The Fall of the Imam by Nawal El Saadawi Page B

to the reports made by the ministers. Every now and then he would nod his head in understanding, or his eyes would stray upwards as though he was lost in deep thought. No one noticed that he was not thinking of anything, that his mind had abandoned his body on the seat of the Imam and had fled to the ground floor. There he took off his rubber face, rubbed his nose flattened by the pressure of the other nose he always wore, and slipped out of the back door of the palace with the servants, hiding himself under his real face to avoid discovery. Once outside he jumped into a bus before it stopped, then jumped out of it before the ticket collector came up to where he stood, and walked leisurely down the narrow lanes, kicking at the pebbles with his pointed shoes until he reached the house where he was going.
    His mother received him with a warm embrace, winding her arms tightly around him. He could recognize the smell of freshly baked bread and dung that clung closely to her clothes.
    ‘How could you forget your mother for so long, for twenty years or more?’
    ‘Have twenty years passed since I was here last time? Was I not here yesterday, mother?’
    ‘He who covers his body with the days is always naked. He who keeps his distance from the crown is always king,’ she said. He sat on her knee and she rocked him up and down, telling him about all the things which had happened since he was last here. ‘This winter all my chickens died of diarrhoea, and your aunt, may God have mercy on her, was taken ill with cholera and expired after a few days. Your uncle went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and never returned. Your female cousin was bitten by a mad dog and immediately after that your father visited me in a dream and said that he was waiting for me up there in Paradise. My son, have you forgotten what you promised me? Where is my ticket to Mecca?’
    He buried his head in her bosom. ‘No, mother, it’s not that I have forgotten, but you know how it is with all these problems of being Imam and which seem to be without solution. Allah alone is all powerful and no one but He can do anything. You know, mother, this question of foreign debts and all. Then the struggle between the Great Powers which nobody can stop, and the preparations for a space war. Besides, I’ve had trouble with Hizb al-Shaitan, in fact with almost all its members. They are sons and daughters of fornication, may God punish them with hell-fire. And this pain I feel here in my chest just under your hand.’ Her fingers were hard and cracked with toil but they touched him gently over his wound. It was a deep wound which went right through from his back to his heart. She filled it up with ashes from the mud oven and with coarse grains of coffee, to help it heal quickly, and he went to sleep in her arms, her voice sounding like a distant sob as she sang her sad song.
    Her deep strong voice reached him from afar as he stood on the platform wearing the face of the Imam just a moment before his fall. Its tones were wafted to his ears, like a voice in a faraway dream, or like a dream within a dream. Many were the times when in his sleep he had dreamt that he was dreaming. He would awaken in the middle of his dream, then fall asleep again only to dream once more that he was dreaming. In this dream he put on his rubber face and descended the stairs of the palace like someone walking in his sleep. Outside a car was waiting for him. He got into it and it drove him through the streets while he waved to his people. In the meetings of the Advisory Council the ministers would see him as he sat there listening attentively without hearing, shaking his head in understanding without understanding. He scratched his head from time to time as though thinking deeply, lost to what was going on around him.
    But he was not thinking, for thinking was not required of those who occupied the post he occupied.
    The sound of guns being fired echoed in the air with a deafening noise. Suddenly