The Fall of the Imam E-Book

Nawal El Saadawi

• Herausgeber: Saqi Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Bint Allah knows herself only as the Daughter of God. Born in a stifling male-dominated state, ruled by the Imam and his coterie of ministers, she dreams of one day reaching the top of a distant hill visible through the bars of the orphanage window. But Bint Allah's ambitions do not escape the attention of the Imam, who never feels secure no matter how well he protects himself. When the Imam falsely accuses Bint Allah of adultery and sentences her to death by stoning, he is not prepared for what happens next. A postmodern fantasia, this powerful and poetic novel is a call to arms against those who use religion as a weapon against women.

Leseprobe

THE FALL OF THE IMAM

Nawal El Saadawi is an internationally renowned feminist writer and activist from Egypt. She is the founder and president of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. Among her numerous roles in public office she has served as Egypt’s National Director of Public Health and stood as a candidate in the 2004 Egyptian presidential elections. El Saadawi holds honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Illinois at Chicago, St Andrews and Tromso, and her numerous awards include the Council of Europe North-South Prize, the Women of the Year Award (UK), Sean MacBride Peace Prize (Ireland), and the National Order of Merit (France). She is the author of over fifty novels, short stories and non-fiction works centering on the status of Arab women, which have been translated into more than thirty languages.

‘A formidable force in the international world of literature’

New Humanist

‘Egypt’s foremost feminist writer …

Saadawi writes beautifully’

Publishers Weekly

‘Nawal El Saadawi writes with conviction, humour and intelligence’

World Literature Today

ALSO BY NAWAL EL SAADAWI

FICTION

Love in the Kingdom of Oil

Memoirs of a Woman Doctor

Two Women in One

Woman at Point Zero

God Dies by the Nile

Zeina

PLAYS

The Dramatic Literature of Nawal El Saadawi

NON-FICTION

A Daughter of Isis

Walking Through Fire

The Hidden Face of Eve

SAQI BOOKS

26 Westbourne Grove

London W2 5RH

www.saqibooks.com

First published in English in 1988 by Saqi Books

This edition published 2020

Copyright © Nawal El Saadawi, 1988, 2009 and 2020

Translation copyright © Sherif Hetata 1988

Nawal El Saadawi has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

A full cip record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 86356 612 7

eISBN 978 1 84659 139 6

Contents

FOREWORD by Jenni Murray

PREFACE by Nawal El Saadawi

THE FALL OF THE IMAM

GLOSSARY

Foreword

Jenni Murray

It’s not hard to imagine how much courage it took for a young woman to rise up in a culture where the cruel suppression of women was a daily occurrence, and to challenge the power of men in that society through both her medical practice and her writing.

Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931 in a small village in Egypt. Her family followed traditional practices – she suffered genital mutilation at the age of six – but also embraced liberal ideas such as the education of girls. El Saadawi graduated from Cairo University in 1955 with a degree in medicine and began to work as a doctor in the village where she was raised. It was there that her feminist politics, which would become the bedrock of her life’s work, began to take shape. After witnessing first-hand the terrible physical and psychological problems her patients suffered as a result of numerous patriarchal practices, El Saadawi became a campaigner against FGM, domestic violence and the requirement for women to veil themselves.

El Saadawi eventually became director of the ministry for public health, but it was her writing, beginning in the early 1970s, that brought her into direct conflict with the authorities. Her first book of non-fiction, Women and Sex, which was published in Egypt in 1972 and includes a frank discussion of female genital mutilation, became an important text in the era of second wave feminism, first in the Arab world and then internationally. El Saadawi’s work was considered so controversial that she was stripped of her official positions in Egypt. Then, when she helped found the feminist magazine Confrontation in 1981, she was imprisoned by President Anwar Sadat (and was only released after his assassination). Of that experience, El Saadawi said, ‘Danger has been part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.’

The Fall of the Imam was first published in Arabic in 1987. It was then translated by her husband into English and published the following year. It is an extraordinary novel, complex and experimental in its construction, as the same events are recounted, altered and expanded upon over and over again. There is page after page of the most horrific descriptions of the punishments a man can order to be inflicted on a woman, based on the slimmest evidence that she has flouted strict moral rules. If you had ever wondered what stoning to death or dismemberment involved, El Saadawi leaves you in no doubt of what those horrors entail.

The story is set in a terrifying location. Although El Saadawi doesn’t specify which Muslim country her characters inhabit, it is ruled by the Great Imam who leads the Party of God, Hizb Allah. The Great Imam was born so poor that he had to walk with his hands behind his back to cover the holes in his trousers. He’s a vindictive, jealous megalomaniac, determined to control his world with absolute rigidity.

After rising to power, the Great Imam funds the party of the opposition to give the impression that he is ruling in a democratic country, but his hypocrisy leaps off the page. His moral standards are appalling. He steals the wives of his supporters and betrays his own mother. He marries a beautiful, blonde former-Christian who holds his arm during public appearances to impress the crowds. Heaven help any woman whose moral standards are as loose as the imam’s.

The most prominent female character in the novel is Bint Allah, whose name means ‘the daughter of God’. Bint Allah lives in an orphanage where the children are indoctrinated in strict Shari’a law. On one occasion, she finds her friend lying in the dark with blood trickling down her legs. Her friend has been raped by one of bearded men in control of the orphans. Bint Allah sees the orphanage’s guards as ‘black eagles hovering in the sky above my head’. The image of those eagles is repeated throughout the book, representing everything from the ever-present law enforcers to the swathes of black clothing that envelop the women who trail in the wake of their cruel, unfaithful husbands.

There are many acts of brutality against women in this book, but the most distressing is the stoning of Bint Allah’s mother. Her execution, ordered by the Great Imam, is graphic. Nawal El Saadawi pulls no punches. ‘They cut out her tongue first. Later came the rest. For the Imam ruled according to God’s Shari’a.’

The Fall of the Imam is not an easy book to read – partly because of its haunting and complex construction and partly because of the unrelenting cruelty and violence integral to the story – but it is an important exposition of the evil that can be done to women and children by fundamentalist regimes; evils that continue to this day.

I met Nawal in the early nineties and interviewed her for a BBC Woman’s Hour programme about Egypt. We talked about her struggles as a prominent feminist who practised medicine and wrote without fear, and of the punishment she had often suffered for being so vocal. I asked her the question which had long puzzled Western feminists: was it any business of ours to interfere in cultures which were not our own and criticise the kinds of practices she wrote about? Or should we leave it to women like her to fight for women’s rights in a culture they understood and of which they were a part? This was her response: ‘When I was held in a filthy prison cell, in the heat and the dark, not knowing what my future might be, I felt the support of Western feminists lapping at my feet like the warm waves of the sea. Never fear that you are interfering in a culture that is not your own. This is a global battle for the rights of women.’

Preface

Nawal El Saadawi

When I was a child, I used to see God in my dreams. He had my mother’s face, the face of someone who is very just. Or He looked like my father, and then His features looked kind. My school friend Fatima Ahmed also saw God in her dreams. His face was that of her father, sometimes that of her uncle. It was a cruel face, the face of a person who was very unjust.

I discovered that the face of God appears to all children. Usually He looks like their mother, sometimes like their father. The problem with God’s face is that neither children’s eyes nor those of grownups can see it. God can only be seen when we sleep, and His face has the features of those who are closest to us.

I tried to write this story when I was still a young girl in school, but all my attempts were in vain. The idea was in my head, and the characters, and the impressions. Everything was so vivid! Yet I could not find the words with which to tell it. It has lived with me since then, dogging my steps. During the last ten years it has given me no respite. The characters stared at me while I was awake, and even when I slept. If I travelled inside my country, or abroad, they were always there, watching me wherever I went. They were there when I met the Iranian Shahbani Shiraz who told me the story of her ‘little girl’, raped by her jailers. There with Fatima Tag al-Sirr, the Sudanese woman, when she took me to visit the ‘Association for People with Amputated Hands’ so that I could see her boy and his companions with their hands cut off at the wrist in accordance with Shari’a. There during the three months I spent with I’tidal Mahmoud and other young Egyptian girls in a prison cell.

The story quivered inside me every time I caught the familiar face of one of those rulers looking out at me from a photograph, his head partly showing from under a godly turban or a military cap, or his eyes watching me in a dream as I slept. It lived with me every time I travelled to Lebanon and heard the bombs of Hizb Allah (Party of God) echoed by the bombs of Hizb al-Shaitan (Party of Satan) from the other camp. It went with me to Mecca, stood by my side as I read ‘Welcome to the Guests of the All Merciful’.

Nawal El Saadawi

Cairo, February 1987

THE FALL OF THE IMAM

The Search Begins

It was the night of the Big Feast. They hunted me down after chasing me all night. Something hit me in the back. I was looking for my mother in the dark, running alone with my dog following in my tracks. Something struck me from behind. I turned round to face them, but they disappeared like frightened fish. They cannot look into the sun, cannot bear its light. They sleep all day and rise up at night. They do not know how to fight, have no honour, have no pride, they always hit you from behind.

Before I fell, before letters and words had time to fade, I asked them, ‘Why do you always let the criminal go free and punish the victim? I am young. My mother died a virgin and so will I.’

They said, ‘You are the child of sin and your mother was stoned to death.’

But before the letters could fade from my mind, before my mind became a blank, I said, ‘I am not the child of sin, I am Bint Allah. That’s how they called me in the orphanage. Even if I lose my memory, I cannot forget. I cannot forget my mother’s face. After I was born, she went to fight the enemy. She is a martyr.’

They said, ‘Your mother never knew what loyalty meant, neither to our land, nor to the Imam Allah. She died an infidel, and is burning in hell.’

I said, ‘Before the life blood leaves my brain and memory ends, my mother was never a traitor. Before I was born my father abandoned her and ran away.’

They said, ‘And pray who might your father be?’

And I said, ‘My father is the Imam.’

They screamed, ‘Not another word. May your tongue be cut out of your head.’

They cut out her tongue first. Later came the rest. For the Imam ruled according to the laws of God’s Shari’a. Stone adulterous women to death. Cut off the hands of those who commit a theft. Slash off the tongues of those who spread rumours about irradiated milk. Pour all bottles, all casks, all barrels of alcoholic drink, into the waters of the river.

On the eve of the Big Feast they slunk away before the spies of the Imam could see them, descended to the river and drank from its waters until their minds were blank. In the morning, suddenly awake, they got up, full of remorse, clamouring for mercy, since on the night of the Big Feast the Imam graciously pardons everyone. The doors of prisons and the concentration camps are thrown open, and out of them march the dead, the martyrs, the victims of nuclear radiation, the women stoned to death, the thieves who have one foot missing on the right and one hand missing on the left.

It was her turn to be free, but the spies of the Imam spotted her as she slipped out, trying to escape in time. They saw her running in the black of night with her dog close behind her. It was just before dawn. She had almost given them the slip when something struck her in the back. As she fell, the question echoed in her mind: Why do you let the criminal go free, and kill the victim?

Their voices faded away into the silence. Her mind was dark as night, her memory all black or white, retaining not a word, not a letter from the alphabet. Only her mother’s name remained behind.

They Cannot Read

The darkness was impenetrable, an opaque black without sun or moon. They could not tell whether it was night, or day without daylight, in a forest thick with overgrown trees hemming them in from every side. Suddenly, from somewhere, there came a faint light, like the glimmer of a torch held in the hand of some guard, or of the Chief of Security. Just enough to catch the shadow of a body fleeing. They could tell from the running movement on two legs that it was human, not animal, nor something on four legs. They could also tell it was a woman, not a man, maybe from the breasts, rounded and firm, or from something else, indefinable. She was young, very young, her bones small, her skin smooth like a child, brown as river silt, her face pointed with slanting, wide-open eyes, their pupils blacker than the blackest night. A goddess of ancient times. She ran barefoot, not stopping for a moment. Her right hand carried something like the branch of a tree. Her body was naked, shining, a silver fish splitting the universe, her ‘public shame’ hidden under the wing of night, or a dark green leaf.

There was a flash of lightning, just enough for them to glimpse her disappearing into the night with the dog at her heels. Then once more everything was black and still.

A moment later something stirred in the dark, a movement made of many eyes, the eyes of the Imam advancing, led by the Chief of Security, a line of men, their huge bodies covered in hair. Each of them carried a stone or a sharp weapon in his right hand. They ran as fast as they could, trying to catch up with her, but she was light as the wind, faster than any man. Besides, she knew all the secrets of the land over which she ran. This was where she had been born, and this was where she died. She would have escaped them had she not halted to fill her breast with the smell of her land.

I halted at the foot of the elevated strip of land between the river and the sea, on the way from my home to the front for the first time since we were defeated in the last war and my mother was killed. My feeling of surprise did not last, but when I climbed up the slope of the hill I caught my breath in wonder. The branch in my hand slipped through my fingers, and I could feel my heart pounding. I called out my sister’s name, for her time would come after me. Twenty long years; since I was born I had dreamt of this hill. I remembered every hollow, fold of the earth, pebble and stone, the feel of sea air on my body and its smell in my nose, the rise looking down on the green valley, and the three date palms and the mulberry tree. I could smell the odour of my mother’s body, like fertile soil. This was my land, my land.

She would have escaped had she not been halted by the smell of the land and the sea, bringing back her whole life in one moment. She halted, took a deep breath, and just at that moment the bullet struck her in the back and bored its way through, like an arrow, straight to her heart. She dropped to the ground, bleeding slowly. Her dog whimpered once and was silent, and the birds flew up in fright, filling the universe with their cries. The heavens echoed with the crowing of cocks, the squawking of crows, the neighing of donkeys, and after a while the dogs joined in, barking loudly. It was the end of the night, and dawn had not yet broken.

Men clothed in white robes, their faces covered in thick black beards, rose up from where they lay on the ground and in great haste climbed up to the top of the minarets and domes, fixed microphones to them as fast as they could, and rapidly climbed down again, leaving the electric wires dangling in the open. A thousand voices united as one voice in the call to prayer, then, resounding in the air like thunder, hailed the Imam as the ‘One and Only Leader’. But right in the middle of all this commotion there was a sudden hush. The electric power had failed, and the chanting voices ceased their hallelujahs. In the deathly silence of those moments they killed her. No one witnessed the crime. No one saw her drop to the ground. Only the stars in space, and the trees and the low hill rising on a stretch of land between the river and the sea. Her dead body was turned to stone, became a statue of rock living on year after year with her dog by her side.

She was a girl on her own, all alone with her dog; her sisters were to follow later. The world was as it is today. Things were the same. The sky, the earth, the trees, the houses, the river, and the sea.

I asked, ‘Is this the Mediterranean Sea? And is this the River Nile?’

They said, ‘Here names can be different, and time passes.’ But the place was the same, and the sun was the same, and the ears of corn were the same, and the she-buffalo had black skin and four legs, and I could see her in the distance descending towards the river, swimming in the water with her back shining in the sun, her eyelids drooping with pleasure as she floated lazily. After a while she climbed out of the water on to the bank, moving with a relaxed ambling gait towards the edge of a field where she stood munching fodder slowly, swinging her tail, her ears listening intently to the wheeze of the water-wheel, her brooding eyes following the woman tied to it with a rope of hemp, as she went round and round blindfolded. A man walked behind her, switching his stick over her buttocks every time she halted to take her breath. A gasp of surprise escaped my lips. A woman turning a water-wheel while the buffalo rests? They said, ‘Here we follow the laws of supply and demand. A buffalo costs more on the market than a woman, so a man can have four wives, but he can only afford one buffalo.’

I stood there surrounded by open space. The fields were like a long green ribbon, and a line of buffaloes floated in the water, their backs shining in the sun. Behind the green ribbon was the desert, and behind the desert were dunes of yellow sand. But if you went as far as the hilly rise in the land, you might run into bands of roaming brigands. Here hyenas and even eagles ate carrion. Tigers devoured antelopes and deer but they refrained from human flesh. Men were the only living beings that fed on the flesh of their own kind. The meat of deer was rare, but human beings were everywhere and their flesh was easy to find. Crocodiles were treacherous, and the skin of snakes was smooth, but their poison was deadly. Here loyalty did not exist except among dogs. It was still night. The night was long, and dark, very dark. Insects hid in its depths. They had the bodies of mosquitoes, or locusts, or rats. There were also reptiles and other beings that crawled on four legs.

‘But where have the people gone?’ I asked. I could see no one. The body of the girl had disappeared, and her assassins had left. ‘Where have the human beings gone?’ I asked again.

‘But there are millions of them’, they said, ‘like gnats floating around. You cannot see them with your eyes. They live deep in the earth, in subterranean caves, in houses like burial pits. They think that light is fire and are afraid of it. They think that the rays of the sun carry nuclear radiation, that great evil will come to them from across the ocean, dispatched by the great powers in tins of children’s milk, that all this is the wrath of God descending upon them. But why should God be angry with them? They do not know. They do not know what crimes they have committed. They do not know God’s word, nor what it says. God’s word is written and they can neither read nor write. They do not know what words are. All they know is to murmur, or applaud, or acclaim, or vociferate, or cry out, or shriek at the top of their voices.’

I asked, ‘Is it not possible to talk to them a while?’