In Rasha al Ameer`s Judgment Day (first published in Beirut in 2002 by Dar Al-Jadeed) a reclusive and middle-aged Muslim cleric from a rural background tells the story of how he falls in love with an independent, educated and urban woman who invites him to work on a book about the great Arab poet Mutanabbi. The relationship opens the man`s eyes to aspects of life he has never encountered and leads him to reconsider everything he has ever learned. In this section, set in the early stages of their friendship, the sheikh goes to the woman`s house and finds out that she wants their collaboration to continue, in a way that will bring them even closer together. Interwoven with speculation about Islam and modernity, and heavily influenced stylistically by the classics of Arabic literature, the novel explores the transformative power of love.
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As the time for our third meeting approached, my good cheer began to diminish, to be replaced by a strange mixture of excitement and anxiety. I was not surprised at how my mood had changed, but my constant apprehension that people were watching me behind my back impelled me to be cautious and keep to my room, although I had intended to perform the sunset prayers in the mosque with my colleagues and then slip away to your place. It was no use resisting the waiting. Then that mixture of excitement and anxiety gradually began to grow as time progressed, and I found my small room and the wait oppressive. In low and high spirits, I left the mosque an hour and a half before our appointment, holding under my arm a small bag that I had dusted off for the occasion and that hardly had room for the two volumes of Mutanabbi’s works, and I decided to walk the long distance to your place, or at least some of the way. It was a good choice, because the more streets I crossed, the more certain I was that no one was reading my thoughts and emotions or was interested in exploring my inner self or my motive for heading into your neighborhood. Were it not for this growing confidence that neither I nor my worries would attract anyone’s attention, I would definitely have been too timid to buy you a modest bunch of flowers, and were it not for that despondent cheerfulness with which I had emerged from the hell of the last few days, I would have thrown the bouquet into the first rubbish bin I encountered, for fear that I might not present it to you properly, because, as you can guess, that was the first bunch of flowers I ever bought to give to a woman.
I could not wait for the last ten minutes before seven o’clock and I knocked on your door with apologies for coming too early. As usual, even if it was not yet usual at that stage, I was saved by your hospitality and your spontaneous questions, which I tried my best to answer properly and in full sentences, not with the ready expressions I could produce on demand.
A moment of doubt almost overwhelmed me: that moment when you were in the kitchen making tea and, as I later discovered, arranging the flowers in two containers. It occurred to me to speculate on what you were thinking, and I imagined you were making fun of me and my flowers and wondering: “Now what to do with him? How do you deal with a sheikh who falls in love at first sight?” I fancied you trying to allay your fears with thoughts along the lines of: “It’s true it’s the first time a sheikh has fallen in love with me, but fending off an infatuated sheikh is not necessarily any harder than fending off an admirer whose profession is teaching or commerce or anything else!”
You saved me again by coming back with my flowers, stamped with your imprint, because you had arranged them in two slender containers, which I thought were not originally designed to be vases, instead of just putting them as I brought them in one ordinary container. I waited for you to come in and then stood up, ignoring your request that I stay seated. In fact, I stayed standing, waiting for you to come back again with the tea things. In case it might seem artificial to be standing, I approached one of the bookcases that covered most of the walls of the room, and started to browse distractedly through the titles in various languages, with just enough concentration to work out that the library probably owed its richness and variety to at least two generations of readers, and not just to you. When you came back with the tea things, you confirmed my guess, as though you could read my thoughts. You explained, in such detail that I almost thought you were apologizing for owning so many books, that they were family heirlooms you were merely preserving, though from time to time you did slip into the shelves some recent publications.
You asked me about the mosque library and its contents, and I replied that we were working on organizing it, because I was too embarrassed to tell you the truth about it—that it consisted of several large Qurans of mosque format, sumptuously bound and gilt to the point of vulgarity, which visitors to the mosque treated like icons, and a collection of books on hadith, the sayings and doings of the Prophet, which I doubt ever aroused anyone’s curiosity. You did not ask for more details, but instead asked if you could inquire about my trip. I took the occasion to test the informality with which you had infected me. What exactly I told you does not come to mind. Of course I did not tell you the story of my trip as it really was, why I took it and why I cut it short, nor what happened in the course of it, but rather for the occasion I patched together a trip with pieces from here and there, embellishing it with imaginary touches where possible. The reason for that was not just shame at the reality but because the truth in that situation, then, in your presence, was my last concern and your last concern, too: it was unnecessary, futile, and there was nothing to be gained from it at all. Because the truth is not ‘the truth,’ or else I would no longer have a pretext to accept your invitation to continue our conversation. I’m not fooling myself so don’t try to fool me. We had nothing to say to each other, but what brought me to your place that day was the fact that you wanted it for some reason you alone knew. All that mattered to me was to untie my tongue and address you as an equal. That was my sole concern and intention, and I do not think I am exaggerating if I claim success.
Chatting with you casually and spontaneously made me somewhat uneasy, as much as it excited me, and I did not know if I should leave it to you to go back to the subject of Mutanabbi and the book project, or whether I should take the initiative. Beneath this unease there was another unease and a question that was more difficult to answer: was this small talk, on the margins of the ‘official’ purpose of my visit, just a stopgap while we finished our tea, or was it the harbinger of a familiarity tentatively seeking a basis on which to flourish?
I did not want to miss the opportunity of casual conversation, so I asked you in my own style—inserting a superfluous “God willing,” that is—if you had any news about ‘the project,’ although my intention was not to confine my inquiry to that.
You replied that there was nothing new, other than the issues that any project ran into in this country, starting with the shortage of workers who combined competence with humility, and then the competition for the title of ‘editor-in-chief’ and other titles, even before the project produced anything to be supervised, and then the smell of corruption that had started to spread when it came to travel tickets and hotel bills.
I do not know from where you dredged up the eloquent examples with which you illustrated what you had spoken about briefly, or how you were able to take such a cold and pessimistic view of things, while at the same time keeping your enthusiasm alive.
I was listening to you with my eyes as well, and when I felt that seeing you talk, with your body language as well as your voice, was about to overwhelm me, I could not help but interrupt your outburst with a timid and pompous question. “And what is to be done, my lady?” I asked.
I had to look at your lips, your eyes, your hands and breasts—that is, every part of you that moved—to remind myself that you were not just a figment of my adolescent imagination, but a woman with a spirit and a body of which you were in full control.
My question provoked you as if you detected some sarcasm in it, and you replied with something to the effect of: “There’s nothing to be done, nothing at all, ‘let’s aspire to a kingdom . . . ’’’* but before you finished the sentence or indicated that it ended there, your voice took me by surprise with an unaccustomed tone. “Anyway, that’s not what our meeting is about today and I don’t know whether, in what I’m about to suggest, I am addressing the right person. It’s a long story, but I will try to be brief. Toward the end of my university studies I was pained to discover that I had lost touch with Arabic and Arabic literature, and that’s why, besides working as adviser to the organization sponsoring the project, I went back to university, not to get another qualification, but to satisfy myself and possibly my pride.
“In short . . . I have long wanted to read some Arabic books with someone trained in the language. Are you willing and do you have the time to help me? Or at least we could try, and since we are indebted to Mutanabbi for introducing us to each other, how about taking on his complete works and reading them together from start to finish?”
Something in your voice revealed that you had had your ‘eureka’ moment, that you had found the door that, once one crosses the threshold, leads to places unknown. I did not hear in your voice on that day what I hear in it now, and it did not seem to me that it was one of those doors that were so dear to you. All I cared was that I saw in your suggestion an invitation to pursue our meetings, regardless of what happened to ‘the project.’
* “Let’s aspire to a kingdom, or find in death an excuse.” (the pre-Islamic poet Imru’ al-Qays)
Excerpted from Judgment Day by Rasha al Ameer. Translated by Jonathan Wright
First published in Arabic as Yawm al-din
Copyright © by Rasha al Ameer
English translation copyright © 2011 by Jonathan Wright
Judgment Day will be published by the American University in Cairo Press (www.aucpress.com) in October 2011.