Suddenly, in what seemed a miracle, Hell disappeared. It vanished suddenly, not by degrees, as wakefulness fell from its free kingdom in the sky. An enlightened wakeful-ness, replete with kindness, peace, and serenity, restful and at rest—a happiness exuding sympathy and affection. I peered through the window—and saw the radiant horizon blooming in the garden of the rising sun.
A Man of Awesome Power
At a certain time, Tayyib al-Mahdi believed that his mission in this world had come to an end. Deeply relaxed, with only minor aches and pains, he would mutter to himself in contentment, “All praise to God, Lord of the Worlds.” He had generous health insurance and a more than adequate pension. He lived in an apartment that he owned in Nasr City, which he had won as a reward for many years of service abroad. His four daughters had each gotten married—there was nothing left for him to do but to spend his evenings with his wife, watching television, reading the newspapers, and listening to the radio channel devoted to the Qur’an.
Was it so strange, then, that he thought he had discharged his duties in life in a commendable way? Yet he had no idea what the future had hidden from him, for one night a man of radiant appearance, bathed in light and wrapped in a snow-white robe, came to him in a dream. In a kindly tone, the apparition told him:
From this moment onward, and for as long as God wills, you shall have the power to tell something, Be!— and it will be. Do with it what you please.
When he woke from his sleep, Tayyib pondered the meaning of his dream. But no sooner had he forgotten it, the way one typically does with dreams, than peculiarly it recurred exactly in its entirety on the following night, and for many nights on end, until he felt there was some secret message hidden within it. Wisely, though, he kept it to himself, telling no one about it, not even his companion in life, his wife Haniya. At the same time, he felt infused with physical energy, filled with confidence, inspiration, and joy. And why not? He was a good man; his sins were forgivable ones. Pious and observant, he was a lover of virtue who lived his life—despite his modest status—as though he bore on his shoulders the worries of the world and of people everywhere.
But from the dream’s intense, ceaseless pursuit of him, he decided to try out his supposed new power discreetly. One evening as he was watching a discussion on the first channel on television, his wife Haniya busy in the kitchen, he mentally demanded that it switch to the second channel instead. Without any warning, and without him rising from his seat, channel one disappeared, replaced by a foreign film on channel two. Trembling in violent confusion, he was seized by conflicting emotions of fear and elation.
He kept commanding the television to change channels, and ordering the room’s chairs to rise in the air, then returning them to their original places, until he was sure of the miracle that had befallen him. He accepted that its significance was beyond his comprehension—yet he saw that his purpose in the world was not yet fulfilled. Indeed, it had not even begun.
He recalled his benevolent dreams for his country and the planet, which had flared and faded in just a few seconds. Now was the time that they all would come true. He would reform reality with his own hands, but without any acclaim or credit to his name. Yet he reckoned that he must heed the inner voice that had accompanied him through his long life, which occupied his mind when awake or asleep. So at the time that he habitually went to the café each day, he got dressed, his awesome new power enfolded within him, and—entrusting himself to God—left the house in his usual way.
As he hailed a taxi to take him to the heart of the city, the driver waved his hand at him in haughty refusal, speeding on his way without paying him further mind. Even though this was hardly the first time such a thing had occurred, Tayyib’s irritation now was greater than in the past. He considered for a moment that he could make the driver suffer an accident on the road. Whoever is granted a power like mine, must use it only for good. As he said this to himself, his anger nonetheless got the better of him. He stared at the taxi’s rear wheels—and both of them exploded suddenly, like a bomb. The driver pulled over, and drumming his palms together in frustration, glanced back and forth at the two shattered tires. “Both at one time!” he exclaimed.
Tayyib felt that he had taught the man a needed lesson, but had it been mistaken for mere coincidence? He walked by the man, casting him a meaningful look and asking, “Can I be of any help?” but his unknowing pupil glared at him, resentful and enraged. When Tayyib reached the bus shelter, he stood beneath it. As the bus pulled up, jammed with humanity, he watched an argument erupt inside between a woman and a man behind her. He couldn’t hear what was going on between them, but he studied the dimensions of the conflict carefully. Then the man suddenly slapped the woman’s face with shocking impulsiveness. Tayyib was so startled by the incident that he focused all his anger at the offending man’s stomach. Stricken by severe cramps, the brute unexpectedly doubled over, moaning and screaming in pain. The bus didn’t move until he had been carried outside for an ambulance to fetch him. Meanwhile, more than one voice cried out, “He deserves it! That’s what he gets for his bad manners and cheekiness.” Tayyib al-Mahdi observed all this with satisfaction, certain that he had done his duty in the best manner possible.
Continuing on his way to the café, he performed memorable services. Spotting a gaping pothole, he filled it. Finding an electrical box hanging dangerously open, he locked it. Tripping on a pile of rubbish, he removed it. Splashed by sewer water flooding an alley, he drained it. All these things together convinced many in the neighborhood that a genuine awakening had struck the nerves of the state—or even had gone beyond mere awakening to an outright renaissance.
He took his seat in the café, to refresh his mind with a cup of coffee. He listened to the radio as an announcer was expounding on promising developments expected in the future. Tayyib al-Mahdi was annoyed: similar prognostications had excited him in the past, though in the end they had produced only frustration. His chest tightening in fury at what the man was saying, he commanded him from afar … Tell us what has already been accomplished— not what has yet to be achieved! Then he remarked to himself that only sneezing would stop this broadcaster from speaking. Without warning the man sneezed massively, then remained silent. Perhaps he was drying his nose and mouth with a kerchief. Resuming his chat, he abruptly sneezed again, more emphatically than before. After that, he couldn’t complete a whole sentence. The sneezes kept waylaying him until he was forced to conclude that an unforeseen illness had seized him. Rather than trying to talk anymore, he instead played a recorded song, “Walk Around and See.”
Tayyib was intoxicated with a rapture of happiness and victory. He would purify both aural and visual broadcasting of what was unworthy of their noble goals. He would terminate any talk that displeased him by making the speaker sneeze spontaneously, or emit trilling cries like those made by women at weddings, or flee at the onset of uncontrollable diarrhea. Without any doubt, he would be the trusty popular censor of the dangerous media of mass communication.
At this time he noticed a man called Sulayman Bey al-Hamalawi surrounded by slavish devotees and followers, not far from his own seat in the café. Sulayman’s stooges crowded around their benefactor in hypocritical sycophancy, inflating him grossly with arrogance and conceit. The tax authorities counted Sulayman, one of the fat cats of the reforms, among the city’s poor. “Wonderful,” Tayyib mumbled. “Just wonderful.”
Sulayman Bey, go straight to the tax prosecutor’s office to repent and say you’re sorry, and pay up the millions of pounds you owe. Immediately the man got up and went to his car parked outside. Tayyib rubbed his hands with glee—tomorrow his victim will be the talk of the newspapers, which will make an example of him to awaken people’s consciences. And when Sulayman returns to his villa, he will wonder what had befallen him, beating his head against the wall in despair.
He kept applying his stupendous ability the rest of that day and in the days that followed, in all sorts of different places, w
herever it seemed suitable. He passed by a maternity hospital, a consumers cooperative, an electrical appliances factory, and so on. A curse and an affliction for some, a mercy for many others. Wherever he went, astonishment and confusion trailed in his wake. Both those he had chastised and those he had blessed would wonder, “How could people change without warning from one extreme to another? What’s happening to the world? How can so many problems be set right, without any steps taken to sort them out?”Meanwhile, Tayyib came to see that he could not make
the best use of his power without proper planning and awareness of need. He obtained guides to the departments of government, factories, and private companies, and took them to the tea garden at the zoo to draw up a comprehensive program for his intervention: the lairs of official bureaucracy, the centers of production and services, the People’s Assembly, the prisons and what was said about them, the commercial markets, the press, the political parties, the schools and universities. Each phase must be mapped out slowly and deliberately. Every clamor must be quieted, every deviation must be deterred. And once he is done correcting his country, he will turn with zeal to deal with the world. The mission that shall emerge from it will be manifold and heavy. Yet the power that he possessed was the wonder of the age!
Something caught his eye at the tea garden’s entrance. He saw a beautiful woman approaching, to take a seat at the table right next to him. Gorgeous and enticing, she was a perfect replication of his lost youthful dreams. Swept by a surge of delight, Sulayman found his passions aroused in a way that he not known since he first married Haniya, destroying the indifference he had dreaded since he entered old age. The surprise attraction amazed him—truly it was far from ordinary, and hardly appropriate for one preoccupied with such a mountainous burden as his.
She barely noticed him as her large, round eyes wandered over the zoo’s green lake, and the ducks floating lazily on it. Does she have any idea that, in a split-second, he could set her head-over-heels at will? He hesitated a moment before sending her a hidden message. Instantly she threw him an answering look, and seemed as though she were about to speak. His desire now ecstasy, he gave way to it in spite of himself.
Would it do any harm to one who wished to repair the world if he also sought to heal himself? And, in one shared smile, he utterly forgot both his faith and his life. He closed his notebook as they stood up together, surrendering to their fate.
Returning to his house one evening, Tayyib came back to his senses: he realized that he had erred. When Haniya remarked he was not in his normal mood, he claimed to her it was only a cold. And though he never thought to repeat his mistake, the pain it caused him would not go away. Worst of all, he was no longer favored with the depthless inner confidence on which he’d been drunk for so long.
He longed to practice his secret power once again. Waiting until Haniya had gone out on an errand, he turned toward the television as he had done so often before.
The channel would not change.
He thought he was going mad. No matter how much he tried, all he met was failure. The miracle was gone— like a dream.
Pleading is pointless. Distress is useless. Regret has no effect. An awesome sadness will haunt Tayyib al-Mahdi until the day of his death.
The Only Man
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Satan. That alone should do. You’ve known my story since antiquity. Indeed, my mission’s fame burns as brilliantly as the sun that shall surely scorch me on the Day of Judgment.
Yet I am dazed and confused since it has come to me that, despite all claims to the contrary, there yet exists an honorable man in your country. To avoid any misunderstanding, let me say frankly that I can take no credit whatsoever for the flood of evil that now engulfs the earth. Yet I gladly embrace these new, deviant ideas that never even occurred to me in times of old. I have always accepted my fate, which is to struggle to make man stumble, then bide my time to see the result. But the innovations of this generation far surpass those of all who came before it. Since time immemorial, the art of tempting a single man or a woman would totally absorb me as I resorted to my vast repertoire of tricks and sleight of hand in the effort to snare them. Yet now I simply watch as all humanity throws itself madly into the abyss. Whole groups and peoples fall into the pit without a word passing from my lips, without my moving at all. They all sink together into the mire, while I stand back and wait, puzzled and perplexed, drumming palm against palm. How I have wished that I was its cause, the man who put it in motion, the one who could boast it was his own!
But what is really going on? From where did all this corruption come?
Once again, I must confess that times have changed. Every day there is some new miracle or wonder in the world. Indeed, I realize that today I must study economics and politics, public speaking and propaganda, and learn all about science and technology, as well as contractors’ and agents’ commissions, and the ways and means of illegal immigration. I have to become more cultured and change my former ways, if I don’t want my cause to be defeated, to lose my very reason for being. Otherwise, my immortal rebellion would vanish fruitlessly into the void, leaving not a trace behind.
I was in this state of frustration and confusion when my spies informed me that there is still a man of integrity left in this land.
“His name is Muhammad Zayn,” they told me. “A judge by profession, he lives at 15 Zayn al-Abidin Street.”
Immediately I began watching this man with special care. His residence is an old house, ill-suited to his status. That is where he grew up with his family until it was left to him as one by one his kin passed away. Nonetheless, it is considered a great boon from the Lord in an era when people are living in tents and tombs. He is married, with a son at university and another son and daughter in secondary school. He sets off alone for the bus to the courthouse each day, getting off one stop early so that people do not see him riding amidst the crowd, clutching his briefcase under his arm. He starts his court sessions at the scheduled time, following the testimony of the prosecution, the defense, and the witnesses with startling concentration and concern. Other than that, he hardly ever leaves his home except out of necessity, to study his legal briefs sometimes, or to pay his bills. He instills the spirit of hard work and abstinence in his children, who do not hold themselves above the offspring of paupers. Overall, the household abides in an air of plain modesty—in demeanor, in clothing, and even in food. His wife, though, endures this with resentment, easing her feelings by complaining, and by cursing the age from time to time.
“You have my entire salary in your hands,” the judge tells her. “I cannot turn base metals into gold. I do not speculate about the savage cost of living, because I live in the protection of God, who shall preserve me from perdition until my last breath is drawn.”
A great man, but blighted just the same. Temptations surround him from all sides, like water and wind. I found the urge of conquest aroused in me, for right before me were his wife and family. What’s more, it was a household fully aware of what was going on around it. Here you have a conversation that shows the divisions between a husband and his spouse:
“What kind of world is this?” she asked. “Are we doomed to all this torment simply because we’re good?”
He cut her off firmly. “This is the lot of the honest in hellish times.”
“They’re all thieves, as you know very well!” she declared.
“Yes, they are—they’re all thieves.”
“And how will it all end?”
“My sole possession is patience,” he rejoined.
This display was both an objection to the way things were going, and a reproach to her husband’s virtue, as well.
The daughter listens a great deal; she reads the daily papers, and takes time to think about worldly affairs. Shall her marriage take place under these dreadful conditions? I did not shrink from sending her a beguiling young man, as well as a female colleague with know-how in finding furnished flats—yet the young c
ouple stopped at the edge of sin.
“The crooks are safe, playing around as though they’re above the law,” the daughter declared. “Meanwhile, the law itself is wretched—and is only applied against the wretched.”
“All doors are open for their children,” said one of Muhammad’s own. “Only they have good opportunities.”
“All we get is suffering, and honey-coated lies.”
“Our father is an honorable man. An honest judge— but weaker than a wealthy criminal!”
I was delighted by what I heard and prepared myself for work. Everything in my existence is done in seconds. My task seemed extremely easy. I decided to leave the man alone to focus on his children. If one wants to subdue a fortress, then he must first look for a weak point in its walls. There is where he must put his toughest toil.
The ecstasy that precedes effort lit up my heart. Soon, though, it was mixed with something, and—O how quickly and strangely!—this something resembled an odor of dubious origin. The euphoria ebbed away like a wave fleeing the shore. I fell into a state of lassitude, a torpor like a sense of being foiled, as though I were ashamed of myself for the first time in my deep-rooted history. I hesitated, when I had never hesitated before. I flinched, when I had never flinched before. Whatever lust I had had for battle, my victory in it was cause for derision, a defeat sure to bring shame.
No, Satan—this is not mere indolence, it is renunciation. I have never had such a contretemps before. I will leave you, Mr. Muhammad, to your blameless travail, to your trying personal circumstances, and your torturous dependents. You are not happy, but still they envy you. You do not succumb to them, so they try to provoke you. No one loves you. No one empathizes with you. They bear a grudge against you and plot ceaselessly to spite you with the worst of wills.
Now I will bid you adieu. I’ll follow your news from afar. You shall remain a black stain on my being forever.