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  I became a Muslim. I had to leave for the desert.

  So I left. I walked there. Soldiers accosted me. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “Where’re you from?” “A country where I couldn’t remain.”

  Since then I’ve been waiting in this camp.

  I thank the pack for forcing me here. I’ve learned a lot from “Muslim,” from this Name, from what it stands for.

  If I reply to their accusations by saying, “I am Muslim,” then I suffocate. They condemn me to silence.

  Zahia Rahmani

  “MUSLIM”

  A NOVEL

  Translated from the French by

  Matt Reeck

  DEEP VELLUM

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  Deep Vellum 3000

  Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

  deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

  Deep Vellum is a 501c3

  nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013.

  Originally published under the title “Musulman” Roman

  Copyright © Sabine Wespieser, éditeur, 2005

  English translation copyright © 2019 by Matthew Reeck

  ISBN: 978-1-941920-75-6 (paperback) · 978-1-941920-76-3 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951694

  This work is supported in part by an Arts Respond grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

  This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

  Cover design by Tanya Wardell

  Interior by Kirby Gann

  Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  ACT I

  The Night of the Elephant

  ACT II

  The Little Poucet and the Magic Nut

  ACT III

  My Mother Tongue Refuses to Die

  ACT IV

  Dialogue with a Government Worker

  ACT V

  Desert Storm

  Unless your tongue was not cut off but merely split, with a cut as neat as a surgeon’s, that drew little blood yet made speech ever afterward impossible. Or let us say the sinews that move the tongue were cut and not the tongue itself, the sinews at the base of the tongue.

  John Maxwell Coetzee, Foe

  Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  PROLOGUE

  I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED that it might come to this. I was forced to lose myself in the century of errors that came before me.

  I’ve become the site of a dispute among men. I became, I became again, a “Muslim.”

  From this madness, this limit, I wasn’t able to escape.

  This condition put an end to my fiction.

  I HAD TO RETURN. To return to a place of origins. I wasn’t one to bark at the heels of people. It’s impossible to do anything against the pack. It condemns you without a defense. “You were Muslim, you’re Muslim,” it named me. I was allowed to answer only from this position, as a “Muslim.”

  “You want me to be Muslim,” I said, “So Muslim I’ll be! But why have you played this trick on me? Why do you want me like this, humbled before a god?”

  “So we don’t lose track of you,” barked the pack.

  For me, I think of God as a protocol, an agreement among people. But the rowdy crowd barred the road in front of me. So “my” God? They simply brought him down from heaven for me. That’s all they needed for proof!

  The pack strapped me to God. I would have to exist for him.

  I became a Muslim. I had to leave for the desert.

  So I left. I walked there. Soldiers accosted me. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “Where’re you from?” “A country where I couldn’t remain.”

  Since then I’ve been waiting in this camp.

  I thank the pack for forcing me here. I’ve learned a lot from “Muslim,” from this Name, from what it stands for.

  If I reply to their accusations by saying, “I am Muslim,” then I suffocate. They condemn me to silence.

  Those who run this camp pretend to ignore this fact. They don’t want anything to do with us, with the word “Muslim.” Nothing. It’s a facile fact on the ground that our dangerous nature justifies their measures. They say we’re evil. That’s how they’ve decided everything. But are they really convinced? I’ve waited for so long in his corrugated tin shack, my cell, that they’ve forgotten why I’m here. Few of the prisoners here will be repatriated, and the State that keeps us, innocents all, doesn’t know how to give us our freedom. This State has violated the laws of war, we tell ourselves. For myself, I think fate led it to this defeat. How can it reproach us, if it hasn’t accepted its own responsibility? If the soldiers kill us today, they’ll be condemned. They’ll have brought that indignity upon themselves. Only a hell machine’s endless noise could hide it. But till when? Sooner or later, they will have to face a court. We, the waiting, have earned that. We’re no longer scared. Shame clings to them now.

  I know nothing about this place, I haven’t even heard its name. Perhaps they will let us go here. Who knows? They’ll leave. It’s their Cayenne. For the moment, we’re isolated, separated from one another. Far from all humanity, our warders, not without evil designs, learn that we don’t share the same language.

  We were brought to a place and left. For some, it was the final trip. The older ones are still in shock. They tremble. Experienced in combat, they vow to sacrifice themselves, to martyr themselves, to go through with it to the end. They are as dead as they are alive. As for us, the others, more arrive each day.

  I know that they worry about us. But who worries about how we are beginning to feel about ourselves?

  Everything I believed in has died. Only my tongue refuses to die.

  ACT I

  THE NIGHT OF THE ELEPHANT

  ONE NIGHT, I LOST my language. My mother tongue. I was hardly five years old, and I’d lived in France for only a few weeks. I no longer spoke my language, a spoken language, a language of fairy tales, of ogres and legends. One night, a night of dreams and nightmares, gave me over to another language, that of Europe. I became hers one night, that night when, sleeping, I met an army of elephants.

  Dream elephants lumber through the half-light.

  They’re one inside the other, and the other inside the one, and me inside them all.

  Inside I’m suffocating.

  They walk through me and over me. I push out.

  Inside the stomachs of the elephants, I push out, I escape.

  I’m taken in again, and I push out. And again inside another, and I push out.

  I swim inside their stomachs, using my arms and legs, and I escape. And I enter again inside. I push out, swimming, I escape.
/>   And then inside another.

  I push out, I escape, I’m taken inside another.

  I push out,

  I escape, I reach out,

  I touch the door,

  I open it.

  Swimming, I pull the door open, I pass inside, I close the door.

  Behind the door, elephants.

  Behind the door, no words.

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

  Without words, no language.

  Without words, no dreams. No words.

  They’re behind me. I’m outside. Alone.

  A voice says to me, “Drive the black and solemn horses …”

  I fall.

  I fell, speechless, into the day.

  “What are you doing out in the hallway?” my mother asked in a language that I refused to speak. No longer. No, no longer. I was sitting in front of my bedroom door. I knew that there was something dangerous on the other side. I thought I had locked it. The sun was just about up. I was sweating, trembling. I remember saying to her, “Elephants.” I said, “Elephants,” but it wasn’t in her language. I was scared. I couldn’t tell her. I had nothing to say. Algeria was behind us. I’d just got to France. There were elephants in my room, and my brother and sister were still inside. I’d left them with the elephants. I’d fled the elephants, I’d left everything behind. My brother, my sister. My mother, my language. Everything was upside down. I no longer had a name.

  I’d forgotten this dream. Were it not for the new terror that threatens the world, I would never have remembered it.

  FOR MUSLIMS, THE NIGHT OF THE ELEPHANT marks the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. It was, the tradition says, when the army of Abraha, King of the Abyssinians, attacked Mecca. It is said that they were mounted on elephants procured from unknown parts, and upon these animals they set out to destroy the town. Seeing the animals, the city’s people became scared. The elephants chased them into the mountains. But it was due to divine grace that thousands upon thousands of birds arrived to pelt the elephants with stones. The army fell into disarray. It was a debacle. The soldiers died of infections. And the town, now holy, was saved. That night, there, the first Muslim was born.

  I can’t deny what lies behind me. I can’t forget the difficult journey. It was suffocating. It was elephants upon elephants. It was one inside another, I went from one stomach to another. I pushed out from inside, and I escaped. Who had taught me about them, the elephants? And when and where? Who put them in my room? How did they find me? Were they at war with me? I couldn’t breathe. They were squashing me, but I didn’t know why. Why me? They were infinite, there was no end to them, one inside the next, invading my space. I fought them. I went out to fight them.

  “Do you see what your Lord did to the Elephant Men?” says the Quran. “Did he not shred to pieces their plan? He sent wave after wave of birds against them, He cast stones against them as a sign. He laid waste to them.”

  Could I defeat such an army? I survived. I left. I left them behind. Hadn’t I heard my mother’s stories about the birth of the baby Muhammad? I was young, I heard the stories in her language. But I’d left this story behind. Why hadn’t I followed history? If the people of Mecca had fled the elephants, why had I entered inside them?

  I was born into the world in a minor language. A language that was passed on orally, a language that was never read. We called it Tamazight. A Berber language that throughout the incursions of history was guarded tightly by its people for what it knew. For the people of the Atlas Mountains, in the regions of Kabylie, in the Aures Mountains, where the Mozabites and Tuareg lived, it was in their language and in their spoken traditions that Islam was introduced.

  “Speak the word, speak the word, speak the word,” the Archangel Gabriel said to Muhammad. “Speak what I tell you, and people will come to you.” And it is said that the voice that came from on high spoke to Muhammad in Arabic poetry. It is said that anyone who hears it will be moved. And was it for this reason that his wife and his nearest friends understood that he was no ordinary man? They listened to him, and they spread the word. And so the people came to Muhammad. They came and came, and more came after that. He told them, “We’re all the children of Abraham.” His every word was like a world unto itself. His presence was radiant. He was the Prophet. So he had to leave Mecca. The vendors of idols hated him, and they chased him out. He had to decide on a place. It was Yathrib in Medina, a town where the memory of the tribes of Israel and their rituals was still fresh. His disciples went before him, one by one. Then it was his turn. Whether out of affection or necessity, Muhammad liked to listen to the stories of the Jewish people, a community that modeled faithfulness to God, which he respected. He wanted to listen to all of the stories—about Noah and his sons, about Lot and his brothers, about Isaac, Sarah, and Ishmael, about Pharaoh, Moses, and Aaron, about Job and his miseries, about Elijah, about Solomon, about Jacob and David. He wanted to hear about their rules for daily life, which he would use to make his own. And they translated these from Hebrew into his language. It was said that Zayd, the youngest of his scribes, had been Jewish. He still went to Jewish school. And, as for the second, Ubayy, it is said that he was a rabbi before his conversion. Upon the death of the Prophet, it was up to them to keep alive his memory, his grandeur, and his glory. They knew his verses by heart. A little while later, they passed the knowledge on to Uthman, the Caliph and the new guide of the community. With the gift of their manuscripts, with the writing out of the Book, they became bound to it. To this word, they added other stories, which they had heard or which had come to them by other means. Perhaps they omitted some stories as well. What exactly constitutes the divine word will be argued over forever, it is said, beneath the watchful eye of God and his Prophet. They made the Quran, the holy book of “Muslims.” And Arabic, as a language, was reborn. It would be the language of this adventure. The language of Islam.

  Reading the Quran, reading this book that defies comprehension, you will understand that it came to us through foreign languages, those of the Old and New Testament. By taking up the spoken word of others, by taking up its stories, replacing certain versions with others, and in passing them on to people who were ignorant of them, to people who didn’t speak Arabic, to people who had never learned to read, Islam opened up the world for them for a while. An endless story. Those who didn’t speak Arabic, and those Arabs unfamiliar with the history of monotheism, should they have refused this story? Those who told the stories of the Quran to the illiterate were intermediaries, translators. And, since then, it was not in Arabic at all that millions of men and women heard the message of the Prophet. Islam wasn’t limited to just one language. And so long as time remains, mothers indoctrinated by the one true word will continue to raise their children through the grace of words. The book of history has been opened wider.

  The stories from Arabic enriched my language as well as many others. And it was for this gift, this gift of history, and its connection to languages, that Arabic was for a long time revered. To reprise a book, to speak of its origins, to speak of what it contains, to speak of its language and its varieties, that is to define that book. And not to read the Quran in that way is to admit that it has won. The ignorance of our times is unbridled, but languages had known how to find instruction in Islam. In its linguistic tradition, they had a treasure.

  I couldn’t tell this to anyone in France, I was a child. I lived inside a language that I couldn’t pass on. It was like in the story of Miriam where the storyteller can’t stop until all of the listeners have fallen asleep. I didn’t know how to control it. If I approached it a thousand times, it would unravel each time. On the Night of the Elephant I didn’t run away, I entered into them. Into their stomachs. What could I have believed in? That I could defeat them by myself? Defeat whom? Could I make them retreat? Change the course of history? I left everything behind—Muhammad, the elephants, and my family. The elephants were still there, approaching the city, tramping toward a battle that would kill
them all. The Night of the Elephants was the birth of Muslims. I didn’t want to be one. And in France, I was taken to be an Arab, even though I wasn’t, even though their language and ways were foreign to me. I left them, left them behind in my cube-like room. I separated myself from them.

  I REMEMBER HOW ONE TIME when I was a teenager I looked at a poster advertising a circus and its special elephant act. And when they came into the ring, I wasn’t disappointed. Their imposing size impressed me. There were quite a few of them, one following closely upon the next, with their children behind them. But as soon as the trainer had arranged them in a circle and made them sit on their haunches, I grew overwhelmed by anger and disgust. Seeing them sitting on their rear ends with their front feet raised to greet the audience made me sad. I was ashamed. I became emotional. I know this confession is ridiculous. I left the elephants, and I left the circus. It was humiliating what they were doing to them. For these marvelous beasts that had brought so much to the world, that had worn the world on their shoulders, was there nothing left other than this as a means to live?

  WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I was told I was a child of Adam and Eve. That I was sister to Cain and Abel. That I was the daughter of the son of Abraham. But as for the sons of Abraham, both of them circumcised, I didn’t know which he had taken to Mount Moriah—his son born of Hagar, the slave, or his son Isaac, born of Sarah. I didn’t know which son had been elected. The first text said Isaac. But the Quran, meant to overturn everything that preceded it, corrected this history by omitting the name of the sacrificed. So which lineage was mine? I guarded this enigma as though it were a treasure. So they had erased a name. Perhaps they didn’t dare to put another in its place. Was it from the one, or the other, or perhaps from both, that a great nation came into being?

  Sarah told Abraham to get rid of Hagar and her son. Abraham was upset, but he did what she said. He gave Hagar some bread and water. She put her son on her shoulders and set out for the desert. Just as she was about to collapse, she happened upon a spring. She put her son down. And then history tells us nothing about her. Nothing. Her life stops. The boy finds himself without a father, and Hagar disappears into the shadows of legend. So perhaps I was a child of Ishmael, the abandoned child, the child born of a cast-off slave. Of a mother expunged from the record. Forgotten. Of a mother cut off from her progeny. I take this to be my lineage. And even if they want to pen me in by calling me what they do, it’s only through the life of Ishmael, the abandoned child, that I escaped the harsh hand of the father. “Abraham, Abraham,” the Angel of the Lord could have said, “Why did you abandon him?” The record never mentions him again. I come from a fatherless family. Where should I go?