The Descent

[4]

      I am a troubled man. Troubled. Fragmented. Tortured by reality, and illusion. Tormented by life, and fantasy. Tossed about, haplessly, by destiny and fate. Entombed in solitude. Exposed to horror. And  frayed by hope, an undying hope that, someday,  it would all be over, that I would be able to see myself through, someday. Someday.

Matters did not improve for me, in terms of my social acceptability in Damascus, the city of my birth. In fact, in many ways, they got even worse. In school, I wasn’t simply ostracized, and I wasn’t simply bullied; I was beaten, beaten, beaten, so many times that, in retrospect, I found it absolutely miraculous that I did not stab anyone in the back, or shoot anyone in the head with my father’s gun in the aftermath of one of the many beating sessions, in which I starred as the only victim, absolutely miraculous. There were many incidents that cut deep in my psyche, and left scars that would never disappear, too many incidents, too many incidents.

“Ammar?” Eve’s soft voice was mesmerizing, and it filled the tent with sensuality. What tent?  The tent that was especially raised in the dining-room for this occasion by Eve’s staff, the dimly lit tent  where both Eve and I reclined on wool-stuffed cots and leaned side by side on a wide and thick cushion that separated us.

Eve was wearing another Moroccan style robe for dinner, but this one was neon blue, and its V-neck opened widely and deeply, revealing, at the slightest possible shrug of the shoulders, much of Eve’s firm and round breasts. The robe, also, had  cuts on both sides that extended from the hips to the ankles, plainly revealing Eve’s voluptuous thighs.

I, on the other hand, was wearing a black silk shirt under a rust colored lamb-wool sweater, and a black velvet pants, all of which I found in a room-sized closet in my quarters.

“Well, it’s a nice old-style Arabian name, there are many people here who bear it. Although we seldom see them, for some reason.”

“But, I guess you’re the only Eve?” I was being sarcastic, and perhaps a little vicious. But Eve didn’t seem perturbed by this attitude, not in the least.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” Eve asked while smiling, my attitude seemed to amuse her. And it was my turn not to be perturbed.

“Well Eve, let me put it this way: are you familiar with the concept of evolution?” That might not have been a fair question in normal circumstances, but in these...Well!

“I’m familiar with it,” Eve answered calmly.

“Well Eve, evolution, is an established scientific fact in the normal world,” I was using Eve’s and Thurayyâ’s terminology now, it seemed more convenient to do so, “I cannot deny it.  I also can’t deny your existence, after all I can see you and touch you,” and as if to reassure myself of this latter reference, I extended my right arm and touched Eve with a finger on her right hand, and she smiled. And something within me came crashing as she smiled.

It was a wall. An old wall that, a mere second ago, stood without a single crack in its foundation. Not a crack. Still, both Jibrîl and Iblîs had warned me that this could happen, they had warned me repeatedly. They had warned me after Eve’s departure from my room, they had warned me after Thurayyâ’s departure from my room, and when she later returned, they had warned me as I entered into the tent in the dining-room and breathed its air, and they had warned me as I gazed upon Eve’s stretched figure on the cot, and as I gazed upon her rebellious breasts.

They had warned me repeatedly, and I did take their warnings seriously, as seriously as I could have in the circumstances; but to no avail, it now appeared, to no avail. A wall tumbled. A wall shattered, and had there not been many others behind it, I would have... well, I would have done things that I had never done before. But those other walls remained tall and impregnable within me, and I needed them, I needed them all, for I was truly stumbling blindly in unfamiliar territories. I needed to be strong.

My silence extended for over a minute, Eve, obviously not understanding its cause, still respected it, until, finally, realizing that I had to say something, I decided to go on with my previous discourse as if there had been no interruption.

“So I have to conclude that here, in this place, you are real, but only here, and whatever memories you have of being somewhere else, be it the Garden of Eden or the normal world, are somehow implanted in you, but never actually experienced, never lived.”

Eve, who had a puzzled look in her eyes for a while, shrugged it off with her shoulders, causing her breasts to bounce up and down, almost bursting out of her robe; then she smiled, pursed her lips, and said:

“You are not the first one, of course, to make these points. You are not the first evolutionist that I had argued with, and who had dismissed my entire normal life experience as being the result of, shall we say, high-tech brain washing? But I cannot blame you for doing so, after all science has spoken, and I... well, I have different sets of memories of my life in the Garden and my life in the normal world. Some conforming to the Qur’an, some to the Bible, and some...some simply do not conform.

For my life in the Garden, the Old Testament tells about me and Adam, and Satan and the serpent, and the apple tree, and the causing of the Original Sin. The Qur’an on other hand, speaks of me consistently as ‘Adam’s spouse,’ as if my individual existence does not matter in the least.

Still, in the Qur’an, Iblîs, who is Satan, lures me and Adam, the both of us together, to eat of ‘the tree of eternal life and sovereignty.’ In the Qur’an, then, I don’t get blamed for the Original Sin, indeed, in the Qur’an, there is no Original Sin, and life is not deemed as a punishment, but  a test, a necessary ordeal...”

“And what is the purpose of that ordeal?” I interjected, again with a sarcastic tone, hoping to thwart Eve’s attempt at theologizing.

“Who knows?” Eve responded in  a similar vein, perhaps she, too, didn’t like the fact that she was beginning to theologize. “God never managed to explain this adequately, neither in the Qur’an, nor in the Bible, nor in any other supposedly divine book, for that matter.

And can one actually live life, whether in the normal world or here, and not think of it as a punishment, at least every other minute? Frankly, I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone can, regardless of whether one is a believer, or not.”

And at this moment, Thurayyâ and three other women showed up with the food.

For a while, and as I gazed upon the five feminine figures that surrounded me, the naturally blonde, the two brunettes, and the two black-hared women, all of whom returned my gaze with impudence, I had a feeling that none of them were real, that  nothing around me  was real, and that I was merely living a fantasy, a fantasy the basic theme of which is familiar to all men living, and all men that had ever lived, a fantasy of being the only man in a world - or is it an island, or a planet? - full of young beautiful and sexy women, all of whom being desperately in love with me.

Or, to put it in more Islamic terms, a fantasy of being surrounded by hûrîs. Oh, I know I had been told that this was not Paradise, and so these could not be Hûrîs. Still, the sexual currents which permeated this tent, this world, were just too plain, and too strong, they put me on the defensive, and sapped my energy. I felt that I was being manipulated, perhaps not by these women, but by someone here who was not God, or even  a god.

I felt angry. I felt scared. I felt lonely. And as I watched Thurayyâ and her three companions leave, I felt the wall, the wall that had just been destroyed by a touch, being rebuilt by another. Still, I wasn’t... reassured.

Eve touched my hand, it was her manner of pulling me out of my reverie. I smiled as I shook my head, apologized and began to eat, following Eve’s example. The food was delicious; I was not surprised.

“Tell me more about yourself.” Eve demanded after more than thirty minute of silent munching, and...eye games, that’s the only way I can describe them really. I was never any good at these games, and this was due to the simple fact that I had never been willing to participate in them. This evening, however, this evening was different, Eve made it different, Eve made all the difference. I allowed myself to play a limited  role in an eye-game begun by Eve, and that seemed to come naturally to her, and, in a short while, I was in good spirits again. Don’t ask me how, don’t bother, I don’t know the answer, I simply don’t.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Everything.” She replied. And why not? We probably did have all the time in the world. Thankfully, we didn’t need it.

“Well, I’ll give you the short version of everything, my life is not that interesting, if at all. I was born in May thirtieth, 1966, in Damascus, Syria. My parents were, and still are, famous artists, my father being a movie director, and my mother an actress. Of the two, my mother, unsurprisingly, was the most famous, to the extant that, for most of my life I was known as the son of blah blah, and I didn’t mind; I merely aspired and daydreamed.

Now my parents were good to me, and I love them dearly, but in school, their fame spelled disaster for me. The other children were jealous of the attention that I received from my teachers, although such attention had its negative side as well. Still, I was quite unpopular in school, and  I was ostracized, which, naturally, made me hate school; I was not a good student.

But I also wasn’t that bad, just a mediocre one. But I didn’t let that get to me at the time, because I knew that the reason for my mediocrity was not intrinsic, that mediocrity was being imposed upon me. And so I waited, and waited for years, for my chance to shine.

I graduated from high school, went to England for three months, to study English, and went to Russia for eight months, to study Russian. I was also planning to study astronomy in the University of Moscow, but Russia felt like a prison, and I knew I wasn’t going to shine in a prison, that’s why I had chosen to leave Syria to begin with. And so I left Russia and then, a year later, I landed in America, in O’Hare airport in Chicago, to be specific.

In America, I spent some eight and a half years, during them I only earned a bachelor’s degree in history, and learned a lot about my abilities, myself, and the world. Out of the eight years, I spent only four years in school, during the other years... well, you can say I was engaged in miscellaneous activities. I was confronting the world and learning to hate it.

I never did shine in America. And yet, somehow, I  still believe that I am meant to shine, and I definitely want to shine. I don’t know at what stage in my life did this desire become an obsession, all I know is that, at one point in my life, it did. I want to shine to the exclusion of anything else that a man would usually aspire to in life: a loving and understanding companion, bright children, countless friends. And money, of course.

This has been the short version of everything there is to know about me, I hope you’ve enjoyed it, because I certainly did not.”

I don’t think my last few words had any meaning, still I smiled at the end of my tale, and took a big gulp of orange juice from the glass that I held all the while in both my hands. This was yet another long speech that I had not intended to make, and I felt quite ashamed, but as it had always been my wont in such occasions, I hid my shame in a smile. An idiotic smile.

“But you said nothing about your religious life, and Thurayyâ told me that you were at one point very religious.” Eve, as she said these words, had an expression on her face, an expression that I could not interpret, it wasn’t surprise, it wasn’t sympathy, but it was serious, that much I could tell.

“Well, there isn’t much to say, really, I started taking religion seriously at the age of seventeen, when I was in England. I became quite committed, that is as committed as Thurayyâ used to be,  shortly thereafter, during my stay in Moscow. This signaled the beginning of a fundamentalist stage in my life that lasted for almost five years, during which I was influenced by Shî’î, Sunnî, and Sunnî-Sûfî ideas, respectively, then, I went through a modernist stage for almost three years, then a philosophic stage for one year, and finally, I became an atheist. I’ve been an atheist for more than a year now, and I am very comfortable with it.”

A playful expression had gradually overtaken Eve’s face as I spoke my words, I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care, for now it was my turn to ask the questions.

“Tell me Eve, what is it about Râbi’ah bint Ismâ’îl that brings a frown to Thurayyâ’s face?” The question didn’t seem to catch Eve by surprise, or to cause her any dismay, and she proceeded to answer my question with a smile on her face. Thus began a new phase in my... journey, my Isrâ’¨. Or so I thought at the time.

_______________

¨The Isrâ’ refers to the Prophet’s Night Journey from Makkah to Jerusalem, on Burâq’s back naturally, where he met all previous Abrahamic prophets and led them in prayer. This immediately proceeded his ascension, or Mi’râj, to Heaven.

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