Читать книгу "Muslim" - Zahia Rahmani - Страница 7

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.