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Part One: The Search for the Missing Manuscript
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1 Part One The Search for the Missing Manuscript You have already heard about the beauteous maidens that this peninsula has produced, daughters of Greece, bedecked in pearls and coral, gowns embossed with eagles, boudoirs in palaces of crowned kings . . . —part of Tariq ibn Ziyad’s*1 oration to the conquering army in Al-Andalus Habit erects a veil against God. Veils invoke a sense of remoteness and villainy. Habit is therefore the very source of remoteness and villainy. To break habit and cast it aside is thus the source of intimacy and happiness. —Ibn Sab‘in, Commentary on Ibn Sab‘in’s “Testament to His Students” The Opening Woe is me! Woe is me for what I have lost, leaving a huge void inside me. I have been asked to explain the nature of this loss by a voice that I’ve grown used to hearing in my dreams. “You herald of the unseen,” I have shouted back at the top of my voice, “you ask me about it, and yet you know more about it than anyone else!” 1. Please note that items in the text indicated with an asterisk (*) are discussed in the glossary. 2 | Bensalem Himmich My shouts rose and echoed through the darkness of night, so much so that they shook me awake. The weather was cold and rainy, and yet springtime was to bring with it a magic of its own. I got up at once and went outside, wandering through the alleys of my own quarter and neighboring quarters too. As I crisscrossed them, I was sometimes lost in my own thoughts, while at others I concentrated my entire attention on the dawn of the day to come and the stirrings of plants and creatures all around me. Yet again, maybe for the thousand and first time, I performed my prayers, with no other plea than that the All-Knowing One would direct me to my manuscript , my missing essence and lost pillar of support. Fragments, snippets of sentences, isolated words, that’s all that remains of my manuscript. I have tried to follow its traces by jotting down various bits during hours of intermittent wakefulness, on the crest of an all-too-fleeting bout of clear thinking, or whenever scattered glimpses and fragments have flashed across my mind. Here now are just a few of them: “You should espouse plenitude in existence, for that displays more purity and intelligence . . . and is . . . “Knowledge is a token of sublimity . . . “Love constitutes within its confines the fertilizer of the living and the means of well-being . . . “As you proceed ever upward, may your progress be spiral . . . so faulty circles are broken; so you can implant your branch on the heights you have reached, not the place where you started; so you can await the onset of drowsiness and everturning habits . . . “Many’s the intellect if it is pure, your own portion will not elude you or disappear . . . “The very obscurity of my discourse is my means of concealment. Whoever seeks to interpret me without understanding, that person is ignorant of my secrets and has become my foe . . . “ . . . I belong to You, O God. To You I will return and be gathered . . . “In Your splendor and glory implant me in Your firmament now, now. Set me down so that I may scatter the clouds of plurality, so I may establish an element of certainty in true existence and unity. “ . . . My routine involves isolation and seclusion . . . [35.172.193.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:02 GMT) A Muslim Suicide | 3 “Concerning the reason why I persist in this direction, . . . just watch me and do not ask. “Reconciliation with your whole self is the correct path. . . . Traveler on the way, remove from your self all attachments and attributes. They are all blemishes and illusions. “L O V E . By all women with their beautiful eyes, I am not a worshipper of the P N S nor am I a crazy presence in your midst.” . . . My manuscript is my foundational location, my untouched flame. If I ever find it, I will rejoice and will find my endeavors invigorated. But if I am deprived of it and the loss lingers for some time, I will feel the fire of anguish and turn in on myself . . . People may well be surprised that I am so intensely sad at the loss and that the mere memory of it brings a lump to my throat, as though I’d been robbed...