The Ardent Swarm

by Yamen Manai

What was easier to hijack than democracy? Like most things in the world of men, democracy was principally a question of money, and the prince had plenty.

The villagers were completely discombobulated. Most of them hadn’t even chosen their spouses, and now they were meant to choose who would govern them.

Louz had never bothered to beg old Jbara so he could run the nightly news, since, for a very long time now, the news had been a soap opera with a single episode, during which you saw the Handsome One parade around as journalists tried to come up with new ways to pay him homage.

The Handsome One appeared deeply moved. He left making plenty of promises, and Nawa was the top story on the nightly news. The very next day, a presidential decree mandated the creation of a solidarity fund fed by an obligatory tax. People gave for the Nawis and the like, the forgotten of the earth, but in the end the only ones they were able to save from misery were the Handsome One and his in-laws.

“God is great! God is great!” The Nawis repeated after them, for how could they do otherwise.

God is my choice. His word, my law. So, when the time comes, do as I did, choose God! When the time comes to vote, vote for the Party of God!” Then the tone of his voice became more instructive and authoritative as he unfolded a paper ballot with multiple boxes next to multiple emblems. “Once you’re in the voting booth, you check here, check the pigeon,” he explained. The pigeon was the emblem of the Party of God.

But in order not to tarnish their reputation in the eyes of the believers, the excesses of the self-proclaimed guardians of faith were well-kept secrets. Better yet, they had achieved the feat of freezing time, throwing a medieval cloak over Arabia, allowing only a facade of modernity: television, chips, jars of mayonnaise, and so on. Women remained a vice to be hidden, and the sword and the whip were the rule. Sins have been the same since the dawn of time, so why on earth change the punishments?

If he objected, the director, scratching at his beard and playing the religious scholar, would invariably tell him a story about the life of Noah or Jonas, or perhaps the Last Prophet, to let Sidi know that he would do well to obey. With a heavy heart, the beekeeper opened his hives and bitterly began to make the requisite, repugnant motions. He blackened his soul to meet the prince’s needs.

Women in the kingdom were forced to live in silence and behind veils, for the devil inhabited their hair, their skin, and their vocal cords. They didn’t have the right to venture far from their guardians, because if left to themselves, they’d be defenseless against the devil hiding between their legs. Such were the codes established by the bearded men elevated to the ranks of ulema and such were the laws of the kingdom.

To the devil’s delight, their bodies were dripping with divine honey, now perverted by men who at daybreak claimed to be working for God, in his holy lands, imposing their rhetoric and fatwas, their beards and clothing.

Once again, man, in search of land, gave the plague to his fellow man in the folds of his offerings.

She didn’t believe a word of his supposed sincerity and held the government responsible not for the country’s inherited poverty but for its divisions and uncustomary violence.

The religious competencies of its ministers didn’t solve a single economic or social problem, and in many respects, the situation worsened. The country remained mired in poverty and its young people in unemployment, while the violence of a fringe of radicals and their hate-filled discourse proliferated with the leaders’ complacency. Within the dream of prosperity and tolerance, nothing remained of fragile democracy but the illusory right to talk shit.

Douda was taken aback. What fate could you promise a child brought into a world of grenades and submachine guns?

In his hands, animals driven by instinct, and across from him, humans driven by free will. Among these creatures mired in clay, who were the true monsters?

He went back for Staka and took the road to the village, damning in his heart the commander, his katiba, and all the murderers and warmongers prostituting God to their ends.