The Silence and the Roar (8 page)

A
FTER HAVING WALKED
under the blazing sun all the way from the neighborhood where my mother lives, I felt a refreshing coolness as soon as I set foot inside Lama’s building. Public transportation was not running, even in neighborhoods far away from the flow of the enormous human stream that is the march. They had cut back services, as always, assuming that everyone is either at the march or at home watching it on TV. Buses sat parked with their doors shut; drivers had been hauled off to the celebrations. There must have been hundreds of them, parked in several rows on the streets, waiting until the march was finished so they could take all the rural folk back to their villages and towns whence they had been brought early this morning.

As I cooled off I felt slightly invigorated, though I failed to recover the peace of mind I had lost this morning as Lama’s neighbors’ television sets blared at unusually high levels to satisfy the Comrades and the goons, turned up so loud that the women and children could not help but watch the marching masses even when they were hunkered down in their own homes. As I climbed the steps, and the whole way over there in fact, I could hear the shouting and the roar of the masses—a perpetual state of agitation I could not quite comprehend. Through their doors I could hear
the building’s residents commenting enthusiastically about what they saw.

Lama opened the door for me and I walked straight into hell. The flat was sweltering. She was wearing nothing but a bikini, reviving herself with water from time to time. She was moist with sweat and her skin glistened. She seemed edgy, on the verge of breaking down into tears; to keep her from doing so I embraced her reassuringly, holding her close. She told me she had started getting nervous after trying to call me several times. She hadn’t imagined that I would dare to go outside on such a terrible day. She could have stayed like that for an hour, as we held each other behind the door; it calmed her down … but I pulled away, took her by the hand and helped her onto the couch, sitting down beside her in front of the TV. I was fascinated to know what it was that could send the masses into such hysterics. She nearly choked me with her arms, burying her face in my chest while I watched the screen.

The masses had been transformed from a patchwork of multiple currents, each one led by someone chanting through a handheld megaphone as the group repeated the same chant, into a single torrent spanning several miles. The camera could not capture the full extent of the stream. The square was packed with people and pictures of the Leader. The agglomeration swelled as those human waves surged like the sea, forming an endless undulating chain. Many people had climbed up trees and streetlights and traffic lights, filling the balconies and the rooftops as the roar reached a crescendo alongside the military march and the voices of the commentators and the shouting of
the masses. As I noticed everyone’s attention being drawn to the balconies in the hotel overlooking the square, something happened, and the people began madly shouting and hollering. I peered closer and saw a ghost resembling the Leader appear every once in a while in one of the windows overlooking the square … slowing down a bit, just enough so the masses could recognize him, and then disappearing. Whenever his ghost appeared the people would holler and scream. As they hollered, the camera would carefully zoom in on the people’s faces in one particular area before panning to another. When the ghost of the Leader appeared they would thrust their hands up toward him and shout at the top of their lungs—mouths open as wide as possible, neck veins bulging, nerves on edge, faces damp with sweat as they turned red (and oh, what sweat it was, as if the masses had just emerged from the ocean). All of a sudden, a bodyguard came out onto the balcony holding a statue of the Leader high above his head, displaying it in all directions as the masses hollered relentlessly, their shouts reaching farther and farther, like the call of a bird as it flies away. This statue presentation lasted for five minutes until he disappeared and the wave of shouting died down bit by bit until it was nearly extinguished. But the Leader had no intention of letting the masses calm down. Just then his ghost appeared from behind the window and the shouting started back up all over again.

With her arms wrapped around me Lama whispered that I was neglecting her.

“Sweetie.”

“Yes, Lama?”

“What’s so important about that circus? I’ve never known you to be so interested.”

I stroked her hair so she would let me keep watching for a few more minutes. Pretending to be asleep, she whispered, “Turn it off … please.”

“Just a minute, my love. I’m right here. Just one minute.”

“I’m bored.”

“One more minute.”

“Your clothes are completely soaked with sweat.”

“I’ll take them off in a little while.”

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

Without waiting for a response she started undoing my buttons, drowsily, pressing her nose in close to my body to smell it, as if she were on drugs. I let her do whatever she wanted even as the Leader continued toying with the masses. I wanted to bear witness to this strangest of relationships between the Leader and the masses.

The Leader had become accustomed to playing with the masses, to toying with them. Ordinarily he would be late showing up to a mass convergence or a celebration organized in his honor. Every time the crowd would anticipate his appearance at any moment, except on occasions when he was busy and would send someone else in his stead, turning all the preparations into a waste. Or just the opposite: he might appear at times when he was unexpected. He had made an art out of stunning the people, and he would laugh out loud whenever he saw those signs of awe on people’s faces. One time he sent his youngest son to inaugurate a charity market. The presence of the son is enough to warrant the same kind of pomp and ceremony that calls for masses who
will chant the Leader’s name and a brass band and reception by state functionaries. On the day the charity market was inaugurated, the governor had a gift for the little boy, a decorated horse that he could ride and that would bring him joy. The procession arrived, the people chanted and the band started to play a military march as fireworks were set off overhead … and just then the red Mercedes that the son typically rode in stopped and the Leader himself stepped out instead. What a surprise it was, tying everyone’s tongues, but the shock only lasted a few seconds until the Leader was received as he must be, and the absence of the son was forgotten. The Governor presented the Leader with the horse that had been decorated in a manner that would please children, and he accepted it, laughing to his aides.

Meanwhile, on another occasion, to dedicate a water purification facility, the son unexpectedly stepped off the train that the father was supposed to be on. In such moments the Leader toyed with the enormous torrent of the masses in new and previously unheard-of ways. He behaved like a child. What else should one call passing by a window like that, stopping for a moment before disappearing and then dispatching one’s assistants out onto the balcony to show the masses a statue and then pictures of oneself in different outfits?

I made Lama’s task easier by lifting myself up off the couch as she removed my last piece of clothing. At that moment one of the Leader’s assistants came out carrying a model draped in the Leader’s military uniform, adorned with all the medals and badges he had earned, and then proceeded to turn the model in every direction as the state of excitement reached an even higher, unprecedentedly
high level. Hands were raised as though they wanted to reach out and touch the uniform. The television producer cut to a shot of scores of young women jumping up and down, screaming and weeping. That scene reminded me of audiences at rock concerts in the West, where teenage girls are struck with comparable hysteria. They do the exact same thing here. Women were reaching out their hands and screaming as tears streamed down their cheeks … some of them held their heads as they screamed.

I stroked Lama’s hair as her mouth wandered around my chest. She now sat on the couch so she could rest her knees as she devoured my body. It was her habit to moan as she caressed me, not the way a woman moans from ecstasy but as though she were complaining, complaining about something with muted moans that emanated from a tortured soul. In that moment I could feel her moaning through her touch but I could not actually hear her because of the loud television. She whispered in my ear and then sucked it in her mouth, “Turn off the television … please.”

“Just a minute, I want to see where this madness ends up.”

“Screw them,” she said, kneading my chest. When I let out a brief laugh she brought her mouth down below, preceded by her hand. She was trying every means to persuade me to switch off the television. But how could I? At that moment they were lowering another one of the Leader’s uniforms with ropes so that the masses could touch it. Hands were outstretched and people started leaping up just to graze its edge. The shouting grew louder and a segment of the masses torqued in a terrifying manner. At one particular moment the uniform was quickly whisked away and as it
vanished the Leader himself appeared. Madness reigned over all existence.

A theatrical move that not even Aristotle himself imagined in his
Politics
, where he elaborated on the deification of the king in the East.

The Greeks became familiar with the nature of rule in the East when Alexander the Great conquered the lands of Persia in the fourth century
BC
. After the celebrated conqueror returned to Athens he wanted to emulate the Shahs of Persia by imposing their custom of deifying themselves, specifically in the form of the relationship between ruler and ruled. Whereas that relationship in Athens had been between the ruler and the citizen, in the East it was an expression of the relationship between the god-king and the slave. People in the lands of Persia would prostrate themselves before their kings, and it was this in particular that Alexander the Great wanted to implement in his own country, but he met with the opposition of the Macedonians. The important thing is that the Macedonians refused to deify their kings and to lie down before them, while the people of the East agreed to do so without any discussion. Whether in Persia or Egypt or China, kings were deities and human beings were slaves. This refusal among the Macedonians was the opposite of a state of total acceptance among the inhabitants of the East. As a result tyranny became bound up in the Western mind as the Eastern condition, and for that reason Aristotle went on at great length about Eastern tyranny, describing it and philosophizing about it.

Human beings in the East are happy slaves, to the point that Hegel believed: “In the East only one individual is free:
the despot.” It follows that whosoever is not a despot must be a slave. Aristotle advised his student Alexander to adhere to two styles in governing the lands extending from the East to the West: think of human beings in Macedonia as citizens and consider Asians slaves. Therefore, the people of Persia were made to lie prostrate before Alexander the Great while those outside of Asia were exempted from doing so. He minted money using the word
shah
to describe himself in Persia, even more specifically, “The Lion Slayer.” Matters degenerated still further after that as kingship—as it was called—became firmly implanted in the Hellenistic world and the
shah
grew unfettered, becoming the lawgiver and a leader more powerful than the army and the highest judicial authority; omniscient, he behaved however he wished, giving whatever orders he desired and so forth. At some point the West became afflicted with tyranny. Its origin: the East.

As I was saying, the Macedonians refused to deify Alexander despite the fact that he was a great conqueror who achieved splendid victories for his country. Consider this irony, dear reader, that as soon as Alexander entered the lands of Persia as a conqueror the people deified him, whereas the people of his own tribe condemned that deification and pushed back against it. History records one of his generals mockingly laughing out loud when he heard of this trend toward deification that Alexander the Great had been preparing to impose on them. Alexander imagined they were making fun of him and he felt rebuffed. But that did not eliminate the thought from his mind altogether; rather, he said the Asians had no objection and that he was like a god to them and they were his happy and willing slaves.

We are willing slaves and the proof is in what was going on just a little while ago in the large plaza outside the hotel, where the Leader was toying with the people (the slaves) to the point that he sent out his military uniforms and his medals in order to make them go mad just by touching them. He loves to see the masses kill themselves on his behalf. As I walked over to Lama’s flat I saw more than one ambulance speed off silently, transporting whoever had been overwhelmed—and there were many of them in that crowd and that heat. One time a doctor informed me, asking to remain anonymous, that in every march like this one more than a hundred people die, whether trampled or suffocated, and twice that number would die in traffic accidents as people returned to their homes and villages.

Why does the Leader love these marches so? Hannah Arendt discussed the relationship between the Leader and the masses, coming to the conclusion that the masses cannot live without a Leader, just as the Leader cannot live without masses. In other words, the Leader cannot exist without the masses just as there is no existence for the masses without the Leader—two poles, each one cannot exist without the other. We’re not talking about the individual people who constitute the masses here now, but about masses of humanity, hordes of human beings who can be found at a particular time in a particular place chanting for the Leader. I believe the Leader loses his self-confidence and gets depressed when too much time passes without him seeing the masses fill the streets in order to chant his name. As I already mentioned, the Leader regularly watched
video clips of the masses chanting for him in marches or in crowded gatherings. He would do this in the interim between one march and the next, between one crowded gathering and another. I would venture to say that he does this to avoid losing his self-confidence. He had a habit of inviting guests into his video room to watch hours of those clips. I trust the reader will recall that he had invited over Mr. Ha’el, who wants to marry my mother, to watch these tapes. Television screens re-airing the most recent march fill out every corner of the Leader’s palace.