Infidels_textforepub-16

My dear children, come in. I was expecting you. Come, both of you. Don’t be shy. No need to pretend or be afraid here. You’ve arrived. You’ve crossed the river. I followed you. I’ve been with you from the start. Approach. Approach. Closer, closer. Boundaries no longer exist. Behind me, the other world begins. In front of me, you must not lower your eyes. Look up. Look up. Higher. Higher still. That’s it, look at me as I look at you. Love me as I love you.

Take off your clothes. They’re of no more use here.

Take them off. All of them.

Shame does not exist. No longer exists.

Jallal, join hands with Mahmoud.

Mahmoud, that’s what I’ll call you from now on. That’s what you wanted. We’ll forget about Mathis, is that it? Yes? No? You’re not sure?

All right, then, in this world you’ll be both. Mahmoud and Mathis. Mathis-Mahmoud. Mahmoud-Mathis. Does that suit you? You won’t have to choose, give anything up, split yourself in two.

I knew your two lives. I will judge you on both. You became Muslim, but that’s not what saved you. I will look into your heart and make a decision. I know your soul. I took it from you and I’m giving it back. Come closer! You too, Jallal!

Voilà. You’ve decided to be brothers. You left the other world as brothers. Mathis was the strongest. The most determined. But you expected nothing less from him, isn’t that true Jallal? Isn’t it? His strength guided you, gave meaning to the chaos of your life, the darkness of your solitude, the misfortunes always close behind you.

You found a heart, Jallal.

You are that heart, Mathis.

You didn’t wait for me. You came together without me, without my blessing. And you were right. I gave you each a heart. It beats inside you without my intervention. It is your heart that decides, that speaks on your behalf. On my behalf. Yes, you did the right thing. I created fate. Yours snuck by me. I must have been sleeping. You took that power. You decided to join your two hearts forever. Sacred Union. Single heart.

Even hidden, I see it before me. It continues to beat for you both. Here that heart will never stop.

Don’t cry, Jallal. There’s no reason to cry anymore. Or, if you want to cry, but only for joy. The clouds are below. Can’t you see them?

Dry your tears. Do it. So I can continue. Other hearts await me. And they’re far from being as serene as yours.

Mathis, help him dry those tears.

Here you can finally know each other. Know each other naked. Know each other without judgments or insults. No houris or virgins for you. I’ll make sure you’re left alone. For as long as you wish.

Another day you’ll see familiar faces, people close to you. They’re already here. They’re resting too. Taking time for themselves. The sky is mesmerizing, disorienting. Go off on your own together as much as you want.

Eternity begins here. Now.

Don’t worry, Jallal, the earth below continues to turn. The Apocalypse is not on our doorstep. Your childhood hero Robocop is aware of your arrival. But not the actor who played him, Peter Weller, no. He’s living down below, for now.

The soldier’s here too. Has been for a very long time. Alone. Always alone. He’s still not over the trauma of war.

Slima your mother met him once. She prefers not to see him again. She spends her time praying, writing poems, talking with her own mother, the woman who adopted her, Saâdia.

She’s waiting for Mouad her husband to arrive.

I know Jallal. I know you don’t like Mouad. You’ll have time to get rid of that resentment. He’s not a bad man. Soon you’ll see.

Are you still crying? Come, now! Why? Do you know, Mathis? You’re afraid, Jallal? You mustn’t be.

Give me your hands. Yes, like that, both of you. Close your eyes.

I give you my blessing. I send a breeze of purity over and into your hearts. Let it win you over, transform you, transport you. You’ll never be separated here. Never judged. Your bond is eternal.

Mahmoud take Jallal in your arms!

Jallal take Mahmoud in your arms!

Now, each blow gently on the other’s neck and nape!

Go ahead. Don’t be shy. Blow hard and gently.

That’s right.

Go, now, go and explore your new life. Sleep if you want. Whenever you want. Day and night are the same thing here.

No, you don’t want to leave? To sleep? You prefer to stay with me? But I’ve got work to do. Other souls are coming up. They’re arriving. Look behind you! They’re growing impatient. I must be there for them. On time. Do you understand? Yes? No?

What exactly do you want?

Another prayer? Another blessing? Stories? A story? Just one story? You want to know me better?

I’m here in front of you. You can look at me. I exist. As you can see. That’s not enough for you? What do you want? A poem? A dance of celebration? A youyou?

A story? Is that what you want? You really insist?

Then listen. I’ll tell you about my first life.

I was born in America. I never knew my father. So who gave me life? I’ll never know. I lived without him, without trying to find out who he was. To find him.

My mother? She was taken from me very early. When I was around the age of three. I don’t remember what she looked like anymore. Only her smell. She almost never washed. She was sick. She had serious fits. She had a mental illness. She was there and then she wasn’t. Didn’t see me anymore. Couldn’t look after me anymore. I never complained. I loved my mother, even when she was sick. I adored her even negligent. She gave me what she could. I didn’t cry. I watched her all the time. I clung to her, never left her side. The world wasn’t kind to her.

Women always need to do more, prove themselves more. Give more. More and more. And never any gratitude. Selfless acts. A sincerely understanding heart. My mother was required to be a woman, mother, lover, worker, servile and submissive . . . She couldn’t do it. The world was no place for her. She didn’t have the strength to keep acting in an absurd comedy. Wearing one mask after another. So she fell asleep. She never left the bed. I slipped in beside her. Inside her. There was no more food. We gave ourselves to each other, fed off each other. I had her empty breast in my mouth all the time. I didn’t need milk. I understood. I accepted her decision. What was the point of living? She was doomed from the start. Why resist? To prolong life, my life, her daughter’s life? At three years old, I’d already had enough, there was nothing I hadn’t felt. I clung to her in the dirty little bed, in her weak arms. I listened to her heart. Its beating reassured me. It told me not to be afraid of death. Something comes after, something is there. Boom. Boom. Boom. I can still hear it. The world through the boom-boom of my mother’s heart. It will never stop. I hear it. Do you hear it too?

One day they came to take her away. People told me later: “Your mother’s crazy, forget about her!”

Forget? What were they talking about? And who were these heartless people giving me the order?

I never understood what other world they’d sent her to. Of course I’ve looked for her here in heaven. She’s not here. Where is she? Still alive down on earth? It’s possible.

I grew up in need. Without knowing how to protect myself. Without knowing how to be a woman.

I remained stuck in that time. A child.

Look at me. Don’t you agree? What do you see? A child. No?

You don’t have to answer.

And then?

After that, only images. And images. Adulation. The void. I walked. I jumped. I wandered. I naively tried to understand. I tried to educate myself, but that didn’t help. Right from the start, the world denied me any chance to make it through, to get a taste of peace or enduring love.

So, there it is. Is that enough?

What do you want now? What happens next?

You already know. That, you can guess. I was sent to live with people. Families. Strangers. Faces with no light in them. All indifferent. They quickly tired of me. Every summer, a new family. A new place. New Orleans. Savannah. San Diego. San Francisco. Los Angeles. I never really knew where I was, what house, what neighborhood I was in, how I was supposed to go in and out. In every place, I was shut in. I didn’t recognize anything. Nothing. Only the darkness of night, where I could find my mother again, calmed me a little.

During the school year, I was sent to orphanages.

The “homes.” I was a girl from “homes.” “She comes from ‘homes,’ the tall little girl over there. She has no parents. She’s a shameless hussy.” That’s what the other students said about me. Horrible! They were all very mean. Absolutely all of them. At the time, the Authorities mixed orphanage children with ordinary children without asking too many questions. What a mistake! What suffering! What shame!

I don’t know how I got through it, how I didn’t go crazy, join my mother.

I don’t know how people resist the haunting temptation of killing themselves. What held me back? I was barely ten years old and I already thought about that.. About killing myself. Leaving the world. Going back to my mother’s dry and empty breast.

Some people said she was dead. I never believed them. For me she was in heaven, up in the sky. For me, heaven up in the sky was no metaphor. It was real. “My mother lives in the sky.” When I revealed this secret, people laughed at me. “That clumsy clot from ‘the homes’ says her mother is in the sky! She’s naive and simple-minded, that girl, nothing will ever come of her.”

I am nothing. They were right. I let everything go. People could do what they wanted with me and my body.

They didn’t hold back. The whole world raped me. No one has ever understood anything. No one. No one protested, defended me, gave me back my humanity.

I was a body I didn’t live in. Not anymore.

The idea and possibility of salvation never crossed my mind.

With time, I became an erotic image for them. A cut-rate fantasy, open to all. A sex. A whore for the entire world. I made movies. I changed my name. I danced. I sang. I’m Through with Love. I Wanna Be Loved by You. River of No Return. They understood nothing. I understood nothing. I tried so many times to understand the things that human beings considered important. Culture. Books. Michelangelo. Leopardi. James Joyce. William Faulkner. Omar Khayyam. Gibran Khalil Gibran. Tintoretto. Stanislavski. I don’t know if any of it helped me to find myself or just made me more lost, drifting farther away from everything, everything.

I wrote. Bits and pieces. The poems of an unhappy little girl. A little girl for eternity. I sent them to an actor who was like a father to me in my teenage dreams. Clark Gable. I don’t know if he ever got them. When we shot The Misfits together, directed by John Huston, he never mentioned them. Was he wrong about me too?

I screamed a lot in that last movie. I was at the end of my tether. My suffering was at its peak. It was there, in that huge, clean desert where we were shooting, that I heard a voice. The Voice. It gave me a message.

I had been chosen.

I’d been chosen? Me?

The voice repeated the message three times. Said my name three times. The name I had in the beginning. Norma Jean Baker.

I wondered, should I wait? Resist?

Everything happened very quickly.

I managed to lose weight. I got my original body back. And in the midst of shooting Something’s Got to Give, I left the world. By my own hand. I flew away.

And then my legend on earth took on new proportions.

Since then, I’ve been here. At the Gates of Heaven.

I greet.

I listen.

I unite.

I judge.

I speak on His behalf.

I speak about His place.

I’m human. Extraterrestrial. Everywhere. Nowhere. Man. Woman. Neither one or the other. Beyond all borders. All languages.

You see, I’m like you. In misfortune and in power. Divine and orphaned. I’m made of the same stuff as you. I’m in you. In every body. Every night. Every dream.

Don’t cry, Jallal.

Take his hand, Mathis.

Go. Go. As brothers of the heart. There, behind that door, life has not even begun for you.

Go. On the way you’ll pass a beautiful pomegranate tree. Pick two pomegranates. And later, before you go to sleep, take a moment to eat them.

Come and listen. Downstairs, a mother is getting ready to pray. The echo of her voice will accompany you. It’s Mahalia Jackson. She’ll start singing Trouble of the World.

Listen to her. She speaks the truth. She tells it like it was on the very first day, with the first spark of life. When suddenly, in the infinite, everything exploded and took on new dimensions.

Listen. Listen . . .

Soon I will be done

Trouble of the world

Soon I will be done

Trouble of the world

Going home to live with God

No more weeping and wailing

Going home to live with my Lord

Soon I will be done

Trouble of the world

Trouble of this world

Soon I will be done

Trouble of the world

Going home to live with my Lord

I want to see my mother

Going home to live with God

Soon I will be done

Trouble of the world

I soon will be done

With the trouble of the world

I’m going home to live with God