Chapter One: The Cry of Birth and the Handing Over of the Paper
Two halls run at the same time, and the candidate in both of them is one man. One hall he sees with his eyes: walls painted a faded colour, seats numbered in a poor hand, a clock hung above the board, and an invigilator walking between the rows whose footsteps are heard, so the heads bend down. And a hall he does not see: wider than sight can take in, with seats as many as the breaths of men, and an invigilator who does not sleep, is never heedless, and from whom nothing hidden is hidden. The candidate walks into the first and thinks he has entered one hall, and at that same moment he has already sat down in the second, and been handed there a paper like no paper.
I am not asking the reader to imagine something he has never lived. Every one of us has sat an examination. Every one of us has known the tremble in the hand as the papers are given out, and heard the bell cut a sentence in half. What I am asking is that he carry what he knows of the smaller hall over to the greater one. The meanings are the same. The difference is in the size, and in who does the marking.
This whole part is about the first few minutes: about the bell when it is rung, about the paper when it is laid between two hands, and about the counter when it begins to fall from the very first breath. I hope the reader will read it with the tick of the clock in his ear, because what is said here is not understood by the mind alone. It is understood by the feeling that something is going out of you now.
بُكَاءٌ وَاحِدٌ فَتَحَ السُّؤَالَا
وَقَدْ بَدَأَ الزَّمَانُ بِهِ الرِّحَالَا
One cry opened the question paper, and with it time set out on its journey.
صَحِيفَةُ مَوْلِدٍ بَيْضَاءُ تُهْدَى
وَمَا كَتَبَ الْجُدُودُ بِهَا مَقَالَا
A white birth record is handed over, and the ancestors have written not one word in it.
وَعَقْرَبُهُ الْخَفِيُّ عَلَى الضُّلُوعِ
وَلَمْ يَرْفَعْ عَنِ الْأَجَلِ الظِّلَالَا
Its hidden clock hand rests on the ribs, and it has never lifted the shadows from the appointed hour.
سَيَطْوِي السَّطْرَ فِي نِصْفِ الْكَلَامِ
وَلَا يُصْغِي لِمَنْ طَلَبَ الْمَجَالَا
It will fold the line away in mid-speech, and it does not listen to anyone who asks for room.
يَسِيرُ ثَلَاثَةٌ فِي إِثْرِ نَعْشٍ
وَوَاحِدُهُمْ يُقِيمُ فَلَا زَوَالَا
Three walk behind the bier, and one of them stays and never leaves.
The verses are the author's own; the English below gives their sense in prose.
The door of the greater examination opens with a cry. Not with a knock, not by asking leave, but with a small hoarse cry out of a creature who does not know where he is or why he has come. That cry is the announcement of entry. By it this human being is registered present in the earthly hall of trial. By it a file is opened in his name, and at the head of it is written what he himself does not know: the hour of the start, and the hour of the end.
And with the first breath, before he opens his eyes to the light, he is handed his answer papers. This is the paper of a whole life: a record, white and untouched, with nothing written on it yet but the first beats of his existence. Not a line in it for his father. Not a letter in it for his mother. Not a word in it for a tribe, or a lineage, or a country. One paper under one name, and everything that will ever be written on it will be written by his own hand — even when he thinks someone else is writing.
The Paper That Is Not Replaced
In the school hall, if a candidate ruins his paper he raises his finger and asks for another; the invigilator brings him a clean one, takes the first, and tears it up in front of him. In the greater hall there is one paper and no second — yet in it is something stranger than replacement: a door of erasure that stays open as long as the time runs, and a pen that passes over the black line and turns it white again. This is not laxity in the marking. It is generosity built into the rules. And of those rules a text has come down that should be read slowly:
«إنَّ اللهَ كتبَ الحسناتِ والسيّئاتِ ثمَّ بيَّن ذلك: فمَن همَّ بحسنةٍ فلم يعملْها كتبها اللهُ عندَه حسنةً كاملة، فإن هو همَّ بها فعمِلها كتبها اللهُ له عشرَ حسناتٍ إلى سبعِمئةِ ضِعفٍ إلى أضعافٍ كثيرة. ومَن همَّ بسيّئةٍ فلم يعملْها كتبها اللهُ عندَه حسنةً كاملة، فإن هو همَّ بها فعمِلها كتبها اللهُ له سيّئةً واحدة»
God has written down good deeds and bad ones, and then made the reckoning plain. Whoever intends a good deed and does not do it, God writes it down for him as one complete good deed; and if he intends it and does it, God writes it down as ten good deeds, up to seven hundred times over, and more still. And whoever intends a bad deed and does not do it, God writes it down for him as one complete good deed; and if he intends it and does it, God writes it down as one bad deed only.
Look at a scale that multiplies one good deed by ten, by seven hundred, by more than can be counted; that writes a bad deed down as one and no more; and that writes an intended good as a good even when it never happened. Which examination on earth has papers marked like that?
The moment of entry, and the handing over of the paper
The candidate stands at the threshold of the hall, a pen in his hand and a tremble inside him. He reads his number off a sheet stuck to the wall, and walks to the seat written down for him. He sits. He lays the paper in front of him, white, with nothing on it but his name at the top. He lifts his head to the clock, then lowers it. He has not begun yet, and he has begun.
The newborn comes out into the air and cries, and his presence is registered. A record is laid before him that he cannot see, white as it was laid for everyone before him, his name and his mother's name written at the top. The file is opened. And nobody in the room knows that an examination has just begun, and that the child being rocked at this moment has taken his paper and started to write.
From that moment something silent is running that nobody feels: the time allowed begins to be spent. Every minute that passes, every breath drawn, every beat of the heart, is taken straight out of the whole examination time granted to this candidate in this life. The child whose first birthday we celebrate, whom we clap for, for whom we light a candle and then blow it out — we are celebrating a year that has left his balance, not a year that has come into it. The candle that goes out is a truthful picture; we simply do not mean it that way.
A Time Allowed That Is Never Announced
There is a difference between the two halls that changes the whole meaning of sitting there. In the school hall the length of the examination is written on the board in the first line: two hours, three hours; and the candidate divides his time among the questions, secure in knowing when it will end. In the greater hall the time allowed is written in the file, but never announced to the man himself. A child is pulled out after a year; an old man is left until his hand shakes too much to hold the pen. If the time were announced, people would fall into two kinds: those who work only in the last hour, and those who sit with folded arms until their turn draws near. It is the hiding of the bell that makes every moment fit to be the last, and fit to be the beginning.
Out of all this the candidate holds one thing only: to write now. The line you write in this minute is the only line you own. Tomorrow's line is not on your paper and not in your hand; it is in a file that has not yet been opened for you.