The Head of the Paper: The General Question
In the hall you see there is a moment that makes you forget everything before it: the moment the paper comes down on the desk. Before it, whispering, a hurried last look, fingers turning pages that are no use any more. After it, a heavy silence that nothing breaks but the scratch of pen on paper; because at that moment every man sitting there has become alone, with nobody to share his paper with him. In the greater hall there is a moment like it in its silence, and unlike it in this: the paper there is nothing new to the man who holds it. He is the one who wrote it, even if he cannot remember when.
The paper comes down
The invigilator comes in with the papers held face down against his chest, and eyes follow them from across the room. He walks the rows one by one, laying a single paper on each desk with its face to the wood, then stands at the board and says: turn them over. One rustle is heard across the whole hall, and then nothing.
And no paper is given out there, because each man's paper was written in this world by his own hand while he did not feel himself writing. He is told: read. He turns the record over and finds his own handwriting, his own voice, and his days set out in rows as they happened, not as he remembers them.
تُقَدَّمُ وَرْقَةٌ فِيهَا سُؤَالٌ
وَلَيْسَ لِمَنْ أَتَى غَيْرُ الْجَوَابِ
A paper is set down with a question on it, and whoever has come has nothing to give but an answer.
وَعُمْرُكَ أَيْنَ سَارَ وَأَيْنَ وَلَّى
وَعِلْمُكَ هَلْ أَقَامَ عَلَى الصَّوَابِ
And your life — where did it go, and where did it turn away to? And your knowledge — did it hold to what is right?
وَمَالُكَ كَيْفَ يَأْتِي كَيْفَ يَمْضِي
فَلَيْسَ يَضِيعُ حَرْفٌ فِي الْحِسَابِ
And your money — how does it come in, and how does it go out? Not one letter is lost in the reckoning.
وَتُسْأَلُ عَنْ قُوَاكَ وَعَنْ خُطَاكَ
وَمَا أَبْقَيْتَ مِنْ زَادِ الشَّبَابِ
And you are asked about your strength and about your steps, and about what you left of the provision of your youth.
أَمَانَاتٌ عَلَيْكَ وَحَقُّ جَارٍ
وَنِيَّتُكَ الْمِدَادُ عَلَى الْكِتَابِ
Trusts are upon you, and a neighbour's right; and your intention is the ink on what is written.
The verses are the author's own; the English below gives their sense in prose.
Every paper in the hall you see has a head before the questions: the name, the seat number, the name of the sitting. There is no mark for this head, and yet no paper is accepted without it, because it is what ties the answers to the man who wrote them so they are not lost in the pile. In the greater hall there is a head of another kind: a general question that comes before any detail and covers everything under it, and that no man and no deed falls outside of: “Them, by thy Lord, We shall question, every one, Of what they used to do.” (Al-Hijr 15:92–93, Pickthall)
And before the detail is opened there is the halting. It is not the candidate's standing at the door of the hall waiting to be let in; that is a minute on your feet and then you sit down. This is a standing in which a whole life is laid out item by item: “And stop them, for they must be questioned.” (As-Saaffaat 37:24, Pickthall)
Then there is the register the answers are set against. In the hall you see it is a mark scheme in the marker's hand, two sheets or three, holding what is expected of the candidate and no more. In the greater hall it is a record of another kind, out of which nothing drops: not a word said in passing, not a step forgotten the same day it was taken: “And the Book is placed, and thou seest the guilty fearful of that which is therein, and they say: What kind of a Book is this that leaveth not a small thing nor a great thing but hath counted it! And they find all that they did confronting them, and thy Lord wrongeth no-one.” (Al-Kahf 18:49, Pickthall)
On the paper in the hall you see there is a line the candidates are glad of: answer three out of five. So the candidate goes down the questions, picks the easiest, leaves what is beyond him, and nothing is taken off his mark. That very line is the first thing to go in the greater hall: there is no optional question there, and no item is folded away because the man was not ready for it. The paper is read right through, and the item its owner skipped stays where it is, waiting for him.
And there is a third difference that takes a while to see. The candidate in the smaller hall knows how many questions he has before he turns the paper over, because in the last lesson he was told: these are the chapters you are required to know. The questions of the greater hall are known by the text and unknown by their hour. We know what is asked about; we do not know when it will be said: halt him.