Dance of Death‍
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Buzurg Alavi‍
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Translated by Dr. Abdul Ali Kazim Al-Fatlawi‍
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They took him yesterday morning. It has been two days since they took him. Since yesterday until now, the sound of the song (Dance Macabre) has been ringing in my ears. Murtaza takes Rajab Ali Rajabov’s hand, he comes out of his grave at midnight. Another corpse plays the terrifying tunes of (Dance of Death) with the bone of a girl’s arm on the skull of a young man, the graves open their mouths, the skeletons come out of the graves and they all sing the anthem of death and stamp their feet on the ground. Margarita with her sad face but alive and contemplating just wants to get Murtaza out of this collective dance.‍
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They took him yesterday. They took him from among us. A person we were with day and night for three months, we ate together, a person we often quarreled with and then made up, a person we congratulated and then apologized to, a person who cried a lot, a person who made us laugh a lot, a person who was our partner in hardships, and our hope in despair, he is the prisoner they took from us and did not tell us where they took him, but I know very well where they took him. They took him to kill him. He was condemned to death.‍
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Mortada and no one else, Murtaza participates in the dance of the dead until the morning rooster crows, he wails in the cemetery. The last hour he was free, embodied before my eyes. I see him well, I hear his voice calling: “Markreta, Markreta. Don’t tell anyone! Anyone.”‍
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In the years I spent in prison – it wasn’t a prison, it was a grave – in the years I spent in the grave I saw many who loved death, I saw them when the court’s verdict was issued, how their color was stolen, how their legs were unable to carry them, as if their souls were leaving their bodies, but this state did not last more than a second, then hope flowed into their bodies again. Hope against the verdict, hope for a general amnesty, hope that the world would come together to save them, hope for a miracle, not just hope but faith in the ignorant and their imagination that the king would issue a pardon for them.‍
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I saw people sentenced to death who died on the night of the execution of the verdict, I saw people sentenced to death before they were shot, they had shaved their beards and put on their finest clothes and bid farewell to their loved ones and friends and went to their death with all manliness and courage.‍
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I saw people sentenced to death shouting at the time of death “Long live the homeland.” I know a death row inmate who sings the famous anthem “Rise, O oppressed, from the world of the hungry and the naked” some time after he was shot.‍
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But I have never known any of them this close. I have never known any of them to be taken from among us, as if they were choosing a sheep from the middle of a flock to take to the guillotine.‍
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They called him last night at half past seven in the morning. That same old cleaner called his name, a hoarse voice calling loudly: “Mortada Ibn Jawad, come sir.” This was Mortada Ibn Jawad, the lover of nineteen-year-old Margarita. They take him to solitary confinement, give him a pass, they want to flog him, they want to abuse him, they pardon him, they banish him to a faraway place, they hang him with a rope or shoot him. It didn’t matter to him, he just called: “Mortada Ibn Jawad! Come sir.” And immediately after this voice others repeated after him, including the cleaners and the guard, they all called: “Mortada Ibn Jawad.”‍
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My heart broke for him. Some of them started to pack their things.‍
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After a few seconds he asked us: “With my things?”‍
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Then they answered him: “No, to the court.”‍
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He was going to die. They would definitely hang him. Maybe Margarita would be waiting for him in front of the prison door and they would see each other for the last time before death. He would definitely tell her again in front of the prison door: “Margarita, Margarita don’t tell anyone! Anyone.”‍