Death of a Prophet

Fiction | Ittoril

I first met him on a street corner in Nabeen. He had begun this way: sitting on a dusty blanket in the afternoon shade, preaching to the passers-by. He spoke on a great many topics; philosophy and society, logic and rhetoric. In the evenings we would gather around him, and he would tell us stories and fables.

His name was Ashrai Al-asad, and I soon became one of his disciples. He had such a breadth of knowledge, with insight into any topic you could name. And he was kind; he would instruct any who was willing to learn, and would debate and teach without condescension. But what drew in the masses was his talk of God and heaven. In one of his most wide-reaching sermons he said, "Bring to me your tired and your poor, your weak and your hungry, your criminal and your repentant, for in the land of God, they all shall be kings". We were enticed by the idea. We talked about spreading his gospel for years --- nay, centuries --- to come. Until all across the world knew what we had learnt firsthand from the prophet of god.

I took upon myself the role of scribe. I would meticulously record each of his sermons and each of his parables, in a book I imagined, perhaps overzealously, would be passed down for generations for others to read and know of god.

He told once a parable whose moral I at first thought I understood, but of which I am no longer so sure. It went like this: One night, he lit a small candle within an open glass jar, and told his disciples to look upon it, and asked them where in this display they could see God.

We stared at him blankly. One hazarded to say, "I see God, in His mercy to have provided us with light and warmth."

And the prophet responded curtly, "This one does not see God."

Another more rash disciple said, "I see God, in His glory, the creation of the glass, and of the bees who have spun the wax, and in the divine invention of fire."

And the prophet declared, "Neither does this one see God."

And a third spoke, "I see the flickering of the light, the fogging of the glass, the scent of the wax. I see God in His omnipresent beauty."

And Ashrai shook his head and proclaimed, "My disciples are savvy, and yet not one of them sees God."

I think the meaning of this demonstration was lost on many of us, who promptly forgot about it. I myself, deciding after hours of thought, took him to mean that men could not see God, no matter how hard we looked. We may see His works, but ultimately it is faith which has us believe in His kingdom. But now, in light of these past days, I am struck with such uncertainty as to the nature of so many of his teachings, that I no longer know what to think. I worry I did not appreciate the prophet while he was with us.

In our homeland, they called us Leonids, for we followed the god whose star was the lion, who we called King of Heaven, by whose grace we reside in this world. Ashrai was a man from heaven, a guest on this earth, who had been sent down by the Lord to guide us. As our numbers grew, he began to speak of a pilgrimage. There was a land across the mountains to the east, a land from which the stars rose, which had been promised to us by God.

About five-hundred of us travelled with him across the desert. We were eager to carry out the Lord's work, to spread the good news of God across the land, to secure our place within the court of Heaven. I reflect on this period with some disdain. We, his disciples, were naïve and filled with self-righteous complacency. We did not care about God or His message, we only wanted to believe we were part of something important, that we knew something that the rest didn't.

By the fourth week, we had reached the foot of the mountains, and entered into a cavernous valley, lined by windswept cliffs. Some days, you would hear the gully birds in the sky above, but on others, the humble bubbling of the streamwater echoed alone between the cliffs. I was not a cynic then --- the prophet's stories of divine forgiveness, of selflessness, still filled me with awe and hope and, I admit, a kind of giddy joy. But by the time we reached the valley, we were exhausted and almost hopeless. It was cold, and quiet, and persistently overcast. Many of us grew sick in the weather, and it was not long before the prophet, too, fell ill.

I attended him by his bed for three days, never having left his side. He was feverish, and weak, and when he wasn't sleeping, he would mutter to himself of the visions he had. I scribbled down as much as I could.

In one of his more lucid moments, he asked me to carry him outside, he said he was tired of the stale air. I took him to sit on a small outcrop, and watched as he looked up at the northern ridge of the valley. I asked him what he saw, and he said there were figures atop the ridge watching us. I told him I saw nothing. He laughed at that.

On the third day he took an abrupt turn for the worse, and I knew he was dying. His last words came in two addresses. I shall record them here, as I did for him on his deathbed.

The first was to his people, as he cried out:

"Oh, why must you have wept for me, dear Leona?
     why must you have grieved for me?
Look where I have brought you! What futile teacher
     am I, whose teachings amount to nothing!
Upon that soil of providence you have built a city,
     whose pinnacle reflects the sun across
the surface of all worlds' seas. And I lie
     as but a speck of sand in the city's shadow,
Yet still I must call from the mountaintops
     that it knows not the meaning of divinity!
     Of the glory and desolation of God. What humiliation
          does that hubris afford me.

A storm is come, vaster than the city,
     whose shadow covers the sea,
and whose approach tears it from the ground
     and rends it across the sky.
Not even in that storm is held an indication
     of a modicum of divinity.
     In this fact you would see God, my dear Leona, But alas,
          you always close your eyes."

The second, a few minutes later, went thus:

"Must I have such visions? Sinhā, my god, my god, why is it
     you curse me with remorse in hours
too late to rectify my errors, and doubt in those
     which see me lose all control of my fate?
I have served you these three and twenty years, yet only now
     do I become so absorbed in doubt.
Do you know the great arcs which you set in motion?
     Or were you as unconscious as I?
Do you bear love for your idolic creations? Or do you
     despise their weak shallowness?"
     Is it my turn now to die? Is that what is required of me?
          But why should I expect an answer?

And what of the disciples? I fear for them.
     They know not what they do.
They sing your name like children ---
     You disgrace yourself by fate.
And where are you now? Do you not care to rectifty
     this insult I have dragged upon your name?
     I am tired, and afraid, my God. It is not yet finished.
          You sent me too young."

These are the words that haunt me. I wish I could understand them, but now I am too afraid to commit to any interpretation out of fear of misrepresenting he who inspired me. His words cut me, they tell me there was something to his teachings that I never came to grasp, but what was it? What did he want out of me? I know I have failed him, but I do not know how. I feel so stupid, so left behind, to have been so unabashed and assured to think that I understood him. I was there with his most private thoughts, in rooms alone when everyone else had left. And yet I could not be there for him. I see now I did not understand him, and it brings tears to my eyes. What a sore confidant I was. And now he is gone.

Without him to guide us, I fear we shall never realise how foolish and misguided we are. I echo his words: My god, why must you curse me with doubt only now, after he has passed?

His death was unceremonious and undeserved. The earth did not shake. The sky did not go dark --- of course it did not. But the valley grew a little quieter. And you could hear the trickle of the water, and the cries of the gully birds.

I shall burn this note now, in the candleflame by whose light I have written it. And I can only hope it reaches God.

Citations^(?)

God's The Bible, which has some solid themes but sometimes comes across as preachy; Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus; Jorge Luis Borges's narrative style, albeit I read him in Spanish so idk; Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar, particularly the songs Poor Jerusalem and I Only Want to Say; Bo Burnham's Rant; The Amazing Devil's The Calling; Ewa U's beautiful worldbuilding of bronze-age societies and cultures.

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