Alamut By Marcel Štefancic Jr in Mladina
Everybody keeps saying, Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalism are something new, well, let’s say relatively new; however it seems, that they’re all something very, very old, not to say antique or better medieval. Whoever has read the Slovenian literary miracle, Alamut, can attest to that. Vladimir Bartol (1903-1967), Slovenian Karl May, has written and published it long, long time ago, in the year 1938, in other words before WWII, when the likes of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were terrorizing Europe. This novel, leaning on Marco Polo’s itinerary, has been translated to many languages and is appreciated everywhere, from Spain to Germany, from France to Italy, from Bosnia to Checkia and from Turkey to Iran. This pop classic, rejected and ignored for a long time in Slovenia, has now been printed again here and never has it been as fresh, contemporary and visionary as it is now. It namely looks like it’s been written today, after 09/11. Whoever reads it, can only sigh: oh s*t, Osama bin Laden, Al.-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalism, they all existed already in the year 1092! Of course they just had different names. Osama bin Laden was called Hassan Ibn Sabbah … Al-Qaida were fedais … and the Islamic fundamentalism was called … hmm … Ismailism. The only difference is, they were not based in Afghanistan, but in Iran – in the impregnable fortress of Alamut, the Ismaili version of the Afghani Tora Bora complex. But this difference is in principle irrelevant, if we remember the claim of some insiders, that OBL fled from Afghanistan to the neighboring Iran.
Bartol does not allow any doubts: ”Fedai is any Ismaili, who’s ready to sacrifice himself without asking questions, when ordered to by his master. And he becomes a martyr if he dies.” And the mystic Hassan Ibn Sabbah, aka Seiduna, the new Prophet, the new Mohamed, new Christ, Moses, Al Mahdi, “the master over life and death of all Ismailis”, “The head of all Ismailis”, who “studies Koran the whole day, who prays and composes sermons and fatwas,” who is assembling this “troop of selected followers, whose ultimate reason is the sacrifice and martyrdom for the holy cause” , in the “fedai school”, in the castle of Alamut … I mean “the military compound”. Al-Qaida, huh! OBL aka Hassan, “the terrible dreamer from hell”, wants to strike at the Turkish sultan, his great vesir, the false khalif, foreign despots – yeah, he wants to kick off “the strife against the false religion”, against the humanity, “strayed in falsehoods”. Fedais have a number of cells, that is fortresses (like Al-Qaida) and they are (like Al-Qaida) enlisting rich sponsors in Islamic countries. To quote Hassan, the Jihad Fuehrer: ”Our cause must become so strong, that it will resist any enemy and if necessary the whole world. It is to become a ruling body of our planet. To achieve this, we count on our death-loving followers. By letting them die, we will be offering them our special grace. Of course they will not chose by themselves the way they die. Every single death, we will permit, will have to mean another big victory.”
That there’s big head money written out for him, is self-evident, because “among men, who ever have inhabited this earth, he is the most powerful.” Namely, Allah gave him the “key to open doors of paradise”, where the martyrs – fedais! – will “partake in eternal splendors”, well, in “the ultimate reward for their devotion and self-sacrifice”. But, as Ibn Sabbah states: ”You can forget any thought of becoming a prophet, if you don’t have the key to open the paradise door for the living.” So how are you supposed to convince fedais, these burning Islamic terrorists, that they should “long for death”, that they should “fall in love with death” and that they should “die with a smile on their face, seeing in their mind the splendors, that wait for them on the other side”? Given the additional problem, that “so far nobody has ever returned to tell, everything is as the Prophet has been proclaiming”. So, to convince the fedais, they can really expect the paradise the other side of the big divide, Ibn Sabbah has created gardens “that mirror the true paradise”.
Turned the fairy tale into reality, created paradise on earth… oh well, in Alamut, where clandestinely, in complete and absolute secrecy, without anybody, first of all fedais, knowing it, he has built some sort of a parallel world, a replica of paradise, that included fairytale gardens, crystal streams, glass pavilions, cushioned reclining beds, magnificently manicured groves, bushy trees, pebble-covered paths, circular fish ponds, flower beds covered with gracious exotic flowers, soft-winged girls with black almond-shaped eyes and white limbs, most exquisite dishes and drinks, fried birds, poached fish, sweets, figs, melons, oranges, peaches, grapes, milk and honey, silver diadems, studded with precious stones, pearl necklaces, golden bracelets and broaches, magnificent turquoise jewelry, earrings with diamonds and sapphires, silken gowns and unbounded fragrances, the perfect party in heaven, the cocktail mix of delight, magnificence and bliss.
When the paradise has been finished, there’s nothing else Hassan needs to do but to drug his hachachins – with dope, cannabis, with “hash balls”, with the “wonder rug out of Thousand and One Nights” – and get them into this secrete paradise, where girls, waiting on them, have of course been instructed to behave, like they were in a real paradise, I mean, like they were in heaven. There’s no difference between the true and the false paradise anymore. Fedais thus get convinced, paradise is for real, and they pass this on to other fedais, to these human suicide bombs, who can now really have fun dying for the holy cause. “We have evolved and grown into a force of steel. We have schooled and educated followers, who no other ruler can boast with. Their zeal is legendary. Their resolve is unmatched. Their loyalty is without compare.” Of course the Turkish sultan wants to destroy Ismailism at any price and that’s why he attacks Alamut – and with an immense army to top. Like Bush. “The universe is hanging on the knife’s edge.” But they can not take Alamut. And they can not get Hassan Ibn Sabbah. Never ever. It’s more the other way around, new Ismaili forts are being built, new cells are appearing, and eventually he locks himself off in his quarters and dies off for the world.
In 1938 Vladimir Bartol sent the Alamut synopsis also to Hollywood, to the legendary MGM studios, but they did not react. If they did, we could say today, that 09/11 – the attack on America and the retaliation – was really just a product of a film fiction. Because Alamut is a movie, it’s a ready-to-be-shot scenario. You don’t have to cut anything. And you don’t need to add anything either. As Bartol has written some time ago: “I felt that at the same time I’m writing for readers, who’ll live half a century later.” Indeed, Alamut has truly made him immortal.
Note that the recension is app 2 years old. I did it for Scalahouse, that published the translation (and had this text and the previous one go through the proofreading - unfortunately I dont have the corrected text at hand). |
