THE HONORABLE ONES
LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS
An English Literary Adaptation
Translated from the Arabic
THE DEATH SEQUENCE
The drumbeat of the baby's cries quickened, pounding violently. Hungry, the infant gasped for breath and lunged toward its mother's breast, clutching at it like a ravenous lion that had searched in vain for prey and at last found it within reach. The baby knew nothing of life beyond its mother's breast: warmth and tenderness, a few drops of water to drink, and the gentle touch of loving fingers against its soft, fragile body. To the infant, this was life in its entirety.
The old woman watched from her chair, smiling as she followed the baby's laughter and the eager movements of its feet, which it lifted and grasped with the fascination of gentle waves settling upon a shore. Her mind wandered far away, and she whispered to herself:
"Death was never a sudden stop waiting for us at the finish line. It was an eternal dance that began with our very first cry. From the moment our feet touched the earth, we have walked along that same finish line, resisting it and celebrating life while death quietly practices its art upon us, in silent increments we scarcely feel."
Long ago, I was this infant—this baby girl. I did as she does, saw what she sees, and felt what she feels. At that age, life contained nothing more than what this child possesses now. The old woman felt her breath catch for a moment as a question rose within her: Where had that baby gone? Was she not me?
She fell silent, then sighed, wonder and sorrow mingling like wine in a cup. "No. She is no longer me. Nothing of that infant remains. She vanished; she died inside me. Every feeling, every gaze, every touch, everything she once enjoyed went with her. It blew away, evaporated, scattered like a feather torn apart by a violent wind. I am no longer that baby."
Her eyes widened as if she had suddenly awakened. "Yes, the infant died. She is not me. Perhaps something in her once resembled me, but I no longer possess what she possessed, do what she did, or receive the care and tenderness she knew. She died and was buried long ago. Deep within me, I dug her a grave; she disappeared into it until not a trace remained. Every new birth within us necessarily means the death of a former, unaware self. That infant died: her absolute innocence was taken from her, along with the gentleness of one who knew no evil. Her first, unspoiled laugh was buried beneath the weight of the awareness that came after."
Before the aged woman, all the selves she had once been began to take shape, like real ghosts she might almost touch. She could hear their whispers and feel each transformation, each development, and then each disappearance—as though that self had never existed. The figures called to her. Their dialogue seemed visible on her wrinkled face, both outwardly present and inwardly concealed. She began to converse with the selves that had faded and turned to nothing, watching their scenes unfold before her as if made of flesh, blood, and fire.
Stage One: A Dialogue Between the Infant and the Child
The death of unspoiled instinct
Scene: A quiet darkness. A faint whisper rises from a child's body as it takes its first steps into life.
The Infant (the dead self):(Her voice is an echo, filled with stillness and purity.) "Ah, you who have only just emerged from my absolute silence—how dare you pull away my covering? I was something pure. No illusion had programmed me, no name had stained me. I was a floating idea without constraints. Why are you so eager to define yourself?"
The Child (the newly born self):(Her voice is beginning to acquire its first notes, mingled with wonder.) "You are a silence I cannot understand! I am light, color, and noise. I have begun to realize that the world has boundaries and the body can move. I taste food that is not the spring of stillness, and I hear stories claiming that some being watches us from above. You, O nothingness, never knew the taste of words or the magic of toys."
The Infant: "You are stepping along the finish line they have drawn for you. Those words you boast of are your first chains; those stories about 'the being' are your first programmed illusions. By my nature, you were born without belief. No one had programmed you or taught you the rituals of a religion. No one had dragged you into religious group rivalries, insisting that one set of rites was more correct, more authentic, or more faithful than another."
The old woman remembered that, as an infant, no one had burdened her with such instruction. No one had forced her to believe with absolute certainty that the rituals she would later be taught were the only true or best ones. She had not entered a divine marathon, desperately searching for—or imagining she had found—a god hidden inside one religion, one denomination, or one sect, each with its own forms and attributes that contradicted those of the others.
As a baby, she had not exhausted herself searching for a god who seemed to play hide-and-seek with humanity, vanishing into a thousand shapes and a thousand thousand religions and rituals, then declaring with complete confidence that he was one. One god—but which of these many versions was the one? Nobody knew. Was it an illusion, a mirage, a deception, an invention? No one had taught her to ask. As an infant, she knew only innocence and had no demands placed upon her. There was no need for hypocrisy or deceit, no rituals to perform, no threats or intimidation, no fear, and no imaginary rewards called life after death. She lived like a piece of white cotton, needing none of this effort or nonsense. Nothing could persuade her except a mother's warmth and biological need.
The Child:(She smiles, a mixture of mischief and innocence. Yet that innocence is already showing the first faint stain, a thread of dirt spreading across the white patch within the infant.) "Now—and only now—the infant has disappeared and vanished from existence. You buried her inside yourself and dug her grave by your own will."
The Infant: "No, no! That never happened. I did not bury the infant in the grave of my body. I searched for her when I awoke one day and could not find her. I screamed, searched the room, the house, and the street, calling out for her. But she did not answer. She was like a piece of ice melting beneath a scorching sun, or steam condensing inside a kettle until it dried away. I rushed to my room and looked in the mirror. There I saw a little girl of a few years. I kept calling for the infant, but she did not answer. Only the child in the mirror remained. Then the baby's ghost appeared, like a mirage approaching from afar, and told me sadly and bitterly, 'Time is over. The moment has passed.'"
The child laughed in defiance, her eyes full of scorn and revenge. "Indeed, the moment has passed; time is over. You have no choice now. I am all you have. I am the child, the tangible reality before you. No matter how much you scream and search for the infant, she will never answer. And now you have begun to inherit superstition; you have begun to replace instinctive certainty with religious doubt. How miserable you are—you inherited your ancestors' legacy before you even knew what inheritance meant."
The child surrendered and began to live her childhood, abandoning the cries and calls for the infant. Searching for what no longer existed was pointless. She was now a little girl, still innocent despite the faint stain that had dulled the whiteness within her. Much of the infant's purity remained. She played, laughed, ate, drank, ran, and walked; then she went to school and learned to read and write. Those around her began their gradual work of programming and indoctrination. One day they performed their religious rituals in front of her. At first, she understood nothing of their gestures and could not see why they needed them. Little by little, as she grew, they taught her at school, at home, in the street—in every place—that these rituals were magnificent, that they would make her happy, calm, and secure, and even solve every problem she faced. They kept teaching her until she mastered the art of being taught. Soon she practiced the rituals herself and spoke about them expertly to her classmates.
Stage Two: A Dialogue Between the Child and the Young Woman
The death of innocence and instinctive wonder
Scene: A vast space ruled by grand dreams and sharp contradictions. The dead child wears a faded dress; the young woman wears a gleaming crimson gown.
The young woman suddenly cried out in astonishment, calling for the child. She looked everywhere but could not find her. She missed her terribly—the child's presence, the sense of wonder she had carried away when she left. Weeping, the young woman called for help and begged someone to bring the child back. But whom could she call upon? Life itself offered no answer.
She stood before the mirror and touched a body that no longer resembled the innocent child she had known for so many years. Beneath her hands was a woman's body, curved and unmistakably feminine, with prominent breasts and a defined waist. Her face bore no resemblance to the missing child. Then she understood: the child had died inside her. She dug a small grave within this female body, buried the child deep in it, and covered her with earth. She would never find her again. In her place stood a teenager, then a woman in her twenties, overflowing with femininity, dreaming of love and consumed by urgent desires and womanly impulses. She did things the child had never done, felt what the child had never felt, and desired things the child could never have imagined.
Yet amid this storm of feelings, cravings, whims, and romantic adventures, she lost the child's way of seeing the world—and with it, her sense of wonder. The images before her grew dull. The streets seemed dim, heavy-footed, dreary; they wearied her, although they were the very same streets the vanished child had once loved. The inheritance of family and society weighed on her shoulders until she could barely bear it. The old shops no longer stirred her. Coca-Cola no longer tasted as it once had; sweets had lost their distinctive smell and their power to carry her into a world of delight. The street had lost its sparkle, and her grandmother's house no longer seemed beautiful. The melodies that had lifted her through childhood's skies fell silent, replaced by the rhythms of desire and the whims of outings. Her needs had changed.
Now she was merely a young woman looking for hope, perhaps in a job, a man, love, or an income. She no longer cared about images or light. Wonder had died, and she did not seek it. Instead, she searched for a man to fill the emptiness left by the lost wonder, and for money to buy clothes for the female body that had become an object meant to stir emotion—but only under conditions and within restraints. She knew she could never recover the child, no matter how much she wept. She had to obey the desires and demands of the young woman standing before her, eyes defiant, whispering like a snake:
"Do not look for her. That child died years ago and was buried inside you. Now she is dust—or nothing. Submit to me: to my desires, to the reality before you, to the life you will live whether you wish to or not."
The Child (the dead self):(Her voice is sad and reproachful.) "You who inherited my funeral, do you remember me? I was the absolute wonder that chased a butterfly for no reason at all. I possessed fields of dreams so white they could cover the darkness of the world. And now you have come, young woman, after committing the terrible crime of killing the child within me—a crime for which no law in the world will ever punish you. Where is the innocent laugh that your wild desires had not yet stained?"
The Young Woman (the newly born self):(Loudly, with defiance and anxiety.) "Like you, I missed the child I knew all those years ago. I swear that sometimes I see you in my mirror and weep for you. But I grew up, matured, and saw you for what you were: a foolish, naïve little girl. I mocked your innocence when I remembered your fascination with ordinary things. What a silly child, seeing beauty in everything—even in ugliness itself!"
She sighed at length and spoke firmly. "She had to die. Do not put me on trial now; it is too late. She was innocent and naïve, delighted by the simplest thing—even a little toy or doll—as though it were an entire year's worth of treasure, or as though she had won a beauty crown and all the wealth in the universe. It was necessary to kill that fool. Now you must surrender to me, the young woman, and do what I command. Forget your childhood dreams. You are no longer that child. Those dreams were pink bubbles that could not withstand society's winds. My dreams have changed. Now I want power, recognition, and a woman's identity. You were innocent because you did not understand; I understand now that life is no game but a struggle. Did innocence leave me? Yes—but it gave me the strength to fight."
The Lost Child: "It gave you contamination, not strength. Look into your eyes: they no longer shine with faith in the simple things. They glitter with the desire to possess. Innocence left because you allowed religious illusion, false rituals, and the society that deceived you to shape your distorted thoughts and drive you like a beast among a herd. As a child, you were more alert and aware. You asked questions. You had been indoctrinated less; your mind had not yet been fully programmed. It was clear as pure water, bright with logical questions, before editing, deletion, conditioning, and the control of religious myths and inherited social delusions. You selfish, foolish young woman—society taught you to let it define right and wrong. You turned your wish for freedom into a war against convention instead of a true liberation. You do not possess genuine wonder; you possess magnified anxiety!"
The Young Woman (the new self):(Whispering in broken confession.) "You are right. Sometimes I feel that I am merely pretending to be proud. I try to convince myself that youth is better, and that femininity is more useful, attractive, and full of its own special passion. But when I remember you, I see that what I call passion is contaminated by wild whims, desire, and temporary instinct. The mask falls away, and I see that I am possessed by instinct rather than in control of it. Now I understand the difference between your radiant, luminous wonder and my desires, which have matured only to lead, control, and possess me."
The young woman began to cry. Until then, she had resisted and concealed her face so the child would not see her tears, but they now fell like dew upon flowers in the early morning. "I live in constant conflict. Something irreplaceable has died inside me—something like a belief in nothingness, the belief you held, little child, when you were once an infant. The child who loved life for its own sake has disappeared—not for its pleasures, and not for the sake of some empty promise waiting beyond it."
"You have died, little child," the young woman said, "and the small mischief and naïve fears inside you have died beneath a wooden bed. The fields of imagination you planted in the darkness of a room, among the stories told by grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, and uncles, have withered. In their place has grown a dry logic that no longer knows how to dream."
Time passed, and the scene changed.
The Middle-Aged Self: The Death of Rebellion
Scene: A sudden quiet replaces the young woman's clamor—her feminine impulses, dreams, husband, children, and all that once surged through her mind and feelings. A grey mist slowly coils around her body. When she turns, she sees a woman in her late forties, approaching fifty, examining the white strands invading the blackness of her hair. The silver cuts through it like a sharp sword, advancing day by day. She gasps as she notices the first fine lines of wrinkles, which seem to stare back at her defiantly. Youth's blaze has begun to die down.
Middle Age (the newly born self):(Her voice is heavy with exhaustion, wisdom, and disappointment.) "Stand before me, young woman who has gone missing. Show respect for my years and dignity. I know you are searching among the white hairs that have begun to overrun your head for the young woman you once were—the one whose noisy departure woke you, and whom you tried in vain to recover. I watched you laughably trying to hide me, to erase my features by coloring those white strands. I told you not to bother: the grey always returns. Its whiteness has cut into your black hair, and my wrinkles have invaded the youthful face you once had. Your skin has begun to sag and contract until that face has faded away. You will not find her; she will never return. Have you forgotten that we buried her together, in a deep grave within you, and covered her with a thick layer of earth? Stand now in respect for my age and dignity. She is nothing now. No matter how loudly you call, she will not answer. Your loud voice can no longer deceive anyone. You have exhausted the fuel of the stars that once lit your chest. I am here now, and my name is the Cold Harvest. Where is the rebellious fire you once brandished? Where is your certainty that you would change the world?"
The Young Woman (the dead self):(Her voice gradually breaks, though she tries to sound strong.) "So you are the new chain—the middle-aged woman nearing fifty. I knew you would come sooner or later. I tried to escape you, or at least postpone your arrival by a few years, but you insisted on occupying my body like a burdensome guest I never wanted. Yet biology imposed you upon me. Now you stand before me to remind me that we buried the young woman in a deep grave, covered her with thick earth, and watched her vanish within me. You slaughtered her with your sharp sword, invaded her, and made her bleed through the white hair and wrinkles now spreading across my face. How cruel you are! You stole my youth, stabbed it with a poisoned dagger."
The middle-aged woman laughed with authority. "And you were the shield that crushed the machine! I killed you to bring you stability, dignity, and maturity—to free you from youthful recklessness, false dreams, and empty promises. I am the composed, dignified self born into reality, your new reality. Biology brought me into your body to build you a house and draw a clear map for life. You now reap what I sowed through struggle, but you reap it coldly, without fervor. At least I believed in loss and victory. You believed in the necessity of things and in the revolution of desires and instincts that imprisoned you. I have come into your body to free you from them, so that you may learn that maturity is more suitable, clearer, more useful, wiser, and more experienced than the heedlessness of youth."
"You may think I fear the lost young woman's power, but I do not. I have realized that all that youthful vigor was beautiful nonsense. I lost you in order to gain silence. I can now see clearly the illusions we were programmed to believe, but I am tired of fighting them. You stripped me of rebellion and gave me the exhausting burden of acceptance. I now understand that we are merely cells moving toward nothingness, and that all those rules and religions were empty pretexts designed to keep slaves working in peace. Yet I no longer have the energy to shout this aloud. The energy I once had died with the young woman within me. In its place remains the energy of stillness, mature contemplation, patience, and a deeper, more discerning view of the life we share now."
The Young Woman: "So you are a wise but helpless woman! You can see the godless truth clearly, yet you still walk with the herd because you have grown tired of running. The death of passion is the real death. You have become your own ghost, caring about small things while neglecting what matters. Do you not miss the day when I was ready to fight the whole world for an idea?"
The Middle-Aged Woman: "I do not miss a pointless struggle. I am now a remnant, gathering the broken mirror shards you left behind. I sleep to escape this painful philosophical awareness. Thank you, young woman: you died so that I could live what remains of my life, a life that is no more than a lie, in silence and disappointment."
Stage Four: A Dialogue Between Middle Age and Old Age
The death of strength, the survival of wisdom
Middle Age (the dead self): "I have left you wisdom, old woman—the one thing that does not die quickly. Strength, by contrast, is foam that washes away. I harvested for you, hoping to lengthen this brief remaining moment, but I failed. All I harvested was the bitter philosophical awareness you carry now: everything was absurd."
The woman, her hair entirely white and her face deeply furrowed, turned and saw before her a bent back, a cane held in trembling hands, and exhausted, dim eyes wandering across a mirror cracked by time.
The Old Woman: "Absurdity? Then you too have died without meaning? Have you left me to face the end alone with this knowledge? Yet I see what you cannot. I watch the cells dying; I see nothingness smiling at me from afar. Everything that passed was merely a temporal illusion, a space between one thing and another. You did not die; you turned into waiting."
How much time had passed? How many years? She could barely remember anything clearly. She struggled to recall even her daily needs; sometimes she forgot her grandchildren's names, ages, occupations, or what they had studied—or were studying. She gazed into the mirror again, like a fish searching for a river that had dried long ago.
All she saw was a mass of cotton-white hair and broken teeth—or the few stumps that remained—leaving empty gaps inside a sagging mouth. Her dry lips were etched with years of bitterness; wrinkles covered her face, the skin around her eyes, and her neck, which now hung like curtains dropped over what had once been a vibrant, youthful body. In the mirror she saw only an extremely old woman, wrapped in wrinkles, her hair white as cotton. A cane supported her hunched back. Her legs trembled beneath her and barely held her upright; she dragged her feet with great effort, while her breath lay heavy and still, like stagnant water.
Where were the bright, ringing laughs of youth? Where were the legs that once raced the wind? Where was the firm, graceful female body? None of it remained. Where was even the woman in her forties? She had been younger than the missing young woman, but stronger, more active, and less helpless. Even she had departed, leaving no trace of such overwhelming white hair. This time, however, the old woman had learned her lesson. She did not search for the vanished self; she let her go quietly. She no longer had the strength to search, scream, call, or even whisper. Whispering itself had become a difficult ritual, something she could manage only when necessary. Her strength had failed, and she knew she must accept reality. She had neither the means nor the energy to seek the lost selves—the former beings that had been buried and died inside her one after another. They had become ghosts with no existence. What was the point of looking for something that was no longer there? She understood that everything was a handful of wind.
Stage Five: Farewell and Nothingness
A Dialogue Between the Old Woman and Death
Scene: The old woman lies in her chair, while the infant lies before her in a small wooden bed, still crying as though mourning her—or sensing the burden of the inheritance that will eventually disfigure its future laughter. The old woman's eyes remain open. She struggles through her dying breaths. The room is empty except for the infant's cries and the defiant movement of its little feet. She sees a dense shadow approaching slowly.
Death (the dense shadow):(A voice without echo, whispering into the ear of consciousness.) "The time has come to fulfill the promise, last heir. There is no longer an infant, a child, a young woman, or even a middle-aged woman. They all died and were buried inside you. Nothing remains but a crumbling ruin, like an old abandoned house coated in dust, its walls rusted, cracked, and furrowed. I have come to take this empty vessel, all the selves and lost identities you once contained, old woman. You and I now face each other, and you have no choice but to face me.
"I know you humans: you do not value your dead until I arrive, and you remember them only after they have gone. How many dear people lie forgotten in your rusted memories? While alive, they were ignored, humiliated, and treated as though they mattered to no one. Then I arrive as their eternal guest, and suddenly you remember them. You rush to say farewell, weep, fill your eyes with tears, and write a thousand elegies—as though they had always occupied your thoughts, as though you had been beside them every moment before they died. Only after I arrive do you mourn them in the most beautiful and tender words. Only then do you see what you never saw, understand what you never understood, praise them, remember them, immortalize them, and value what they said and did while they were alive. Only after they have vanished do you judge them right and forget what you once said and did to them. You humans awaken your sleeping consciences only when I arrive—when it is too late. Then you invent eternity out of nothingness.
"You are all beneath my hammer. When I choose, I strike down the one I have selected and send them where there is no return; I seize their final breath until they pass into nothing. And now I am all that remains for you, frail old woman. I will bury the last crumbling fragment of your former selves. They have all died, and now it is your turn to join them where there is nothing to return to. Congratulations: you will receive nothingness, the void, the emptiness. Extinction is all there is. You would be deluded to think otherwise. For all your years, they deceived you and traded on your dreams, selling you a bargain called life after death. I will not deceive you as those who programmed you did. I believe in science and reason. I am frank and honest; I know no patchwork excuses, fraud, or religious delusions and rituals, all of which you practiced throughout your life.
"Consciousness ends; perception stops; the brain ceases to work; then the heart, the pump of blood, stops too. That is all. Perhaps you will join nature's cycle and become a tree, an edible fruit, or drinking water. Perhaps your decaying bones and dust will become part of the natural cycle on this wretched planet, which I assure you will one day end. But this will not begin the imaginary myth of an afterlife with which you were deceived, poor old woman who practiced rituals day and night out of fear and greed for imaginary rewards. Something deeper and more mature may endure: life on other planets—Mars, Saturn, Jupiter—and other beings. The human species will probably become extinct and be replaced by beings more advanced, longer-lived, and technologically more developed. Who knows? Perhaps they will live forever, never fall ill or decay; perhaps they will not defecate or urinate, perhaps they will not have sex as you do, perhaps they will not bleed, perhaps they will not even be made of flesh and blood. What matters is that life and the universe will continue, enduring forever."
Death asked, "Are you afraid of this nothingness you used to philosophize about, and of the words of charlatan sheikhs and religious men who spun tales around it for so long, dressing you in the patched garment of illusion and falsehood that you wore all your life?"
The Old Woman:(Her voice is barely audible, yet firm with understanding.) "You are not the end, Death. You are merely the final confirmation of reason. I now realize that I spent my entire life believing a great lie, wasting my years on religious illusions and the trick of one god. I believe you now because you are logical and trust science. I am no longer afraid of the nothingness I once feared, nor of the afterlife they invented, taught me, and programmed me to believe in since childhood. I realize now that I have carried nothingness with me since my first cry. Only now do I feel relief—relief from the burden and toil of life. I am happy because I will have nothingness; at last, eternal silence, far from life's illusions and programmed clamor. Atheism was my instinct, my honest nature before it was contaminated or taught away; and nothingness is my destiny. Both release me from divine illusion."
Death: "Have you left anything worthy of remaining in the emptiness in which you lived? Did you enjoy pleasure, accomplish a noble goal, or complete the great mission you dreamed of when you were young? What is your final harvest?"
The Old Woman:(She closes her eyes for a moment.) "My harvest is a comforting regret. I regret every minute in which I was not myself, every moment spent in illusion and deceptive hope. Yet I am happy now, because at last I have grasped the hard truth: there is no creator, no punishment, and no reward after you. My final message is this: live as though there were no god, and die as though there were no resurrection. Now… take me."
The Final Scene: A Dialogue Between the Old Woman and the Grave
The final encounter with absolute nothingness
Scene: Complete darkness. The remaining self begins to feel the cold of earth. A voice emerges from the ground—from nothingness itself.
The Grave (the silent voice of nothingness):(A rough voice embodying the material and logical end.) "Welcome, old woman. There is no light here, no reckoning, no angels. I am neither paradise nor fire. I am simply soil that returns cells to their elements. Did you achieve immortality through a message or a word, as you once dreamed, or have you realized that everything will become dust?"
The Old Woman: "How coldly logical you are! I understand now that the attempt to leave an eternal message was itself an illusion. The last illusion nesting in other people's minds is that achievement equals immortality. But the only immortality is the endurance of the atom. I lived as best I could; I loved and strayed; I believed in reason and rejected the myths of every religion without exception. I learned that there is no heaven, only atmosphere and space; that other life may exist, and that nothingness means extinction. Now I possess nothing but an exhausted body."
The Grave: "Then have all your former selves—the beings you passed through from infancy onward—come to an end?"
The Old Woman, dead in her grave:(Her smile fades; her voice mingles with the dust of the end.) "No. Only now does the true sequence begin: a scientific and logical one, without the deceit and fraud of religions, and without the imaginary god invented by human beings to flee from themselves and deceive themselves. They imagine they are more important than other creatures, that they were made—or, as they claim, created—to live forever. In their foolish arrogance, they invented another life and an imaginary being, believing it would protect, judge, punish, or reward them alone, unlike all other creatures. Yet if we looked at reality honestly, we would find human beings among the basest, vilest, and most malicious of creatures, the source of every corruption and ruin."
The old woman's body began to decompose. After the worms consumed it, it would gradually become silent earth, returning as a plant, a stone, or nothing at all. "My life was no more than a passing moment between one thing and another. In the end, I did not die; the illusion simply stopped beating. Farewell, earth… farewell, mortal existence."
End of reflection