Autumn of the Throne

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Autumn of the Throne

Author: Ahmed Juma

Title: Autumn of the throne

Translator: Timtaoucine Abla

Cover design: Hasnaoui Dalila

Painter: Khelifa Abdesselam

Linguistic auditor: Amrane Messas

Layout: Belhabib Abdelfetah

ISBN: 978-2-38660-047-0

EAN: 9782386600470

13014 Marseille, France

Email: [email protected]

Any reproduction or external use of elements such as images, graphics, sounds, and texts in other electronic or printed publications or public performance is prohibited without the consent of the author.

ÓAll rights reserved

Autumn of the Throne

A novel

translated by:

Timtaoucine Abla

I would like to express my gratitude to the esteemed writer, Mr. Ahmed Juma, for his trust. I wish him success and prosperity in all his endeavors.

« No one deserves to be gifted this work, no one has risen to the level of deserving something I have labored over so tirelessly. No one but that shadow that has always stood by my side. Dedecated to my Shadow. »

Abla Timtaoucine. The translator.

Acknowledgments

To Shorouq, my beloved daughter and first reader, who has always stood by me through my drafts before publication...

I am pleased to extend my gratitude to my friend, Miss Tarab Sayed, in recognition of her literary and linguistic efforts in editing and reviewing the text...

My thanks also go to B.J. for all the information and documents that greatly contributed to the completion of this novel...

My gratitude extends to my friend Najm S. for his patience and open-hearted tolerance of all my revisions and investigative inquiries.

And finally, but by no means least, my heartfelt thanks to my readers, especially those who have accompanied me on my long journey since my debut novel, The Egg of the Moon...

My gratitude goes to Miss Abla, my translator, who accompanied me on a long and arduous journey for over a year, boldly undertaking the daunting challenge of translating this untamed novel.

I also extend my heartfelt thanks to Mrs.Hayat Qasdi, the dynamic and courageous publisher, for her unwavering collaboration.

And, of course, my deepest appreciation to my dear friend, Mr. Youssef Hussein, my Arab publisher, who has always stood by my side.

Sincerely,

Ahmed Juma

m I allowed to ask my book if I wrote it correctly?”

Pablo Neruda

“When the gods slumber, the mind awakens.”

Ahmad Juma

A journalist once asked the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, “What is a dictatorship?”

He replied, “It is to silence thinkers, intellectuals, and writers.”

“Only slaves ask for freedom;free people create it.”

Nelson Mandela.

The Autumn of the Imam

The savagery of the Imam, instilled in him from a young age, reached the heights that touched the sky. As he grew older, his cruelty intensified, fueled by ever-growing suspicions that spread like the fire of Judgment Day. The Imam, who considered himself the appointed vicar of God on Earth, crafted divine laws and edicts, embroidered with his blood, aimed at all those who surrounded him and glorified his kingdom, which basked in sunlight by day and was shrouded in darkness by night. If it had been in his power, he would have prevented the sun from rising. He believed that the darkness of the universe was a divine tool to plunge the inhabitants of his kingdom into total blindness, ensuring they could not see one another. He forbade the lighting of lamps at night, banned roaming the streets, and prohibited wearing dark black glasses.

He issued a series of Imam Decrees that included the prohibition of singing, holding celebrations, listening to music, and reading books, except the Quran and works by the Salafist from his entourage, whom he entrusted with the affairs of the population. Anyone who dared to read would lose his life. A group of secret book smugglers risked their lives for it, and all those who read were punished by death. It was an era of eternal autumn that the kingdom’sinhabitants of Yoruba were condemned to endure, along with a cadre of ill-fated ministers appointed to sham ministries. The Imam was the one who legislated and enforced laws, and his most sovereign ministers, endowed with powers derived from his authority, were given rings signifying their stature.

Among these ministers was the invisible sorceress, who never met or saw anyone and was undetectable. She issued her decrees and declared her measures without hesitation, forbidding or permitting various metals, woods, garments, and stones under the pretext of suppressing heresies, and punishing transgressors by castrating them to nullify their magic. It was rumored that she used to select beautiful and alluring women for nightly harvests. Recently, it was said that Queen Marianna, “Daughter of Makhzoum Tuwaini”, had deposed her by stripping her of her rings and banishing her to the world of fantasy.

Among the prominent ministers was the Minister of Endowments, Prayers, and Alms, who was adept in trickery and well-versed in the corridors of the sheikhs and preachers. He played a sovereign role until his powers were curtailed and his influence diminished by Marianna, daughter of Makhzoum. The list also included the court minister, who, due to his cunning and deceit, was secretly nicknamed “Divide and Rule”, in line with the British colonial philosophy of the concept “Divide and Rule”. He was despised, even among the Imam's circles. He operated as if he were in the jungles, and although Marianna fought against him, she could not oust him due to the Imam's support, despite the Imam's simultaneous dislike for him. It was rumored that he held a secret document that condemned the Imam and threatened his life.

This exemplary list reveals the dark and deceitful circle surrounding the Imam - a mythical façade and a deceptive background, which lies in avoiding quackery fueled by ignorance and blindness.This is the essence of the entire ministry headed by the Imam himself, influencing every facet of societal life in the great Kingdom of Yaruba.

A pale autumn, overpowering like a throne, has passed through no land except by a triangle of mythical nations. An infinite, eternal autumn, with no other seasons—no summer, no winter, and no spring. An autumn of permanence, sweeping away what is both behind and before it under the weight of the entire Earth. Lands were separated from the global map under the rule of a sovereign, a king, a tyrant, described in the dusty annals of his history as the Imam. These lands have another, contemporary face, described as modern, yet they witness the same eternal autumn. A single box contained the two lands, and a single autumn encompassed both. It is the myth of an autumn that ascended the throne of both lands, manifesting in two intertwined narratives recount the truth of a real myth, the myth of an ancient time settled in the core of our present - and the truth of a family that shared a living legacy, each arguing over their share.

I rose from the ruins of a garbage dump and the nonsense of a past, paying its debts with two-thirds of my life and paying a high price in the last third, residing in gentle caves and torture basements. As a result, a galaxy split from a pulsating omen of compensation, soon prophesied by the gods in a trade that proved it was an autumn still ongoing, and the twilight of two intertwined eras in myth and truth - a single face in whose folds predatory spiders grow, nesting among us and feeding on our fabric. We live in its eternal autumn, unaware that we are in lands that have devoured and crushed us, believing ourselves to be of royal lineage, until a vile autumn stripped us bare, making us equal, whether in heaven or hell - a galaxy containing demons and angels described in yellowed books as being of a single kind, secluded in a realm that divided us, myth and truth.

This is a land that has known only one autumn throughout its history - not a myth but a reality. I am Issa bin Salem Al-Nabhani Twaini, witnessing both tragedy and comedy, just like this land where there is no distinction between heaven and hell, between angels and demons, between tyrants and fighters. In the end, we are all the tyrants of truth and myth. Created by the hands of multiple gods, the wealth was divided, leaving behind a funeral and a coffin, then a grave... The land rejected me, my family exploited me, and my Creator deprived me of the spoils of heaven and earth distributed to those lower and more despicable than humans, contenting Himselfwith giving me the autumnal creature. He drowned me in the mire of poverty and marginalization, with a fever raging through every aspect of life, despite my efforts, sweat, and struggle. But he allied with my enemies, both inside and outside the political system. The biased universe, the chosen card player, left me a house, akin to an ancient fortress, but I am not innocent of pure debauchery or sin. Not all debauchery has its moral face, for I have committed lascivious massacres, but I have not raped or demeaned a woman; rather, I revered her, riding the wave of a lover and kissing her heel. Yet, I did not steal, oppress, or flatter, and my charge was dreaming of a revolution to overthrow a tyrant, only to find myself becoming a tyrant... I was attracted to a lineage I thought—and my thought proved correct—that would save me from my deprivation and poverty. Doubt assailed me in the tyrant's realm until I slipped, drawn into his world under the pretext of curiosity, becoming part of his mythical world, unprecedented in the dimensions of existence. I drowned in a cup of dark coffee when I slipped into alignment between my revolutionary change and my dusty lineage, marrying two opposing histories as the novelist did.

I came from a family steeped in poverty, and to my horror, I fathered seven children. My mother prayed for more to unify the family, while my father prayed for obscurity—for I never saw his face, heard his voice, or imagined his form. I sprouted like a delayed mushroom, arriving in an autumn fleeing from the seasons of time, avenging a misguided path. The permanence of events unfolded upon me until I reached the foothills of an early old age, spilling its chill and leaving me today at the gates of the inferno, Khardalah ibn Samaa’ Al-Nabhani Tuwaini.

I tied my fate to that of the Imam in a dusty palace inherited from my ancestors, which became my grave. Did my daughter die, or did she not? Who was responsible for that incident? When I look back to the beginnings, I think about how to redraw the map of my path in lands that rejected me while a forgotten history embraced me. A mythical turn, isn't it? As Pablo Neruda once said, "With which rivers do they speak? The rivers never reach the sea?"