The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar

Author:Sofia Samatar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2022-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

The Desert

the wall is no more, nor those who daubed it

Claas Epp syndrome

“I hope we don’t get Claas Epp syndrome in Khiva,” Micah says. We’re at a rest stop in the desert, regrouping after visiting the bathrooms, unwilling to get back on the bus before we must, stretching our legs in sun, wind, and the roar of the highway. Micah, the college student, took a school trip to Jerusalem last year, where he learned about Jerusalem syndrome, which causes tourists to the city to suffer from delusions, believing they’re prophets or even Jesus Christ. A search on Tom’s phone yields a photograph of a long-haired man in a robe sitting on a sidewalk, labeled “Man who claims to be a Messiah in Tel Aviv, 2010.” We’re laughing, although I, at least, am a little bit horrified by the image, the pathos of the sidewalk prophet on the busy street. He’s so isolated, conviction surrounding him like a wall of flame. And yet, of course, he’s deeply connected to others, enmeshed in a well-known story, a story that was waiting for him and caught him in some hotel, maybe even right off the plane, as soon as his feet touched earth.

The end is near. In 1530, Martin Luther hurried to publish his translation of the Book of Daniel; he was afraid the world would end before it was finished. The radical Anabaptists Hans Hut and Leonhard Schiemer, working independently, both set the date of Christ’s return at Pentecost 1528. A Hessian Anabaptist predicted three end dates one after the other: September 11, November 11, and Christmas 1530. Melchior Hoffmann, whose teachings inspired the infamous Münster Rebellion, said the Lord would return in 1533. From that date until his death a decade later, Hoffmann languished in prison, feverishly reworking his eschatology, trying to make the numbers come out right. His disciples declared the town of Münster in Westphalia the site of the new Jerusalem, and took the city by force to prepare it for the Second Coming.

Older prophecies. “The last times are come upon us,” wrote Ignatius of Antioch in the second century. The Joachites, who expected the world to end in 1260, roamed the Italian countryside, wailing and striking themselves with iron-studded whips. In medieval times, prophecies focused less on the coming of Christ than on the Antichrist, who was to arrive in 1184, 1229, 1260, 1300, 1325, 1335, 1346, 1387, 1396, and 1400. A tradition of ceaseless urgency, a message for the whole world. “If you do not do what I tell you,” Savonarola warned, “woe to Florence, woe to the people, woe to the poor, woe to the rich!”

In the fearsome year of 1666—1,000 plus 666, the mark of the Beast—every thunderstorm was seen as the beginning of the end. In 1795, claimed Richard Brothers, the end times would arrive, and he himself would lead the lost tribes back to Israel. 1814, said Joanna Southcott: at this time Christ would return through her, a sixty-four-year-old woman, in a second virgin birth.

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