There aren't supposed to be any presents, and there certainly won't be candles and a cake. A little singing, I suppose, of a certain, sober kind. I, however, will be taking advantage of my position to offer something that's both a gift and an awful lot more. Five minutes of film, gathered from 25 of our tapes (only five of which were actually broadcast—I protested, as artists do, but he's nothing if not a perfectionist, and hates his public to see anything less than perfection). This tape, though, is different. It's the greatest hits. The previously unseen footage. The special edition. He doesn't see so well these days—one of the perils of the fugitive lifestyle is its lack of decent medical facilities; that and the frequent incidents—but I know he'll love it. This is my director's cut, and every frame has been chosen by these most attentive, these most devout, of eyes.
I know what you're going to say. Where's the art? You will have seen my work, but to you it will be as though I never existed. This, of course, is the very purpose of my art: to make you see only what I wish, what he wishes, you to see. And what you haven't seen? I won't even begin to tell you about the outtakes, the tantrums, the heaps on the cutting-room floor—the cave floor, I should say—for none of this is relevant. Please, though, ask yourself. You think we stand the camera on a rock? That it's some cheerful mujahedin with a grin on his face and a gun across his back, anxious to return to the struggle outside? You have no idea how wrong you are. We pass days, sometimes weeks, just in pre-production. The choice of cave, for instance, brings out a meticulous, even mercurial, streak in our leader. This cave is too dark, that one is too narrow; that wall is too smooth, that outcrop looks too European. Nuance is everything. The world, as he frequently points out, is itself a book written by the most intricate of beings, and if we are to read it truly we must not allow haste to become the mother of impiety. And he doesn't hear too well these days either (there are no decent doctors, only that posturing Egyptian kidney man), which tends to make the meetings overrun.
Anyway. I could go on all day about timing, lighting (it has to look natural, you see), texture, coloration (serious, he always says, yet somehow enticing, as if we're saying—this could be your cave too); but time compels me to cut to the chase. The moment is almost upon us. So if you're looking for a single phrase that sums up everything I do: it's all about the beard. He's obsessed. This isn't earthly vanity, of course (in any case, he hasn't been able to exercise the earthlier kind of desire for a long time, not since the closest and most gruesome of our many incidents). It's more that, as he puts it, without the beard, what are you looking at? Some guy in a desert, having a chat. It's the beard, the beard: there is your legitimacy, your prophetic lineage, your 40 days and 40 nights, if you'll pardon the reference. Everybody loves a beard. Without a beard, you're just not serious.
Like everything, of course, it has to look natural, has to look like it just happened. This is the hardest effect of all, and the most vital of all my many duties. A snip here, a cut there, and I try it again; it's not quite right, so a tuck here, a tuft there, a splitting of those ends; and push this back over the ears, move that off the lower lip, flash those grey hairs just under the promontory of the nose… it's more than an art. It's a spiritual vocation. And these days, even the off-cuts are taking on a particular significance, what with that latest round of incidents and their alarming effects on the vigour of our leader's hair growth. Whatever else happens, the beard must be seen, must remain.
And now the time is upon us. No more talk! Fifty years young today, here he comes, borne by two of our most trusted in their arms. He is weak, but I know he is smiling beneath the knotted hairs of the face and chin. And now he is looking at me; and here is the projector, the perfect spot on the wall, and all of our greatest moments are poised to flicker into life…
