To the cultural anthropologist, one of the most disheartening aspects of the Museum Fremen was their commercialization and cheapening of the society whose ways they were intended to preserve. While Leto forbade any selling within the Museum Fremen villages themselves, rings of vendors' stands sprang up circling the mock sietches; there one could buy plastic crysknives and maker hooks, clearly stamped with their planet of manufacture — Giedi Prime. Stuffed toys in the shape of sandworms, sietch models to be cut out and assembled, stillsuited dolls — all were available to the tourist desiring a souvenir but not worried much about its authenticity. In the surrounding shops, one could have his fortune told by a "Sayyadina" or see panoramic displays of scenes from the life of Paul Muad'Dib, eat baklava or drink "spiced" (cinnamon-flavored) coffee. Yet worst of all was the reenactment of Fremen ritual, such as the Ceremony of the Seed, or the consecration of the Water of Life, not annually as had been the case when the rites were meaningful, but on the hour before bleachersful of pilgrims.
The Museum Fremen contained the worst of two possibilities: they possessed neither a fun-loving spirit of make-believe nor a genuine reverence for the past: their villages were carnivals without gaiety and rituals without respect. Among the excesses and follies of Emperor Leto's long reign, the Museum Fremen must be counted one of the most degrading.
M.O.
FREMEN POETRY, 10196-10208
During the last two hundred years ("Atreidean period") of the most acclaimed era of Imperial poetry (10000-10400), almost all of the noted lyricists who wrote in Fremen were from other worlds (See poetry). The number of native Fremen writers was relatively small, and their talents tended in different directions. The native-born Fremen poet most often found expression, when he employed the shorter forms, in the elegy or lament. Sacred verses — prayers and psalms — were likewise favored by the Fremen poet, but the study of those works belongs more properly to the category of religion, not of art.
The Fremen liking for the elegy and lament stemmed from several factors: first, the conditions of desert life turned many a Fremen mind to isolation and introspection. Second, the participation of the desert tribes in the plans of the Kyneses, father and son, gave them a vision of a flowering of their planet, but a vision so far in the future that none of them would live to see it. This remoteness from blessedness intensified a melancholy offset only by a firm belief in the benefits to flow to their descendants. This second factor, a lament for the present (if we may term it such) was matched by a longing for the past that developed during Paul's Jihad. As the Fremen forces swept from world to world, many soldiers found themselves in almost intolerable contradictions: picture a Fremen officer off-duty on a newly conquered world, in a scene that must have been repeated many, many times. Perhaps he lies on a couch, served by skillful and comely attendants; nearby is a table heaped with exotic fruits, rich pastries, and spiced meats; his fingers are adorned with jeweled rings and his head with silk scarves taken in booty; hanging between columns are embroidered gauzes, waving in cool breezes and shading him from a spring sun; his couch rests beside a pool of water and, as brightly plumed birds drink at its edges, his reaching fingers stir ripples in the face of the waters. For the Fremen, this was the very image of Paradise. Yet the officer, in the midst of his beatitude, finds himself thinking of Dune, remembering the wife and children at home, the smells of the sietch, the look of the desert at dawn. Add this longing for the past to a mind already turned within, to a will already sated with action, and to emotions steeped in melancholy, and the surging feelings that result are likely to issue forth in the form of laments and elegies.
Here, is one such, composed by an anonymous warrior on one of the worlds of the Jihad, nameless to the Fremen who saw this place as just another in a seemingly endless war. As a song transmitted orally, it has many versions, but the following (from Mustava Rozalen's collection, Laments of the Lost) was recorded on Malet:
YA KALA, NEHIBBUCUM
(O DESERT, I LOVE YOU)
Her hips are dunes curved by the winds,
Her eyes the glow of hearthfires seen at dusk;
Two braids of hair — the desert vines —
Wander down her back,
And gold-veined rocks
Gleam in them like water-rings;
The wind soothes her skin,
Smells the incense sage of her breath,
Kisses the slope of her shoulders.
O, wind, has she forgotten me
When you, not I, embrace my lover?
I tremble, giving water to the dead,
And the corpse I mourn is me. (p. 43)
A second example from Rozalen's remarkable book is particularly poignant: its unknown author remembers a hymn to Shai-Hulud from Princess Irulan's The Dunebuk, but the alchemy of his yearning transmutes the gold of the hymn into the lead of his lament. Here first is the hymn, from The Dunebuk:
O worm of many teeth, Canst thou deny what has no cure?
The flesh and breath which lure thee
To the ground of all beginnings
Feed on monsters twisting in a door of fire!
Thou hast no robe in all thy attire
To cover intoxications of divinity
Or hide the burnings of desire!
And now its transformation (as recorded by Rozalen):
I am become a tooth of Shai-Hulud;
The opened door has loosed a flood
Of monsters ravening for prey,
For alien flesh, though I, no longer keen,
Blunted my sharp desire on the hundredth day
That I was robed in drying blood,
As peoples, planets, stars, became my food. (p. 70)
Our last example, also from Rozalen, of the form coming to be called "The Legion Lament" has a known author. His name was Kamal Salah, of whom little is known beyond his birth in Sietch Gara Kulon, his service in the Refuge campaign, and his death there of dysentery.
YA SULH, LA TIHARRAM-NI IJMAL-AK
(O PEACE, DO NOT DEPRIVE ME OF YOUR FAVOR)
Trees ring me on every side,
Taller than the Simsam rock —
Once I saw the falcon cross the sun,
Once I saw clouds walk across the dunes,
Once I saw the distant mountains hang
Above the desert sand —
But here I see only eyes shining in the night;
In the challenge of my youth
I put my back against the wall
And the friendly sietch was a shield behind me;
Once I had a front, two sides, a hack —
But now I am all back, and the knives
Strike always from behind, (p. 163)
The poetry of the Fremen legions drew on their native traditions and native forms of expression, but the violence of the Jihad threw those traditions and forms into sharp relief and gave an extra charge of power and immediacy to those who used them to soften their grief, their longing, even their despair.
W.E.M.
Further references: IMPERIAL POETRY, 10000-10400; Troge Puuradrizh, The Fremen Common Soldier in the Last Jihad, Lib. Conf. Temp. Ser. 10; Mustava Rozalen, ed., Laments of the Lost (10207), tr. Novad Allad (Salusa Secundus: Morgan and Sharak); Princess Irulan Atreides-Corrino, ed., The Dunebuk, Rakis Ref. Cat. 7-2331.
FREMEN SCULPTURE. "The eyes of Muad’Dib"
Few historical records on Arrakis survived the Starvation and the Scattering, but if they concerned the city of Arrakeen, and if they discussed religious matters, they were likely to have made reference to "The Eyes of Muad'Dib"; though something that could be seen by every resident of the city every day, "The Eyes" were never described.
Now with the discovery of the Rakis Hoard, this minor puzzle has been solved, and its solution provides a curious sidelight into the mores and thinking of the Fremen of the eleventh millennium.
In 10196, as is well known, Paul Atreides used his family atomics to breach the Shield Wall, about 1500 meters high at that point, south of
Arrakeen. Through the gap moved his forces to destroy the surprised Sardaukar. After Paul assumed the throne, the gap remained as a visible sign of his conquest, and became a place honored by the Fremen. In 10211, two years after Paul went into the desert, a delegation from the city of Arrakeen approached the regent Alia with a proposal to create a monument to Muad'Dib at the west end of the gap. They pointed out that the crumbled edge of the west wall bore a rough likeness of a human face; playing both with and against powerful religious feelings, the delegation interpreted the likeness as a sign from Shai-Hulud that on that spot should be carved a gigantic likeness of Paul, looking out over the bled. Anxious to secure her power base, Alia agreed to the plan, and allocated resources sufficient to begin work on the form of a hooded face, rising 400 meters from the chin to the top of the head.
Work was to proceed through a modified use of the wind-etching technique — the first attempt to wind-etch on such a monumental scale, but a technique in keeping with Fremen tradition. Areas to be protected were to be covered with sheets of plasteel thus allowing the sandstorms from the desert side of the wall to grind away the exposed areas. It was estimated that the project would take sixty years to complete, after which the whole sculpture would be coated with a protective surfacing until such time (perhaps three or four hundred years) as climatic changes had reduced sandstorms to the extent that protection was no longer needed.
The work became a source of discord as soon as the plan was announced, because many of the desert Fremen held religious scruples against the representation of the human form in general, and against a depiction of the Messiah in particular. Nevertheless, work began and by 10218, high up on the west wall of the gap, there reared the gigantic form of a hood above two heavily lidded eyes (construction had proceeded from the top down, on scaffolding lowered from the rim of the wall). By this time, sentiment against the project was so vocal that Alia, confronting mounting political problems, ordered work to be set aside till some quieter period. That calmer time never came, however, and Leto II replaced Alia in the next year. Work was then permanently halted on the project, and only "The Eyes of Muad'Dib" remained to stare sightlessly into the desert into which their original had wandered.
"The Eyes of Muad'Dib" remained one of the supreme attractions of Arrakis until Leto II destroyed the sculpture when the gap was widened and deepened to permit passage of the Idaho River.
W.E.M.
Further references: FREMEN SCULPTURE: WIND-ETCHING; Gwaitl Iivz-Gwiltan. Atreidean Sculpture, Appendix I (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Fremen Culture).
FREMEN SCULPTURE: WIND ETCHING
Although the Fremen sculptor was beset by taboos (which differed from region to region) regarding the representation of the human form, sculpture as a decorative art was developed to a high degree planetwide. One method peculiar to the desert Fremen was "wind-etching."
The process of wind-etching began with the collection of the scale insect Laccifera arctica, which lived on the twigs of certain plants native to the northern near-polar regions. The resin secreted by the insects was gathered and traded to the desert Fremen, who boiled it (distilling and saving the water vapor given off — waste not, want not) to produce a gumlike varnish. The sculptor spread the varnish in a thick layer on the surface of the stone to be etched, then scratched the design in the coated face with a flint scribing tool. On the next day of calm weather, the stone was taken out of the sietch and set up in a spot in direct sunlight but protected from the wind. The heat of the sun baked the gum to a hard, smooth coating. Before the next expected sandstorm, the stone was placed so that the wind would blow directly on the coated face.
When the storm arrived, the sand which it carried would abrade the coated face, wearing it away, but would etch the stone directly in those areas uncovered by the scribing tool. After the storm subsided, the sculptor would remove the remaining coating and examine the surface. The face was then re-coated, and the process repeated as many times as necessary (sometimes ten or twenty times) to produce the different patterns of decoration and bas-relief that were desired. Since only a major storm could produce the sandblasting force that made a distinguishable effect on the stone face, such sculptures were often years in the making.
Patterns of great delicacy and beauty could be created in this way, and many Fremen were justly recognized as master artists at wind-etching. Perhaps the most prominent among them during the Atreidean period was Karmara al-Jofar, who etched the architraves in the great meeting hall of Paul Muad'Dib's palace at Arrakeen. Yet those who compared them said that even al-Jofar's best work did not match, in intricacy and delicacy of line, that of the Master of Rifana Sietch, an unknown desert Fremen of the 9800s. Unfortunately, no work of the Master of Rifana Sietch is known to survive, although the discovery on Rakis has led to an understandable caution in definite statements about what is or is not lost to posterity.
Inscriptions were popular subjects for wind-etchings. That reproduced below reads al-xishf al-muzakki, "the grown fawn," and hung as a sign above a tavern entrance in Arrakeen.
As this example shows, a wind-etched stone could be used outdoors as a sign or frieze on the cornice of a building. But when used outdoors, the sculptures needed to be constantly protected by applications of varnish over the whole surface. The abrading layer had to be uniform in thickness to allow the relief to show, and it needed to be reapplied at intervals depending on the amount of weathering that had taken place. As a result of the care that outdoor sculptures required, artists seldom thought of their work as something separable from them, or as something with which they were finished when the etching was completed. The attitude of the desert Fremen sculptor was more like that of a keeper of livestock or a grower of plants, whose care for his charges continued through his life.
W.E.M.
Further reference: Gwaitl Ijvz-Gwiltan, Atreidean Sculpture, Chapter 3, "Wind-Etching" (Paseo: Institute of Galacto-Fremen Culture).
FREMEN WATER CUSTOMS.
The intricate mystic rites with which the Fremen surrounded almost every contact with water are made far more understandable when one considers the environment which inspired them: the harsh, sand-covered surface of Arrakis, possibly the most inhospitable world ever colonized by human beings. Water, which made life possible, was seen as being the carrier of that life. It was something to be fought for, conserved, treasured — and in the eyes of the Fremen, descendants of the Zensunni Wanderers and shaped by the trials those outcast mystics had suffered, it was holy beyond all other things.
Every ceremony involving water was supervised, if not conducted, by a Sayyadina (Fremen priestess) initiated in the rites and trained in their practice. In the event that no Sayyadina was available, it was permitted for the female in the group with the greatest knowledge of such matters to be temporarily consecrated into the office.
BIRTH. Every Fremen's first exposure to water customs took place minutes after he or she was born. The amniotic fluid surrounding the newborn was saved and distilled following the child's expulsion from the womb. This water was then fed to the infant by its godmother (usually one of the mother's best friends) in the presence of a Sayyadina; this feeding was the baby's first, given before it was returned to the mother to nurse.
As the baby drank, it was the godmother's duty to say to it, "Here is the water of thy conception." In this way, the child was seen as having been tied to its parents by the bond of water, as well as being tied, by extension, to the rest of the tribe. This unity was very important to the Fremen: it was, in fact, the basis for their entire social structure.
How the "water of conception" ritual originated is not precisely known. It is believed, however, to be one of the most ancient Fremen rituals, dating back to their original placement on Arrakis in the eighth millennium. Faced with an unforgiving environment and the absolute necessity for each tribe to five and work as a single organism in order to survive, the Fremen undoubtedly seized upon this rite as a means of stressing unity from the beginning of an
individual's life.
DAILY RITUALS. In a Fremen sietch, the first workers who donned their stillsuits and braved the day were the dew gatherers. As soon as the light of predawn could be seen, the gatherers hurried outside with their scythelike dew reapers, gleaning the available moisture from whatever plants grew near the sietch. When the collecting was finished and the precious water safely stored in the reapers' sealed handles, the dew gatherers carried the morning's harvest to a Sayyadina so that it — and they — could be given her blessing. The water was then carried to the tribe's communal basin.
Shortly after the dew gatherers were finished, the head of each household in the sietch would come to collect the family's daily allotment from the general stores. The allowances were niggardly (less than a liter per day for a household of ten, for example) but adequate, given the Fremen's ability to recycle their water in stillsuits and stilltents. The Sayyadina distributing the water also gave her blessings to its use and to those consuming it, and prayers of thanks were offered to Shai-Hulud for providing the means of survival for another day.
A family's last action before retiring for the night was to divide among its members the water produced by their reclamation chambers (small rooms adjoining one's quarters where bodily wastes were recycled for their water). It was considered unlucky to leave free water standing unused unless stored in one of the sietch's evaporation-proof basins; the best place to keep a household's water was thought to be within the bodies of that family's members.
As the water was consumed, the head of the family chanted: "Now do we consume that which will one day be returned... for the flesh of a man is his own, but his water belongs to the tribe."
Like the "water of conception" ritual, this nightly reminder served to emphasize the image of the individual as a part of the tribal whole.
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