Setting aside what institutional voices had added to the pertinent information—several thousand pages of explanation in the press and hundreds of hours of learned commentary in the nadirs—one could reach the heart of the matter: a new holy shrine of prime importance had been discovered! After some minor work, to be financed by the funding drive, it would soon be open for pilgrimage, or so the publicity hype immediately claimed, creating huge enthusiasm among the people and a no less colossal flurry of business activity. The publicity projected the mind-boggling figure of twenty million penitents the first year, thirty the second, and forty each consecutive year. Reservations had been filled for the next ten years to come. Things had gotten out of hand, people were losing their tempers, prices going through the roof—burnis, satchels, sandals and pilgrims’ staffs now cost a fortune, and there was a threat of shortages. A new era had begun.
That wasn’t all: religious historians, doctors of the law, and Grand Mockbis would be very busy in the decades to come. Already they were sharpening their nibs and stockpiling paper; they would have to rewrite the history of Abistan and the Gkabul, revise the founding speeches, and what was more, touch up chapters in the Holy Book. Abi himself had admitted that his memory might have failed him; his life had been so complex and thrilling, he had an entire planet to govern, and Yölah was demanding.
This new shrine was no ordinary place; it would offer the unexpected, alter perspectives. One example among hundreds: in the common version of the Gkabul, Qodsabad was at the center of History; but the truth lay elsewhere, Qodsabad did not exist before the Revelation, in its place there had been a prosperous megalopolis known as Ur, the present-day ghetto of Qodsabad, and Abi lived in another region. It was only later, for business purposes, that he came to settle in Ur. The new draft of the Holy Book would have to integrate the fact that Abi had hidden for several years in this miraculous village after he had fled from Ur, threatened as he was by the lords of that corrupted city, now in the hands of Balis and the Enemy. In those days, Balis was still called the Chitan and the Enemy was simply the enemy; they did not have the mythical aura they have today, but were a conglomerate of degenerate, barbarian peoples whose lands were known as the United High Regions of the North, the Lig in abilang. It might have been enough simply to wait for them to die off, their end would have been a fairly sad one, but there was evil in them, and it might spread to the believers and corrupt them. It was in that village, in the simplicity of his new life, that Abi began to hear and make heard the message of a new god, Yölah, who in those days was simply referred to as God. His message was full of light, it could fit into one slogan: “God is everything and everything is in God.” It was an elegant way of saying that the only God was God. Let us not forget that Abi himself went by another name, which we do not know; he changed his name to Abi, which means Father beloved by believers, when God acknowledged him as his unique and ultimate messenger.
It was only when the crop of converts attained a critical mass capable of setting off a chain reaction that would pulverize the ancient world that God would reveal his name: Yölah, by which he reigns over eternity. And it was also in that village that one night, in a flash of light, Yölah would teach Abi the sacred language he would use to gather the men scattered through the world and lead them, repentant and grateful, onto the path of the Gkabul. He would teach him that faith is not enough: however brightly it burns, the fire can go out, and men are difficult, they must be subjugated the way snakes must be charmed, one must be always be wary of them, and to do so takes a powerful language that is enduringly hypnotic. Abi added two or three inventions of his own and baptized the language abilang. He verified its power over his own companions: after a few lessons, poor devils that they were, terrified at the thought that God existed and was watching them, they turned into infernally charismatic commanders, juggling rhetoric and the cunning of warfare. Koa had carried out the same experiment on the children of a devastated suburb and obtained the same incredible result: after one month of lessons you could no longer recognize the ignorant little brats. “With the holy language my adepts will be valiant unto death; they will need nothing more than the words of Yölah to dominate the world. These words made my companions into commanders of genius, and so now will they make them into elite soldiers; the victory will be rapid, total, and final,” he says, as recorded in the Book of Abi, title 5, chapter 12, verses 96 and following. It was from this village, with this embryonic army, that Abi would start the Char, the first Great Holy War of the Gkabul. One might wonder how Abi could have forgotten this refuge that had been so crucial to his career and the future of humanity, but no one did wonder: Abi was the Delegate, Yölah inspired him in every circumstance.
Later, once Abi had established the Just Brotherhood and made it his cabinet and the supreme authority of state, higher than all the religious and governmental institutions, he would proclaim abilang to be the official universal language, and issue a decree that any other idiom to be found anywhere on the planet was primitive and sacrilegious. History does not tell us who created the Apparatus, nor what its purpose was, where it stood on the chessboard, nor who ran it; those who tried to find out failed, and did not pursue their attempts any further.
The Honorable Rob, at the time spokesman for the Just Brotherhood and Abi’s governor of communications, explained through the press, and in a very moving speech at the Great Mockba in Qodsabad, that the dear Delegate was truly convinced that this village which had taken him in with such a display of fraternal love, assuming enormous risks in so doing, given the menace of Ur, had been destroyed in one of the Holy Wars and razed to the ground by the Enemy, and that was why he had not breathed a word about it until this year, when an angel sent by Yölah came to him in a dream to inform him that the good village was still there, standing on its own two feet, and that it still preserved the sweet smell of his passage. Stunned by so much divine indulgence, Abi immediately sent out a reconnaissance mission. The village was indeed there, just as he had seen it in his dream, spruce and shining in a supernatural light. Abi wept when they showed him the film they had made on-site and he recognized the humble dwelling the inhabitants had placed at his disposal, and the no less modest mockba, a comical sight with its pagan aspect; the villagers, full of joy, had built it when Abi converted them to the Gkabul. Spurred by a wave of enthusiasm he urged the Honorable Hoc to order the Ministry of Sacrifices and Pilgrimages to do whatever it took to enable deserving believers to visit the blessed village as soon as possible, and find joy therein.
He asked the Honorable Dia, the mysterious Dia, a very influential member of the Just Brotherhood and head of the Department of Investigations into Miracles, to carry out all the appropriate investigations and to conclude that the condition in which the village had been preserved was nothing short of miraculous, and that this phenomenon must have something to do with the fact that he, Abi, had stayed there. Which Dia did, forthwith. The believers were unanimous in hailing it as a miracle and requesting its consecration. Once again the streets of Abistan showed their infallible forbearance. As a token of his recognition, Abi granted Dia the title of “Honorable among Honorables,” along with a hereditary concession on the pilgrimage to this holy place. The Honorables celebrated their powerful colleague: his promotion implied a revision of the entire interplay of alliances; the world of the Just Brotherhood and the Apparatus would, henceforth, turn for or against Dia.
To close the festivities, several thousand prisoners were executed—renegades, riffraff, fornicators, generally unworthy individuals. The prisons and camps were emptied out, and endless processions through the streets were organized so that the people could do their bit for the holocaust. The Grand Mockbi of the Great Mockba of Qodsabad inaugurated the holy carnage under the cameras’ concupiscent gaze by taking the knife in his own hand to the throat of a ragged, shaggy, sinister bandit they’d found in some makeshift asylum. The wretch’s skin was tough, and the frail old mockbi had to make ten
attempts before he pierced the windpipe.
The moment the discovery of the village was announced, Ati understood that the affair had something to do with the archeological site where Nas had been working. He was only mildly surprised. The way the media were reporting it, the story had little in common with what Nas had told him during their long journey back to Qodsabad, basically that it was simply pilgrims who had discovered the village, that no angel had informed them: they had been forced off their designated route by the torrential rain which had flooded vast expanses of territory—cutting off roads, confusing landmarks, adding danger to desolation. As they skirted the disaster area, the pilgrims went through places so dreary it was impossible to imagine any human being might ever want to settle there. While they were looking for a place to shelter from the gusts, in order to rest and perform their devotions, they came upon the village. It seemed alive, even welcoming, without a single sign of decay; it looked as if the inhabitants had merely gone out on some errand and would be back in no time. The penitents soon realized the village was dead, as if embalmed; that the dry climate and its extreme isolation had preserved it from the ravages of time and mankind. It was obvious that the inhabitants had left the place in a great hurry. There were signs—tables set for meals, doors gaping wide, benches overturned in a place that looked like a midra—that it must have been morning, between the third and fourth prayer, when they left the place. But when? A very long time ago, that was all it was possible to say; something in the air suggested antiquity, the distant past, in everything that is uncertain and mystical about these time-space indicators. But perhaps the sense of oppression was merely due to the infinite solitude of the place. Nas had said that when he arrived in the village he felt as if he’d been projected into another dimension. The pilgrims had decided to stay there until the storm abated; they spent their time exploring the astonishing village and, at night around the fire, recalling old legends that had been banished from memory.
Once they reached their camp, they told of their discovery, eyes wide, and to support their testimony they produced various objects they’d taken from the site—trifles, but very unusual things at the same time. But what they were, no one would say, dammit! As this was no ordinary matter, the camp provost confiscated the objects, filed a report to his superior, and a few weeks later a mission arrived from Qodsabad, led by Nas. The Apparatus immediately launched another mission, via helicopter, in order to catch up with the pilgrims and put them through a rapid debriefing, followed by quarantine in a secret place. Not a single newspaper or nadir mentioned the mysterious disappearance of the village’s inhabitants, or the strange objects found on the site, or the unjust confinement of the pilgrims. The commissar of faith, the guide, and the guards who had taken it upon themselves to stray from the official designated road were severely punished; every pilgrimage had a consecrated path, and its length and trials were as important as the goal, the shrine; no power on earth could change that path—Abi himself could not change it, nor would he.
And so it was that Nas was the first to examine the objects the pilgrims had collected, and the first to enter the village. What he found there plunged him into deep thought. He refused to say more, even as Ati urged him for all he was worth. Their recent friendship in no way authorized a failure to abide by the rule of secrecy to which Nas was bound by his position as sworn investigator of the Ministry of Archives, Sacred Books, and Holy Memories. It was as he gazed off into space, his lip trembling, that one night by the campfire he let slip that what he had discovered could shake the symbolic foundations of Abistan, in which case the government of the Just Brotherhood would resort to very drastic measures—stifling restrictions, mass deportation, immense destruction—so as to maintain order in its former innocence. This declaration had caused Ati to smile: a village is a village, a parenthesis in the desert, the story of a handful of families forgotten along the road to the city. It was the fate of villages to disappear into the dust of years, or for the city to close in on them and swallow them whole; no one laments their loss for very long. Nas had underestimated the government; he would never have imagined they could come up with the ideal solution so easily: raise the village to the rank of a holy shrine, and there you had it; consecrated and set in the limelight it would be safely hidden from any hypocritical gazes or sacrilegious questioning. The System is never threatened by the revelation of an embarrassing fact; rather, it will be reinforced by making this fact its own.
In all honesty, Nas was thinking of something else: the sad fate that awaited the witnesses, for they were doomed to disappear, one after the other—the guide and the guards, the camp provost and his adjutants. Left to their own resources, the pilgrims would be lost in the wilderness and before long they too would perish. The nadirs would report the tragedy, and nine days of national mourning would be proclaimed. They died as martyrs, that was the main thing, so people would say as the ceremonies came to an end. And Nas thought of himself, a key witness: not only had he seen with his own eyes, he had grasped the deep significance of what was before him.
There was no point asking for the name of the village. No one knew it—such a loss—it had been erased and replaced by an Abistani name. The Just Brotherhood gathered in a solemn assembly and baptized it Mab, which comes from med Abi, the refuge of Abi. Ever since Abistan was founded, all the names of places, people, or things that dated from an earlier era had been banished, along with the languages, traditions, and all the rest; it was the law, there was no reason to make any exception for this village, all the more so in that it had been raised to the rank of a privileged Abistani shrine.
Once the initial excitement over the discovery of the village had subsided, along with the surge of pride he felt in his friend Nas, whose name would forever remain associated with the miracle, Ati recalled several things. Nas had told him that the village was not Abistani, Abistanis had not built it, nor did they inhabit it, a thousand details attested to the fact—the architecture, the furniture, the clothing, the dishes. What seemed to be a midra and a mockba were arranged completely differently from in Abistan. Documents, books, almanacs, postcards, and other printed matter were written in a strange language. Who were these people, what was their history, their era, how had they ended up in Abistan, the world of believers? The archeologist in Nas was astounded by how well the village was preserved, and by the absence of any human bones. An array of theories were considered, none of which proved satisfactory. The first idea: the village had been attacked, and its inhabitants had been rounded up and deported God knows where. Perhaps, but there were no signs of struggle or pillage; and if villagers had been killed during the battle, where were their corpses? Another possibility: the inhabitants had left of their own accord, but why so precipitously? They seemed to lead quiet lives, and behaved accordingly.
Ati and Koa discussed it at length. The theory of a miracle did not convince them for one second; they preferred the fact of the unchanging dry climate to explain the condition of the village, as well as the improbable but romantic explanation for the absence of human bones, which was the possibility that the village was still inhabited by a few last survivors. The story went as follows: for whatever reason, the villagers had fled their homes one day; they perished along the way, or argued over the route to take: the fact remained that a few of them, exhausted and desperate, had turned back, and once they were home they led reclusive lives, running to hide in the wilderness or the mountains at the drop of a hat. When they heard the armada of pilgrims pouring toward them like a flood, the unfortunate survivors cried out that their end had come. If this was the case, where were they, now that their haven had been invaded, occupied, transformed, guarded like the grail? Did they die in the wilderness? Might they have made it to a megalopolis in the hopes of melting into the first crowd they chanced upon? In all likelihood; but what were their chances of fooling such forbidding and suspicious folk, how could they dodge the administration, the Civics, the Vs, the Apparatus’s s
pies, the AntiRegs, the army patrols, the Volunteer Law-enforcing Believers, the Volunteer Militia, the judges of Moral Inspection, the mockbis and their response-givers, assorted informers, and those neighbors whom no wall, no door can discourage? These survivors, lost in an unknown world—did they know these things, did they know that Bigaye saw everything with his magical eye, and the nadirs not only broadcast images, they also filmed those who looked at them, and picked up their thoughts? Whatever way you looked at it, their end was ineluctable because, as you can well imagine, those villagers were not adepts of the Gkabul, and spoke forbidden languages. The best thing for them and for the survival of their kind would be to head as fast as they could for the nearest ghetto, if there were any left in their region. Maybe that is what they did, maybe they found a place even more totally isolated than their village had been, and built a retreat that could withstand any trial. Ati knew how huge the country was, how incredibly void of life; nothing could be easier than to lose oneself in it forever, were it not for those swarms of pilgrims, blinded by their impetuous faith, crisscrossing the land from its farthest reaches to the outmost bounds.
It was these thoughts that compelled Ati to find a way to visit Nas in his ministry, the only address he had for him. He shared them with Koa, and they began to construct plan upon plan. As they had never left their neighborhood—something that was forbidden by a law that was all the stricter in that it was unwritten and no one knew the terms—they had no clue where they should go, nor whom to ask for directions to the ministry, and they didn’t have the damnedest idea how they’d make it past the obstacles they’d encounter around every corner. They were well aware at present that they didn’t know Qodsabad at all, that they didn’t know what it looked like or what sort of people lived there. Up until now the world, to them, had been no more than the continuation of their neighborhood, but the existence of the impregnable ghetto and the mysterious village were proof that there were breaches in the System, and any number of hidden worlds. On the road from the sanatorium Ati had seen the emptiness that encompassed Abistan, an oppressive emptiness that seemed woven with the murmurs of a multitude of parallel worlds that had been spirited away by an all-powerful magic. The absolutist spirit of the Gkabul? The radiating thought of Bigaye? The purifying breath of the Great Holy Wars?
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