Imaswan looked at him in astonishment, and the members of the council gazed at him with even greater surprise. Meanwhile, Aghulli was smiling secretly and enigmatically while his fingers fiddled with the diss mat. Finally, Imaswan spoke. “You should have attempted to sway them rather than deliver their heresy to our ears.”
“My comrade can try to sway them, because they’ve come to tell you today exactly what they told me yesterday.”
Silence reigned over the oblation chamber. Outside, the people’s clamor grew louder. Imaswan asked, “Do you really want me to go out to them?”
“If you don’t, we’ll be forced to choose someone who will act for you and all the rest of us.”
“I’ve never been good at public speaking.”
“You’ve never been at a loss for an argument. You’ve never lacked eloquence.”
“But, my voice. …”
“We’ll call the herald. I’ve sent someone to search for him.”
“I see you’ve thought of everything.”
“I consider this the lesser evil than civil strife consuming the oasis.”
“Civil strife?”
“It would be wrong to underestimate the common people. It’s said they’re like children before a sage and like an inferno before a fool.”
The seated man pressed the diss mat with his palms to control his emotions and cast a sweeping glance round the council as if asking for help from its members. The hero gestured to him encouragingly, but Imaswan Wandarran looked off in another direction and addressed the venerable elder with words that blended earnestness and jest. “Have you heard, master? They’re set on replacing eternity’s leader with the fool’s leader. Does our master find any point to their bickering?”
The venerable elder’s eyes narrowed till the whites were no longer visible. He swayed like someone overcome by a catastrophe. He keened his everlasting lament, “Hi-y-y-yeh!”
At the chamber door, a powerful man wearing a black turban peered in. The sleeves of his gray tunic were hiked to his shoulders, revealing arms that were also gray and were sculpted with bulging muscles that twisted like the roots of some trees. He crossed his arms at his waist prior to announcing: “The herald awaits permission to enter.”
4
In the circular plaza that surrounded the sanctuary on all four sides, citizens crowded together. Even though the area appeared packed, the adjoining alleys continued to spew forth new folks who had banded together in small knots or encountered each other as individuals on the streets. They bumped turbans at times to whisper to each other about the conduct of the conspirators and then shrank back to argue loudly with one another.
Even though their voices created a fearsome growl unprecedented in the oasis, the voices in the area near the eastern walls of the temple were more daring than all the others and became a veritable, detestable cacophony.
The sun was heading toward its zenith.
The members of the council left the chamber and lined up parallel to the wall, with Imaswan Wandarran at the center. To his left stood Aghulli. The hero stationed himself on his right, thrusting his mythic spear into the earth beside him. He had drawn his sword, about which female poets had recited so many poems that people deemed it a legendary artifact from the ancients’ myths.
The slaves bearing the palm-branch litter appeared, and Aghulli stepped to the left to make room beside Imaswan Wandarran for the venerable elder.
A sudden silence seized the plaza.
The silence evolved into a stillness the tribe had only experienced in the desert.
It was a stillness people had forgotten since they erected buildings, settled inside houses and walls, and surrounded those walls with barricades and fences, welcoming within these redoubts caravans, foreigners, and wayfarers.
They enjoyed the silence and delighted in listening to the stillness, hearing spiritual songs that are audible only when the world is still. The silence, however, terrifies people who have never known solitude and never savored the taste of stillness in the desert. The quiet frightened the crowds, because from eternity it has been hostile to anyone who has lost his psychological bearings. Man flees to seek refuge among crowds, because he cannot bear the stillness. He could not bear the stillness now either. So he fidgeted, whispered, and muttered.
The mumbling grew louder. Then the venerable elder responded with his refrain, which he had borrowed from the dictionary of eternity, “Hi-y-y-yeh.”
Imaswan considered this cry a good omen and seized the opportunity to speak, “I have heard … the council has heard that the inhabitants of the oasis intend to reject the oasis’s master who rests in the tomb to replace him with a wretched puppet chosen from earthly people’s puppets.”
The herald sprang into the gap between the crowd of people and the row of noblemen. He called out in a resonant voice that seemed to outstrip his compact body: “I have heard … the council has heard that the inhabitants of the oasis intend to reject the oasis’s master who rests in the tomb to replace him with a wretched puppet chosen from earthly people’s puppets.”
A row erupted in the throngs. Angry and disgusted shouts rang out. People at the rear brazenly brandished fists threateningly in the air.
Somewhere in the front lines a voice was raised, “They call the earthly leader a puppet. We call the comatose leader a corpse.”
Other voices repeated this statement as if seconding the appeal and making fun of the herald, who had repeated the nobleman’s words. “They call the earthly leader a puppet. We call the comatose leader a corpse.”
The noblemen’s scion tightened the veil around his face and pulled it higher till it covered his nose. He lowered the upper portion until it shielded his eyes. The other noblemen perceived that he was hiding his perplexity, since they knew that this glorious scarf was designed to ward off anguish and to succor veiled nations during confrontations. The scion of the nobles was still for a longer time than protocol allowed. So the hero secretly nudged him with his elbow.
Without uncovering his face or eyes, Imaswan asked, “Don’t you know that renouncing the leader’s Law entails renunciation of the prophecy?”
The herald leapt forward once more and, clapping his hands over his ears, chanted this query so melodiously that his performance stirred their admiration.
Then silence dominated the area.
The stillness did not last long.
Soon the same voice burst forth again from somewhere in the front row, “Let the dead supervise the affairs of the dead. Bring us a leader from among you.”
The throngs snatched up this phase and repeated the call, roaring in unison. The appeal was reiterated with spontaneous emotion even though it seemed once more an ignoble jest intended to poke fun at the herald’s craft.
Imaswan shouted desperately, “If you’ve decided to renounce the Law today, don’t blame us if the heavens renounce you tomorrow.”
The herald clapped his hands over his ears again, directed his head toward the sun, tensed his muscles like a rooster, and repeated the speech, as if it were a beautiful chant full of poetry’s sweetness and a song’s melancholy.
At that moment, a wiry man sprang from the swarms in the front line. Wearing a striped djellaba, the man had wrapped the veil around his head in a ludicrous fashion. A piece of faded linen concealed the top part of his head, and another piece of the same color was wrapped around his lips, cheeks, and chin, without covering his protruding ears. This individual was not merely wiry, he was also short. When he spoke, the whole crowd recognized his voice as the one that had been challenging the nobles’ scion throughout the debate. He seemed to be addressing the herald and not the council of nobles, who were lined up against the wall. “You should understand that we have demonstrated a lot of confidence in you by asking you to choose a leader for us from among yourselves.”
The masses trumpeted this thought and some voices repeated it numerous times, accentuating the provocation.
The nobles’ scion asked with a
stonishment, “What do you expect us to say, immigrant?”
The herald leapt forward like a grasshopper, stopped his ears with his palms, and once more tensed his body like a cock before he seized this phrase from his master’s mouth and cast it to the heavens.
Silence reigned for a brief moment. Then the man with the wiry figure rushed forward until he almost rammed the herald with the tip of his turban. He shouted loudly, “I meant to say that these folks could just as easily select a leader from among themselves … someone just as wise as any leader with a lengthy tribal pedigree. But because we think well of the sage standing beside you, we have come to present ourselves to the council.”
The crowd attempted to repeat this new charm, but the imperfections of their voices turned the refrain into a detestable din.
The scion of the noblemen asked in a critical tone, “What do I hear? Have you gone behind our backs and chosen a leader from among us?”
The herald captured this phrase and leapt into the air like a grasshopper in the fields. He clapped his hands over his ears before casting these words melodiously into space.
“We have chosen Aghulli, master. We have chosen Aghulli with the unanimous agreement of the intellectuals.”
“You have designated intellectuals among yourselves too?”
The herald prepared to spring into action but the nobleman stopped him with a stern gesture of his hand.
The short man replied, “The truth is that we’ve been intellectuals for a long time—wise men from day one.”
“Wretch, to what day do you refer?”
“I’m speaking, master, of the first day, our birthday.”
“Amazing!”
“It’s never good to insult another person.”
“Are you a merchant or a transient?”
“I’m neither a merchant nor a transient.”
“Are you from one of the tribes of vassals?”
“Vassals?”
“The symbol on your head attests to your status as an immigrant or the son of vassals.”
“Symbol?”
“The turban. Only an immigrant or a vassal would tie a veil in this fashion.”
“Does our master see some relationship between turbans and leadership?”
The mob grew restless. Then, feeling emboldened, they laughed openly, loudly, offensively. Their laughter revealed a spirit of derision and Schadenfreude.
______________
1. The Qibli is the south wind, from the desert.
2. Ampelodesma tenax, a low-growing grass.
THE JUDGMENT
1
He set off for a walk through the barren lands.
He emerged from the alleys on the south side of the oasis, crossed the area reserved for caravans, reached the well, and leaned over the stone wall encircling its opening. He was diverted by the trickle of water that continued to flow down a damp ditch with weeds on both sides. He tarried by the irrigation ditch, enjoying the water’s sound as it prattled and raved in its struggle with the ditch’s rock. The watercourse zigzagged east and then turned west before disappearing in thickets of date palms, grapevines, and pomegranates. In a patch of ground between the trees, at the center of a field to the west, the plentiful waters glistened—seditious and naughty in the twilight. He remembered how the tribe had struggled to find this treasure’s location and recalled in detail the day that the beneficent herald had made the rounds repeating the good news. He felt downhearted, however, when he pictured himself clasping in his arms the old well-digger—the earth’s victim—to raise him from the belly of the earth. He had known that the tribe would lose the well-digger. The tribe had also realized beforehand what the well-digger’s fate would be. The well-digger, who was fond of tunnels and who had learned the earth’s secret once he had chosen it for his eternal refuge, himself understood that the day he struck water would be his doomsday. The tribe would not have known he knew had he not confided the matter to his son, who circled the encampment, weeping, before earth’s offspring decided to enter the earth to struggle and search for the treasure.
He would never forget the day he descended to the bottom to pull the man out. He would not forget the enigmatic, mocking look that had settled in the well-digger’s eyes. He would never forget his tunic, which was soiled with blood and dirt moistened by the spring’s water. He would never forget another matter that he had kept from everyone and that remained his breast’s secret even now. When he had removed the piles of gravel, mud, and rock and had felt the victim’s pulse, he had been certain the man was dead. Then, when he had strapped the body to himself—so that the two bodies (the live one and the dead one) cohered into a single creature thanks to the palm-fiber rope—and when he had tugged at the rope to signal to the men to begin hauling them up, at that moment, he had felt warmth course through his partner’s body and had felt with his chest, which was strapped to the victim’s breast, his partner’s heartbeat. That had not been a fantasy, because the necessary pulse continued during the trip from the pit’s bottom to the mouth of the well. He had also clearly felt his partner’s heart stop once light flooded over them and the men’s hands grabbed them. It had happened shortly before the men untied the fiber rope from their two bodies. He had sensed the mysterious rhythm recede and weaken before vanishing. As it disappeared, the warmth in his partner’s body diminished. Their two bodies separated and a fever convulsed him. A fiery tear sprang from his eye and in his heart he felt a thorn’s prick. Then he withdrew at once, fleeing from the group’s din to bury his pain in the wasteland.
2
On the ridge overlooking Retem Valley, a ghostly figure appeared, emerging suddenly from the retem thickets. He walked alongside the other man at a nobleman’s pace, his hands clasped behind him. As if to himself, he said, “It’s not a good idea for a person who has assumed responsibility for a people to walk alone, defenseless.”
His voice was husky, a scarcely audible whisper. Although erect, he was leaning forward. Like a wayfarer long separated from other people, he searched the stone monoliths, which were flooded by twilight’s rays, for a nameless sign. Recluses do not look their companions in the eye and pay no heed to their associates. They shoot past people without noticing their existence. They are, however, a breed fascinated with observing the bodies that unite again at the eternal horizon, even though the tribes perceive these to be inanimate objects or the wasteland’s emptiness. Recluses hunt for a prophecy in wayside objects and spy on the Spirit World’s inhabitants, who do not show themselves to other human beings. Perhaps for these reasons, the desert’s tribes are accustomed to regarding members of this enigmatic community as creatures who always provoke debate, doubts, and suspicions.
Watching with curiosity, he asked, “Is my wasteland companion a stranger from the Spirit World’s tribes or a human being from a nomadic family?”
His companion replied with an alacrity that desert people would not have thought typical of nomads or of the denizens of the Spirit World, “Don’t they amount to the same thing? Don’t communities lose their distinguishing characteristics as dusk falls?”
“You’re right. We say that too. But I can affirm I’ve never seen you before, despite … despite my intuition to the contrary.”
“Now you deny with your tongue a matter you first thought certain.”
“You’re right. The veil confuses the matter for every eye. Thus even the most perspicacious people cannot affirm categorically that the person seen today is the same man they sat with yesterday. That happens whenever the distinctive signal provided by headgear changes.”
“But wise men cannot perceive the identity of a creature who hasn’t wrapped a veil round his head.”
“That’s most amazing.”
“During raids, combatants deliberately fasten veils to fallen comrades’ faces to distinguish their own fatalities from the enemy’s.”
“That’s most amazing.”
“A son of the desert emerges veiled from his mother’s belly. So how woul
d you expect the veil not to become a member of his body like his hand, shoulder, or arm? How could the veil not become one of his identifying features?”
“Is this why some tribes treat it with veneration akin to their respect for the Spirit World?”
“You said ‘some tribes.’ You really ought to say ‘all tribes.’ I don’t know even one clan that doesn’t worship this rag.”
“Forgive me for this slip of the tongue, because the fact is that the best people of our tribe also venerate it; so much so that a group of them almost erects idols to it and offers blood sacrifices for it.”
“I’m not surprised to hear this from my master’s mouth, because I know in another desert another tribe that inherited from their ancestors a religious festival that honors the veil. During it they slaughter sacrificial animals, warriors race camels, and young women sing the noblest melodies. On this day, each year, there is a contest for the best-looking veil.”
“But … but let’s skip the veil’s story. Tell me why you think a person in charge of public affairs shouldn’t walk in public, defenseless and alone.”
“Because once a person takes charge of something, he becomes sacred and is no longer considered a man.”
“Did you say ‘sacred,’ or has my hearing deceived me?”
“Master, your hearing did not deceive you.”
“How could a man change overnight, after being an unclean chap who has walked among the people?”
“Because he borrows his authority from another realm that we refer to as the Spirit World; because his is a sovereignty that mimics the ultimate sovereignty of the Spirit World.”
“Spirit World?”
“Haven’t you noticed that people in positions of power also disappear from public view, just like the Spirit World’s authority?”
The Puppet (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 4
