“That’s because the people discussing this, master, have been nomads, moving through barren lands bereft of anything but mirage and sky. Those people fear gold dust, because they fear commerce. They fear commerce because they fear stress.”
“Now you’re close to disaster. Now you’re circling the ghoul’s cave. Beware!”
“Yes, I know I’m standing at the edge of the abyss. I know I’ll be forced to say something reprehensible, but I’ll say what must be said. I’ll say that your people flee life by fleeing from commerce and from gold, as if fleeing from a plague.”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“In the desert peoples’ blood courses an odious enmity to life.”
“I’ve been expecting to see you tumble into this pit for the last hour.”
“I don’t feel embarrassed, master. The desert’s inhabitants are the born enemies of life.”
The leader stopped and gazed at the nearby specter of the scarecrow. He asked sternly, “Is this conviction your reason for twisting the stick in the Law’s hand and hoarding gold in your house despite the prohibition?”
The man with two veils also studied the enigmatic specter and then checked the upper fastening of his veil with his fingers. He responded with the firmness of someone expecting this accusation, “I didn’t hide the gold in order to speculate with it in hard times the way some members of my fraternity do. I have held on to it as a trust for a dear companion who left it in my safekeeping.”
“Really?”
“As you see, I haven’t violated the Law in any way, because the precepts forbidding possession of gold also encourage us to respect a trust and to return it to the rightful owner, even if we realize that these assets include gold ingots.”
“What a wily schemer you are!”
“The embargo notwithstanding, the day when owning gold will change from being a cause for suspicion to a cause for pride is near at hand, master.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Commerce, not I, is sure about this. I wanted to say that you all will recognize gold, if not today, then tomorrow, because you won’t be able to accept commerce and reject its spirit.”
“What a sneak you are!”
“Forgive me, master, but I’m still waiting for the trust.”
“What did you say?”
“Your slave hasn’t received the trust that wretch seized.”
“Do you really expect me to return the purse full of coins to you?”
“Does my master intend to seize people’s goods? Does my master intend to retain the assets of others?”
“But I’m not the one who revealed the assets’ secret. I’m not the person who told people that the purse contains a pile of gold.”
“My master shouldn’t forget that the law of trusts supersedes all others. My master shouldn’t forget that the legal system decrees that a trust should be returned to its owner, even if it is gold.”
“Can you persuade the oasis’s inhabitants that this is true?”
“Persuading people is the responsibility of the responsible person.”
“What are you saying?”
“I mean to say that addressing the masses is entirely my master’s responsibility.”
“What a shrewd schemer you are!”
“I just want to return the property to its owners.”
“It’s out of the question that what you consider a legal property should be returned to those you consider its owners, after everyone has learned the true nature of the serpent that the purse conceals.”
“My master is making a mistake!”
“What are you saying?”
“My master isn’t merely injuring my rights or those of the owner, but the rights of the Law too.”
“Speaking for myself, I say regretfully that after seizing the purse and its contraband contents, I cannot restore it to someone who deliberately attempted to conceal it from other people.”
“My master’s making a mistake.”
“Is this a threat?”
The chief merchant did not reply. Darkness overwhelmed the fields and stillness dominated the area, causing the spectral scarecrow to look even more august and eerie. They retraced their steps silently, their feet sinking into the muddy mires. A muffled sound rose behind them: a mocking, suppressed laugh, a sob of lament, or a phrase so choked in a throat that it emerged as an indistinct cry.
All sounds resemble each other when muffled.
All opposites seem concordant when a matter is confused.
THE CAMPAIGN
1
He chose them carefully. He chose men immune to ecstasy, men unaffected by yearning when they listened to melodies celebrating the full moon’s arrival. They were men who had never been observed to lower modesty’s wing in the presence of women or nobles. They had not passionately endeavored to retire with beautiful female jinn into the caves of the chain of blue mountains.
He chose the men with the toughest souls and the most ruggedly intrepid bodies, gathering them in a retreat where he addressed them in a mellifluous voice as if reciting verses of a satirical poem. “Know that we don’t combat the metal of misfortunes because it has, since the most ancient times, been a harbinger of chaos and that we’re not setting forth today to expel it from our homes out of loyalty to the ancient covenant that our ancestors concluded with the jinn tribes. We embark on today’s offensive with the sole aim of defending ourselves, because even youngsters know that this ill-omened metal’s arrival inevitably devastates a land and turns its most distinguished citizens into the most abject. Will you sanction a disgrace in your homes that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies? Will you allow your souls to be humiliated by the forbidden dust in a way that you wouldn’t accept even from yourselves? Shall we violate a law that each generation has inherited from the previous one and submit to the wishes of greedy people in order to satisfy insatiable bellies?” He also discussed timing, the best moments to begin, and the importance of surprise. He counseled them to reconnoiter and to beware of underestimating tricky strategies and extolled secrecy at length, concluding that it was the key to the affair’s success. When he raised his right hand toward the heavens, his disciples understood that this gesture marked the campaign’s beginning.
2
The man with two veils was granted permission to enter. His protruding cheeks looked pale. The leader saw true anxiety in the man’s eyes. Behind the fading pastel double veils he detected concern.
This concern was soon voiced.
The chief merchant stopped at the entrance and cast him a rather threatening look. In a voice strained by anger, he said, “I thought we had agreed that day.”
“Agreed?”
“I thought you agreed with me when I told you that commerce is a maiden who becomes beautiful only in the shade of a sovereign’s sword. How can you have forsaken me today and slain her with that same sword?”
He smiled and gestured for his guest to sit beside him. The pallor of the man’s cheeks increased. He sighed deeply, and the sound resembled a serpent’s hiss. He told his guest, “Today you resemble an angry child. It’s not seemly for a rational adult to lose his balance, even if he sees raiders kidnap his beautiful maiden.”
“If only the men kidnapping the belle today had been raiders from hostile tribes! Enemies from marauding tribes kidnap. Internal enemies slaughter!”
“I’m grieved to hear you assert that an agreement was reached between us merely because I tried to listen to you like a friend.”
“I thought words differed little from food.”
“I don’t catch your drift.”
“When a wayfarer meets you in the wasteland and nourishes your heart with a secret that assists you in coping with the terrors of the route, isn’t this secret more precious than the morsel of food he places in your knapsack as provender?”
“I’ll grant you that.”
“Then why have you betrayed a tongue that informed you of something no one else had?”
> “I wasn’t trying to entice you to say anything you didn’t wish to say.”
“But you know that the organ housed between the jaws cannot be restrained, even by its master, once it has been set free.”
“Is a man blamed for a defect that originates in human nature?”
“A secret, master, is a covenant, and you’re the one who enticed me to talk about the state of the caravans and to discuss commerce’s secret.”
“Did you suppose I would wait for commerce’s secrets to be revealed before launching an attack on the metal of misfortunes?”
“But the attack on gold was an attack on commerce. Or did the words’ gist escape my master that day?”
“The fact is, I don’t remember much of what was said.”
“In any event, it’s out of the question for noblemen to disdain the trust for which my master was responsible.”
“You’re still talking about the trust and the covenant.”
“You didn’t merely reveal my secret, you harmed the entire oasis by profiting from your knowledge of the secret.”
“Today, you not only resemble a child, but you’re even talking like a kid who has lost his puppet.”
“On many occasions a man must channel the obstinacy of childhood when defending himself. A man must on many occasions borrow childhood’s tongue to dare to speak the truth.”
He rubbed his hands together, smiled enigmatically, and said contemptuously, “Fine. What recompense does childhood ask in exchange for freeing the rational adult from error?”
The man with two veils replied with childish obstinacy, “My master would do well to end the campaign.”
“End the campaign?”
“Today, not tomorrow.”
“This truly is childish!”
“My master will help himself first of all and secondly will benefit other people.”
“Is this a threat?”
“My master would be well-advised to act quickly before the suffering becomes even more widespread.”
The lower section of his veil slipped, revealing his lips. Then his host saw spittle trickling from them. He also noticed that his guest was trembling violently and suspected that he heard the man’s teeth chattering and clacking as if he were racked by fever. The pallor of the man’s projecting cheeks faded as a murky color suffused them. The man’s eyes narrowed and eyelids with irregular blue creases, which bulged out like tiny vipers, unfolded.
3
The leader swayed before his companion as if overwhelmed by yearning. He released the painful groan that springs from the chests of deranged people before ecstasy transports them to alternative realms. He moaned for a long time before he repeated, as if reciting a sad song, “Even you, companion of eternity! Even you, son of nobles! Even you, warrior hero!”
Ahallum, however, replied in a tongue uninfluenced by ecstatic people’s magical incantations, “Gold is the destiny of oases. Why don’t you accept this fact?”
The leader began to sway back and forth, lowering his veil over his eyes. He asked mellifluously, “How can you expect me to accept a matter that violates the Law? How can you ask me to profane the precepts of our forefathers?”
“We left our forefathers in the wasteland’s tombs. Now we inhabit oases. Today we’re Waw’s children. The wastelands have a legal code and the oases another. Why don’t you want to acknowledge that?”
“How can you ask me to acknowledge a matter that is calamitous, according to our precepts? Do I know more than our forefathers? Are you shrewder than our original grandfathers?”
“Our grandfathers didn’t tie themselves to the land. In their endless migrations they didn’t practice commerce.”
“What need does a nomad have for commerce? What need do caravans of migrants have for goods?”
“This is the problem: you don’t want to acknowledge that we haven’t been nomads for a long time. You don’t want to admit that we’ve been bound to the land for forty years. You’ve forgotten the Law’s precept saying that to stay for more than forty days in one place is a mark of bondage to the land. What if the number forty modifies years, not days?”
“Anyone who ties himself to the earth becomes the earth’s slave. Any slave of the earth finds himself exchanging goods for a profit and becomes a merchant. Anyone who adopts commerce for his profession acquires the dust of misfortunes. Isn’t this what you’re trying to have me believe? Isn’t that what seduced you into hiding the hateful metal in your house?”
“Yes. I’ll never deny that I—like all the nobles—have smuggled gold dust into my home. I smuggled it in not because I yielded to its beauty, which enslaves women and weak-willed men, but because its possession affords security.”
“Security?”
“Yes, master. Gold dust in the owner’s hand is a gift of security. Gold dust is life’s secret for everyone who chooses agricultural land for a homeland.”
“I’m amazed by what I hear!”
“This isn’t just my opinion; this is what all the nobles think. This is the opinion of the entire population of the oasis, including the person closest to you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that gold was seized in your only daughter’s residence too.”
“No!”
“Didn’t the vassals tell you that?”
“No!”
“Now you’ve finally learned that your adversary is a specter found in every home in the oasis. It has dared invade your household too.”
He began to sway back and forth again, releasing his pain in a new moan. Ahallum asked, “Do you still consider the people’s sweetheart an enemy?”
The leader released a deep sound as if intoning an agonizing tune. His companion inquired, “Are you going to persist in plundering houses and destroying the metal?”
The leader began to tremble but did not reply.
4
That evening Imaswan Wandarran also visited.
He sat down on an expertly tanned leather mat, which lacked the typical colored wool embroidery and which was spread over a thick goat-hair kilim rug placed beside the wall.
The mixed-race maid brought in froth-topped camel milk in a wooden mug. He took the mug with both hands and gazed at the froth, which was slowly dissipating. Then he placed the mug on the leather mat. He listened to the froth’s whispering as it continued to disappear. He deliberately violated circumspection’s rituals. “If the goal of the campaign was to inform people of your majestic rule, then rest assured that you’ve succeeded. If the goal was to raise respect for the Law, then know that this lost constitution never ordered the violation of what people conceal in their hearts or homes. Have you finally realized that everything has a proper limit?”
The leader watched him inquisitively. He asked in an artificially complacent tone, “Is this the council’s advice or a warning?”
“It isn’t the council’s custom to warn those it has recommended for leadership, even though our customary law also affirms that those in power shouldn’t adopt a position the council hasn’t authorized.”
“I beg your pardon. It’s just that over the last few days I’ve grown accustomed to hearing a threat in the words of all those who have sat in this same corner.”
“If I were in your position, I would have excused them, since I wouldn’t know what to expect from people whose possessions and reputations have been assailed.”
“Answer one question for me: Why did you all select me from among yourselves if you didn’t mean for the leader to be the Law’s guardian even more than the people’s ruler?”
“The fact is that we never chose you. You know the hoi polloi selected you.”
“The rabble?”
“The problem is actually not the rabble’s choice, since the rabble have never been good at choosing, given that they never know what they are doing or what they want. The true affliction, however, has been your credulity.”
The leader waited for him to complete his statement, but the gues
t fell silent and went back to contemplating the vanishing froth in the mug of milk.
So he asked sternly, “In what sense have I been credulous?”
The guest responded casually, “You believed you really were a leader!”
“Who am I, by your lights, if not a leader?”
He retorted harshly, “You’re a puppet!”
“A puppet?”
“Didn’t you hear them say from the beginning that they couldn’t bear to be led by a leader who reposed in a sepulcher and instead wanted a leader from the earth’s residents: a puppet that walks on two feet?”
“That was a typical circumlocution. That was a linguistic trick to hide the meaning. You’re the first to take this literally.”
“Our master is mistaken if he believes so. The masses say exactly what they mean. Even when they intend to speak circumspectly, as you suggest, they fail and express themselves bluntly.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m trying to say that you committed a fatal error when you believed the lie and assumed that you could be a real leader instead of a puppet.”
“Here again I discern a threat! Admit immediately that you’re threatening me!”
“They wanted you to be their puppet like all the other political stooges, but you rushed to draw your sword the moment they handed you the sovereign’s mace.”
“What do you all want from me? Why don’t you reclaim your sovereignty if you want a puppet? Why don’t you release me?”
“I fear, master, it’s too late for that now. To save the situation, you can backtrack and accept a puppet’s costume, like any other puppet.”
The leader’s chest resonated with his sorrowful moan. Looking up at the ceiling of palm fronds woven around palm branches, he said, “I’m afraid that ever since you chose the wrong man, thinking that anyone can don a puppet’s veils, it has been too late.”
“Am I hearing an opinion or receiving a decision?”
“If it is a decision, it’s destiny’s.”
“I’m sorry to hear this.”
He looked at the elements of the ceiling’s fabric and was astonished by the regularity of the rows of branches and the delicate weave of the palm fronds. The workmanship was comparable to a beautiful woman’s beadwork stitched onto a saddle cloth she has embroidered for a beloved warrior.
The Puppet (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 7
