Gold Dust (Modern Arabic Literature)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  Ukhayyad noticed the camel’s sullenness, but for some days did not discover the reason. He was inspecting the camel’s lustrous coat, checking for ticks and pulling out a lote thorn from his speckled skin. There, on his hide, beneath the pelt, a disease and inflammation had taken hold. He scratched at it with his fingers and the Mahri winced and bellowed in pain. He brought out the shears and chose a place to cut away the thick hair. Underneath, the beast’s skin had turned black and the flesh had been eaten away.

  In the coming days, he saw that the mange was spreading and devouring new spots on the piebald’s body. He went to the wise men of the tribe, the doctors, asking for advice. They agreed that there was little hope for a cure: “When mange takes hold of a camel, expect the worst.” But Ukhayyad did not lose faith. He could not allow himself to believe that there was a power capable of stealing his piebald from him. One blind man, an expert of animal diseases, shook his head and answered him skeptically: “Son—after laughter come tears. Just as sorrow follows happiness, so too does death intrude into the foolishness of life.”

  But the young man would not be reconciled. The piebald was not a mortal creation. Ukhayyad recalled how he cared for his steed and how he had raised the camel after receiving him, still a colt, from the great chieftain. During famine, he would sneak barley from the tent, placing it in the palms of his hands to offer it to the camel. His secret was soon discovered and the black servant woman complained about it to his mother. This was all before his mother had died. His mother told his father, who scolded him, saying, “At a time when not everybody has grain to eat, you go and give it to the livestock!” That day he answered his father: “The piebald is not livestock. The piebald is the piebald.” His father, who hardly ever smiled, chuckled and shook his finger at the boy, perhaps pleased by the cleverness of the boy’s answer.

  In those days the young Mahri would wander with Ukhayyad from tent to tent, following on his heels like a dog. He would trot after him, even when he went to stay out at all-night gatherings in barren regions, and he would not sleep until Ukhayyad had lain down first. He even escorted the young man when he wandered into the desert to relieve himself. These things made Ukhayyad’s cohort laugh at him, but he did not care. He submitted to the caresses and tendernesses of the camel and retorted: “Sheikh Musa says that animals are superior to humans and make the best friends. I heard him say that.” Sheikh Musa was a man who read books and recited the Qur’an and led the people in prayer. He was all alone in the world, without wife, children, or relatives, and wandered around with the tribe even though he was not of the tribe. It was said he came from the western ends of the desert, from Fez, the land of teachers and scholars of Islamic law. Sheikh Musa was the one who whispered to him the secret that saved his piebald: “This must stay between us, but only silphium can cure your camel. Don’t be an idiot, listen to what I say. Go to the desolate fields of Maimoun next spring. Since the fall of Rome, silphium grows nowhere but there. Secure the Mahri well so he cannot escape and let him graze one or two days. You’ll see.” Then he repeated enigmatically, “But don’t forget to secure him well.”

  Among the tribe, silphium was another name for the fury of jinn and madness itself. Whoever tasted it, whether beast or man, lost their senses and went mad. Dread of this legendary plant was passed down from generation to generation. As soon as a child became mature enough to herd goats, he was told, “Don’t graze the goats in the fields of Maimoun. There’s silphium there. There may be a thousand cures in that weed, but each one passes by the door of jinn. If silphium takes to you, it will cure you of any ailment. But what is the use of restoring health if you then lose your wits? He who loses his reason has lost his soul!” His mother had recited this very warning when he had grown old enough to herd the goats in the valleys.

  Sheikh Musa’s injunction frightened him. Would the piebald really become possessed? Would he lose his wits? And how exactly does an animal lose his reason? Do his eyes bulge and turn bloodshot? Does froth drool from his lips? Does he beat his head against stones like men who have become slaves to passion during late-night revelries, or like dervishes who join the Sufi brotherhoods and rove through the encampments and deserts, beating tambourines and wandering all night, every night?

  This would be a fate more wretched than mange. Rather than submitting to the sage’s advice, Ukhayyad roamed the encampments searching for others knowledgeable in animal diseases. He could not bear seeing his steed suffer the cruelty of the other shepherds. They had separated him from the camel herd, fearing the contagion, and left him to graze, isolated and alone in the pastures. Ukhayyad preferred to accompany him in his tribulation, setting out with him in the pastures from dawn, not returning until night. Sometimes, Ukhayyad himself was harsh with the Mahri and scolded him, “This is all the result of your recklessness. What have you gained now from your adventures? Didn’t you listen to what Sheikh Musa said, ‘Females are the most dangerous trap males can fall into.’ Adam was led astray by his woman and God condemned him to be expelled from the Garden. If it were not for that damn woman, us men would have remained there, blessed with an easy life, left to wander freely about paradise.

  “There are serpents and scorpions lurking in every hole, ready to sting any idiot who sticks a limb in. What did your sweet she-camel do to you? It turns out she was also a serpent. She’s lovely, but she bites. And the germ you carry is the price of it. You must bear your situation and be patient for the time being.”

  The beast lowered his eyelids and answered in shame, “Aw-a-a-a-a-a-a.”

  “Oh, now you regret it,” Ukhyayyad smiled bitterly. “Regret won’t do you any good. What will we do with your disease? Don’t you understand how serious this is? Mange is more contagious than smallpox or the plague. God save us from it. Don’t you know, life contains nothing but pitfalls and traps. If you don’t pay attention to where you put your foot, you’ll step right into one. Good God—it was I who raised you to become so heedless! Your mother didn’t get to enjoy seeing you as an adult when the great chief brought you to me. But tell me, by God, how am I supposed to enlighten your mind if I myself, no less than you, need someone to enlighten me? Living blindfolded is our lot, and only traps can teach us wisdom. How reckless we are!”

  The Mahri drew near and nuzzled Ukhayyad with his shoulder. Ukhayyad regretted his tirade and changed his tone: “It does not matter. Don’t worry. Thoughtless she-camels may have infected you, but pay them no mind. We’ll find a way out. We have to find a way. Just be patient. You must be very patient if you want to get out of this mess. Life consists of nothing but patience, as old men say.”

  He held the Mahri’s head in his embrace and stood there, consoling and consoling him in the pasture.

  A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

  Proverbs 12:10

  5

  While traveling through the various encampments, Ukhayyad acquired some thick salve from the Bouseif tribes. He sheared the piebald’s fleece and massaged the blackened skin with it three times a day. This soon made the skin supple. But the blackness continued to consume the camel’s body, creeping ever lower, wrapping around the belly and eating at the legs. Another man knowledgeable in animal diseases arrived with a caravan of merchants from Aïr. He gave Ukhayyad a dark ointment in a small vial and told him he had distilled it from herbs. Ukhayyad applied the medication until it ran out. A few weeks later, the blackened skin began to peel off. Blood oozed profusely, but the scabs would not congeal. Ukhayyad could not bear to see the threads of blood that trickled from the piebald’s body. In the eyes of others, he saw pity and sympathy. But the sympathy was only for him, not the afflicted beast.

  By now the piebald was no longer piebald. The lustrous speckles had disappeared from his gray body. The keen glance had faded from his beguiling eyes. His lean, graceful frame had been transformed into a bloated and splotched skeleton. He was now the pale and wretched image of his former self. Go
d may create, but disease can transform His creations into completely other beings. And as with beasts, so too with humans.

  The piebald would no longer go near him in the light of day. The camel spent his hours chasing angels whose flight shimmered in the mirages on the horizon. He was embarrassed when Ukhayyad showed him affection in public, so much so that when the young man came to rub him with medicine, the Mahri would dodge and try to flee. Sometimes he would complain miserably, “Aw-a-a-a-a-a-a.”

  It was only with the shadows of the night that the piebald would sneak up on him, long after everything in the desert had faded and died down. In the deep darkness, when only jinn moved across the open wastes, murmuring among each other in secret conversation, the miserable piebald crept up and nuzzled his head against the blankets of his friend. Ukhayyad, sleepless with anxiety, was trying to steal a short spell before dawn shot its light at the horizon. The camel nudged at the covers. He prodded at the exposed parts of Ukhayyad’s body with fleshy lips. Then he thrust his long head under the blanket. With a groan, Ukhayyad embraced him, and together the two wept, each licking away the tears of the other, tasting the salt and the pain. When the shadows of death descend, this is all creatures can do. Ukhayyad turned his eyes toward the pale, shamefaced moon and sighed, “Why does God create if death must follow birth? Why must His creatures suffer before they die?” Then he bit his lip: “God damn women!”

  One day, he grew sick of complaining. In the evening, beneath the covers so that no other creature would hear them, Ukhayyad told his friend, “That’s enough. We’ve had our fill of suffering. We need to do something, even if it’s madness. We’ll try Sheikh Musa’s plan. Islamic scholars from Fez are wise—everyone in the desert knows that. Even if the price is madness, what’s so wrong for a creature to lose his senses? Don’t you see—we’re going to go crazy whether we eat silphium or not! I don’t want to watch any longer as your body falls apart piece by piece. I will go insane before you die that way. Yes, that way, you will die and I will be the one who loses his mind. Now can you see what small moments of carelessness can cost?”

  With that resolve, Ukhayyad traveled with the camel to the merciful western Hamada desert, heading toward the ancient pagan shrine nestled within its mountains. He never realized that had he delayed his travel even days longer, his father would have taken matters into his own hand and killed the sick animal. The man had been planning to end the mangy thoroughbred’s misery by putting a bullet in its head.

  6

  At the entrance to where the two mountains faced one another, in an open waste that stretched on forever, stood the shrine of the Magus, tucked into the folds of a lonely hillside. In the past, the tomb had had frequent visitors, even religious teachers and scholars. No one had considered it an idolatrous object. Everyone agreed that it belonged to a Muslim from Arabia who had been witness to the early Islamic conquests, a companion of the Prophet who had died of thirst in the desert while fighting on behalf of God’s religion. Nomads of the desert sought out the saint, sometimes visiting the monument alone, sometimes coming in large groups. They would sacrifice animals to him, spilling the blood of their offerings before the shrine. That was until the pagan soothsayer from Kano arrived. ‘The crow’ as people called him, was an old black man who wore a necklace of river oyster shells around his leathered neck. On his head, he wore a black turban, and his silky, broad robes were of the same color. The man traveled alone on an emaciated she-camel, and stayed away from other people. He chewed tobacco and would spit in the faces of curious children and people who got too close. It was this fearsome witch doctor who first demolished the myth of the shrine.

  The stone base of the shrine was triangular. At the top, the image of the god was set into the body of a large stone. Its neckless head sat directly on the torso. Its enigmatic features suggested it had been worshiped for millennia. Only rocks accustomed to receiving supplications over the eons could ever take on such features. The idol evoked tenderness and harshness, mercy and vengeance, wisdom and arrogance, and above all, patience—the patience of immortals well acquainted with the treachery of time and the loneliness of existence. The god’s right eye and cheek had been devoured by a millennium of dust and sand blown by the hot southern winds. The left side, in contrast, still bore testimony to the sad history of the desert. It faced the northern mountain, looking heavenward toward a peak that was wrapped in a pale blue turban. The remains of ancient bones lay scattered around the idol. Some had crumbled, while the vestiges of others—other animal sacrifices—remained intact.

  The witch doctor had undone the myth of the shrine by reading the symbols engraved on the pedestal of the idol. He said they spelled the name of an ancient Saharan god. He went on to decipher the ancient Tifinagh alphabet, but he refused to reveal the hidden truth that had been buried at the feet of the god. Months later, he was found dead in a nearby plain. No one had ever been able to get him to disclose the secret of the pagan talismans.

  At the shrine, Ukhayyad forced the splotched piebald to kneel. He stood there a long time, attempting to divine the secrets of the desert from the structure of the inscrutable idol. Finally, he prostrated himself, raised his hands and cried, “O lord of the desert, god of the ancients! I promise to offer up to you one fat camel of sound body and mind. Cure my piebald of his malignant disease and protect him from the madness of silphium! You are the all hearing, the all knowing.” He poured dust from the shrine all over the Mahri’s half-consumed body, then lay down and slept until the desert burst forth with the light of dawn. He made a cup of green tea, then made his way to the desolate western pastures.

  That night, he had dreamed that the piebald was drowning in the valley. A flash flood swept over and swallowed him up. Ukhayyad clutched at the camel’s reins and fought the cold water. He tore at the animal from one side, while the torrent tugged at the Mahri from the other. The camel stumbled onto its front knees more than once, then sank beneath the violent waters until his head went under. Ukhayyad resisted the water’s pull, yanking at the halter from the other end. Blood poured from the nostrils of the struggling beast. Had he torn the muzzle at the bridle? The struggle went on for a long time—a very long time—until the fury calmed and the dark waters began to recede across the roaring valley. To his astonishment, he saw that the murky water had been transformed into demons who, like the water, were pulling at the Mahri by the tail, intent on dragging the animal into a dark abyss. Ukhayyad awoke from the nightmare to see the first blaze as it pierced the twilight of dawn.

  He thought a long time about this sign. Dreams at shrines call for the expertise of soothsayer interpretation. Sheikh Musa was well versed in the kinds of visions that took place around Muslim saints’ tombs. But only the witch doctors of Kano had the special competence to read visions inspired by ancient tombs, pagan tombs. Kano soothsayers often traveled with merchant caravans in the desert—but where could Ukhayyad find one? One could not treat the revelations of shrines lightly. To seek out the knowledge of scholars at any cost was no less a duty in Muslim law than pursuing holy war. That is what the sheikhs said. But where could he find a scholar of shrines in this empty waste? Where would he come across someone who knew how to read the signs of heathen idols?

  His maternal grandfather had been wise in these matters. Whenever he had dreamed, he would not rise from his bed until they brought him soothsayers who could interpret the dream for him. The whole tribe remembered how he liked to say, “If God ever sends you a warning, and its secret is revealed to you, you must pause and take heed. If you do not, you will have no one but yourself to blame.” He was a firm believer in the treachery of two things—time and people—and neither failed to disappoint. No misdeed ever surprised him, nor did any enemy ever catch him off guard. Everyone agreed that his wisdom sprang entirely from the attention he paid to occult signs. It was said that even death did not take him by surprise. One night, he dreamed of the fabled lote tree, said by some tribes to exist in the middle of the western desert
next to the spring whose waters grant immortality. In his dream, he drank from that pool. In the morning, the soothsayer told him, “Ready yourself for a journey. What you have seen is the lote tree at the furthest reaches of existence.” So he prepared his burial shroud, washed his body with ritual care, and donned his finest clothing, then waited for the King of Death. He did this each day for a week after the dream, until he breathed his last.

  7

  Thick purple clouds hung above the fields of Maimoun cleaving to the peaks of the mountains, then receding into the endless desert void. While each mountain rose separately out of the surrounding desolation, together they effected a wall that split the desert in two. Across the spaces between the lone summits rolled a sea of rich, red soil, where grew patches of grass and wild flowers whose sweet odor filled the air. It was the end of spring, but the sun was not yet overpowering. Ukhayyad gathered a good number of desert truffles and killed a snake with his stick. Then he began to search in earnest for the herb the sheikh had promised. Toward sunset, he found an entire field of the fabled plants—each stood a meter in height with dark green leaves. The branches of the plant dangled low to the ground, revealing magical, delicate stalks. At the top of each stem opened a yellow bud that gave off a dark, musky scent—the flower of jinn!

  Repressing his own shudders and misgivings at the fruit of generations of myth and terror, he led the camel toward the field, where he hobbled the camel’s forelegs with thick palm rope. He secured the bridle to the camel’s tail, letting the rope hang slack so his neck could move freely while he grazed. Ukhayyad stood there, thinking, trying to remember how the jinn in such places plotted their schemes. He told himself, “Old women say with confidence that jinn are not like humans. There’s no deception and no trickery with jinn. The kernel of their difference lies in their dignity. If there were a contest over who was more dignified, man or jinn, the latter would win. If you wrong a jinn, he’ll respond in kind. If you treat him right, he’ll do the same. Jinn do not know how to deceive, they play by the rules. The important thing is to always be aware of your own motives and actions toward them.”