New Waw, Saharan Oasis (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  The diviner shook his turban no. In his lusterless eyes the leader noticed an inchoate sorrow.

  With his sandal he too rolled a stone, as if imitating the diviner’s gesture. The sun bowed to kiss the stern horizon, which extended like a taut bow, and spilled a profuse purple glow over the wasteland. The diviner followed this glow as it poured forth and washed the pebbles, shrubs, and boulders. He admitted, “I confess, Master: I knew he would do this.”

  The leader rolled away another stone. He stopped and stared at the void for an instant. As he walked on, the diviner told him, “Master, I heard him say, ‘We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’”

  The leader paused and—with the intoxication of the possessed—repeated, ‘“We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’” He fell silent, and his silence was matched by the silence of the desert. It seemed that the wasteland thought it should keep quiet and listen too.

  In the leader’s eyes, the diviner saw the leader’s tranquility, a sage’s tranquility, a hermit’s tranquility. This wasn’t normal tranquility; it was something nobler. It was childhood. Yes, the leader wouldn’t be a leader if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. The sage wouldn’t be a sage if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. The hermit wouldn’t deserve the title of hermit if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. Childhood is our lost oasis. Childhood is the oasis we seek. There is no good in an eye devoid of childhood. Do not trust a creature in whose eyes you do not discover childhood.

  As though chanting, the leader repeated, “‘We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’ How harsh that is!”

  He took some steps and clasped his hands behind his back the way a man planning to walk a long distance does. In a different voice he said, “Do you know? I’ve always tried to say something like this.”

  The diviner acknowledged, “I have as well, but we never hear what we want to say until others state it for us. This is the secret of wisdom, Master.”

  “You’re right.”

  The diviner gazed at him and discovered moisture like tears in his eyes.

  9

  Many wadis flowed with water in the northern desert, many cavaliers courted many virgins before the wadis filled with water, and the women poets recited extremely beautiful poems about love, war, and disgrace.

  The tribe discovered that it had stayed in that place longer than it should have, and the sages were of the opinion that they should let this land return to nature. So they ordered the drums struck to signal a migration to the north.

  The same night that the drums were struck, the herald made the rounds to alert people concerning what had happened at the tomb. Some individuals had gone to the cemetery at the foot of the hill and found the beauty’s tomb empty.

  The leader arrived to find the diviner waiting for him. They exchanged enigmatic glances by the light of the full moon. Then they set off for a walk in the open countryside as if by prior arrangement. They didn’t speak. They did not speak till they were separated from the tumult of the masses and were certain that the desert had lent an ear and begun to listen.

  The diviner began, “Didn’t I tell you he’d return?”

  “Yes. He disappeared that day as if he was from the Spirit World and returned today as if he was from the Spirit World.”

  “You don’t realize, Master, that he has been waiting. …”

  “Waiting?”

  “Yes. He waited for the dirt to claim its share of the dirt’s gift.”

  “The truth is that I don’t understand.”

  “He waited till the dirt had eaten the flesh, leaving him the bones.”

  “What will the wretch do with the bones now they have moldered?”

  The diviner didn’t reply. He didn’t stop. He didn’t roll a stone with his sandal. He kept walking forward as if he had decided to cross the desert on foot, to migrate, to dispense with everything.

  Then he said, “He’ll make talismans from them. A talisman for his neck, one for his veil’s pleat, one for his left wrist, one for his right wrist, and one for the pommel of his saddle. The talisman is a symbol, and the symbol is the lover’s language.”

  “Did you say ‘symbol’?”

  Unconsciously the diviner hastened his steps. The diviner knew that the desert is a temptation. The diviner knew that the desert entices people. The diviner knew that going into the desert is a voyage, because the naked continent does not accommodate people who come for sightseeing. Because the only law it recognizes is travel. He outpaced the leader by some distance.

  Panting, he said, “The lover knows better than anyone else the misery of destiny, Master. He knows he will never obtain anything, so what matters to him is the symbol. The talisman is the only symbol, Master.”

  The leader quickened his pace as well. He hastened at a speed inappropriate for a leader, inappropriate for a sage, but didn’t feel comfortable calling to ask the diviner to slow down.

  The diviner pulled farther away and the distance between them increased, but the leader stumbled stubbornly after him.

  In a strange voice he raved, “The symbol. What’s important is the symbol.”

  He studied the horizon, which was flooded by light like daytime. When he realized that the diviner was far ahead of him, he said aloud to himself, “‘We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’ How cruel this is; how beautiful this is!”

  He repeated the phrase in the wasteland. Then he heard it again like an echo of a mysterious call.

  ______________

  Author’s Note. Successive generations have affirmed that these events took place before the tribe became sedentary, before the leader’s tomb became a peg that tied them to the earth. Even so, some narrators feel that this tale could have occurred in any age and that we may find it playing out in the dwellings of any tribe headed by a leader who is assisted by a diviner.

  V

  THE SUCCESSOR

  He is like a witness, isolated from everyone, but observes the play surreptitiously.

  The Upanishads

  1

  They came that day too.

  They came the way they had always come; Emmamma led the way, grasping his polished staff. The diviner walked beside him as he usually did. They came swathed in flowing, lustrous garments accented by bands of blue cloth—the mark of special occasions—one above the veil and the second over the shoulders. They came as they were wont to come whenever the specter of an important affair hovered over the tribe. They came as they were wont to come when the awe-inspiring drum, which was decorated with designs of the ancients, was struck in the leader’s tent, when they had contacted each other, assembled, and come in response to the leader’s appeal. They came today again while fear circulated and fright was on the prowl in the settlement. Then young warriors, old codgers, women, and children emerged from their dwellings and stood humbly by the entrances to their tents as if waiting for something dreadful to happen or expecting an earthquake. People who have savored a sedentary life and have yielded to the land’s temptation also grow accustomed to viewing the noble blue-clad council, which looks black from a distance, as a council of crows and a threat to their sedentary life: a convulsion, a blotting out of indolence, an end to muddling through, and the beginning of every futile deed.

  They came today as well, and their arrival frightened the tribe, even though it varied today from those over the past decades. It was different because these elders had before always visited an inhabited residence; today they found the leader’s tent vacant.

  The immortal Emmamma stopped at the tent’s entrance to release a long moan of sorrow, to emit a savage groan of farewell, the groan of a dying man, the distressing groan that ends the life of many people, a groan elders that day heard as a lethal lament. Tears flowed from their eyes, and their hearts bled grievously. The venerable elder swayed like someone in an ecstatic trance. So the diviner supported him on one side and Imaswan on the other.

  T
he aged man rapped the tent pole at the entrance with his burnished stick and shouted, “How many times, House, have we entered to find you inhabited? Today we come and find you vacant?”

  He released a moan of lament once more. Imaswan protested, “Noble Grandfather, this isn’t appropriate!”

  Emmamma wiped the tears from his eyes and from his eyelids, which were lined with rugged wrinkles where tears collected. He retorted, “This is appropriate; this isn’t appropriate! This is done; this isn’t done! Is this all we know how to say in the tribe’s language? Haven’t we killed the leader himself with such talk? When he tried to convince us that a poet is ill-suited to serve as leader, didn’t we tell him, ‘This isn’t appropriate’? Didn’t we tell him when his heart went pit-a-pat long ago and he wanted to marry the poet, ‘This isn’t appropriate’? When he wanted to help us and thought we should tarry in a bountiful land, which has nourished and sheltered us, didn’t we say, ‘This isn’t appropriate’? So why shouldn’t we admit that we’re the ones who killed him with a dagger called ‘This isn’t appropriate’?”

  The diviner said, “It would be better for my master to preside over the council and thus honor the master of the house, because the leader will continue to fret uncomfortably in his new home and won’t rest until we finish choosing a successor for the master of this house.”

  Everyone murmured his agreement. The diviner seated the venerable elder near the tent pole at the center of the assembly and sat down beside him to his right. The venerable elder swayed again and said, “We have sought refuge with you from iniquity, and you have kept us safe. We have appealed to you for judgment, and you have treated us fairly. We have relied on you, and you have fed us. House, where has your master gone? Where has our master vanished?”

  He tried to trace some characters on the ground but found he was shaking too hard. He thrust both hands in the dirt (the way sorcerers do when they fear some evil) and sighed. This wasn’t merely a sigh; it was another moan, a deep groan that poets use to express painful sorrow and that a sage uses to extinguish anguish: “Hi … yi … yi … yi … yeh.” Then everyone repeated this moan after him. The noble elders repeated it as if responding to a mysterious call. This emerged from their chests like the groan of a dying person taking his last breath.

  2

  The sorrow did not dissipate and, beneath the ashes, the glowing ember of pain did not die out. The elders’ sense of decorum, however, did not prevent them from yielding to their sorrows for a long time. They substituted for the story of parting the narrative of memorable deeds and replaced chanting with panegyric. They said he had not merely been a leader; he had been a brother to every member of the tribe. They said he had lived like an orphan, lacking family and relatives. To their amazement they hadn’t realized, until they lost him, that he had lost his mother and father, his brother and sister, and his friend and consort. They said he had been born alone, had lived alone, and had left the life of the tribe alone. They said he was the only leader in the tribe’s history not to have privileged his own opinion, not to have rejected a request from the council, and not to have made a decision without recourse to it. They said in the tribe’s history he was the only leader who from the beginning had dedicated his life to the tribe. Even so, the council had been stingy with him about everything, refusing to back down and grant his least request. They commented that his parents had been too stingy to grant him a sister who might have given birth to a nephew to serve as his successor and that they, the council members, had been too stingy to grant him a wife to bear a son to serve as his heir when he lacked a sister’s son. They concluded by acknowledging that their misfortune on losing him would be all the greater because they wouldn’t be able to find a suitable replacement for his eminence. Emmamma swayed once more; this venerable elder almost led them back to the land they had fled. Then the diviner intervened and told them they should sacrifice an animal on behalf of the deceased man’s soul. This suggestion pleased them. They joyously expressed their approval, and the slaves rushed to bring a black goat to the awe-inspiring tomb.

  3

  They slaughtered the black goat and brought a boy with a thick shock of hair dividing his head in two parts, like a cock’s comb. They plunged his hands in the sacrificial offering’s blood and dragged him to the tomb, where they placed his hands on its stones. His ten fingers made the sign that had been passed down through the generations. With this sign, recorded in blood, the fingers said, “This is our blood, Master, that has been redeemed by the blood of our son. This is our son’s blood, Master, that has been redeemed by the black goat’s blood.” The noble elders stood nearby and humbly recited this talisman: “This is our blood. This is our blood. This is our blood.” They were silent for a short time. Then they picked up the second talisman. “This is our son’s blood. This is our son’s blood. This is our son’s blood.” Then they paused again before competing with each other to recite the final talisman three times as well: “This is the blood of the black goat, our sacrificial offering to you. …” Next they knelt, swayed, and sang near the leader’s head, the maxim of their forefathers: “Ikrahkay akahal, tamosad akedag. You have become a possession of every time and a sovereign over every place.”

  They chanted till their eyes swam with tears. Then they sat down to savor the grilled meat and to debate the question of a successor. Imaswan pointed out that tribes normally chose the leader’s sister’s son as the leader’s successor and that if no nephew was available, then the leader’s son, and when no son was available, the lot fell to the wisest sage. Emmamma, however, left his homeland, which encompassed all lands because it was the homeland of every space, and liberated himself from the time of every time, because it was the time of all times. He returned to the desert, to the tribe, to the council, and to the meeting near the tomb. With his forefinger he cautioned Imaswan and said in jest, “I see you have jumped to a conclusion. Allow me to correct this maxim for you. The Law states that tribes choose the diviner if the leader leaves behind no nephew or son. The diviner appears in the dictum before the wisest sage. Or, has memory failed me once again, causing me to see what is invisible, hear what is inaudible, and say what is unspoken?”

  The diviner smiled and then remarked with a diviner’s cunning: “The Law never went beyond sons. The Law left the sages’ hands free to choose the successor if the leader lacked sons. In the opinion of other tribes, Anhi washed its hands of the entire affair if the leader lacked a sister’s son. Then councils chose a person from outside the leader’s family, even if he had sons. With regard to the diviner, all the laws have established that his place is beside the leader, not as the leader. This has been true since the earliest times. Why would our master Emmamma attempt to evade this practice and recite maxims to us from the Lost Book, ones that we have never read or heard of before today?”8

  The elderly man swayed right and left and stared dejectedly at the diviner, but his was a look that spoke more of the impetuousness of his inner boy than of old age’s fatigue. He asked, “Haven’t you heard that the Book said, ‘The wisest of the wise,’ or has my hearing betrayed me once again? Do you retain such a good opinion of Emmamma, who long ago succumbed to dementia and whose primary homeland years ago became forgetfulness, that you would have him assume charge of the tribe and of you?”

  Imaswan replied, “A sage whose homeland has become forgetfulness is easier to bear than idiots who boast about being intellectuals and who—if time should frown and danger lurk—threaten our lives and those of the tribe with their minds.”

  The hero Ahallum interjected, “Our only option is to allow the Spirit World to guide us by casting lots.”

  But Emmamma gruffly rebutted him, “No, let’s seek the advice of the commander.”

  More than one voice asked, “The commander?”

  Emmamma, who was preparing to return to his homeland, said, “The leader! We must seek the leader’s advice.”

  Glancing at one another, they embraced this idea joyfully and sa
id, “You’re right. You’re right. Why didn’t we think of the leader at the outset?”

  4

  In the tent, the women sat in a circle around the virgin. They washed her virginal body with precious cologne and rubbed her with salves prepared from retem blossoms. They combed her hair into splendid plaits. Then the older women trilled jubilantly, announcing the good news that she was to become the leader’s bride.

  They brought her out of the tent at dusk but only reached the hill crowned by the tomb shortly before the sun disappeared. The older women escorted her with their ululations and sad ballads. On the way, the poetess sang verses about yearning, death, and marriage. Her companions repeated the heartrending refrains after her, and then ecstasy seized hold of the young men, who trembled, wept, and leapt out of their dwellings to follow this noble cortege, without daring to draw a single step closer. The procession crossed the level, open space spread with depressing gray stones that had witnessed the fires of their ancient forefathers, because these were piles of more ancient gravestones. Their ancestors had stacked these stones when they cremated their dead. Time, however, had scattered these stones, and the centuries had leveled them with the ground. Then the wind had turned them to their original course, lining them up across the space and arranging them in the wasteland, in the Hammada, which was well endowed with rocks, returning them to their original condition. Save for their color, save for their mysterious darkness, save for the coat of ash cloaking these stones, no one would have realized that this area was the exact location of an awe-inspiring cemetery of the ancients.

  When the procession neared the tomb, the women’s steps slowed, because the original rites that prescribed the path of the bride to her fiancé’s dwelling also prescribed the law for her progress there and decreed that the female should model her departure from her home on the first time a female had set forth resolutely and been spirited away from her father’s dwelling to her fiancé’s abode. In this way, hesitation became the norm for the bride’s procession. The female took one step toward her destiny and one step back out of fear and wariness. She ventured forward, because she knew that it was inevitable that she would set forth one day. She proceeded slowly, dawdled, and felt regretful, because she knew she would never go back. Then she asked the group to assist her with poetry’s treasures and to help her in her crisis with sad songs appealing to the fiancé to be kind to his bride. These were songs that encouraged the groom to view his bride as a pitiable creature kidnapped against her wishes from her family’s home and that encouraged the bride to play the earth for her spouse, who would represent the sky for her.