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

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

Some said he was a little smaller than the mola-mola bird. Others said he was much smaller than a mola-mola. A third faction swore he was the size of a worker bee.

  People of the wasteland also disagreed about his color. Some said he was speckled. Others affirmed that he was silver with wings washed with chartreuse. They said this made him look captivating during the fleeting moments when he darted from tree to tree and light deluged his wings. A third faction went even further and said he had no color, because it was impossible to discern the color of a being no one had ever seen. They also claimed that the people bickering about the bird’s size, color, or behavior were nothing but poets, who typically see what ordinary people don’t, hear what other people don’t, and say what others don’t.

  But such a claim did not prevent the tribes from arguing about the bird’s behavior as well. Narrators said that he was terribly fond of valleys and preferred to hide in retem groves that autumn’s yellow assailed, hiding for a time by the trunks of these shrubs before breathing through his pipes and beginning his amazing music-making. Others said he only descended into the lower valleys toward the end, because he sheltered in the crests of the acacias on the higher plains and stayed there for longer or shorter periods, slipping into the valley bottoms only at the appointed hour for singing.

  Skeptics, however, attacked these narratives too. They said that the desert people still suffer from an ancient illness that antiquity itself named blindness! The proof is that they are still incapable of distinguishing between what is true and what is false, between what is good and what is evil, and between what is visible and what is hidden. If suffering this ailment had not been an everlasting curse for them, they would have been able to discover easily that the bird they describe isn’t the same bird that fascinates them with his song. The bird they have always thought to be one bird actually visits the settlements in the company of another bird, his mate. Everything the tribes said about this songbird’s size, color, or conduct does not apply to the bird of the Spirit World but to the bird’s mate, which they typically view with the eyes of blindness.

  4

  The skeptics further discussed the bird and said that each body is divisible into two parts: the original and its shadow. They spoke for a long time about what is visible in the wasteland and what is hidden. They concluded that the shadow of a being is what the being’s eye sees with its blind vision. The original of the being is what is hidden from the eye of blindness and perceived only with the eye of the Spirit World. The people of the desert are wretches who have brought incurable ailments to the desert. They are incapable of distinguishing between these two types of vision and are equally incapable of distinguishing between all the weighty contradictions.

  It is said that this faction was the first to caution the tribes against the allure of the Spirit World’s bird when they recounted the effect of his songs on people’s souls and the domination of his tunes over the intellects of even the wisest intellectuals. People would all jump up and hurry to the valleys to hear his hymns of amazing sorrow. Noblemen, vassals, slaves, herdsmen, women, young men, and even the children would rush to the valleys. The bird would seize control of them with his voice, and they would stay in the wadis for days, frequently forgetting themselves there. They would stay as long as the bird did—not eating, drinking, speaking, or sleeping. Then they would become emaciated and quiver with feverish ecstatic trances. The jinn tribes that resided in their breasts—which they thought they had forever destroyed with the talismans of the ancients—would awake. The feuding tribes in their breasts would wake up and become ecstatic, foam at the mouth, and reel.

  But the devastation affecting their chattels at such times surpassed the devastation affecting their bodies. Jackals were able to slay people’s flocks in the pastures at will. Camels wandered off to other lands, where they fell into the hands of brigands and rustlers. Autumn winds blew and unruly storms plundered their tents, carrying away the furnishings. When people finally regained control of themselves, they discovered that the Spirit World had not returned them to the desert but had tossed them into the labyrinths of the wasteland for the first time. Then they were obliged to search for their way, starting afresh.

  At this point the soothsayers intervened, thinking they should take charge of the matter themselves.

  5

  The soothsayers made the rounds of the tribes and dictated their call to the herald. They said the seductive bird wasn’t one of the messengers from the Spirit World but a new device of the immortal enemy Wantahet. So people should be wary and extremely cautious. They said via the herald that the ancient, ignoble one had been unable to destroy them with bribes and it hurt him too much to take them with the weapon of seduction. Therefore he had devised the strategy of singing to annihilate their bodies, destroy their physiques, and devastate their homelands, because he had discovered their weakness for music. He had realized that nothing could annihilate creatures’ bodies as effectively as singing. They also said that the immortal sorcerer was hiding in the bird’s body this time just as he had previously hidden in the bodies of serpents. He had borrowed the bird’s voice and slipped into the neighboring valleys to rob them of their bodies and souls through the domination of this voice, because the ignoble one knew their secret and perceived the weakness they had inherited from their ancestors regarding the voice and the delight of the voice. So he had decided to take them by means of the sovereignty of the voice. They needed to be on guard from that day forward against every voice!

  Panic swept the tribes, and an argument erupted among the sages. Many attacked the edicts of the soothsayers. One faction tried to mount some opposition. Skeptics said that the diviners did not merely wish to shun the minds of the intellectuals, and never tired of repeating the lies they had fabricated long ago to lead the nations of the desert toward life (even though the tribes realized that they were merely terrifying claims), but today again they had come to drag the tribes far from the truth, claiming that they did this from a desire to prevent the community from going extinct, whereas they knew better than anyone else that they were preventing the community from enjoying the eternal longing for immortality, because they also knew that a being that doesn’t become immortal unless he loses his body does not mind dispensing with the shadow body if through this sacrificial offering he can assume the body of light, the body of the Spirit World, the original body that doesn’t know bodies.

  In their opposition to the soothsayers, the skeptics went to the extreme of accusing their foes of depriving the wretched tribesmen of the sole pleasure the Spirit World had granted them and said that the diviners, by forbidding listening to and enjoying music, were not just imitating the severity of Wantahet but were appropriating his role and speaking with his tongue. In fact they were digging for the people of the wasteland that foul pit to which Wantahet had sworn to lead them one day. The soothsayers weren’t soothsayers; they were Wantahet.

  6

  North winds frequently carried clouds to the desert, the valleys flowed with plentiful water, from the floors of the tents rang the painful screams of newborns frightened by the terror of childbirth, and the successive days destroyed many bodies, which then slumbered in the slopes of the mountains beneath piles of gray stones, but the bird of the Spirit World never stopped singing.

  The bird never stopped singing, and his passionate fans never stopped descending to the valley in order to emigrate via song from this valley and all valleys—from the whole desert. Then they would see what they could only see through song and hear what they could only hear through song, and live another life that they could only live through song.

  Their bodies grew emaciated, withered, and wasted away till they vanished. But they did not retreat. They did not want to return to the land of shadows, because anyone who travels far and explores other homelands beyond the wasteland will not return to the realm of the wasteland. He will not return to lands that can only be seen with the eye of blindness!

  VIII

  TH
E WESTERN HAMMADA

  We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

  The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, 5:6–8

  1

  During the second year, the drought became extreme, and desiccation, blazing heat, and blasts of the Qibli wind scorched the pathetic grasses left from the blessing of the wet years. Then the leader approached him.

  The leader came to him and invited him to explore the effects of the downpours from transient clouds on the plains of the Western Hammada.

  They set off on foot in the sunset dusk, leading their camels behind them and dislodging rocks along the way with their sandals. In earlier days, they typically had done this when the tribe was affected by some momentous matter that required private debate. Back then they would set off for the great outdoors, roaming on foot through the dark expanses of the wasteland like two shadows from the jinn tribes, striking their sandals against stones with childish stubbornness, exchanging a gesture at one time, allowing themselves to be guided by the circumlocutions of the ancients at others, adopting the language of the people of passion at times, and remaining silent for long, long periods. They stayed silent so long that the jinn who were spying on them concluded that they would never say anything. The Spirit World’s spies decided that they would never reach an accord or assumed that these two men had secretly agreed to use a vile, unspoken language, a language that the clever strategists of the wretched human community appealed to in order to conceal their evil intentions against the scions of the people of the Spirit World. Dawn surprised them in the badlands, but they would not turn back till they discovered a talisman to protect the tribe against the evil of the affliction. So the most eminent jinn butted their heads against the walls of their caves in despair at ever detecting the secret and out of admiration for man’s cunning.

  This time too they walked along quietly. They walked in silence for a very great distance. They dislodged with their sandals a very great number of stones. They discovered the sign that rolling rocks with sandals conceals. They perceived the secret of the language that doesn’t acknowledge the tongue, that rejects the eye’s winks, that scorns the stupid signals of the finger, because it proceeds far into stillness, disappears in the whispering of the Qibli wind through the groves of the dry land, and bobs around in the open sea of the void with a feverish trance till the prophecy is stolen from the obscure rhythm. Above their turbans a moon swathed in a pale diaper began to spill a meager light over the wasteland.

  In the faint light the naked land stretched away, covered with gray rocks that the limited light dappled with despair and gloom.

  In the baffling stillness, the bodies of beings turned into ears and began to spy on beings whose bodies had also turned into ears. But the scattering stones wounded the diffident stillness and continued to gather the voices and to erect an edifice of language in the song.

  They crossed barren plains, descended into valleys where the trunks of dead trees clung to their bottoms, and ascended heights that all vegetation had deserted, leaving on their summits monuments of solidity and boulders of rock that rose as high as haughty acacias.

  Without employing his tongue, he said: “How harsh the drought is, Master! Is there a harsher affliction in the desert than a drought?”

  He heard the leader reply, also without employing his tongue, “If it weren’t for the chastisement of drought, the desert would no longer be a desert. In drought, too, the Spirit World hasn’t forgotten to deposit a secret.”

  He fell silent. They traversed another expanse. Then in the same soundless language, he said, “But the desert is nobler without drought.”

  He detected the scorn in the leader’s response when he heard him ask, “Do you want to deprecate the wisdom of contradictions and to devise for the homeland a law that the sky hasn’t acknowledged?”

  He was still again. They traversed valleys and plains. They clambered up copper-colored mountains. Then the barrenness was uniform and rushed away, extending forever. Over this harsh ground the pale light spilled down and proceeded to pursue the expanse until it turned into genuine gloom at the end of the horizon. As though distances had lost sovereignty over time and therefore could not interrupt the dialogue, the leader added, “It’s not appropriate for a diviner to cast doubt on the blessings of contradiction, since he knows better than anyone else the qualities of an affair that fools consider an affliction!”

  Smiling behind his veil, he said, “May I be excused, Master—doesn’t the diviner have a right to forget he’s a diviner and speak with the voice of the masses from time to time?”

  He heard an answer as stern as a sword: “This is inappropriate.”

  He smiled again and replied earnestly: “I know we mustn’t disdain the Law, even if the ignoble Wantahet was the first to give it to us.”

  He heard a suggestion of disapproval in the tone of the leader, who replied in the same language that shied clear of the tongue, “Did you say Wantahet?”

  He responded at once, “Didn’t the ancients pass down to us the claim that he was the first to say he did not do good because he knew that good would turn into evil and would not do evil because he knew for certain that the law of contradictions would transform it into good?”

  The leader said, “When did it become right for people of the Unknown to propound the strategies of the ignoble one as part of an argument?”

  He answered, “The diviner did not propound an argument. He repeated for his master’s hearing what has been passed down from the first forefathers.”

  The leader said, “The diviner knows better than anyone else that the ignoble one prevaricates even when his tongue’s utterance is correct. So, what about the intellect?”

  He replied, “My error, Master, is that I wanted to be liberated briefly from this burden that you referred to as the intellect in order to enjoy peace of mind like the commoners in the tribe.”

  The leader retorted, “This is inappropriate.” He rolled a stone away with an angry kick.

  2

  They traversed further distances.

  Suddenly the leader asked, “Do you know why I wanted you to accompany me to the Western Hammada?”

  He replied, “I’m good at deciphering the Unknown but have never been good at deciphering my master’s intentions!”

  The leader, however, ignored this jest and said with the sternness that has always been a hallmark of leadership, “You’ve always been beside me; I’ve never deferred to anyone the way I’ve deferred to you. You have been my buttress. You’re the only person to whom I have revealed a secret, because you have never betrayed my trust. I have been isolated, and my solitude might have proved lethal but for your presence beside me. I have always doubted whether what is called a friend truly exists under heaven’s dome. Had your conduct not told me that a friend must either be a companion or not, I would have been certain that a confidant was one of the many lies we devise and embrace to deceive ourselves. How can you not want me to choose you as a companion for a journey to the settlements of the Western Hammada since you have been my companion in the wasteland?”

  The diviner replied gratefully, “I have tried to live up to my master’s good opinion of me. I feel this is my obligation. If I have succeeded, may my master allow me to express my delight.”

  The leader inquired, “Are you delighted even though you know the terrors of a trip to the settlements of the Western Hammada?”

  He replied, “My master’s company is something that surpasses delight. My master’s company is something greater than happiness. My master’s company is a treasure in the diviner’s breast that can only be compared to a prophecy.”

  The leader probed further, “Are you sure?”

  He answered this question with a question: “Does my master doubt the truth of what I say?”

  The leader, however, commented sorrowful
ly, “I’m not pressing this question because I doubt you but because I know how intensely tribe members hate to travel the route to the Western Hammada. I wouldn’t want to compel you to do something you’re not keen on.”

  He rolled a stone with his sandal and smiled twice behind his black veil. He said, “I didn’t know that the route to the Western Hammada had a worse reputation in the hearts of members of the tribe than the venom of forest serpents. I also acknowledge to my master my negative feeling toward it, although I have a secret conviction that it isn’t as evil as we think. In fact I’ve often thought that its evil isn’t concealed in the terrors we attribute to it but that we dread it out of our ignorance of it. Since my master has chosen me to accompany him on this unaccustomed route, how can I decline his company, when it is an honor for which he has singled me out?”

  The leader said, “I don’t want you to do this for my sake, because the trip to the Western Hammada is the only trip that a man must undertake of his own free will in response to a call, not out of loyalty to a bosom friend.”

  He asked, “Does my master think that reading prophecies in the bones of sacrificial victims is an easier job than departing to our homeland in the Western Hammada?”

  The leader answered, “I have never trivialized the dangers of prophecy.”

  He mentioned the terrors of prophecy in a sad tone that no physical tongue defiled: “Doesn’t my master know that the diviner roams the desert and repeatedly crosses the Western Hammada before reaching the heavens of prophecy?”

  The leader answered as sadly, “I have never doubted that.”

  Finally he observed, “My master can rest assured that the person he has chosen for a traveling companion is a man who knows the path and has returned from the settlements of the Western Hammada each time he has brought a prophecy.”