He began to tremble and protested, “We consider the intellect to be life-sustaining—possibly because we’ve never experienced life without an intellect.”
The leader said, “Here you have won the key to the secret. All that remains is for you to take another step to open the door.”
He was shaking more violently and pleaded, “But forgetfulness is grim, Master. Dementia is grimmer than extinction.”
The leader approached him, leaned toward his ear, and asked, “Would it harm you to forget the people and terrors of the Eastern Hammada? Would it harm you to move from that barren land to live in a homeland that doesn’t acknowledge space because it has liberated itself from time’s rule?”
His body became feverish, and he began to tremble again, shaking violently. He complained loudly, “Dementia is an illness, Master. Forgetfulness is a terror worse than the plague, Master!”
The guide insisted stubbornly, “The lethal illness has a lethal antidote. You will never gain life unless you lose a fantasy you have always considered life. So beware!” The leader knelt at the spring, where water leapt from a fissure in the solid rock. Pure water like tears chased through the void in spiraling tongues that joined at times and separated at others, creating a mischievous bow in the air, before falling to the bottom, splashing on solid rock, scattering spray over the banks, and inundating the green, fertile soil that clung to the shores. The leader moved his veil away from his mouth and filled his hands with the deluge as tiny bubbles from the spray glistened and dripped from his hands like teardrops. He raised his palms to his mouth, which was covered by a thick mustache that had turned totally white. Below his mouth a dense beard was even whiter. A few small hairs grew upwards and were interwoven with his mustache, fully covering his lips. He swallowed. He swallowed with the slow deliberation of the noble elders and the ravenous thirst of the masses. Then his eyes were flooded with profound surrender, and the diviner saw in his pupils a gleam like tears of joy. There was a smile in his eyes. The diviner did not catch the smile on his lips, which were covered by the underbrush of snow-white hair. He did, however, capture the smile in his eyes, because the diviner was accustomed to seizing a prophecy from the sparks of a sign. He was searching for the secret of the sign when he found that a handful of the deluge was touching his lips too.
The diviner released a profound sigh before sipping some of the flood from his palms.
______________
10. Calotropis procera (Asclepiadaceae), also known as the Sodom apple.
IX
FORGETFULNESS
Forgetfulness is a form of freedom.
Gibran Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam
1
Gossips quickly spread the news.
The tribe awoke to hear that the diviner had succumbed to dementia’s forgetfulness the previous day. They said he had thrown out his slave girl, whipped his slave, and ordered the herders to bring him his camels because he had decided to quit the tribe’s encampment and migrate to settle in the Western Hammada. The ruckus grew more agitated by late morning. Boys raced from tent site to tent site, women emerged from their tents to watch, and herdsmen left their caravans of camels and retraced their steps to question servants about the news to satisfy their curiosity. Even the sages were compelled to gape as the bareheaded diviner chased teenage boys and the rabble while brandishing his tent pole threateningly. Others related that they had seen him respond to the call of nature between tent sites—still bareheaded—and then hurriedly enter the next tent instead of returning to his own home. The wretched slave girl claimed that he had thrown her out because she had refused to submit to his shameful desire when he groped her and wanted to sleep with her. She made a comment that soon made the rounds and was repeated by every tongue: “Iymmeskal. Ahadagh ar iymmeskal. Awagh wiggegh amghar wazzayagh. He’s been switched. I swear he’s been switched. This isn’t the old man I know.”
The ruckus continued.
The boys realized that the diviner actually had lost his mind and decided to have some fun. They provoked him with the tricks they typically played on madmen and the possessed. He chased them, cursing or waving his tent pole.
The sages consulted and sent each other letters via servants, herders, or teenage boys, but the hero acted before they could. He was the first to drive away the rabble and scatter them. Then he put his arms around the raging diviner and hugged him for a long time. Next he seized the tent pole from the diviner’s grasp and carried him away like a bundle of clothes. He set him down in a corner of the tent, which had collapsed in the center after the tent pole was removed. Ahallum replaced the tent pole and ordered a passerby to bring him both the physician and the apothecary.
Before the physician or the apothecary arrived, the nobles approached the tent with the venerable Emmamma in the lead. They were followed at a distance by Imaswan Wandarran. They gathered on a hillock by the entrance. The venerable elder took a step toward the patient. He leaned forward to examine the ancient soothsayer, resting his veined, twiglike hands on the crook of his staff. His small eyes examined his comrade’s face. The diviner’s head was bare. His skull was crowned by a stern copper baldness, and meager little pepper-gray hairs, which were turning white, sprouted on his temples. White was prevalent and had also assailed the bottom of his beard, which was coated by grains of dust. On each side of his head grew a long ear; they were so long they hung down. These repellent ears resembled a young donkey’s. As for the mouth’s fissure, it was even more repulsive. It proceeded from the far side, setting out from the jaw’s back border, plowing through the front of the face, dividing the heart’s throne of beauty with an ugly creek resembling a woman’s genitals, digging in the full moon’s surface a crater that could never be filled, an abyss that was the reason that the first father, Mandam, was ousted from the homeland, because it swallowed the forbidden fruit. Since then it has not ceased devouring forbidden fruits. It has never eaten its fill since that day. Did the ancestors err when they viewed it as a defect and devised the veil to hide it from each other?
The odious cleft did not stop until it penetrated the jewel, disfiguring the entire face. It gathered by the other end of the jaw at the conclusion of its trajectory and so stamped the man with the brand of infamy. The grandfathers did not err when they considered the mouth to be a defect and covered it with the veil.
Emmamma said, “This isn’t the diviner we know.”
He stared in the soothsayer’s face again and then turned to the nearest man to ask, “Can you recognize a man whose head isn’t covered by a veil?”
Imaswan Wandarran dismissed the idea with a shake of his turban, and bowed his head toward the earth.
Addressing the hero Ahallum, Emmamma said, “I’ve never been good at speaking to a man whose face isn’t covered by a veil.”
Amasis commented, “How ugly the face is when a veil doesn’t cover it!”
The venerable elder gestured to the hero, “Cover his face at once!”
The hero motioned to a slave standing near the tent, and the slave rushed forward as though he had been expecting this signal. He whispered something in his ear, and the slave leapt to a corner of the tent, returned with a black veil from a pile of clothes, and began to wrap it around the soothsayer’s head while the elders sat in a circle inside. Ahallum, however, remained standing beside the diviner, following the winding of the black veil around the head of the poor soothsayer. The slave’s fingers slipped between the folds of the linen as deftly as the wind, gradually circling the head vertically till cloth hung down on either side. Then he drew the coil in the other direction and held the other end right beside the diviner’s mouth, fastening the fabric over the mouth with his forefinger and seizing the clump with his right hand to encircle the lower part of the face first. Then he lifted the tail up and wound it around the summit of the head twice to form the base of the turban. Next he slipped the fingers of his other hand between the folds to test the firmness of the bond without his first hand ever ceasi
ng to pull the linen around the head. The fabric’s tail, which had coiled at their feet like a serpent, diminished and moved to wrap the head with a proud turban that returned the former diviner to the council.
Ahallum sat the invalid down before the council and took a place beside him.
Emmamma asked, “Isn’t it possible that the whole affair is simply a frenzied fit?”
Amasis replied, “The jinn possess a member of the tribe every day, but we’ve never had a crazed man strip off his veil, enter other people’s homes, and struggle with boys outdoors.”
Emmamma explained, “Possession may take many forms, and the acts of people of the Spirit World come in graduated levels.”
Imaswan Wandarran interjected, “The desert has borne us on her back for generations, and our ancestors’ bones have nourished her for generations, but we have never heard of a diviner being possessed by the jinn. Similarly we have never discovered in the lives of our forebears the story of a diviner whom the inhabitants of the Spirit World possessed.”
Support for his claim was expressed in a communal murmur of approval.
Aggulli spoke for the first time, “You’re right. The sagas relate that the jinn fear nothing more than soothsayers. We have also all heard in the sagas that soothsayers are a coterie that differs little from those of the Spirit World.”
Amasis remarked despairingly, “We’re used to relying on the diviner to decipher the talismans of the times. We’ve never considered what we would do when the diviner himself became a victim of the times.”
Aggulli said, “This is a fault of the community not of the times. We should have learned that the times have never exempted anyone from their chastisement. The diviner too is a son of the community and of the age.”
Emmamma leaned toward the diviner and examined his vacant eyes before asking, “Do you remember me?”
When the soothsayer did not reply, the venerable elder asked, “Have you forgotten your longtime companion?”
A faint glow shone in the eyes; then the council heard a voice, “Hee, hee, hee.”
The nobles exchanged disapproving, astonished glances but clung to their silence.
The venerable elder said, “I am Emmamma. Have you forgotten me? Does a chum forget his crony so readily?”
“Hee, hee, hee.”
The elders looked down at the ground and hid their sorrow in the figures their fingers dug in the dirt.
The physician arrived. Before he entered the tent, he ordered the servants to prepare a fire. He grasped the nobles’ hands with rough palms split by atrocious cracks. He shook hands with them with both hands. Then he moved forward and knelt before the diviner. He took his hands in his palms and swayed back and forth a little as he said, “I wish I had never seen the day when the physician would be obliged to cauterize his master’s head to restore him to the gardens of the intellect!”
The nobles bridled their grumbling, but it was audible all the same. Their fingers continued to trail across the earth, drawing pictures, tracing symbols, and building houses as if searching for the secret reason for this punishment and exploring the Unknown for an antidote for this unknown malady.
2
The physician cauterized the soothsayer’s head with fire that day. The apothecary arrived and poured him a pot of herb-infused water. Then the invalid slept for several days in a row. Slaves kept watch over him by night, and the elders visited him mornings and evenings, but the patient evaded them and fled to the vacant lands to the west. Two days later, herdsmen returned him to the encampments. They said they had found him wandering barefoot and bareheaded, bleeding from the awful wounds caused by the physician’s burns on his head and temples.
At dusk that evening a tall, thin, grim-looking man, who was totally enveloped in black, came to Emmamma’s home. The venerable elder sat with him outside his tent and leaned forward, trying to make out the visitor’s features in the evening’s gloom. The man did not stand on ceremony, did not launch into the customary questions about health, plagues, and the news of droughts, raids, and the ruses of the times. He said instead that the diviner’s illness was an ordeal that had caused him great sorrow and that burning the poor man’s head had been a barbaric act that would not help, because the soothsayer’s condition wasn’t an instance of demonic possession. Next he surprised the old man by claiming he knew a secret that could cure the victim. People simply needed to allow him to closet himself with the invalid for a certain number of days.
The old man listened with interest. His fingers toyed with some pebbles, and he leaned so far forward his guest thought the old coot would tumble on his face. Finally he sat up straight and asked, “Will the reverend visitor be able to do for the diviner what the physician and the herbalist could not?”
“Medical doctors have never borrowed any science from the Spirit World, and the herbs of the wasteland cannot cure an illness from the Spirit World.”
“Is the guest certain that the soothsayer’s illness is a spiritual one?”
“A secret, Master, is a treasure you lose if you share it!”
“Is some sorcery at work here?”
“No illness would defy diagnosis if sorcery could not infiltrate our bodies.”
“Are you a sorcerer?”
The guest smiled in the dark and did not reply.
The elderly man inquired, “Are you a rambler?”
The guest was silent for a long time. Finally he replied, “My master knows that we would never boast of a tie to the desert if we weren’t ramblers.”
The venerable elder wanted to ask about the man’s tribe but realized that curiosity had pushed him over the line. He had violated the laws of etiquette and breached propriety by besieging the guest with questions that the Law forbade a host from tossing at the face of a guest who had not yet spent three days in his abode.
He whistled with despair. Then he ordered the servants to bring the visitor a vessel of milk.
3
It was said that the mysterious man expelled the servants from the tent and prevented visitors from entering the residence. He closeted himself with the invalid for a period that lasted a number of weeks. They also said in the tribe that they would never have received any news of the soothsayer and that the work of the strange man might have remained a secret forever if inquiring minds hadn’t resorted to their ancient stratagems to satisfy their never-ending thirst for news of the elite. So they hired some mischievous boys, bribed them with dates, and sent them to spy on the activities of the man in black.
These boys said that they hid in a corner of the tent and saw the frightening man tie a palm-fiber rope to the feet of the poor diviner and fasten the other end to a peg driven into empty land opposite the tent’s entrance. He left the sick man out in the open, bareheaded, and the lethal sun seared him with rays more vicious than the fires of the physician. So the first day the diviner sweated a lot and continued perspiring until his clothing was soaked. Then with their own ears they heard him beg for water!
The next two days the stranger left him out in the midday sun again. On the third day, with their own ears, they heard him plead with his tormentor to bring him a veil. But food was a different matter; they witnessed the atrocious torturer himself devour the food the tribe’s women sent to the tent, leaving his victim hungry. These wretches swore that the man in black did not feed him a single morsel during the many subsequent days and that the diviner had not surrendered or asked his torturer to let him share the food. He sat nearby, directing his gaze gravely toward the void but returning occasionally from his despondent preoccupation to cast his jailer an enigmatic glance that gleamed with an even more enigmatic smile. He would toy with his veil and run his fingers through its thick folds. Then he would sway from side to side and the smile in his eyes would gleam even more clearly.
But the poor man broke after almost three weeks. The youngsters said that with their own ears they heard him ask for a crust of bread.
After this the man sent for the noble eld
ers and informed them that he had restored the lost memory of the tribe’s diviner and that they simply needed to supervise his nutrition if they wanted to restore him to his former state.
Emmamma was incredulous. He sat on his haunches before the frail body, raising his knees and thighs, and leaned forward till his turban touched the diviner’s. He asked, “Do you know me? Swear by the goddess Tanit if you really recognize me.”
The diviner lowered his eyes to hide the smile in them and said in a low voice like the whispers of lovers, “Do I need to swear by the lords of the Spirit World to recognize our revered master Emmamma?”
Emmamma clapped his hands and turned to the assembly of sages. He released a heroic shout louder than any that the tribe expected to come from the mouth of a venerable elder. He slapped his scrawny thighs, which resembled dry sticks, and repeated with childish glee, “Bravo! Bravo! Beat the drums of glad tidings, tell the maidens to fill the desert with their trilling, and slaughter … slaughter sacrificial beasts at once!”
He hugged the diviner and held him in his arms a long time. When he released him to allow the other elders to embrace their longtime comrade, everyone saw the tears in his eyes.
4
Emmamma said, “We missed you a lot.”
Aggulli concurred, “Your absence seemed to last forever. We have grown accustomed to living with the absence of someone who has left us to travel far away; we haven’t grown accustomed to enduring a yearning for a person whom we can see with our eyes but who doesn’t hear our voice or answer our call.”
Amasis exclaimed, “What a grim loss this was!”
The diviner responded, “I won’t conceal from you that I missed you too. Had I not enjoyed the leader’s company, my regret at losing you would have been even greater.”
Everyone was still; the sages exchanged covert glances. Emmamma was the first to inquire in a voice that was somewhat disapproving, “Did you say ‘the leader’?”
New Waw, Saharan Oasis (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 11
