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

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  The diviner answered earnestly, “Yes. I traveled to the Western Hammada at the leader’s invitation.”

  Everyone was apprehensive and quiet again. People hid their reaction by looking down at the earth. The venerable elder asked, “Did you mention traveling to the Western Hammada?”

  “Yes, Master. The leader took me on a trip to the Western Hammada to search for rainfall from passing clouds. We found there a springtime that no eye has seen and that you all would never have imagined. I don’t know why you cling to a life of drought in the Eastern Hammada and ignore springtime in the West, which you will never consider.”

  He fell silent and stared at the celestial void. Then he toured the horizons and rushed off through the eternal expanse. When he spoke again it was in a whisper, “I expressed my astonishment about this matter. Then our master told me that this is always the way with desert people. They enjoy an arid climate, because that’s all they’ve ever known. They turned away from the orchards, because they have never gotten used to traveling West and have never known what the great expanse there conceals. I won’t hide from you that I intend to return there once I have paid off my debts and discharged my worldly duties.”

  The venerable elder was the first to express his shock: “What are you saying? Have you returned to our domiciles or do I find you still traversing the encampments of forgetfulness? Don’t you know that our scouts explored the Western Hammada inch by inch and returned two days ago, advising us that the earth there is scorching hot and that the rocks are almost molten and turning to ash on account of the fiery heat?”

  He continued to roam through the remote distance, which was draped by the mirage. Then he observed in the same voice reminiscent of lovers whispering, “I don’t know which hammada your scouts are describing, but I doubt that their feet ever trod the earth of the Western Hammada.”

  The elders stopped digging in the dirt and cast the diviner a pitying look.

  X

  THE CROW

  Life pursues death, and with death life begins.

  Zhuang Zi

  1

  “Never in the desert will glad tidings from heaven be heard unless the tomb’s stone drinks the crow’s blood.”

  The sage asked the Tomb Maiden three times about remedies, and each time the Priestess replied with this same prophecy: “Never in the desert will glad tidings from heaven be heard unless the tomb’s stone drinks the crow’s blood.”

  The nobles did not know how to interpret this prophecy and gathered for many nights in the venerable elder’s tent to debate it. They had asked the diviner’s opinion shortly before he succumbed to dementia, but the diviner had not been able to offer any gloss for the revelation. The Temple Diviner herself was equally unable to decipher the symbolism of the prophecy, and the jurists did not discover any key to the puzzle. Then the Virgin’s tongue repeated the statement with the same obstinacy and phrasing—as if this prophecy was a heavenly sign, as if this prophecy had been taken from some inalterable sacred tablet for which not even the number of its letters was arbitrary.

  The first clause of the revelation did not confuse the tribe; it was the second half that provoked debate, caused disagreement, and confounded the most perspicacious people, the tribesmen who loved wisdom the most, and the ones most skilled at explaining dicta of the Spirit World.

  The truth was that the second clause did not confound them in its entirety; the dispute centered on the meaning of the word “crow.” Some said the word referred to the bird they knew. They declared that a real crow had to be sacrificed. Most people mocked that interpretation and said that the Spirit World always spoke in symbols. They were likewise unaccustomed to hearing in prophecies something that even the jinn could not accomplish—such as capturing a bird like the crow, which was proverbial in the tribe for its wariness, ability to blindside hunters, mystery, wisdom, and immortality. There was even a characterization of the crow in a riddle that stated: “Ed yohaz afus. Waritiggah afus! So near at hand, but never caught by the hand.” This was because the crow kept moving between tent sites and never left the tribe’s eyes for an hour; but despite its ubiquity, the generations that had tried to hunt it as a treatment for sorcery had despaired of ever bagging it—forcing them to search for relief from other creatures like the chameleon. They had left this aged immortal to later generations, who in turn discovered the secret for themselves. So their children ignored the crow, and the nomads forgot that it existed. What destiny could be searching for it today as a sacrificial offering? What enormous sin had they committed to prompt the dread Spirit World to impose this impossible condition on them?

  This faction insisted on searching for the real truth in another place and invited the community to continue mulling over the matter, because celestial wisdom comes cloaked in mystery. But they had also learned that it could not resist a stubborn quest. Then it would be disclosed in the light of inspiration with all the suddenness of a spark shooting from a flint. If they wished to escape destruction from drought, they merely had to be obstinate, search down the corridor, use the intellect, and proceed down the path of debate. But the wait for rainfall became lengthy, and patience provided no consolation.

  2

  The first peoples said that when the Spirit World wishes to cleanse the desert of defilement by its creatures or to punish its people, it imposes on them either of two opposites: water or fire.

  It either deluges the desert with rains—washing the land with floods until it drowns the creatures—or imposes suns that breathe fires on the plains for years, scorching pastures, destroying plants, and leaving there only trails of mirages and wraithlike fumes.

  The first peoples also learned from experience that the heavens aren’t stingy with water for the earth without reason, that the suns don’t scorch the pastures in vain, that suffering descends on the desert for a reason that will not remain unknown forever, because the times, which address them with the language of signs at the outset, must necessarily reverse course one day and turn against the secret they concealed and expose it till finally every matter they were initially keen to conceal is revealed.

  This time the sages exerted themselves to search for the scourge’s secret too and discussed with each other a lot. Some found the cause in their subservience to the dirt and acceptance of the settled life that had always been their enemy. They had violated the law of nomadic migration once the leader’s tomb became a peg that tied them to the earth. Others thought that the drought contained a broader significance and said that there was a sign in the matter, a sign like an embryo born without features, although the days would fashion a face for it. They had repeatedly learned from experience that secrets, even the most significant secrets, exist only to become known.

  They simply had to be patient and wait for an act that would fulfill the Law’s dictates.

  The rabble were skeptical of the propaganda of the supporters of semiotics and spoke scornfully of their Law, which promoted a subservience that threatened the tribe’s life and brought its people only destruction and extinction. These ruffians continued to scoff and express their skepticism even after the diviner succumbed to dementia. Then rumors circulated among the tent sites suggesting that evil had gripped the hamlet for a long time because the tribesmen had violated the statutes by trading camels, saddles, and containers of clarified butter to the merchants in the caravans in exchange for gold dust. They had taken these ill-omened flakes to the smiths, who had worked the ugly metal into vile jewelry for these wretches to present to their girlfriends as a down payment on passion and fidelity. It was said, too, that the diviner also procured the vile metal and had it worked into jewelry he presented to the Tomb Maiden, with whom many knew he had fallen in love long ago, even before the disappearance of Lover of Stones. In another version it was said that he had not disclosed his secret until long after the migration of the Physician of Stones and that then she had repulsed him severely. The Virgin was said to have told him that a virgin who married the leader and
befriended prophecy would never stoop to love people of the shadow world. But the soothsayer did not give up. He decided to resort to gold because he had long known that this hateful metal can imprison the hearts of virgins and realized that Wantahet did not introduce it into the desert until he had tested its frightening ability to transform intellects, baffle hearts, and distort intentions.

  Passion blinded the diviner and caused him to forget the Law’s prohibitions. Then he acquired the forbidden dust from an itinerant merchant (according to another version: he acquired it from one of the tribesmen, who had secretly begun to deal in it) and had it cast as vile jewelry by a smith. Then he brought the present to his beloved in the temple. What is truly astonishing is that the narrators do not differ about the acceptance of the gift by the Priestess. Indeed they all agree that the Virgin took the jewelry and gazed at it for a long time before thrusting it between the stones of the tomb. Curiosity seekers swore that they themselves had seen her examine the jewelry with demonic, greedy eyes. She had held the gift up to the light before her face for a time and then had dangled the necklace around her neck and breast briefly while her lips smiled in a seductive way inappropriate for a beautiful woman who had chosen the Spirit World for her spouse.

  The sages detested these reports. Many denounced passion and said that the curse was not actually in the forbidden metal but in passion, which shows no pity even to the people of the Unseen. The unwashed masses were amazed and said that the drought was a puny trial for a tribe whose diviner had acquired gold dust to present to a virgin who had dedicated herself to the rule of the Spirit World.

  3

  A thin, grim man, who was veiled and cloaked in black, paced outside the diviner’s tent waiting for the dark to descend. He looked around him with the misgivings of someone who feared being caught red-handed. Then he penetrated the tent.

  Inside he found the soothsayer leaning against the tent pole beside a dying fire and staring vacantly into a dark corner. He squatted near the hearth and tossed a handful of branches on the fire. Then he said, “I see that my master is still touring the land of forgetfulness.”

  The diviner did not actually return from his fugue and continued to stare rigidly into the void of the dark corner as if unaware of the visitor’s presence.

  But soon he returned to say, “How absurd it would be for someone who has explored the homeland of forgetfulness to settle for the lands of vanity or to savor lingering with people.”

  “I have never known a creature who lauded forgetfulness with your enthusiasm.”

  “How could a person who hasn’t experienced forgetfulness or known its advantages praise it?”

  “Why should we experiment with it when we know we will experience it one day for the first and last time?”

  “If you all tasted the sweetness of forgetfulness, you would want to live it today, not tomorrow.”

  “May the Spirit World spare us this fate! We have children we need to care for till they grow up. We have livelihoods that we need to husband and develop. In the desert there are beautiful women and maidens we need to fondle and embrace on winter nights. So to whom should we leave all of this if we travel the road of forgetfulness before the appointed hour?”

  “If you wish to escape from the manacles you just mentioned, then you shouldn’t worry about them, because throngs of idiots will instantly assume your responsibilities.”

  “I fear, then, I would be the one deserving the epithet ‘idiot.’”

  “I have a superior claim to idiocy than you, because I want to bring outside a person who has grown accustomed to life in the dark recesses of a cave. I want to convince him that light is more beautiful than darkness.”

  “You’re right. Leave me in my murky gloom and repay me your debt. Then go to the Western Hammada and live out your forgetfulness to your heart’s desire.”

  The diviner abandoned his immobility and turned toward his guest to ask, “You?”

  The visitor responded calmly, “Did my master think he was still advancing through his distant wasteland and chatting with the ghostly shades of tombs in the Western Hammada?”

  The diviner sat up straight and tried to discern the features of the stranger by the light of the tongues of the fire that had begun to spread and blaze. He said, “I thought you were a man who once came to this tent to bring me back from the land of forgetfulness—thinking he was doing me a favor.”

  “The fact is, Master, that I didn’t do you a favor that day out of any love of doing good, because you know no one does good these days out of a love of doing good. That day I did it because I feared my debts would go unpaid.”

  “What?” The soothsayer shouted this acerbic question twice.

  His companion responded with a muffled laugh. He snickered for a long time before he asked, “Have you forgotten the debt or was the whole affair simply a strategy to escape paying? Was your supposed flight to the Western Hammada nothing but a flight to avoid repaying the debt?”

  The diviner shouted in a threatening voice, “How dare you ridicule me? How dare you accuse me?”

  “Hee, hee, hee. On my way to my master’s house I was wondering why people avoid paying their debts and decided to ask my master why enmity insinuates itself between the debtor and the creditor despite the fact that the intellect says that debt ought to build sturdy bridges of affection between them. Did my master speak to me about wisdom?”

  He leaned forward till the end of his veil almost landed in the fire. He released into the face of the diviner a hateful laugh like the hiss of a serpent. Then he leaned back and watched the diviner with a malicious expression.

  The diviner said, “The Spirit World knows that I made a good faith effort to repay the debt I owe you. Had the heavens not intervened and the drought, which destroyed my herds, descended, I would have repaid the debt a long time ago. Don’t think that a man can wash his hands of the burdens of the people of the wasteland merely by reaching the land of forgetfulness. In fact, liberation from the cares of the wasteland is the precondition for attaining forgetfulness. If I made the trip and was content to return after going half way, I only did that out of a desire to pay the debt. Had it not been for that desire, no antidote would have been able to bring me back to this earth.”

  “Hee, hee … but my antidote returned you to our encampments, Master. Admit, Master, that my antidote is more potent than the forces of the Spirit World. Do you know why, Master? Because it’s an antidote that came to me from those encampments, because it is an antidote borrowed from the land of the Spirit World. Hee, hee, hee.”

  The diviner was silent. He was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “In the past few days the tribe’s nobles have praised the one who returned me to them. I was thinking the reverse. I was telling myself that I would never forgive the specter who dragged me from the gardens of the Western Hammada to return me to the concerns of the world and the fetters of life in the tribe’s encampments. Now that I learn this specter wasn’t one of the shadows of the Spirit World, but a miserable man who merely wanted to retrieve a handful of gold dust, I see that I should punish him the way he has punished me. The only punishment I can think of is to refuse to repay the debt. This is your penalty!”

  “What does my master mean to say?”

  “Your punishment for your vile deed is not receiving your payment.”

  “Does my master wish to turn affection into hatred pursuant to the law of the creditor and the debtor?”

  “Defaulting on a loan is a mild punishment when gauged against your hateful deed!”

  “Why are good deeds in this wasteland destined to be rewarded with ingratitude?”

  “Get out or I’ll order you whipped!”

  “You refuse to pay me and then order me whipped too?”

  “Leave at once if you want to avoid falling into the hands of slaves with forearms stronger than iron chains!”

  The guest leapt to his feet. Once outside he murmured a threat, as if uttering a prophecy to himself. “
The desert has taught us to go and live in some earth other than the desert if we happen to acquire an enemy. Beware of living in the desert any longer, Crow of Misfortune!”

  4

  The tribe was destined to hear this prophecy again the day the diviner was slaughtered.

  What happened was that the nobles’ debate about the sacrificial victim finally ended with an agreement to slaughter a black, male kid, because the exegesis adopted by the majority affirmed that “crow” did not refer to the physical bird; the secret was hidden, instead, in its color. The special attribute of the crow was not its conduct, gait, or other less obvious characteristics but its blackness, which was its principal distinction. So they selected a black goat kid and brought it to the diviner to sacrifice on the stones of the tomb.

  The nobles circled round the temple mount, and children and curiosity seekers patrolled the empty area near the tent sites. Then one of the vassals brought the bound kid and placed it at the soothsayer’s feet. Busy reciting ancient talismans, he cast a vacant gaze at the naked sky. Then from his sleeve he brought out the bronze dagger and removed it from the scabbard. He bent over the sacrificial offering, and the goat bleated as loudly as it could. Then the diviner gestured to one of the vassals to come help him. The man put his knee on the goat’s neck and clung to its throat with both hands. So the soothsayer drew the greedy blade across the neck vein, and blood spouted copiously from the throat. It spattered and soiled the stones of the wall. The diviner withdrew his dagger and wiped the blood from it on the hair of the slaughtered goat. Then he sank the blade into the dirt near the blood offering’s head.

  Just then the specter approached the temple. He was awe-inspiring with his stern gait, broad shoulders, and black raiment. He passed by the nobles and proceeded till he neared the soothsayer’s location. He said with the same strange rumble from which the diviner could make out the words only with difficulty that night: “I told you, Crow of Misfortune, to go and live anywhere but in the desert if you happened to acquire an enemy here.”