He took the atrocious dagger, which was planted in the dirt, and stabbed the diviner in the throat. Everyone saw the lethal blade gleam in the light of the setting sun before disappearing up to its hilt in the priest’s throat. The poor man emitted a weird rattle and seized the hilt with both hands. He leaned forward a little, and his eyes bulged out until onlookers thought they would drop from their sockets. Then he swayed as he struggled and fought to extract the ferocious blade from his throat. Blood flowed even more vigorously than the blood of the sacrificial offering, soiling his veil and flowing over all his clothing. When the gulled man moved in his attempts to save himself, his blood soiled the stones of the wall too. Everyone asserted that they heard the rumble of thunder far away at that moment, even though there was not a cloud in the sky. When they turned, they saw lightning split the horizon to the north, and they understood everything.
A voice cried out, “Did you hear what he said? He referred to our master as ‘the Crow of Misfortune.’ How could we have forgotten that all the tribes call diviners crows?”
At the moment the group snapped out of their stupor; some rushed to the diviner and others dashed after the specter, who had disappeared.
Ahallum pulled the dagger from the diviner’s throat and the flow of the blood increased. The frail body shook with a feverish convulsion before becoming rigid forever.
Emmamma embraced him for a long time, mumbling like a mentally deranged man: “Here you have preceded us to the shore of forgetfulness, which you always wanted to reach first. And you, Master, accept your crow as a sacrificial offering!”
Thunder rumbled loudly, and the horizon blazed with lightning. People turned to see that legions of black clouds had begun to assault the desert from the North.
XI
THE DAGGER’S SECRET
Confucius said, “Fish were created for water; man was created for the Dao.”
Zhuang Zi
1
Thirst for the neck vein grows intense, desire for blood blazes, the tongue trembles with lust to plunge into flesh, the cutting edge gestures—craving to meet the beloved body—and the blade fidgets in the cavity of the scabbard, grieving for its loss and protesting against its suppression, cursing the punishment of confinement to these dark recesses. The body that is extended between the two leaves of the scabbard, however, remembers the talisman, recalls the symbols carved on both sides of the blade with a tongue of fire; so it appeals to the sign of the first peoples, who were the only ones to discern the dagger’s secret. It propitiates the symbol by narrating the story of the beginning. So it talks about its amazing ability to pass through bodies, to swim in blood, to tear into the toughest meats, to glide between networks of veins, and to slip down ignoble paths to avoid chunks of bone. It whispers a secret, saying that discovery of articulated joints is the greatest trick in the whole trip. It gives to this discovery the name “trade secret.” It concludes by saying that a nomad will not only double the length of his life if he discovers this secret but will accomplish his ancient dream of attaining happiness, because progress down the way of articulations is an amulet that protects one against evils and that saves a nomad from falling into captivity. I open a door in the mute body, I make a path through the deluge of blood, I slip between the groves and disappear in the jungle, I scout for locations, I always choose the soft track, I avoid rough terrain, and I’m bent on fleeing from hard ground. The Way turns north. I go north. The generous Way curves west. I bend west. The path rises; I ascend. I glide up. The tour ends with an obstinate solid mass. I stop. I scout around. I turn north, investigate to the west, and retreat a step. I take two steps forward. I search the grim wall for its secret, for its hidden gap. I never tire of searching. I don’t stop investigating until I discover the treasure, until I discover the cleft. I never struggle against the solid mass. I don’t try to force my way through. Instead, flexibility, research, and patience will open a fissure for me in its body. I slip through the narrow gap like a serpent slipping through subterranean excavations. Then I shoot down a new Way without any strife, without any controversy, without any chaos.
By using this small stratagem, I attain peace of mind and win my master’s confidence.
2
I was born a slave like every other being in the desert. The secret of my existence is concealed in my blade, in my tongue. The secret of my master’s existence is concealed in the handle. My destruction lies in my handle. My master’s destruction is in the edge of my tongue. If he seizes the hilt, he obtains life. If he releases the hilt, others seize it. Then the blade becomes his fate. The blade can bring destruction, because destruction entered the desert inside my tongue. That was why the first peoples created the forbidding scabbard to hide my intentions, to restrain my desire, and to suppress my eternal craving for a brother’s throat.
In the short distance lying between the hilt and the beginning of the blade stretches the law of life and the law of death. A person came who succumbed to temptation and yielded to desire; so he took possession of the hilt. The desert bowed down to him because he possessed the hilt. Then he became sultan over the desert. The blade became the fate of anyone who hesitated. These people became slaves, captives, and mamluks in the sultan’s kingdom.
No one in the desert knows how the sultan was able to discover the secret of the hilt and the secret of the tongue. Most probably the jinn tribes whispered the matter to him, because the desert people realize that members of this mysterious tribe become allies of the sovereign once he grasps the terrifying hilt. By night they tell him what he should do during the day. They brief him on the intentions of evildoers even before these miscreants tell themselves what they intend to do. It has been said that the sultan’s desire to possess the hilt originated with the jinn. So he would not go to sleep without first wrapping his fist around the hilt. Later, he fastened his fingers to the hilt with a rope of palm fiber. Later still, he secured his fingers around the hilt with straps of fresh leather, and once these straps dried, his fist and the hilt formed a single hand. It has been said that this ruler surpassed in cleverness even the jinn sages themselves. So their demons feared him, and their clever schemers were afraid of him. Then it came to pass that he subdued them and they became his servants; he put them in charge of his enemies among the people of the wasteland. His sovereignty over the desert was unchallenged because aspirants to power despaired of ever seizing hold of the hilt now that it formed a single body with his hand.
3
The jinn were the first to discover the horror of metal. Then they avoided blades and fled from the tongue to the farthest kingdoms. It was said in one report that they experimented with it. It was said in another report that they weren’t stupid enough to try it themselves but observed its domination over the people of the wasteland when the sultan of the wasteland mastered them with a hand strapped to the hilt. So they read this as a prophecy.
No one knows how their situation was disclosed and how people learned their fear of blades, but the people of the desert soon started using blades to take vengeance on the residents of the Spirit World. They stripped the tongues of their scabbards and affixed lethal blades near the heads of infants, whom the jinn customarily kidnap in their swaddling clothes to swap for children from their own community. Then they terrified the wretches and expelled them to the farthest corners of the badlands.
From that day forward, the body of the dagger has been an amulet. But fools neglected the hilt and left it hanging in the air. Then enemies took possession of it and aimed it at the chests of their children one day.
4
Today, as well, the dagger seeks help from the talisman sketched on the tongue; the ancient talisman finds a way for it to escape from the flask. It dives into the void of the sky, bathes its ravenous tongue in the flood of light, and plucks, from a dusk-time rendezvous, a prophecy that will eventually carve out an existence for it with the edge of the blade.
The dagger emerged from its prison, and the blade rattled in the
throat while it licked the blood of the black kid. It rattled with a sarcasm that wasn’t grasped because it wasn’t understood.
The hilt disappeared in the master’s palm, and the blade plunged into the flesh of the neck. It followed its ancient Way, cut the network, severed the ropes of arteries, and penetrated the veins in which the fountain of life flows. It mangled the rough pass, severed the strings, crossed into the stream to drink from the copious deluge. But it would be absurd for the tongue of prophecy to quench its thirst from the spring of the lie.
5
The tongue leapt from the cavity, and the blade fled from the body of the sacrificial offering. It descended nearby and hid its thirsty head in the dirt. The master released the hilt; then the long fettered demon of the blade liberated itself. It circled the heavens in an instant, and when it returned to the confines of the wasteland with a prophecy, the messenger of the Spirit World had ascended the temple mount. He approached the temple stealthily—thin and stern. Bending down, he seized the hilt at once, exploiting the master’s error. So he preceded him to the lethal throne, since the master needed to receive his punishment at once, because the sovereign forgot that the hilt would revert to being a blade if the commander set it aside for even an hour.
The blade settled in the throat of the master of the blade that evening, because the Spirit World wanted to exchange prophecy for the lie and wished to tell the diviner that the person possessing the hilt of the dagger should be extraordinarily cautious, because the sovereign who errs once inevitably errs for the first and last time.
XII
THE TORRENTS
Water, gentle, yielding, and pure, is good for washing away the filth of men. Therein lies its humaneness. When one looks at it, it may appear black or it may appear white. Therein lies its subtlety. When measuring it, one cannot use a leveling stick as with grain, but when the vessel is full, it stops accumulating. Therein lies its rectitude. There is no place into which it will not flow, yet it stops on reaching its proper level. Therein lies its righteousness. Men all rush upward; it alone rushes downward. Therein lies its sense of humility.
The Guanzi, “Water and Earth”
1
The north breathed winds that diffused the fragrance of moisture; the gloomy horizon encircled the northern mountains with a noble belt that always took on the color of dawn; the distant clouds grew thicker, presaging an assault; bolts of lightning ripped through their august gloom with an insistent gleam that twisted in tongues as fast as fiery whips only to die out with a swiftness reminiscent of the mystery of prophecy.
The wait did not last long.
The black clouds assaulted the thirsty wasteland like enemy hordes. The storm advanced as if wishing to caress the naked badlands and threw down at first large drops the size of the foam that fine camel stallions expectorate in mating season. Then the rain poured down. It poured down plentifully. The downfall stirred up dust in the void and the thirsty earth was taken by surprise. It spluttered with the insatiable appetite of someone who always wants more and then, overcome by greed, chokes on his serving and spits back up what he has swallowed. The expanses paved with stone slabs drank first; then the deserts covered with carpets of pebbles imitated them. Next the deluge flooded the terraces and slipped secretly down natural conduits to the ravines, which carried it to washes coated with layers of soft earth. Then the sandy valley bottoms seized the water with the longing of passionate lovers. Meanwhile the clay lowlands drank in less time and the water rose again to collect in level patches, but this stasis did not last long. The ravines pushed down a new heavenly stream, and the earth received from the sky a new supplement. The upper valleys brought a greater share. Then the demon in the flask of the patch of ground grew restless and rushed off on a course that began with a humane, rational chain but that increased in insanity as it advanced. This insanity was fed by the many ravines that intersected the valley’s banks, and the flood borrowed nourishing momentum from the sky. As these gifts accumulated, the frenzy increased. The water abandoned its own name to become a demon that had appropriated the name torrent!
2
The torrent outstripped the cloud’s slow advance and reached the farthest deserts downstream, surprising creatures that roamed the wasteland over which shone the harsh rays of a cloud-free sun.
The demon grew increasingly delirious and stretched out a stealthy hand to seize sacrificial offerings. It snatched bird nests from the trunks of the retem shrubs. Small eggs marked with murky, dark colors floated to the surface, and newborn chicks covered in yellow down appeared at the tip of the voracious tongue, fussing and releasing cries of farewell. Meanwhile the mothers fluttered over the insane current with the alarm of a tribe subjected unexpectedly to a raid.
In areas further downstream, in the expanses where the earth of the valley bottoms was soft and the burrows many, the demon’s hand reached down to extract victims from the deepest holes. Mice fled from aggressive snakes, snakes fled from brutal hedgehogs, and hedgehogs fled from terrifying men. The demon put its sacrificial victims in its satchel and stormed through other clefts to take other victims from other species: hares, dung beetles, lizards large and small, and young gazelles. It did not acquire more significant victims until it reached the wide lower valleys, where herds of sheep and camels grazed and herdsmen chatted around bonfires, entertaining themselves by exchanging riddles, vying in poetry, and raising their voices in mournful songs. Then they returned from the realms of longing to discuss again the punishing drought and the vacillating flow of time. The demon surprised the lower pastures to seize the most significant sacrificial offerings.
It surprised the herdsmen by night. Then it caught the sheep, goats, and kids off guard and claimed a terrifying share of the herds. Next it attacked the owners of the herds, corralling them on small islands that rose in the hearts of the large, flooded lower valleys. At first it carefully laid siege to its victims while waiting for the support it would receive from the deluge via other tributary ravines, water courses, and wadis. It grew stronger with the abundant rain in the North when the earth became saturated with water and propelled a plentiful amount to the lower valleys. The deluge poured forth, the water level rose in the valley bottoms, and frightening waves gushed on to the farthest plains. The current swept away the meager islands, and the demon washed over its stranded victims to throw them into the dreadful floodwaters. The herdsmen fought back courageously. They clung to retem trees and deployed palm-fiber ropes, contending with the rising waters with poles, but the demon also fought desperately and did not yield until it had seized human victims.
The torrent dragged its victims to the lowlands in the Southern desert. There sand swords—longitudinal dunes—obstructed it. So it slowed, became calmer, and its tongue plunged underground to bury in the abyss the victims it had carried from the Northern deserts.
3
On the heights, on the open plateau of the Hammada, the tribe abandoned their tents, which were threatened with flooding, and fled to the hills, to high places, and to the mountain slopes. In these locations, groups of children, women, and old men gathered. They wrapped themselves in whatever covers they had been able to carry, and the clever strategists among them pulled from their clothes treasured sticks of firewood they had brought wrapped in scraps of linen to keep them from getting wet. They stretched themselves over their wood to protect it from the rain with their bodies. As the children’s crying grew louder and adults started complaining they were cold and hungry, the cunning planners gathered in circles, shielding their heads and bodies with cloths, and began to struggle with their flints to beg for fire. They struggled for a long time before sparks shot out. Then they struggled for an even longer period before these sparks ignited the linen wicks and the smell of smoke rose from the scraps of fabric. They struggled further before successfully setting the wood on fire as a tongue of flame rose from it. Then they began to blow on the nascent tongues of flame to encourage the fire to crave the sticks, which none of
their precautions had kept from growing damp.
The herdsmen in the lower valleys, for their part, hastened to move their herds from the deep valley bottoms during the rain’s first assault and sought refuge on the heights overlooking the valleys. They grieved over their lost livestock and helped each other rescue victims stranded by the torrents on islands in the wadis. They threw them ropes or tossed them poles to use in fending off the current when the flood waters spread and the rising water level threatened them. When evening fell, the herdsmen discovered that the lethal demon had separated their company and scattered them over the heights, hills, and banks. They called loudly to one another, asking in the first hours of the night about losses. Then they were still for a long time. The sound of the surging water rose; the water dominated the conversation instead of them for a long time. But the words of the torrent frightened them and roused the ghoul of loneliness in their souls. So they raised their voices in song and sang all night long.
In the wadi bottoms, the torrent sang.
On the cliff tops, the shepherds sang.
4
The clouds’ assault lasted a day, two, or three before the Unknown drew a sign across the horizon; a rainbow appeared to indicate that the storm clouds had withdrawn.
In the sky the sun’s disc, deprived of its fiery rays, shone myopically through bands of cloud and fog—like a full moon over the desert. Even after these diaphanous clouds dissipated and the fogs lifted, the celestial goddess cast a tolerant eye at the wasteland’s creatures—as if she had finally decided to relax her former oppression. The humidity, however, evaporated once the clouds had scattered. Then the barren lands paved with slabs of stone dried out, followed by the terraces carpeted with pebbles and small gravel. The moisture burned off the body of the clay lands and then the sandy tracts till no trace of the rain lingered in the upper desert except for low-lying washes soaked by the deluge. All the same, the torrent continued to rave, jabber, and prattle in the valley bottoms.
New Waw, Saharan Oasis (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 13
