3. A Refutation of the Refutation of the
Account of the Land of Witches
Another fruitless day at the embassy.
Coming home, the taxi passed one of the usual crowds. Only a few people wept openly. The blast must have occurred several hours before. A pair of trousers hung on a dead electric wire, as if it were washing day.
Now the evening turns blue. The heat dissipates.
My brother met me at the door. I shook my head. This is all we require, now, to communicate the essentials: no, there’s no progress, no visa, not yet, I can’t get out.
“You shouldn’t have come,” my brother says, not for the first time.
I know. I know.
Once it’s dark, I pretend to sleep. Lie on the bed with my face to the wall, the sheet over my head. I can hear the scrape of my brother’s plastic slippers on the floor. Voices, too, the voices of other people come to visit. Neighbors, aunts. Once the sun goes down, there’s nothing to do but talk. They exchange news and warnings and advice. Somebody has a pain in his stomach; my brother pulls a bottle of precious soda from under the bed. Warm American soda in the warm night, not to quench the thirst but as medicine. Slowly moonlight fills the air of the city like milk. It’s bright enough to read by. It glows through my sheet. In the distance, every so often, interrupting the conversation, blasts like dishes breaking.
The “Account of the Land of Witches” is a document with no catalog, an orphaned textual fragment with no archive. The appearance of the words “Napata” and “Qorm” (Kerma) led Augustus Kircher to date the “Account,” quite convincingly, to the ninth century BCE; however, the version of demotic Egyptian used, with its distinctive “swallow-tailed” plural markers, is found in no other extant text, making all attempts at dating the document uncertain and inconclusive. And if the text’s place in time is vague, its place in literature is equally so. Is it simply an unusual autobiographical record? Or is it (as Kircher surmised—“autobiography being unknown in the Kingdom of Kush”) some sort of occult text, written in a coded language known only to the priesthood? Do the first two parts (the “Account” and the “Refutation”) form a thesis and antithesis, and the third (the “Dreamer’s Lexicon”) a sort of synthesis? Are we looking at the sole trace of an ancient religion? Or does the “Account,” rather, disprove, or at least complicate, Kircher’s claims regarding autobiography?
This dissertation takes the position that these possibilities are not mutually exclusive, and that the “Account,” the “Refutation,” and the “Lexicon,” taken together, can be read as both autobiographical fragments and the foundational scriptures of a spiritual tradition heretofore unknown . . .
Pause.
The sun goes down. No moon tonight.
“You’ll wreck your eyes,” my brother says.
He’s right, it’s too dark to see, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write. Tomorrow I’ll find these lines flung across the page, running over each other like the footprints of armies that have met by night.
I don’t work on the dissertation in the dark. I just scribble these private notes. I can’t risk writing important ideas in an illegible scrawl. I fear losing my only chance. The perfect thought, the one moment when a customs agent softens in a good mood.
“All right, miss.” The stamp. I dream about it.
I call my professor in Madison on my brother’s phone. My own ran out of credit long ago. The connection’s tentative, full of holes. I’m on the starlit roof, my brother crouching beside me.
“Hello? Hello?”
My brother watches anxiously, without moving.
“Hello!”
My professor’s voice, happy and worried, frayed across the distance. I’m catching every third syllable. He’s had to give my class to another graduate assistant, he couldn’t keep on teaching it himself.
“I understand,” I tell him. I wonder if he hears “I . . . stand.”
“When you get back, we’ll figure out a way for you to keep your assistantship. Has there been any progress?”
No. No.
“You gave them my letter? My phone number?”
Yes.
“Well. Don’t lose hope! And keep working. Think of it as a writing holiday!”
A small shudder in the distance. Another blast.
He says something I can’t make out.
“What?”
“Stand up,” my brother snaps, “you’ll get a better signal.” He can’t understand this conversation in a foreign tongue but he interprets my panic, the rising tone of my voice. He hisses at me, he says I need to move into that corner, where there’s a narrow view of the sea: that’s where the signal’s always best. He’s cursing now and yanking on my arm and I can only hear my professor’s voice as a series of broken yelps. I’m standing and stumbling, swamped in my brother’s impatience, the charcoal scent of his clothes, and I ought to be angry because he’s only making it harder to hear, but I’m everywhere at once in this moment, at home and yet magically transported back to campus by my professor’s voice, and I’m happy. I’m so happy.
What does it mean to dream of a visa?
I used to think of air travel as a sort of Dream Science. The dry cocoon of the plane was a zone of sleep. Then you’d wake up in a different country, in the long snake of the customs line, the windows full of pearly foreign light. It seemed easy, like sliding into a dream, even if sometimes you tossed and turned on the way, even if they made you empty everything out of your bag. The indignities themselves had a dreamlike quality, absurd: the room where a stranger patted down your body and rifled through your hair.
My plan was to visit my brother and then travel north in search of the home city of Arta, the writer of the “Account.” Then I’d go west to Khartoum. I’d pay a visit to the museum, then make my way to the ruins of Napata . . .
Everyone was worried about me: my professor, my uncle, my friends. And I laughed. I was filled with the spirit of the dream-travelers, Arta and Verken. I came home. And home was crumbling, a trap. I couldn’t go anywhere I’d planned. So I gave up my trip. I’ll go back to the States, I said . . .
I’ll go back. But they wouldn’t let me on the plane to London, and so I couldn’t get back to Chicago, and so I couldn’t get back to Madison. I begged them. I’m a student! But there was something wrong with my papers, I never knew what. You need a different visa, they said.
“You should really go to an American embassy,” the agent clucked, frowning over my papers. But there’s no American embassy here.
Sometimes I see the world traversed by jagged lines of borders, like the cracks across a broken windowpane.
Can you see anything through that window? Do you recognize the world?
Don’t touch it; you’ll cut yourself.
Tonight, on the radio, an old Sudanese song. The kind my father used to love. I sat in the dark and cried. “Why did you have to study history,” my brother said.
Notes toward a dissertation. The location of the Land of Witches—if such a place exists—has confounded scholars for over a century, ever since the document, written on papyrus, was discovered in a grave at Kuraymah (where I can’t go). It is clear enough that the merchant Taharqo was a citizen of Kerma (where I can’t go); as for Arta, the author of both the “Account” and the “Lexicon,” most scholars believe she came from Bahr el-Ghazal (where I can’t go), though I will argue that her home was more likely in modern Somaliland (where I can’t go). It is possible to make claims, however tentative, about these matters. The Land of Witches presents a more serious problem. Was it, as Kircher thought, somewhere in Europe (where I can’t go)? Was it in China (where I can’t go) or even Siberia (where I can’t go)? What can be determined from the tantalizing and fragile clues we are given: bells, giant hoops, a river, and snow? Is the Land of Witches locatable by anyone—or by everyone? Is it a complex hallucination? A state of mind?
I lie on my side for hours.
Don’t talk to me. I’m trying to sleep.
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I’m hot and then cold.
I don’t go to the embassy anymore. It’s too dangerous, and in any case they wouldn’t admit me, or anyone else. Nobody gets out now. The borders are closed.
I can hear my brother and the others talking down the hall in the communal kitchen, over the clacking of mortar fire and the crackle of boiling ghee. I chew on the sheet, but I won’t cry. I hate myself for not getting up. I’m appalled at the way I’ve sunk when my brother keeps moving, calculating, scheming. Money tied up in a sack inside his clothes. He wants me to call my uncle in Canada again, the one who’s paid for my education. I can’t, I can’t face him, the scolding, the pain in his voice, his rage at my arrogance, my stupidity, the way I’ve thrown the family’s resources away. “You’ll die there,” he said the last time we spoke. The ground shakes, and I think he’s right, but there’s only a brief lull in the kitchen conversation. The sound of frying, the smell, doesn’t stop at all. I think of how my mother ran away six years ago, to the camp. And how she ran back again, unable to bear it. She spoke to me of the dirt, of her fear of snakes and lions on the journey. Never her fear of men. The stars would shrink and vanish like ice. By “mother” I don’t mean mother, I mean the aunt who tells me “I am your mother now.”
I hesitate to write this but I have begun to travel in dreams . . .
Faces at checkpoints. Your father drinking tea. The explosion, the gap in the wall. You can see his leg. Suddenly Canada. Wind across the St. Lawrence River. There are no flying boats. Oh, Sagal, don’t come home. The phone pressed against your ear in the student union where someone is walking by with a pitcher of reddish beer. Crows in the sky like the broken pieces of someone who thinks, I could be, I should be, dead. What does it mean to dream of these things?
Notes. Toward.
Pomegranate. In an instant she found herself in the Place of Mourning. I return to my dissertation, and it looks completely different. I can’t understand it anymore. Oh, I understand the words, but I can’t comprehend why somebody would write them. It all seems so obvious: the chapter on gender, the chapter on animals, the chapter on the trace. I can’t work up the energy to reflect on the controversial translation of the word “cloister,” or even the fate of Taharqo of Qorm. “Did Taharqo ever return to the Land of Witches? Is it possible to identify him as the ‘southern lord’ described by an anonymous Egyptian scribe, who, ‘together with a vast company of mercenary soldiers, was swallowed by that pale crocodile, the Sea’?” This work, which used to excite me, now seems utterly remote, featureless, like a desert seen from an airplane window. While the “Account” itself, the “Lexicon,” and even the “Refutation”—these brim with light. Each word translatable into a dream.
I was in a building. It was made of brick. Every few steps a patch of grass. Old men were working at little desks. My mother offered me 7-Up in a gourd. There was a camel in the background with a saddle of aluminum foil.
The kitchenette in my dorm room had gotten smaller. I dropped a dish in the sink and it broke. I turned on the garbage disposal to grind up the pieces. A man stood behind me holding a wire, his face wrapped in a keffieh. He said everyone acted like me, that’s why the disposals were always getting broken.
I decided to go to the Land of Witches. “I’m going,” I told my mother. She grunted and told me to lie down. She offered me 7-Up in a gourd. “Don’t get up,” she said. Her necklace glinted in the moonlight that fell through the bars of the window. Who gave you that? I tried to ask.
My father was drinking tea. The wall crumbled. I was out back, at the tap in the courtyard. I was trying to wash out his socks. Money fell out of his sock and I cried. Crows flew low, close by. Their wingbeats whispered, “You will wear a black wedding dress.”
I decided to go the Land of Witches. “I’m going,” I told my brother. He was muffled in an enormous coat, with sandals on his feet. “Come with me,” I begged him. “Dream of pomegranates.” His feet were ashy and I realized we were standing in the snow.
Winter. Black bile. A cloister. A tooth.
I am going to the Land of Witches.
“I’m going,” I told my brother. He grunted and told me to lie down. He brought me a cup containing a few tablespoons of American soda that turned circles on my tongue, flat and sweet. “Don’t get up,” he said. Moonlight fell through the bars of the window and glinted on the gun against the wall. Who gave you that? I tried to ask. I think it was my father. Against my throat I could feel the gentle, comforting irritation of the thin gold necklace he gave me before he died.
I remembered my brother’s face the day I came home, that desperate brightness, every muscle tensed to keep him from slapping me.
Tonight he was all softness, touching my hair while the city shook. I clutched his hand. The noise grew louder and louder. A terrible clatter approaching. In the inferno of sound and light I understood why my dissertation had failed. No one can practice the Dream Science alone. Everything depends on the Festival of the Dreaming, when all the witches dream together. “Come with me,” I shouted at my brother, “dream of pomegranates.” He shook me off and crawled to the gun by the wall, moving like a snake or an orphaned child. When I rose from the bed he screamed at me to stay down. I crouched but reached for my papers on the table. Everything shook and I could read my writing in the leaping light. “Notes Toward a Dreamer’s Lexicon.” “Dusk,” I screamed. “The rattling of dry leaves.” My brother was shouting, the city was shouting, the sky was shouting. How will we fall asleep in this noise? I thought of Verken dreaming with her eyes open. “Dream with your eyes open,” I told my brother. The gun was at his shoulder, his gestures expert, fluid. My voice was raw. I tasted blood. Lightning. The door opened.
4. Notes Toward a Dreamer’s Lexicon
Pomegranate: Dusk. The rattling of dry leaves. Winter, black bile, a cloister, a tooth. Dream of pomegranates to enter the Place of Mourning.
Rabbit: Springtime. Erotic love. Silk sleeves. Ease after a long illness. Green.
Ice: The hidden life of things. Music, especially bells.
Bat: Magic. A holy place. A child.
Parsley: A feast.
Veil: Gentleness. A curtained window. Dawn.
Javelin: Movement, possibly from fear. A pounding heart.
Ostrich: A woman with plans. Dream of ostriches to enter the Place of Tents.
Fur: Unspoken longing. Lamplight. The river.
Boat: A new friend. A change in weather. Domestic uncertainty. An illness.
Cake: An intimate event.
Spider: Intellectual endeavors. A wound.
Wrist: Failure. Attachment to sorrow. A conspiracy.
Urine: Forgetfulness. Stone. A torch.
Cup: A fall.
Grapes: Jewelry. The Place of Emerald Noon. An exchange of gifts.
Pumpkin: Tears. Relief. A project begun at the proper time.
Fog: A walled city. The cry of a miracle vendor. Home.
Additional notes by Sagal Said
Milk: Moonlight. Mother. Toil. Circular thoughts. Buried rage. A hand.
Charcoal: Alchemy. Transfer. The sea at night.
Tea: Father. Exploding plaster. Ordinary death.
Gourd: Discovery. The act of overflowing.
American soda: Economic exploitation. Frustration. Healing. Love.
Wire: A threat.
Dishes: Whole: A beach. Broken: A storm. Disintegration.
Necklace: A gift. A chain. Constraint. Return. A debt.
5. The Travelers
We set off on a windless, moonlit night, a night that often returns to us, skimming along our pathway like a boat. At times we have even boarded this boat and passed into our own point of departure, into the beginning of our journey. Of course this origin moment is never the same. We find the identical silent town, the familiar moon suspended among the mobile towers, but passing on tiptoe through our Diviner’s old apartment, we discover a row of spoons laid out on the carpet. These spoons were certainly not in this positio
n on the night we left. We debate their meaning in whispers so as not to wake the household. The Mountaineer is for going on, the Harpist for exploring the rooms. Meanwhile, the Diviner discovers a flask in the otherwise empty birdcage. She takes a sip from the flask, which makes her shudder, and announces that we must descend the ladder. Sure enough, there is a ladder outside the window. The Mountaineer goes down first. The Diviner leaves a lock of hair on the couch for her son to find in the morning.
I, of course, have taken some paper and a bottle of ink from the cluttered old desk. As our Scribe, I am always in need of these materials. At the bottom of the ladder we find an afternoon in an insect-haunted restaurant that smells vaguely of scorched rice. This suits me very well, as it gives me the chance to arrange my papers at the table while the others order food. The Archivist and the Diviner argue over a word on one of the peeling posters, whether it means “palace” or “chair.” Among the papers I have taken I find a few penciled diagrams, perhaps the schoolwork of the Diviner’s son, and a number of notes on the kingdom of Kush that may have come from the hand of our own Sagal. Immediately the blue outside the skylight intensifies. The waiter brings us rice cooked with tomatoes, an oily mess we devour with delight in the suddenly splendid atmosphere, the atmosphere of a morning after dreams. The Archivist leans forward and stubs out her cigarette in excitement (a cigarette made, alas, with a scrap torn from my records—the Archivist thinks she’s returning them to the source of all dreams, while I mourn their loss—part of our longstanding argument about hope and cyclical time). The Archivist swings her legs down from their resting place on her enormous pack, which sits beside her on the floor, and plants her feet, ready for business. She seizes my pen and begins making notes on the notes, cross-referencing. “Museum,” she mutters. “Crocodile. Wedding. Trace.”
Tender : Stories Page 16