Gold Dust (Modern Arabic Literature)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  It was always like that. Yesterday, as the piebald tried to flee his fate, at the very height of his frenzied gallop, Ukhayyad had dozed off. He slept while hanging suspended from the camel’s tail. The rocks tore the skin from his feet, the bushes shredded his skin. And despite everything, despite the weariness and thirst and pain, he had slept. He did not know how or when that happened. At first, he had lost the sensation of pain. Then he lost the sensation of thirst. Then he slept as if he had passed out. If someone had told him this as a story, he wouldn’t have believed that it could happen. If he had not lived through the minutiae of the fantastical event, he would never have believed it. How powerful a human being is! Ukhayyad had not known so before this moment. Yes, a human was a trivial creature—so weak and insignificant that he could be killed even by mosquitoes. At the same time he was the strongest creature in the desert, fiercer than any wild beast.

  And now he had to think about how he would face the worst enemy one can have in the greater Sahara: thirst. This trial would be the greatest measure of his strength.

  Ukhayyad collapsed beneath the broom tree. He filled his mouth with its twigs and began to chew them, sucking on their bitter resins. My God, how bitter the broom is! He continued to chew and their narcotic effect began to flood through him, blunting his senses and numbing his limbs—and the pain began to recede. Soon, he stood up easily, feeling light and lively. With no time to lose, he hurried to the Mahri, holding the camel’s head in his arms for a few moments. The raw flesh of his neck was sticky to the touch. Poor creature. If his mate saw him like this, she would reject him forever. Just like the Devil does with humans sometimes.

  Beware infection, camel—now do you see what disease can do? It can turn a creature’s shape inside out! What will we do if you have lost your dappled color for good? Sheikh Musa says that perfection belongs only to God. That’s right—God’s blessings are never complete. There is no Garden on this earth. In this world you might enjoy your health, but beauty exists only to be lost. Perhaps it is for the best that perfection exists only for gods—if everyone was ugly, and no beauty invited the attention of the evil eye, then what malevolence could threaten us? Grotesqueness is a protection—and it offers a form of wisdom too.

  Ukhayyad hugged the camel and whispered into his ear, “We’ve gone halfway. Now we’ll go the remaining distance, the part that’ll be the hardest for me. All my water spilled out during our mad journey. Now you must save me. We’ll head for the nearest well in the lower valleys. Do not attempt to carry me to the oases. I’ll die before we get very far along that road. There’s not a single drop of water in me, I can’t store water like you. Do you understand? You do not want to lose your old friend, your new brother. Now—there’s no time to lose.”

  He looked for the reins and staggered dizzily, nearly falling to the ground. He clung to the Mahri’s neck and dug in the sand under his belly. There, he placed one end of the reins. He went to the other side of the camel and pulled on the leather strap. He pulled himself up to sit behind the Mahri’s hump and tied the reins around his waist. The position was not a comfortable one. He stretched out over the camel’s back, gluing himself to the wet flesh. The red flesh was sticky to his touch, the blood not yet dry. Ukhayyad’s body, now also naked, fused with the viscous flesh of the Mahri. Flesh met flesh, blood mixed with blood. In the past they had been merely friends. Today, they had been joined by a much stronger tie. Those who become brothers by sharing blood are closer than those who share parentage. A mother might give birth to two boys without their ever becoming brothers. As long as their blood does not mingle, they can never share this deeper bond. Becoming someone’s brother is easier said than done.

  He cinched the cord around his body and secured it to the back of the Mahri. Ukhayyad kicked him lightly, and the Mahri rose to his feet. He stood motionless for a moment, then began to move. He did not retrace the way they came, but headed south instead. They first passed through a valley, then climbed a ridge. There, camel and rider were swallowed up by the endless flatlands. Ukhayyad’s eyes melted into the limitless horizon. The camel walked on, with wide, firm steps—the steps of one ready to cross waterless wastes.

  It was midday, and ghosts danced before Ukhayyad’s eyes. Soon, he faded back into the shadows.

  9

  With the first fall, Ukhayyad found himself perched between consciousness and oblivion, in that interval between life and death. Using his teeth, he reattached his hand to the tail so quickly that he never left his semi-conscious state. Being in this no man’s land between heaven and hell inspired him to return to the trick he had used before. He tumbled and got back up over and over. He fell into a daze and, parched, licked at the urine when it trickled down the camel’s thigh. It had been divine inspiration to tie his hand to the camel’s tail.

  He imagined that the camel was descending from a tall mountain. At that point, he transcended all bounds of consciousness and crossed over again into the shadows.

  Returning from his brutal journey into half-conscious oblivion, Ukhayyad found himself atop the well at Awal. He groped around its stony lip for a bucket, but found none. With his teeth, he untied his hand from the camel. The strap had carved a deep gash around his wrist, and now he wore a bracelet of blood. He felt no pain, nothing but sticky fluid. He licked his hand, but tasted nothing. Things were covered in a haze of fog and shadow. His eyes had lost their ability to see a long time ago, perhaps because he had lingered so long in that interval between this world and the hereafter. But life’s force stirred his dead limbs, filling them with an unvanquished will to continue moving.

  Ukhayyad now fastened the leather reins to his ankle. He tied the knot securely and examined the place where the strap joined the tail. He stumbled, stupefied, trying to locate the Mahri’s neck, then head. He wanted to tell the camel something before he plunged into the bottomless well. He never doubted whether he would return. At that peculiar moment, he thought about what Sheikh Musa said about death: it was closer than your jugular vein and yet farther than the ends of the earth. He wanted to tell the piebald this. He wanted to tell him what to do as he plunged into the abyss. The piebald lavished the young man with attention, covering him with his lips and licking his face. Ukhayyad was unable to see the other’s eyes and unable to utter a word. He had lost the ability to speak. First he had lost his sight, and now he had lost his voice. He raised his right hand and patted the Mahri’s head. Man and camel spoke to one another, as brothers, by way of gesture. His head began to spin and he looked for the mouth of the well. He stepped out, over the lip, his unfettered leg dangling over the pit. The thought of death never occurred to him. He thought only about what he would say to Sheikh Musa, “Death truly lies closer than your jugular vein, and yet, it is still very difficult for a man to die. Death lies beyond the furthest end of the world. When you arrive at a well, of course there will be no pail. Or you might find a pail, but don’t then expect to find the well that goes with it. It’s always like that.” He held onto the stones that lined the lip of the well. Then he began to crawl into the hole. He saw nothing, heard nothing, and felt nothing. He struggled, using his hands to clamber down the first rows of stone and hoping to avoid a free fall that would yank the strap from the camel’s tail. His descent was automatic, unconscious. He lowered himself into the rock, until his strength—the limbs that had been smashed by journey and injury—betrayed him and he fell into the abyss.

  An entire lifetime passed in the fraction of a second that came between the stone lip of the well and the water below. An eon went by, taking him back, beyond the day he was born. During that moment, he saw his own birth pass before his eyes. He saw himself as he fell from his mother’s womb into the chasm. He heard the trilling of she-jinn on Jebel Hasawna. He saw the shadows of houris in paradise. It was one of these dark-eyed virgins wearing a diaphanous mantle who then caught him and gently placed him down into heaven’s river. Here, in this river of paradise, he began to drink.

  Then he b
egan to choke and gag. He did not vomit in the well itself, but outside. If he could have opened his eyes, he would have seen a vision of the piebald, and the rays of the sun, glaring sharply like fiery spurs. The piebald had carried out his unspoken command—he had pulled him out of that freshwater sea.

  Once more he returned to the space between, and ascended, one more time, into the world of shadows.

  10

  When the herders brought their camels to the well, they found the young man’s emaciated, bloody body stretched out naked beneath its edge. His foot was still fastened to the tail of a thoroughbred Mahri that looked as if he had been skinned alive. The camel stood over his head, using his body to shield him from the scorching sun. They carried him into the shade of a nearby lote tree. Under that thick canopy crown, they dunked his head into a bucket and poured water over him. An old herder hastened to light a fire and heat a kettle of water. The man rifled through his belongings and returned with a handful of fenugreek seeds that he proceeded to cook. The camel herder served the broth to him with a spoon, all the while holding his head like mothers do when they breastfeed their children.

  A few days later, Ukhayyad began to talk. He spoke to the old man about the piebald, “Did you know he was a piebald? Have you ever seen a piebald Mahri in the desert? Don’t pay any attention to his condition right now—it’s just a passing sickness. His original colors will come back. They have to come back.”

  The herders exchanged looks among themselves. The old herder watched him with intense curiosity, then smiled a benign smile. The smile of one who has seen much in the world.

  Ukhayyad asked abruptly, “Do you think he’s lost his original color?”

  The old man said, while pouring tea from one pot to another, “Lord only knows. The Sufi sheikhs of Ghadamès say that everything returns to its original form in the end. The seedling grows into the broom tree. The broom tree blossoms. Its flowers turn to fruit. Fruit brings forth seeds which fall to the ground. If his original form was piebald, then that color will return to his form in time. Be patient, and do not fear.”

  Then he smiled again.

  “If his colors don’t return, his health will have no meaning,” Ukhayyad replied, impatiently. “His cure has already cost us so much.”

  “Would you have preferred to purchase his health without suffering?”

  “Without his dappled color, he has no health.” His fear that the Mahri might have lost his original color for good stuck in his throat. He forgot the sweet taste of health and rescue from death. The herders clothed him and gave him a veil and supplies. They escorted him as far as the end of the Hamada desert. There, they bid him farewell and returned to the lower valleys where they made their camps.

  Shame prevented Ukhayyad from bringing the piebald into the camp while he was in this state. Using a cord the herders had given him, Ukhayyad tethered him in a pasture just north of the plain where his kin’s encampments stretched far and wide.

  Of all his belongings, nothing remained but the reins. He coiled them around his wrist, determined to preserve them as a memento of his journey. They consisted of a polished strap, painstakingly braided and branded with geometric designs that had faded from long use. That thin leather strap had been the sole material connecting him to life, the cord that took him from his purgatory, where he hovered in the shadows, and delivered him back to the desert again. It was the thread that had bound him to the piebald during that first mad journey and had joined their destinies. It had held him again during his second journey that stretched between the mouth of the well to the surface of the waters. These reins marked that distance between one reality and the other. They embodied the threshold where he had heard the howls of the she-jinn of Jebel Hasawna and where he had seen the houris of paradise. In these reins was distilled the moment in which he was given drink from heaven’s stream. In them was also an eon that measured the whole of his life in the desert. The reins marked the moment when he tumbled headlong into an abyss, lighting his soul with a dark flame that would never go out. Without this thread connecting one extreme and the other, that mystical moment would never have come into being. Without this thread, he would never have seen that mysterious spark whose kernel he was unable to divulge, even to himself. Is this spark what wine drinkers see in their moment of abandon? Is it what the Sufi sheikhs of the Tijaniya brotherhood referred to when they spoke of their encounter with God? He had seen dervishes in the Adrar oasis, spinning wildly when suddenly one of them flew into ecstasy. The man had pulled out his knife and plunged it into his chest, expecting to complete the journey back to God, hoping to savor an encounter with the infinite. Sheikhs, like Sheikh Musa of the Qadiriya sect, accused the Tijanis of heresy and fought them wherever they met. War broke out from time to time between adherents of the two sects. The hostilities had even reached far into the desert wilderness itself, carried to the distant pastures by wandering dervishes and itinerant travelers who accompanied the long-distance caravans. Had he seen a vision of this magnificent fate in that flash of a moment?

  The sheikh visited him in the tent Ukhayyad’s father had erected specially for receiving the visitors and well-wishers who came to congratulate him on his safe return from the vast, labyrinthine desert. The sheikh said, “A beautiful thing can be bought only at great price. And health is the most beautiful thing in this world. So, have no regrets about what you have been through.”

  At nightfall, the two went off alone into the open desert. “Did you suffer much?” The sheikh asked, seeking to comfort him.

  Ukhayyad did not answer. Something else was worrying him. Impatient, he asked, “Will the piebald go back to his original state?”

  The sheikh asked him to explain with a nod of his head. The young man asked more bluntly, “Will his color return?”

  “God is beautiful and He loves beauty and camels,” Musa smiled in the twilight. “You’ve paid for his cure with much suffering. If it is perfection you want, then you will have to pay for that as well.”

  Ukhayyad did not understand. The sheikh clarified, “Think about it. He needs to be cleansed.”

  “Cleansed?”

  “Purified—he needs to be gelded.”

  “Gelded?”

  “What else? Didn’t we agree that everything has its price?”

  “. . .”

  “His whole body carries the mark of sin. His body is an offense in itself. We need to remove the cause at the root.”

  The young man stood silent. “I cannot come to this decision by myself,” he eventually said. “I need to consult with others. I have to think about it some.”

  Then Ukhayyad turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  11

  The harm you’ve caused us was enough,” Ukhayyad said when he and the camel were off by themselves again in the pasture. “Women cause nothing but headaches, don’t they?” By now, the camel’s new skin had toughened, and his wounds had mended. The ghastly redness had disappeared. But the camel’s coat had yet to grow back. When the Mahri did not comment on his proposition, the young men continued: “Sheikh Musa says the root cause must be removed. Splendor is no easy thing to attain, everything demands its own sacrifice. You won’t be in pain for long. We will do it during the summer. Summer is the best season for it.”

  Agitated, the piebald reared his head. Was this his way of showing that he rejected the idea? “No, no—wait,” Ukhayyad blurted out. “Don’t rush into decisions that you’ll later regret. What happened to you should never have happened. Warriors have no business contracting contagious skin diseases. Purebreds should not allow themselves to get mange. Have you seen any other piebald with mange? You’re a splendid creature, you’re beautiful. But beauty can’t be bought with mere money. For your looks, I am ready to pay with my life. To be the most beautiful thoroughbred in the Sahara—you have no idea what that would be like. Do you think I would ever do something that would cause you harm? Do you have so little trust in me?”

  The piebald opened his j
aws as wide as they would go. The outlines of a wicked laugh twinkled in his keen eyes. “I get it,” Ukhayyad also laughed. “You mean to say that females are more beautiful still! No—don’t lie, by God! Women are beautiful, yes. Even lovely. But so are snakes. And like snakes, they bite. You’ve been bitten by one, and look what her venom did to you the last time. Wasn’t that enough? Have some shame—turn your back on the ways of the Devil!”

  He stroked the Mahri’s neck and inspected his hide, whispering, “When we get through this ordeal, we’ll begin something new. We’ll learn how to dance. Purebred camels must know how to dance, and you have never tried. It’ll make you forget all about love. Trust me. You’ll soar through the air, and sail through the heavens. It’s more dignified to see God in heaven, isn’t it, than to chase after silly she-camels on earth?”

  He sat in front of the camel in the open desert, his hands wrapped around his knees. “There’s no way around it,” he said. “Without purification, you will never attain beauty and never meet God. Without purity, nothing. I admit it is a nasty business, but we have no other choice.”

  Then summer arrived and with it came time to perform all manner of work. Ukhayyad disappeared, using the pretext of traveling to the oasis of Gariyat to retrieve camels that had strayed there. He left the piebald in the hands of executioners. Only Sheikh Musa was aware that Ukhayyad had left, not to chase after camels, but to flee from the appointed day.

  The day after he departed, the men gathered around the poor camel. They spent the morning struggling to remove the scourge from his body. They spent the afternoon, in accordance with custom, making the camel swallow his own testicles.