The diviner had the audacity to ask, “Who departed, Master?”
He did not reply; instead he continued grooming the bird’s feathers with all the affection of a mother combing her virgin daughter’s hair on her wedding night. His eyes circled their faces, moving with the ecstasy of someone moved by singing, because he saw what he wasn’t observing, because he saw what he had longed to observe for the longest time. He didn’t see them. They were all certain that he didn’t see them.
He said, “You can make your preparations. You can dodge the horizons as soon as tomorrow. You can flee from here, but realize that you won’t be able to flee from your souls. I know you want to flee from your souls, but you attribute that desire to the Law, because you are cowards. Yes, you are cowards. Ha, ha, ha. …”
He laughed. The leader laughed. He laughed out loud, actually, offensively.
He didn’t just laugh; he borrowed the language of the street and humiliated the council. He characterized them as cowards and denigrated the Law. So was the person sitting opposite them the leader they knew or had the jinn succeeded in possessing him, there in the sanctuary, in Retem Valley, and substituted for him another creature, a hateful member of their jinn community?
The diviner said, “You’re feverish, Master. It’s best for people with a fever to rest in bed.”
The hero Ahallum remarked, “My master is ill. The best thing would be to send for the herbalist.”
But a stern sage threatened him with his forefinger. “No, he’s crazy. Only madmen speak like this. So send for the sorcerer, not the herbalist.”
The leader guffawed again, laughing sarcastically. Then he embraced the dead bird and asked, “What’s the point of all this, given that we’re setting out tomorrow or perhaps today? Haven’t you said that travel is the antidote for every ill? Let’s go! Prepare! In fact, rise and depart now. Now! Now! Hee, hee, hee. …”
Silence descended over the council, an ancient silence, a mysterious silence, an aloof silence, a hostile silence.
The next morning the diviner appeared before the tribe and made the pronouncement they always feared, the phrase they shied away from just as they shied away from fire—more than they shied away from a raid, more than from an epidemic: “Amghar yazzrenghin: the leader has preceded us.”
Children, women, and weak-hearted men began to sob, but the sages yielded to an ancient oasis, to the ancient silence, the stern, hostile, aloof silence.
______________
7. Disproportionate, dissimilar.
IV
THE CHAPLET
What is love—this ill-natured thing that makes enemies even of friends?
Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy, 6.24
1
The first garland was plaited like a girl’s braids.
He came to her tent shortly before sunset and placed the noble garlands on her lap. She leaned forward to examine the many strands. Then the breath of the mysterious blossoms perfumed her face. She noticed the flowers’ slender inflorescences (which young men compared to virgins’ locks and avoided referring to as crests) that intertwined in intimate embrace. Two side stems, which were crowned by white flowers with five petals, twisted around a central stem, which was also crowned by white flowers with five petals, the way a snake in the forest twists around the branch of an acacia tree till the branch, in turn, twists around the body of the snake, as the sages of those tribes say. The central stalk, which was crowned by almost imperceptible flowers, borrowed the flexibility of strands of hair to twine around the bodies of the two side stems. Then these slender bodies vanished in this intimate embrace. Of this marriage, all that showed was the soft, tender flowers’ fuzz that evoked the essence of a conquered creature. This being curved with the bend of a taut bow, meeting in a part that resembled a bow because in the rigor of the weaving, in the precision of the craftsmanship, in the inchoate, insane desire to suppress the stem, to hide the stalk, and to obliterate the three stems until nothing showed in the braid but retem blossoms, the juncture of the intertwining braids became a noble garland of white pearls.
The creator of this chaplet had not been content to make a single garland; that evening he presented the beauty a whole cluster of them. The beauty inhaled the perfume of the flowers piled in her lap and smiled. She smiled the type of smile that sorcerers normally see only in people “who have spent a long time talking about eternity” (as they describe hermits) and raised her fingers toward the void. The lover saw the row of her lower teeth when she laughed. She laughed in an odd way and then sneezed twice.
2
He had settled in the tribe’s camp a few months back and had attended the evening parties of the young women in the moonlight. He had, however, not rolled around ecstatically on the ground, and the jinn of ecstatic trancing had not seized hold of him. He had sat off by himself in the open. By sitting apart, he had seemed to be a loner like all foreigners and intimidating like senior jinn. Some individual tribesmen, however, affirmed that they had observed him swaying in response to the music and emitting incoherent sounds in response to the vibration of the single string of the imzad, which sought inspiration for its sweet tunes from the stars in the heavens and from the kingdoms of the Unknown. It was, however, certain as well that the ecstatic jinn had not seized him in the young women’s circle and that he had not tranced along with other fellows his age.
Suddenly, he stopped attending the full moon parties.
He stopped attending the evening parties and appeared in the grazing lands, where he long kept company with the herdsmen of the lower valleys. Inquiring minds also followed him there and returned to the campsite to say they had heard him sing unfamiliar songs that reminded them of the drone of the jinn in the blue-black mountain caverns. They had been unable to make out the tunes and hadn’t understood a single word of his songs. When they questioned the herdsmen about the stranger’s conduct, they said he hadn’t sung at their soirées and hadn’t spoken either. When they had asked him to join in their nightly singing, he had replied that foreigners have a different law and different songs. Since, of all the desert people, herdsmen are the most knowledgeable about the behavior of foreigners, they abandoned and avoided him.
He returned to the tribe.
He returned to the tribe, and then gossips discovered his interest in the poetess.
3
Other people said that his infatuation with her began before he went to the grazing lands, because passionate lovers are wont to seek refuge there. Fleeing to the wilderness was something everyone did when time struck them with the blow called in the law of love a “blow with the talon.” This phrase was borrowed by passionate lovers from the lexicon of sorcery to attribute to themselves. Joining the herdsmen was always just an excuse to forget and an attempt made by everyone smitten by this blow, by this ailment that was the only one sorcerers couldn’t treat: love! Meanwhile another group affirmed that the stranger’s ailment had not begun until after his return from the homeland where lovers typically buried their lethal ailment. But everyone knows that foreigners are a group who are extremely hard to fathom. Everyone also knows that the stranger’s secret would not be a true secret if love’s disease did not disclose its nature.
The tribe’s stranger also harbored another secret typical of any stranger, but many thought that his true secret had not begun until he became interested in the poetess. So they repeatedly intimated that love actually was his only secret.
Fate arranged for their first meeting to be at one of the nocturnal festivities when the full moon glowed high overhead and its alternative daylight inundated the wasteland. A bird fluttered in the breast then, and people yearned to reach the land of longing. Since they yearned, they sang, because singing is the only wing that can reach the domain of the homeland and enter the realm of the lost dominion. The poet sang with the ancient voice of longing. Then the bird fidgeted in the cage but did not escape. Other throats repeated the song after her, and the bird fluttered some more and beat its wings feve
rishly to fly off into space. Tears leapt from their eyes, and their breasts were oppressed by a mysterious sorrow. People conscious of the secret tried to vent their emotions by screaming. They shouted until their throats grew hoarse. Then they leapt about, danced, and raced off into the open countryside. But the captive bird attempted to overpower them; so they beat their heads with rocks till their foreheads flowed with blood. They crawled around on their knees and writhed on the ground like madmen. They achieved ecstasy only after a painful journey.
When the party ended, the stranger accompanied the tribe’s poet to her tent.
After that, they were frequently observed wandering together in the wasteland and in the valleys near the settlements.
4
She placed the bundle of chaplets in a corner of the tent and hung one luxuriant necklace from the post. She was sneezing, coughing, and struggling with dizziness and a headache. She lay down beneath the tent post, and the garland dangled over her head. It hung down far enough to brush her nose. She closed her eyes, and a smile traveled across her lips—the same indescribable smile that the tribe’s sorcerers consider a characteristic of anyone granted the ability to see clearly into eternity.
Her face soon turned red and then pale. She felt she was suffocating and groaned, gasping for air. She raised her slender fingers in the air as she had done when she received the gift, but her palm fell and landed on the ground. She crawled out of the tent and began to vomit loudly.
5
He came to visit her the next evening. He came bearing a new cluster of garlands, which he placed in her lap before sitting down at a distance. He spoke about the desert’s intentions and the disposition of the Qibli wind but avoided any discussion of poetry. She struggled with nausea and dizziness and felt short of breath. All the same she continued to toy with the mysterious flower petals while suppressing a mad cough in her chest. When the visitor left, she placed the new cluster atop of the other one, which was piled in a corner of the tent. Then she hung a new garland on the tent post as before, and the fragrance of retem blossoms assailed her. She collapsed and knelt by the post. She felt paralysis spread through her entire body and called out to her slave for help. She asked him to summon the woman diviner.
The diviner lit a fire into which she threw a handful of wormwood and another light-colored piece of something with a foul odor. She said it was an efficacious drug for treating illnesses of the Spirit World. When she saw the questioning look in the beauty’s eyes, she explained, “You’ve inhaled the sweat of jinn. You must avoid loitering in the wasteland at dusk.”
6
Neither the handful of wormwood nor the pale-colored piece of something with a foul odor succeeded in curing the malady. In fact, her headache grew worse and she was running a high fever. Strange sores appeared on her body. She began to rave, to sing, and to waste away.
Her friends rushed to her tent and sat near her head. The male diviner was finally summoned. A tall, thin creature approached the tent wearing a somber veil and holding a handful of pebbles. He sat at the entrance of the tent and started to shift the pebbles from his right fist to his left and then back to the right again. The bevy of young women noticed that he leaned over when a pebble fell; he bent down with the concern of someone who has lost a treasure. He searched the dirt and didn’t relax till he found that stone. The women present affirmed that there was some secret about this procedure and that the pebbles were some mysterious sorcerer’s talisman.
The diviner spoke after a long silence. He clenched his fist around the stones and ordered, “Burn the retem!”
No one understood; her friends exchanged glances. The slaves glanced mockingly at the diviner. But the diviner commanded again, “Burn the retem!”
The questioning looks turned into true astonishment; everyone was dumbfounded. How could these extraordinary garlands woven from retem blossoms be burned? The retem blossom is the splendor of the desert and the favorite flower of all the tribes. Hermits have discerned in its fragrance the exhalations of the lost oasis. Virgins wash themselves with retem blossom water on their wedding nights. Parties are thrown to rejoice at its flowering in the first days of spring; poems are sung by the female poets in honor of its beauty. Heroes and mounted warriors speak of its beauty. What was wrong with the tribe’s diviner that he would suspect the retem blossoms and order this sacred body burnt? One of the slaves started to remove the bundles piled in the corner, but the girl leapt from her sick bed and pointed her forefinger at him.
He retreated, but the diviner said, “If you want to be cured, order your slaves to burn the retem and dispatch someone to bring back a scrap of the stranger’s clothing!”
Doubt was still apparent in their eyes; the pronouncements of diviners always provoke doubt. The diviner does not recycle statements or advice. The diviner would not be a diviner if he did not invent a statement that no one else had said before. The diviner must say something uncouth.
He put the handful of pebbles in his pocket, rose, and threw out the piles of retem blossoms himself. He left these outside and returned to the tent pole, but the lovesick woman had reached it first and grasped the garland, which she hid in the confines of her flowing thawb. She swayed and one of her friends steadied her. Then the poetess lay down on her bed and smiled enigmatically.
The diviner lit a fire and fed the retem blossoms to it. He proclaimed with a gruffness befitting his occupation: “If you all don’t bring me a scrap of the stranger’s clothing, the girl will die!”
7
What truly baffled the tribe was that when they sent men and women out that night to bring the diviner a scrap from the stranger’s clothes, these emissaries found no shred of clothing belonging to him. They searched his residence unannounced and scoured the neighboring valleys where he had often gone to make retem garlands for his beloved. They sent a mounted warrior to the distant pastures and another messenger to the dark mountain caves where he had sought shelter the previous winter. But they found no garment in his dwelling, not even a scrap of linen. In the valleys they found no place where he could have hidden anything, and the mounted warrior returned from the grazing lands empty-handed. From the southern mountains arrived a messenger who said he had found nothing in the caves but the paintings of the first people. The sages felt certain that the stranger was a sorcerer and repeated to one another a clause of the ancient Law: “A secret sleeps in the heart of every stranger. There is always a reason when a son of the desert leaves his own people.”
In her tent, the beauty began to expire. The fever intensified, and she experienced difficulty breathing. In the middle of the night she surrendered the most precious gift in life—breath—and began to fade into the distance.
She ebbed away without the enigmatic smile ever leaving her lips.
Her girlfriends said that she had died apparently the happiest person in the world!
8
A throng gathered at the entrance of her tent, and the leader arrived. He surprised the group, and the crowds fell back to make way for him, separating into two lines. He halted in front of the diviner and asked angrily, “What’s the meaning of this?”
The diviner did not reply. He bowed and smiled. The leader repeated his question in the same tone. Then the diviner took him by the hand and drew him out into the open countryside. He said, “I wasn’t the one, Master, who gave the stranger permission to enjoy a stay in the tribe’s encampments.”
The leader shouted, “Do you want the tribes to say I violated the Lost Book and expelled a stranger who asked for safe refuge? Yes. I gave the stranger permission to stay with the tribe; I didn’t give permission to a sorcerer!”
The diviner replied coldly, “He’s not a sorcerer, Master.”
“The whole tribe says he is. If he weren’t a sorcerer, how could he have spirited the maiden away with sacred retem blossoms?”
“Among some tribes in the forestlands, a young man who loves a girl may kill her.”
“Kill her?”
“And if a girl loves a young man, she poisons his food!”
“I won’t deny that you know more than anyone else about the tribes of the forestlands, but I’ve never heard about this hideous tribe before.”
“There they think that the lover doesn’t win his beloved unless he removes her from the desert!”
“Fetishists! This is the religion of those fetishists!”
“Our stranger fell truly in love with our maiden; so he took her!”
“He took her?”
“Yes, this is the way they talk. They say, ‘He took her,’ when he has killed her.”
He was silent for a moment and then continued, “If you all had brought me a scrap of his clothing, I would have known how to prevent his foul deed. But the clever rogue understood this and was careful not to leave behind any clothing from the very first day.”
“I sent riders in pursuit of him. They’ll bring him back bound with palm-fiber ropes.”
“The riders won’t bring him back.”
“How can you be so certain?”
‘‘I know this community. They’re never caught.”
“Is he a human stranger or a jinni from the tribes of the Spirit World?”
The diviner was silent. Then he smiled enigmatically. He rolled a stone with his sandal and said almost in a whisper, “But he will return.”
The leader stared at him before remarking, “I see you speak as if this were a certainty.”
The diviner limited his response to a nod. Then the leader asked, “Did you read this in the bones of sacrificial animals?”
New Waw, Saharan Oasis (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 5