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

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  The leader repeated solemnly, “I have never doubted that.”

  3

  The moon didn’t budge at all from its heavenly throne. The perceived distance had not changed once. The horizon had yet to give any glad tidings of the journey’s end. The disc had continued to hang over their heads. The wasteland had continued to generate empty expanse after empty expanse, to spawn hills after hills, to sprout mountains after mountains, to cast forth plains after plains, and to split the earth with trenches, gorges, passes, valleys, and ravines. The two men met chasms face on as the distance swallowed terrifying crevasses, leaving gaping mouths behind them to become part of the opposite horizon. But the distance did not yield, and the dark ravines were interminable. These came from the north, flowing down from the crests of distant plateaus, plowing through the earth to create—with earlier torrents—a path to the southern lowlands before flowing into the waters of the great lake on the shores of which Waw had once stood.

  After a silence that lasted an extremely long time, he complained, “How long the distances are! How enormous the desert is! When will the traveler ever reach his destination?”

  The leader replied, “The destiny of the traveler is to submit to the route. The destiny of the nomad is to forget about distance. The sole antidote to distance is forgetfulness.”

  He asked with amazement, “Doesn’t the wanderer dream of the blessing of arriving one day?”

  The leader asked, “How does it benefit the nomad to dream of the blessings of an arrival when he delights in his travel? Won’t travel in this case become the traveler’s goal?”

  He yielded to the leader’s argument: “My master is right. I forgot that we are a nomadic nation. I forgot that we are a lineage whose destiny is nomadism, a lineage that does not care to celebrate arrival, because it knows that arrival is a shackle. We travel the path, because ever since antiquity we have made our living as nomads. The root of my fears, though, Master, is a dread of the labyrinth and isn’t based on any desire to arrive.”

  The leader rolled away some stones that ricocheted off each other across the expanse, generating a syncopated rhythm. The leader asked, “Why should a nomad fear the labyrinth since he doesn’t think of arriving as his goal? Doesn’t travel in this case become a maze in a labyrinth?”

  He replied, “I agree with my master, but my master also knows that the people of the desert fear no trial more than the labyrinth. Half of the talismans fastened to their chests were created to ward off the ordeal of the labyrinth.”

  The leader commented, “Desert people only seek what they fear. They passionately desire only what they hate. They only request protection from those they fear. Don’t they attach sticks of torha wood to their dwellings to protect them from the evil of envious eyes,10 even though they know it’s a tree inhabited by tribes of jinn? Don’t they consider the jinn their enemies? Then we see them rush to assist the jinn when wanting to learn news of relatives who have been long absent on trips.”

  He smiled beneath his black veil again and said, “You’re right, Master. Nomads are always like this. Probably they have learned to sense the opposite in things because they have embraced the teachings of Wantahet, who taught them sorcery and extolled the capacity of desert lands to hide behind a borrowed veil.”

  The leader concurred: “I confess to you today that I am one of the greatest admirers of this ignoble one’s arguments, even though I’m equally certain that the warnings of the Law against his wiles should not be taken lightly.”

  He smiled and asked mischievously, “Would my master have been able to state this view publicly while presiding over the Council of Sages?”

  He glanced stealthily at his companion, but the leader was quick to reply, “Can a man state in public what he truly thinks after surrendering his neck to other people and allowing himself to be shackled by sovereignty? You know better than anyone else how openly I struggled against the chains of leadership. But I finally yielded, not to humor the nobles—as dolts have assumed—but to obey the will of the fates that made me my predecessor’s sole nephew on his sister’s side. Today, now that the same fates have unshackled me and set me on a path that is beyond people’s control and that the days do not alter, I will not hide from you my delight at my divestment. Oh, my longtime confidant, you don’t realize that divestiture is a treasure; only one who has experienced it knows how sweet it is. Divestiture is the law of those who travel the route to the Western Hammada. So be patient till you try it. Then don’t hesitate to bring me the news of your pleasure! Does my friend think I would choose him for my companion if I hadn’t discovered that divestment is Waw, for which we have exhausted ourselves, searching all the desert’s routes? I have always thought of leadership as a curse I did not choose and have always stated this view in public, because—from the heaven of divestment—I dare say that leadership is a million curses and that domination is an affliction that does not differ from any other plague. So today I acknowledge to you that I not only could not state in public then any opinion about anything—not just about Wantahet—but couldn’t scratch my head in the council without upsetting the sages! So are you upset today that I sing the praises of divestiture?”

  He was silent while they covered a short distance. Then, resuming the discussion, he seemed to reconsider his words: “We began by talking about the labyrinth. I don’t know how we progressed in the conversation to divestiture!”

  With the same zeal, the leader replied, “Doesn’t the confidant see that the labyrinth is one of divestment’s visages? Be careful, though, not to mix the labyrinth with divestiture in a single vessel, because heaven wanted to raise divestment several degrees above the labyrinth to prevent weak souls from aspiring to it.”

  He abandoned this discussion and spoke as if remembering something he had long forgotten: “But doesn’t my master think it’s time to bed down for the night?”

  The leader answered casually, “Why should we bed down for the night when we don’t feel tired? Didn’t the forefathers teach us that the noblest trips are nocturnal?”

  He responded in a tone that sounded skeptical: “Doesn’t it seem to my master that this night trip doesn’t care to end?”

  The leader replied immediately, “This is the night reserved for people traveling on the route to the Western Hammada. If night didn’t dominate this Hammada, why would the ancients have dubbed it ‘The Sunset Hammada’? You should learn to forget excessively hot days and enjoy eternally moonlit nights.”

  They had not gone much farther along the path when other doubts flooded his breast. “I’ve wanted to draw my master’s attention to a certain matter since the start of our trip, but it slipped my mind for some reason. I’m just discovering that we’ve traveled for a time without any food or water. Can a wanderer forgive himself for a mistake like this?”

  The leader responded with a question, “Has my friend felt hungry or suffered from thirst? Does it hurt a wanderer to forget food and water if he is shielded from hunger and thirst? Don’t you know that travelers on this road don’t need to carry food or water?”

  He did not mask his astonishment: “The truth is that I haven’t felt hungry or thirsty. If there’s anything under heaven’s dome that can astonish me, Master, it is for a desert wanderer not to need food or water.”

  The leader kicked many stones and crushed a thick, dry plant before he replied, “The traveler on the Western Hammada road doesn’t experience thirst because he doesn’t experience suns or days. He isn’t afflicted by hunger, because he has dispensed with the land of creation that belongs to the children of creation. Leave vanities to vain people and walk with me to the place where passing clouds have freely deposited their copious rain!”

  Almost prayerfully, he asked, “Does my master mean to bring us a rainfall that we have despaired of receiving for generations?”

  The leader replied with a promise that the tongue did not sully: “If certainty had not been my talisman with regard to the existence of copious rainfa
ll, I wouldn’t have dared choose my only confidant to accompany me!”

  4

  The barren land underwent a transformation.

  The earth’s mien grew softer, and the desert began to dispense with some of its grimness, gloom, and grayness. Then brilliant clay patches, which were covered with scattered, pale-colored gravel, were clearly visible, spreading in extensive, circular expanses culminating in low hills. But their crests were spread with rocks that differed from those of the Eastern Hammada. They were brighter in color, their size was smaller, and their appearance was gentler and softer. In many places the expanses of pebbles led to shallow valleys near the riverbeds. The leader told him that these are the earth’s daughters, which gather the rains of the northern mountains to bring to the valleys of the Western Hammada. In these shallow ravines the two men found not only the plants’ fleeting green but areas that had plentiful mires, other clay-rich lands where water was still pouring from them, and rocky riverbeds over which the heavenly spring glimmered in the moonlight. They discovered that water was still flowing.

  The guide cried out, “We’ve finally reached the shores of the transient clouds!”

  The leader added that the earth of the Western Hammada possessed qualities that the desert had not granted to any other land, because layers of dirt had accumulated atop the surface of the naked land and throughout the year it enjoyed a more temperate climate than those of the four corners of the desert. Its sky possessed an everlasting purity, and rains did not fall on it directly but arrived from the distant northern highlands via wadis, ravines, and trenches. The ravines and shallow trenches watered the nearby plains, and the washes carried the torrents to the lower deserts. This water was not merely generous with the earth but accumulated in caverns and caves while creating astonishing fens that ruminants visited throughout the summer months and that thirsty caravans, nomads, and wayfarers sought. What was left of this noble liquid after satisfying the needs of these deep caverns liberally provided for the depths of the great lake at the far end of the sandy desert, thanks to the lay of the intervening land. For this reason, desert dwellers said that the sandy Zellaf Desert was the desert most abundantly endowed with water and never tired of repeating a maxim that their tongues converted into a time-honored proverb whenever they affirmed that only the Spirit World knows what treasures the sandy desert hides.

  The grass became more plentiful in the beds of the ravines, and in other tracts the vegetation grew increasingly dense and became real grass meadows. But the two men did not discover the riches of the expansive plains and deep valleys until they had traversed many mountain passes.

  Deep in the valleys, retem shrubs were in bloom, the crests of the acacias were turning green, the jujube were ripening, and this thirsty tree was absorbing a generous draught of water as its thorns turned green and its tapered tips softened till they started to resemble the stings of scorpions. From the groves, startled mola-mola birds rose, and other birds sang prophecies in the tufts of the acacias while fledglings chirped in unison from clumps of grass.

  The plains that lie between the gaps of the wadis were also teeming with plants. The fragrance of the flowers rose in the air and greeted the men in the valleys with a scent in which retem blossoms dominated. He drew the edges of his veil away from his nostrils to inhale the rich fragrance, which left him feeling tipsy. Tears came to his eyes, and he stumbled. So he quickly pulled the veil over his nose again. In the plains, which were carpeted with grass, it wasn’t just flocks of birds that were circulating—herds of gazelles were grazing everywhere, racing across the grass. They plucked flower petals deliberately and lifted their heads, which were marked with white, to gaze into the distance while enjoying themselves and chewing. At the edge of the plain a wild goat leaned forward, bowed his two long, symmetrical horns, and began to scrape the earth with his hoof. He pawed away a tuft that rose some inches above the plain’s surface and extended his striped muzzle to pull out a truffle. He gnawed off the top half and left the rest still in the belly of the earth. The guide called out, “I bet we’ll find truffles too!”

  But the scent of the truffles had found its way to his nose even before he heard the leader’s call. He drew his veil away from his nostrils again. He wailed like a man possessed and then released a long, painful moan that resembled a dying gasp from an ailing chest afflicted with death’s intoxication. He raced across the earth, dug out a truffle with his finger, raised it to his nose, and released another moan that was even longer than the first.

  Birds hid their nests among fasis plants, bird’s-foot trefoil, in order to conceal their fledglings from the hands of wanderers. From childhood experience he had learned that birds do not merely use this strategy to hide their nestlings but also to protect the nest itself. If a nest is discovered and the bird realizes that a hand has touched it, he will abandon it forever and fly far away to search for a location that no creature’s hand can reach. In his childhood he had discovered that birds do not merely sacrifice empty nests but abandon their eggs as well if they find that human hands have touched them. A bird would stop singing and circle the nest for days during this mourning period. Then he would depart to another land where there is no trace of our filthy species.

  5

  In the vastness of these plains stood mounds of stones and many tombs of the forefathers. The leader provided good news that his tongue did not defile: “I promise we’ll reach the homeland shortly.”

  He asked reverently, “Is the existence of these tombs of the ancients a sign we are nearing the homeland?”

  The leader replied, “From now on you will walk through endless fields of tombs, because you know the Western Hammada is the first desert that the ancient ancestors settled when they arrived from the islands of the ocean, fleeing from flooding.”

  He admitted, “This is actually what we have heard from the jurists. But this is one of three narratives, Master, because the first one says that they entered the desert when they obeyed an order that banned them from their first homeland in the sky, the second affirms that they approached the desert after losing Waw, and the third says that they came from the islands of the sea after the ocean swallowed their cities, which were suspended between bridges. So which narrative should we believe, Master?”

  The guide replied, “What matters here is the symbolism, not the stories. Notice that all the narratives concur in the existence of a first homeland for the first generations prior to all other homelands. They also agree on the existence of some heavenly anger or curse that drove them from their venerable homeland. Then they roamed the earth, and yearning for the motherland became a malady for which they have never discovered an antidote since that day.”

  They traversed another distance where the grass was more extensive, the trees were denser, and the flowers released their heartrending fragrance into the air. In the plains the gazelles bounded, and in the tracts lying between the plains and the wadis, lizards loitered. At the limits of the hills, herds of Barbary sheep accosted them.

  He was amazed and observed, “I don’t understand how the people of the Eastern Hammada can tolerate suffering from barrenness and perish from drought when near them lie gardens that would suffice to feed dozens of tribes.”

  The guide replied, “The first secret is hidden there. The nomad found himself traveling through the Eastern Hammada and relished that life, assuming that he was walking through the promised paradise. He persuaded himself, relying on habit, that he would definitely perish should he dare to leave for the West, because his foot had never trod the land of the Western Hammada and he had learned its characteristics only from the tales of travelers, the whispers of the Spirit World’s inhabitants, and the mouths of lying messengers. So how can you rescue a community that refuses to attempt an exodus? How can people achieve salvation if they refuse to look farther than their noses? This reminds me of a slave I wished to honor. So I decided to manumit him. Do you know how he responded to this gift? He threw himself at my feet and kissed my
sandal as he wept. He said that freedom is a burden that wasn’t created for someone accustomed to servitude. He did not know what he would do with himself if he left my household. He finally said he would be forced to hang himself if I refused to change my mind.”

  He answered disapprovingly, “How horrible, Master! Now I have grasped why our tribe is marked for extinction.”

  The guide seconded this thought: “You’re right. A tribe of this character deserves nothing but extinction!”

  6

  Bold streams flowed through the next valleys. Although the water had receded, the clay banks it left were still wet, and their feet sank into the quivering muck. They followed paths that were stones set in the slopes. Then they climbed terraces that soon spread out into plains that were carpeted with patches embellished by colorful flowers. In the open air, birds called back and forth with songs like young women’s trills. Herds of gazelles trampled the body of the earth with their hooves as they bolted away, and the tombs of the ancient ancestors kept the two men company on swordlike heights and the crests of hills until these stopped them when they confronted the summit where the spring originated.

  The guide said, “You should drink from the spring’s waters if you wish to liberate yourself from the ancient load.”

  He asked in astonishment, “To what load is my master referring?”

  The leader replied, “Didn’t you tell me you long to free yourself from the bonds of the intellect?”

  He responded, “I don’t deny that this has frequently tempted me, but merely as a passing whisper, because we are a people who do not free ourselves of anything easily. We consider liberation from the intellect, Master, to be a harsh punishment.”

  The leader cried out, “Here you resemble the people of the Eastern Hammada and cling to the shackles of servitude!”