The Scarecrow (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  They exchanged a supercilious look. Afterward they fled to the wasteland, to a stern, barren wasteland that shot off to eternity in every direction, strewn with gray rocks of extreme severity. In the distance loomed a lone acacia tree, which looked depressing in the labyrinth’s desolation and—by its very existence—made the labyrinth all the crueler and sterner.

  But the evening turned the matter head over heels and converted the sky into a desert and the desert into a sky. Darkness slipped down to spoil the beauty of the horizon. In the plaza of the heights, another nakedness was born and stars began to raid it. In its precincts, stars and spheres began to call back and forth to each other with allusive winks, as if eager to divulge a fear that the sovereignty of the lights might take them by surprise and erase their glow when the moon rose. A seditious charm was born in the upper desert while the lower desert died for the time being.

  Imaswan objected, “Do you want us to cast lots to see which one of us will be conducted to the ghoul’s corral?”

  But the chief merchant could no longer bear the inspiration patiently. So he crept forward till he almost stuck his knee into the fire. He shouted zealously, “Wait! I think Amasis is onto something. ‘Sticks’ in soothsayers’ jargon really means casting lots, because our ancestors only knew how to cast lots with sticks, but the prophecy that directed us to leave the matter to chance did not place us in the pool of candidates.”

  The hero broke in: “What do you mean?”

  “Sticks are a method of casting lots and therefore a game supervised by a god named Luck.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The god of sovereignty is the Spirit World, and its partner is Luck. Luck and sovereignty share a homeland. What alternative do we have to commissioning Luck to bring us a comrade who is his neighbor in the Spirit World?”

  Ah’llum looked around anxiously at his comrades. The man with two veils explained, “Games of chance have many aspects, but the ones farthest removed from calamities are the path our ancestors chose and what they preferred over all others.”

  They held their breath, extended their necks, and waited for more information with greater concern than if awaiting a prophecy.

  The man with two veils raked the fire with a poker and added with a sage’s cool detachment, “When a matter puzzled them and no inspiration came, they bathed with herbal salves, sacrificed a chameleon, and rushed off to choose the first man they met in the wilderness to be their ruler.”

  He was silent for a long time, gazing at the fire. Then he said mysteriously, “We’ll set off tomorrow and bestow the title of leader on the first creature we meet inside the walls of the oasis!”

  THE SCARECROW

  1

  They reached the oasis at dusk but did not breach the walls or traverse the Western Hammada Gate till sunset’s gloom had mastered the earth. Then they crept through the land, which was enveloped in threadbare darkness that was not concentrated in tenebrous recesses but remained mysterious, excited whispered enticements in weak souls, and opened a portal to the nether reaches, which released a morose creature disguised in human raiment to lay a trap for mankind. The Spirit World’s foot soldiers rallied their allies to form legions of armies to combat the people of the wasteland and take revenge for their tyranny. These legions returned to their homes in the Spirit World bearing booty and loot. Simpletons—people who had never ever suspected that other creatures might share the desert world—simply assumed, however, that their tribe had been attacked in a treacherous raid by some neighboring tribe. The pious ancestors were also pleased to emerge in the dark gloom from their spiritual world. They disguised themselves in the rough attire of wayfarers before visiting their descendants in this or that hamlet, where their offspring whiled away the night entertaining them the way desert people honor travelers, till morning drew nigh and light threatened to assail the wasteland just as drowsiness was assailing their hosts. Then the guests slipped away and melted into the open countryside, leaving their descendants some treasures stuffed into a knapsack.

  In the tenebrous depths’ void, other night creatures materialized, but they deliberately chose their former bodies to terrorize their relatives. They emerged to frighten and harm their former enemies.

  In these dark recesses Wantahet awoke to devise the project of the eternal ruse. He, however, unlike all the dark recesses’ other denizens, waited till day to accost the tribes—the better to deceive them.

  In the desert gloom, creatures were generated in people’s souls—creatures those people did not recognize. Then with all the impetuousness of ecstatics, they liberated themselves from their souls, which they pawned to other people in order to gull them of their souls and to downplay their own disgrace, referring to this sacrificial offering as “passion.”

  In the gloom of the barren continent, inanimate objects exchanged roles and beings migrated to the bodies of other creatures. Then the desert itself migrated from the desert’s patch of ground.

  On nights when no moon was visible and lights were slow to appear, cunning strategists were cautious at crossroads, because they knew from experience that talking to strangers after dusk is a danger that always risks being a trap, an evil, or a snare.

  2

  They hovered around him like jinni specters, addressing him with incantations. The first shouted as if performing a sorrowful ballad, “We, master, are a people who have been unable to select a head of state. Therefore we have entrusted the affair to its master, to the entity we refer to in our stupid language as a Spirit World.”

  The second sang, “We obeyed the report that eternity sent us as a prophecy. So we set forth, rolled in the dust of emptiness, and washed our hearts with separation’s water. Then we were told that our only recourse lay in following the example of our ancestors.”

  The third sprang aside and then leaped with a gracious bound that mimicked an avian dance and perhaps also the ecstasy of folks who are obsessed by longing and who go into a trance when people sing. He recited, “We have come to entrust the matter to destiny’s hand. We have come to court danger!”

  The fourth specter shot off, fleeing toward the right for a long distance. Then he returned only to flee to the left for a longer distance. On both laps, darkness swallowed him. All the same, he returned from the Spirit World with a talisman: “You, master, from today forward are the master of this oasis. May all the nooks hear the news and may the Spirit World bear witness that we have conveyed the prophecy.”

  Stillness descended on the area, and the mysterious being returned from his exile to govern the oasis. Then the creatures restrained their tongues so they could eavesdrop on this creature’s whispers in a pantomime of lost time. The detestable guffaws, the lethal laughter, and the suppressed cackling that people of the oasis had often heard when they passed the scarecrow in the fields and that they glossed as the voice of the Unknown—this mysterious, mischievous rattle—immediately burst from the chest of the twilight specter. Then the stillness was at once shaken, and the place became chaotic. The mysterious being, whom people had known but never seen, fled and settled in the farthest corner of the austere tract spread beneath the moon.

  3

  In the oasis, griots and gossips have related the story of the scarecrow. They said that an alien migrant sorcerer, when he came from the Unknown and settled in the oasis, disguised himself in rough haircloth—as members of this coterie always like to do. Then he claimed he was a metalsmith whose specialties were using metal tools to carve poles, saw planks, and turn trees into saddles. Not long after the new immigrant rented a workshop in the metalsmiths’ market, residents became convinced that the man’s boast was not only accurate but that he was even being modest, because his saddles differed from any they knew in markets in the oases or had purchased from blacksmith shops. His were unique for their captivating carving. People had also never seen any as skillfully crafted. Thus his renown spread in a short time, and the oasis’s nobles—who had never lost their yearning for the tr
aditions of mounted warriors—and other real cavaliers, who were leaders of tribes scattered through neighboring deserts, headed to his workshop. Traders from passing caravans also flocked to his door to buy all the saddles he had in stock. Then the merchants carried them to the deserts of the South and the cities of the North. So the cunning artisan offered evidence to slothful tribesmen and slugabeds of the oasis that anyone who perfected a task while alive would inevitably be rewarded by the Spirit World, which would convey his fame to the farthest corners.

  The secret behind the smith’s renown among far-flung peoples was his expertise, but it was a different story inside the oasis walls. Clever men have long realized that there is no honor for a soothsayer or diviner in a land where people do not recognize prophecy and that a product does not succeed in a land where local people view it dismissively or disdainfully. So if merchants and mounted warriors from neighboring tribes had not purchased the clever artisan’s saddles, the man would not have enjoyed any share of the respect he deserved. Indeed the market for his products would have remained tepid for a long time in a land where people hid their past and piled their old saddles in the corners of their houses, allowing them to be destroyed by moths and grit. They had also traded in their purebred Mahri camels (on which tribes prided themselves, celebrating them in poems) for matted, morose, behemoth camels with bodies like an elephant—beasts fit only for transporting heavy loads.

  But communities also knew that anyone who was loved by the Spirit World and who harbored its secret inside him would inevitably succeed in a pursuit—even if he lost in some other one he had perfected for the public good when people did not acknowledge his skill.

  4

  A captivating widow, whose beloved husband died on a business trip to the forestlands, was said to have inspired the sorcerer to construct that abominable scarecrow. She had gone into mourning, secluded herself, and rejected suitors and prospective husbands. She lived alone in the oasis, occupying her time with crooning plaintive ballads and supervising the herd of livestock she had inherited from her deceased lord.

  This herd was devastated by a calamity that led her to the metalsmiths’ market, where she fell under the influence of the sorcerer.

  It was said that she claimed at first she thought some epidemic had infected her livestock. Wise herdsmen, however, informed her that the calamity was caused not by some mysterious epidemic but by the ravages of the vermin that creep across the face of the wasteland. She consulted a clairvoyant, who confirmed that the Spirit World was not responsible for this bloodshed. He spoke cryptically about evil intentions and concluded that the crime demonstrated the existence of a culprit. So she proceeded to set up scary figures around her livestock’s corral to frighten away wild beasts. These resembled the effigies that farmers set up in their fields to scare away birds but did not save her herd from destruction. Every morning she would discover the disappearance of one or two head of livestock overnight. Outside the palm-stalk fence she would find the remaining vestiges of this nocturnal bloodbath. There were pools of blood that the dirt had absorbed till it hardened and coagulated and skeletons with their bones stripped clean of flesh with alarming efficiency—as if it had been trimmed off with a knife. Intestines were strewn about—split open and begrimed with dirt and pebbles—as digestive juices spilled from them, mixed with cud. The skins had been flayed from the body and cut into many pieces as if the perpetrator had intentionally destroyed them to ward off suspicion and to destroy the traces of his heinous deed.

  At first suspicions centered on wild beasts. Many people told her that the gully the spring’s waters had created at the base of the eastern section of the city wall frequently attracted reptiles, vermin, and wild beasts from the wasteland and that it was certainly not out of the question that dieb jackals had slipped in from there too. When she asked why jackals would prefer her animals to the herds of other people, they ignored this question and claimed this aspect of the mystery pertained exclusively to the Spirit World, because creatures like jackals held no grudge against her and did not descend on the oasis to slay one person’s livestock instead of another’s—except to deliver a message. She would need to appease the Spirit World with sacrificial offerings if she wanted to save herself and her flocks from this calamity.

  The poor woman hurried to the temple and slaughtered a ewe on the tomb’s threshold, but the ghoul attacked the corral that same night and slew two of the nanny goats that gave the most bountiful amounts of milk. So she despaired. She despaired without knowing that despair is the only amulet capable of conquering every calamity.

  She despaired, and her despair led her to the scion of the foreigners. In the oasis they said he practiced saddle making only as a cover for the dread craft that arrogant people typically conceal whenever they migrate from their homelands. This tactician would not have succeeded in his carpentry and in fashioning poles had it not been for his mastery of that other craft—from which tribes were never secure because veils of mystery always encompassed it; its masters practiced deferential rites and demonstrated their apprehension and wariness many times.

  On that day, the widow heard a boast of the type that flows from the mouths of migrants.

  It is said that, after hearing the beautiful woman’s recital, the clever artisan offered, “With my own hands I will build you a scarecrow unlike any ever seen in the oases. I shall give my lady an idol so sacred that not even flies will dare approach it—if my lady will allow me to carry her to the fields in my arms and carry her back as well.”

  At first the belle did not understand what he meant by saying he would “carry her to the fields” in his arms. She suspected the matter was some sort of joke that foreigners enjoy or an innocent caprice that citizens encounter in the conduct of artisans and that the tribes know in the eccentricities of poets. She was offended, however, and bolted away after doubt whispered in her breast and she grasped the hidden meaning of this allusion. She confided his offer to her girlfriends, who winked at each other, laughed, mocked her, and told their grannies who then asked her, “What’s the harm in that? Will a man do something to a woman she does not want—even if he is alone with her in the fields? Fool, you should realize that the fool we call ‘man’ is merely a puppet that only does with a woman what the woman wants. Which is the lesser of the two evils: letting your herds be destroyed when their destruction entails your own, or going to the fields to play with a doll called ‘man’?”

  The beautiful woman hesitated for a time, but her hesitation did not last long because the nightly massacres of her flocks drove her to the cunning artisan.

  5

  Once the scarecrow was erected in the fields to guard over the herd’s corral, the unidentified enemy vanished.

  The enemy did not merely vanish; people were astounded to find a rascal’s corpse stretched out beside the corral a few days later. On the slain man’s neck they found blue marks that clearly showed the wretch had been strangled. Then they spread a rumor that this scarecrow differed from all the others, because it had a real creature hidden inside it. Some went even further and contended that this august body contained the person of the sorcerer himself, who had constructed this fearsome puppet with wooden poles that he clad with camel skin. Finally he stretched strips of fabric and scraps of linen over the hollow body. Then, as darkness fell, the despicable man glided through the twilight gloom to enter his vile hideout, where he spent the night, to emerge at dawn and slip back to his workshop. Others said that slaughtering the entire herd was merely a sorcerer’s trick the astute artisan had used to conquer the poor widow, with whom he had fallen in love the first day. Her livestock corral had seemed the best way to win her, because sorcerers know better than anyone else that a person’s heart is a pawn of his wealth and that a creature’s weak point is what he possesses. When spiteful people pointed out the scarecrow’s true nature in hopes of smoking out the cunning strategist, they were surprised to hear him say, “The scarecrow is twofold. One scarecrow frightens away
the wasteland’s beasts and predatory birds. The second terrifies human jackals, who would not be scared if it weren’t the real thing.” Then he released an evil laugh, which was muffled and as hoarse as the rattle of a man choking or the hiss of a serpent. This was the laugh they heard repeatedly from the mouth of his detestable dummy once it was erected in an empty place in the fields.

  Sages, trying to be fair to this ignoble man, said that the scion of strangers had not wished to cause any harm, for if his work had not been beneficial, he would not have freed the oasis from the evil of the rascal whose body was dumped at the feet of the scarecrow when it was first erected. Mean-spirited men, however, considered this action a crime of the most repulsive sort and asserted that, since the damn rotter had feared he might be discovered, he had tempted to the site an innocent fool, whom he had killed with his own hands to provide people evidence of the culprit’s existence (to which the seer had alluded), and to dispel doubts concerning his own plot.

  If narrators differed about the circumstances of the puppet’s erection and the puppet master’s intentions, they agreed that the specter who emerged to meet the Council of Elders on that ill-omened evening was none other than the scarecrow from the fields. They offered as evidence the disappearance of the sorcerer of the Unknown from his workshop and the fact that no one saw him in the oasis thereafter.

  THE GIFTS

  1

  “Here are the rewards from Luck’s ally for the good opinion that Luck’s emissaries hold of him.”

  He touched the bulging leather bag, which was decorated with magical designs, and held it up toward the elders’ faces as his eyes glinted mischievously. Then he added, “Don’t belittle its size, because within it you will find everything you desire!”

  The council members exchanged a look that combined doubt, astonishment, and disparagement. The chief merchant protested, “Our master compensates us for our good opinion of him with a gift that shows his poor opinion of us.”