The Scarecrow (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  “Poor opinion?”

  “Does our master think we are ascetics to whom he can fling a paltry pouch and then say we’ll find everything we want inside it?”

  The new governor rubbed his dark hands together. Then he pulled an intensely black veil around his protruding cheeks as a nasty smile gleamed in his eyes. With the chilly hauteur of residents of the Spirit World descending to the tribes’ hamlets dressed as wayfarers, he retorted, “I still feel certain that each hand will find in my modest pouch everything the soul desires.”

  “Does our master know that the soul desires more than the hand can reach? Does our master realize that the soul desires whatever the eye sees and that even this does not satisfy it? Then it also craves whatever it creates for itself in the imagination.”

  “I know. Trust me: I know.”

  “Then are you still certain that your knapsack can satisfy the greed of a soul that only dirt ultimately fills?”

  The enigmatic smile flickered in his eyes again, and he said with great conviction, “The gifts in my little pouch will cure souls of greed and feed nations gold dust, not dirt.”

  A laugh escaped from the chief merchant’s mouth. He laughed like a hooligan till he leaned back and his veil slipped from his mouth. Then his comrades observed depressingly black teeth in that cavity. He sat up straight and tightened the veil around his nose before asking, “Does our master wish to persuade us that all the treasures that the residents of the Spirit World have accumulated down through the ages and hidden in unknown reaches of the desert reside inside it?”

  “If our venerable companion desires treasures, I will produce treasures for him from the knapsack.”

  “But I’m the chief merchant of this oasis and won’t be satisfied, master, with a trinket.”

  “I wager that the chief merchant of the oasis will find a gift in the pouch that is fit for the chief merchant of the grandest oases.”

  “I am astonished to hear in my master’s speech a certitude that puts to shame any I have ever heard from a man’s mouth.”

  “A wise head doesn’t look disdainfully at anything, no matter how trifling it appears to the eye.”

  “Now we are hearing the language of the Spirit World’s residents who visit our dwellings camouflaged with the clothing of travelers.”

  “Hasn’t the time come for us to discover what these souls desire so we can finally complete this task?”

  The chief merchant looked round at his companions’ faces. In his eyes they read a challenge, a call to arms, and a thirst for sport. So he turned back to their mysterious companion, around whose neck the fates had hung the title “leader.” As if reading from an inscription burned with hot iron onto a square of leather, he said, “My longstanding dream has been to fasten around my waist a gold belt. Should I hope to find in my master’s quiver a gift of gold dust fashioned into a belt?”

  He leveled a derisive look at the leader and then turned toward his comrades, in whose eyes he observed a supercilious expression. The leader’s eyes, however, acquired the merry look his companions had only witnessed previously in the eyes of adversaries who wait patiently to strike. He patted the leather—which was stamped with amulets—and then stuck his other hand into the mouth of the satchel, from which he extracted an object wrapped in a piece of faded dark linen. Placing the package on his lap, he untied it with the slow deliberation of a person enjoying his task. Finally he reached the item, seized the end of it the way a hunter grabs a rabbit by its tail, and held it up. Then a parlous glint ignited in thin air, and the group saw a gold belt as wide as a knuckle. It was fabricated from very minute pieces the daintiness of which added to the belt’s charm and extraordinary allure. The pieces were arranged vertically in delicate links and spread out horizontally with pieces that were even smaller but all the more captivating.

  The hand remained lifted in space for a long time, and the enchanting body continued to dangle in the air, where it inflamed souls with greed, desire, confusion, and insanity. Finally his palm moved to present the gift to its recipient. The leader placed the noble tail in the chief merchant’s lap, releasing it slowly and allowing the gold to flow onto the seated man’s lap, where it coiled up like a serpent.

  Their eyes gazed at the coil with bedazzlement, awe, and astonishment.

  2

  Generations have discussed gift-giving, saying a gift that proves fatal if it falls below the mark becomes even more lethal if it exceeds the mark. They have related in the language of the ancients how gifts—in the first instance—generate scorn, and how they—in the second—are the lasso of subjugation that wraps around the recipient’s neck.

  People of the desert have handed down from generation to generation a story that the first time a gift was given, it whispered in the breast of the recipient, who was obsessed with malice and deceitful thoughts all night long. Then he found no way to doze off. So he slipped into the darkness before dawn, entered the home of his benefactor, and stabbed him with a fatal dagger blow to the heart. In the morning he went out to boast to everyone that he had taken revenge. Inquisitive people asked why he felt no gratitude for the benefaction. Then he shouted at people as loudly as he could, “Nothing in the desert so deserves punishment as a gift, because no one has the right to despise his neighbor. No one has the right to pretend he has been given more possessions than his neighbor—not even if he possesses everything on the whole disc beneath the moon. Anyone who owns something should be discreet about it to the point of feeling ashamed. He should not stand up among people to boast about what his hand, which has been soiled by deceit and lies, possesses. The sovereign is not content to possess everything on earth. He goes beyond that and gains possession of other people with gifts. For this reason, a present deserves the gravest punishment, because it isn’t a boon and has never been one. Instead, it is a crime that outstrips all others, because it means spitting in the face of the Spirit World even before spitting in the face of the nobleman. So beware!”

  Desert people recounted another narrative about a man who received a precious gift from one of the elders. It delighted him, and he paid off his debts with it. He invested a share in commercial enterprises. Then he dispatched caravans and purchased maids and slaves, making his fortune. He lost his peace of mind, however, and was disturbed by a feeling of being indebted and of not having repaid his debt. So he went to his benefactor and bestowed a fortune on him. Then he returned home but still could not feel calm, because the whispered insinuations he heard in his heart and saw in everyone’s eyes mocked him even more, telling him in an audible voice that he would never be able to repay the debt to the lender—no matter how much he gave him—because a gift is not a loan; a gift is a loan that can never be repaid. A gift, even when repaid, still remains a debt for as long as the desert stretches beneath the dome of the sky and creatures are strewn across the wasteland.

  The wretch suffered from insomnia—an insomnia he had not experienced even during his years of commercial speculations and of making deals in the markets of the oases and distant cities. He suffered from insomnia, and the insinuating whispers persisted in his breast. He felt exhausted and depressed. He neglected his herds, his commerce declined, and his stocks found no market. Then he lost his close friends, his family, and even his slaves. All he had left was ill health. He suffered with his disability for a long time, until the day sparks exploded inside him. Then he went to the residence of the man who had been his benefactor, guided by an obscure inspiration to kill him by strangling him.

  Since then, successive generations have considered gift-giving to be a lethal danger. One person said that it is tantamount to spitting in a person’s face. Others said that since it is a debt to the jinn, no man can repay it to another man. A third faction viewed it as a cause for civil strife and a down payment on enmity. The tribes’ cunning strategists repeated a cryptic characterization of it as the Spirit World’s curse.

  3

  It is said that when the nobles accepted gifts fro
m the cunning strategist, he told his close associates that he had only presented these gifts as a form of self-defense, because the Law of Gift-giving grants a right of revenge to conspirators who are good to people and befriend strangers with presents and gifts. When experience taught him that time inevitably reveals peoples’ hidden intentions, he saw that people rush to their demise instead of waiting for the preordained sword thrust on a day when no amount of planning will help.

  Gossips attributed the death of the chief merchant (who was found strangled by his gold belt) to his excessive greed and his impudent bickering with a wayfarer whose secret he did not know and whose goal he did not perceive. He had forgotten that the being who sat before him enveloped in black was a newborn delivered by the Spirit World the previous day from the loins of the twilight before he became the creature to whom they pledged fealty that day. Then the wretch met a hideous destiny that was a far cry from the wisdom people attributed to him. Indeed, it was even said that the Spirit World’s emissary, who came to the oasis disguised in the garments of a wayfarer, had punished the man with two veils in the worst possible way—first and foremost to expose this arrogant man’s claim to wisdom, and secondly to teach fools the proverb that says the wisdom of a person destined to annihilation is as bogus as all the trifles destined for annihilation.

  Imaswan died from being stabbed by the spear—which had a shaft studded with red gemstones—he had sarcastically asked for on that ill-omened day.

  Of Amasis the Younger, tongues related how a tremor had affected him at the time of the distribution. His veil had dangled around his lips, his mouth had foamed copiously, and his eyes had glittered suddenly with a strange moisture that his peers had never observed there before. His voice had quavered with genuine emotion when he exclaimed, “Truffles! Truffles! If you found truffles for me in your bag, I would give you my whole life!”

  The messenger of Luck smiled in the mysterious way that almost became an identity or a metonym for him. This was a cunning smile that only strategists have perfected. Then he thrust the hand of certainty into his frightful knapsack to extract three medium, round truffles of various colors. These were marked with mysterious, cryptic indentations that might have been drawn by the hand of a sorcerer or a diviner. Clinging to them were clods of moist, fresh, dark dirt—as if the hand of the jinn had dug these treasures from the earth of the Western Hammada and brought them from that distant land to place before this man, who was a passionate connoisseur of truffles. He began to inhale the aroma of the legendary fruit. Then he muttered guttural, unintelligible sounds and swayed east and west, weeping tears of ecstasy, affliction, and longing. The next morning they found him pop-eyed and bathed in foam and saliva. His face was spotted with suspicious blue marks herbalists said appear only on the bodies of people exposed to the most virulent poisons.

  The fate of the hero Ah’llum differed from those of his comrades.

  On that day Ah’llum was silent for a long time. The messenger did not entice or goad him, appearing oblivious to his existence. Unlike his comrades, the hero did not ask the sultan of gifts to produce a prodigy from his wonder-sack. Finally the hero wiped his eyes with the dark scrap of cloth and said, “Master, I have learned from experience that I lose the battle whenever I desire booty. Combat, master, is my profession, but I have learned to leave the spoils and the captives to the cowards. This principle is not merely the secret of my heroism but is also the secret of my salvation. I won’t deny that I am a creature who has desires like anyone else, because I have never been as passionate about anything as my health. Indeed, I admit that good health is my true love. Couldn’t my master produce from his satchel a salve or some other remedy that would heal my vision?” The mysterious creature smiled enigmatically and thrust a knowing hand into his dread sack to extract a small purse of dark cloth decorated with suspicious embroidery. In the purse the hero found coal black ashes that the master of ceremonies assured him was kohl that would restore his vision’s health in the wink of an eye.

  But this alleged kohl blinded him instead of healing his sight.

  In spite of this affliction, the hero was the only creature destined to attend the last meeting of the Council of Nobles inside the temple that day and then also to hear the herald cry as he toured the oasis the next morning: “The soul is slain only by what it desires, and man is destroyed only by what he craves.”

  THE EDICTS

  1

  Everyone finally concurred with what the elders and sages had once said—that the disappearance of justice was preordained for life in oases. These men seemed the only faction who thought they had a right to express an opinion about life in the oasis, because they had lived another life in the wasteland before time frowned on them and forced them to settle. Then they had found themselves held hostage by enclosures, buildings, and rows of stones.

  The generations who were reared within the ramparts were astonished to observe wise men tremble and shed tears when the saga of the desert flowed from tongues. These youngsters did not understand the adults’ secret. So they would run after them to ask, “If abandoning the desert is this painful, why don’t you return?” But these afflicted people found no answer for the question, because they themselves did not know what bound them to an earth that denied and rejected them, that made them feel they were strangers and enemies while their beloved wilderness stretched before them with all its nobility, discretion, pride, submission, affection, nonchalance, and charm. They had never discovered its secret or found anything comparable to its beauty and magic or even any explanation for these qualities. So why didn’t they rush off? Why didn’t they go to embrace the paradise that awaited them beyond the city walls? Why didn’t they pass through the city gates and cast themselves into the labyrinth of the homeland of longing?

  But … how absurd!

  How absurd! People who had settled in the oasis knew from experience that the oasis is a siren more captivating than women singers famed for their beauty, more magical than the desert from which the arts of magic are derived, and a stronger sovereign than the most recalcitrant sultans, because it holds in its hand an indomitable weapon called “seduction.”

  The oasis is not content merely to entice the wretched wayfarer who has lost his way. It is not satisfied with tempting thirsty people who will perish if they do not drink from its dread deluge. It also twists around the neck of anyone alighting there the lasso of a seduction that cannot be resisted or overcome, even when the forty-night period specified by the forefathers in the Law has elapsed. The traveler relinquishes his travel plans, and the wayfarer finds himself shackled by a chain a thousand cubits long. Then he despairs and hunkers down to the earth, even while suffering from remorse and weeping for the rest of his life. He does not merely weep for his loss. He does not merely weep because of his grievous sense of the treachery of the age and his abandonment of traveling, searching, and looking for the lost longing. He weeps because he has discovered the loss of the wager and the worthlessness of the swap that moved him to sell the red-hot firebrand, a firebrand from an eternal fire, to acquire humiliation from earth he thought that he owned, whereas it owned him. It not only owned him; it slew him. If it had not slain him in the vilest possible fashion, how then could he see injustice and keep quiet about it? If it had not slain him, how could he watch the masters of the earth tighten their stranglehold around the necks of the innocent and say nothing? If it had not truly slain him, how could he be content to see the powerful continue to extend their control over his neck with taxes when he tilled the earth of the fields, went to the metalsmiths’ market to forge metals, or sought to support his offspring through any other profession?

  Clever technocrats said the destiny of the oases was not simply the disappearance of justice or the acceptance of humiliation, but also tyranny.

  “Tyranny is the poison swallowed by everyone who finds himself held hostage by the oasis,” wily strategists added.

  2

  The head of state told the peo
ple that if he could not bring the desert to the desert lovers, he could return to the hearts of these wretches the treasure they had lost the day they lost the desert: justice.

  Then he asked forthrightly whether the noblemen of the oasis had inherited their fortunes from their ancestors. With a shout like an earthquake the throng responded, “No!” Then the cunning tactician asked in the same crafty language, “Did the landlords inherit their fields from their fathers?” The corners of the oasis rocked with, “No!” Then the governor started to pepper the crowd with provocative questions that had found their way into every mind but that had never previously been voiced by anyone. “Did the wealthy emerge from their mothers’ bellies as merchants and men of property?” The walls of the oasis were shaken again by “No!” The mysterious man did not pause to take a breath or to give the throng time to reflect. Instead he concluded with the zeal of someone who had long planned his offensive: “Did the lords acquire from the Spirit World a wisdom like the sagacity that tribes recognized in their leaders, thus entitling them to rule over innocents and wretches?” The area was convulsed with a “no” stronger than all the previous ones. A tumult succeeded the convulsion. Vigorous activity among the riffraff followed the hubbub. A call followed this activity. The voice of the sorcerer, however, stopped them with a more powerful call: “Is it just for people who yesterday were free men to be enslaved by what calamitous gold dust buys or by possessions acquired through clever dodges, deceit, or lies?”

  A ghoul awoke in the souls of the crowds, and a demonic afreet fidgeted in the flask as it prepared to escape from its ancient cell. People shouldered each other aside and surged through the streets, alleys, and plazas. They broke into the merchants’ dwellings, wrecked the doors of shops, plundered the caravan markets, seized grain and dates stored in mattamores in the fields, snatched from each other the gold jewelry they found in gentlemen’s dwellings, and dug up the yards of houses in search of pieces of gold and silver coins. Many went so mad that they stripped the noblemen’s wives of their jewelry and pulled the earrings from their ears.