The herbalist hovered around him for a time and then knelt nearby. He flung his supplies on the mat and stretched out a lean, dark hand marked with veins, creases, and old scratches, to examine the bloody eyes—even though his feverish patient never stopped pounding the hide with his mysterious beats, which he paired with a vague dance and an inaudible tune.
When he loosened the bandage wrapping the eyes, he found that the linen had adhered to the eyelids as the blood dried. Then he, too, began to sway back and forth, as if mimicking the hero, and released a long, barely audible moan. He plunged his fingers into a container filled with a dark, viscous liquid and began to anoint his patient’s eyes. He continued to moan his mysterious song till he finished freeing the scrap of cloth from the dried blood. He pulled the cloth away, and then the damage to the eyes was obvious. They were bloody and swollen, as if a wild beast’s fangs had ravaged them.
The herbalist scooted back and sighed deeply. He remarked like a diviner repeating a prophecy: “When a herbalist is perplexed about the cure, a patient is left with the choice between a sorcerer or a diviner.”
He dipped a piece of black linen in another container, which was filled with a green liquid, and began to massage his patient’s eyes with that. He added, “It doesn’t harm the herbalist to acknowledge his inability to effect a cure when he sees that the malady resisting him isn’t—like ordinary diseases—an enemy spawned by the wasteland, but a messenger from the Spirit World.”
He tossed the rag aside and drew a leather pouch from his satchel. He untied its ribbon very slowly and sprinkled dark powder into his palm. Then he spread this suspect dust around the eyes, and the maniac responded for the first time by ceasing his muffled moaning, even though his fist continued to pound the mat with the same beat.
“I haven’t concealed anything from my master. I shared my doubts with him about the affliction the first day.”
The feverish hero resumed his moaning, swaying, and drumming.
The herbalist soaked another piece of cloth in a liquid from another container and then wrapped the cloth around the invalid’s head.
He started to bandage the eyes carefully and remarked in the same enigmatic tone, “I wasn’t stingy with advice for my master yesterday. I haven’t been stingy with advice for my master today. My master would do himself a favor if he went to the diviner or sorcerer today, not tomorrow. The stubbornness of heroes, master, is useless in combatting diseases from the Spirit World.”
He emitted a long, heartrending groan, and tears formed in his eyes. He traveled far away—the way lovers, hermits, wayfarers, poets, and ecstatics do. He hummed as if singing a stanza of poetry from an ancient epic.
“Physical pains afflicted man one day, and the herbalist arrived in the desert. Secret pains afflicted man one day, and the herbalist couldn’t find a cure for them in the desert’s herbs. So man was about to go extinct. Then the spiritual worlds collaborated and sent the sorcerer to the wasteland. When man was afflicted by other, even more mysterious diseases, and was threatened by annihilation once more, the Spirit World intervened and man found that the soothsayer had settled in the wasteland—as if he had sprouted from the belly of the dirt like grass or truffles or had fallen from the sky like rain or specters of jinn.”
2
He went to visit the female diviner.
She appeared and sat with him in the Chamber of Sacrificial Offerings.
She said with a diviner’s tongue: “The pains of heroes are the calamity of hypochondriacs.”
“And the sympathy of noblemen is the calamity of heroes.”
“I thought that the sympathy of the nobles was always a balsam.”
“A balsam for the masses and for foreigners but a fatal blow to the hearts of the elite men commoners refer to as heroes.”
“Are you sure about this or do you merely suspect it?”
“Actually, this is the normal course of events, my lady. We have typically grown accustomed to finding people gloating whenever calamities strike our homes.”
“Enemies’ gloating for the judicious man today is a treasure that will help him on the morrow.”
“The matter would be easy, my lady, if this gloating was that of enemies. The gloating of boon companions, my lady, leaves an aftertaste in the throat bitterer than colocynth.”
“But this is also the Law of things.”
“You’re right, but I don’t know why we acknowledge all the laws, accepting even the harshest of them, and yet disparage the Law that makes yesterday’s boon companion the first to deliver a blow when calamity strikes.”
“This is the wisdom of the Spirit World.”
“But this is a cruel wisdom, my lady; it is a wisdom crueler than any other.”
“The Spirit World does not offer us its wisdom gratis. The Spirit World has given it to us on the understanding that we will pay the full retail price.”
“But that’s the cruelest possible price.”
“We should trust no one.”
“Tribes customarily teach this lesson to their children without understanding it.”
“The phrase is brief, as you observed, but exposes our life to danger if we understand it too late.”
“I don’t understand wisdom’s utility when understanding it too late is a precondition for it.”
“True wisdom is only understood after it is too late.”
“This is what’s worst about the matter. This is what’s worst about wisdom.”
“But let’s drop the question of wisdom and search for the cure.”
“The truth is that my only reason for approaching the sanctuary has been to search for a cure.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
“I will give my lady everything I possess if my lady will show me the sun’s disc.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
“I will give my lady everything. I will give her even the title ‘hero,’ which became part of me, if my lady can show me the sun for a single day, a single hour, or a single instant.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
3
“In the urine of a woman who has known only her husband is found the cure.”
The prophecy was inscribed on soft gazelle-skin parchment wrapped in a piece of faded linen and fastened with straps of colored leather. Her messenger brought it at twilight. He said his mistress refused to accept any fee for this prophecy until the cure was effected.
“In the urine of a woman who has known only her husband is found the cure.”
What correlation does the Spirit World see between women’s liquids and sorceries that blind the eye? Why does prophecy keep surprising us with one marvel after another? Or—does the secret of prophecy rest in its marvelous quality? Would prophecy lose its magic if marvel were not its mate?
But he knew better than to ask too many questions. He knew that what is covert is the Spirit World’s share and that he had no right to question a matter that time had not brought to the badlands. He knew that stubborn resistance to a sign differs from a hero’s stubborn resistance to enemies with spears or swords. He knew that obtaining a prophecy’s text was easier than expounding it and that the exegesis of a prophecy was easier than searching for the secret behind a prophecy.
But … how could he find a woman in this desert who had known only her husband? In an oasis where nations mixed together, where a babel of foreign tongues was heard, where human nature was up for grabs—would he be able to locate a woman protected by the amulet of faithfulness? Would he discover anywhere in the desert even one woman who had never cheated on her husband—if not with her body surely at least in her heart? Would the Spirit World generously provide news from the Spirit World without inserting into the message an impossible condition? Didn’t the Spirit World say prophetically that woman could deceive even herself—as she was always happy to do—but could not deceive the Spirit World a sin
gle time?
But….
But why look so far? Why would he need to hunt far away when the creature whose chastity was discussed in poems and whose conjugal faithfulness her female companions lauded did not live in the homelands of the ancient epics, but slept beside him? Wasn’t his wife the only creature whose chastity would never be doubted—not even by the dread Spirit World—after people’s tongues had spoken of it and crowned her head with chastity?
4
Man’s liquid caused the dispute between the sorceress and her neighbor. Ancient cautionary tales report that the sorceress heard her neighbor disparage the value of this liquid and call it polluted. So she scolded and cautioned her. But like any other chatterbox, this neighbor gave free rein to her tongue in women’s gatherings and thoroughly lambasted and slandered the magical liquid. It was said that she took great delight in vilifying it and spat in disgust whenever her girlfriends mentioned it. The sorceress’s patience with her neighbor was exhausted, and she decided to teach the fool a lesson that only a practitioner of sorcery can deliver. She wandered in the northern badlands by night and conversed with the heaven’s stars. Lovers tarrying in the wastelands heard her loud debate with jinn demons but did not fathom the reason for the dispute till some days later when ischuria afflicted her wretched neighbor, and this human liquid was retained by her haughty body.
She closeted herself in her tent, sent out for salves and macerated herbs, and swallowed juices prescribed by grannies. She drank chamomile tea for three days straight and swallowed wormwood elixir for the next three. Then she stewed colocynth fruit and drank the broth and also consumed the seeds, but the illness was not affected, and the human liquid was retained even more stubbornly by her body. The miserable woman was obliged to descend from her high horse and to send for the herbalist.
The herbalist drew many herbs from his satchel and gave her lots of liquids to drink, but her urine retention persisted. So the woman was burning with fever and began to struggle with bouts of insanity.
Finally the herbalist admitted he could not cure her—as every desert apothecary does when he realizes that a condition’s etiology is mysterious. He told the woman that herbalists were created to treat physical ills the wasteland spawns, but that wasteland inhabitants would be obliged to search for a cure for Spirit World illnesses from the masters of the Spirit World. Then the arrogant neighbor woman was forced to descend from her high horse a second time; she summoned the sorceress.
The sorceress entered her neighbor’s tent and was surprised to find there—instead of her neighbor—a specter … a shriveled, pale, unkempt female jinni, whose large, protruding eyeballs glowed with anxiety, pain, and insanity. In her pupils was that distressing sign seen only in the eyes of people whom time has afflicted with an unexpected calamity so that they find themselves standing before the house of destruction without ever yielding to an unknown destiny or believing that death might be so easy.
The sorceress stood by her longtime neighbor’s head and remarked, “What do you suppose a person in whom human liquid is retained will give if one day a person is found who can expel from the body poisoned by this pollution a single drop of the sacred liquid that purifies man from his defilements?”
The neighbor woman collapsed and howled at the top of her lungs. Wallowing in the dirt at the feet of the longtime sorceress, she begged, “A person suffering from urine retention will give everything her hand possesses to the person who can expel from her body a single drop of the one liquid that purifies man’s body from man’s defilement.”
“I am happy to hear a tongue describe man’s water as sacred today after I heard it accuse urine yesterday of all types of impurity.”
“Man, my lady, is a dull-witted child who does not realize that fire burns till it scorches his fingers.”
“Man won’t be wise, man won’t be happy, till he recognizes the contrary in its contrary.”
“It is pointless to think the haughty fellow will learn that before the day he receives a punishing lesson.”
“Isn’t it astonishing that you described man’s water yesterday as impure and today characterize it as sacred?”
“I would not have admitted that, my lady, if time had not taught me such a severe lesson.”
“Know, then, that man’s water is like a chameleon’s saliva, which is lethal poison for vipers but the strongest antidote for sorcery in man’s body.”
“I have heard that the chameleon overpowers the sorceries of foreigners.”
“The water that exits from the body is a secret like the chameleon’s saliva. It literally kills grass because it is a herbicide, but purifies bodies of their poisons.”
“No creature who exists in the desert could possibly believe my lady’s statement as fervently as the miserable wretch kneeling at your feet.”
“In man’s water resides man’s cure!”
“You’re right, my lady.”
“What is man’s water, which fools refer to as urine? Isn’t man’s water life itself?”
“Man’s water is life!”
5
He came to the temple escorted by two of his slaves, who seated him on the mat in the Chamber of Sacrificial Offerings. Then he ordered them to leave. Alone, he sat erect at the center of the chamber, scouting the stillness and fending off demons in the abyss of darkness. Even so, he did not hear the footsteps of the lady in the thawb.
He did not hear her footstep but did hear her voice. “I never expected to see the token of the disease still around the eyes of the hero of heroes after the prophecy.”
“How futile!”
“I am not disappointed about losing any hope of receiving a payment for the prophecy, because the wealth of diviners is not a gift from the physical world but a prophecy from the Spirit World. What has shaken me is a husband’s disillusionment with his wife’s chastity.”
He moaned expansively, and his fingers trembled violently. Slender fingers, which no longer resembled those that had earned him the title of hero, extended and slipped through the fuzz of the leather mat’s thick hair in an attempt to stifle his emotion and to mask the trembling of his fingers.
He spoke with the nobility of the last of the nobles. “Had it not been for my longstanding confidence in it, I would have doubted the truth of prophecy.”
“Is it right for a champion of the intellect to doubt the Spirit World and instead believe a woman’s word?”
“I admit, my lady, that this would be inappropriate. I acknowledge to my lady that this would be sheer stupidity. But what does a man have left when he is deceived by a wife whose nobility has been discussed by the tribes and whose chastity has been celebrated in extremely beautiful verses by poets?”
“The ultimate wisdom is not to believe a woman. The ultimate wisdom is never to trust a woman.”
“Was woman born to be an artiste?”
“All women are artistes. Woman is a born artiste.”
“Time has slung its catastrophes at me on three occasions in one span. The first was the day we elevated above us the Spirit World’s emissary, who stripped me of all my titles. The second was the day I imagined that one man could rescue another from an ailment, affliction, or any other loathsome condition and therefore accepted for my affliction medicine that blinded me and confined me to the abode of tenebrous darkness. Now time has struck me for a third time and stolen from my bedchamber a beloved whose chastity was proverbial among the tribes.”
“Catastrophes refuse to descend to the campsites singly.”
“We always badmouth time’s treachery but do not swallow the bitterness of this treachery till time betrays us.”
“Did you believe that heroism consists of withstanding the thrusts of spears or the blades of swords? Today, do you believe that true heroism means bearing the blows of the age—not those of people armed with weapons?”
“That’s true. The masses puff us up with their cheap praise. Then we believe the lie and strut among people with all the arrogance of pe
acocks. We do not discover the fraud till the Spirit World frowns and inflicts punishment on the empty lands.”
“Here, at last, you speak with the tongue of wisdom.”
“But why doesn’t wisdom come before it is too late?”
“This is the nature of wisdom. This is the secret of wisdom.”
He was silent, and so was she. After a lengthy pause she repeated to herself, “This is the secret of wisdom.”
6
The day of the confrontation, the disclosure began with a stern question. “Do you understand that a man can bear being betrayed by a bosom friend but not by a sweetheart?”
She drew the scarf around her captivating cheeks, which were draining of color and losing their beautiful complexion.
Anger overwhelmed him, immediately robbing him of a wise man’s dignity. He shouted in a voice that was totally unlike any he had ever used: “I have come to hear the truth from you now.”
Pallor assailed her entire face, and its beauty retreated in alarm. Worry’s shadow peered from her captivating eyes. She muttered, “What do you want to hear?”
“I want to hear what must be heard.”
“What’s the point of hearing what you will hate to hear?”
“I want to double my pain. Perhaps the draft of poison I consume will prove poison’s antidote.”
She looked down at the earth. Anxiety disappeared from her eyes, where enigmatic mystery now settled.
She gazed up at him suddenly. Then mystery turned to defiance in the wink of an eye.
She spoke calmly, almost coldly. She addressed him with the composure that has always been the hallmark of the brave. “He was a wayfarer!”
“What are you saying?”
The Scarecrow (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 9