The Scarecrow (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  “He came as a wayfarer. So I offered him the only hospitality a woman can offer a man.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I told myself that the transient paradise belongs to the transient, as the Law has taught us, and that the paradise of the male transient is a woman.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “I offered him a treasure that has always been man’s safe deposit with woman!”

  “If only I had lost my sense of hearing and not my sight so I wouldn’t be hearing what I am now!”

  “Don’t think I acted this way to satisfy some caprice or in response to the desire of a woman whose husband is away. I did it as retribution!”

  “Did you say ‘retribution’?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. A woman does not lie in the same bedchamber with another man unless she is plotting some revenge. Don’t believe what is said about the phenomenon of flirtatious women.”

  “What revenge are you discussing?”

  She shot him a spiteful glance. Looks like this escape a woman unintentionally and glow like sparks from a flint, but are immediately extinguished when the woman regains her self-control. She deleted the spiteful look and replaced it with captivating seduction when she pelted him with this cutting question: “Have you forgotten that you abducted me from my father’s home?”

  He lifted his hand to the cloth bandaging his eyes and grasped the piece of linen as if intending to rip it off and toss it far away. He swayed back and forth like a man in mourning. Suddenly he became still.

  Then he asked, “Did I do something the first peoples didn’t? Did I violate the Law we inherited from our fathers? Did I perform some foul deed when I took you from a tent that was a prison for you?”

  “That tent you term a prison was my only safe nook.”

  “I’m amazed by what I hear.”

  “Know that a woman never forgives her man for taking her from her father’s home.”

  “You speak about your father’s home the way inhabitants of the desert speak about the alleged paradise.”

  “You may doubt whether the paradise the desert’s inhabitants sing about exists, but beware of doubting the father’s paradise!”

  “Amazing!”

  “A father’s home is a nest for the virgin. If she leaves it one day, she will never return. If she leaves it one day, she loses the way back to it—and loses herself as well.”

  “I’ve never heard anything like what you’re saying.”

  “Woman watches for opportunities for revenge, because she hasn’t found the treasure they deceitfully told her she would find in man’s arms—happiness!”

  “Happiness?”

  “This fairy tale definitely does not exist beside a man.”

  “I doubt that this fairy tale exists anywhere.”

  “Woman is the only creature who knows where this treasure is found.”

  “You’re talking about happiness? Who can say decisively where happiness hides?”

  “Man’s happiness is with a woman, but a woman’s exists elsewhere.”

  “Amazing!”

  “Man’s happiness is with a woman, but a woman’s exists elsewhere.”

  7

  Revenge….

  Revenge is a way of life in the realm of the desert. Successive generations have reported that many other advocates preceded the advocate of revenge to the desert.

  The advocate of revenge was the last partisan to enter the barren land but surpassed all others in sovereignty and sorcery.

  He is said to have found his predecessors embracing one another and pretending to be fond of each other by day but competing to plot conspiracies against each other once night fell. Thus the desert’s very pillars rocked with their ignominy. Then the desert’s inhabitants were in an uproar because of this chaos.

  The cunning strategist climbed a mountain and from it spied on his rivals in sorcery. The advocate of anger darted at his companions’ faces like a raging dust cloud. The advocate of envy smirked while fashioning snares behind his back. The advocate of hatred was taking advantage of his two foes’ distraction while bracing to deliver his own blow with a hand held out of sight.

  The advocate of revenge chuckled, then the summit trembled, and the mountain’s rocks shook. This wily strategist told himself that his adversaries posed no threat to him, because they had only been provided with a limited knowledge of the science of duplicity. He characterized them out loud as playful tikes and empty puppets the winds tossed about. Then….

  Then the cunning strategist decided to enter the playing field to teach these fools some tricky moves.

  He donned a slave’s tattered rags and approached his rivals at noon, when they were hugging and pretending to like each other while performing rituals of mutual respect. He told them he was a mamluk of the leader and had come as a messenger from His Majesty to deliver an invitation to a banquet grander than any the desert had ever witnessed throughout its long history. They stared at him suspiciously at first. Then the advocate of anger darted at this messenger, demanding a sign from him. Before the wily strategist responded to this demand, the advocate of envy jumped up and pointed at the mount’s bridle, which was embellished with gold galloons and set with rows of precious stones. He asked, “How could a slave have a treasure like that bridle? When have slaves ridden beasts adorned with treasures? I wager, wretch, the donkey also belongs to your master!” The wily strategist prostrated himself till his turban touched the naked land’s dirt and asked reverentially, “Does a mamluk in our desert own anything besides his dreams, master?” So the fools chuckled together for a long time. Then the advocate of hatred remarked, “You’re right, wretch. We’re sure a slave doesn’t even possess his tongue, because his master can rip it out by the roots the moment he feels angry.” They guffawed together again. Then the emissary announced, “My master provided me with the gold bridle as a sign for you.” Doubts dissipated in hearts that had never known anything but doubts, and these master sorcerers raced each other to attend the leader’s banquet on the neighboring plain. The wily strategist seated them on a carpet of incomparable beauty, served them dishes more delicious than any people had ever tasted, and poured them a beverage so ambrosial they sang ecstatically. They became excited with desire and embraced each other according to banquet etiquette. When the wily strategist determined that the Day of Retribution had arrived, he rose to address them with a vengeful tongue for which these fools were totally unprepared.

  “Does the advocate of anger recall the day he approached my tent as a traveler and I gave him shelter, fed him, and supplied him generously from my stocks? Does the advocate of blameworthy anger remember how he returned the favor before leaving my dwelling by strangling me with his bare hands after an innocent piece of advice from me awakened volcanic wrath in his breast? Advocate of envy, do you recall that I accompanied you in a caravan to the forestlands and that my commercial success there and the enthusiastic reception for my wares hurt your feelings so badly that on the way home you waited for me to fall asleep and then stabbed me with an enchanted dagger, plundered all my possessions, and fled from that place, thinking you could flee from punishment? As for you, advocate of hatred, on your behalf I repaid a major debt and freed you from the captivity of a clan determined to take you as a slave to their encampments for your failure to repay it. Then you slit my throat with your blade to reward me for my good deed. Did you fools assume that a person protected by good intentions could be harmed by a chokehold, a dagger thrust, or the slash of a sword? Cowards, don’t you know that innocents don’t die? Don’t you know why innocent people become immortal? Listen to a secret you’ll never hear again. Innocent people do not die, because they harbor in their hearts a ghoul named revenge. Innocent people do not die before they take their revenge. Innocent people do not even die if they take revenge, because revenge is the Law that prevents disorders and restores everything to equilibrium, because it is a talisman borrowed from the will of the Spirit World—not from the inhab
itants of the wasteland.”

  The cunning strategist pulled the dread carpet out from under their bodies, and the fools fell together into a bottomless abyss.

  Successive generations have said that tribes gave the name “Wantahet” to the advocate of revenge. Other communities dubbed him the “Master of Deceit.” Some nations have lauded his heroism, but other lineages have satirized his wily ignobility in their epic poems. Some clans have applauded his spirit of vengeance and repeated a statement attributed to this cunning strategist that he had decided to do no evil because he was certain that the evil would inevitably turn to good, thanks to the Law of Contradictory Effect, and never to do any good, because the good would inevitably turn into evil.

  It is also said that Wantahet’s faith in vengeance was responsible for turning this wily strategist into an immortal being.

  THE EPIDEMIC

  1

  The advocate of revenge does not die. Since he has embraced retribution, however, he must necessarily kill his enemies by tricking them, if he wants to avoid dying. Just as hermits disappear into distant mountain caverns, a person thirsting for revenge digs a cave for himself in a spot near the jugular vein in order to peer out at his foes. He does not lose his focus or blink, because he needs to keep his sight fixed on the rabble.

  In himself he slays the man he knew, rids himself of his inborn character, and liberates himself from desires, passions, and pleasures. At first he snubs his fellow liars. Then he quickly disavows his father, mother, and child—and every other relative—in order to seclude himself with his idée fixe, which is a vision, inspiration, and whispered temptation. He begins with self-denial; he starves himself so he can dine on his dread treasure, goes thirsty so he can quench his thirst with the secret that dwells inside him, and slays his body’s senses to bring to life the invisible ghoul. He ogles death and even goes to the sacrificial altar to present his life as an offering, because he knows that sacrificing his life is the only price the ghoul expects as a precondition for taking the lives of his enemies.

  The disciple of revenge is a creature who is ready to perish in order to reincarnate as the atrocious nightmare people refer to as vengeance.

  2

  He dispatched slaves to bring back sorcerers accompanying caravans heading to the north and soothsayers returning from trips to the east, west, or south. He closeted himself for long periods with these men and conversed with them at length before he headed out to the crowd with the lethal amulet that wiped out women, baffled sages, shook husbands, and turned the life of the oasis into a continual funeral. A day did not pass without men carrying on their shoulders a litter of poles on which the corpse of a woman lay. They would take her to a burial site on which they piled the stones of a mausoleum.

  Children became motherless orphans, men married to the most captivating brides became widowers, and fathers grieved for beloved daughters. Then the oasis experienced chaos because of the calamity’s terror, and people investigated the secret of the epidemic in every nook and cranny, consulting sorcerers, diviners, and novice masters. They intercepted passing caravans to debate with travelers, wayfarers, and merchants who might have encountered a comparable epidemic during their unending travels—or who might have heard one day about a tribe afflicted in a similar fashion. But these people in transit and merchants declared that they knew of no epidemic that discriminated between men and women. In the history of the entire desert, they had never heard of a plague that afflicted beautiful women but spared the camel corps. They were unanimous in saying that the matter doubtless concealed an ignoble secret and that the citizens really ought to launch an investigation into the conspiracy, because an affair that the Spirit World did not establish in the ancient Law must be attributable to human volition.

  In the early days, doubts hovered around the hero, and accusations—which directed fingers of blame at him alone—lolled on people’s tongues. The demise of his wife, however, quelled that rumor and dispelled suspicions about him.

  The cunning strategist rubbed his hands together gloatingly and proceeded to send lethal gifts to his victims. He knew that the enigmatic creature generations have referred to as “woman” could fend off every adversity, conquer every obstacle, and abstain from every treat, but could not refuse a single gift fashioned from this base metal. If not for gold, woman would never have succumbed to men’s depravities and would never have become a sacrificial offering in the snares of revenge. At the very time that the oasis’s longtime herald—who was a man of such diminutive stature citizens compared him to a rooster—rushed around to warn people against accepting suspicious presents or introducing toxic substances into their dwellings, the disciple of retribution placed between the lips of a counterherald a subliminal message and paid him to scurry about repeating a call that sounded reasonable: “We are only deceived by what we love. We only die of what we desire.”

  3

  Shortly after the scarecrow’s master took control of the oasis, he ordered the construction of a governor’s mansion on the height beside the temple in the northeastern suburb. The annihilation of women had scarcely commenced when the contractors finished their work. Then this glorious mansion, which was circular and encircled by a wall that was also round, gleamed white on the hilltop like one of those jinni fortresses discussed in the epics of the first peoples. For this reason, rubbernecks, riffraff, and rumormongers dubbed it “The Sorcerer’s House” even before construction workers finished the building and coated it with the lime stucco that lent it the mysterious quality that enchanted everyone who saw it.

  The leader (or the sorcerer, as rumormongers liked to call him) settled into his new castle at the same time that bedlam peaked and houses were depleted of housewives. The only sound to be heard from dwellings was the wail of orphaned offspring. Men wandered aimlessly in the alleys, plazas, and markets—oblivious to their surroundings—like madmen or idiots. The oasis was on the brink of destruction, and its men sensed a lethal void. They were afflicted by maladies attributable to the absence of women. Many noblemen died as a result of this disaster. Finally people were obliged to voice what they had only been averring secretly. They denounced the leader as a sinister creature whose era had brought the oasis no good. Instead, calamities had swooped down on its head since the first day he was chosen. They reminded each other of the slaughter of nobles, using language that included suspicious allusions and intimations.

  The governor, though, like any head of state, was conscious from day one that citizens were secretly cursing him (because these fools did not realize that cursing never escapes the governor’s attention even when secret, even when not uttered, even if it is merely a thought in a person’s mind). What, then, if this name-calling were a statement launched by a tongue and heard by another creature that was keen to consume it? He had, however, not paid any attention to this, because he was sure that people would inevitably curse someone, and that if they could not find any other target, they would curse their governor. If people feared a governor’s tyranny, they would curse the Spirit World that had installed this governor.

  The sorcerer’s knowledge of people’s innate nature led him to ignore what was said—and indeed to disparage everything spouted by commoners—but certainly also caused him to be extremely wary once the agitation increased, the chaos became pronounced, and people dared to curse their head of state in the streets, because this was another sign that could lead to anarchy, insurrection, or some other form of recklessness that could threaten the lives of the people, if the governor did not pay attention and did not counter this danger with an appropriate plan.

  In these circumstances, it was necessary for a figure who had agreed to govern people to intervene decisively—not to humor people but to shield them from their own savagery.

  4

  The leader met with the vassals, who had replaced the Council of Sages as his advisers after the sages had been eliminated. The chief vassal said, “Yesterday, master, the first victims of the emptying of the
oasis of women fell dead.”

  He was reclining on a chaise longue that artisans had crafted from palm planks and upholstered with padded strips of leather. He was gazing at the emptiness of the naked sky, which was still, nonchalant, and generously washed by a flood of twilight rays. He was lost in space for a long time. Then he asked carelessly, without ending his celestial romp, “To which victims does the chief vassal refer?”

  “The rivalry of two suitors for a girl who had not yet turned fourteen; one struck his rival a fatal blow with a dagger.”

  The wily strategist’s eyes gleamed with sarcasm, but he did not return from his jaunt in the gilded, blue void. He asked dismissively, “Have men begun to understand what it means for man to lose woman—to live in a settlement without any females?”

  “The elders of the oasis agree, master, that the absence of women from the fatherland is an enormous evil, even though they would not deny that their presence may also constitute an even greater evil.”

  “Do they finally realize that woman is a tribulation, no matter the circumstances?”

  “The truth is that the intellectuals aren’t embarrassed to state bluntly that the desert will never be a true desert till the day it loses all its women.”

  He taunted the group sarcastically: “Now oasis citizens find themselves living in the desert while the wasteland tribes live comfortably in the shade of the oasis, because they did not lose their quota of women during their migrations.”

  Sorrow gleamed in Abanaban’s eyes, which were washed by the heavenly spring of tears. “My master is right. We are wretches now. No community in the desert, master, is more wretched!”

  The leader turned toward him, although his eyes remained locked on the grim void. “Did the chief vassal lose his wife as well?”

  The distress in Abanaban’s eyes became even more pronounced. He buried his head in his arms and replied in a murmur like a whisper, “Did my master think my wife could escape a trap that has been the destiny of all the women?”