The Scarecrow (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  The ecstatic leader’s breathing calmed a little, but he writhed along the wall while he kept his eyes trained on the moon. He mumbled, “What does a person do when he has a thirst he can never quench?”

  “A thirst that water cannot quench is satisfied by a beautiful woman, master.”

  “There is one thirst that not even a beauty can satisfy.”

  “I bet this thirst is nothing more nor less than yearning.”

  “Can anything but melodies satisfy a man’s yearning?”

  “I fear that melodies will prove a short-lived remedy.”

  “What treatment is there for patients suffering from yearning if melodies provide no cure?”

  The chief vassal fell silent and directed his gaze toward a sky that was washed by the moon’s deluge. He watched a shooting star that fell to the east and another that fell to the west. In the voice of a person wandering away, he said, “Travels, travels. The only antidote for the pains caused by the Spirit World is travel. The only balsam that treats yearning is travel.”

  The leader swayed as if dancing. He soon joined the visionary vassal in the distant land: “Travels, travels. Don’t you suspect that this word is itself a tune? Don’t you know that this word conceals the most exquisite melody? Don’t you know that lyrics would not be lyrics if they didn’t discuss travels?”

  “How could I not know, master, when I was the first devotee of this god? But for him, people of the desert would never have deserved the title of ‘desert people.’”

  “Do you know I was once a wayfarer too? I was a man the tribes called the sorcerer—the way they do all wayfarers who keep their secrets to themselves. I disliked arriving in a land if I couldn’t leave it the next day. I came to the oasis as a wayfarer too, but the walls caught me by surprise the day I decided to use some of my secrets to purchase supplies. I had forgotten that provisions are an ignoble stratagem that evokes whispered temptations in wayfarers who then hunker down on the earth, which enslaves them. The earth’s turn ends only when the beauty’s turn commences. The day the beauty entered the earth of the fields, I became her captive. I have never left the earth of the fields since.”

  “The fields?”

  “I have been a hostage of the scarecrow since that day.”

  “The scarecrow?”

  “The scarecrow is our destiny. We settle in it. It settles in us. We are the scarecrow, and the scarecrow is us.”

  “My master was discussing travels.”

  “The scarecrow is the enemy of travels.”

  “Frankly, master, I don’t understand.”

  “Trips. Travels. If I didn’t long to travel, the siege wouldn’t upset me—not even if it lasted a thousand years.”

  “This is further evidence of the cunning of the foreigners’ giant mascot. He knew our secret and grabbed us where it hurt.”

  “You’re right. This ignoble chap knows that a siege for a wayfarer is a harsher punishment than any other.”

  He fell silent and watched the stars’ sign. His eyes gleamed by the light of the full moon. He added cryptically, “If the idol weren’t a scarecrow, he wouldn’t have been granted much of the Spirit World’s knowledge!”

  He repeated this prophecy twice.

  4

  The suffering of the oasis began despite crisis management.

  During the first days of the siege, the leader had released a stern command to purchase grain and produce from the caravan markets at market prices, which began to rise once the scent of danger was in the air—as normally happens in chaotic times to any commodity. He encouraged the vassals to offer farmers tempting prices for their crops and continued to press them to spend money lavishly on food supplies, even if that meant expending the last gold coin collected for taxes.

  Despite his crisis management, the oasis began to suffer a food shortage after only a few months. Then misgivings tormented people, and sages felt anxious about the fate of their offspring, because they saw the specter of famine hovering over the oasis—which had enjoyed prosperity, affluence, and the good life for years.

  Many people grasped the oasis’s secret that day. They grasped the secret of that timid child who fears anarchy and therefore flees to the farthest land or is afflicted by paralysis. He is called, in common parlance, “commerce.” They realized that the oasis’s secret was borrowed from commerce’s secret and that the aggressors’ scarecrow had been granted much of the science of the Spirit World, because he had terrified the creature that cannot tolerate wars. Then the artery that had supplied New Waw with life throughout these years was severed. The ignoble creature’s goal was to starve the masses to death and to prevent the minority that hunger would not kill (because such people were sustained by poetry and plaintive songs) from stepping forth and wandering through the world.

  Spellbound folks, who liked to detect a sign in every matter, discovered that the secret the caravans bore, the secret that crossed desert wilderness on beasts of burden, did not merely fashion the splendor of oases but actually created the oases. It built their walls. It brought sons there from parts unknown to reside in the houses, populate the markets, stroll down the streets, and plant crops in its earth. With its own magic hands, it built a civilization from nothing and settled it in the labyrinths of the void as a complex to which a traveler headed—even while suspecting this was another ploy of the mirage.

  The painful aspect of the matter, however, is that the secret is a transitory treasure that has no spot to call home save the backs of beasts of burden, and these creatures—like people, like poets—suffer from wanderlust and keep on the move. If a caravan unpacked its secret in a place one day, it would doubtless carry it off on the animals’ backs to another location on the morrow.

  The afflicted people, who never stopped investigating by interpreting and deciphering news of the times, saw in the flight of the caravans an evil omen presaging the flight of the oasis from its walls.

  5

  No one knows what the leader was thinking the day he sent the foreign coalition’s leader a new bevy: a long column of women. They marched out of the oasis—escorted by couriers instead of the soldiers who had been their escorts the day they first entered the oasis. The aliens’ scarecrow’s response came in the form of a new talisman: a gray serpent puppet made of camel hair, leather thongs, pieces of fabric, and sticks of wood. This hateful serpent had bloody eyes and a savage snout. It held between its jaws the puppet of a woman with worried eyes and ashen cheeks. She was wrapped in faded rags.

  The governor placed the repulsive talisman before the itinerant diviner, who dispassionately translated it into words: “The trick has reclaimed what the treacherous hand took from us.”

  The message astonished the courtiers, but the sorcerer smiled enigmatically that day. The vassals did not discern in his eyes the ugly expression that always shook them: weakness.

  No one grasped that smile’s secret meaning till tongues repeated news of the spread of an epidemic in the enemy ranks and the destruction of dreadful numbers of soldiers. Then gossips spread the rumor that this epidemic was transmitted to the enemy camp through the women’s clothes. Commenting on the outbreak, the leader said in the courtyard of his glorious fortress: “Woman, who brought bad luck into the oasis’s dwellings yesterday, can transport it to the enemy’s dwellings today.”

  The sorcerer’s delight with the epidemic did not, however, last long, because one morning, when he climbed to the fort’s roof terraces and studied the nearby wasteland where the raiders’ forces were stationed, he saw a black mass covering the wilderness and stretching to the horizon in every direction. He observed as many creatures as there are pebbles. They were clinging to the hospitable wasteland like ticks to the hide of a camel. New convoys of soldiers—spawned continually by the Unknown—cloaked the earth till not an inch of it was visible. They advanced quickly and made the corners of the earth shake till the ground itself seemed to be quaking and moving—rather than the creatures streaming across it.

&n
bsp; The sight terrified him, and a paralyzing impotence flowed through his body. He was absent for a long time but finally grumbled to himself: “No. These aren’t Azjirr’s tribes. No, since day one we haven’t been fighting against wasteland tribes. The tribes are from the Spirit World! That hideous idol was never the leader of Azjirr. Every sign points to the fact that the creature was of jinni descent. How could I have missed this? Why didn’t I see this before?”

  THE SACRIFICIAL OFFERING

  1

  He disguised himself in the tattered garments of shepherds, slipped out the servants’ gate, and gazed at the sky, which was decorated with garlands of stars. His eyes sparkled with an enigmatic glint. He listened carefully but heard only the stillness. He descended from the heights and crossed the temple plaza. He turned north and entered the alleys. The walls’ shadows swallowed him for a long way. Before he emerged from the last alleyway, he remembered the council and pondered how base specters called prominent citizens had sullied his actions and turned his good deed into an evil one. They had not been satisfied with distorting or corrupting it; they had gone even farther, spoken maliciously, and secretly conspired to commit evil. They had not merely revealed their loathsome faces; their vengeful eyes had glared at him with an ill-omened gleam when he extracted powerful despair from his body the way tweezers draw a thorn from the foot. Then weakness flooded his soul. Could he forgive them this vengeful signal at the only hour when governors need sympathy that they do not expect from strangers, because they normally are the ones extending sympathy to strangers?

  He traversed the lanes, which were masked by rows of walls, and took the route leading to the fields. The singing of the grasshoppers grew louder, and the smell of grass and moist earth assailed his nostrils. This was water’s smell. This was water’s perfume. This was water’s secret—water’s smell that dolts do not detect, not realizing that water moves all the things that scents pervade. Water crosses dead earth and imbues its dirt with a smell. It descends deep into the earth to reach seeds buried in mattamore pits. It revives them and infuses them with its breath to grant them an odor. Even when it tires of playing underground and decides to leave the earth and return to its homeland by evaporating—rising in vapors, passing through the air—it leaves a scent in the void. Water! It has no odor but lavishly grants odors. It has no color but lavishly grants colors. It has no taste but lavishly grants all tastes. Is this not sufficient proof that this entity belongs to the Spirit World?

  He crossed the brook. The mysterious liquid gleamed in the irrigation ditches by the light of the stars. The smell of grass, mud, and fig trees grew more intense. He slipped off his sandals and placed them under his arm. He lowered his right foot into the water and sank his left foot into the brook’s mire. He waded in the mud for a stretch and then retraced his steps. The song of the grasshoppers rose like melancholy hymns. He slowly removed his baggy shorts and pulled off his tunic as well. He loosened his head wrap and began to free himself of his veil. He bundled his clothes together and threw them far away. He knelt on the earth and plunged into the mire. The noble liquid flooded over him, teased his limbs, tickled his armpits, and caressed his entire body. Then he sighed ecstatically and sniffed the humid air, which water perfumed with its unknown scent.

  He began the process of rehydration as water flowed through his body and he flowed through the mire’s body. He did not sink into the mud; instead the mud sank into him. The pores of his body opened to allow mud to enter, and mud’s pores opened to allow him to penetrate them with all his suppleness, virility, and fluidity. Then he yielded and disappeared in order to struggle with a thirst that swallowing water does not quench. It is a thirst that can be tamed only when a thirsty person renounces his pride and becomes part of the water, the mud, the marriage of dirt and water, earth and sky, wasteland and Spirit World. He wallowed. He crawled right, turned north, and moaned ecstatically. Then he relaxed every muscle of his body and stretched out.

  In the earth’s thickets the hymn of the grasshoppers resounded. In the sky’s expanses stars spoke.

  He crawled toward the veil.

  He reached the leather figure positioned near the north brook. He crawled up this specter’s frame and glided into its coarse fabric the way a snake glides into its den. He entered the veil to replace the veil. He fled from the scarecrow to take refuge in the scarecrow. He fled from the real scarecrow to shelter in the leather scarecrow erected in the fields. He liberated himself from a scarecrow that inhabited him—a scarecrow hostile to him—to settle as a guest in the belly of another scarecrow.

  He freed himself the way a snake does when it sloughs off its skin. He did not merely liberate himself; he was reborn in a new body.

  From this body, which was enveloped in the gloom, a mysterious hiss rattled.

  2

  The chief vassal said, “Famished people are grumbling, master.”

  They were strolling in the courtyard of the glorious fortress. The sun was kneeling to the west, and the eastern wall was bathed by twilight’s rays. The vanquished forces of the mirage, however, resisted desperately before they shot off into seclusion—leaving behind robust trails—and then climbed the neighboring walls.

  The leader clasped his hands behind his back before asking, “Is a sovereign even sovereign over a public catastrophe? What strategy can a commander adopt against a problem that he had no role in creating?”

  Anxiety settled into Abanaban’s eyes. His trembling hand reached out to adjust his veil around his cheeks. Straightening a veil is always a subterfuge to conceal nervousness or mask emotion. After a long silence he ventured, “I don’t feel able to offer any advice today; but, master, I do wish to save anything I can. This is what drives me to bare my heart to my master and to discuss the custom that obliges a ruler to feed his subjects.”

  “I know. I know the Law holds a ruler responsible for the welfare of his subjects. I know, too, that we can’t buy their obedience with anything but food. I know, finally, that the sovereign loses his title to sovereignty if he fails to provide these two things: security and bread!”

  Upset, he paused and stared at a corner of the wall. He continued with a different refrain: “But don’t forget that this is the Law of Peace—not the Law of War. Wartime dictates a different Law. Otherwise war wouldn’t be called war, and nations wouldn’t tremble in fright at the mere mention of the word.”

  “I haven’t cast doubt on my master’s wisdom nor have I questioned his knowledge of the Law of Governors. I simply wanted to draw my master’s attention to the danger of civil unrest, because spies have reported that the stink of anarchy is in the air!”

  “Everyone knows that prosperity in the oasis depends on it welcoming merchant caravans. Everyone knows as well that the war has frightened away the caravans, which have changed their routes, depriving us of both their goods and the taxes on these goods. So where can I obtain food for the hungry?”

  Twilight’s rays, which had been bathing the eastern ramparts, retired, and the mirage’s tongues, which had been climbing those walls, scattered. The chief vassal said in a disturbing tone, “The day before yesterday they harvested the last edible palm core from the top of the last surviving palm tree in the fields!”

  “The last palm?”

  “And yesterday a patrol found a pile of human bones buried in a pit near the eastern wall.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Abanaban was silent for a time. When he replied, his voice sounded even stranger: “I’m trying to say that a man who preys on his brother’s flesh is not to be trusted.”

  The leader appeared deflated but did not turn toward his companion. Instead, he continued to stare at a patch of dirt veiled by the evening’s shadows. As if finding himself among people for the first time, he observed, “I wouldn’t have thought man would ever be capable of doing that.”

  “Hunger, master, ravishes the mind, and once the mind is lost, so is the man.”

  “In the desert, people bury themselv
es in their tents during famines and don’t leave them till they’re dead.”

  “The desert has different laws.”

  “In the desert, they combat hunger by hunting wild animals. Then if a man is lucky and returns with game, he sends half to the leader and divides the rest with his entire hamlet!”

  “Different laws apply in the desert, master.

  “In the oasis they grumble and challenge authority, wanting to grab bread from the leader’s hand.”

  “This is the law of the oasis, master.”

  “If they were a community that acknowledged a good deed, that would be easy—or have you forgotten how the nobles disavowed me the day the council met?”

  “No good deed goes unpunished, master—that’s human nature.”

  “From day one, I helped the downtrodden among them. I removed the tax burden from the shoulders of poor people, craftsmen, and farmers. I allowed their merchants to trade with gold. So life was revived, our standard of living was good, and everyone was happy.”

  “Denial of a favor is a human characteristic, master.”

  “During a calamity, all I see in their eyes is a thirst for vengeance. What right have I to pardon these wretches’ mistreatment of me and give them bread, thus decreasing my own nourishment?”

  “They claim our master foresaw this crisis, purchased all the wheat in the markets of the oasis, and then buried it secretly underground, the way sorcerers do.”

  “I will give them all my stockpiles of wheat if you promise that this gift will buy me their fealty for a single day.”

  “I won’t ever do that, master, because I know that man will never pardon a good deed.”

  “Never pardon a good deed?”

  “Yes, master. Man can forgive a bad deed but never a good one!”

  He paused and turned his whole body to face his companion. Gazing into his master’s eyes with astonishment, the chief vassal saw he was trembling.