Seven Veils of Seth

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  He returned to his kit and extracted from the bag a pouch wrapped in leather ornamented with cryptic symbols. He removed a suspect powder, which he examined carefully before returning it to the bag. He thrust his hand into his bag again to take out another pouch also wrapped in leather even less prepossessing than the previous piece. He untied it and stepped toward the spot where the water bubbled up. He stood on the bank and mulled over the significance of the way the light looked on the body of its beloved water. He listened carefully to the silence, which was interrupted only by the songs of the grasshoppers. He recited the charm in a loud voice: “Aid me in the struggle, master water, as I transmit my commandment to people.”

  He sprinkled a secret drug onto the water. The suspect particles flashed in the light as they fell and then scattered over the water’s surface. He watched them quickly spread

  – zealously, like entranced mystics – to contaminate the entire pool.

  4 Longing

  The evening celebration convened on the night the moon became full. While it was enthroned as lord in a heavenly throne, the maidens turned to poetry’s sanctuary and commended their hearts to mournful songs in their ancient longing as a message honoring the Beloved.

  Their parched throats released melancholy songs endowed with a longing that was as ancient as the eternal desert and that was dispatched to honor a Beloved as ancient as the eternal sky. The women’s circle was located in an open area, which was adjacent to the houses of the oasis on the northeast and which bounded the far-stretched fields to the southwest. The men were present too but did not form a circle. Instead they sat in an impressive row and remained silent so they could – as they usually did when there was a gathering – spy on the women or the spirit world.

  With their fingertips, the beauties made the drums speak; a cry emerged from the drums’ bellies. The beauties’ voices rang with longing, and a prophecy emerged from their mouths. Their fingers touched not only the drums but squeezed their own hearts.

  Their throats did not release just voices but gave voice to their very spirits. Once the veil of the Beloved – enthroned in the heavens – was tinged with frenzy and blood, the men’s feet began to pummel the ground. They crawled about on their hands and knees in ecstasy. Others fell in the dirt, where in response to their longing they rolled around in a trance-like state of altered consciousness.

  Meanwhile he – a stranger through all generations, the poster child of curses, the eternal man with the jenny – hiding behind a sandy hillock, began to observe the festivities surreptitiously. When the timeless rite commenced and the hearts of the young women were decimated by longing, he too quaked. He swayed and rocked with ardors beyond any that creatures of the desert had ever experienced. He released a lethal groan that could have devastated him had he not sped off in search of the vast open spaces. No one could sap the body’s strength, thrust a knife in the chest, or crush a breast the way these imbecilic, passionate ecstatics did, but he fled. He fled from the place behind the hill, from the oasis, and from the entire desert. He fled to the orchard. He did not, however, test its defenses. He circled round the place where physical space does not exist and longingly gazed at the Orchard’s Master, who had expelled him from his realm one day even before he expelled Mandam from the sacred site. For the first time he grieved at his eternal solitude and wished he had brought the she-jinni Tamuli with him so she could see what she had never seen, hear what she had never heard, and taste what she had never tasted. If that wretched woman acquired a talent or gained a gift from the spirit world and accompanied him on a trip to the horizons, she would grasp the secret. Then she would not dare chide him for criminal ignorance of the Law. She would certainly recognize that the punishment the Master of the Orchard had meted out to the jenny master was immeasurably more severe than that he inflicted upon Mandam, that child of wretchedness.

  If there was anything in the desert that could excuse the beauty’s offense, it had to be her crazed hymn, which shook him and stripped away his ugly body, allowing him to flee as he did now, exploring the vast expanses of the place that no mother’s child had ever reached by any route, since it slumbers in hearts far away and can only be attained via the demon that tribes refer to as “longing.” Is this really you, ancient orchard? Is this really you, river of milk and honey? Is this really you, tree of obfuscation? Is this really you, enigmatic fruit? Is this really you, heavenly lote tree?

  Then he bolted; he bolted and began running at breakneck speed. He raced as fast as the wind, indeed as fast as the jinn. He shot from his secluded spot in a second. He shot past the women’s circle in an insane leap and disappeared. He reached the fields in two seconds. He crossed over the spring in one second. He reached the sandy expanses in another second and collapsed there. He began to tremble and wail.

  He heard himself weep like a child that has lost its doll.

  PART I Section 2: The Messengers

  1 The Fool

  It was reported by oasis people that the fool’s ancestors – like theirs – were originally nomadic and that he had settled in the oasis with other stragglers from one of the northern tribes during a lean year when drought had decimated both people and herds. These survivors had sought refuge in the southern oases as they normally did whenever drought gripped the desert for an extended period. It was also said – on the authority of these nomads – that the wretch had first appeared in a herd belonging to a slave woman who had discovered him squeezing in among a crush of livestock to nurse from the teat of a goat. He had been murmuring monotonous sounds like a chant. She recited over his head charms derived from the forgotten language of the ancestors and waited fruitlessly for his mother to appear to reclaim him. So she was forced to wrap him in her cloak and take him home, adopting him. The infant, however, did not remain hers, for children dropped outdoors by the Unknown are not born to become some tribe’s offspring but to live as strangers among the tribes. The fates entrust them to the desert race not to adopt but to cradle, since – no matter what – they will not consent to domestication or incorporation into a clan. Privy to this secret, the tribe’s elders watched compassionately as the woman raced among the tents of the tribe’s settlement, searching for her foster son, who had not returned home for days. They were certain that this alleged offspring was not like other children and that the poor woman could not have claimed him as her son even if he had emerged from her belly. What then if he had arrived through some machination of the Unknown? The proof for this was that the womb that had carried him for months had disavowed him, thrusting him into a herd, because of the despair his destiny caused her once the unknown world revealed to her that an infant the fates have chosen as their messenger will resist all attempts by people to integrate him into a family, so that not even his mother will be able to make a son of him.

  Although the child disappeared for days or even weeks, he would turn up occasionally, reappearing as suddenly as he had vanished. He would surface perhaps out of compassion for his mother, even though he would never tell her the secret reason for his absence or where he had been during those days. He would just laugh idiotically whenever his mother attempted to question him and then dart off to join his playmates outdoors. It was also said that these mysterious forays of his were responsible for his mental hiccups. He had once absented himself for more than a month, and the whole tribe had gone out searching for him, to no avail. Cunning trackers arrived and followed a trail, which ended abruptly at an impressive hill that was encircled by tombs of ancient ancestors and that overlooked arid Temarit Ravine, which leads to the western deserts. When his tracks stopped abruptly, the tribe was reduced to wandering aimlessly, gleaning news from shepherds, wayfarers, migrants, and hermits. More days passed, then weeks, but the lost lad did not turn up. It is always like this in the desert, for deliverance from affliction comes only after one despairs of relief. People had despaired and lost hope when the missing lad appeared one evening, carried on the back of a camel that was led by a migrant who dro
pped him off at the campsite and continued on his way into the unknown. The feverish and glassy-eyed child, who had foam trickling from his mouth, argued with unidentified companions no one else could see. The slave woman tended him with herbal remedies, twiggy brews, and charms. After a few days he was able to move about on his own two feet. Physically he was returning to normal, but the trip had scarred him. He had become noticeably squint-eyed, and his mind was even more clearly affected. His words seemed topsy-turvy. He saw things no one else saw and heard what no one else heard. Even on the coldest nights, he would sleep out in the open, terming tents and dwellings “prisons.” He would tear the shirt from his chest and run naked, referring to garments as “swaddling clothes.” He had an extreme distaste for gold and called the ingots over which the traders in passing caravans vied “copper.” He also referred to the beauties of the clans as “snares,” even though he enjoyed teasing them and conveying their messages to their lovers. He played with children his age but ridiculed them as “fathers’ tombs,” whenever he quarreled with them. These wretches would taunt him and call him “foundling” to his face. He would take this as a joke and retort as his ruined intellect dictated: “You boast of your earthly fathers, but show me your heavenly father.” If they bragged about their fathers when he was present, he would tell them, “We should not call a father a ‘father,’ unless he’s absent. We should not brag about our affiliation with a father we can see and hear, even if he is the tribe’s leader or priest.”

  Then he would suddenly feel so downhearted that tears would glisten in his eyes. Gazing over the expanses of eternal wasteland, he would say, “We’re all foundlings in this desert!” Those wretches, however, ignored his sorrow, for they were too “intelligent” to catch the secret drift of his words. Instead, they took turns mocking him, repeating, “You’re a she-jinni’s kid!” He would respond just as derisively, “You’re fathers’ sons. I’m the sky’s son.” When they decided to push their provocation further to deride him for his mind’s handicaps, he would retort defiantly, “Praise heaven for liberating me from this tyrannical demon!” The mentally unchallenged children would all laugh at the logic of their playmate’s boast of being liberated from the intellect’s constraints. The fool would make fun of his mates who bragged about their hobbling intellects, since not even the wisest of the tribe’s elders from either faction could rule according to his mind.

  When he wearied of his contemporaries’ sarcasm, the fool enjoyed repeating, “Your minds are in your heads; mine is in my heart.” Then he would quit them as if fleeing to eternity.

  What the fool could not bear was discussion of the mysterious voyage during which he lost his mind – or was liberated from that tyrannical demon, as he liked to put it. Whenever people chanced to mention that and inquisitively attempted to pry the secret from him, his eyes gazed off across the empty countryside. Sorrow pervaded his look, and his right eye became even more dominant. The most he would say was that the earth had answered his appeal, transporting the hill where he sat at twilight, to deposit him in the land of Longing. He never once, however, answered nosy questions about the land he referred to as “Longing.” When people showered him with inquiries, eager to hear more, he would slip away from the gathering and escape to the open countryside. The tribe’s elders said, “Fools are a community who will not betray their message. The only reason they lost their earthly minds was to recover their hearts in the spirit world.”

  2 The Sage

  Western marauders who launched a raid against his tribe’s lands one year found him tending his camels in the region adjacent to the Blue Mountains. They fastened a palm-fiber rope around his neck and took him away as a captive to sell in the markets of Tawat, where a noble from the Ahaggar tribes, who live in the western deserts, purchased him. His new master set off with him toward his tribal homelands. The two men spent the night in a grim ravine ringed by clay banks. Then the captive took from his pocket a flute he had himself cut from a reed thicket in an oasis swamp of his lost homeland and – once his master had withdrawn partway down the valley bottom – breathed through it his grief for this lost land. After midnight, however, the master returned and loomed above his captive like a ghostly jinni, swaying to the melodies of the flute. The man stopped playing, but his master urgently gestured for him to continue. He breathed into the flute’s opening his longing and articulated his despair through these yearning breaths. The master swayed, experiencing the intoxicated trance of mystics. In fact, he liberated himself from the dignified behavior of nobles and chanted an ancient lament to the melody that flowed from the flute. Longing flamed in his heart, and with each breath he exhaled this fire, as the reed responded with complaints and wails. The stillness grew even more profound and this melody made the desert’s solitude seem even more pronounced. The heavens abandoned their eternal serenity to lean down toward the valley bottom, and the stars glistened with an inquisitive, inebriated gleam. Once the captive put down his flute and silence supplanted its harmony, the master observed, “I never would have thought a man could sing with a palm cord around his neck.”

  Panting from exhaustion, the captive replied, “The cord’s around my neck, master, not around my heart.” He fell silent but added, “We lose nothing, master, as long as we have not lost the self.”

  The master asked in a manner that showed his astonishment, “Haven’t you lost your self?”

  “Of course not. Perhaps I’ve lost control of my body; I’ve not lost my self.”

  “Isn’t slavery the ultimate loss?”

  “Slavery is the body’s ultimate loss of control, not the heart’s. We lose our selves, master, when our heart is enslaved and we are free. We gain our selves via the heart’s freedom while we are captive.”

  “Are you a poet?”

  “All of us are poets, master.”

  “Have you suffered a great deal?”

  “What is life save a succession of pains that eventually accustom us to enjoying pain’s bitterness?”

  “Woe to anyone who does not acquire a taste for pain’s bitter flavor.”

  “Master, your slave here present before you, has in his lifetime seen calamities that make the affliction of slavery appear insignificant.”

  “But don’t people say death is easier to bear than slavery?”

  “Death actually is easily borne, master. Death is easier to bear than anything else, even when slavery isn’t the alternative. So, what if we’re able to wager only the body and thereby assure life for the heart?”

  “That’s a hard choice!”

  “Living’s hard; dying is easy.”

  When the master did not respond, he continued, “It’s difficult to live, because we learn through pain. It’s easy to die, because we are made miserable by what we learn.”

  The master expressed his agreement in a pained moan like a mournful ballad. He did not leave to sleep until shortly before dawn.

  The following evening he sat with his captive and asked him to discuss calamities. So he told his master he had seen a land quake so violently that it swallowed what stood on its surface, a homeland trade one set of inhabitants for another, a windstorm blow hard enough to carry off people and their livestock and bring in other residents, a son raise his hand to stab his father, and a daughter disguise herself each night to couple in bed with her father. He told his master about the effects of an epidemic when it sweeps across the desert, about calamities occasioned by drought, the terrors of hostile raids, and many other afflictions.

  It was not hard for the man to discern in each misfortune he heard recounted a message from the spirit world. So he developed a taste for these evening conversations and persisted in sitting with his captive each night until they became boon companions. He told him confidentially one day, “Man should not fear a man who has suffered, because just as there is nothing to fear for a man who has suffered, there is nothing to fear from him.” That was before he put all his possessions at the captive’s disposition. In fact, it was before
he made him master over his whole world, so that even the master was at the captive’s beck and call. He commented jokingly at the time they concluded this contract, “In our world, the owner is the slave and the slave the owner. So don’t imagine I freed you when I relinquished control over you. From now on, I’ll be a chain around your neck.” Thereafter he did not discuss anything having to do with his possessions, until he fell prey to an illness that quickly dispatched him. Then his household found in his possessions a piece of leather by which he left his captive half of his livestock along with a gift called freedom. So, emancipated, he returned to his homeland.

  He regained his homeland in the northern desert but found no family members, no fellow tribesmen, and no pastures. His family had perished, the tribe had been dispersed, and the earth had been scorched by drought. So he headed south and left half of his herd of camels – untended – to forage for any grass that had survived the lengthy drought in the sandy areas near the oases. Then he settled in the oasis and sold the remainder of his herd in the markets. He built a hut there and waited, gleaning information about his camels from wayfarers and caravan leaders and inquiring about the desert’s condition. The drought’s curse, however, continued unabated. So he thought he would defang calamity by amusing himself. He forgot that man always errs when he decides to amuse himself, because amusement – as subsequently became evident – is actually nothing but an affront to the mind.

  Having taken a fancy to a girl from a farming family, he asked himself, “Why don’t I do today what I will have to do some day? Why don’t I give in and hitch myself to a woman, the way my ancestors did before me?” He only realized later that he had committed another error the day he decided to prefer a course of action that had not been recommended by his sovereign intellect but that tied him instead to his ancestors.