Seven Veils of Seth

by Ibrahim Al-Koni

  “Trade is my archenemy.”

  The other man inquired in a disapproving tone, “What did you say?”

  “Trade is the archenemy of all wild refuges. Commerce is the enemy of deliverance, and any enemy of deliverance is my enemy.”

  “I don’t understand what kind of deliverance you’re discussing. What I know is that the existence of this oasis is pawn to the spirit people call exchange, barter, or trade.”

  He offered a chilly rebuttal, “It truly is a spirit, but an evil one. It truly is an enchantress, but one that braids her tresses into fetters for us.”

  “I’ve never heard a man anywhere use such language about the queen of the world.”

  The strategist, however, wanted to end this debate. So he asked, as he turned around, “Where’s the fool?”

  “Never mind him. The fool appears suddenly and disappears suddenly.”

  He paused by a herbalist who was touting a rag full of herbs and calling out his wares as loudly as possible: “Aphrodisiac! Aphrodisiac! Erectile dysfunction cured with herbal remedy: Ezer. It will make your sex drive sizzle.”

  He casually asked the herbalist the price and then ignored the response to turn to tell his companion, “Do you know? What I love best out of all your commerce is your fool.” The head merchant stared at him in astonishment. So he repeated, “Indeed, what I love most in this world of yours is that fool of yours. Ha, ha . . . .”

  “I don’t like to make trouble between folks, but I gathered from something the fool said once that he doesn’t feel the same way about you.”

  “Ha, ha . . . I know, I know. That’s because he doesn’t understand that I’m the kind of person who is happier loving than being loved.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t love those who love me. I love those whom I love. Do you know why?” He did not wait for a response but continued as if to himself: “Whoever loves me places fetters around my neck. Anyone I love gets shackles around his neck.”

  “Amazing! I’ve always thought we fell captive to those we love, not to those who love us.”

  “That’s the logic of the masses. That’s the language of weaklings, who don’t know why they love the ones they love. They have no strength or ability to stop loving those they loved when they realize the truth about them.”

  “Does my master have the power to extirpate love for one he loves on discovering that person’s true character?”

  “The ability to extirpate love belongs to the loser, not to the person who hits the mark. Normally I don’t ever love until I have first grasped the true character of the one I love.”

  A giant confronted them. He was turbaned with twin veils, which were doubled over, and armed with twin swords stuffed into twin scabbards stamped with amulets and ancient magical signs. In his right hand he gripped a long, gloomy-colored lance with a deadly tip. The chief merchant introduced him respectfully: “This is our master the warrior Emmar.”

  4 Heroism

  With a palm the size of a camel’s hoof, he shook the stranger’s hand with noble condescension, but said nothing, in keeping with the nobleman’s etiquette. Therefore, the wayfarer decided to employ praise to make him speak: “Meeting warriors is always a good omen. In which campaign did our master gain his exalted title?”

  The alleged warrior did not respond, however. He sauntered along beside him in the crush of people, kicking a stone with his sandal and shoving people aside with his colossal shoulders with admirable indifference.

  He waited a long time for a response. Finally the head merchant volunteered an answer for him: “The hero Emmar has never participated in a military campaign.”

  “Then hasn’t he defended the oasis against raiders?”

  “No, never.”

  “Hasn’t he hanged miscreants from palm trunks?”

  “He’s never hanged a miscreant from a palm.”

  “Hasn’t he punished highwaymen with his lance?”

  The chief merchant and the warrior glanced stealthily at one another. He noticed in the giant’s eye a mocking smile, as if he were granting the other man the right to speak for him. “He hasn’t struck down any highwaymen with his lance, either.”

  At this point the visitor suddenly stopped and adjusted his turban with his hand, “I remember: our comrade inherited his imposing title from his ancestors; that’s for sure.”

  The chief merchant, however, denied that too: “No, not at all. The warrior didn’t inherit his title from his grandfathers.”

  He released a throaty cough before saying, “This is a riddle! I swear it’s a cunning riddle. Save me from trying to undo the talisman, for I confess I can’t.”

  He suppressed his hideous laugh, and the head merchant replied nonchalantly, “Our master Emmar felled a gigantic jinni in a competition and thus earned this heroic and fitting epithet.”

  He glanced at him from behind his veil, but the chief merchant did not respond. So he asked, “Is this a joke?”

  “Not at all!”

  “I thought you were kidding.”

  “Why should I kid you? Do you think that casting down a giant from the spirit world is a negligible feat?”

  “Ha, ha . . . I don’t consider it a heroic one, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Heroism’s something else. Heroism is felling your self, not felling the jinn.”

  “Explain.”

  “Heroism’s doing what you don’t want to do.”

  “I thought heroism’s doing what you want – not what you don’t want.”

  “Nonsense! A person who does whatever he wants in this world will eventually fail.”

  “I remember wanting to have a fortune when I was barely more than a babe in the cradle. I heard a voice urging me to join the caravans and to become a merchant. So I did. I did what I wanted, because I realized that I was destined to be a merchant and that the whispering voice was my prophecy. Had I not been certain of this, I would not have succeeded. I would not have become – as you see me today – the chief merchant in the oasis and possibly in all the oases.”

  “Ha, ha . . . but commerce isn’t heroism. Indeed commerce’s the opposite of heroism. Heroism, chief merchant, is the renunciation of trade and the divestiture of wealth.”

  “Divestiture! Divestiture! If we all embraced divestiture, the world would not exist as we know it and the oasis wouldn’t pulse with life the way you see before you now. Commerce, Mr. Stranger, is life.”

  “If commerce is life, then there’s no doubt that heroism’s the opposite of life.”

  “Do you mean that heroism’s tantamount to death?”

  “Right. Heroism is to die, not to live, but . . . not so fast; not so fast, why doesn’t our master the warrior answer my questions? Is he dumb?”

  “It’s because warriors don’t speak.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Didn’t you just say that heroism is death and that heroes are dead men?”

  “Ha, ha. . . .”

  A group of nobles blocked their way. A portly man of medium height, enveloped in dignified blue robes stood in the center. The chief merchant hailed him reverently, as if reciting a panegyric ode: “This is our chief, our sovereign, our master, the Venerable Ewar.”

  5 Deliverance

  With smiling eyes, the tribe’s chief advanced toward him and came so close he almost bumped into the stranger with his imposing turban. Then he noticed pockmarks left by smallpox on the cheeks of the chief, who gazed at him with laughing eyes before teasing him, “Do I behold the stranger who came to our community on a jenny’s back?” He pulled the bottom of his veil tighter and higher and then folded it over to provide a double covering for his lips in the fashion affected by nobles and tribal leaders. Then he threw back his head as he attempted to suppress a merry laugh before continuing: “How can you expect our elders not to think ill of you when you arrive on the back of a jenny, as if you were the accursed Wantahet, who has been the butt of jokes for
generations?”

  He raised his hand to adjust the end of his veil too, before embarking on his defense: “I have indeed garnered the tribe’s suspicions, even though I have yet to allure the masses into deceitful games to lead them to hell’s abyss.”

  Everyone laughed in unison. The tribe’s chief laughed too. Hiding his laughter behind his veil, he asked, “Is this your plan?”

  “Ha, ha . . . can a creature rebel against his destiny? I will definitely lead them, but not along the road to the abyss – contrary to the way generations have told the story – but on the path to deliverance.”

  “Deliverance! Deliverance! We will never learn the path to deliverance unless we delete this word from our vocabulary. Each recruit for the band of wayfarers claims to be a prophet and announces to the tribes that he is the Messenger of Deliverance. The strategist known as Wantahet also claimed he would carry people on the path of deliverance the day he cast them down the mouth of the abyss.”

  “Hell, too, master, is at times deliverance.”

  “Did you all hear that?” He drew the edge of his veil over his nose, concealing his pockmarked cheeks, and laughed with childish glee as he leaned back: “Hell, too, is deliverance. Do you mean it’s what the masses deserve?”

  “Yes, indeed. Don’t we burn the body at times with fire to root out a disease?”

  The tribe’s chief, however, tilted his turban toward him and whispered, “Why not defer our discussion of deliverance until you dine with me this evening?”

  “I’ve promised myself never to share a feast with another person.”

  The merry gleam left the sovereign’s eyes as he asked in astonishment, “Was that an oath?”

  “You could call this nonsense an oath.”

  “It truly is nonsense, for the oath should be for us to share a feast instead of to lie in ambush for one another.”

  “Renunciation of feasting, master, is not always a conspiracy.”

  “But a covenant we inherited from our ancestors said yesterday the opposite of what you’re saying today.”

  “Ha, ha . . . the covenant we inherited from our ancestors proposed many maxims that, if embraced, would discourage us from devoting much time to building, developing oases, or gathering in marketplaces.”

  “ ‘People are a pain, but useful.’3 That’s what the ancient Law said.”

  “ ‘No matter where the caravan goes, it will return to its point of origin.’4 The ancient Law also said that.”

  “Is that a summons to nomadism?”

  “There is no imperative, master, save this.”

  “But no matter what, we will pass on. We will inevitably pass away, even if we appease the entire world.”

  “The nomadism of appeasement, to which you refer, master, is an ignominious form of wayfaring. It is not the maxim-driven nomadism of which the Law speaks.”

  The sovereign groaned in disgust and wound the fringe of his lower veil around his index finger so that it would hide the top of his right cheek. Then he said, “It’s not a good idea to hold debates in the market. I’ve never debated with anyone about the Law’s maxims in the congested market. Accept my invitation and I’ll slaughter a she-camel to compensate for your vow.”

  He laughed to disguise his discomfort, but the JennyMaster declined in no uncertain terms: “Preposterous!”

  The ruler shot back defiantly, “Do you derive more human comfort in leaning on tombs than from mingling with living beings?”

  The jenny’s strategist bowed his head for the first time, but the throng discerned the deeply felt sorrow that he tried to hide before answering: “By sitting with our slumbering ancestors, master, we gain the wisdom of eternal rest, because through their rest they tell us more than worldly people tell us when they pause; they tell us the truth, master.”

  “We’ll learn that truth one day, whether we want to or not; what’s the hurry?”

  “Because we don’t truly live, master, unless we develop a taste for slumber; because we don’t truly live today, master, unless we sleep before death arrives.”

  “You astonish me. You awaken in my heart a curiosity I once assumed I had laid to rest. Is there no way to hear the noble guest save in the market square amid this din?”

  He answered with a look. Then he bowed his head toward the earth before shooting off. The chief called after him, “Hermits are always right. It’s futile for us to try to win a wager with a recluse.”

  PART I Section 5: The Embryos

  1 The Malady

  After leaving the other members of her covey – who were meandering through a grove of palm trees – to gather firewood on the eastern plains, she started to feel dizzy. Her vision was blurred by a dark cloud, and she felt totally debilitated. She began shaking and staggering. She sat down to combat her intense abdominal pain. She closed her eyes and hyperventilated. Sweat beaded up on her forehead. Convulsed by severe trembling, she fell to her knees. She tried to vomit up the clump that blocked her esophagus but spat out only quivering saliva of a sinister hue. As she fought to free herself of this scourge, she emitted a weird groan that frightened her even more than the seizure, for it reminded her of the querulous cry a neighbor woman had released more than a year before, prior to expiring beside her. The disapproving look visible that day in the dying woman’s eyes exceeded even the disapproving ring of her groan. Was death that terrifying? Could the other woman have been that frightened by her final passage, even though she had long realized she would die? Indeed, she had repeatedly said she looked forward to death, which would end her pains.

  The vertigo diminished and the dark cloud dispersed. Her breathing became more regular. She rose to return to the covey in the grove, but immediately after she passed through the palm trees that spread along the grove’s heights, a gray hare bolted between her legs and fled east, toward the sword-type dunes. Suddenly, however, he changed course and flew off to disappear behind a hill that hid him from the grove. She felt awful, haunted by a desperate sense of doom. She hastened on, mumbling the ancients’ incantations to drive off evil spirits. Hurrying, she tripped and fell. She stammered, “Bad luck, bad luck.” She kept repeating this phrase in place of the arcane charms. She tried to rise again but collapsed. At that moment, her insides contracted with pain that seemed not acute discomfort so much as a knife slashing her insides with insane malice. She screamed at the top of her lungs. She tried to rise again, but the hideous pain felled her and she tumbled to the ground. She began to writhe as the malevolent blade continued to reap the contents of her belly. She kept pressing on her abdomen with both hands as she twisted about. Her body was suffused with such profuse perspiration that she felt the thirsty sand beneath her grow damp with moisture borrowed from her body. Once the knife ceased cutting, she opened her eyes to discover that the fluid inundating her and wetting the earth beneath her was not sweat but blood flowing from between her thighs. She released such a prolonged and hurt wail that she did not hear the call of a covey member hastening to assist her: “Help, women! Tafarat’s swimming in blood!”

  2 The Proclamation

  After sunrise on a day promising severe heat, a proclamation rang out in the oasis: “Today, oasis dwellers, an affliction has settled on our homes; a malady has affected women’s bellies. So perform sacrificial offerings and try to stay calm until the matter is clarified and the affliction’s cause is discovered. Those present are duty-bound to inform those absent.”

  The fool moved from one neighborhood to another, speedily at times and slowly at others, wiping sweat from his face with the tip of his veil at times and with the sleeve of his garment at others, and raising his voice to call out at times and falling silent to catch his breath at others. He paused repeatedly in front of houses and huts to receive water from women, who watched him inquisitively as he sipped from their jugs or wooden vessels before darting away again. Only the fool realized, however, that what passersby observed in women’s eyes that day was not curiosity, thirst for information, or fear of the unk
nown – which are normally associated with the news of any scourge – but a feeling greater than all of these. Their eyes had an expression of certainty presaging calamity; for the scourge this time not only threatened the women but constituted a conspiracy that threatened to deprive the oasis of offspring – perhaps even the whole desert. The women’s calamity, however, did not silence him, for he continued to shout the announcement: “Today, oasis dwellers, an affliction has settled on our homes; a malady has afflicted women’s bellies. So perform sacrificial offerings and try to stay calm until the matter is clarified and the affliction’s cause is discovered. Those present are duty-bound to inform those absent.”

  Boys joined him as he made his rounds. They kept him company, with one line racing along to his right and a second one on his left. Some would fall away whenever he exceeded their range, but others would join each time the procession reached a new settlement. Elders were scattered at the entryways of huts and mud-brick houses, standing there like silent specters or statues; they did not budge till the company had passed by and disappeared from sight in a grove of trees or behind the top of some hills.

  Only the visitor to the oasis sequestered himself that morning on the flank of the hill. He watched the procession from the time it left the press of northern houses and traversed the shacks scattered along the plain that led to the dwellings surrounding the market square and circling the hill to the north and east. He did not cease watching until it turned to slip down the narrow alleys where dwellings clung to each other and the houses shared walls, as if protecting each other from an unknown danger.

  The public affairs announcement reached his ears too, booming loud enough at times for him to make out clearly every word and then fading into the distance where, in the stillness of the open country, it seemed the buzz of a fly. Even though insolent laughter rattled in his throat from the moment the tour began and the proclamation first rang out, more than once he choked on a tear in response to the tragic ring of the call, which sounded like a lament to him, perhaps because he heard only tragedy in the announcement and could decipher in it only a mourner’s admonition whenever it resounded through the tribes’ settlements. Were creatures destined to hear from the herald’s mouth nothing but an elegy whenever a proclamation rang out in the tribes’ lands? Were creatures destined to hear nothing more than a lament from the mouth of the herald? Are glad tidings a voiceless, shameful secret that slips into these lands covertly and diffidently and flees clandestinely from these territories too, as shamefacedly as it arrives?