PART II Section 2: The Antidote
1 The Oasis
The oasis lay in a depression encircled to the south and east by a network of sword-type dunes. It was bounded on the north by a barren plain strewn with rocks that were baked in the inferno of ancient volcanoes and then divided by shallow valleys leading eventually to a distant mountain chain, which was swathed in murky blue. To the west extended a wasteland with even, sandy dirt coated with pebbles. At the heart of the oasis stood a single hill, although it was not originally one and had become a mountain thanks to the flow of a power called time, which leveled the buildings of one generation, reducing them to mounds on which the next generation raised its own. The subsequent act in this everlasting epic was the collapse of this generation’s buildings; thus the structures of later generations rose on that debris. Eventually, with the passing days, the top of all this construction stretched high enough to stand as a real mountain, crowned by caverns and decorated at every step by skulls of bygone generations and the bones of ancestors, whom time had felled and cast down to feed the earth. During its long history, this oasis apparently experienced a flowering that brought it many honors among the oases but also created enemies for it, so that it was subjected to armed raids from neighboring clans. Testifying to this were broken remnants of the oldest wall – incorporated into a later one. These were located by the tomb mountain on the north. The desert world understands from experience that oases only imprison themselves behind walls to defend themselves against violent enemies. It has also learned from experience that enemies only launch attacks on prosperous oases.
Generations have related that the spring, located at the southern limits of the oasis, near the sands, was once part of a great lake, before the wind’s sandy attacks advanced against it in prehistoric times. Out of self-defense, it retreated north, seeking refuge with the rocky desert, for which the northern mountain chains serve as a landmark. Once water nymphs had enticed desert men to abandon their endless migrations, settle down, populate the empty space, and sow the earth, they were able, thanks to this astonishing feat, to lay the cornerstone for the structure of the civilization known to later generations as “the oasis.”
2 Glad Tidings
The day he arrived at the market mounted on his jenny, he stopped her at a nearby wall and tossed her a handful of clover for her delectation. Then he went to the square, where the chief merchant hurried to greet him, jubilantly resorting to panegyric hyperbole: “It is reported that Wantahet willingly carries his jenny on his back when wading through mires in the sandy desert or transports her by camel-back, like a precious cargo, thus going out of his way to demean camels.” “Ha, ha. . . . Why shouldn’t the jenny master carry his jenny on his back, since she protected him one day? Why shouldn’t the jenny master decry the offspring of camels, since his fear of them is not unfounded?”
“The jenny master’s tongue never lacks a response. Only a person granted felicitous use of this organ by the spirit world will ever know happiness.”
“The tongue assures happiness in our world, but eternal happiness depends on the intellect.”
“You’re right. Anyone granted mastery over the tongue will never need to conclude a pact with our master luck.”
“And anyone allied with luck will equally have little need for the tongue. You merchants are the scions of luck.”
“That’s what everyone thinks. Only a few people realize that nothing depends so much on the intellect, which you just mentioned, as does commerce. Because they are ignorant of the truth about this riddle called commerce, people disdain it. The problem is not that common people are naturally opposed to what they don’t understand; they simply have never known the delight of commerce. They don’t understand that landing a deal ranks even above landing a beautiful virgin.”
“I know that no sedentary person practices a profession unless he finds pleasure in its pursuit.”
“Commerce, Mr. Foreigner, isn’t just trade. Commerce does not consist merely of profit or loss. Commerce – like woman – is a plaything. Commerce is a song! Commerce, for the accomplished practitioner, is a stanza in a long epic. The epic is the physical world and commerce is its verses. Commerce’s brilliance is evidenced by its ability to call forth civilization from a void. Were it not for commerce, this oasis wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. If it were not for commerce, we would not have had the pleasure of meeting here in the market today.”
From behind his veil, he watched the merchant with interest but interrupted at this juncture: “Your aria about commerce has moved me, inspiring me to dream up a deal. Ha, ha . . . would you imagine that the jenny master would dare engage in commerce by offering a deal to the master merchant?”
The chief merchant smiled a salesman’s cunning leer and then replied, “Why not? A contract lies hidden in everyone’s pocket. In the heart of each creature sleeps a wish that can be converted into a contract. The innards of any individual conceal a contract. A woman is pregnant with a fetus; a man is burdened with a contract. From cradle to grave, our entire life is a contract. Some succeed in fulfilling it early; others only execute it successfully later on, but woe to anyone who fails to conclude a contract, because our contract, master, is our life.”
“Actually my contract will prove equally significant, since you think the only true contract is one that provides deliverance for us, because every deliverance is a life.”
“Yes, every contract is a deliverance and every deliverance is a life.”
“I’d like to sell you glad tidings, cheap.”
“Cheap, glad tidings?”
“You’ll trade me barley, dates, and dried meat for the antidote.”
“Antidote?”
“In my pocket I have an antidote to treat the epidemic threatening the bellies of your women.”
“Are you joking?”
“Would we dare joke about a condition that threatens people with annihilation?”
“What do you mean?”
They halted within sight of the crowd, facing each other. The man offering the glad tidings said, “You can try out the antidote on your wife. If it fails, I’ll pay the cost of your goods plus my camels. You can send your vassals to Danbaba, where they will recognize my camels by my mark, which the tribes ridicule, claiming that it was not inherited from our ancestors. No pictures of hares or donkeys were incised on the rocks, since these two wicked creatures were considered ill-omened. Tribesmen have even cast doubt on my mark, which – branded on my camels’ flanks – is shaped like two long ears, for they deem the design an innovation that violates the Law. Hee, hee, hee. . . .”
He nearly choked on his offensive laughter, and so the master of commerce assumed the reins of speech: “I don’t think I’ll need to send my men to take possession of your camels in Danbaba. I would never have become chief of the merchants in this oasis had I not trusted people. Trust is the law of commerce. My own law is to be less troubled by the loss of some goods than by loss of confidence in another person. So how does one test the efficacy of your antidote?”
He moved a step closer to his companion and gazed into the man’s soul from concealed eyes. He seemed to have stopped breathing altogether before he asked in a hoarse voice, “Does it hurt you a lot not to bring children into the world?”
Amghar lowered his gaze. He sighed. He exhaled audibly. Then he whispered, as if to match his speech to his companion’s: “What are we without children? Do you believe that we really live when we don’t live on through our children? Everything we do is in vain if we don’t bring children into this world. Even my commercial transactions are in vain if I can’t pass them along to my children as a trust.”
The master of the glad tidings remained silent for a time. Without ceasing to stare his companion in the eye, he said, “You know I don’t visit other men’s homes.”
“I know.”
“You know that charms must be recited before a medication can be administered.”
“I know.”
“I know.”
“You also know that idle chatter is the helpmeet of miscarriage and that the tribes do not know the success of a matter that has not been cloaked in silence.”
“I know.”
“Send your wife to me tonight. You will see the results in a few weeks.”
3 Tafarat
She lost the fetus, and a woman without a fetus is not a woman. She lost a treasure on which she had counted even more than her spouse imagined, because a child to its father is nothing more than a toy, but a child to its mother is the world. For this reason, oral histories of the tribes have passed down tales of ancient women, who threw themselves down pits or into flooded ravines when their sterility was confirmed, in response to the traditional assumption that a woman’s life is pointless if the fullness of time proves her barren. She had nourished doubts about herself and whispered suggestions had shredded her heart after she spent a year with her husband without feeling a fetus twitch inside her. Then she rushed to the blind sorceress to beg for deliverance. The wily scoundrel subjected her to a taxing examination, messing about with her internal organs. Then she gave her a potion that upset her digestion so terribly that she almost spat out her guts. Next, from straps of camel hide that had been soaked in water, she made her client a vicious girdle that became a stifling corset as it dried, almost arresting her respiration. She left her victim imprisoned by this corset for three days. On the fourth day she freed her and sent her – heavily laden with herbal concoctions, her neck encircled by amulets – back to her husband. Within only a few weeks, she felt nauseous and experienced the first symptoms of pregnancy. Her happiness, however, like all other sorts of bliss, did not last long, for something descended on the languid oasis that carried away women’s offspring and tore embryos from the bellies of their mothers. She suffered a miscarriage too. She would have been able to keep up her hopes and to regain her strength preparatory to becoming pregnant once more – like all the other women – had the sorceress not acknowledged the difficulty of mounting a counteroffensive. This was what so terrified her, rekindling memories of the ancient tales about a barren woman’s destiny, that she twice slipped off secretly to the spring to check the depth of the pool in preparation for the day when she would decide to imitate the example of those ancient women.
In the past, prior to her calamity, she had recalled her escapade on her wedding night to laugh at her own antics, which the oasis considered disrespectful of the customs the tribes had passed down from one generation to the next. After the affliction, however, tears burnt her eyes whenever she remembered that first night, when she had fled to hide in the groves, as the Law dictates, and the women had gone out to search for her, but she – instead of playing this game to its conclusion – had decided to trick the women and to slip into the isolated tent – near the fields – where her bridegroom sat. She had not done that out of any disrespect for the Law, as the oasis thought, or because she longed to throw herself into her man’s embrace. She had violated ancient customs out of a longing to obtain something else, which not even all women would really comprehend, since not every woman is a woman and not every mother is the type of mother who fondles offspring in her heart as her sole dream.
She did not reveal her secret even to her sisters, because she was sure they would not believe her. So, rather than bare her heart to them, she preferred to let them call her “Tenekert,” because even if they had believed her, they would have rightfully disapproved of her disrespect for inherited custom, since she knew they did not bear in their hearts the same whispering and did not share her thirst for offspring.
Now, as he broached the topic of the antidote with her, she remembered his astonishment the moment she had come to him on their wedding night. He had tried to disguise it with silence at first but had suddenly abandoned his gravity to guffaw so loudly he ended up losing his balance. He had continued squirming on his earthen throne for a long time as he attempted to stifle his laughter. She waited for him to stop laughing, curious to hear what he would say, because anyone who initiates a surprise always anticipates reactions rather than some new action. After his bout of laughter subsided that night, he grasped her wrist to offer his interpretation: “You know? I didn’t acquire my fortune until I had paid for it with my life. I did not imagine that I would acquire a creature who would revive my lost life gratis. Hee, hee, hee. . . .”
She did not tell him her real reason that night. She did not reveal her secret to him. She left him in his triumphal swoon at his imaginary victory. She was not uncomfortable about allowing him to presume what he wanted, because she knew instinctively as a woman that nothing is easier for a clever woman than to introduce happiness to the heart of a man, who is more like a child than a man, because it takes little to make a man feel happy. It merely takes a presumption, provided that the cause of this presumption is a woman rather than a man. Women can rest assured that a man requires nothing more than a doll in order to enjoy the legendary condition called happiness, provided that this doll is a woman. An astute woman does not need to borrow a doll for him from the temporal world or a puppet from the physical world, since she can transform herself into an action figure for him. This is woman’s secret. This is the difference between an astute woman and a dumb one. She had given herself to him that night like a doll. He had not needed to wait for her to be brought back from a flight to the desert for a night or even for several nights, during which time he would have submitted to a vexing interrogation by old women, who would not have handed over to him the maiden he had chosen as his spouse until after negotiations during which he might have surrendered half of his wealth, or even all of it, to pay them for delivering her, in keeping with the dictates of the lost Law.
She had, however, violated the exalted commandments and fled from the desert and from the hands of the aged sorceresses. She had fled from this faux-flight to throw herself voluntarily into the embrace of the ghoul, her abductor and her spouse. She had offered herself to the man in order to give him the impression that he was receiving her for free, to make him think that he had concluded the most precious deal in the whole world, for she was certain that to a man in whose veins trade flows like blood a woman is merely another deal. In fact, she is the ultimate deal, one that renders superfluous all previous deals. She did not tell him that she had another contract in her pocket. She did not disclose her vulnerable spot to him. She did not discuss with him her longing for a child. She was fated to keep this secret throughout this period, even though secrets do not remain secret forever. The moment for the secret’s predestined revelation arrived when he approached her dejectedly to broach the matter of the antidote with her, for she decided then to strip bare her heart. She decided to defend herself by discrediting what men always assume to be certain, even though she knew that by using this defense she would injure the man’s self-esteem. That night she had no need to tell him she had not fled to his tent on their wedding night out of any yearning to conquer man’s community but instead to gain offspring from his loins. That achieved, it would not matter to her whether she lost on the deal, since she would have acquired life by gaining a child.
That night she did not need to utter a word, for her eyes told him all he needed to hear. She informed him in this way that she would have sought an antidote to allow her to bear a child even if he not raised this subject. She told him with her eyes that a man, in her opinion, was nothing more than a meaningless specter if he did not carry the miraculous seed in his body, that he would never deserve a woman unless the spirit world supplied his loins with this sacred trust and that he was not created to take a woman but to be taken by one, because man’s message resembles that of a male drone destined to perish once he passes on the sacred trust to the queen bee.
She had seen the stranger at the spring one day when she was with her sisters. It had not been hard for her to see what type of man that st
rategist was. Therefore, she knew what she would do when she went the following evening to receive the antidote from his hands.
4 Amghar
Had he exaggerated when he told the jenny master that winning a deal beats even winning a beautiful virgin? In point of fact, he could just as easily have asserted the opposite, since his bitter journey in search of a contract had taught him that a contract not aimed at securing a beautiful virgin is an improvised and pointless one. He had never dreamt of a contract involving a fortune in isolation from a contract involving a beautiful woman. Indeed, he had not begun his journey on this bitter quest for any other purpose than the pursuit of the impossible dream he always beheld in the physique of a beautiful woman. He was now able to state decisively, after many years had been frittered away, that the dream of conquering a beautiful woman had been the original, whispered temptation that had aroused inside him a longing to make a deal and a craving for riches. He had understood since adolescence that a belle is a she-jinni who will not fall into a man’s snare unless it is baited with a fortune. The day he set out to realize his mission, his secret motivation never slipped from his mind, notwithstanding the seductive, tricky stratagems that each trading trip casts before travelers, tempting some to fall by the wayside and luring others to deviate from the true course till they forget their goal and substitute for it another Beloved. Thus an action figure is transformed into the lord of lords, while the Lord of Lords renounces the exalted heights to become a figment of the imagination in the difficult errand. He actually had been reckless on the way but had never ignored the truth. He had attempted to distinguish between the Beloved and the dummy, which we compare with the Beloved so it can nourish in our hearts our passion for the Beloved. He had fought off the demons, struggled with the jinn, and come to blows with battalions of ghouls to consummate a contract. Whenever he made a deal, he would retreat into himself and address in his heart the mysterious Beloved, in order to borrow from His sovereignty a new incentive to assist him in making another deal, because the young beauty for whom his heart had pounded when he was an adolescent and who had jilted him for a rich man, had not left his memory, even though she had left his heart. She had become a sibilant insinuation whispering in his ear, reminding him of his loss. At the outset, his sole reason for embarking on this journey had been to transform this sound into a pining song that would convert his defeat into a victory. Since the journey had begun for the sake of a woman, a woman necessarily became its goal. The day he spotted the beauty bathing naked in the pool at the spring, a lump formed in his throat and a whispered desire stirred in his heart. The cause of the lump was the memory of his first disappointment and the reason for the whispered suggestion was the dream he had cherished so fondly throughout his journey that it had almost become a forgotten secret. Her precious chest was splashed with drops of water and topped by two jaunty, swelling breasts. To her right breast clung some strands of jet-black hair that formed around the shapely, virginal nipple a mysterious, gloomy-colored circle that reminded him, for some unknown reason, of the halo of the moon when it turns full. Her large black eyes, which resembled those of a gazelle in the Massak desert, shone with a dusky radiance. In them glowed a cryptic look suggesting temptation, appeal, desire, hope, or a secret combination of all these. He was convulsed by a tremor – actually an earthquake, one well known to anyone to whom the spirit world has presented the woman destined for him. Afterwards, he found himself involuntarily repeating out loud: “She! She! She’s the one!” Then he emitted a subdued groan before proclaiming hoarsely: “I’ve waited a long time for you!”
Seven Veils of Seth Page 10