The fetishists, p.30
The Fetishists, page 30
Idikran moved closer to the leader and, staring him straight in the eyes, asked, “Do you know what the diviner did after he lost hope?”
He did not wait for an answer. He narrowed his eyes, and the shaykh thought he had closed them till he detected the gleam of Idikran’s right pupil in the moonlight. The foreigner continued: “He chose the tallest mountain overlooking the Kawkaw River and jumped in. He was never seen again.”
Adda busied himself preparing the second round of tea. Drumming continued to the east, and the cries of people feeling music’s rapture resounded. The shaykh could also hear the imzad’s wails.
The foreigner burst out in sudden, mysterious laughter. Then he was silent for some moments before he added, “I hope the noble leader won’t think ill of me or believe that I intend to climb the horns of Idinen and do something stupid.”
Without ceasing to mix the tea, the leader replied frostily, “I know diviners don’t do such things. A true diviner would never do that.”
“How do you know the diviner who fell in love was a phony?”
“From your choice of words. From your tone. You can’t claim kinship with nomadic tribes if you haven’t learned to read voices.”
“Ha, ha, ha. I hear the oldest voice in the desert. I hear Anhi, which we found carved on boulders and stones. I acknowledge that he was a phony diviner. In fact, he wasn’t a diviner at all. He was a sculptor who carved boulders. The desert sculptor loved Nature, because he wouldn’t have been able to write on stone if he hadn’t been love’s fool since birth—in fact since before he was born. One delightful tidbit is that he didn’t love terrestrial women, whom he didn’t pursue and didn’t care for. He was in love with the maidens of paradise and believed they live only in Waw. He had poured into the stone bride all his yearning, longing, and desire for these legendary houris. While he was working, he forgot the belle was a heavenly sacrifice to bring fertility to the wasteland and restore the torrent to the dead valley.”
“Should I gather that my guest has also forgotten the assignment that brought him from Aïr, because he has fallen in love with the princess?”
The stranger laughed again and pulled the edge of his upper veil down till it covered his eyes. He raised the lower part up over his nose and hid his face entirely. He stammered, “Ha, ha. . . . What makes you suspect that?”
“You’re the one who said it. You’re the one who said, ‘“What I’ve experienced resembles what happened to the stone bride’s lover. . . .’”
“Ha, ha. I admit that our shaykh has a strong memory. But doesn’t this mean I’m a fraud too, given that I told you I’m a diviner?”
“I didn’t say true diviners can’t fall in love. I said they don’t do idiotic things.”
“Don’t you think that someone who falls in love will do something idiotic? Anyone—including a diviner?”
“Any normal creature—yes. A diviner—no.”
“I must welcome your good opinion of our guild. This means I should not fall head over heels in love if I wish to avoid committing foolhardy acts and hope to win our leader’s trust.”
The shaykh smiled and replied, “For you to gain my trust wouldn’t require forsaking love.”
“If I informed you confidently that any love affair inevitably leads to the commission of some foolish act, what would you say?”
The leader returned the teapot to the buried embers and said in a quavering voice, “I admit that’s a cruel belief.”
“Cruel, yes, but realistic. I suspect that I wouldn’t err if I said that this belief stems from the life of the desert people, including our leader Adda’s own experience.”
The shaykh stared at him with astonishment but found the diviner was still hiding his eyes. He recognized the trick. Idikran had deliberately made this comment to observe its effect on his companion while shielding his own eyes with gauzy cloth to protect himself from embarrassment.
The leader did not reply.
Then the guest spoke again about the princess. “I admit I have followed her not only to please Amnay.”
He fell silent, and the leader waited for his confession, but the diviner dodged the issue: “I responded as well to a craving for the earth—to rescue Timbuktu from the treacherous grit—and to the ancient, mysterious call I inherited from my ancestors during my years of exile in the forestlands. Only foreigners know this secret. You’ve lived in exile, and that’s why I’m not embarrassed to discuss the enigmatic call with you. When you live bereft of any hope of joining the beloved you call ‘the homeland,’ you sense you’re bound to it by an unknown, secret, noble vow. Is it the call of the original source? Is it a sacred desire to fork over the price of a handful of clay the Creator’s breath rendered priceless? What meaning does a creature’s life have if he doesn’t pay the debt the Creator entrusted to the earth, on which a creature treads at every hour of every day? This call turns cowards into heroes who rush to their destruction and motivates them to confront enemies with their bare chests to pay tribute to the earth and to irrigate a patch of earth with their blood.”
The visitor thrust both hands into the dirt in a childish gesture and then slowly pulled them out. The shaykh watched him bury them again and noticed the marks of smallpox on his forearms. In a calm, distracted tone, as if the earth had soaked up his tension, the guest remarked: “No doubt you heard about Anay’s quarrel with his brother. Do you know why this fox organized the girl’s escape despite his long-standing disagreement with his brother? You all don’t know this schemer. While you’ve consecrated your life to the desert, this fox has devoted his to commerce. All professional merchants share this characteristic. In this demonic profession, a secret lures a person, seduces him, and makes profit his goal. This is a game that swallows a man and steals his soul from him. Then he forgets his duty to pursue life instead of struggling to balance profits and losses in the markets of Ghadames, Tamanrasset, or Timbuktu. Anay is a member of this faction who have forgotten themselves and whom the game has impoverished spiritually. He commiserated with his brother, the sultan, and took charge of saving the girl from her fate—not out of heroism or gallantry or to perform a good deed, as Oragh, who has been deceived, thinks—but to seal a deal.”
He hid his right hand in the dirt up to the wrist and poured additional sand over it with his other hand. At this moment he reminded the shaykh of a naughty boy. In the same vein he added, “He didn’t slip out of Timbuktu until he had been guaranteed he could continue his business, fleecing Oragh of a lot of gold to make a grand show in the stagnant markets of the central desert. I don’t understand how he deceived all of you with this puerile trick—the oldest trick in the desert! All past invaders have used it to plant their feet firmly on the generous continent. It’s no worse than the method the shaykh of the Qadiriya Order used, before Anay. Every adventurer summons the courage to present himself before the tribe’s pitiable leader to ask permission to settle nearby and to share water from the well. The leader, who is famous throughout the desert as the most capable man ever to grasp the staff by the middle, found no reason to object, especially when the tract requested was no larger than a bull, water buffalo, Barbary sheep, or other wild animal. The pitiful shaykh did not realize that its hide could be cut into strips by the nimble fingers of a beauty adept at embroidery with threads even finer than silk and thus transformed into a legendary serpent that swallows the desert whole. How could the leader learn this secret when for his entire life he has been preoccupied with avoiding being thrust higher or lower than others, as if the middle ground were a promised blessing?”
The leader protested, “You speak as if everything was over!”
The stranger laughed loudly for a long time—so hard he had to tilt his head back. Tears gleamed in his eyes in the moonlight. As his vigor returned he asked emotionally, “Do you still doubt that, Noble Shaykh? Haven’t you noticed how the classified stamp has been removed from the secret? Haven’t you observed how brazenly he announced that he trades with the forbidden metal on your plain? Haven’t you witnessed how he has seized the well and your battle-ready men? Hasn’t he tempted away the women with that foul ‘brass’ and left you alone with the aged clan heads? By Amnay, don’t you see you’re all alone?”
He punctuated these questions with a new, audacious guffaw. The leader sat up straight, adjusted his veil around his face, and took the initiative: “Will the distinguished diviner permit me to ask him not to be so hasty and to allow me to assert that my only reason for acting moderately and agreeing to share the water with the influx of migrants—I admit—was my fear of the desert’s Law. The ancient Law that appeared in the Anhi cautioned desert dwellers against being stingy with water—even with an enemy. Have you in Aïr forgotten this warning? If the hostile party—after you have given him the water of life from your hands—does not repent, manifests his enmity, and seeks vengeance, then the punishment won’t fall on the shoulders of the generous party who shared heaven’s liquid. Instead, the penalty falls on the entire desert. In this case, the desert is punished. You will be familiar with the strategies this continent employs to punish obdurate foes when the moment arrives; it possesses the most ferocious weapon—thirst! I fear the noble diviner thinks far too favorably of me when he attributes to me expertise in grasping the stick by the middle. I don’t deny that this is praise, but it’s not praise that someone like me who has led an adventurous, edgy life in the desert can claim. I don’t want to give you a headache by recounting all my experiences, although I think fairness suggests—indeed forces me—to tell you a secret: leadership has imposed this policy on me—even though I wouldn’t describe sheltering a migrant or sharing a drop of water with a traveler as examples of moderation in any case. Such deeds, in the desert’s language, reveal obedience to the simplest Law. You will object and argue against me by referring to the results. Then I will protest and tell you that the consequences should not enter into the calculus of a good deed, because subsequent gain and loss are irrelevant to the act itself.”
He looked up to search his guest’s eyes. He smiled sadly as he added, “Excuse me for my severity, but I won’t hesitate to disclose my opinion to you. What upsets you about the game—and I’m referring to Anay’s game—is that you have also fallen in love with the princess—like three quarters of the plain’s warriors . . . and the dervish! Since a lover is always a weak, wretched creature, he must search for the cause of his disasters in the nearest encampment, in the nearest tent in that encampment. Fortunately for me, the tent closest to the visiting diviner’s cave belongs to Shaykh Adda, who has the honor of hosting this noble migrant. I don’t think that the entertaining legends I have heard from you are inspired by the plain.”
The guest turned his face toward the leader, and at that moment the shaykh glimpsed Idikran’s suffering in his eyes.
Silence took possession of the plain.
In distant Waw, a voice could be heard singing snatches of a song as mournful as a lament.
4
The banquet lasted for weeks.
Sacrificial offerings were slaughtered, food was prepared, and pillars of smoke carried the aromas of spices and condiments into the heavens of the plain. The new oasis became a must-visit destination for herders, merchants, and travelers. Inside its walls, evening parties featured drumming, women trilling, and immigrants singing the most ancient songs about Lost Waw. They expressed their mournful, ancient longing for the Promised Unknown they forfeited when their first grandfather was expelled from the Lost Oasis. As is customary during festive, joyful days and weddings, gossips inevitably wove around the glorious topic a legend to amuse the encampment later, during the days of seclusion, desolation, stillness, and disappointment that people normally experience after every celebration. The team of gossips and griots did not harbor any doubt that the material they anticipated gathering from the wedding feast in Waw would be bigger than all the stories they had garnered from all the weddings and celebrations the plain had witnessed in its history, because they were accustomed to estimating the yield from the size of the event.
Their hopes were not dashed this time either, because in addition to tens of new anecdotes about passion, love, courtship, dishonor, satire, and eulogy and the number of times noble young cavaliers were caught accidentally disclosing their head’s private orifice—the mouth—not to mention new poems composed by poets who wished to remain anonymous—the plain also acquired the legend of the key!
The dervish was the first to spread the tale. He attended a party with the women singers shortly before the dance and told the poet that the sultan had hung the magic key on a gold chain around his neck. He also revealed that this gold key unlocked Waw’s treasuries. Anay had received it as a gift from Oragh when he despaired of saving the original Timbuktu in the ill-fated oasis from domination by Fetishists. So he had sent the key to his brother in Azjer to bless his new location and to save the new Timbuktu from misfortune. To emphasize the ill-omened role of the key, Musa mentioned, with a laugh, the necklace of amulets, tucked into pouches of gazelle leather, the sultan had wrapped around the gold chain. The Dervish also related, attributing the report to the sultan’s servants, that the treasures were concealed in copper chests in a subterranean corridor. Caravan merchants seized this narrative and carried it to the four corners of the continent. The people of the plain repeated the story to banish melancholy and satisfy their curiosity, but the merchants—especially merchants threatened by bankruptcy and by rivals’ plots—were thrilled. Al-Hajj al-Bakkay, for example, could not sleep for three nights in a row. That was not all—he boldly requested an urgent meeting with the sultan, who, however, naturally declined to see him, citing his extra workload planning the banquet and dedicating the oasis. This rumor lit a new fire in al-Bakkay’s imagination and another in his heart, since during the last years he had kept trying to strike bargains that would let him stand on his own two feet again, after the painful blow he had received from his foes. It was only natural for this discovery to excite merchants like al-Bakkay, who had disclosed his Achilles heel to the sultan and shared his own disgrace with him. In fact, the most repugnant aspect of the situation was that he had wept before the sultan—humiliating himself to curry favor—and had asked him to use his good offices to find some way for him to emerge from bankruptcy. That day, Anay, using construction of the city as a pretext, had said he did not have enough gold dust to serve as collateral to rescue al-Bakkay’s honor from his enemies in Ghadames. He could merely console him and counsel him to be patient; perhaps relief would come with the reserves he was awaiting from Timbuktu—the mother city. As a friend, he could excuse the sultan for being cautious with his gold dust—to safeguard against fluctuating commodity prices and to prepare for hard times, but—as an ill-fated merchant—he still hoped to soften the sultan’s heart so he would lend a helping hand.
The leader did not attend the banquets. He either stayed in his dwelling or wandered in the western wadis. But news of the key reached him too. Shaykh Bakhi took ill with a fever, and Adda went to visit him. There he found the heads of the clans and some venerable elders including Bakka. They talked for a long time about the drought, the Qibli, and the fever but avoided discussing Waw, since that would introduce the story of the key made of the forbidden metal.
5
Two days after Idikran vanished, the leader received representatives of the sultan.
He had watched them spread out over Idinen’s slope and shout to one another at the mouth of the cave where the foreign visitor had sheltered during his stay on the plain. They searched for any trace of him at the foot of the mountain. They scouted the naked land that extended northeast of the mountain, but a new assault by the wind had erased all tracks of any kind; so they chose to inquire about him in the shaykh’s residence. They had split into two teams. A group composed of three men disappeared behind the mountain to scout its northern and western flanks. The second team—also composed of three men: a black guard, the head of the militia, and, in the lead, the Shinqiti judge Baba—descended on the leader’s tent.
They stood outside his home late one afternoon when the desert was threatened by the Qibli and the horizon was veiled by darkness. Standing there, the judge observed: “May the shaykh excuse us if we trouble him by asking about his neighbor, the Fetishist.”
“You are all my neighbors. The desert is also my neighbor, but I have never received anyone who asked me about its wretched destiny.”
The qadi exchanged a knowing look with the head of the militia before responding, “To the best of my knowledge your wretched neighbor, the desert, has never disclosed its secret to anyone—unlike your other neighbor, the Fetishist.”
“Its secret. . . .”
The judge interrupted him: “It would be good for our revered shaykh to remain steadfast and remember that this wretched desert has ears that hear and eyes that see. . . .” Then he laughed under his breath.
The leader smiled and took his time before commenting forbearingly, “This is something that I have never doubted, Your Honor the Judge; but I have always thought we should switch around the saying if we wish to grant your wisdom proper weight. Then we would say that the deaf have ears that capture the whisper of the desert’s stillness and that the blind have eyes that observe the phantoms the mirage traces on the horizon of the wasteland. So how much more will be detected by the sultan’s spies, whose hearing and sight are excellent and who are well endowed with know-how and expertise?”
