The fetishists, p.4
The Fetishists, page 4
The wind burst forth in a surprise raid and puffed up their loose garments and tugged at their veils. As they stood struggling against the wind, the leader said, “I’m obliged to welcome migrants but won’t change my opinion. I’ve never heard that both have coexisted in a person’s heart.”
The messenger made no comment and continued struggling against the wind. So the leader added a clarification: “God and gold dust.”
The words were lost in the Qibli’s grit and the gloom of the open countryside.
5
On his way back, Anay passed near the well. Men there took turns battling the waves of sand. He avoided them, veered toward the right, and climbed several hills before he reached the south slope. There, too, men were laboring late. They had spent long hours building walls, working in shifts. They lit torches and fires, which the wind extinguished. Then they stubbornly lit them again. Stone walls roofed with palm fronds and acacia branches rose beneath the rough boulders of the slope. Other completed buildings stood nearby.
He crossed piles of rocks, streets under construction, and walls that slaves and vassals scaled like flies. In the glow of the flickering lights these men looked like evil spirits. A sudden gust pummeled him, and he stepped back to find himself inside the circle of a low, stone wall. An acrid smell assailed his nostrils, and he held his turban tight until the sandy gust blew past. The smell grew sharper and grosser, and he felt dizzy. Turning, he found above his head a giant black man trimming a stone with a pickaxe, carefully trying to fit the block into the wall. He stopped his nostrils with the end of his veil and leapt to the opposite wall. He spat out saliva mixed with dirt and entered a house roofed with palm fronds and acacia branches. Thin stone panels topped the roof from the outside. Inside, a leather tent decorated with magical symbols and diviners’ talismans, rose to form the ceiling.
The tent’s interior was partitioned by numerous curtains—actually carpets from Touat—and colorful cloth hangings from the Nafusa Mountains. A glow of light came from the far end of the tent. He stopped and announced his arrival with a cough. After a few moments, a specter traversed the darkness. It was an old woman, who was trailed by a wretched black man wearing a gray turban. The specter stood by the stone wall and stared enigmatically through the dark. He waited for the ghost to speak, but it said nothing. He turned his face momentarily toward the gleam of light, and the ghost vanished. Tenere emerged from her tent, and he asked, “What’s that she-jinni doing here?”
She smiled in the gloom and replied, “There’s no harm in a stranger amusing herself by meeting with people.”
He sat down on a mound of sand covered with a kilim rug and said harshly, “You know I don’t like diviners—male or female.”
“But she’s not a run-of-the-mill diviner. She plays the imzad and recites poetry.”
“I’ll never trust a diviner, no matter how divine her talents are.”
The maid came to ask the young woman, “Shall I light the fire?”
He ignored the question and said in a different tone, “Enjoy your stay! Victory and glad tidings!”
She ordered the servant to light the fire, vanished into the tent, and returned enveloped in a thick blanket. She sat down opposite him and said with a smile, “It’s not right to celebrate good news in the dark.”
She waited until the Ethiopian maid had left to search for firewood before concluding in the language of diviners: “That would be ill-omened.”
He listened to their ancient enemy howl as it rushed through the magnanimous desert. Then he smiled despondently. Attempting to suppress certain memories, he jumped to another idea: “I told him that goodness, like truth, is an angel that speeds unimpeded across the countryside, but that if a human hand seizes it and places it in a flask, it turns into an evil demon. This is the secret of the upheaval with the Sufi shaykh.”
She drew the blanket tighter around her head; her face showed no reaction.
He concluded, “He was so pleased with my explanation that he suggested I’m a diviner!”
She threw her head back to laugh. “He doesn’t know the truth about your relationship with them.”
Tongues of fire and smoke rose in the corner. They were able to see each other more clearly now, and she noticed the pallor of the cheek protruding from his gray veil. He adjusted the veil around his eyes and added coldly, “I won’t conceal from you, however, that he warned me.”
She looked at him inquisitively, and he explained, “He said that two things can never coexist in a single heart: God and the precious metal.”
He shot her a quick look, and she hid inside the blanket. The Ethiopian maid began to prepare tea beside the stone wall.
He continued, “The caravan from the North will arrive soon. You must encourage the smiths to fashion products that will make us look good. In commerce, taking the initiative works like magic.”
“They can’t labor in the open air. The Qibli won’t stop them, but people’s inquisitive eyes will.”
“We can’t wait for the Qibli’s mercy, either. It will grow stronger during the coming days.”
“How hideous it is! No one can decipher its intentions.”
“We must expect the worst, in any case.”
“The ancient prophecy says that only the mountain is safe from it. And here we are in its custody.”
“I don’t believe in diviners’ prophecies.”
Silence reigned, smoke rose, and a new wind gust rushed past as though joining in the conversation. It deposited a layer of dust, and he watched stubborn particles attempt to obscure the firelight. The wind shook roofs and caused the tent to billow. He said suddenly, “In circumstances like these, only marriage alliances are of any use.”
He peeked at her from beneath his veil but was unable to detect her reaction, because a curtain of dust obscured her face. He continued, “I only believe in customary law and the ancient legacy. This law affirms that blood’s tie is stronger than any covenant, treaty, or pact.”
He fell silent. Then crossing his arms over his chest and gazing into the gloom at the entrance, he concluded, “Because it is a heavenly pact.”
She stared at him inquisitively.
Then he detected a gleam in her eyes.
NOTES
1. Quran, 9:105
2. Statement attributed to the Prophet Muhammad as one of the Hadith
4
The Errant Twin
Al-Dunya en tasidert tkarras;
Wud esekin ar Idenan gbas.
Wissas Kud yara adu yaghlayas
Ed Kumbat sabada tekras follas.
World, you were created for patience and chicanery;
Only Mount Idinen can bear your weight.
It alone remains oblivious to the wind’s siege
And ignores the dust’s turban.
ANCIENT, ANONYMOUS TUAREG POEM
1
The pair of mountains left the mother chain, fleeing from the wind, and agreed that Idinen would explore the desert. It headed north, crowned by the mightiest citadel the desert has ever seen atop a mountain. It had scarcely crossed the plain when the jinn’s king stopped it, saying, “We have also decided to settle on the earth and to establish a homeland for our clans. Loitering in the wastelands has exhausted us, and we have suffered from persecution by human beings, who deserve to be stoned. They have come to the virgin desert as aliens, adventurers, and thieves. They have defiled it and plundered its treasures. Throughout the entire desert continent we can find no dwelling more suitable and no refuge more secure than the mighty fortress on your head. Will you sell yourself to us in exchange for our guarantee of protection against the Qibli wind and the sand?”
Idinen thought for a long time about this proposal. Then it asked, “But can any power block the Qibli?”
The king answered, “Yes, and that one power is the jinn.”
Idinen thought some more. Then it observed skeptically, “I would have thought that would take a messenger from the gods.”
The king said, “Neither a divine messenger nor fate. Nothing can withstand the jinn.”
Awe-inspiring Idinen scratched its mighty head and asked sarcastically, “What forces you to search for a refuge if you do not fear even fate?”
The wise jinni laughed till he threw back his head. Then he replied, “Know that there is not to be found on Earth or in the heavens anyone who can claim he has no weak point. We can add to this list even the gods themselves. The human community is our weak point. They are worse than the Qibli and the gods—indeed even worse than almighty fate itself.”
The mountain was baffled and thought for a long time. Then it asked once more, “What have people done?”
“What haven’t they done?”
“. . . .”
“When a man wants to brand someone else as evil, he calls him a jinni. It would be more fitting to describe him as a man. We don’t act unjustly. We honor our treaties and believe in the gods. Those in the human community treat each other unjustly, betray every pact, and do not believe in any god. May the gods be compassionate to us and shield us from their stupendous evil! They have spread havoc through the desert and stolen all our treasures.”
“Would my head suffice to safeguard your treasures?”
“It will suffice, because it is secure. Not a single man will be able to scale it. We debated at length among ourselves before deciding on this location.”
“If I grant you my heavenly fortress, I fear I will lose my soul.”
“You will lose your soul if you don’t give us the fortress. No one is safe from the Qibli and its dust unless he seeks our aid. Look at what it’s done to your mother, Akakus. See how the gods punished the mountain chain in the valley of al-Ajal when it appealed for justice to the gods; they chastised it by cutting off all its peaks. Now it wanders bald and helpless through the desert and can’t summon rain. Not a drop has fallen in forty years.”
“It’s said that the absence of rain for forty years is a sign of the absence of justice.”
The mighty jinni laughed once more. “Do you want a stronger indication of the absence of justice than this? The gods have been stingy with water for you for forty years while providing your enemy seas of sand and dust. If you refuse our proposal, I will soon be saddened to see this mighty fortress disappear. Look at what it’s doing now to your twin. It’s beginning to scale its rear. Ha, ha, ha.”
The echo resounded throughout all the desert’s mountains. Then they wept in the naked continent and begged Idinen to accept the proposal. They said it would be better if even one mountain to which the gods had granted a heavenly fortress survived, rather than allowing their descendants and offspring to die out and disappear from the great desert.
Idinen accepted the proposal and sold its soul. The jinn tribes came and settled on it. They placed around its awe-inspiring square citadel an eternal turban of clouds and forbade the Qibli’s dust to approach their new homeland.
Then northern Idinen shunned its twin to the south and left it to singlehandedly fight the enemy.
2
They jabber a lot in a clearly articulated but incomprehensible tongue. The people of the plain say that they choose the middle of dark nights for long arcane discussions. During the rare seasons of heavy rain, torrents from the heavenly, rectangular peak sweep away the bare branches and trunks of palms, dry boughs from fig and pomegranate trees, and dead vines from vineyards, forcing them down the slope toward the plain. Adventurers and curiosity-seekers whose egos seduce them into climbing the mountain are subjected to attacks by swarms of bees. None of the residents would have believed that this insect, which the Quran praises,1 was found in the desert, had there not been repeated instances of wayfarers and migrants rushing into dwellings after being afflicted by its lethal stings on the mountain slope.
Then gazelles occupied it, and Barbary sheep settled there.
It allowed their flocks to graze freely in the neighboring plains, where hunters competed for them, not realizing that these were enchanted flocks until the most headstrong fell ill and contracted maladies. People of the plain still pass down stories about the behavior of these wild animals. After being the most skittish of creatures around man, they became even tamer than sheep or camels. The change began when the renowned black hunter Amnay came upon a peaceful herd of gazelles grazing calmly on the open plain near Idinen’s slope. Determined to bring a banquet home to the encampment, he rolled up his sleeves, revealing muscular arms, and shot all the arrows in his quiver without hitting a single gazelle.
Relating this incident to the tribe’s leader, he said the gazelles were calmly grazing on withered, wild grasses and paid no attention to his arrows. Moreover, the fawns would leap in the air with each shot and utter a shrill bleat. Then they would stick their muzzles back into the plants. The old hunter did not give in, though. He made other, equally unsuccessful attempts. Toward the end of his life, he lost his mind, and a sudden illness quickly carried him off.
Mokhammad’s fate was even worse. A Barbary ram butted him with its legendary horns and tore out his belly.
The inhabitants of the plain learned the truth, and the jurists’ amulets and the imam’s talismans proved futile. They forbade hunting the mountain’s animals, and hunters were forced to organize hunting trips to the mountains of Tadrart or Messak Settafet or to the valleys of Messak Mellet. The enchanted Barbary sheep would graze together with their herds of sheep and butt heads with the billy goats. The gazelles became quite tame and strolled with the goat kids into animal pens or houses.
3
Then it was the treasures’ turn.
The mountain’s residents had no difficulty duping the plains’ inhabitants and plundering their prized possessions made of gold. They pursued an ancient path traced by con-artists, bogus jurists, and members of Sufi brotherhoods to gain possession of the women’s jewelry and the children’s sustenance by exploiting both the desert people’s ignorance about their religion and their distance from Mecca. Every schemer who had memorized some verses of the Quran and a few prayers and who could ride a she-ass or a she-camel was able to fleece them by pretending to teach them the principles of the faith and to return them to the straight path.
The jinn mastered this chicanery.
They clad their sage in a rough, loose-fitting cloak of the type that members of the Sufi orders normally wore in the desert and sent him to the plain to bring glad tidings of a new religion to people in the desert. Elders and wise men continue to repeat the wise maxim that the jinni sage used to introduce his mission.
He said, “Every possessor is possessed. We possess, transmogrify, and haunt anyone who possesses gold. Know that. Gold and God cannot coexist in the believer’s heart. Know that too.”
He said he was a member of the Tijaniya Brotherhood. Then—in the presence of a group of tribal leaders sympathetic to the Qadiriya Brotherhood—he attacked his Qadiriya predecessors and accused them of corrupt teachings and of opposing the Sunnah and the Messenger. He also said that the Qadiriya derived their doctrines from the Jews’ Scriptures and the Christians’ Gospels—not from the Quran. He concluded that prophetic deliverance depended on liberation from the yellow metal and on stripping women of their gold jewelry. People heard the foulest descriptions of this metal from his lips. They also heard the most beautiful descriptions of deliverance and the delights of asceticism. Everything the desert people later repeated about inner peace and tranquility or about opposing worldly wealth could be traced back to this gifted Tijani missionary. Moreover, had it not been for this divine talent, no creature would ever have been able to convince even one woman to divest herself voluntarily of her gold jewelry and bury it in a cavity at the foot of the mountain—the way desert women did that day. It was only a few days after this “Day of Purification” that people discovered the missionary had disappeared. They searched everywhere and never found any trace of him on this earth. Some doubted the affair at first, and inquisitive folks exchanged many stories, claiming that the strange visitor had simply been a jinni inhabitant of the celestial mountain. They said they had followed his tracks and found he walked with donkey’s hooves and that the function of the loose-fitting cloak he dragged on the ground was to camouflage the truth about his feet. A statement was attributed to one of those fortunate enough to have visited Mecca and to have made a pilgrimage to the House of God to the effect that the cloak was in no way a Sufi garment, since in Egypt this man had seen Coptic Christian priests who wore a jubba like it, frequenting the Bab al-Zuwayla market.
Long discussions flared up concerning his heretical maxim: “Anyone who possesses gold, we possess. We possess, transmogrify, and haunt anyone who possesses gold.” Jurisprudents hesitated over this slip of the tongue, asking: “Why did he say, ‘We possess, transmogrify, and haunt anyone who possesses gold’? Can any creature except a demon or a jinni cause metamorphoses, possess people and haunt them?”
Intellectuals, however, embraced the maxim and referred to him as a divine messenger or a legendary missionary. They built a shrine for him in their hearts and remained true to his memory.
Women in the desert were forbidden to wear anything made of gold from that day forward, because factions finally reached a consensus that anyone who possesses gold is himself possessed and that his spirit is a puppet in the hands of Unseen Forces.
4
When the mysterious army destroyed the Sufi shaykh’s kingdom, people suspected the mountain was responsible, because the shaykh’s Achilles heel had been overlooking the consequences of stashing a box of gold dust among his possessions.
NOTE
1. Quran, 16:68
5
The Bird of Paradise
The destination of its migration is not known but it passes through the southern oases of the interior. Status: migratory. Perhaps it builds nests—Hartert assumed so, but no one else has said this. Most observers who have seen it in the wild have heard an intermittent song without finding any trace of nests.1
