Anubis: A Desert Novel

1 First Light

I AWOKE AT SUNRISE and found myself alone, abandoned, and stretched out in a harsh, solitary area into which intruded stubborn spines of sand. It was blocked to the west and north by a desert punctuated by grim mountain cliffs, around the sides of which the sands twisted in relentless swirls. A discrete, early light kissed their peaks, but the tips of the sand drifts were bathed with morning’s flood, and glinting gold specks flashed there.

I awoke but lay quiet for a long time, listening to a stillness that I was prepared to believe — I don’t know why — eternal, devoid of any precursor, the sole beloved ever to share the desert’s solitude, since it came into existence.

Surveying my surroundings, I found no food or water in sight. When I tried to stand, my body felt as heavy as if I had covered incredible distances on foot. On touching my face, I discovered that it was enveloped by a soft mask of skin that resembled a piece of silk. I ran my palm over my chest only to find it clad in soft, rich hide stamped with symbols I did not recognize. My feet were also encased in splendid shoes of costly leather decorated with talismanic charms. I did not feel hungry or thirsty.

Overcoming the heaviness of my body, I regained my feet, got my bearings, and headed east. The golden disk was concealed behind a high ridge of sand. The sandy tentacles with overbearing tops twisted one way and the other, but the valleys between them were grim and uninviting. All the same, I caught sight of a green tangle of plants clinging to the earth, which was strewn with pebbles in places and sand granules in others.

A vast mountain of sand blocked my way. At its foot, I discovered a line of luxuriant plants, massed together. These took the form of mounds, crowned with delicate, pure white florets that responded to the morning breezes by bobbing back and forth in a desperate dance, as if wishing to break free from their roots. They sighed mournfully, affording me companionship in the lonely desolation of the timeless quiet. From the canopy of one I seized a handful of flowers that oozed a white liquid. I sampled a piece of the stalk, testing its flavor with my tongue. The sap was gooey and had a bitter taste.

When I tried to scale the sandy mountain, I discovered its sand was the unstable kind that shifts and rushes downward in a flood, sweeping everything with it. I struggled for a long time and attempted to anchor my hands in the sand, but was always cast back, down to the foot of the mountain. Resolving to outwit it, I relinquished my attempts to climb straight up and edged along sideways, instead, following the protruding veins that lay along its horizontal articulations. These led me to the summit from which I beheld broad plains interspersed with green clusters of trees at four points. Meanwhile, on four sides, sandy ridges also enclosed the plains, which seemed set apart from the desert’s body, which extended and multiplied until it disappeared at what passed for the horizon. To the far southwest, at the point where the intersection of the southern mountain ranges with the western ones should have been visible, there was a cleft, which seemed the sole escape from this mighty fortress contrived by the desert’s cunning.

I tumbled down the prodigious slope, casting myself on the unstable, rough terrain, which rolled me down, over and over. On reaching the mountain’s foot, I shot off toward the groves but did not reach them, since they were farther than I had anticipated. On the way, I found evidence that creatures inhabited the land. The traces were plentiful, but my eyes discerned not a single animal. When I reached the first clump of green, I found trees there and some shrubs. These all followed the course of a bold stream that gleamed in the sunlight. Water gushed from a natural reservoir to pour into the plain in little rivulets that ran west and east, until the neighboring sandy hills consumed them.

Copious clusters of attractive fruit, which looked delicious, hung from the tops of the trees. I stretched out my hand and plucked a plump fruit the size of my finger from a generous bunch. When I touched it, I found the clear liquid leaking from it was sticky. I popped it into my mouth and started to chew. As it dissolved beneath my tongue, it was so sweet my teeth hurt. It mixed with my saliva and began to course through my body. Chewing on it lazily, I reveled in the unusual taste. I was in no hurry to swallow the morsel, not because I did not feel hungry but because of the obscure sensation the taste awakened in my heart.

I visited the other three springs as well. Around them grew date palms in congenial groupings similar to that surrounding the first spring. From these palms dangled stalks heavy with various types of dates. Beneath the trunks of these lofty palms were scattered dates, some dry and others still fresh. On the damp earth beside the springs were tracks of the animals whose traces I had found by the rivulets rich with vegetation. I could identify them, now that I had jogged my memory, as tracks left by the feet of gazelles, Barbary sheep, hares, lizards, and various types of birds. I did not recognize them merely from their tracks but from the dung pellets distributed everywhere. Flocks of birds flapped their wings as I violated the groves’ sanctuary. They would soar over my head once or twice before flying off, only to land on the canopy of the nearest spring. I encountered a large herd of gazelles in a valley opposite the last spring toward the southeast. Acacia trees proliferated there, and the gazelles roamed among the trees, some grazing off plants on the ground and others craning their necks to reach the top of the acacias and pluck the green leaves. They became skittish when they saw me and joined ranks to form a single herd. This reminded me of the way goats react to the scent of jackals. They watched me with collective curiosity but did not take fright or flee. So I felt certain they had never seen a man before. I stood, admiring the beauty of their eyes, but eventually the herd bolted and dashed away.

I traversed an open area coated with gravel composed of small round, red pebbles until I reached the base of the mountain range. What I had assumed was a sandy slope was actually a genuine mountain scaled by drifting sand. The walls forming this mythic fortress had not originally been ridges of sand but rocky mountains that the sands had seized in crazed raids, submerging the rock. Only the southern barrier had succeeded in resisting their assault, even though the wind had been able to submerge it from the back, as I discovered later.

All along the cliff face there were caves, which seemed, seen from below, to be fabulous mouths. Around their entrances lay many dung pellets, but I did not know a herd of Barbary sheep sheltered there until a huge ram with thick, matted fleece stormed out of a cave and scaled the high rocks in a couple of bounds. He stood looking down on me curiously. When I explored the cave, I discovered that its walls were decorated with numerous colossal figures. These were strangely contrived creatures: legendary animals and women. Men pursued Barbary sheep, or — brandishing spears — danced in groups. There were other creatures concocted by matching men’s bodies with animal heads crowned with horns or with birds’ heads. I stood for a long time examining these unnatural, composite creatures.

These designs coated the cavern from the top of the ceiling to the foot of the sides and extended the length of the rock walls, which were cloaked in darkness they ran so deep inside.

Outside I craned my neck, examining the cliff face, until noon and time for the midday heat. Then I decided to take a break and sought refuge in the nearest cave, where, from the entrance, I found myself facing a shadowy figure I could not make out clearly, since it was so dark; as I leaned against a wall of the cavern to catch my breath, I saw, in the gloomy recesses, two gleaming eyes that reflected the light entering from the cavern’s mouth. I did my best to make out the body but failed, since the gloom was too dense. I closed my eyes to listen, but the timeless stillness swallowed everything. All I could hear was my own breathing.

I was quiet for a time. When I reopened my eyes, I found that they had adjusted sufficiently to the darkness for me to see. The figure stood erect in a corner of the cave, as still as a stone statue. There was a weird, unfathomable gleam to its blazing eyes. It had curving horns like those of a Barbary ram, but its body was that of a gazelle, although of huge proportions. It was gazing at me with intense curiosity, but without moving, shying, or even breathing. It might just as well have been an empty hide. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at the creature, but it did not react, bolt, or take flight. I crept toward it on my hands and knees, narrowing the gap between us. Then I saw its pupils expand and enlarge as the strange gleam of its pupils became more intense. I kept staring, and a secret was awakened in my heart. A sharp odor assailed my nostrils, but I did not look away. I was afflicted by a strange trembling and the mysterious whispering spread to my heart. I deciphered in its eyes a prophetic message, which I read without difficulty, although it was wordless. Involuntarily, I mumbled a cryptic, incomprehensible phrase. I crawled out of the cave on all fours and then attempted to rise to my feet but failed. I was forced to continue crawling. I descended the cliff face, still on all fours. When I reached the base of the mountain, I lay quietly on my back and started to shake. The prophecy was making my head pound. As it matured, I felt dizzy and then nauseous. My heart was awash with whispered temptations, and I began to vomit. I threw up for a long time. Then I went into convulsions. I stroked my chest and found its covering soft to the touch and thick enough to arouse suspicions. When I investigated my leather clothing, I discovered that it adhered to my skin, like skin. I tried to strip it off, but how can you pull skin from skin? I cried out for help but heard only a choking rattle.

The composite apparition with the Barbary ram’s head and gazelle’s body showed me no mercy. It overtook me and stood over my head with its glittering, doubt-provoking eyes. I struggled against my despair and gazed into its eyes. The composite creature gazed right back. I continued staring. The dusky coloring of its eyes became ever more intense and they looked more mysterious. I did not budge while the mystery transmogrified. Once the mystery lifted, the prophecy’s distinguishing features stood out more clearly. In the profound, unfamiliar talisman, I saw myself. The stone eyeball was transformed into the surface of water flowing from Heaven’s spring, Salsabil, and I saw myself clearly in it. I saw I was a monster. I saw I was a freak. I saw I was a creature patched together from two disparate animals. I could not believe that I was still myself, and yet I felt certain my essence had not been destroyed. Only then was I freed. I could feel my body becoming liberated. I regained the ability to stand erect and found that I had the power to speed through the air.

2 Midday

THE POWER THAT ENABLED me to speed through the air helped me mingle with the herds, of which I became a member from that day on. In the lowlands I bounded with the gazelle fawns. I ascended mountain crags with the Barbary sheep kids. I nursed beside them, sucking milk from their mothers’ teats, and we competed for the plants that grew on the plains and for the roots of vegetation on the mountain flanks. We shared the dates strewn beneath the palms. The intimidating gazelle with the horns of a Barbary ram had become a mother and father for me ever since the power spread through my heart the day we met in the cavern. She was a creature endowed with a gazelle’s ability to traverse treacherous sandy plains and a Barbary sheep’s ability to clamber up the highest mountain peaks. To attain the steep flanks of the southern mountain I would cling to her meager tail. I would climb on her back to reach the grazing lands of the sandy plains to the north, east, and west. I hung from her neck, swinging back and forth and amusing myself. I had forgotten. I had forgotten my mission. I did not brood about my true nature; I had even forgotten forgetting.

I do not know how long my exile lasted, but the whispered temptation returned one winter day, when the sky was veiled by gloomy, thick clouds and the mountain summits were shaken by a bombardment more ferocious than any I had ever heard in the desert. The herds fled and scattered. The flocks of Barbary sheep sought refuge in their mountains, and the herds of gazelles hid in the groves of palm trees. The thundering did not cease. The clouds started to shoot out terrifying bolts, and the heavens overhead were aflame with blinding fires. The herds grew increasingly alarmed and huddled together. I hid too. I had lost sight of my mother’s tail and sought refuge with a herd of gazelles in a grove. I had squeezed in among them beneath a low palm with bushy fronds when the sky was rocked by such a terrifying roll of thunder that it seemed as if it would crash down and collapse on the face of the earth. Then I observed a gap languishing in the heavenly conflagration. This fissure was ablaze with flames and stretched forth a fiery tongue to strike the tops of the tallest palms, and so the grove began to catch fire. Smoke was everywhere, but my terror-stricken clan stuck together and did not budge or flee. I heard the agony of the palms’ branches, which were caught by lapping fire, but did not catch their toasty scent until the top fronds began to fall on our miserable palm, which burst into flames as well.

The singular fragrance sparked the new prophecy in my heart and roused me, even though it seemed difficult, impossible even, to decipher the talisman. In my anxiety I began to shake. The whispered appeal apparently caused me so much pain that I rushed from the thicket into the fire. As the scorched smell in the air became more pungent, my sense of prophetic inspiration increased, but the prophecy itself did not pour forth. I shot off, racing across plains that were awash with the heaven’s deluge, not knowing whether I was galloping to flee from the conflagration or in search of a stratagem that would illuminate the prophetic message inside me. Yet I never doubted that it was a smell that had excited me: the scents of the fire, of a body being consumed by fire, of mystery, of a prophetic maxim, and of greed. A ravenous appetite, which I could not account for, swept through my body, affecting me like a lethal poison, and I ran as if deranged. My flight carried me far away. I reached the grassy valleys that lie to the north and found them flooded by the heavenly downpour. I lapped the flood water, hoping to extinguish the coal flaming in my belly, but the water, which was created to give life, not to exterminate it, did not douse the flames. I retraced my steps and, without meaning to, returned to the burning palm groves. The herd had cleared out of their hiding place and scattered across the adjacent plain. The thunderous bombardment had ceased, the downpour was checked, dwindling to scattered drops, and the cloud cover had begun to break up, but the fire in the grove burned on. As I approached the palms, that scent grew stronger. I struggled with dizziness. I was trying not to succumb to it, when I observed, beneath the palm’s burning trunk, a wretched, young ewe’s body consumed by flames. Smoke rose from what was left of her corpse. I took another step closer to poke this mound. A repulsive liquid like blood, purulence, or pus flowed out, escaping from the body. I took a stick and scraped charred lumps off her rump. The flesh had been blackened by flames, which had reduced it to bits and pieces, even as smoke continued to rise from some areas. When I plunged the stick into the creature’s thigh, the smoke subsided and the steamy scent wafted from it; the appetizing aroma of the scent that had driven me crazy. I began to tremble once more. So, without any premeditation, I stretched out my hand and feverishly pulled a chunk off the thigh. With my teeth, I tore into the flesh, which — although charred and saturated with blood and dirt — released an appetizing vapor. I savored it thoroughly, bit into the chunk, and began to chew it with the voracity of a sick man. The morsel dissolved in my mouth, and my saliva mixed with the blood, charred flesh, and mud. Then my limbs relaxed, my trembling ceased, and my fever lifted. Calm flowed through my body. Once I consumed the antidote, I heard a supernatural whisper, which was the catalyst for a weird sensation that was a forgotten prophecy.

The fog finally dispersed, and the vision’s details became clear. I saw a boy rolling between two full breasts before dropping into a dark abyss. I had to struggle even longer to make out the character of the abyss, which was that obscure ghost I today call “forgetfulness,” before I could perceive the cure — memory. It helped me remember my name.

After I recovered my name, the gloom lifted and the dream vision continued, starting with the rituals of childbirth and ending with the hunting knife I used to sever my father’s sway over me.

A new, profound sensation took hold of me. It rocked me, but I only recognized it much later as that murky enigma the tribes refer to as “happiness.” I did not then know that the spirit world, which grants happiness, normally refuses to grant it unalloyed. In my case, when I used the stick to poke at the ewe’s body roasted by the fire, I discovered, in part of the body buried under the heap, the twin, curved horns from the head of the creature that was a composite of a Barbary ram and a gazelle. Then I realized that I had poisoned my body with “evil,” since I had devoured my mother’s flesh, which had been molded together with my father’s.

3 Afternoon

THE CLOUDS LIFTED and the sky lost its distinguishing features, but the earth remained soaked from the downpour. I plunged into the mires in the valleys to rejoin the herds. I saw a knot of gazelles in the northern plains, but they shied away from me. I moved a few steps closer, but they looked alarmed, prepared to flee, and stamped the earth with their hooves. When I advanced still farther, they shot off all together, as if fleeing from a jackal. I rushed off too and caught up with them before I knew it, but the herd continued to flee and disappeared behind the hills that lead to the eastern ridges of sand. I raced after them for a long way. I gave chase, because the flight by this herd of my boon companions awakened in my heart an ugly feeling of abandonment. I choked on a bitterness that clouded my happiness by immediately bringing back my memory. I felt as ostracized, deserted, and banished as the day I fled from my tribe’s encampment. When I pondered the secret behind the gazelles’ rejection, I could think of nothing save my gluttony. Had the appetizing morsel constituted an act of civil disobedience grave enough to warrant my banishment? Was I destined to become an alien again because of this ill-omened slip? Had the gazelle clans welcomed me only because forgetfulness had allowed me to revert to a swaddling-clothes stage of animal metamorphosis and to morph into a gazelle or a Barbary sheep without my realizing it, and had this stage lasted until I devoured the morsel and thus freed myself from it by regaining my memory, only to have my shameful identity revealed to the herds, which then fled from me, horrified by my true nature? Was it reasonable for that era to end and for me to be denied forgiveness, just because I ate the flesh of a relative — not out of hunger but driven by the intoxication of something I later learned is called “greed”? All the same, I did not admit defeat.

I crossed over the northern hills to circle back on the herd from the spines of sand, but the mires slowed my pace. I did not reach the lower valleys until late that afternoon. The sky had cleared, although the shells of a few clouds loitered in the void. In the valleys, moist vapors continued to rise, carrying to my nostrils the earth’s prophetic counsel. Looking down over the depression below me, I spotted the herd grazing in its hollow. I fell to my knees and watched from my vantage point.

The gazelles were roaming peacefully, munching on plants as dry as chaff down to their roots, since they had appealed for sustenance to an earth reduced to powder by the intense drought. The gazelles lowered their heads to pluck at the stalks and then began to glance around nervously, as if sensing danger. They turned to the right and left and kept flicking their tails, another sign they thought danger was nigh.

Some of the fawns bounded hither and yon, while others were busy drawing milk from their mothers’ teats. Males with horns haughtily patrolled the circumference, not stooping to nibble the grass. Instead, they stood guard over the herd, earnestly endeavoring to protect it. I watched a male that kept staring at my hill, as if he had found me out. Then I saw the prophecy in his eyes, despite his arrogance. I saw the prophetic message in his stance, physique, build, coloring, posture, nobility, and in his eyes, which gazed into the void of eternity, staring at the spirit world, which I could not see. Was it beauty? Was this the beauty that had disowned me and was too hardhearted to pardon me? How could I live without beauty? How could beauty be retrieved?

I crept on all fours across the top of the hill and continued in the same fashion down its flank. I approached the nearest doe and gazed into her eyes. She stared back at me, stopped chewing, and stamped the earth with her hoof. I used my eyes to show her my affection. I entreated her with my eyes. I told her I was the same creature who had played with her the day before and who had shared her hiding place this very day, but she rejected me. She kicked the ground with her front hoof. Then she bolted, and the herd bolted with her. They shot off like an arrow in the air and vanished from sight. This was how I realized that my tie to the herd had been severed. I admitted to myself that I had not merely lost beauty but had emerged as beauty’s eternal foe. Still, I did not capitulate.

I left the gazelles, resolving to try my luck with the nation of Barbary sheep. I galloped across the ravine, traversed the valleys, and then plunged into the muddy wallows of the plains, as if pursued by a demon from the spirit world. I fell many times, and my feet sank into the mud up to my knees. I do not know how I reached the bare, rocky area adjacent to the southern mountain’s cliff face, which was cloaked by sandy deposits that twisted like serpents’ bodies. Apparently my struggle through the mires had transformed me into a monster uglier than any other, for the sight of me caused the herds of Barbary sheep to bolt from the mountain’s foot and to gallop en masse uphill. I scaled the cliff face behind them, as if possessed, and did not slow my pace until I caught up with a pregnant ewe, whose progress was hampered by the creature she bore in her belly. As she raced higher, she stepped on a friable layer of rock that time had weakened. Her two rear hooves slipped so that her belly hit the ground, and she began to slide back. She attempted to stop her fall with her front hooves but failed. Then she tried to save herself with her head, planting her muzzle in crevices between brittle layers of stone, but she could not hold on and continued to slide ever lower in a slow, grievous descent. I reached her, or more precisely she reached me, for her descent rather than my effort to catch her placed her before me. I seized her rear hoof, gasping to catch my breath, but she stamped her hoof in a murderous way to free herself. I recklessly grabbed hold of her hoof with both hands. She was quiet then only because she was too weak to resist, not because she felt reassured. She turned her head toward me, and in her eyes I perceived not only dust, mucous, and grains of sand but terror, revulsion, and agony.

I was so hurt by the agony visible in her weeping eyes that a tear sprang from my eye too. I massaged her body, which was shaking violently. Seeking a way to regain her trust, I whispered to her, in Tuareg, “It’s me. Have you forgotten me?”

Her response, however, was a rude kick to my right cheek. Then she struggled to break free. She succeeded and began bravely climbing higher, but the eroding layers of rock failed her once more, and she slid back down to find herself in my grasp again. Then she bleated desperately before turning toward me. I could read in her eyes a plea and an admission of impotence. She collapsed on her right side and gazed at me in despair. I stroked her neck to reassure her but noticed that her misery continued to show in her eyes. She was allowing me to touch her only because she was too weak to resist, not because she liked me. I wondered what secret had separated me from these docile creatures, which only the day before had been my family, my race, and my clan. The only answer I could find to this puzzle was the hunk of meat. Had I been transformed, in one fell swoop, into a predator in their eyes? Was I a monster that had denied his true nature by swallowing the morsel and had then become a different creature that deserved to be shunned?

The sheets of crumbling rock collapsed under our combined weight, and we tumbled downhill. I found myself hugging her body with both hands as we fell. I put my arms around her neck, which I pressed against mine. I sensed the moisture of her snot on my face, her breathing in my ear, her heartbeats in my heart, and the pulsing fetus in her belly with my pulse. We were united during our descent, for I felt she was part of me and I part of her. I regained my sense of wellbeing and composure, since I had regained my feeling of affiliation.

The rocks scraped my skin grievously, and I bled profusely. I did not feel the pain, however, until some time after we landed. The trip down did not take long, but it was long enough for that emotion I learned priests call “happiness” to be sparked for a few moments in my soul. This flighty emotion does not tarry with us long. A boulder blocked our path and brought us to a halt. When we came to a stop, our union terminated and a painful estrangement ensued. Our bodies separated, and exile reasserted its sovereignty over my world. The ewe kicked me in the chest with her two front hooves and forced me, against my will, to release my hold on her neck. She shook herself free and rose to her four feet to confront me. She panted. From her nostrils she discharged dust, mixed with drops of the snot that had spattered over me. She glared at my face. She stared at my eyes, at my pupils, and at whatever lay behind my pupils. She saw, or so it seemed, everything in my eyes. The slow deliberation with which she backed away revealed her terror, alarm, and revulsion. Without meaning to, I crawled toward her. I crept after her to reclaim her. I crawled toward her to restore our harmony and to recreate our bond. I stretched out my hand, both my hands, as if begging, but she backed away from me with a strange zeal, never ceasing to stare at my eyes with that terrifying look.

I trailed after her. I found myself pulled toward her. I could not bear to be separated from her. I could not stand to be parted from her. She continued to retreat. She backed until a boulder blocked her from the rear. Her pupils narrowed. She was swept by a fear greater than any I had ever witnessed. It was a mixture of despair, grief, and impotence. When she opened her eyes, a liquid flowed from them. I saw it glide down her muzzle till drops fell on the rocks of the cliff face. She closed her eyes and began to tremble once more. She shook violently before reopening them. Then I detected a new gleam, a different one, a look of genuine determination and of the courage a creature feels when it decides to terminate a problem and to be heroic. Then … suddenly, she sprang. She shot toward me in a lethal leap, which I dodged only at the last second, by tumbling over backwards. Then I saw her bound into the air and disappear behind the boulder. Before I came to terms with what had happened I heard the heavy crash of her body against the earth. Leaping up, I discovered that only the boulder that had stopped our descent had prevented our conjoined bodies from falling into an abyss. My eyes searched for her from my lofty perch but could not make her out among the rocks below. I bounded down the cliff face, although my progress was hampered by rocks I repeatedly had to sidestep. Eventually I tripped over a stone, fell to the ground, and began to roll down the hill. I tumbled a long way. I tumbled the whole way down till I reached the chasm’s floor. My limbs were bathed in blood, but I felt numb all over. As I stood above her body, I saw that, although she was still breathing, she was dying. Her swollen belly rose and fell. Blood trickled from her muzzle and flowed over the rocks of the pit. Blood also spouted from her rump. She bellowed profoundly while the sides of her abdomen stretched taut and contracted. She discharged a lot of mucous and blood, before discharging the fetus in one fell swoop.

I rushed to the newborn and took it in my hands. It was limp and slimy with blood, amniotic fluid, and threads of mucous. Its eyes were covered by a veil as diaphanous as spiders’ webs. The eye beneath the coating was extinguished. The lamb quivered in my hands once and then a second time before it subsided, forever.

The mother also quivered as she released her final breath at exactly the same moment.

4 Evening

I HEADED FOR THE CAVERN decorated with the wisdom of the ancients and spent several days there. I did not feel like eating and was disgusted by everything, even the hunk of meat that had sparked greed in my heart the day lightning incinerated the ewe formed from the body of a gazelle and the head of a Barbary ram.

Whenever I recalled that taste, I saw in my mind the image of the Barbary ewe that had fled from me forcing from her body her stillborn lamb — a-swirl in fluids — and her last breaths. Then I was unable to keep myself from vomiting till I almost spat out my guts. My only consolation came from kneeling to beg for forgiveness beneath the images that the ancestors’ shamans had traced on the hard walls. I brooded about my situation for two days following the death of the ewe and her lamb. The only cure I could devise was to admit the truth. After a prolonged internal debate, I realized that all along the source of my conflict with the herds had not been, as I had originally tried to persuade myself, my conquest of beauty, but my seizure of prey capable of quieting gluttony’s call in my belly. Yes, greed was the cause. The gluttony revealed by my consumption of the illomened morsel had not only poisoned my body but had stripped me of my camouflage as a member of the herds. That was the cause. So how could I free myself of these poisons and absolve myself of my error?

Yet, it seemed my hunger for meat turned out to be the stronger drive, for my feelings of nausea eventually disappeared, and the image of the ewe and her newborn also faded away, so that I found myself, without any conscious decision, prowling around the herds’ grazing lands once again. I prowled there for a long time without bagging a victim from either species and was finally reduced to employing a different type of amulet, one I dubbed iyghf or “reasoning.”

I brought fresh palm stalks from the groves and began to plait them into a circular form. By trimming away the leaves, I created a perfect circle. Then I crisscrossed the heart of the circle with rows of twigs that I fastened to the circular frame by threads of bast. I called this base fabrication tasarsamt or “trap.” After that, I headed to the pasture where I dug a pit as deep as I could reach and then placed my ignoble handiwork exactly over the mouth of the hole. I spread dry material and plants over the contraption so that it was invisible. Inspecting what my hands had wrought, I found it excellent. Then I retreated to a nearby acacia to relax as a reward for the effort I had taken to craft this excellent device. I rested under this bushy acacia and began to dream of the antidote that had restored my memory until — I do not know how or when — I dozed off.

I slept profoundly and did not wake until dawn had traced its talisman across the horizon. I went back down to the plain but found neither snare nor victim. I searched the area excitedly and discovered near the hole’s mouth some fur tufts that convinced me the prey that had run off with my snare was a gazelle. I followed the tracks through depressions that twisted around before leading to the northeastern valleys. I descended into the low-lying valley bottoms, but their sides soon began to climb and rise to become, in the tracts beyond, trails that would ascend the peaks of the stubborn sand ridges. In the muddy valley bottoms I could see the track much more clearly. My victim had circled an acacia tree repeatedly, as if appealing to it for help in liberating herself from her shackle, but the tree had snagged her body in the form of bits of furry hide stuck to thorns. At a steep bend, where the ravine rose stubbornly to join gullies that came down from the highest reaches, I found blood on smooth rocks that crowded together at the mouth of the ravine like a thicket of boulders.

I darted over their smooth tops, which were rounded like the tombs of ancients in the northern desert. Here I lost the track but found it again after I had left the stone thicket and the trail became easier, less challenging, and higher. In this easy stretch, the shrubs fell away to the rear to disappear among the lower rocks, fleeing from the vanguards of the sandy rebel. In this area, only some low-lying plants blanketed the earth, seeking refuge from the fiery sky with the sun-baked surface of the aggressive ridges of sand. The track was clearer on the sandy soil. It seemed that my victim had risked her life attempting to free herself from the snare, for the struggle waged over this interval had resulted in heavy bleeding and in her shedding tufts of blood-soaked fur. Then, suddenly, the track disappeared. I retraced my steps to scout the area where the trail forked into two gullies. I followed the gulley that turned off toward the east without finding any tracks there. I stopped to peer around. I looked to the south and the north. I spotted her. I saw her with my heart before I noticed her with my eyes. I sensed her presence before I caught sight of her. Had it not been for this strange sensation, I would not have retraced my steps. I would not have explored the second gulley. I would not have paused at this spot rather than another. I would not have peered to the south and the north only to espy her hidden in a pit located between the two trails. A dense bramble of dry, interwoven branches hid her from view. The snare that I had laid over the hole played a part in concealing her. She was trembling violently from fear and pain, and snot was streaming from her muzzle. From the leg held by the teeth of the trap flowed fresh blood, which was mingled with clots of dry dirt. The silent call that had guided me back to her had been prophetic, for when I seized hold of her, I discovered that her leg had worked free from the snare and that its teeth no longer grasped anything save a hoof, so the doe would definitely have freed herself had she bolted from her hiding place. As I grasped hold of her with two quivering hands her trembling became even more violent.

Her eyes flashed with fear, innocence, despair, and beauty. I embraced her with both arms and hugged her to my chest, without knowing why. Perhaps the look in her wide, dark eyes was irresistible. Perhaps it was because the prophecy I detected in her deep eyes would never be repeated. Perhaps it was because the significance I read in the flash of her eyes was as intimate as it was painful, so that anxiety prevented me from discovering the secret of either our intimacy or her pain, because the call of greed suppressed the voice of truth in my heart. I did not hear it until after I had slaughtered her with a sharp stone, skinned, and eaten her.

Once her death cry fell silent, that voice grew louder. Anxiety was dissipated, the gloom faded, and the mysteries were revealed. I heard the statement her eyes had addressed to me in that look. Inspiration burst forth, and I recognized in the gazelle’s eyes the mother who had twice rescued me from destruction: once when wicked denizens of the spirit world, masquerading as the hare of misfortune, had enticed me and caused me to lose my way when I was searching for my father, and a second time when the world collapsed around me the day I slaughtered my father with a hunting knife only to find myself alone, abandoned, banished, a pariah. My situation in short had been tantamount to Anubi’s. My mother had arrived, thrust me into her skin, and fled far away to save me yet another time through metamorphosis.

5 Dusk

WITH THIS BLOODY ESCAPADE commenced my break with the herds. Thereafter my animal kin shunned me and braved the heights to cross over into unknown realms.

The gazelles migrated to the north, crossing lofty, sand-strewn peaks to cast themselves into the mighty sea of sand. The Barbary sheep clans migrated to the south, scaling the circle of southern mountains and crossing into the trackless deserts that lead to mountain chains with surging peaks, about which the tribes recount fantastic legends as part of epics handed down from their forefathers. I first followed the gazelles’ trail in their journey northward but then retraced my steps rather than tackle the sandy slope that cast me down to the oasis one day, for I remembered that gazelles are a species extraordinarily hard to capture when traversing sandy ground. I conjectured, on the other hand, that I could catch up with the herds of Barbary sheep, which are slow creatures on the difficult plains that dot the southern desert before it reaches the mountain chains of whose impregnable heights fantastic legends are narrated. The hope for escape for Barbary sheep is always weaker when they enter a sandy area. The hope for escape for gazelles, conversely, is weaker when they enter mountainous terrain, as time-honored proverbs assert.

I scaled the mountain but had trouble ascending the highest boulders leading to the summit. So I fell back on my wits and sought easier passageways through the chain’s westward extension. That took me the whole day, and dusk fell before I discovered a gap. As darkness overtook me, I cast about for a sheltered place where I could spend the night. Stretching out in a hollow at the base of a column-like boulder, which was suggestive in its majesty of an idol, I surveyed from my lofty perch the low-lying areas where my oasis looked a modest plot no different from the groves of acacia or retem in some of the valleys of the northern desert. When I cast my eyes upwards, the bare, dispassionate sky spoke to me in a stern tongue. As it addressed me, I pondered the cause for the temporary insanity that drove me to pursue creatures that shunned me. Had gluttony motivated me to chase after them? Was gluttony an illness, a need, or an appetite? Was I pursuing them and risking my life in their pursuit out of a longing to capture beauty, which for some unknown reason I felt I could not live without? Was my pursuit motivated by fear of solitude? Was my pursuit occasioned by some other unknown cause? Was I pursuing because man must always pursue, so that even when he finds nothing to pursue, he invents a prey, albeit fictitious, deceptive, or imaginary? Was I pursuing them merely out of stubbornness, because these creatures that had so recently constituted my kin had banished me from their ranks in the course of one day, leaving me a fugitive, alone, and shunned, so that I resembled no one so much as a bastard, desert Anubi? Or did my motivation actually lurk deep within a whispering appeal that told me this rejection was not a rejection but a portent embracing an awe-inspiring truth related to my truth, which no stratagem had allowed me to discern in myself?

I wondered and wondered until my head hurt so much it was ready to burst open. Sleep carried me off before I could reach any answer to any question. I awoke to a dawn that was still cloaked in darkness. I sped away at that early hour, acting on the counsel of the Barbary sheep community, which recommends: “Travel in the morning, rising at dawn, in order to reach your destination.”

I struggled past the stone monoliths until dawn receded and a firebrand was born on the horizon. I climbed a forbidding cliff face and found I was ascending the mountain’s summit from its western side. Because of the gloom, I was not able to discern the full extension of its foothills. I groped my way through a relatively easy opening but was unable to make out the lay of the land until the darkness was routed and light prevailed. The region was filled with mountainous knobs of gloomy hue and modest elevation. These were spaced out and scattered at some points and, in other locations smack dab together. They rose at times and fell in other places till the plains terminated them. All the same, their average height remained constant, even though they were paralleled at the rear by true mountain peaks. Thus the oasis at the bottom appeared to be in a pit rather than on a plain.

I discovered dung from Barbary sheep on the sandy blazon encircling the haunch of one of these knobs. When I rubbed it between my fingers, I found it was still fresh, but the ewe’s trail disappeared where the sandy band terminated. So I made for the heights, knowing that Barbary sheep would typically be satisfied with no other type of refuge. I persevered till midday without finding a single ewe. My throat was parched, my tongue and lips were dry, and my body had shed its sweat reserve. I saw that I had forsaken sound counsel when I failed to respond to the inner voice that had advised me all along to desist and turn back before it was too late. I searched for a shrub or boulder that would afford me some shade until the noonday heat passed, but the soil was of that grievous type the tribes say was cursed at some time; a fiery heat emerging from the center of the desert had scorched it, wiping out all vegetation until even plant seeds had disappeared. The only crop its dirt produced was stones.

I resolved to turn back but thought I would never survive unless I found a place where I could shelter from the siesta-time heat. I committed another error for once again I ignored the little voice and went forward, hoping to run across some shade behind the hill, which was bathed by waves of mirages.

I pressed forward, but the hill retreated ever farther away the more I advanced toward it, as if fleeing from me. I remembered the tricks mirages play in the northern desert and felt certain that I had fallen out of the pan into the fire and that confusion had once again led me into harm’s way. My vision was blurred, and I started to see double. My body shook from a weakness that struck without warning. I felt dizzy, dropped to my knees in a grim, eternal solitude, with a scorching earth beneath me and a furnace overhead. Only then did I understand that my crime lay not in venturing farther into the desert than I should have, but in entering the desert in search of anything other than water. I realized at last that although the fates had provided me with everything I needed, I had rebelled and set forth in search of something I had never needed. I deserved the fury and punishment of the sun-baked earth.

I perceived clearly that a sip of water was all I needed. Why had I disdained the bold stream, the springs, and life in general to set out like a madman in search of a figment of the imagination and a lie, substituting for life a shadow of life? Now I had landed myself in life-threatening isolation, where I was searching for a drop of moisture in a rocky desert. I did not even dare to think about the copious supply of water I had left behind, since all I dreamt of was some shade to shelter me from the blazing sky and to preserve in my body all of the lost treasure I could salvage.

I crawled for a distance, but the scorching earth burned my hands. I licked them and fell on my stomach and elbows. I began to wriggle forward on my belly like a snake but was not able to wriggle far. I lay on my back. My face was burned by the punishing sun and my back by the punishing earth. I burned until I no longer felt the inferno. I sensed I was about to pass out. I do not know how long I was unconscious, but the sip of water that saved my life certainly preceded the prophecy I heard from the mouth of the emissary who stood above my head: “It is not wise to neglect what we have in order to search for what we lack.”

He placed the mouth of his water-skin in my mouth, and the water poured down my throat. I could feel it flow through my body and spread into my blood, restoring my faculties to me. I regained the ability to use my hands and grasped the water-skin with thirst’s insanity, attempting to empty it into my belly in one gulp, but the emissary seized it, pulling it away from my mouth. “This is the answer,” he said. “This is the secret. It is all about greed.”

I was thirsty. I had returned in an instant from a trip to the unknown. My dream was to provision myself with more of the antidote that had rescued me from the ghoul’s grip. I made a sign with my eyes. I begged with my eyes, because — like others who have fallen into the ghoul’s grip and then miraculously returned to the desert of the living — I had lost the ability to speak. Even so, the apparition kept the water-skin out of my reach while he proclaimed sagely: “You had a comfortable living bestowed on you, but you betrayed your covenant.”

My tongue, however, stammered with the wisdom of the thirsty: “Water!”

“You received water and betrayed it by setting out on a journey. Where are you heading? Where?”

“Give me a sip, and I’ll tell you a secret.”

“No one who has disavowed his secret has a secret.”

“Did I disavow my secret by setting forth in search of food?”

“We provided you with the fruit of the palm for nourishment. So don’t lie.”

“Dates are a lifeless form of nourishment.”

“Lifeless?”

“Any nourishment devoid of that riddle named beauty is lifeless food.”

“Beauty is a treasure that gives life, not a deadly ordeal.”

“How can one seize beauty, master?”

“Beauty always evades us if we set out to search for it.”

“Master, I have never dreamt of obtaining anything so much as I’ve dreamt of obtaining beauty. When, however, I departed one day to search for my father, I lost my way and was not destined to return, for I found myself stuffed into the jug of metamorphoses.”

“Do you see? This was your punishment. You should not search for anything you do not find in your heart. You are beauty. You are your father. You are prophecy. You are the treasure!”

He chanted his words as if reciting verse. He swayed right and left, as if in a trance. He uttered groans of pain reminiscent of those of people overcome by longing. My faculties were restored and life began to pulse through my body. I said, “I gave up searching for my father one day and decided to look for Targa, but the spirit world cast me into an oasis whose name I don’t even know.”

“What the spirit world wishes for us is always nobler than what we wish for ourselves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The oasis whose name you don’t know is real, but Targa is a false illusion.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Targa too is a lost oasis.”

“I’ve heard members of my tribe speak of caravans that left for Targa.”

“Caravans that leave for Targa don’t return. It is the lost caravans that head for Targa.”

“Targa is lost, the law is a lost set of prophetic admonitions, and the people of the desert are a lost tribe. Are we, then, bastard children of heaven like Anubi?”

“Each one of us is Anubi; each a fleeting shadow.”

“But…who are you?”

“I am a fleeting shadow.”

Because of my fatigue, dizziness, and ordeal-induced daze, I was not able to make out his features clearly, but sparks in my heart tried to tell me something. “Has the spirit world not brought us together before?” I asked.

He stuck to his enigmatic response: “I’m naught but a fleeting shadow.”

The sparks in my heart illuminated a corner veiled by darkness, and I pulled myself together and struggled onto my elbows. I clung to his blue veil, which gleamed indigo in the twilight. Unaware of what I was doing, I shouted, “Not so fast! You are my father! Are you my father?”

He stared at my face for a time. His eyes narrowed to slits, but when he opened them again I detected an attractive smile in them, the smile of a child who has received what he wants. I struggled against vertigo once more but heard his prophetic admonition clearly: “What need for a father has one whose father is the heavens?”

“I heard a maxim saying that a father is the antidote for misery and that a creature who has never discovered his father will never be happy. So, who are you?”

He continued to gaze silently at me. The childish smile in his eyes twinkled brighter and became more affectionate and tender. I smiled too, for I sensed intuitively that he was preparing to give me some good news. I wished he would be quick to quench my thirst for the truth before my heart grew confused and I passed out again. He, however, took his time, deliberately I supposed. Just when I felt the whispered onset of unconsciousness I heard him say: “I’m you!”

6 After Midnight

“THE PROPHET OF EXPLORATION guided us,” said the first strangers when they reached my oasis. I hurried out to greet them before I could mask my astonishment. Once they had descended through the pass between the sandy mountains of the west and the rocky ones of the south, I asked: “Who are you?”

The elder leading them replied: “Wanderers parched by thirst.”

“How did you cross the rocky wastes to reach here?”

“The prophet of exploration guided us.”

“Amazing!”

“Please postpone your amazement till later and give us water from your spring.”

I led them to the nearest of my four groves, and they knelt to sip from the spring. They thrust their mouths into the deluge till their noses and faces disappeared. Their animals also darted to the bubbling waters. I stood beside them, waiting until they had slaked their thirst. I watched the delight they took in the water, till thirst stirred in my heart too. This was the thirst concealed, since birth, in the psyche of every desert dweller, for it can never be quenched, even if he consumes all the water in the world. Awakened in my heart was the thirst that had become an enigmatic murmur ever since I was overcome by thirst while searching for the Barbary sheep. Unlike the spirit world’s emissary, who wrested the water-skin from my mouth that day, I did not drive these people from the water but, rather, found myself also dropping to my knees to sip from the bubbling water. I sipped and only came to my senses when the caravan’s leader repeated less than grammatically, “Four! Four! Not just one well, but they is four. What have you done for spirit world that grant you four treasures?”

I replied with the stupidity of one who has been isolated from other people for a long time and who has forgotten the niceties of expression: “I didn’t do anything. I was searching for my father.”

He gazed into my eyes for a long time. Then he looked away, toward the peaks of the southern mountains; over the peaks in fact, for he stared upward. His eyes shone with a look of longing. His chest growled nervously, and he swayed like someone in an ecstatic trance before proclaiming, “No one else is compensated like a person who demonstrates how to search for a father.”

“But I killed him.”

“What?”

“The she-jinni said I killed my father.”

He hummed with suppressed longing once more and allowed his eyes to roam the naked, eternal emptiness. His distress set his shoulders to shaking. The look of his eyes changed into real tears. He repeated, “No, no. You didn’t kill your father! You can’t kill your father. You slew a shadow and found your father. Believe me!”

Then he turned to his vassals and ordered them to fetch gifts: dried meats, clothes, skins, containers, and many other objects, the uses of which I only grasped later. As he piled these items at my feet, he declared, “You must have suffered a great deal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Only those who suffer succeed. All my gifts to you count as nothing compared to what you have given me. Your gift has granted me life. Your gift will continue to afford life.”

I was going to object, but he stopped me with a gesture of his hand. “These meats are from creatures that will safeguard you from the meat of relatives.”

“The meat of relatives?”

“The prophet who guided us to you told me everything.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The prophet said you had set out to search for relatives but had almost perished from dehydration.”

“I went out in search of beauty.”

“Beauty? Did you kill beauty?”

“The thirst for beauty, master, is worse than the thirst for water.”

“But beauty’s not beautiful unless we touch it. Beauty’s not beautiful unless it touches us. Beauty’s not beautiful unless we envelope it and it envelopes us the way metamorphosis envelopes composite creatures.”

He turned to his vassals and ordered them to fetch two animals from the caravan. Placing their halters in my hand, he said, “This is a male camel and this a female. You will use them to help you bear the burdens of your world.”

He passed the night in my shelter. In the morning, he provisioned himself with water, loaded his goods onto the camels, and set off after embracing me and chanting for me a plaintive, passionate song of longing. I kept repeating it to myself so I could comfort myself with it in my solitary times.

7 Daybreak

THE SIGHT OF THE TWO CAMELS freely roaming the plains, as their bodies vanished up to their chests in grass the desert had generously offered, after being irrigated by the heavy, recent downpours, stirred in my soul happiness of the rare species that we can experience but fail to verbalize when we try. The mystery of this sensation frequently left me wondering whether its cause was the sight of the two beasts of burden, the vision of the lush grass, the temperate weather, my carefree existence, or the conjunction of all these blessings. I can testify that the sensation not only appeared suddenly but proved evanescent and ephemeral whenever I attempted to appropriate and detain it, to enjoy it longer. My subsequent disappointment was always bitter. Is happiness a vibratory hum that pervades us only while it is far from our thoughts, so that once we perceive it and attempt to grasp hold, it slips through our fingers and flees far away?

I attempted to outwit happiness so that I could hold onto it. One stratagem I tried was to pretend not to notice it, hoping in this way to ensnare it miraculously. Then I discovered that this beloved does not desire us if we desire it and does not yearn for us unless we choose some rival beloved. I would have to forget it, or to pretend to forget it, to bring off my miracle. I made a pet of the she-camel and fondled her in the animal yard each morning before I took her to the grazing lands. I would pluck bloodsucking ticks from her neck and clear away the stalks of straw that adhered to her hump, belly, and thighs. I would dress with herbal salves the wounds that thorns had torn in her flesh while she was craning her neck in the palm groves. I noticed that she enjoyed the feel of my fingers moving over her body even more than being liberated from the ticks, thorns, or straw. Soon I began to multiply my caresses and prolong my massages down her body, endeavoring with my fingers to express my affection and anxiety or even longing, so that she would be forced to respond. At first she fidgeted and shuddered slightly, as if importunate armies of flies had swept down upon her, for all camels shake their coats in self-defense then. Even so, this quivering of the skin was soon followed by a disquieting ardor. She would rock her long, white neck to the right and left, rearing it up. Her large, dark eyes would gleam like those of my darling gazelles, and then she would emit a profound, restrained, intermittent moan that left me wondering whether it was a complaint, an intimate aside, or an ecstatic cry. Then she would lower her neck till it rubbed my shoulder, hand, or face. With her snout, which was damp with froth, she would nuzzle my arms, fingers, nose, or head, not ceasing until I did. I once attempted to groom as well her mate, the male camel, of his ticks, thorns, and straw, but she avenged herself on me, deserting me until I stretched out to take a siesta under an acacia. Then she snuck up and stood towering over my head. When I awoke I found her standing there, her head stretched toward the horizon, which was limited solely by the sandy dunes north of the oasis.

She was breathing heavily and chewing moodily, as if brooding. Despair, anxiety, and malice were visible in her eyes. I stretched out my hand to stroke her front leg, but she pulled it away and thumped her chest a mighty blow. I drew myself up on my elbows, but she did not soften toward me. I was caught off-guard when she jumped in the air to begin pummeling me with her feet. She hit my head, my right shoulder, and my left knee, and had I not sheltered myself by the acacia’s trunk, I would not have escaped her mischief. I was obliged, in order to mollify her, to massage her body with both hands: once in the animal yard in the morning, a second time out in the grazing lands at midday, and a third time back in the yard in the evening.

This relationship was not destined to last long, however, for the leader of a caravan, wishing to lavish gifts on me out of appreciation for the water, deposited a woman beside me, saying that he had purchased her in the forest lands and had decided to leave her in my custody to assist me with my daily chores. She was of mixed race, a skittish, comely, jumpy, excessively wary creature, who seemed ready to flee or to pounce. I soon had to acknowledge that she had awakened in my heart the whispers I had forgotten since the spirit world separated me from my lost she-jinni from whom I once learned some things. So it was not long before I was searching for my forgotten reality in this new creature’s embrace, which did not bring me happiness. The new she-jinni did not trust me, despite her pretence at amiability. I observed how skeptical of me she remained over the course of the following days. I do not deny that I occasionally had pleasure with her, but I could not claim it was fully satisfying. Because she lacked the kind of beauty I had lost when I lost the gazelles, this pleasure was lackluster. In the beginning, I suspected that her indifference, skittishness, and wariness were symptoms of fear, perhaps a result of a longing for the solitude to which she was accustomed in her forest land. Subsequently I discovered that these characteristics were to the contrary a hankering to be close to other people and a desire for contact with villages. So she awakened in me my old sense of being an orphan, of solitude, and of being at my wits’ end. Then I punished her by avoiding her. I acted condescending and holed up in the caverns of the ancestors for two consecutive nights. I abandoned her, feigning disdain for her gifts. The truth was, however, that I was not as liberated from the suzerainty of her embraces as I had imagined, for whispered temptations troubled me both nights I spent in the caves of the southern cliff faces more than at any time before. I realized that this she-jinni had soothed me more than anyone I had ever known before. So I hastened to rejoin her as soon as I saw her at the edge of the wadi, after I had descended the mountain on my return to the oasis. Yet I pretended not to see her and went to pet the she-camel at the bottom of the valley, because I have discovered that a creature who thirsts for the beauty he once found with gazelles is fated to recapture his dream only with she-camels, whose eyes flash with the gazelles’ spirit.

I petted the she-camel, and the she-jinni stealthily trailed after me. I chanted to my gentle creature a song of longing, and my beloved grunted her pain and shared her suppressed sorrow with me. Despite preoccupation with this intimate conversation and despite being lost in the world of song, I was aware that the she-jinni was pursuing me. She disappeared behind a low hill separating the cliff face from the valley bottom. My beloved camel thrust her long neck against my chest, and I embraced her. I whispered to her that I loved her because she bore in her eyes the look of another beloved creature that had carried me in her body when I was on the point of perishing of thirst and had also returned to bear me once more the day I lost my father and my truth. The poor creature moaned in distress and swayed from right to left like an ecstatic religious celebrant overwhelmed by grief. The she-jinni, whom I had forgotten in my crazed dance, then ruined everything by suddenly popping up, as she-jinnis will. The beloved camel beside me took fright and bolted.

The she-camel fled, and I found myself standing face-to-face with a creature far more hideous than the she-jinni, one more like a she-demon. I forced myself to smile at her, but the evil look I saw in her eyes frightened me. So I retreated, but she did not approach me. She glared maliciously at me and then departed. She climbed the hill and vanished at a curve in the valley, where it stretched northward.

I tried to forget, but the whispered temptations would not cease. These frightened me more than the threat in her eyes, because I knew that such a threat is generally an empty one, whereas an idée fixe is nothing more or less than a prophecy. It seems that what I had learned was confirmed on this occasion as well, because I discovered beauty’s paragon dead the next morning. I did not for a moment doubt that the she-jinni had plotted this outrage. I found the she-camel in the animal yard, all swollen up, her eyeballs protruding, with suspicious-looking snot oozing from her nostrils. I was certain that the she-jinni had given the camel poison mixed with dry grass. I pursued her to rebuke her for her deed, but she bared her teeth at me like a jackal and then pelted me with a hail of abuse in the forest dwellers’ gibberish. So I left her and went off by myself to the open spaces to seek inspiration for some wily subterfuge. I told myself that a creature who plots the destruction of a fellow creature is a past-master of evil who will stop at nothing and that unless I succeeded in limiting this evil I would be its next victim, without the slightest doubt. I went to her and lured her into a conversation about the secrets of the caves. I did not tell her about the ancestors’ prophetic aphorisms, not merely because I felt sure her community would disdain prophetic wisdom and anything linked to the ancestors but also because of her instinctive hostility toward these riddles, which she considered trumped-up superstitions devoid of truth. All the same, I sang for her, under my breath: “Wherever you come from, there you’ll return, for man, like a caravan, would not be man, unless he returned to his point of departure.” Then, out loud, I told her about the secrets awaiting her in the caverns and the other things the ancestors had hidden, treasures that they had been unable to carry with them into eternity and had been forced to stash in tombs at the foot of the walls. In my narration, I substituted earthly treasures for the heavenly ones. I recited verses about the earthly legacy but kept silent about the eternal legacy. Curiosity flared in her breast, and she followed me like a shadow. I took her by the heights and scaled the boulders of the southern cliff faces, chanting to myself the law of arrival and departure while my tongue kept extolling the vaunted treasures. I followed twisting trails and cut back and forth between rugged boulders. I crossed passes, ridges, and peaks that I had reconnoitered during my explorations in the southern redoubts in the past. I caught sight of the escape route at last, for I noticed the secret cleft that had brought me to the labyrinth when I crossed through it one day, searching for my brethren from the herds’ clans.

I slipped through the forbidding cleft, and my shadow slunk through behind me. I crossed to the other side and traversed in this stage a distance long enough that our tracks would disappear. Then I turned to toss a question her way: “Are you a jinni or a person?”

She smiled at me blankly but did not reply. She may have thought the question senseless. She may have suspected that I was merely joking. In any case I said, “You arrived at my oasis borne on the steeds of the jinn, and a demon jinni placed you in my custody. Is it reasonable that you would be of any lineage other than the jinn?”

At that she spoke. She spoke while I listened to words like a prophecy issuing from the peak of the mountain rather than from the mouth of a creature named woman: “Master, has there ever been any difference between men and jinn? Didn’t you tell me some days ago that you donned the body of a gazelle to save yourself?”

“You’re right. The truth is that I shouldn’t search for any distinction between men and jinn, between a man and gazelles or Barbary sheep, even between animals and the plants animals consume, or between plants and the earth’s soil that nourishes the plants, for I am everything, and everything is really me.”

She smiled slyly but said nothing. I too kept my peace, but under my breath I chanted my insane refrain, “Wherever you come from, there you’ll return, for man, like a caravan, would not be man unless he returned to his point of departure.”

I chanted until I reached the strip of land that is the point of no return. There, at the gap of the unknown, I left her to her fate and fled. Leaping like a Barbary ram, I disappeared behind the boulders that demarcate the deadly opening from the west. I did not pause but continued leaping as though fleeing from my own shadow. I dodged the rocks that obstructed my progress without ever slowing my pace. I did not pause to catch my breath until I had traversed much of the distance on the long way back, while the horizons became covered with the sky’s gloom. Then I stretched out to rest. I lay down and dozed off out of sheer exhaustion. I did not awake until the horizons were imbued with daybreak’s dazzling firebrand. I jumped up in alarm, for I had witnessed a prophetic vision in my slumber. As I slept, I had seen the she-jinni slither across the earth like a serpent and search in the sun-baked earth for treasure, digging up hard, fiery lumps with both hands. She dug with the insane intensity with which thirsty people excavate parched depths, even though she knew full well she would find nothing there. Despite that certainty, she did not despair. The spirit world mocked her efforts and wrapped them in floods of fraudulent fluids, so that from a distance the poor body seemed a toy teased by the mirage’s tongues, which alternately drowned her in the sea and plucked her from its waves, letting her float on the surface of this imaginary flood. This struggle awakened in my heart something I had never experienced before. It awakened in my breast a new inspiration and an insistent whispering that struggled against forgetfulness for a long time before memory told me it was what nations call “compassion.” Compassion convulsed me, and I leapt from my sleep and shot off at a gallop over the route I had taken. I raced back with a crazed passion that exceeded that with which I had fled. On my way to the point of no return, I shouted repeatedly, “I never for a moment imagined a child of the jinn could perish of thirst. Forgive me!” I repeated this cry to help me last the distance.

I said aloud, “I’ll kill myself if the poor woman has perished before I reach her, because her blood will be on my hands.” I wondered about the secret of compassion while I wept. When I finally reached the point of no return, I found I was too late. I heard an uproar there and then saw in the distance the disorganized caravan that had snatched her away before I could reach her.

8 Morning

FINDING MYSELF EMBRACED by solitude once more, I sang my sorrows, chanted my loneliness, and in verse questioned my true nature. I was tormented by yearnings for the unknown and attempted to work off my longings among the rocky boulders. I contrived to cut solid rock into a splendid statue and determined to erect it as a landmark, thus satisfying an unexplained craving that I sensed as a persistent, hushed call in my soul, even though I had never managed to grasp it intellectually. I thought the statue excellent. Washed each morning by rays from my master Ragh, it whispered to the sky a secret it had borrowed from my hands, from my pulse, and from my heart, after this secret had thwarted my tongue. My sole remedy for my weakness was to stroke its torso at dawn each day and shortly after sunset.

After finishing the statue, I felt another strange need. Was it for security? Was it for warmth? Was it for the tranquility that only a nest can provide? I knew the ways of solitude, which likes to wear many veils. I also knew that my thirst for a statue had been an attempt to defend myself against my true love, solitude herself. I had to recognize that the need for a nest was quite simply another face of this beloved, about whom I could swear I was as hard put to live without as to live with. It was a long time before I grasped that this is true of every authentic beloved. I still do not know whether my need for a nest arose from a desire for my beloved seclusion or from a desire to avoid her. Certainly considerations of heat, cold, or wind were not responsible, since I was accustomed to shielding myself from heat in the shade of the palm groves and from cold or dust storms in the caves of the ancestors in the southern mountain range. I had noticed that this unaccountable need had developed with the passing days into a bitter hunger, a genuine thirst that would need to be slaked. I did not feel satisfied again until I had cut from the palm groves bushy fronds, which I wove into the shape of a cylindrical hut. I thought it was splendid too. I entered it on the seventh day to rest and stretched out in its cavity, which embraced me as a nest embraces fledglings. It swallowed me the way a tomb swallows the corpse. I liked this image so much that I named my cozy nest azkka.

Yes, my tomb truly was cozy, and I grew accustomed to sleeping inside it while I roamed far away in visionary dreams. I sought shelter inside at midday and when evening fell, stretching out on my back and roaming and roaming where there was no barrier to stop me, no barricade to obstruct my way, no rocks to scrape my shin, and no rough terrain to impede my progress. Inside that space, no cares, reptiles, or wild creatures — the offspring of men, jinn, or animals — threatened me. In my nest’s embrace, borne off on one of my trips, I did whatever I wished, without being visited by any harm or disturbed by any whispered temptations. I would shoot off to the east and west, deeply furrow the earth, cut the horizons down to size, plunge into the watery depths, and journey to the sky. I returned once from a journey to the sky with the question: “Who am I?” It tormented me because I could not answer it. I exhausted myself on these journeys, thinking I might find the answer in the unfathomable expanses but returned from each disappointed. Disappointment left me bitter, dispirited, and melancholy; and I emerged from my cozy redoubt one day to find myself banished once again, exiled from my own land, which I had created with my own hands. I ceased journeying on the wings of dreams and exchanged these voyages through the unknown for voyages of the body. As I wandered aimlessly, I would ask out loud, “Who am I?” and the echo from the mountainous caverns would not vouchsafe any response.

The question “Who am I?” shook my sense of wellbeing, and the whisperings returned, destroying my peace of mind. Then I chased every which way. I did not totally abandon my tomb but did not find inside it the comfort I had discovered there when I first created it. A murky sensation would vibrate my chest and bring me back to the nest once more. The hut’s framework continued to taunt me and to fascinate me. My experience is that a fleeting sign always conceals a treasure, which vanishes and is dispersed if we ignore or neglect it. If we strip it bare and wrestle with it, it discloses its secret and gives itself to us. This insight inspired me to resist my murky feeling for a time. In only a matter of weeks its true nature was revealed to me for I saw that I would never feel satisfied or calm or acquire peace of mind unless I married my awe-inspiring stone idol, which I had erected at the foot of the mountain, with the cozy dome, which I had installed in the valley.

I felt that I would put an end to the disruptions, longings, and hunger, if I created a single structure from the two. How could I combine them?

I thought long and hard, and voyaged far and wide in my dreams. When I finished this spiritual investigation, I climbed the mountain and set to work.

I used the noble statue in the foundation and wall for my new dwelling, and it became the house’s cornerstone. Wishing to manifest the dream vision through this structure, I told myself that the house could not be a cozy nest unless through its circularity it resembled the sky, the moon, the lord of light Ragh, and the horizon, which arches to encompass the earth. Thus I constructed circular walls like those of the sepulchers of the ancestors. When I finished the walls, I fetched branches, fronds, palm fiber, and palm leaves from my nest below the mountain and wove them over these walls to fashion for this dwelling a domed roof — inspired by the shape of the sky — as an echo of the sky’s exaltation.

Once I fulfilled the prophecy, I felt satisfied. Once I felt satisfied, my heart was flooded by ecstasy, longing, and intoxication. So I sang. I sang a touching song of praise for my glorious edifice, to which kinsmen would later bow in prayer, designating it a temple.