Anubis: A Desert Novel

1 Early Morning

I STRUGGLED ALL MY LIFE to reach my eternal father in the higher world, but my father would only consent to appoint me his deputy in the lower world. I wrestled all my days to reach him in the heavens, but he chose to appoint me sovereign of a dirt-covered foothill over which roam the shades that burden the earth.

In later times, caravans stormed me. I did not know whether they were commanded by jinn from the spirit world or by the spawn of men. I asked them repeatedly what they really were, but every time they replied, in a tone suggesting veiled condescension, “The fact is that we are none but you.” I also interrogated the nobles about the circumstances that had cast them into my home-place, which was protected by the desert’s wiles. They would smile furtively and respond that cunning prophets had guided them. If I chanced to ask their destination, they would answer ungrammatically, “From where we come, to there returning we go.” Some were mirthful and others painfully stern, but I saw their uniform enthusiasm for late parties at which people sang. They enjoyed spending their evenings with me while recuperating from the terrors of the route and would converse with each other in their pidgin tongue as if exchanging verses of poetry. Occasionally they sang sad laments or launched into long conversations about riddles like hope, heroism, and happiness. At times they continued their chatter till dawn. Before they set off again, they would leave me various types of meat and tools, along with other gifts, in exchange for the water. One of them happened to leave me a present that was responsible for robbing me of my peace of mind and turning the oasis upside down. The gift was some vile dust that danced in the rays of light. The man said it was called gold dust. The leader of the caravan told me that this dust could be exchanged for commodities but could also harm people, change enemies into bosom buddies, buy protection, bolster civilization and destroy cities, transform the lowest to the highest and the highest to the lowest, subjugate the spirit, enslave other people, overcome any redoubt, and work any miracle. He finished by saying that it was a rebellious demon, notwithstanding its gaiety, and could turn into an evil thing, unless its owner handled it wisely. I thirstily imbibed his account. I did not, however, have occasion to use the dust until much later — when the seduction of taxation distracted me from the truth about it — for I bartered my water for the various types of commodities that leaders had devised throughout the desert: food, clothing, livestock, and even other human beings.

Yes, water brought me slaves, vassals, and women of the type known as slave girls. I would cleave to their bodies when I felt a need for warmth, for I discovered by fondling them that their companionship served as an antidote for loneliness. I also modeled on their conceits some amulets that were useful as a balm to heal the body’s ills, even though the conduct of these women and the fluctuation of their humors often agitated me to such a degree that I was reminded of my first she-jinni. I could, now that I was migrating between the embraces of women I owned, diagnose her as having been afflicted by what the sages of migratory tribes call “melancholy.”

The symptoms of this disease I found in the behavior of another seductively beautiful female jinni who arrived at the oasis with a prodigious cortège. She enchanted me with her voice, and I fell in love with her. It seems the gift of song was the secret snare by which this new she-jinni captivated me, not her beauty, since the voice, in its true nature, is profound, whereas beauty by itself, as experience has taught me, is a shell. I am now willing to acknowledge myself a coward, for my attempts to free myself from her were not inspired by her eccentricities but by my fear of loving her. I had cohabited with solitude for such a long time that solitude had become my true love and I was afraid of cheating on her with another playmate. Despite my secret conviction that this was the case, even so, I tried to outwit my certainty and to convince myself that my rejection of the beautiful woman’s passionate love was caused by my eagerness for calm and peace of mind. I used this contrived lie with the questioning men who crowded round me the day I ordered her expelled from the oasis. They obeyed, expelling her one morning as I had commanded, but I was flabbergasted when everyone in the oasis trailed after her. I could not believe it. At first I suspected that the throngs had followed merely to satisfy their curiosity or that they had turned out to bid her farewell as they did for important people. What really affected me, however, was their songs, which were genuine, heart-rending laments. So I dashed after them only to discover that the cause of the tumult was the beautiful woman’s singing. Yes, the she-jinni was raising her voice in a sorrowful song that affected me so deeply I was unable to walk. I halted halfway to them, weeping. My suppressed longing was roused, and I wept some more. Then I stopped my ears with my index fingers to stifle the sound so I could walk again.

With the sound stilled and the impediment of my feet lifted, I set off at a gallop. I rushed up to the weeping throngs. I caught sight of the vassals, who were clustered around her, lamenting and crying. I yelled as loudly as I could, “Bring her back! Bring her back! Bring her back!”

They brought her back, but I did not return. I obtained the lady of song for my home and as part of the exchange lost the lord of stillness. I kept to myself while I pondered my confusion. I did not conclude this self-examination until the spirit world whispered to me another truth, saying that a man passionately in love with solitude will never feel at peace with those passionately in love with women. I discounted this insight and surrendered to her, hoping to be able to forget. She attempted to compound from her embraces an antidote for my malady. She sang sorrowful songs to me in our bedchamber until I swooned. She did everything she could to grant me happiness, an enigma as mysterious as the desert. How preposterous! I perceived that happiness is a talisman that rightfully belongs to others, to people whose knowledge, pursuits, and travels are limited. Devotees of solitude are destined to take solace in silence, because their mission is to keep company with the spirit world. My heart was flooded by longing. I felt stifled and fled to the caves of the ancestors in the southern peaks. There I examined the wisdom that the first peoples had etched on the cavern walls. I argued at length with the spirit world and did not return from my fugue until I had received prophetic guidance. I entered the oasis one night and sequestered myself with the wisest and most trustworthy of my vassals to share the substance of this revelation with him. I could see disapproval in his eyes, but he obeyed. He undertook to bring me what I needed the following day: a leather bag of a depressing color, filled with an even more depressing powder. I hid this in my pocket and waited until the servants brought the food. Then I tossed all the powder into the broth. The she-jinni came, consumed the broth, and then ate. She sang until midnight, even though she had put enough poison into her belly to annihilate an entire caravan.

I awoke expecting to find her corpse, but she disappointed me. I ordered my chief vassal to appear so I could inquire about the effects of the poison. The man said the effects were slow and that I should be patient. After a day and a night she felt nauseous, complained of feeling dizzy, and lay down to nurse herself. I assumed that the hour of release was at hand and wept sorrowful tears, mixed with tears of joy. I was sad because I did not know how I would confront the void she would leave in my life when I lost her. I was as joyful as a child, because I would finally be liberated once my doll had been smashed. Even so, neither my sorrow nor my joy lasted long, because the servant whom I had stationed by her bedside as a spy under the pretense of caring for her informed me the next morning that she had indeed suffered from the pains of fever at first and that she had sweated profusely and combated demons in a nightmare but had sneezed three times after midnight and each time had expelled from her nostrils sinister, evil-colored snot. The dolt added that he believed these discharges of mucous had freed her from her ailment and cured her. I listened dumbfounded to his chatter. Then I found myself repeating, “She-jinni! She-jinni! The lord of lords is a she-jinni.” I went to investigate in person. She gave me a look in which I saw everything. I could see that she knew, and forgave me, but wondered why. In fact, in no time at all, she asked, “Why?”

I pretended not to understand, but she gazed into my eyes with the look of one who knows everything. So I confessed, “I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t in love with you. You know that better than anyone.”

“Is the beloved destined to die by the lover’s hand?”

“Yes, indeed!”

“By what law?”

“By the law of fear.”

“To which fear do you refer?”

“The fear of confusion.”

“Confusion?”

“No, the fear of anxiety.”

“What foul talk!” she exclaimed.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Don’t you know that love is the only treasure we don’t forfeit even if we reward it with a calamity?”

“I know that love is a treasure. I know that love is the most precious treasure, but solitude inevitably risks death to defend herself, because she too is love, love of a unique variety.”

“Rubbish!”

“Are you a jinni?” I asked.

“Are you human?” she countered.

“Yes, indeed.”

“You’re lying!”

“I don’t understand.”

“I meant to say that in the heart of each person is a creature spawned by the jinn and that in the body of each jinni is a creature spawned by men.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m from a country where there is no distinction between men and jinn.”

“Is it the country of longing?”

“You’re right. It is the country of longing, from which you also came, before you went into exile.”

“I will devote three out of every four of my days to my lady if you tell me the truth about the country of longing I knew before I entered forgetfulness.”

“I don’t want your days in payment for the deal. Give me your heart.”

“For the sake of knowledge I will not withhold even my heart.”

“I know you yearn to hear news of your fatherland, since you desire a father.”

“Have you been granted news of the father too?”

“Nothing is hidden from a messenger.”

“A messenger?”

“A messenger of destiny, I come to your lands from the distant country of Asaho to share your kingdom and bedchamber and to sing the glories of the eternal father.”

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“I will bear you offspring that will perpetuate the clan of the original homeland to leave a trace and to fulfill a pledge I have made.”

Then she raised her voice in a song of longing that made me forget who I was. When I regained my senses, I heard her complete the prophecy: “From today forward, your offspring will be the progeny of Targa, and tongues will constantly speak of them, because they are, of all the clans, a clan with a secret. Their true name will remain a talisman among people, as the law decreed. All the same, they are a wretched clan, for their destiny is exile. So, beware!”

2 Midday

AT FIRST I SHARED my bedroom with Tin Hinan, because I considered this cunning creature my spouse. Once the people made me priest of the temple, the goddess Tanit visited me, while I was between sleeping and waking, and asked me to bring my spouse into the shrine to keep me company there too. I did that, although I obeyed out of respect for the gods’ secrets and not out of any conviction about the true nature of women. All the same, I soon discovered the wisdom of this advice. In fact the shejinni’s voice, which had once shaken the people’s souls, was now able to awaken a similar response in the souls of the gods. From the first day she sang of eternal longing inside my old temple, which I had constructed on the mountainside as a home for myself, the world has not ceased to resound with her heavenly hymn. It was the first psalm heard by the walls of a desert temple. Apparently the supplication pleased the heavens, for the lords of the spirit world courted her and selected her from among all the people to bear the burden of prophecy. Thus her dreams became revelations that were never tardy or false. Some scholars say that Targa’s emblem, which the engineers placed on the corners of the walls to serve as a symbol for that magnificent oasis, was actually a revelation from the principal goddess Tanit, who confided it to her beloved temple priestess Tin Hinan, who in turn revealed it to the earth’s master builders. My vassals told me that there was a symbolic meaning to the triangular emblem. The first angle represented virility and the second femininity. The reference of the third angle had been lost, but the quest for it excited a lengthy debate during the course of which some people pointed out its supremacy and discussed its power, even though it was shielded and concealed from sight. At the same time, another team attributed the lost reference in the figure to reality itself, for reality is nothing more or less than a sign. The third faction was more daring and made it quite clear they believed that the third corner of the emblem represented the goddess Tanit, because she had decreed that the body of the earth would not stand upright unless there was within it some aspect of her character. Evidence was provided by the extraordinary care the engineers took in designing the emblem and in drawing it on every structure, for it became a symbol of the entire desert tribe. They first placed it on my old house, which they insisted on using as a temple for the religion of longing when they summoned me to be a priest for the shrine. They used my yearning for my father to justify their request with the same enthusiasm with which they summoned Tin Hinan to join me and become the priestess, citing her passion for songs of longing. This was even before I revealed to people the desert goddess’ advice, which she gave me during a visit when I was between sleep and wakefulness.

The day they decided to fetter me with political leadership as well as the priesthood I was terrified by the burden, but they flocked to me and told me in unison, “We have selected you to govern us, because we would be wrong to trust a man who has not suffered. For similar reasons, we have chosen you to serve as guardian over our temple, because we are certain that our worldly affairs will not prosper unless someone with access to dream visions takes charge. There is nothing to be gained from a ruler who does not unite pain and prophecy in his heart.”

Astonished by the clarity of their insight, I asked, “Who are you?”

They replied in the ancient language of riddles, “We are a community which prefers to speak of the shadow when referring to the shadow’s original and which gestures toward the shadow when speaking of the original.” This made me sure that they were a group of that small band that roams the desert and that some call “Kel Iba,” which in Tuareg means “people of the spirit” or “spirits.” Others refer to them as “people of the spirit world.” Then the vassals went all out in construction projects, drawing on the assistance of the throngs of people who by that time had gathered in the oasis. The first project they put in place was the incorporation of my old house, which had been turned into a temple on the advice of their priests, into my new house. The sanctuary occupied the place of the heart in the structure. They named the central part, which was crowned with the emblem of the goddess, “House of the Spirit,” because of the way it was conjoined with the newer house, which they called the “Sublime Gate,” because it rested on the flank of a knoll overlooking the growing oasis.

The sages were not satisfied, however. They gazed at the sky, admiring its handsome light. They searched everywhere and excavated the earth, working tirelessly to extract a mineral the color of light. This they named “lime.” They set right to work using it to whitewash the walls of the temple, turning it white, since they judged the color of daylight auspicious and wished to show respect for Ragh’s immortal gift. After that, they came to me and wrested me from my seclusion in the cave of the ancestors. They were singing charms of longing as sacred chants. They took me by the hand and led me to the lofty edifice, which the white stucco rendered even more majestic, imposing, and grand. There they surprised me with melancholy songs and caught me off-guard. Three of the fiercest of the team of sages pounced on me. One wrapped his arms around me. A second man fit a leather mask over my face, and the third chanted the charm in my ear: “You are the scion of the lord of lords, Ragh, who deserted you one day, for he only deserts the creature he loves. Thus you became, from that day forward, eternally, Anubi. Had it not been for your exile, we would never have appointed you sovereign of the lower world and we would not have dared to make you deputy, or caliph, over the earth for the lord of lords.” So the mask of Anubi, following this secret ceremony, became an amulet I used to conceal my face whenever I entered the temple, either to be alone, to ponder a concern of mine or of the people’s, or to beseech the spirit world to inspire me with a prophecy.

After these sages finished the house of the spirit, it was the turn of the house of worldly affairs, which they called the “Sublime House.” After examining the heavens again they returned from those vast expanses with a new prophetic mission. They accosted me inside my house this time, shackled me, and jerked me back and forth. When they stopped that, I assumed my bout of punishment was concluded, but they grasped whips and flogged me. They whipped me until I started bleeding. Then they left me in a corner while they chanted charms that meant nothing to me. Once they had finished, their attention turned back to me. They crowned my head with a blue, leather turban imprinted with the goddess Tanit’s triangle and handed me the hilt of a wooden staff, which was topped by another emblem of the goddess: two intersecting, straight lines. Next they belted into my ear a musical incantation, as if they were singing: “We caused you pain, even though you weren’t guilty, to give you a taste of how tyranny feels to an innocent person. We have crowned you with this blue headgear so that you will know that the scion of the heavens came from the heavens and will return to the heavens. Thus his status here below is temporary. We have placed the staff in your right hand for you to use in greeting, not in killing. You should realize that we have not appointed you to rule over the living but over dead people who think they’re alive. You should set forth, because from today on, you are a shadow charged with care of the shadows that burden the earth.” Then I heard them sing in unison about longing, using the tune “Saho,” which speaks of the exile of the clan in ancient days. I detected the melodious voice of Tin Hinan.

After this melodic initiation rite the master builders decided to make architectural history in the oasis. They circulated another enigmatic saying, referring to a building as a song in space and to a tune as a structure in time. Next they debated at length the dawn of being, first discussing its relationship with the spirit world. Then they turned their attention to visible bodies, beginning with the sky and culminating with the arc of the horizon, which encircles the desert. They discussed in their recondite language the puzzle of perfection, saying that a talisman will inevitably be circular, because worship of the divine, like the circle, has no beginning or end. They decided to shelter themselves inside buildings inspired by worship and began erecting rounded corners while chanting sorrowful songs that portrayed a building’s essence as a melody in space and a melody as a structure situated in time. These presumptuous fellows did not stop until they had arranged rows of circular houses into a necklace around the oasis, thus creating a perimeter wall that bristled with platoons of the goddess’ triangular emblem. They left the buildings earth-colored for a time, but soon the sages argued among themselves and raised their voices in debate before reaching a consensus about the essence of color. It is reported that they said that white is the color associated with nobles, since it is the only color that borrows its sanctity from Ragh’s expression, which everyone sees in the color of daylight. So they gave a free hand to the vassals and engineers, who spread the walls of the houses with the whitest types of lime, excavated from neighboring valley bottoms.

Natural protective boundaries of sand and rock notwithstanding, people contrived to reach the oasis. Clans from the four corners of the desert mixed in suspect settlements where people tracing their lineage back to the people of the spirit world rubbed shoulders with other communities that traced their roots back to distant nations of unknown identity. They lived harmoniously in that valley and intermarried. Then the sages decided to advance another step toward the realization of their dream. They began to build with stone and to erect ever larger buildings, relying on a team of magicians allegedly from the east. They were said to excel in parleying with the spirit world, in mastering stone, and in solving the talismanic riddles of the earth. These fellows assisted the sages in erecting walls. Their engineering was inspired by the circularity of the temple, which was slipped into the heart of the palace. I heard these wretches sing, while they labored industriously, tunes that I admit awakened in my heart a forgotten sorrow, possibly because they referred to the riddle of creation:

We who love stone

Are the people of prophetic counsel,

The sages,

The shapers of existence.

We have created the world.

I appropriated this song from these people and repeated it to myself in my hideaway, even though its lyrics’ arrogance and braggadocio made me nervous. So I was not astonished when a team of these scoundrels from the east used furnaces to smelt metals and to produce a lethal material they named “iron.” It was judged by the better people to be inimical to the sovereignty of the spirit world. All the same, that faction’s insatiable appetite for research was far from satisfied. The vassals told me that they had met with the sages before emerging from their conference with another prophetic directive to process the metal and to mint from it a disk they named “coin.” These coins they dropped into people’s hands to serve as markers for commercial exchanges between caravan leaders. Base metal coins predominated for a time, but soon they replaced these with gold dust, which they smelted, poured into molds, and then minted into coins as well.

I had not grasped the truth of the prophetic counsel of the wanderer who had once given me gold dust in lieu of merchandise and who had told me about gold’s exceptional characteristics, until I saw what the team from the east did with it. They decreed, after consulting the sages as usual, that one should covet it and attempt to procure it by any means whatsoever. They were the first to broadcast this propaganda, which spread like a plague through the nations. It stated that gold dust is a sacred gift, not a terrestrial metal. That this metal’s traits mimic those of the lord of lords was cited as evidence for their claim. It was said that gold dust was related to Ragh both in appearance and in substance; in appearance because of its color and in substance because of its immortality. On account of this despicable claim, many people became even more passionately enamored of it than of the lord of lords, and competed with each other to acquire it. Although this hoarding of gold succeeded in saving the oasis from famines many times, that despicable powder introduced to the oasis major crimes unknown before.

Worship of the metal became widespread, and many people erred for the first time. They erred, because they conspired, plotted, plundered, and thus abandoned the spirit world. Not surprisingly, the matter ended with one native son raising his hand to slay his brother and then seizing the other’s share of this ignoble metal. The first crime the oasis experienced was committed with a weapon forged from iron and concerned a gold bar. Then I remembered the counsel of the wanderer and felt certain that his words had not been simply an admonition but a prophecy and that the wanderer had not been simply a passerby but a prophet in the rags of a vagabond.

3 Afternoon

I WAS PROWLING through the caves of the ancestors in the southern mountain range when my slave Hur arrived, bearing good news.

I descended the mountain behind him and heard the hymns of longing before I reached the base of the cliff. Circumambulating the sanctuary were sages preceded by the oldest and most venerable one. He carried a doll, which was wrapped in a hide lined with goat hair, tossed it in the air from time to time, and then caught it again as he raised his voice in a sacred, heart-rending psalm to conciliate the spirit world. The group of apparitions scurrying behind him quickly snatched the tune from his lips and repeated it after him in a melancholy harmony of a sweetness known to tribes only in songs of the people of the spirit world. I attempted to make out the words of the psalm, even though I had failed repeatedly on previous occasions. I failed this time as well. Therefore I assumed that this clan did not use a desert tongue in its songs and was gibbering in the language of the people of the spirit world. Once when I asked one of these sages the secret meaning carried by these songs, he responded with a murky question: “Would hymns be hymns if they were rendered in an earthly tongue?” So I swallowed my curiosity and never asked about their meaning again. Here they were now, swaying, reeling, and chanting incomprehensible gibberish. I must confess that the sweetness of this gibberish is beyond compare and far exceeds that of any language.

I walked ever closer to this congregation and heard for the first times an infant’s cries, which reached my ears faintly — as if rising from the depths of a well — and melodiously, as if mimicking the sages’ hymn to mock them. I stopped to ask myself, “Is it conceivable that this doll they’re tossing in the air is my child?” The conjecture shook me, but I gained control of myself and stepped forward.

Then one of them rushed toward me, took me aside, and said, “This isn’t done. This isn’t done.” When I attempted to free myself so I could reach the people, he stubbornly prevented me, saying, “We mustn’t allow emotion to infringe on our law in any way.” Seeing the determined look in my eye, he gestured to one of the group’s demons. He arrived in the wink of an eye to assist the sly dog. He too blocked my way. The cunning sage said apologetically, “We’re not celebrating the birth of a child. We’re singing to celebrate the birth of the prophecy.” I did not understand. I did not comprehend his riddle but did not ask for any clarification.

He must have detected my silent incomprehension, for he explained, “Today the desert witnesses the birth of the desert. Today creation witnesses the birth of the race that the spirit world wishes to serve as the secret heart of nations.” I remembered a prophetic saying of Tin Hinan and stole a glance to see what the insolent fellows were doing to my child. I saw the swarms of people enter the temple. As I listened intently, the solemn hymn swelled to swallow the newborn’s sobs. I tried to trail after them, but the two sages restrained me once more. The first said, “Not before the spirit world grants permission.”

I was about to ask, “But when will that happen?”

The wily strategist again read my mind, because I heard him say as enigmatically as ever, “Today is not like other days. Today the desert witnesses a birth. You must relax, be patient, and wait.” I waited a long time, for the rites of birth were not concluded until after midnight, when their elder came to tell me that the congregation had only just then finished praying. When I inquired about the prayer ritual, he ignored my question and burst into an account of the purification. He said that the infant’s spirit had been cleansed with a flash from the light of Ragh and that his body had been bathed in spring water, because the spirit is the offspring of light, whereas the body is born of water and clay. Then he chanted an incantation set to music before adding that the congregation had unanimously adopted the name Ara for the infant as a hopeful augury for the future, yielding to the wishes of prophecy. I was upset by this choice but suppressed my anger, for I had decided to give him a different name — Hur — chosen for me by another prophecy. I would take the name of my loyal slave for my good omen and try in this way to deceive the female ghouls that watch for any chance to pounce on the nobles’ sons to abduct and swap for changelings descended from the jinn or from the tribes of the spirit world. I certainly did not know it at the time, but in this fashion I was, unconsciously, countering the prophecy of the female soothsayer who informed me one day that the offspring of slaves would take control of my kingdom and arrogate to themselves my offspring’s due, leaving me to return empty-handed from my journey. I immediately ascribed to my son the name of my slave, hoping this name would protect him against exile. I could not learn until later that this would be his destiny. The termination of the oasis’ celebration of the birth, however, was followed by a confession. I had scarcely stretched out one night when Tin Hinan burst in upon my solitude to tell me a secret. She said that she was not a foreigner and that she had never belonged to the nations of migrants. Rather she was blood kin, and not just related to me but that very sister whom I had once known and who had frequently sheltered me in her embrace. I did not say a word. I stared at her incredulously for a time.

She smiled mischievously and nodded her head “yes” when I shouted, “The priest’s daughter?” I was shocked and voiced my astonishment. She explained that she had deliberately disguised herself in foreign garb to fulfill a prophetic dictum. I was silent. She did not wish to complete her confession. So I quizzed her to learn the import of this dictum.

During a painful silence that lasted a long time, she said nothing. Finally she said, “I did that to safeguard our progeny.”

When I gave her a questioning look, she explained, “You know fathers are figments of the imagination.”

“What?”

“You know better than anyone else how spurious fatherhood is.”

“Fatherhood spurious?”

“You’ve wasted your life chasing after your father and have reaped nothing but the wind.”

“But you told me once that my father was your father, the priest, whom I killed to avenge my mother.”

“You killed your father’s shadow. You didn’t kill your father.”

“What are you saying?”

“You were right to want to kill him; fathers must die, since a father is always a shadow. A father is always a specter. The father we know is not a father. The true father is an unknown apparition. Should he decide to renounce his concealment and to descend on us, bringing us glad tidings of his paternity, we must resort to force and do away with him with our own hands, since he is our father’s shadow and not our father. He is a spurious father, not the legitimate one.”

“A wanderer told me a riddle like this once, but I didn’t believe it.”

“Back then, you killed the shadow of our father, but our father slipped away again. The mother’s status, on the other hand, is different.”

“Tell me about the mother.”

“If the father is spurious, the mother is always authentic.”

“Bravo!”

“A mother we don’t know is not a mother. The father we do know isn’t a father.”

“Riddles certainly fascinate you, desert nation.”

“Be a child and you’ll see that what the daughter of the desert has said is anything but a riddle. Return to the cradle of a newborn and you’ll know that the mother who plucked you from her belly, in whose arms you were carried, and in whose embrace you slept, is the only true one and that anyone else is fraudulent and counterfeit.”

“Fortunately for you, I can revert to my childhood. Fortunately for you, I had a greater sense of my mother’s presence than any other child and a greater sense of my father’s absence. Had I not lost my father I would not have begun my journey through the labyrinth and would not have lost my talisman while wandering.”

“I’ve come in disguise to you to help care for the talisman.”

“Is this another riddle?”

“Not so fast! I’ve come to bear you, from my womb, offspring who will trace their lineage to your mother’s clan, for you have not produced them from the womb of a foreigner but from the blood of a woman who is your sister. This is the only amulet that can safeguard the offspring of the desert against extinction.”

“But what about the father?”

“Haven’t we agreed on the fraudulent nature of the father? In this game, you are only a passing specter. Be careful, for the only refuge you’ll ever find for your offspring is my embrace.”

“Do you suppose this will quench my thirst? Do you think that rescuing my offspring will make up for my failure to find my father?”

“Leave your progeny to me and search for your father to your heart’s content, even though I’m certain you have sprung from a fraud and are becoming one yourself.”

“But what status will be granted me by the law of descent concerning the mother’s descendants?”

“It suffices that it will protect them from a she-demon named loss.”

“Loss is truly a she-demon. Loss is a ghoul that threatens the entire desert nation.”

“One must cling firmly to the mother’s tent peg to preserve the riddle of life over the course of a life. One must fasten the rope tight to the woman’s tent peg, because woman is the mistress of this world. Man cannot be relied on, because he, in the game, is always a disappearing dream. If man weren’t so obtuse, you wouldn’t have wasted your life searching for your father, miserable spouse.”

I perceived that she had deprived me of my strongest arguments, not because I had missed my father or killed my father or my father’s shadow, as the priestess referred to him and as the wanderer referred to all fathers, but because I had always lost my way to my father and had found myself isolated, forsaken, and lost whenever I thought I had grasped the reins of my truth. Thus I was content to accept the curse of Anubi as my destiny. Without meaning to, I stammered, “Anubi’s fate was atrocious. Let my clan trace their lineage according to the mother’s law, or any law, so long as that saves them from the fate of Anubi.”

Then I heard the priestess prophesy: “From this day forward, the banner will be in the hand of the sister’s son and not in the hand of the father’s son.”

With this, however, the priestess did not just place the staff of sovereignty in the hand of the sister’s offspring but also laid the foundation stone for the law authorizing marriage with one’s sister.

4 Sunset

ONE DAY, SHORTLY AFTER SUNSET, the sages escorted me to the congregation and their leaders told me that the time had come for me to assume power. They first discussed the law, telling me that its prophetic dicta are divided into two parts. The first half facilitates the affairs of this world and the second preserves our relationship with the spirit world. To the second belong those abstruse texts devoted to the community’s incontrovertible class structure. The most venerable of them stepped toward me and thrust in my face a scrap of hide imprinted with cryptic symbols. Then he said that the tribe was to be divided, according to the mandate of the spirit world, into three authentic castes. The offspring of Ragh would constitute the head, the progeny of the goddess Yeth, the spine and torso, and the clan of Seth, the flexible limbs. Then he examined the talismanic writing on the scrap of leather for some time before adding that the spirit world’s wisdom decreed the first clan should assume responsibility for governance, following matrilineal descent, on condition that they owned nothing and they kept their hands off worldly vanities, taking their cue from the divine progenitor, who possesses nothing, since he is sovereign over all.

Then he spoke of the second clan’s mission, saying that they were the cavalry of the supreme goddess and sons of the mother who gave birth to everything. They were destined to enjoy material possessions and to appoint kings from among the descendants of Ragh, on condition that they themselves never attempted to rule.

The strategic clan’s mission was to be cunning and to investigate everything, no matter how obvious or obscure, searching out whatever was useful, without defying the talisman.

Then this wily sage fell silent. He remained silent for such a long time that this stillness swallowed the world. When he returned from his spiritual journey, he proclaimed the final piece of the prophecy: “There will be disturbances and the whole tribe will be destroyed the day the law is violated, whether the lineage of Ragh covets possession of worldly vanities, the lineage of Yeth wishes to seize power, or the carnal self seduces the lineage of Seth to exceed the boundaries of what is appropriate in their pursuit of knowledge.” He fell silent, and stillness reigned over the earth once more. Then he concluded his pronouncement by saying, “Thus ends the revelation!” He approached me and handed me the pieces of hide imprinted with talismans. He bowed to me so deferentially that I was shaken. In a grave tone he recited, “You, master, from today forward, are master of these texts. You, master, from today forward are sovereign over the desert.” Then he gestured to the row of sages, who approached me, one at a time.

They bowed to my transient body, repeating the prophetic saying as if chanting a supplication raised to the spirit world: “You, master, from today forward, are master of these texts. You, master, from today forward, are sovereign over the desert.” Then the senior sage continued his address, emphasizing the need to respect the three goals. He said that a truth that cannot rest on one goal must inevitably rest on three but emended this statement to caution against the fourth goal, affirming that concealed truth contradicts surface truth, which is demolished if the fourth goal is lost. After that I heard him raise his voice in a heart-rending hymn of longing. Its sweetness set my heart to dancing and stirred tears from my eye, so I wept involuntarily. Still singing, he stepped toward me. Then he whispered in poetic words: “Master, man is a prophetic saying. The division is real. Don’t forget it!” Then … then he withdrew. He did not merely withdraw; he vanished like a mirage one pursues. He vanished and with him vanished the rows of sages. I never saw them again after that.

The sages left me to my own devices. As emptiness settled into my heart, I felt the void. I returned alone, feeling isolated and abandoned, despite the existence of throngs of people in the oasis and despite the presence of my consort beside me. That day I realized that there are creatures whose true nature is veiled from us until we lose them. I also realized that there are creatures no woman can replace, even if by virtue of her wisdom she is a priestess, and for whose absence even throngs of the very best sort of men are no consolation. I realized that loneliness is a beast that cannot be tamed, even by someone we choose for that task. It is, rather, a secret frittered away by people we do not attempt to befriend and do not seek out. I was obliged, once more, to recognize that I was none other than Anubi and that the destiny of Anubi in this desert is solitude.

Even so, I remembered the prophetic counsel of the venerable master who granted me custody of the hide texts and who appointed me ruler over the desert. Thus I was forced to come to terms with my destiny and to take charge of things myself this time. The fact is that my motive in assuming power was not a sense of obligation but as a way of dispelling my loneliness and annihilating my ennui. Why shouldn’t I have some fun?

I observed what was around me. I observed what was inside me. I saw that this game required rules. So I decided to begin by selecting for my sessions an entourage to console me for the loss of the college of sages. I was obliged to search the leather texts to find support for this in the prophetic aphorisms entrusted to me by the sages. Relying on these, I saw the importance of doing things in threes. I went to the cave of the ancestors in the southern cliff face and sequestered myself there for a time before returning to my oasis with a vision. I seated my consort beside me and ordered the vassals to bring me the nobles of the tribes. I told them that the Law in its dicta had praised the Trinitarian approach and that I proposed to select from each community a man who would not begrudge me his advice, should I request his counsel, and who would serve as my companion in my daily life, should stifling loneliness afflict me. They murmured their approval. I wasted no time in surrounding myself with this group and then immediately asked them, “Will the lords of the people confirm that we will not be blamed for having fun?”

They were quick to protest in unison, “Of course not, master. Absolutely not!”

“I shall shower my wealth on anyone who can show me how to dispel worry from our world except through entertainment.”

The group straightaway shouted to one another, “The sages of our tribes buried their heads in prophecies till their eyesight blurred and discovered no other truth in this world than entertainment.”

“But you, lords of the people, know better than the other folk the maxim that in our world the law governs everything, including entertainment.”

“Of course, our master: entertainment too is governed by the will of the law.”

“The era of the lords of the law has passed, and a void hangs over our oasis. Their reality, however, did not reside in their bodies, which have passed away, but in their wise sayings, which they have bequeathed to us.”

At this point a voice brazenly raised a question that I thought reeked of veiled insolence: “Does it make sense, my master, to claim the sages advocated jesting?”

The man beside him, however, saved me the trouble of rebutting him, for he said, “We will perish, master, of boredom, if we don’t rule in favor of entertainment. A child must be an infant to lack the ability to play. My goat gave birth to a melancholy kid that acted weird. He wouldn’t frolic with the other kids or respond to his mother’s nudges. He spent the whole day staring into space and stayed up all night examining the stars. I saw a sorrow in his eyes I could compare only to that in the eyes of wanderers, exiles, and sages. I was sure some jinni’s spawn was dwelling in this kid’s body. It appears I guessed right, because the sorrowful look in this wretch’s eyes increased to a point that augured ill. Do you know what happened next? One day I saw him climb a boulder on the cliff face and then cast himself into the abyss. He perished, my master, just as any creature that loses the ability to have fun perishes.”

A murmur spread through the assembly. One man shouted, “Your kid was a man, not a beast or a jinni!”

I gestured for them to be still, and they hushed. I studied a piece of text in my lap before observing, “The sages advocated a threefold approach. To reinforce the footers of the sacred building, there must be three pillars.”

This metaphorical reference was too abstruse for the crowd, and people looked apprehensive. I tried to elucidate the allusion: “Our master Ragh is overhead, on earth there are creatures, and in the souls of the people there is wisdom.” I concluded, “The fourth pillar of the building, however, is a blunder. Beware!”

Voices repeated after me, “The fourth pillar is a blunder.”

“In wombs, the sperm is restless and the fetuses develop, waiting for the hour of birth, which no one knows for certain. All the same, I have thought that waiting will slay us with loneliness. This is why I thought I would choose from each of your tribes a man who would take a place beside me in the council to act as the nucleus of the future clan, until the sperm develops out of sight and the embryos are delivered from the wombs.”

They repeated with all the intoxication of singers touched by ecstatic longing, “Until the sperm develops out of sight and the embryos are delivered from the wombs.”

“But don’t get so carried away that you forget the whole thing is in jest.”

“The whole thing is in jest.”

“I don’t want you to neglect your carnal self or to err by arrogating to yourselves the role of the secret being waiting in the womb. Act, rather, with an understanding that you divert yourselves in order to forget.”

At that point, one of the nobles approached and whispered to me, as if confiding a secret, “But what is it, my master, that you want us to forget by jesting?”

The wretch infuriated me with his question, but I enjoyed my response to him: “You’ll kill yourselves, if you don’t forget you’re alive. You’ll share the fate of the kid that your companion described, if you don’t amuse yourselves.”

Anxiety reigned once again, so I chanted this appeal: “The text from the spirit world, O people of Targa, says that the offspring of Ragh will be the tribe’s head. So, have you chosen for me from among yourselves a child of Ragh to be his deputy on earth?”

Silence was universal. People exchanged surreptitious glances, nudged each other, and whispered to one another. Their consultation produced this response, “Do we dare, our master, select a creature to be Ragh’s vice-regent on earth when our assembly is headed by the descendant of Ragh chosen by the spirit world to be Ragh’s authentic deputy, not his counterfeit deputy?”

“I am grateful for your confidence but fear that for me to remain with you will constitute an abuse of the texts and an infraction of the law of entertainment.”

The lady of my house and priestess of the temple cast me a disapproving look. Apparently one of the men seated nearby saw that look, for he took the offensive: “Doesn’t our master fear the spirit world will be provoked by his reluctance to assume the sovereignty that was his destiny from the start?”

“Will it harm this sovereignty if the nation goes a bit overboard in combating alienation through their jests?”

“I once heard a clever man predict a grievous end, master, for nations that dare to mix earnestness with jest.”

“If you can tell me the truth about earnestness, I’ll give you half my kingdom. If you can tell me the truth about jesting, I’ll give you the other half.”

At this point the lady seated beside me intervened for the first time: “We do not control our destinies; our destinies control us. We may wager what our hands possess but have no right to wager what possesses us. Our master may throw into play everything he possesses. Our master, however, has no right to throw into play the hand that controls him.”

“To what hand do you refer, mistress?”

“The hand of destiny, the hand that threw you into the arena of this oasis, placing it before you, the hand that installed you not only as head of Targa but also as its guardian.”

“But what can a sovereign do when his breast is mangled by melancholy and his heart tempted by wandering?”

She ignored my question, however, and delivered another prophecy to the assembly: “Sovereignty, our master, is what holds sway over us. We aren’t sovereign over sovereignty.”

“Doesn’t the sovereign have the right to free himself from his power?”

“Certainly not!”

“In our lady’s law, is sovereignty a curse?”

“Sovereignty for the sovereign is a destiny, not a curse. Do you know who you are?”

“I? I, lady, am a wanderer.”

“Certainly not! You were a wanderer, master, before the fates shackled you with the oasis. You were a wanderer, master, before the spirit world fettered you with sovereignty. From today forward, you have no name besides sovereign, no homeland besides sovereignty, and no god besides sovereignty. You are the monarchy, and the monarchy is you. How can you abdicate a kingship the spirit world has granted you as a sacred trust without also abdicating your true nature? How can you renounce this trust without renouncing your self?”

“With what antidote, then, is the master of melancholy to be healed? By what antidote, then is the victim of longing to be cured?”

I did not hear her response. I did not hear it, because ecstasy had flooded my heart and longing had overflowed my spirit. The unidentified tune became ever louder in my ears. I was choked by a tear and found that my body was swaying to the right and left, in time with the beat. My tongue picked up the refrain right away. This was an anxious song that affected my muscles the way a prophecy affects the heart. I sang, and everyone sang with me, although the priestess declined the invitation. She stared at me with veiled curiosity. When I stopped to catch my breath, she leaned toward me to say, “Don’t be foolhardy.”

I did not know what she meant and began singing again. I sang and everyone resumed singing with me. I wept while I sang, and thus all the leaders wept with me. The inquisitive look in my priestess’ eyes turned threatening. She scolded me more harshly than she had ever before: “Stop that!”

My heart’s effusion, however, proved the more powerful impetus and the suzerainty of longing the stronger, because I have learned from my struggle that man’s exterior is a shadow, and his interior longing, a longing that stirs only when the spirit world dispatches it as a messenger to notify us of our true nature. Even so, we frequently lose sight of our true nature, because we do not listen carefully to the voice of our longing or sing the hymn of our longing properly. Our longing is precisely our identity, which we have forgotten how to discover and which we cannot find any stratagem to retrieve. Why can’t singing be that stratagem? Why shouldn’t tunes become our prophecy?

Nevertheless, the prophecy that the spirit world whispered to my heart differed from the one the priestess brandished at me when my song provoked her to fling the gauntlet in my face: “You’re making a big mistake!”

5 Evening

THE REALLY BIG MISTAKE I made was to toy with another doll beside my wife. My experience notwithstanding, I did not know that a woman is capable of forgiving her husband the foulest misdeeds and the gravest sins so long as he does not supplant her with a baby doll, since a woman is less threatened by a co-wife than by a doll, which forces her to face the fact that she too is a doll, shaken and exposed to the worst perils. Unfortunately, my yearning for amusement made me forget myself and neglect this secret truth about dolls until later. In the meantime there were some weighty developments. I announced my intentions — in a weakened state, without knowing what I was doing — that the nobles of each clan should play the role of Ragh’s descendents, whose duty it is to govern, provided that they eschew worldly vanities, as the law decreed. In my declaration I did not forget to append a proviso cautioning that their appointment was temporary — by the law of entertainment — and highlighting the future role of embryos fidgeting in the wombs. In this way I committed another offense, as I understood only later, for sovereignty is the only treasure that should not be meted out in jest and for entertainment. It is an elusive quality, and anyone with a natural talent for ruling will reject such an arrangement, for even sovereignty conferred in jest becomes a reality, no matter how fraudulent its origin.

In feverish longing I raised my voice and uttered a second proclamation to the effect that the nobles of the other tribes would assume the role of the goddess Yeth’s community, whom the law burdens with ownership of material goods. It would be their duty to select a descendant of Ragh to ascend the throne, someone devoid of desires for material possessions. Then longing swept through me as melodies wailed in my heart and I uttered the final words of the proclamation, declaring that the blacksmiths, who had slipped into the oasis one day from the east, would assume the role of Seth’s offspring, who excel in metalworking, mixing of alloys, and creating iron and other hard substances. Then a weakness of a type familiar to anyone who has felt the pains of longing overwhelmed me. So I lay down and drew a cover over my head, thinking I had said what I needed to say. I do not know how long I was unconscious, but when I awoke I found my slave Hur standing by my head. He said that two men, who were flinging accusations at each other and calling each other names, were waiting at my door, demanding to see me. I granted them permission to enter and found myself confronted by two fellows veiled with dark leather. Their eyes, which looked stern and stubborn, showed lingering anger. The men were similar enough to have been twins, except that they were of different heights. The taller one spoke. He said he had entrusted his friend with some gold dust on the understanding that it would be handed back once he returned from his voyage to the forest lands, but that the cunning strategist had betrayed him by molding the powder into a vile ingot, which he had created and refused to surrender. He asked me to settle their dispute with justice rather than let it be settled by the sword.

He fell silent, and I looked at his shorter companion, whom I asked bluntly, “Do you deny this?”

He shook his head “no.”

“Do you admit that the gold belongs to your companion?” I asked him.

He answered without any hesitation, “Certainly!”

“So why have you denied him what is rightfully his?”

“I don’t deny that the gold dust is rightfully his. I deny his right to what he refers to as a ‘vile ingot.’”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t deny that I owe him a handful of gold dust, but that doesn’t mean I owe him an ingot to which I entrusted my spirit as my hands created it.”

“If you don’t want to give him back the ingot you love, why don’t you return some gold dust?”

“Master, I’ve asked him to allow me more time to acquire some gold dust, but he wants to claim the ingot instead of the gold dust.”

“Did you ask his permission before you smelted his gold dust into your ingot?”

“How could I ask his permission, master, when he had traveled far away?”

“Did he not tell you when to expect him back?”

“Absolutely not!”

“But what gave you the right to violate a trust bestowed upon you?”

“Master, when I looked at the gold dust, I saw it was beautiful. When I gazed into my heart, I realized I was in love.”

“I really don’t understand.”

So the lover narrated the story of his infatuation as he gazed off into space: “I responded to an inner call, after I acquainted myself with the look of the gold dust, for I found its gleam seductive. Then I poured the powder into the furnace one night when an unfamiliar fever tormented me. I didn’t discover I had created an antidote for this fever until I shaped the powder and turned it into poetry. Yes, indeed, I created poetry from dirt, master.”

“Would you be willing to show me this poetry?”

He began to stare through the doorway leading to the vacant lands outside. His eyes also looked vacant. No, a frightening anxiety flared in his eyes along with another inner call? A sign? Passion? Latent anxiety? I do not know, but when he finally overcame his hesitation and decided to withdraw the treasure from his garment his hand trembled. He extracted a leather container from the sleeve of his gown. He clung tightly to this with both hands for some time, before relenting and presenting it to me. I accepted the object and withdrew from the wrapper what his irate comrade had referred to as the “vile ingot.” It was a physical creation of a unique, lustrous appearance: strange, rich, with an inner beauty and glory. The metal did not reveal its beauty or glory; these spoke through its solid form the way priests speak through a curtain. They were diffused throughout the metal’s being, where they created an existence the body denied them. Through secrecy, concealment, and absence, beauty and glory revealed themselves completely, becoming existent, alive, and eternal. Was this a metal idol or a sacred shrine? Was this masterpiece a metal rod or the body of a goddess?

Impressed, I asked the love-struck man, “Is this a devotional object?”

His eyes looked off into the distance once more. When I repeated my question, he replied murkily, “The ingot is me, master.”

“What?”

“Before me, master, rests my heart.”

I resumed my contemplation of his creation. As I turned it over in my hands, I discovered that it was almost painfully smooth. Soon a whispered temptation stirred in my own breast, a temptation awakened by the spirit world, which permeated the golden masterpiece. I felt I had seen it before, even though I was certain this was the first time the object had fallen into my hands. Where? When? I tried to squeeze certainty from my memory as I once had when the unknown cast me on the heights above Targa, leaving me to experience forgetfulness. This time, however, the prophecy was blocked, notwithstanding the delight I felt in losing myself in the beauty that flowed through the lustrous body — like the spirit flowing through a person’s body — and in the pleasure I experienced in pursuing its glory, which hid to reveal itself the better and concealed itself to grow stronger. What spirit lay concealed within this metal? What god was camouflaged by this glorious body?

I kept turning the shrine over in my hands. Finally I said, “You have the right to refuse to surrender the ingot, and your companion has the right to receive the gold dust he entrusted to you.”

“I begged him, master, to give me a little time.”

I turned to ask his comrade, “Will you give him a little more time?”

He replied without any hesitation, “Absolutely not!”

I gazed at the love-struck man and said regretfully, “There’s no way around it. You’ll have to give him the devotional object in exchange for his gold dust.”

“Absolutely not!”

I looked sadly at him and asked, “Do you know that a person who trifles with a trust faces the same penalty as one who defaults on a loan?”

“I know!”

“Do you know the penalty for defaulting on a loan under to the law of the oasis?”

“I know!”

“Would you rather deliver yourself to him as his slave than deliver the metal ingot?”

“This body’s not merely a metal ingot, master.”

“I won’t deny its perfection, but what you term a body is an ingot in the eyes of the law.”

“I told you, master, that body is me.”

“What good will retaining possession of your handiwork do you if the law punishes you by making you a slave?”

“I will pledge him my body, pursuant to the verdict, but it’s inconceivable that he should take the pledge I’ve concealed within the body that lies before me, master.”

I reflected a little before asking him, “Will you tell me the divine object’s secret, if I pardon you?”

The lover merely gazed off into the distance without replying.

I returned the devotional object to him and sentenced him to be his companion’s slave for several years. They departed, hurling insults at one another and calling each other names, as my slave Hur later told me. I tried to forget these two wretched adversaries and to drive the whole confused muddle from my mind, but the inspiration of the extraordinary devotional object flowed through my heart the same way the goddess’ unknown beauty flowed through that metal rod. I tried to discover its secret. I slept for a long time, roamed in dreams for a long time, and attempted to adjudicate many disputes fairly, but the divine object’s secret remained a mysterious talisman that never left my heart. One day I was chatting with my consort, who was seated in the chamber beside me. She was gazing out of the palace window toward the open countryside in a way that I found inspirational, and this awakened in my heart a missing sign. The sensation troubled me, and so I went to the caves of the ancestors with a few vassals. There, in the refuge of the original prophetic wisdom, revelation flowed forth and the prophecy that I had awaited and that had escaped me for such a long time trickled into my heart. In a moment, I discovered that the devotional object the wretch had created was a goddess and, in fact, the priestess herself. Yes, yes, the goddess smelted into the golden rod was none other than my consort in worldly matters, my intimate in our chamber, my sister by blood, and my priestess in the temple. Why had it taken me so long to discern the similarity?

I ordered the vassals to fetch the miserable lover at once. When he appeared, I asked him to show me the divine object again. He wept, alleging that he had lost the treasure, but his comrade, who now owned him, denied this, saying the vile fellow had hidden the goddess in some safe place, for fear greedy people would plot to steal it. The lover, however, attacked the other man, saying he was not satisfied with gaining possession of him through the verdict but intended to seize control of the goddess as well. A quarrel flared up between them, and their anger reached such heights that they flung accusations at one another and called each other names. I was going to order the two men fettered and left out in the sun till they calmed down, but instead, set them free and sent spies after them to keep me posted about what they did and where they went. These spies eventually returned to tell me that the owner was also spying on his slave, in hopes of learning where the devotional object was hidden but that the love-struck man was the more clever of the two, for they had seen him mix suspect herbs into his master’s food so the fool would doze off and sleep like a log all night long. Meanwhile the wretch would slip off to the northern, sandy, cliff faces to retrieve his doll, to which he would whisper in a tongue like jinn’s gibberish, continuing till dawn. They also informed me they had tried to find the treasure and had dug through the earth there repeatedly without discovering the trophy. I told myself that the lover hid his worshiped object in the endless sands, where he would find it easily the next time, since he held the landmarks in his heart, not in his visual memory, whereas such signs would be invisible to the heart of anyone searching with his eyes. I grasped this secret and then ordered them to pounce on the wretch during his whispered conversations and to bring me the goddess. In a few days they delivered what I wanted. As I contemplated it, I found that its resemblance to the goddess of the temple had increased. I was astonished I had missed this the previous time. I probed it, examined it, and attempted to extract the poetry from its essence. Beauty spoke so clearly in its bearing and glory was so radiantly diffused through its structure that I felt choked and tears flowed from my eyes. The longing I had not experienced in the refrains of the songs touched me. I began to confide in the goddess object daily, because I enjoyed it more than the priestess in whose image it was forged. Was this miracle caused by passion? Does love create what the human will cannot? Does passion devise what the intellect cannot?

I hid the body in a secure place and was therefore incredulous when I discovered the treasure missing a few days later. The adored body disappeared from my safekeeping just as its lover disappeared from the safekeeping of the entire oasis. They searched for him in the caves, on the cliff faces, and in the nearby pasture lands, but the wretch had vanished. I lamented the loss of my adored, golden object for some time until I found consolation with my real-life object of adoration. It never once occurred to me that the loss of the devotional image was a harbinger of ill and a warning that I might lose the original as well. All the same, a series of events began to unfold in my oasis that day. My true love first disappeared from the bedchamber. Originally, her excuse was some feminine complaint. I thought she was expecting a second child, but the signs of pregnancy did not appear. Instead of witnessing her return to the bedchamber, I was flabbergasted when she moved out of the palace altogether and sought refuge in the temple, spending her nights there. When I asked why, she cited an emptiness of heart, saying that this was a threat from the spirit world and that the only antidote was singing hymns of grief and seeking refuge in the sanctuary. I heard her sing those immortal songs that caused stone to crumble and birds to fall dead to the ground from delight and that had once enchanted the sages, who had summoned her to be the temple’s goddess. At first, she withdrew there alone, but later I found that her maids and servants had joined her and had begun spending their nights in the temple. So doubts troubled me. I detected in my slave Hur’s eyes a sorrow I ought to have deciphered but did not, because lassitude spawns intellectual apathy and spiritual ruin. Thus I chose to ignore his sorrow, attributing the whole affair to the bizarre phases of this mysterious community known as women. I once went to recite a psalm of longing inside the sanctuary, where she accosted me at the entrance. I gazed into her eyes, but she turned away. The enchanting way she turned to gaze into the distance reminded me of the immortal look flowing through the body of the lost devotional object. She seemed privy to eternity’s secret, which lay beyond the horizon. Pain tormented my heart, but I asked her, “Punishment obeys a law, and according to the legal code of the ancients the culprit is entitled to learn the complete charges against him.”

Avoiding my gaze, she said, “The culprit was fully informed of the charge a long time ago, but the plaintiff has not been granted the defendant’s undivided attention.”

“I just don’t get it.”

At that she turned toward me and then I saw another woman in her eyes. She said defiantly, “The day you set aside for entertainment, didn’t compassion’s shadow scream, asking you to stop? Didn’t the voice of prophecy shout in your ears to warn you that you were making a big mistake, the day you set aside for entertainment?”

I stared at her with genuine astonishment. Stunned, I asked, “Is it reasonable for the earth to quake just because one action figure wants to play with another? Does it make sense for the sky to fall just because one shadow gives offense by wishing to joke around with other shades?”

Pallor spread over her cheeks and the sparkle left her eyes. I thought she was going to faint. With the language of a priestess prophesying, she declared, “You really don’t know what you did. You don’t know that you mixed the sacred with the defiled. You don’t know that you betrayed prophetic counsel and shook the pillars of existence. You….”

She stopped. She sighed, and her sigh sounded like the hissing of a serpent. She tried to finish, but anger choked her. In her eyes I saw an even more hideous gleam. Was it contempt? What was certain, however, was that this look was a message instructing me that I had lost her forever, because a woman can hide everything except her decision to leave a man.

At that time I stood nervously by the temple’s entrance. I stood there nervously because I did not understand. I forgot my intention to pray. The longing in my heart to encounter the spirit world faded. I stood where I was, dumbstruck, because I found myself an accused man on whom a death sentence has been pronounced, even though he does not know the nature of his offense. I perceived, intuitively, that something had happened. The conspiracy hatched in the spirit world had begun to mature. I remembered the lost goddess then. I considered it an ill omen and felt hurt. I did not know that this was only the opening volley in the bloodshed that would follow after the “big mistake” but before the breach.

The nobles of the tribes had grown accustomed to gathering in my assembly to represent the divine trinity Ragh, Yeth, and Seth, according to the dictates of the prophetic teachings, recorded on leather sheets that the sages had left me. They launched their first raid against the neighboring tribes on a troubling pretext. The public reason was self-defense against the greed of envious persons, whereas the private subtext was a desire to seize herds of animals and to extend their area of influence. The cavalry, composed of partisans of the goddess Yeth, were the most ardent and the most vociferous advocates of war. I heard their nobles stress in the assembly a heretical idea, the gist of which was that the noblest form of defense is a pre-emptive strike and that a weapon that remains in a person’s hand will end up in his throat, unless used against an enemy. With this vicious doctrine they were secretly alluding to the deadly metal blades with which blacksmiths, partisans of Seth, were flooding the markets of the oasis. Among the citizens, they circulated rumors that advocated the necessity of using weapons, if only as a training exercise, since in their opinion, iron formed into weapons is not really a weapon, until used as one. I noticed during the nobles’ debate, which preceded the agreement to wade into the first clash, that those from the tribes of Seth were covertly supporting the position of the cavalry of Yeth, by an occasional wink and by repeating prophetic dicta that laud aggression and say that life is merely a voyage of struggle, during which you are inevitably conquered by other people, unless you conquer them first. I heard them allege repeatedly that these dicta were copied from the laws of the ancients. The tribal lords, who had assumed the role of the partisans of Ragh back on the day set aside for entertainment, opposed them and advocated a wait-and-see approach, pleading for the rule of wisdom. They said that wisdom is iron’s ancient enemy, that these two have never united under a single roof, and that tribes have noticed, since the beginning of time, that the appearance of one entails the disappearance of the other, because wisdom flows from the spring of peace-making, whereas iron flows exclusively from the spring of blood. I remember that back then the tribe of Seth adopted the position of the tribe of Yeth when the moment came to vote for the first attack. Then their alliance was disclosed and intellect lost the first battle.

My assembly still met whenever necessary. My consort would sit beside me without volunteering any opinion. She seemed bored by all the assembly’s wrangling, which often deteriorated into name-calling, and began to absent herself. When I once asked why, she replied, “I didn’t know that men’s meetings, when drawn out, become even more mean-spirited than women’s.” When I disputed this, she observed that a man’s initial comments deserve to be heard but become pointless chatter if prolonged while his heart becomes a shell. In her head, a woman always conceals in her quiver a valuable thought she does not reveal. Indeed, a woman never states what she would like to say. She never says what she ought to say, because she knows that the thought we treasure is always inestimably more precious than the statement we utter. For this reason, we never grow tired of listening to a woman. For this reason, we are attracted to a woman, since we anticipate that she will eventually tell us the thought she is hiding. Woman, however, is too intelligent to condescend to speak her secret, unlike man. She concluded her exposition by stating, “How despicable is a man who has not been granted wisdom by the spirit world.” I realized that she had pronounced a final verdict on my assembly. I also understood that her final phrase, with which she terminated her bizarre exposition, was directed at me, not the nobles of my assembly. Her phrasing would not have aroused my suspicions had I not detected contempt in it. I must confess that this was what most upset me, because I knew that when a woman feels contempt for a man, not even the spirit world can deflect her evil. These intimations shook my heart’s optimism; so I learned to be suspicious and began to read hidden meanings into every phrase. Next she began to siphon off the leading figures of the assembly, one by one, until I discovered that they had deserted me to unite in her assembly in the temple. I was astonished at the ability of people to change over night and to turn their backs on me, after I had placed my confidence in them, and to shun me so unequivocally that they saw nothing wrong in scowling at me today after kissing the ground beneath my feet yesterday. I confronted a noble from Ragh’s clan, a man I had previously installed as the head of his people and a pillar of the assembly. I decided I would try to reason with him, even though I had no hope of success. He was a mature man of great dignity, inclined toward silence. He wore a veil of blue linen. In fact it was reported in the oasis that he was the first to substitute for leather veils these linen ones that caravans procured for him from nations to the north. That was not all, for he had dyed the linen blue the day after I installed him on the Trinitarian throne as a representative of the putative offspring of Ragh. When asked his reasons, he had said that since blue is the color of the sky, it would have been inappropriate for descendents of the divine lords to wend their way through the throngs without a sign to notify strangers of their true status as persons tracing their lineage back to the lord of the sky. Then he pushed his game one step further by deciding to change his name as well, substituting for his former name, Imsikni, a new one, Amnay. At the time, I did not lend any significance to these initiatives. All I did was joke about them in the assembly, just as strangers had previously joked about them. I did not understand then that joking about people is not merely a mistake but also dangerous, for a joke conceals a display of contempt that will provoke the people subjected to it. Then they do not merely harbor hatred for us, but the show of contempt for their position increases their determination to carry out their heretical innovation, even if it verges on the impractical or the insane. Here was Amnay strutting before me as haughtily as a lord, veiled by a blue cloth that idiots assumed was a guarantee of affiliation with descendents of the sky, hiding behind a lofty sobriquet accepted by strangers as having been bestowed on him one night in a heavenly revelation, and leaning on a staff that, in his grasp, became a mace and symbol of sovereignty. Here he was, pretending not to see me, in fact avoiding me, as he had done repeatedly. I blocked his way, not to remind him who he really was, not to avenge myself for his skullduggery, but to heal my rancor and to cheer my heart, as I had attempted to do the day I set aside for amusement, when I had laid the cornerstone for my own downfall, as my former consort was pleased to remind me. I blocked the way of this gent, who was bristling with fine clothing, and asked, without muting the disdain in my tone, “The master of nobility shows himself to people by bristling with wisdom, whereas the master of vacuity reveals himself to people by bristling with lies.”

He studied me, while brandishing his mace in the air to mask his discomfort, but never once looked me in the eye. I told myself the man’s soul surely retained some remnant of shame. Nonetheless, he said, with the glibness of a man proficient in double-talk, “Do we know, master, anything about the stronghold of reality? Do we know, master, anything about the stronghold of falsehood? What can show us, master, that the stronghold of reality is in the homeland of falsehood? What can show us, master, that the stronghold of falsehood is in the homeland of reality?”

“Should I be surprised to hear an exposition like this from a man who claims to be a prophet?”

“On the contrary, master! My master will never hear an exposition of this from anyone except a prophet.”

“Is that so?”

The cunning strategist, however, waved his stick in the air and continued to recite his prophecy without looking me in the eye: “Absolutely! I’m not cognizant of the reality of reality nor of the reality of falsehood, because this type of knowledge is found only in the spirit world, but I do know that reality cannot be established without falsehood and that falsehood cannot be established without reality. Had this not been the case, our master would never have needed to jest one day.”

“Bravo! Bravo! Here you are talking about the jest that made you a ruler. Then you disavow this regime and its ruler.”

“I meant to say that the fraud we term ‘jest’ is the same fraud that creates reality.”

“Do you label your situation at present ‘reality’?”

“Isn’t our present situation the actual one that we can see and touch?”

“Do you take everything seen to be real?”

“What does my master consider everything seen?”

“I would have thought the reverse. I would have thought that the fraudulent is what is seen and the reality what’s not seen.”

“If my master is right, what meaning is there to all this? What meaning is there to debating? What meaning is there to loving? What meaning is there to living?”

“Yes, indeed; there is no meaning to living. The meaning is, rather, in learning to live.”

“This is the language of the law!”

“I would have thought that the master of prophetic visions would be, of all the people, the worthiest person with whom to discuss a clear exposition of the law.”

“Not so fast! Not so fast, master.”

I did not cut him any slack. I did not go slow with him, for I decided to render a verdict: “I fraudulently installed you as my replacements. Then you betrayed me to install yourselves for real. Is this legal according to your law, which celebrates what is visible?”

He replied icily, “Certainly, master. This is a legal system for what is visible. We, master, are the children of what is visible.”

“I thought I heard you discuss your affiliation with offspring of the spirit world.”

“Certainly; I am a scion of the spirit world, and it is, my master, the spirit world that has decreed that I should live according to the law of what’s visible, for there is a wisdom I do not understand in the fact that it plucked me from the hidden recesses of the spirit world to place me in the homelands of light.”

“Amazing!”

“What’s amazing, master, is that we live in the physical world according to the spirit’s laws of the private and live in spirit world according to the laws for public life.”

“From now on, I won’t be surprised if you all rule in favor of aggression and seek to enslave the members of pacific tribes. I’ve even begun to wonder if you’re the mastermind behind the schemes of aggression.”

“Yes, certainly, master; the mind plotting what you term aggression is mine and the law of visible reality is what has inspired me to spread the influence of the oasis beyond its boundaries, because the spirit world does not grant a community wealth, sovereignty, or wisdom to fool around with, the way numbskulls do, but to use in visible ways. If we don’t master the tribes of the world with our power today, they’ll enslave us tomorrow, when our powers have waned, for the spirit world’s law has hidden its secret in an endlessly revolving wheel. This is an inexorable wheel that reclaims today what it created yesterday and resurrects tomorrow what it assassinates today.”

I listened to him dumbfounded, because from this terrifying jinni’s discourse I learned that this was not just a plot against me but a conspiracy against the entire desert and that my wife was not the mastermind plotting this insurrection but merely a piece of the snare the cunning strategist had disclosed to me in his fatal exposition.

After this, nothing surprised me. I was not surprised when the nobles deserted me, one at a time. I was not surprised when they clustered around my former consort in the temple’s heart to finish weaving the strands of this conspiracy. I was not surprised when they kept me from seeing my son, preventing me from sharing stages of his development as he grew, matured, and explored the desert, where he learned to hunt, grew tough, and discovered how to be a man. I found myself alone, isolated, and abandoned, just as I had always been. I grew ever more certain that the fate of men in this desert is always Anubi’s. I was born in the desert like Anubi, live in the desert like Anubi, and will leave the desert one day the way Anubi did, for anyone whose father has ever left him will have Anubi’s destiny as his eternal fate. My slave Hur attempted to lighten my burden. “What’s all this, my master, but a trial from which we can learn?” he asked me one day.

“Learn what, Hur?”

“Learn the reality of truth and falsehood.”

“Don’t talk to me about the reality discussed by the prophet of lying.”

“The prophet of lying?”

“Is the leader of the people of Ragh anything other than the lie’s prophet?”

“Master, we’ll never recognize truthful prophets, if we aren’t plagued by the lying ones.”

“But I lost reality the day I decided to play. I have come to believe that the lady of the temple was right to scold and menace me with the punishment appropriate to this offense.”

“We can’t learn, master, unless we suffer.”

“I lost reality, thanks to my taste for amusement; so forgive me.”

“Despair master, is also therapeutic.”

“I have lost my offspring, my nation, and my reality and have brought you all down with me. Worse than all this is the fact that I’ve lost my son. By losing the prophetic counsel of the law, I lost my son.”

“We don’t find ourselves, if we don’t lose ourselves, master.”

“The one thing I ask from you is to refrain from changing my offspring’s name. Inform the people that as of today my name is no longer Ara. From today forward it will be Amahagh; so don’t forget.”

“We are all Imuhagh, master. We are all children of a desert labyrinth. None of us, master, knows what to do with himself. It is this ignorance that motivates us to commit offenses like playing, because we must inevitably ask ourselves one day: ‘What will we do with ourselves, if we don’t play?’ Thus entertainment slays us, just as others are slain by longing. One group dies from the offense of playing, master, and another group dies from the disease of longing.”

“I entrust my offspring Imuhagh to your care and count on you to divulge to all the people the true nature of this name.”

“Master, I pledge my life to be true to this trust.”

A few days later I was informed of the community’s verdict, which sentenced me to exile, once more.

6 The Slip

I FOUND MYSELF in my desert, cleansing myself with the last drops of my mirage and roaming through the endless expanse of my open countryside. I returned to my solitude and believed in my solitude, since only solitude is real. The evidence for this claim is that within its confines I had no need for entertainment in order to live. I discovered life-threatening entertainment to be an innovation created by the lassitude of oases. The antidote to this malady is closer to us than the jugular vein, since it rushes to greet us as soon as we venture into the desert, embracing us to provide a replacement for whatever we have left behind. I roamed and began, in the labyrinth, to purify myself. I contemplated what appeared and what was concealed, what was manifest and what latent, what was visible and what invisible, and cleansed myself from all the rot of lethargy. I stood a foot or less from a sanctuary to the spirit world, feeling certain that if I called out, I would receive a response and that if I pressed my intrusion an inch farther it would appear before me. Yet, fearful, I suppressed my cry each time, so that I would not receive an answer, and confined my intrusive behavior to my head, so it would not show. I quit my confrontations with the covert and diverted myself by reading the talismans of the ancients on the rock statues or on the walls of the caves or by re-enacting my first gallop behind the herds of gazelles or pursuit of the heads of Barbary sheep, when the fates cast me at the outskirts of the oasis. Then I had eaten my relatives’ flesh grilled by a heavenly lightening bolt, and my body has been aflame with greed ever since. I roamed through the companionable countryside. I rambled around to enjoy my isolation, reveling in the time I had alone with my beloved, whom I realized I had betrayed when I substituted for her another creature, who soon betrayed me. I courted my former true love with the most heart-rending poetry. I sang her plaintive ballads she had never heard before, not even from the jinn’s female vocalists, whom I had seen in the caves and encountered while they roamed the great outdoors by the full moon. I forgot my curse. I forgot my destiny. I forgot Anubi’s fate, which had always encumbered me. I forgot my lost father. I forgot the lost law. I forgot my lost spouse. I forgot my lost oasis. I forgot my lost reality, for the desert became father, law, spouse, homeland, and reality for me. I threw myself into its embrace. Then it eased my mind, dandled me, calmed me, and made me forget my exhaustion. I wandered through its vast expanses. I scaled peaks to discover springs that my desert had never shown any creature before. I descended ravines and valleys to find, in their lowest reaches, wells that my consort had hidden from strangers’ eyes for ages. When I wandered across the plains, she fed me secret fruit more delicious than any I had ever tasted. My desert showed me her affection like a tender mother with an errant child, a son who returns after a misguided voyage. So how could I help but recite poems about her beauty or sing ballads glorifying her?

My former true love was not content to celebrate my return with all this munificence; she sent my way some jinn disguised as people to console me and to dispel from my heart the isolation that mankind terms loneliness. Then she sent my way people masquerading as jinn to show me how remorseless people are. The most precious treat she granted me was the hint of purity that drew me close to my secret reality, however, for it was this exalted purity that brought me to a stop only a fraction of an inch from the sanctuary where I felt that, were I to call, I would be granted a response invisible to human eyes, inaudible to human ears, and unimaginable by the human mind. The past’s pains, with which the desert had once weighed me down to test me and to make a man of me, became the memory of a comforting grace. The delights of lethargy, which the oasis had generously showered upon me, became the memory of a hideous inferno. I saw how hell frequently is transformed into a blessing when it becomes a memory, and a blessing frequently evolves into an inferno in memory; the talisman, apparently, is a pawn to the riddle named time, which deliberately puts us off, delays us, and fails to inform us of the true nature of what transpires on a certain day until it is too late.

I was entranced by this healing and felt myself light as a straw, as pure as a tear; like a person recovering from a lengthy, near fatal illness. I smiled, because I understood that the group of conspirators, who had thought they were harming me, had actually done me a favor. Nonetheless, the nightmare of the oasis soon swept over my solitude to disrupt my blessing and to ruin my situation. Are the wise men of the tribes correct when they say that the spirit world’s envy does not allow anyone’s happiness to last long?

I did not hear the news that troubled me from an emissary or a messenger but from a wayfarer, who casually mentioned it during a night he spent with me before heading north the next day. I met up with him near the edge of the extensive Tinghart desert on the threshold of a terrifying tomb of the type that the ancients customarily built for their chiefs, leaders, dignitaries, and priests. I buried under the ashes of the fire some gray-colored truffles I had gathered during my wanderings in a valley that had received autumn rain from a fickle cloud. As soon as the wayfarer sniffed the fragrance of the truffles, he went into an ecstatic trance and began to moan like a suffering patient. When I pulled out this treasure and set it before him, he gazed at the legendary comestible for a long time. Then, without ever ceasing his mysterious moaning, he started to examine each section with as much curiosity as a diviner hunting for a portent. He did not reveal his secret to me until after midnight. At first he sang about an oasis named Targa. I did not know whether he was singing about my lost oasis or about the Targa that generations have celebrated in the epic songs of the ancestors and that the tribes, so long ago that no one remembers, had lost, so that its name was given by sages to any country that one cannot hope to visit and live to return from. Finally he concluded his song by saying that any legend we believe will become a reality, even if originally it was a fiction, and that whatever a creature covets in the unseen world will be presented to him by the spirit world in the visible world, and that the proof for this is the oasis of Targa, for the desert nations have never seen anything comparable to it. Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Have you heard about the magician who created an image of the lady of the temple from gold and thus mastered her spirit?”

“They say he created the image out of love for beauty,” I answered. “But he fled from the oasis for fear something would happen to a creation to which he had entrusted his spirit.”

“Yes, in the solid metal two spirits met: the lady’s spirit and the spirit of the creator of the lady.”

“I like that!”

“Because the law of the gods, according to the lore of these magicians, is creation of a creature, and the law of the creature is the creation of the gods, and the creator’s creation is artistic creation. This harbors the secret. Here is hidden the insane passion.”

“How creative this is! Are you a poet?”

He did not answer my question. Sprawled out beside me in the open air, he spoke as if confiding to the stars or addressing himself: “The lord of the oasis thought the lady’s lover had fled from the oasis, but would a lover ever flee from his true love? Does the creature flee from his creator? Or the creator from his creation? Far from it!”

“The wretch didn’t flee from the oasis?”

“The lover does not flee from the beloved he has created in his spirit even before his hands shape it. The lover does not flee from his beloved, because the lover is the beloved’s destiny, just as the creator is his creation’s destiny. The lady pulled the rug out from under the feet of the lord of the oasis, because he had given her power but had been stingy with creativity. She threw herself into the embrace of the lover who created her, because he had invented her.”

“What do you mean by saying that the lord of the oasis gave his wife power but stinted on creativity?”

“I meant to say that the ruler gave his wife an oasis but did not give her a heart, whereas the homeland for a woman is a heart, not a land. The fault of the ruler lay in forgetting that woman flees from a wealthy man who gives her a kingdom if he veils his heart from her; and she surrenders herself to a shepherd who offers her a residence outdoors but awards her his heart.”

“Woe is the man who feels secure with a woman!”

“It’s said that after she expelled her husband from the precincts of the country the lady of the oasis abdicated the throne to her lover.”

“Not so fast! Tell me first of all the truth about the lover’s disappearance from the oasis.”

“The lover didn’t disappear from the oasis. The woman hid her beloved in her chamber.”

“In her chamber?”

The way I shouted this almost revealed my identity. The fact was that the news rattled me, because like any man who has been betrayed I was so confident of myself I could not believe this. The poet, however, was anything but merciful in his narration: “It’s said in the oasis that the priestess seized power after her consort, the ruler, denied her the throne, not because she wanted political power but to guarantee the right of the offspring of the mother to inherit the world and likewise to take vengeance on her cast-off husband.”

“Vengeance on her cast-off husband?”

“She wanted revenge on her husband because he, according to accounts, had once upon a time slain her father.”

He fell silent, and then I heard in the night’s silence the muddled hubbub of roaring jinn. I realized that a creature whom the spirit world abandons will never escape the sword’s thrust, not in the farthest reaches of the desert. I tried to eavesdrop on the hubbub in my heart. Then I heard the sojourner prophet continue with his recital: “The creature who fled from the oasis was not the lover but the son.”

“The son?”

“The child of the original leader!”

I could hear my own pulse throbbing but asked, “Where did the son flee?”

“To parts unknown, looking for his father.”

“Did you say he was looking for his father?”

“Yes, indeed; each of us searches for his father. A son who does not search for his father is not worth much. A son who does not search for his father will never be successful. It’s said in the oasis that the boy’s father would never have discovered the treasure that is the oasis named Targa, if he had not been searching for his own father.”

He fell silent. I soon heard his breathing grow steady and knew he had fallen asleep. Yet, I found no sign of him in the morning. So, even today, I do not know whether my guest that night was the wandering offspring of wayfarers or a spectral messenger of the jinn.

7 False Dawn

THE WANDERER’S PROPHECY about a son who set off in search of his father awakened in my chest a forgotten longing for my child. So I began to hunt for news of his fate, but the vast desert had swallowed him. Wanderers, herdsmen, and leaders of caravans brought me no news of him. Instead, they provided me with information about plots being hatched between key figures in the assembly on the one hand and elite figures in the palace on the other. It was reported that the “Master of the Troop,” as he was known by inhabitants of the oasis had chopped off the head of the leader of the sons of Seth, whose intentions he suspected, and that he had chosen a puppet from that tribe to replace him. Then he dismissed the leader of the sons of Yeth from the assembly, as well, for saying too openly that raiding desert tribes was a dangerous adventure that would result in an unnecessary amount of bloodshed. He also replaced him with a puppet from the tribe. He was not content with that but conspired against the lady of the oasis. He abducted her beloved poet, who disappeared without a trace. It was reported that he had killed and then buried him in a rugged area of the southern oasis. Others said he did not bury him but handed him over to the ironworkers to cremate in the smelting furnaces, in order to obliterate all traces. People expected the wily strategist to seize the throne next, but this spurious leader was more cunning than the dolts suspected. He headed for the bedchamber rather than the throne and ruled the oasis from there. He took the priestess for his consort but left her on the throne as a scarecrow, an empty shell, to cast dust in people’s eyes. Meanwhile he hid himself behind the scarecrow’s body, thus gaining power surreptitiously. The spirit world, however, was eventually victorious, once it took charge of the matter.

Time gushed forth and the oasis’ army conquered the desert, but this suzerainty did not last long. As continued raids multiplied the tax burdens of the inhabitants of the oasis, people were ruined, the condition of the oasis was undermined, and the spell rebounded on the sorcerer. The oasis received painful blows, and its influence over the desert diminished gradually. Times looked bleak, and the oasis retreated to a defensive position. Next it lost its ability to defend itself and consented to pay tribute, so the victors’ swords would allow people to brood about their rout inside the confines of their shell. I was upset by the fate of my oasis, which had once been known throughout the entire desert for its prosperity and happiness. Tranquil, it had been sheltered from the ravages of time throughout the history of all its generations. Soon after I wondered with a wounded man’s passion about the true nature of epochs and about the caprices of time, I received an answer from the desert’s shejinni, who visited me in my hermitage one day. Disguised in the ragged clothing of an aged priestess of the southern deserts, she was accompanied by two maids, one of whom clung to her right hand, while the other was hanging onto her left one. Her procession was preceded by coveys of demon spirits masquerading as slaves and by an entourage of servants and vassals. The shejinni took me by the hand and led me away from the others. She told me that just as water evaporates, sand scatters, and stone crumbles, the world has three time periods. Yesterday’s time is fraudulent, because no amount of wisdom will suffice to reclaim it. Tomorrow’s time is a figment of the imagination, because it has not arrived and perhaps never will, no matter how certain we feel. Today’s time is a dream, for we possess no argument that it exists, since its ignobility makes it a bridge, the head of which disappears into what is to happen, whereas its rear end is immersed in what is over and done with. Then she spoke about the nature of the days, saying that each period of time is divisible into units, the heart of which lies in an hour. The hour’s heart is in the day. The day’s is in what people refer as an age, because this miracle is divisible into twenty-four periods, each of which conceals a life. On concluding with the names of these divisions, she questioned my resolve: “What more than this do you want, man? What do you desire from your world, wretch? Is being born and not being born equivalent for you, scion of futility?” A look of futility was traced on my forehead, glittered in my eye, and encircled my body. Since my destiny seemed to cause her pain, she decided to favor me with a final prophecy: “Those who have lived are not on a par with those who have not, for he who has lived, has lived, even if he has now perished. Someone who was never born, however, leaves behind no memories, trace, or existence. Believe me: the spirit world has been especially compassionate to you. It has favored you, inspired you, entrusted you with its sententiae, and granted you a life that has endured for ages, which greedy folk deem the winking of an eye. You have received twenty-three of your life’s periods. Once you emerge from the false dawn stage, you’ll lack only your morning. If you’ve learned to live, then you’ll have succeeded. If you’ve failed to learn, you’ve lost. Know, finally, that loss does not consist in vanishing and passing out of existence but in not knowing how to begin life afresh.” Then she turned away, mounted her steed, and rode off.

At that time I had withdrawn into my self. Within my unknown reaches I had dug tunnels, anterooms, and vaults. So I headed for the sanctuary, since I was discovering what I had once discovered on sensing that if I cried out, I would receive a response invisible to the eye, inaudible by the ear, and unimaginable by the human heart. I groped my way from there to guide myself to prophetic aphorisms, wrestle with talismans, and unravel convoluted symbols in order to record in characters the prophetic sayings. I engraved these signs in my heart and bore them for a time deep in my recesses until eventually I found myself inscribing them on solid walls with shards of rock. I toured the caves and explored the caverns so I could confide to solid rock my worries, animating the hard surface with my longing, entrusting to it my truth, and making it a guardian over my life story, which might thus be conveyed to future generations. I also traced what my heart had told me on pieces of leather I branded with fire and hid in many caves. My heart, however, spoke to me of the superiority, trustworthiness, and passion of stone. Therefore I entrusted my heart to stone, which I made the guardian for my passion. I appointed it the trustee for my longing and my revelations, because a whisper informed me that my time was wasting away, that my days were vanishing, and that my morning was nigh.

8 Morning

THE HOSTILE TRIBES tightened their stranglehold over the oasis, and the people suffered cruelly from oppressive taxes. The assembly’s specialists in false doctrine learned that there is no turning back for foolhardy persons who have committed evil hastily, for they cannot limit the price of repentance to surrendering and paying tribute to the victor. The price is, rather, unlimited, never-ending submission. This is what happened to the oasis in its risky campaign against neighboring tribes. News reached me of the people’s anger and unhappiness with the rule by falsehood’s partisans, who treated them to stinging humiliation and doled out bitter hunger to their offspring. Repeated rebellions were brutally suppressed. Nobles of the three tribes assembled, debated, and flung accusations at each other, before they managed to craft a course of action that would protect them, according to their calculations, against the twin evils of being hemmed in by the walls of the oasis and of being attacked by enemies coming from beyond those walls. In keeping with this strategy, they called on each other to advocate a retreat to the surrounding deserts, where they would seek protection from the desert, which has never disappointed anyone who has appealed to it for aid. Thus they would gain a free hand to stave off their enemies and to safeguard the oasis, but from outside. Meanwhile, vassals and agents from the tribes of Seth competed with each other to manage the affairs of the oasis, hiding their actions behind the priestess, that hollow scarecrow.

This game did not, however, alleviate the rancor of the citizens, whose bitter, public demonstrations of anger rocked the oasis, since the tyranny of the spurious doctrine’s leader did not end when he moved into the surrounding deserts. In fact, it doubled and reached alarming proportions, thanks to his vassals, disciples, and messengers, not to mention his own secret visits, which he persisted in making, to the palace. He would disguise himself in servants’ rags to unite with his doll in the bedchamber and to dictate rules of conduct for the oasis.

With the passing days, however, his vassals, disciples, agents, and even his servants began to grow insolent, for when a game lasts a long time, it ceases to be a game. Weak-spirited people end up mistaking it for reality, and when weak-spirited people mistake a game for reality, it becomes real. So I was surprised one day by the arrival of my former slave Hur, who came as a messenger to me at the head of a troop of mounted men. He told me that the nobles had actually succeeded in protecting the oasis from external attacks but at a cost of battles that had taken many lives. Fending off raids had eaten away at their ranks, destroying many men and leaving only a small corps of survivors. The spurious doctrine’s cunning strategist had been slain in his bedchamber at the palace by one of his slaves. When I asked about the fate of the priestess, he bowed his head. A tear slipped from his right eye, before he told me that the mobs had plunged a knife into her throat as well. When I asked about my son, he wept and sighed, before admitting that no trace had been seen of him, ever since the lie’s leader had taken control of the palace. He could promise me nothing, although he had not stopped searching. I asked him to say more, but he made it clear he knew only that the boy was determined to reach his father. Then I remembered my destiny and understood that I had passed on to my offspring this unquenchable thirst. Children who do not search for their true nature by tracing their paternal ancestry have little to recommend them. There is no point to a creature that does not seek out its efficient cause. Searching for a father, however, is dangerous. If my son had set out on this path, alas for him, considering all the terrors of the road. He would never be attracted to a sedentary or comfortable life, because his genetic predisposition would be to search, and his daily bread would be a morsel kneaded with suffering. I was consoled to know he truly was my son in whom was borne out the prophecy of the ancient sages, who had one day foretold his destiny to be a seeker who bore in his heart a secret for future generations and a talisman for nations.

A silent despondency gripped the emissaries in deference to my sorrow, and Hur did not dare broach the main topic until after midnight. Then he said that they had come as messengers from the citizens of Targa, who invited me to return as their savior, for they would never accept anyone else as their ruler. He also said that the messengers had been asked to inform me that the oasis, which I had one day accepted as a gift from the spirit world, had, in the course of time, become a bequest for which I was the trustee. To allow it to become a prize snatched at by the hands of dilettantes, swindlers, and adventurers was an offense that could no longer be tolerated. The sages of the oasis when imploring my presence did not wish to weigh me down with the cares of the world but hoped I would agree to lend my authority to their efforts by sitting beside them, since the presence of those who have suffered much, in the opinion of the law, constitutes — in and of itself — wisdom, a protective charm, and a prophetic maxim. They left me no choice but to yield, and I did. I went to the oasis but did not stay in its settlements for long, because I was overcome by anxiety. Staying in one place suffocated me and left me prey to a lethal depression, from which I was unable to extricate myself save by resumption of my wandering, nomadic life. I entrusted the oasis to my servant Hur — advising him to continue the search for my lost child — on condition that he never allow the people to make him their supreme leader, since anyone who assumes supreme authority over a people becomes their slave. Only a creature who has renounced public office can claim control over his self and befriend the spirit world. A person who has been entrusted with prophetic counsel will fail unless he breaks away and retreats from the world. If in time he should find my son, he should encourage him to travel, because wandering is the fate of anyone destined to search for his father. “Amahagh” was the name he would bear as a talisman in the world and “Targa” would be the epithet by which his descendants would be known, for a prophecy of ancient times revealed that generations of foreigners would use the adjective “Targi” to refer to the nation, thinking this auspicious. Some peoples pronounce this “Tarqi” and others “Tarqi,” without knowing that it is Anubi’s curse to live among mankind as a stranger.

I returned to my solitude where its passages received me and brought home to me the true nature of my situation. I plunged far down tunnels, extracting from the depths spiritual treasures I carved on the bodies of the rocks. I did not cease searching until at last a shadowy apparition obscured by the darkness of night stood over my head, after arriving on foot. He was of slender build and gloomy coloring, tall, veiled by a well-worn scarf, covered with dust, and wrapped in a faded garment, which was also well worn. In his eyes, too, I detected a gloomy expression. No, no, that was not it. It was not gloom I detected in his eyes but the determined look of perpetual wanderers. No, that was not it. It was not the determination of perpetual wanderers but the suffering of exiles. Yes, that was right. It was the misery of those condemned to unending exile, the misery of searchers who have gone astray, the misery of those touched by longing, the misery of those confused by dreams, visions, and poetry, the misery of troubled people who have come to the desert, where they live as strangers, who find nothing better to do with themselves in this world than to flee and to keep moving. It was the misery of that mysterious community in whose veins flows Anubi’s blood. Yes, that was it. This wretch standing before me, as perplexed, apprehensive, and hesitant as if he were waiting for an opportunity to flee from my presence toward eternity, was none other than Anubi’s child.

He began to tremble as he begged, “A sip of water! Can you spare me a sip of water?”

I hurried to the nearby boulder and fetched a water-skin, which was half full. He grabbed it from me roughly but did not put the mouth of the water-skin to his mouth. Instead, he clung to it with both hands and began to scrutinize me with a vacant but determined look. I realized that he was battling his thirst. He was struggling, with a heroism seen in the desert only among perpetual voyagers who have long familiarity with thirst. Only a person who has had firsthand experience of thirst knows that for a thirsty person to resist his desire for water is more heroic than for a cavalryman to charge toward death’s portal, because only those with firsthand experience of thirst understand that thirst is death. Indeed, it is a fate worse than death.

He took his time. He grinned. In his eye gleamed a smile that had forced itself upon him and seemed improvised, as if he were apologizing to me. He seemed to be asking my forgiveness for bursting into my life and spoiling my solitude. Then, however, he looked gloomy again and the glint of eternal suffering flashed in his eyes. Then I saw him bring the water-skin to his mouth. His faded garment slipped down his lean forearms, which resembled sticks of firewood. My heart overflowed with compassion, not just for him but for me as well, and not only for me but for all the creatures of the desert. It was compassion for man, who came to earth to strive, leaving his heart behind him in some homeland, only to find himself suspended, gazing at the horizon that offers glad tidings of a homeland. It is, however, a horizon that does not fulfill its promise, for every horizon opens onto another. Man, therefore, searches for a reality beyond space in order to extinguish his empty belly’s insatiable appetite, or thirst, for his lost treasure. Who are you, man? Where are you heading, man?

He swallowed the water slowly, haughtily, and patiently, even though he craved water intensely. Then he suddenly stopped drinking. He stopped before he had drunk his fill, seized the mouth of the water-skin, and cast me a look requesting a tie. I handed him a strip of leather, and he tied it round the mouth of the water-skin, which he retained. I had him sit down by my kit and brought out some dates. He stared at the plate but did not take a single one. In a murky voice he said, “I’ve got to go.”

Without meaning to, I voiced a question that was racing through my heart, tormenting me: “Where to?”

“Hope lies in keeping moving.”

I felt certain that Anubi’s destiny reverberated in this wanderer’s heart. So I mused: “That’s the voice of longing. I bet I hear the voice of longing.”

“We are all victims of longing.”

“What’s the use of moving about, since the desert is hospitable to hungry people but crowds out people hungry with longings?”

“Even so, we crave no other fate for ourselves than longing.”

“You’re right. If granted the choice, we would certainly choose longing.”

“I have to leave.”

I felt fond of him and feared his leaving. My affection was stronger than that of one descendant of Anubi for another. It was stronger than the affection of an exile for his fellow exile, because the affection aroused by longing, it would seem, is the affection of a unique breed. A person governed by an unfulfilled longing finds refreshment only with a fellow sufferer.

I tried to slow his departure, but he expressed his determination: “I have a long trip ahead of me.”

“You must understand that no matter how far you journey, you will never satisfy your longing.”

“The longing we satisfy is not really longing. Hope, master, lies in the road, not in the destination.”

His language awakened my admiration, and my heart became ever more attached to him. I resolved to search for some other excuse to detain him, if only for a night. I did not realize, until then, that a hankering for anything other than unfulfilled longing is an offense against longing and against ourselves. Clear vision, however, is never possible until it is too late. I committed a fatal error by dispensing with the language of gesture and insinuation. I resorted to the clear expression typical of the masses when I revealed the treasure that I ought to have concealed in my heart: “Don’t parents have a right to enjoy the company of their descendants for a night?”

He stared at me with loathing. He seemed not to have understood, for he clung to his silence. I ought to have taken his disapproval as a warning. I should have stopped in my tracks but found myself tripping farther down the road that would lay bare my secret: “Will you spend the night with me if I tell you who I am?”

By the light of the newly full moon I detected in his eyes an even stranger gleam. I saw astonishment, dismay, and pain there. He did not answer my question, and so I moved closer to him: one step, two steps. I leaned over his head and, in the voice one might use on discovering a well or a spring, I yelled: “You’re Ara! I’m sure you’re Ara!”

In the wink of an eye, everything went topsy-turvy. The slender apparition jumped up from his lair as quick as a demon jinni and trembled in a way I had never seen a creature’s body shake before. I could only compare it to the bodies of ecstatic people long tormented by passionate love. I don’t know what happened after that for certain. I simply caught sight of the blade of the knife bathed in the light of the newly full moon. Then … there was the warmth of the sticky, gooey liquid that was pouring from my neck. I was still on my feet, facing him when I croaked: “But… why? Why have you killed me?”

I heard him reply, “Because you’ll disclose my secret to people if I don’t. Forgive me!”

I pressed my hand to my throat. I felt dizzy, but the blow to my heart was far more severe than that to my body. Defying death, I said: “Don’t you know that you’ve … that you’ve killed your father?”

“Rubbish! Many men have claimed to be my father.”

“Prophecy is credible only when we deem it a falsehood. I am your father!”

“Rubbish!”

“Is the son destined to slay his father?”

“Each one of us, master, is created to slay his father. Who among us does not seek his father? Who among us does not wish to slay his father?”

I recognized in his phrase a prophecy that appealed to me. I fought off my vertigo and stuffed a bit of my veil in my wound. I sat down upon the ground. I decided to utter my prophecy too: “We must slay our father in order to search for our father. We must slay our father in order to find our father.”

I heard him repeat my words as if fascinated: “We must slay our father in order to search for him. We must slay our father in order to find him.”

“Do you know that one day your father did to his father what you have done to yours today?”

He did not reply. The disk of the full moon began to shimmer and to grow dark in my eye, as I favored the shadowy apparition with my final aphorism. “Here’s a bit of advice for you: never raise your hand against a man from whose hand you’ve taken a sip of water.”

He disappeared. I found myself abandoned, left to my stillness as always. My greatest fear was that I would not be able to start a fire to provide enough light so I could complete the final scrap of my life story, which I now understood was not the real truth. My insane desire to transform dream into reality endowed me with sufficient strength to struggle until I was able to light a fire and then trace on a square of leather a final symbol that would provide evidence for future generations of the reality of Anubi, who was neither a shade nor a figment of the imagination but a man, who once crisscrossed the desert.