Gold Dust

26

For three consecutive nights he dreamed of the same decrepit house.

He did not actually sleep. The burning that filled his heart left no room for slumber. But with the glow of each new dawn, he managed to drift off for a short spell. And there, in his sleep, he saw the wretched ruins. Though he knew this fitful sleep would be fleeting, his wanderings through the wrecked dwelling would last the whole night.

The dream was not new.

In his childhood, it had tortured him again and again, returning to torment him during the first years of his youth. At that time, he had not yet visited the oases, nor ever once seen a house built with adobe or stone. Even so, the vision haunted him. The dark, foreboding house had two stories, and was built of mud brick. Its roof was made of palm trunks, over which rested a layer of palm fronds, and clay mixed with earth. The ground floor was a shambles. A wall, and some of the rooms too, had partly collapsed. There was something else about the house: it was completely abandoned and had neither windows nor doors. It was strange: Ukhayyad always found himself trapped inside without knowing how he had got in. He was on the second floor walking along dark hallways looking for a way out — a door or window or even a glint of light. The ground beneath him shook and threatened to collapse, and he would step faster, holding his breath for fear of falling. At the same time, he instinctively felt the presence of a specter that never actually appeared, neither as substance nor shadow. In the dream, these two fears were always with him, that he would fall and that he would enrage the phantom being.

Later in his youth, the dream abruptly stopped. After that he forgot all about it.

This was the dream that came back the first night after talking with the traveler. That night, something snatched his sleep away. And now, only now, could he clearly make out the three things that had so frightened him: the obscurity, the rickety ceiling, and the shadowy being that had never — not in the past, nor in the latest visitations — announced itself by word or by sign. Ukhayyad knew that it was present somewhere in the house, at the end of one of the hallways, in the corner of one of the rooms, in the ceiling, on the rooftop, or on the ground floor below amid the debris and piles of fallen bricks. He dreaded this being — its mere presence filled his heart with a terror, a dread that made him feel ashamed upon awaking. He had never experienced this kind of fear in his waking life. Even death never aroused feelings like this in him. What was he afraid of? Who, or what was this being? Was it human or jinn? Angel or devil?

As he struggled, searching for the being, the same two things stood in his way: the gloom and the ceiling that was always on the verge of collapse. His steps were anxious and hesitant. The sweat poured out of him, he panted, and groped along the empty hallways like a blind man. For some reason, he would not use his hands to feel his way along the walls. Instead, he walked feebly and alone into the void, always about to tumble into the abyss. Whenever he awoke from the vision, he took a deep breath and thanked God that he had not fallen, and that what had taken place in the dream had not happened here in his waking life.

Likewise, what troubled and baffled him was his inability to understand how he came to be inside the crumbling house, since it had no door, nor windows. He could not have dropped from the sky. He simply appeared there, inside, and did not emerge again until he woke up. He wandered about in the darkness like a blind man. He trembled, terrified of falling, dreading the being and unable to escape this phantom place until he awoke.

Without understanding why, he was sure that if not for the rickety floor, the crumbling palm trunks, and the gloom, he would have been able to locate the invisible being. He tried to force himself to move, but was undone by his helplessness. On the fourth day, though his sleep was no less fitful and broken than it had been before, his nightmares abruptly stopped.

Shame had planted an ache that surpassed all other feeling in his heart. Yet now, the return of the dream filled him with fantastical thoughts of dread. He was terrified by something obscure and this fear had begun to displace his sense of shame. Yet when the dream disappeared on the fourth night, it was the shame that remained.

These were restless days for Ukhayyad. He forgot to drink tea. He forgot to drink water. He had even forgotten the piebald. He spent his hours wandering through the fields, and climbing up and down the mountain until he was overcome by fatigue. Then he would collapse and lie down wherever he happened to be — under a broom or lote tree, in the shade of a rock, or inside a cave, on the summit of the mountain or at its foot. The piebald paced after him, bewildered. While Ukhayyad climbed up mountains, the camel would wait at their foot, in distress.

Who had dared to spread the pernicious rumor that had turned the signs upside down? Who had invented this falsehood? Was it Dudu — or his wretched servants? Was it Ayur, hoping to repay the insult he had shown her when he traded her away for a camel? Or had they all conspired together in the lie? How could they say that he had sold his family for a handful of gold dust? What did gold have to do with it? He had accepted the flecks of metal as a gift, but only at the last moment. He had refused the dust, but the man had insisted. Had his insistence been a ploy? What perplexed Ukhayyad most of all was how quickly the rumor had taken flight — already it had traveled to the farthest reaches of the desert. From time immemorial, it has been said that desert winds carry with them all kinds of rumor and report — especially stories of scandal and outrage. My God — the story told of a shameful deed, the likes of which had never been heard of before in the desert. Even the lowest slave would never sell his wife or child for a handful of gold dust. To hell with the gold — that handful of dirt — he had accepted. The stuff brought nothing but ruin. Ukhayyad had even mentioned how, in his tribe, the yellow copper was considered a curse. And now its curse had caught up with him. It had caught him even though he had not done anything wrong. What they said was libel and slander, but had he inadvertently done something wrong?

He had almost forgotten the promise he made to Tanit. Was Tanit’s pledge behind this — or was it his father’s curse? This was enough to make his head split and his heart explode. Patience now — he needed to be patient. Patience was a form of worship. It was prayer. Patience was life itself. Were the confused thoughts in his head what Sufi sheikhs meant when they talked about the malicious whispering of the Devil? Was this what people called madness?

He had suffered patiently through all kinds of calamity, but how could he withstand something like this with mere patience? It was worse than shame and worse than death. If only he had died! No, it was better to die after he had a chance to make good his mistake. He would have to show people the truth of what had happened. He had sold no person — he had relinquished only his fetters. Of his own will, he had slipped his chains in order to win back his life with the piebald. He had sought salvation — to be free. But who would understand the nonsense he was spouting now? Who would believe these fantastical ideals coming out of his mouth?

In the end, though, he had accepted the gold dust. He had redeemed the pledge of his camel and handed over his wife and child to a foreign man who claimed — perhaps fraudulently — to be her kin.

So easily had he fallen into the trap. No one would believe his story — all the evidence seemed to condemn him. What would he do? He could not go to his death covered in this sort of shame. He would go to the bastard and wrench the truth from his lips. He would force Dudu to tell the truth to all who would listen. And, most of all — he would return the damn gold. Dudu had used it to slander Ukhayyad. The man had dirtied Ukhayyad’s hands and polluted his soul. What now could wash away the stain of that accursed shiny yellow copper? Death might wash away the curse, but how would Ukhayyad wash the insult from people’s minds?

He made up his mind to leave the valley. With a single blow, the rumor had killed the fables of Ukhayyad’s new life. The illusion returned — as shame. The doll came back as child, the noose as wife.

The meaning of everything returned to what it had once been — with a vengeance.