New Waw, Saharan Oasis

XI THE DAGGER’S SECRET

1

Thirst for the neck vein grows intense, desire for blood blazes, the tongue trembles with lust to plunge into flesh, the cutting edge gestures — craving to meet the beloved body — and the blade fidgets in the cavity of the scabbard, grieving for its loss and protesting against its suppression, cursing the punishment of confinement to these dark recesses. The body that is extended between the two leaves of the scabbard, however, remembers the talisman, recalls the symbols carved on both sides of the blade with a tongue of fire; so it appeals to the sign of the first peoples, who were the only ones to discern the dagger’s secret. It propitiates the symbol by narrating the story of the beginning. So it talks about its amazing ability to pass through bodies, to swim in blood, to tear into the toughest meats, to glide between networks of veins, and to slip down ignoble paths to avoid chunks of bone. It whispers a secret, saying that discovery of articulated joints is the greatest trick in the whole trip. It gives to this discovery the name “trade secret.” It concludes by saying that a nomad will not only double the length of his life if he discovers this secret but will accomplish his ancient dream of attaining happiness, because progress down the way of articulations is an amulet that protects one against evils and that saves a nomad from falling into captivity. I open a door in the mute body, I make a path through the deluge of blood, I slip between the groves and disappear in the jungle, I scout for locations, I always choose the soft track, I avoid rough terrain, and I’m bent on fleeing from hard ground. The Way turns north. I go north. The generous Way curves west. I bend west. The path rises; I ascend. I glide up. The tour ends with an obstinate solid mass. I stop. I scout around. I turn north, investigate to the west, and retreat a step. I take two steps forward. I search the grim wall for its secret, for its hidden gap. I never tire of searching. I don’t stop investigating until I discover the treasure, until I discover the cleft. I never struggle against the solid mass. I don’t try to force my way through. Instead, flexibility, research, and patience will open a fissure for me in its body. I slip through the narrow gap like a serpent slipping through subterranean excavations. Then I shoot down a new Way without any strife, without any controversy, without any chaos.

By using this small stratagem, I attain peace of mind and win my master’s confidence.

2

I was born a slave like every other being in the desert. The secret of my existence is concealed in my blade, in my tongue. The secret of my master’s existence is concealed in the handle. My destruction lies in my handle. My master’s destruction is in the edge of my tongue. If he seizes the hilt, he obtains life. If he releases the hilt, others seize it. Then the blade becomes his fate. The blade can bring destruction, because destruction entered the desert inside my tongue. That was why the first peoples created the forbidding scabbard to hide my intentions, to restrain my desire, and to suppress my eternal craving for a brother’s throat.

In the short distance lying between the hilt and the beginning of the blade stretches the law of life and the law of death. A person came who succumbed to temptation and yielded to desire; so he took possession of the hilt. The desert bowed down to him because he possessed the hilt. Then he became sultan over the desert. The blade became the fate of anyone who hesitated. These people became slaves, captives, and mamluks in the sultan’s kingdom.

No one in the desert knows how the sultan was able to discover the secret of the hilt and the secret of the tongue. Most probably the jinn tribes whispered the matter to him, because the desert people realize that members of this mysterious tribe become allies of the sovereign once he grasps the terrifying hilt. By night they tell him what he should do during the day. They brief him on the intentions of evildoers even before these miscreants tell themselves what they intend to do. It has been said that the sultan’s desire to possess the hilt originated with the jinn. So he would not go to sleep without first wrapping his fist around the hilt. Later, he fastened his fingers to the hilt with a rope of palm fiber. Later still, he secured his fingers around the hilt with straps of fresh leather, and once these straps dried, his fist and the hilt formed a single hand. It has been said that this ruler surpassed in cleverness even the jinn sages themselves. So their demons feared him, and their clever schemers were afraid of him. Then it came to pass that he subdued them and they became his servants; he put them in charge of his enemies among the people of the wasteland. His sovereignty over the desert was unchallenged because aspirants to power despaired of ever seizing hold of the hilt now that it formed a single body with his hand.

3

The jinn were the first to discover the horror of metal. Then they avoided blades and fled from the tongue to the farthest kingdoms. It was said in one report that they experimented with it. It was said in another report that they weren’t stupid enough to try it themselves but observed its domination over the people of the wasteland when the sultan of the wasteland mastered them with a hand strapped to the hilt. So they read this as a prophecy.

No one knows how their situation was disclosed and how people learned their fear of blades, but the people of the desert soon started using blades to take vengeance on the residents of the Spirit World. They stripped the tongues of their scabbards and affixed lethal blades near the heads of infants, whom the jinn customarily kidnap in their swaddling clothes to swap for children from their own community. Then they terrified the wretches and expelled them to the farthest corners of the badlands.

From that day forward, the body of the dagger has been an amulet. But fools neglected the hilt and left it hanging in the air. Then enemies took possession of it and aimed it at the chests of their children one day.

4

Today, as well, the dagger seeks help from the talisman sketched on the tongue; the ancient talisman finds a way for it to escape from the flask. It dives into the void of the sky, bathes its ravenous tongue in the flood of light, and plucks, from a dusk-time rendezvous, a prophecy that will eventually carve out an existence for it with the edge of the blade.

The dagger emerged from its prison, and the blade rattled in the throat while it licked the blood of the black kid. It rattled with a sarcasm that wasn’t grasped because it wasn’t understood.

The hilt disappeared in the master’s palm, and the blade plunged into the flesh of the neck. It followed its ancient Way, cut the network, severed the ropes of arteries, and penetrated the veins in which the fountain of life flows. It mangled the rough pass, severed the strings, crossed into the stream to drink from the copious deluge. But it would be absurd for the tongue of prophecy to quench its thirst from the spring of the lie.

5

The tongue leapt from the cavity, and the blade fled from the body of the sacrificial offering. It descended nearby and hid its thirsty head in the dirt. The master released the hilt; then the long fettered demon of the blade liberated itself. It circled the heavens in an instant, and when it returned to the confines of the wasteland with a prophecy, the messenger of the Spirit World had ascended the temple mount. He approached the temple stealthily — thin and stern. Bending down, he seized the hilt at once, exploiting the master’s error. So he preceded him to the lethal throne, since the master needed to receive his punishment at once, because the sovereign forgot that the hilt would revert to being a blade if the commander set it aside for even an hour.

The blade settled in the throat of the master of the blade that evening, because the Spirit World wanted to exchange prophecy for the lie and wished to tell the diviner that the person possessing the hilt of the dagger should be extraordinarily cautious, because the sovereign who errs once inevitably errs for the first and last time.