New Waw, Saharan Oasis

XIII THE SACRIFICE

1

“Water in the sky, and water on the earth: if you lack water in the sky, search for water in the earth.” The tomb’s Diviner uttered this prophecy aloud, inscribed it on a piece of leather with a metal skewer, which she had heated in the fire, and then sent it to the Council of Sages. These nobles, however, were so used to cryptic expressions in news from the Spirit World that they could not believe they had been granted a prophecy that did not require extensive exegesis. So they searched for the hidden meaning beneath the apparent one for nights. They were skeptical of the apparent meaning, saying that the Law had cautioned them against accepting statements at face value, because anyone who trusted what he saw, believed what he heard, and accepted what he was given met a fate like the traveler who violated the law of the road by leaning over a rope left in the middle of the trail. After he took it and placed it around his waist, the rope changed into a snake that killed him during the night when he lay down to sleep.

The elders’ debate lasted for days. Finally they sent a messenger to the Temple Priestess with a question that would put an end to their doubts. They received in return a square of leather with the prophecy two days later: “Water in the sky, and water on the earth: if you lack water in the sky, search for water in the earth.”

They abandoned their debate and consulted with each other. They scouted all four directions and reached a consensus in favor of the depression that lay south of the plain. Then they sacrificed a young billy goat and began to dig.

2

The poets sing in praise of the Red Hammada’s beauty, calling it the sky’s true love. It rises far above the elevation of the other deserts, reaches into space, and pursues distant stars on its way to unite with its beloved. It utilizes shanks of solid rock and strives to reach the heights on pillars of mountain peaks. But it stops halfway for a reason the ancestors did not explain, not even in the traditions of the first fathers. The later generations did inherit from their grandfathers sad songs that compare this patch of ground suspended in the celestial void to a nomad who chose solitude, not because he wanted to flee from people but because he pitied people. Then he lost his way, and the labyrinth became his sole homeland. The Hammada that swims in space’s expanses is another vagabond homeland. Thus it has not obtained its share of water from the sky, thirst has parched its lands, and it is incapable of chasing after the waters that flee to lowlands of the Southern desert (where the lake of Great Waw once swelled and where a mighty sea of sand cowers today) or slip to the North to pour their gift into the distant sea. So it is said that the Red Hammada is the only desert area that feeds neighboring regions with its blood, gives other deserts the secret of life, and chooses drought as its destiny — pursuant to the Law’s dictates, which say that a parched land is nobler than wet ones.

Despite the terrifying elevation, despite the deluge’s flow to the North and South, the suspended desert found a way to conceal its waters in severe, solid stone. Thus since the most ancient times the nomad’s hand has reached down to dig in solid boulders shafts so deep that the eye cannot discern the bottom. Later desert dwellers called these passages “wells.”

From the West appeared unidentified ancestors, who settled there. They enjoyed living in the expanses of the suspended body. They were, however, soon caught off guard by the heat and tasted the bitterness of thirst. So they split open the earth’s belly and crumbled the solid stone with their hands. They were not destined to reach water for several generations. For years tribes have passed down to the next generation the well of the Western Hammada, giving it many names, which changed from one generation to the next. The last of these was Efartas.

People came from the South and met the same fate as the ancient people from the West. They dug into the dirt with a zeal that surpassed the ardor of rats. Far down they reached water and gave the Southern well many names. The last of these was “Thirsty Man’s Well.”

Peoples arrived from the North and proceeded to search for their share of water in the depressions of the awe-inspiring mountain ranges that characterize the North. Local historians relate that the luck of these peoples was worse than that of the other tribes. They dug very many wells before they drew water from two called Awal and Emgharghar. Herdsmen still discover the vestiges of all these wells and find their mouths sealed with circular slabs of cut stone. They are delighted, exult, and call back and forth to each other, thinking that they have discovered a new mouth for the earth. But their joy turns to sorrow when they discover that the well is nothing but an empty pit. Despite their disappointment, the sages did not despair. Frequently they found random wells that were more like cisterns, because their water was not merely fetid, bitter, or weird smelling but the quantity was limited and was exhausted as soon as herds of camels visited it once or twice.

The strangest, deepest, and oldest well, however, is Harakat, which is situated at the heart of this suspended planet. In their songs poets refer to it as “the gift from the people of passion” or “the lovers’ miracle,” because narrators say that a lover who was a member of the first tribes dug it as a symbol of fidelity to his beloved, who was coming from the East to marry him when thirst killed her en route. The lover wept a long time for her. Then he realized that his glory would come not from weeping for his beloved in verse but in conquering the ghoul that had taken her from him.

The lover searched the Hammada from the extreme East right through the central areas inch by inch and scoured it with an army of hired assistants, servants, and vassals. Then he did not discover even moisture left behind by floodwaters in the lowest strata of the earth. All the same, he hired more workers, purchased armies of slaves, made use of people coming from every direction, and proceeded to fight the rock and to chisel away the solid stone without succeeding in discovering the treasure. The tops of many wells caved in during this struggle as the earth claimed its sacrificial offerings repeatedly through cave-ins. Many slaves fled and even more hired hands quit, but the lover bought more slaves to replace those who had fled and paid the new workers even more liberally, replacing the army of explorers who had quit. So the excavations continued with even greater zeal each time he welcomed a new army into his ranks as recruits. Other tracts of land were harrowed as time passed. The commander of this army was the only person who wasn’t conscious of the passage of time, who did not notice the changing seasons, and who did not hear the screams of the many babies who were born. Likewise information about people who grew tired and lay down beside their fathers beneath piles of rocks in the tombs of the slopes escaped him. He kept stooping over the earth, inspecting its markings as if reading in them a prophecy that confirmed that life did not consist of trekking like nomads across vast expanses in search of a rendezvous beyond the horizon. Instead, life meant kneeling on the ground and searching for treasure in the deepest pits. For this reason, wrinkles formed on the lover’s skin, and networks of veins showed on his face and arms. His heart, however, did not grow old, and the sparks in his breast did not die out. In this way he lost all his peers and contemporaries, all the members of his generation. He became his generation’s sole heir.

He was his generation’s heir because he did not follow his generation’s path. His peers disappeared because they spread over the earth, seeking something that did not exist. He differed from his peers because he did not move across the earth and did not waste time on what the earth lacked. His contemporaries had long ago passed away, bequeathing life to a person who had renounced life and did not wish to inherit what other people considered life. The lover had forgotten the goal of the desperate digging and had forgotten the reason for this lethal struggle, because he had forgotten himself for an even longer period. So he did not even lift his eyes from the earth when his workers came to him and brought him the good news that the solid rock had finally been vanquished and that water was spurting from the hard stone.

3

Songs celebrate the water that gushed from the granite with all the abundance of a spring and continued to flow into the wasteland during all the bygone years after the lover’s age. In subsequent generations, however, the treasure began to retreat, and the earth started to swallow its water, which disappeared from sight. Reaching the water required a sturdy set of palm-fiber ropes. Soon tribes were talking about travelers who headed to the well but perished while circling the mouth and looking down the pit at the sight of the water, because they hadn’t provided themselves with sufficient quantities of rope. In other times, clever planners attempted to remedy the problem by leaving piles of palm-fiber ropes at the well’s mouth as a benefaction for wayfarers. But sun and dirt got to the ropes before travelers did and destroyed them in short order. Then the sages introduced a new law that in time became a noble tradition. It required everyone who came to the well — whether herdsmen, caravan owners, or nomadic tribes — to bring a quantity of rope to leave behind at the mouth of the well in exchange for water. So piles of rope accumulated by the mouth of the well, and bulky clusters of rope littered the area in networks that stretched here and there. Coils of palm-fiber ropes transformed the adjacent bare land into a veritable rope jungle. The savage sun devoured some ropes as the fiber turned white; dust and grit mangled the rest. Not only did the color fade, but the rope became frayed and disintegrated. Other piles more recently created looked brand new from a distance. A person seeing them imagined that he would inhale their fresh scent when he approached — the scent of fresh, moist palm fiber, the smell of the oases, and the aroma of dates and of seasons of ripe dates at the beginning of fall.

Nearby, in increasing numbers, other ropes woven from goat or camel hair piled up. These ropes were braided with greater expertise. Poets report that they were woven by the fingers of beautiful women who trembled for fear of getting a bad reputation or of being disgraced. So they took extraordinary care and wove the ropes with the same apprehension they felt when weaving nose ropes for mehri camels or the saddle ropes for gallant riders, because they were certain that the strangers who frequented the well’s mouth would inquire, ask each other, and figure out some stratagem to determine who had made the rope. If she had done a good job, they would write poems praising her; otherwise they would attack her with satirical songs.

Pride of place in the epics of the ancient generations, however, was allotted to the amazing ring around the mouth of the well. This polished disc, which was no more than a single cubit across, was sternly rounded. Many agreed that its charm was attributable precisely to this severity. Its solid stone had a unique coloration. At noon when the sun’s rays ruled, the circle’s stone looked pure white. When the setting sun sowed the horizon with dusk’s rays, the ring’s color changed and borrowed its hue from the flecks of gold on the Western horizon. When evening attacked and darkness settled over the desert, the collar also became gloomy, but the stone covering the mouth continued to glow mysteriously as if calling out to its devotees among the passersby or exchanging secret messages with the distant stars. During moonlit evenings, the ring would cheer up once more and regain its merry color.

But the patterning of the stone of the circular collar was even more beautiful.

The entire rim was marked with signs that ropes had cut into it over successive generations till these cuts in the smooth, translucent rock resembled the mark on the thighs of a camel or the deep scar of ancient wounds that time had healed. In this pattern, connoisseurs of the Unknown were wont to decipher signs of the time to come. It was said that diviners in the past had sought out the well — not to provision themselves with water — but to interrogate the stone and to research news of the time that had passed and of the time that was to come.

Over the course of the generations, many poems were recited in honor of the rim, and lovesick female poets still sing of it, comparing a lover known for faithful love to the rim of the well of Harakat. They have also used it as an epithet for patient people and added its name to every matter they wanted to characterize as immortal.

4

The tribe’s strongest men dug in the northern passes; they dug in the lowlands of the southern plains; and they dug as well in sinkholes adjoining the valley bottoms to the west. Then they despaired. They dug down to great depths and reached great heights without even finding moist soil. So they despaired.

They gathered in the evening shadows and lowered their gaze as they normally did when despair gripped them. With their forefingers they imprinted riddles in the dirt. But they did not consult each other orally. They did not raise their voices in debate, because gloomy silence is always the language of despair. Proceeding a long way down the path of despair is an acknowledgement of the beauty of divestiture. Divestiture is the law that comes from the Unknown with inspiration, and inspiration was what reminded them of the excavator on one of those evenings.

They remembered the stranger who had lived with the tribe for many years with his only son; they had all joked — grown men, children, and women — about the satisfactions he found in the earth. He would say that the life above ground was a mistake for a man and that a wayfarer should not trust a place that provided no opportunity for him to crawl inside the belly of the earth. So he would lift his child down from behind his camel’s hump whenever the tribe stopped traveling and decided to set up camp somewhere. Standing by the camel, he would unload from her the hoes, picks, and other stone implements that he had inherited from ancestors, who had used them as digging tools before the desert knew metals like copper and iron. Then he would stride around the area a little before choosing the suitable patch of ground to begin digging into. He would dig all day if the tribe reached the place early or dig all night long if the tribe arrived at a new site in the evening. He would dig without stopping until he had created in the belly of the earth a cave large enough to shelter him and his son. A portly man in his fourth or fifth decade, he was on the short side and wore a veil crowned with a protruding leather amulet. He encircled his belly with a thick leather girdle that extended from his ribcage to a little below his navel. Inquiring minds attributed the width of this belt to generous padding that the excavator had devised for a reason that the tribesmen only grasped the day a hostile tribe treacherously raided their encampment. Then they saw the excavator leap from his tomb beneath the earth and fight the enemies with pickaxes. When bowmen hit him with arrows, the belt deflected the blows. So he had real body armor. Then the people of the encampment knew for certain that the excavator had not adopted the broad belt, which was stuffed with straw and chaff, to help him dig, as he claimed. He had another secret reason. It was said that his strange habits dated back to an earlier period, when he married a young woman who was related to him. Then he dug an underground bed chamber for their wedding night, concealing the entrance under a blanket inside the bridal tent. He did not uncover it until the wedding officials left. At that time the naughty boys, who were accustomed to slip into the corners of tents to spy on couples on their wedding night, were flabbergasted when they saw the bride flee angrily from the tent. She reportedly said she wasn’t a snake, a rat, or some ugly reptile to consent to live in a home underground. The excavator sent her a letter advising her that he had chosen to enter the dirt not only because he could find no place more secure than the earth but for its other qualities the tribe didn’t know about. Then the bride unleashed the women poets on him. They recited deadly satires about his conduct; these were repeated by the beautiful women of neighboring tribes. But neither the satirical poems nor fear of disgrace could force the man to quit his subterranean chambers. Instead he became increasingly infatuated with this approach and dug even more. At times when the tribe settled on the earth for a long time, he made himself more than one dwelling. For her part, his bride never returned — perhaps because he made no effort to bring her back, perhaps because he never forgave her for her anger on their wedding night, and perhaps because he did not understand, or did not care to understand, what his fellows in the desert had grasped, namely that a woman is a tribulation acquired not only by renouncing pride but many other things as well.

His bride bore him a son before she disappeared from the desert in a lethal epidemic that harvested many members of the tribe. Then he took the child from the girl’s family and introduced him to his excavations. He obtained from his clan two women slaves he had inherited from his ancestors — just as he had inherited his stone tools — to supervise rearing his child. Soon, however, he rid himself of them. He remarked that anyone who chose the earth’s way and delivered his interests to the dirt would never need maids or slaves, and that caring for children even when they are quite young is less taxing than the headache of putting up with a hateful and ignoble community like that of servants. At first the tribeswomen pitied him. Later their pity turned into admiration. They would accost him and offer to help in disciplining the child, but the excavator would always thank them for their kindness and refuse their assistance with a politeness that women encountered only from hermits who had been secluded in desolate regions for long periods of time. It was said that he carried the child on his back in a rope halter when he went out to search for his camels, to gather firewood, or to collect truffles. It was said that he knew how to hide him from sight in high mountain crevices or in a hole the mouth of which only he could find. It was also said that he had taken a captivating bride who was one of the women of the Spirit World and that she took charge of the child for him. Many swore by the mightiest gods of the desert that they had repeatedly seen him in the company of this beauty on his wanderings but that she would disappear and vanish when they drew near. Others spoke of hearing him with their own ears converse with this female jinni; they had not, however, discerned her body or seen any figure.

5

The earth spoke to him.

The earth spoke to him; so he did not cast an eye toward the sky.

He had not gazed at the sky since he emerged from inside the tent and crawled across the earth to the distant pastures. On the trail to the pastures, he heard her speak for the first time. She spoke through the stone stelae. She spoke to him through the trunks of acacias enveloped in the evening’s gloom. She spoke to him through retem blossoms that bowl people over with their fragrance, which fills breasts with ecstasy, dizziness, and longing. She spoke to him through the summits of northern mountains that are clad in turbans of celestial fabric threaded with color from dawn’s firebrand. She spoke through grim expanses of the wasteland, which coaxes the wanderer till he yields, gives away everything, and advances when she leads him down the path to the Unknown, from which he never turns back. She spoke to him through the stillness of the nights, the empty expanses of which were dominated by flooding moonlight. She would humble herself, withdraw, and divest herself as if she were chief of all insouciant creatures.

She spoke to him in many tongues. Then he understood, and the mysterious firebrand overwhelmed him. He wept and prostrated himself, hearing nothing but her whispering and seeing nothing but her body since that day long ago.

After that, the sky fled from the sky and on earth only the earth remained.

6

Who had told him in times forgotten that the earth is the appropriate abode? Was it his father, whom he didn’t remember? Was it the tribe’s leader long ago? Was it the voice of the ancestors? Was it a messenger from the inhabitants of the Spirit World? Or, was it the earth herself who had communicated with a mysterious cry, confiding to him that she is a mother who must never be forsaken?

In that period — the days of childhood, play, and innocence — the earth was very close. He would crawl outside to play between the tent sites, plunge into her dirt and clay, and smear his face with her sand. He was only inches from her breast and stumbled on all fours across her palm. He would stand only to fall the next instant. When he pushed up even as high as a knuckle, he would be seized by fear — a nameless, noble fear imbued with a sense of danger. Was it the danger of falling? The danger of leaving never to return? The danger of the first step on the path to the labyrinth? Or, was it the enigmatic sensation of being on the verge of losing paradise and the voice of the herald crying that the time is nigh for a migration from which there is no return?

But the trip does not begin blindly, because the enigmatic desert does not allow its children to depart without instructions. The lesson begins with the first step. Then the little wanderer meets its prophecies in the plasticity of the clay he molds, in the scraggly plants the desert produces bountifully in rainy seasons, in the tiny grains it slips into the bread dough that its sands cook. Afterwards it leads him by the hand on another journey. It takes him on a tour of the grazing lands to teach him the trails that lead out of them. On the naked plains it lashes him with winds that strike the faces of wanderers with grit. Or, it frowns, glowers, and pours down a deluge of rain. Or, it exhales feverish fire in the seasons of the Qibli wind. Or, it unleashes cold in winter seasons. It employs many strategies to inform the young wanderer that the migratory route will be desolate and inescapable if he does not rely on her, if he is not guided by her, and if he does not remain loyal to her. So he realizes and learns from the first day that in this tenebrous, munificent terrain, which extends and renews itself forever, there is a secret he can never dispense with. In it lurks that cryptic amulet the traveler in the labyrinth can never do without.

7

When the messenger from the nobles arrived that evening, he was recalling his life story and hiding out in his cellar. He was recalling this amulet, because he — unlike the others — had never forgotten it. He hadn’t forgotten it, because the mother hadn’t shared it with him during that forgotten time of innocence when she had told the others. He hadn’t forgotten it because the earth screamed advice in his ear the way desert mothers normally scream the names of newborn babes in their ears. Perhaps for this reason he hadn’t followed the same path the others had in their migrations. The others had pursued the trail toward the horizon, whereas he had followed the trail leading to the depths. His mates had set out, like those before them, on the path of the extensive wasteland. He, on the other hand, had bowed his head, looked down into the belly, and established his dwelling inside its breast before building his vaults in the dirt, fleeing from the labyrinth of the expanse, while seeking protection with the mother from the ghoul of loss.

He was reliving his life when the messenger of the elders visited him.

He normally recalled that story every day — indeed, several times a day, because the mother to whose breast he had come for refuge would repeat her counsels to him, lest he forget, and deliver new instructions on each occasion. He would eavesdrop and hear this female diviner when she mocked her naughty children who had fled and raced into the wasteland, lured by the horizons. They capitulated, darted off, and then rolled around the way tumbleweed does when the wind drives it. They forgot the lower reaches just as quickly as they forgot her counsels. Then they considered vain locomotion to be a homeland, and the search scorched them with fires of longing. So they rushed off, and the fates of the primeval labyrinth changed into genuine and lethal loss.

Since he was listening carefully, he heard their footsteps from his shelter. They were pounding on the earth as if they wanted to harm it. They exaggerated their boorishness as if they deliberately wanted to cave the earth into the earth, without planning an escape route should the earth sink and flee from the earth. They were wandering aimlessly over her face like the hoi polloi, who don’t know what they are doing, don’t fathom where they are going, and don’t understand what they want.

He was hunkered down in the earth, hearing, listening, brooding, wondering, and becoming ever more certain that salvation is possible only through proceeding farther down the corridor and digging deeper into the belly of the earth.

They ridiculed his shelter, but their ridicule only made him more convinced. The female poets satirized him, but he laughed at their verses in his subterranean vaults and smiled from ear to ear. Once he committed an error. He chased after the beauty and had a child by her. But he decided to atone for his sin. So he taught the child the counsels of the lower reaches, of isolation, and of stillness. The baby was only calm when he brought him into the shelter and placed him as a pledge in the hand of the earth.

8

In the council he leaned forward over his homeland and read in its skin the dirt’s riddles. They told him they had dug, searched, and torn the body of the earth until they had despaired. They also said that they had finally learned that they would never find a way to water if he did not come to their aid. So would the son of the earth countenance the people of the earth or would he reject them and disappoint their request?

He leaned further forward. He bowed so low that his bent head touched his chest while his fingers continued to trace a sign in the earth’s book. He dug furrows with his forefinger and with all his fingers punched the tracks of various creatures: the pawing of a camel’s hoof, the imprint of a jackal, the trudging of dung beetles, and the twisting trail of the snake.

Aggulli said, “The well on the mountain slope destroyed us. We have excavated many summits without even reaching damp soil. What does this mean?”

He stopped making tracks in the earth and extended the tips of his fingers to gather some pebbles — white, gray, black, and gold ones. He constructed a small pile with them — a mass that was approximately level. Then he began to remove the colored stones from the pile and drew some signs near it.

Imaswan Wandarran explained, “Had it not been for the prophecy, we would not have needed all this. You know that we haven’t settled on the earth in response to some whim; it is what the leader willed. Since we have resigned ourselves to remaining in this place, we must find water to serve us as a consolation and a peg. The presence among us of a man who knows the depths of the earth as well as he knows the ends of his fingers has escaped us throughout our search. So did we err in sending for you?”

He arranged the golden pebbles in a vertical column, which he traversed with a chain of black stones. Then the beautiful intersection was visible: the sign of the goddess Tanit.

The hero intervened for the first time, “Our reliance on this earth benefits our venerable companion. From today forward you won’t need to leave your refuge here to dig another one there. Do you take my point?”

The excavator glanced stealthily at Ahallum. A flash gleamed in his stern eyes, but he bent over the mandala again. He chose white stones from the pile and arranged them around the upper part of the cross. Then he encircled the lower part of the figure with the gray pebbles. The circle around the cross was divided into two colors, and the first figure was split into four triangles. The triangle is also a symbol of the goddess Tanit. Emmamma interjected a comment from another angle. He spoke swaying like those possessed. Before he spoke, he sang that tuneful moan that the people of the wasteland are accustomed to hear from noble elders who have inhabited eternity for long periods till nothing of them remains in this world save their scrawny bodies.

He said, “Loath as we are to send for a man to teach us to dig pits, the ancients taught us to search for the secret of something before beginning to search for it. All of us know that the desert, like the sky, conceals in its belly a secret bigger than all the treasures that have captivated the minds of greedy people from antiquity. We have also inherited from the first peoples the insight that the earth’s secret is one of the secrets of the desert. If the sages had not hovered around its secret for ages, they would not have been able to discover the Law.”

He set about buttressing his statement by proof-texting it from provisos of the Law while his meager body swayed right and left. He chanted a moan that almost evolved into the tune of a sorrowful ballad. Then he spoke once more, saying that their companion was the man closest to the earth, because things reveal their secrets only to one who loves them and offers them not only an attentive ear but goes farther and commits his affairs to them. Finally he ended by saying, “We have come to you hoping you will tell us the secret.”

Silence prevailed. His fingers stopped arranging the pebbles.

Aggulli repeated, “We have come to you hoping you will tell us the secret.”

They all repeated this statement in unison. They repeated the statement as if reciting one of the talismans of the first peoples.

9

“I must admit there is a secret to this.” He repeated that twice, just as they had twice repeated the venerable elder’s talisman in unison. He looked up at them for the first time, and they noticed traces of a sparkle, ecstasy, and tears in his eyes.

He declared definitively, “A sacrifice!”

They exchanged astonished looks before asking, “Sacrifice?”

He glanced boldly from one to another of them, and the amulet attached to the front of his veil at the top seemed to protrude and move higher. He repeated this prophecy: “A sacrifice!”

Aggulli protested, “But we slaughtered a sacrificial victim on day one!”

Then the excavator’s body was seized by the fever of ecstatics, and the tears in his eyes became clearly visible. He released a long moan like those of Emmamma when the venerable elder sang sad songs from the desert of eternity. Trembling overwhelmed him, and he swayed and shook. He tried to calm his longing and returned to his sacred mandala, but his fingers betrayed him. When he picked up a pebble it would fall before he could place it in an empty spot in the figure. He shook the dirt from his hands and ran his right hand over his broad leather girdle. He sighed emotionally and asked, “What do you know about sacrificial victims? What do you know about the earth? If you slaughter a black goat to extract a little gold dust, should you slaughter a black goat when you wish to extract water? Don’t you realize you’re disparaging the earth’s treasure, the truth’s treasure, when you offer the same sacrificial kid for both of these treasures, even though people think it a major sin to compare the two?”

The elders exchanged questioning glances, and their fingers stopped fiddling in the dirt. Aggulli observed, “The truth is that we’ve never dug a well before. How would we know what blood offering the earth demands as the price for water?”

“Before we speak of the blood offering, let’s discuss the location. I’ve heard where you’ve dug and know that you missed the right place. Don’t you realize that the earth is a body comparable to that of a slaughtered animal? Haven’t you seen how a skillful butcher will follow the joints when butchering a carcass? Don’t you know that the belly of the earth also has articulations and that water flows through the lower reaches of the earth like blood flowing through bodies?”

Imaswan Wandarran cried out, “You all see? Didn’t I tell you we didn’t pick the right place even once?”

The excavator paid him no heed. He cast a look all around the council. Then he said, “Earth’s blood is water; nothing demands a blood offering so much as blood. Nothing on earth seeks the blood of a sacrificial victim as much as blood!”

He bent over his mandala again and dropped a pebble to fill a gap in the right triangle on the upper edge. He repeated his prophecy as if reading it from a symbol in the sacred mandala: “Nothing on earth seeks the blood of a sacrificial victim as much as blood!”

Aggulli asked, “Do you want us to slaughter a whole herd? Would the blood of a herd suffice to obtain water?”

“A herd’s blood is an appropriate offering for evanescent treasures.”

“Into which group of blood offerings does water fall?” He looked up mournfully at their guest.

The excavator replied almost in a whisper, “Water bears no relationship to your blood offerings. Water isn’t a transient treasure. Water is another type of being.”

“Tell us a little about water!”

“Can a creature like me speak of water? I admit that I have spent long years with it; but I can’t claim to understand water.”

“Do you want us to believe that a boon companion knows nothing of his friend of many years?”

“I acknowledge that the earth’s compassion has been greater than I could ever have imagined. Water has come to me as a messenger and kept me company in my solitude.”

“What does water say? Tell us what water has confided to you.”

He raised his head high, and the leather amulet attached to the front of his veil shot up. Then he leaned toward Aggulli till the amulet almost touched his companion’s veil. His eyes narrowed to slits. He replied in a mysterious voice, “The earth’s tongue can only be understood by someone who lives in the earth. Only someone who has lost the ability to use people’s language comprehends water’s language.”

Silence reigned. Eventually Emmamma’s voice rose in a sorrowful moan. Ahallum interjected, “Let’s go back to the blood offering!”

More than one voice seconded his suggestion. Then the excavator asked, “Remember the blood sacrifice for the sky’s water?”

They kept still for a long time. Then Aggulli asked suspiciously, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the sky took the tribe’s soothsayer as the price for the sky’s water.”

The nobles exchanged glances again. Aggulli asked even more skeptically, “What are you saying?”

The excavator dropped more stones into the column dividing the circle. The column was duplicated, leaving the design unbalanced. He lined up other pebbles along the horizontal line to restore the mandala’s balance. Without looking up, he replied, “I’m saying that the earth’s water is just as dear as the sky’s.”

The elders observed him with suspicious eyes as Aggulli resumed his questioning: “What are you saying?”

“I mean to say that the earth’s sacrificial victim will be no less significant than the sky’s!”

A grumbling murmur was audible in the council, and the excavator leapt to his feet.

10

Ever since he had learned how to excavate and had discovered his first drop of water inside the earth’s cavity, he had asked this messenger whence it came and where it was heading. At first it oozed from clefts in rocks — viscous, skimpy, and mysterious. He would run his fingers over the smooth slabs to feel the moist viscosity. He would lick the ends of his fingers with the tip of his tongue, savoring the salinity, the array of metals, the mix of soils, and the sweetness of the torrents’ waters in turn. The secret of this unidentified messenger, however, grew increasingly obscure during a migration.

In some places he found no trace of it but would hear its melodies once he had finished digging his shelter and stretched out to sleep. Then he would press against the earth, pulling the encircling blanket’s edge from his lower ear, and listen. At times, while listening, he would hear a distant, unruly roar. At other times he would hear an obscure, insistent chatter. Eventually, he learned something about the modus operandi of this messenger, which would growl when raging and rush away as if falling from an abyss. It hid in aquifers as if fleeing from a jinni afreet. It raced migrating nomads and beat them to an earth that does not exist on earth. It would sing during its eternal journey the hostile rap song that does not so much reveal as conceal a secret. The excavator followed the song and discovered its moist tongue. Torments of longing would overwhelm him, and he would not even be aware of the tears welling up in his eyes. He would not hear himself addressing this nomad with a nomad’s language: “Where do you come from, Water? Where are you heading, Water?” At times when the subterranean currents slowed, as he delighted in this traveler’s murky chatter, he understood his beloved was busy addressing creatures. These addresses were muffled but amiable and eager, and contained in their tunes the angst of lovers.

He would follow these arcane orations till he forgot himself. The tongue would engross him, and the messenger’s prophecies would seize hold of him. The creatures’ replies would also astonish him. The soirée would continue with diverting evening conversation, and he would quit the earth as astonishment at the talisman overcame him. He would repeat it as a mantra for reflection. Then a glow would lead him to the door of riddles. So he would be amazed, laugh out loud, question, explore, or doze off. By keeping tabs on the question, he would find solace and attain the life normally lost through sociability, which he considered a catnap.

He would have liked not to return from this slumber. He hoped he would not be forced to pry his ear from the earth. He would rather not have been obliged to stand on his feet. He hoped he wouldn’t emerge from the subterranean corridor’s dark recesses. He frequently remained beneath the lower levels for entire days, coming out only when the sages worried about his absence and came to intrude on his solitude in the shelter.

But departure also had a set date, and the hour of farewell would inevitably arrive one day. The herald would rush through the wasteland, crying out the day of their departure. Tumult would dominate the campsite, boys would race between tent sites, women would emerge to break down the tents, herdsmen would arrive with the caravans of camels, and slaves, servants, and vassals would start readying the bags and cinching up the luggage. Then he would descend.

He would descend to the lower reaches, pull the corner of the blanket away from his right ear, and prostrate himself. He would press himself against the dirt, stretch out, lie on his belly, and touch his lips to the clay. Then the salty crystals would slide into his mouth and onto his tongue as he sensed the delicious saline taste. He would press more firmly against the body and meld with it till he became the groom uniting with his bride on their wedding night. He would tremble and shudder, overwhelmed by an orgasmic climax. Then the eternal melody would break out from the solid rock. The song would grow louder and flow through the earth’s body before circulating through his whole physique. He would hear the eternal call, and longing would flood out and subdue the world of sorrows. He would mumble impotently, “Master, may I accompany you? Why don’t you take me with you, God of Wanderers?” The call would grow more intense; the leitmotif of sorrow would become more strident in the call, and tears would spring from his eyes while his breast heaved with groans of lamentation. Then the leader’s messengers would arrive to wrench him forcibly away from this feverish tryst.

11

“Master, may I accompany you? Why don’t you take me with you, God of Wanderers?”

He repeated this talisman to himself at first in secret. Then he uttered it in public. Next he sang the call once he found the articulated joint and began to strike the earth with a terrifying stone-headed pickaxe.

At first, boys gathered around him, but the elders soon arrived.

They arrived as if coming for a council meeting. The venerable elder led the way, but bursts of wind buffeted his skinny body, which lurched with the gusts. So he would swerve off the path for some steps. The group behind him veered off course, too, without ever offering to assist him. When he returned to the trail, they returned also, still walking behind him. He brandished his burnished stick in the empty air and emitted the groans of people who have lived for a long time, who have lost their contemporaries, who have lost their loved ones, and who wander through tribes like strangers.

The venerable elder stood above him and gazed at the void, which was flooded with mirage trails. His beady eyes stared at the expanse that everyone knew he couldn’t see, because eyes accustomed to gazing at the homelands of eternity cannot revert to viewing the wasteland of the living.

He emitted his painful moan, the moan of the defenseless, the moan of exiles, the moan of people who have crossed with those who have traveled back into antiquity, leaving behind in the desert only their scrawny bodies. To the excavator’s ears, this moan sounded like another wail of lament.

Emmamma uttered his prophecy from the other shore: “I was sure you would attempt to find the secret. I was certain that water is a treasure only found by a man with a talisman.”

The men removed their flowing garments, rolled up their sleeves, cinched their belts tight, and began to dig.

12

That night he heard the call.

He went to sleep and a little later heard the call. He did not exactly hear the call that night; instead he made the rounds with the wanderer, tasting the pleasure of sliding along, flowing past like the days, and losing spatial limitations once he discovered he was every place. When he awoke from his slumbers, he heard the messenger’s chattering clearly. He heard the messenger dancing with the outcroppings of solid rock, getting cheeky with slabs of stone, dispersing in hollows in the lowlands, complaining for a time, then clamoring, and jabbering in some other language occasionally. The messenger fell, frothed, leveled off, bubbled up, and flowed through the secret articulations, racing against the march of days without the days’ dominion realizing it. The messenger told the creatures of the lower reaches about the pit. It said it came as a messenger from the sky to become the earth’s blood, the earth’s tongue, the earth’s spirit, and the earth’s call. It wasn’t shy about revealing the secret and telling creatures of the lower reaches that it is the call. It addressed its loved ones only allegorically, but the creatures heard the word “call” as clearly as those inhabiting the nugatory realm. Then some factions believed what they heard and others denied it.

13

That night he woke the boy.

He woke him and spoke to him in the darkness — the darkness of his grotto and the darkness outside.

The boy wiped his eyes with his hands and protested audibly.

The man addressed him, saying, “I have frequently spoken to you about migration. Do you remember what I have said?”

The boy continued to rub his eyes, face, and head with his hands, struggling to stay awake. He murmured something indecipherable but did not speak.

The man said to him, “I told you that we don’t come to the desert to rest on the desert. Instead each of us comes to chase after the others in the wasteland like the tails of mirages. The adult outstrips the youth, but the lucky person outstrips everyone else and departs while still a child in the cradle.”

The boy did not respond. So the man continued, “There is a small faction who burden the earth and only emerge when they hear the call.”

The child stopped messing with parts of his body and exclaimed in a weird voice, “The call?”

“The call. The call is a present from the sky. The call is the language of the earth. The call is the gift of the possessed.”

The boy was still. He soon muttered, “Did Amghar refer to the possessed?”¹¹

“Yes, Amghar is speaking about the possessed, because possessed people are additional conduits. The possessed are another community. For this reason, a possessed person shouldn’t tarry when he hears the call.”

“. …”

“This is why I woke you. This is why I want to tell you that my time has come and that my call is ringing in my ears night and day. So promise me that you’ll be true to the covenant and that you’ll never abandon your mother, the earth.”

The boy mumbled indistinctly. The father made himself clearer with a decisive phrase: “Beware of fleeing the earth. You should know you’ll never get far if you do!”

“. …”

“I bequeath you the pickaxe. Beware of going too far away.”

The son yawned loudly, and so the father fell silent. The boy leaned forward and fell asleep. The father dozed off as the call resounded in his ears.

14

Weeping woke him several hours later that night.

He rose to find his son collapsed in a heap beside him, weeping loudly. He felt like questioning him but decided to refrain and then fell asleep again. The boy wept till morning. Then he went out to the plain, still weeping. He accompanied the herdsmen when they departed to the pastures. Since he was weeping, they asked, “Why are you crying?” But he didn’t reply. He left the herders and returned to wander among the dwellings.

The sages stopped him and asked, “Why are you weeping?” He did not reply. Instead he hid his face in his arms and walked away. The women went to him and also asked about the secret cause of his weeping. He did not answer them either. Then his chums blocked his way and questioned him. They asked persistently, but he crossed the vacant land to the heights to the north and roamed there for a long time.

The tribe grasped the secret behind his weeping some days later.

15

The nobles led their assistants, vassals, and slaves to the well as if they were the tribe’s heroes leading mounted warriors on a raid.

They trailed across the low-lying, vacant land south of the temple. Then they took turns descending down the shaft, their belts lashed securely with palm-fiber ropes. They dug the pit deeper and reached moist earth after penetrating a few cubits farther down.

The excavator struck the blow that cut through to the moisture. He took the hunk of damp clay in his hands and tasted it with his tongue. He closed his eyes and savored the morsel, leaning to the left and right. He emitted a groan of approval. Then he shared the good news with the people: “I bet there’ll be a greater consensus among you about the sweetness of the water than about anything in your lives ever!”

The depths resounded with the call of the depths, but the people above ground did not make out the words clearly. One man shouted a question down the shaft. So the excavator placed a lump of the clay in the container hanging over his head and jerked on the rope that hung there to signal for them to begin pulling it up. They drew the bucket up and struggled with each other for the moist clay. He heard them express their delight, shout to each other, and argue with one another as they exchanged muddy handfuls of the treasure.

He bent over and splintered the hard place with the solid stone of his alarming pickaxe. The earth at the bottom of the pit was astonishing. In its dirt, pebbles and pieces of white stone mixed with thin slabs of stone and promising lumps of clay. He dug at the heart of the pit for a time but found it was less moist there. So he turned his attention to the west side and struck the earth from there. He struck once, twice, three times. Then, after this final blow, the Master flowed out. It trickled from a fissure on the right side. It seeped from the pores of a solid, snowy white slab, which began to sweat. Then this perspiration dripped down, and beads of sweat collected on the august, generous body that darkness had hidden from the human eye forever. These beads increased in circumference, plumpness, and size. He dragged the blade of his pickaxe along the indescribable fissure. Then stone pummeled stone, and the solid rock spoke with a hushed voice. From the talk of the solid rock was born an actual being. The deluge flooded out and gushed down in a succession of large drops. In no time at all, the drops united in a line that continued to bleed, bleed, bleed. It bled and spoke as it fell on the rocks at the bottom. The wanderer saw it for the first time and heard its whisper like the first gasp of a newborn child.

16

He watched the wanderer change and evolve into a truly heavenly stream. He watched the mysterious wanderer emerge from the Unknown as a body. He watched the immortal wanderer collect, take shape, multiply, and appropriate a fluent, running tongue.

He watched the miracle jabber, flood, inundate the rocks, and rise to form a circular pond on which the light of the well’s mouth fell. Then it shone with a glimmering, dreadfully seductive charm.

The pulsing deluge damaged the hastily done work. Then the liquid poured from the groins of the fissure, and the pores of the rocks secreted even more. The creature twisted as it traveled and crossed on its eternal trip to the valley bottoms. So the disciple witnessed in its passage the secret of the Master and the birth of primeval life.

The heartbeat increased, and the anguish of the first people assailed him. Then he wailed, “May I accompany you, Master? Why don’t you carry us along on the journey, God of Wanderers?” Then a tremor struck that patch of ground.

The people above heard the earthquake, and the ground trembled violently beneath their feet. They shoved forward to the chasm. They leaned over its opening and batted away the spray that wet their downturned faces. This spray was thick, viscous, heavy, and mixed with mud, dirt, and gravel. They saw that surging water had risen to the top. They realized that an internal collapse had narrowed the well’s shaft and pushed the water up. They called to one another, fastened palm-fiber belts to their bodies, and were quick to dangle down the well, taking pickaxes and leather containers designed to haul dirt from wells. Three men descended and began filling the containers with lumps of clay, mud, and dirt. They immediately tugged on the rope when they finished filling the leather buckets. The other strongest men collaborated above at the mouth. The men unloaded a lot of dirt and kept drawing out containers of it all day long. But they only reached the buried man shortly before sunset.

Aggulli reached him. He found him tucked beneath an awe-inspiring slab of white stone that was marked on the underside with arcane lines like a sorcerer’s symbols. It was bisected by a network of minute veins that antiquity had traced inside the slab. Perhaps the pranks of some mysterious creature had dug them, one generation after another, till it became an indecipherable legacy like the talismans of the first peoples carved into walls of caves. He cautiously lifted the slab away and raised the excavator’s head. The lower part of his veil was missing, and his gray beard, coated with mud mixed with pebbles, was smeared with clay. There was an enigmatic smile on his lips, and his eyes expressed profound acquiescence. The blood flowing freely from his forehead mixed with lines from the rogue flood. Even after the victim was pulled out, his bleeding continued. Blood flowed from his forehead, deluged his face, eyes, lips, and beard, and fell to mingle with the deluge in the pit of the well.

Aggulli embraced him for a long time. He continued hugging him even after he wrapped the dread rope carefully around both their bodies. He tugged hard on the rope to sanction the start of their ascent.

The strongest men stepped forward to pull them up. When they reached the mouth, the bond was unfastened in dignified silence. Aggulli too was all bloody. Blood covered his face and arms and stained all his clothes. The men noticed his eyes’ redness, gleam, and tears. They shrouded the deceased man near the mouth of the well, and then Aggulli fled to the wasteland.

Emmamma approached.

He stood over the drowned man and stared at the horizon, which was flooded with dusk’s rays. His beady eyes stared, and then he released a distressing moan like a lament. Finally he said, “I knew he would go before us. I knew the verbal secret would not suffice to obtain water. I knew that blood is the price of blood.”

He began his wailing lament again. Then many people remembered the son’s wails and realized that the boy’s weeping had been a prophecy.

______________

11. Tamasheq for father, grandfather, tribal elder, or leader.