Seven Veils of Seth (16 page)

Tightening the veil around his nostrils first, he proceeded to examine his patient, on whose forehead he noticed beads of sweat. As this sweat coated the man's whole body, the flesh started to liberate itself from the garment that had dried, adhering to the body's flesh. He rejoiced in a loud voice: “Ha, ha . . . I knew I wouldn't succeed in saving the ailing body from destruction until I burned off its infected sweat.”

The miserable wretch moaned loudly and opened his eyes for the first time. His eyeballs looked so white that they did not seem capable of seeing anything. His eyes expressed astonishment mixed with fright. This was the astonishment of an eye that had grown accustomed to darkness and that had gazed into eternity for a long time. His eye was frightened by the light marking its return. It felt perplexed at having lost space and at having been deprived of the sensation of existing in space. Now the only evidence left to it of its existence in time was the fire burning inside it. The next moment the wretch screamed in a repulsive voice, repeating the appeal: “Fire! Fire! A drop of water to put out the fire!”

He, however, did not grant his patient a drop of water to extinguish the flame, because he had no intention of putting it out. He knew that extinguishing the fire inside a body suffering from smallpox would allow the disease to gain the upper hand over the medicine. The fire was the medicine. The fire was a noble emissary because it would only overpower the strongest adversary. Smallpox, once established in a body, is stronger than the body. For this reason, he had bet on the nobility of fire, on the innate disposition of fire, which recedes unless it can combat champions. Smallpox was the champion to which he had dispatched the fire as a terminator. Now the fire was close to completing its mission. Here the belly was begging for help and thus announcing the victory of fire. Fire's victory was the cure, a cure for which one paid a steep price in suffering. It was, however, still a cure. He knew the truth about fire, because he would not have been the lord of fire had he not known fire's true nature.

Following his patient's recovery, he started a debate with him: “It would be better for you not to settle in an oasis again.” With total candor, the other man replied, “The truth is that I don't know what I can do with myself if I don't.”

“Is sedentary life that attractive?”

“The worst thing about sedentary life is its ability to co-opt people. We disdain it and then it gains control of us. We mock it and then it slays us.”

“The most accursed snare is one we disdain.”

“You're right. We must never disdain anything. I set foot in an oasis for the first time to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Curiosity is dangerous too.”

“I enjoyed my stay and sold a camel.”

“Then you followed that with the sale of another camel after a few days.”

“After some weeks.”

“Then you looked around you and noticed a beautiful woman.”

Ewar smiled and adjusted the end of his veil to hide his cheeks, which were scarred by smallpox. “You're not mistaken, but. . . .”

“There's no need to be ashamed. A man doesn't need to be a diviner to understand that the curiosity that leads a person to set foot in an oasis will necessarily lead to the sale of a camel and the entrance of a woman. I wager that the next step was the purchase of some land.”

“You're not mistaken this time either. What astonishes me is not your ability to discern this but your narration of the tale, apparently from painful, first-hand experience.”

“Once a beautiful woman appears, land must necessarily follow. Is there any peg stronger than land? Is there any tie stronger than a beautiful woman?”

His throat rattled with contemptuous laughter. Then he added, “A man has only two companions when embracing slavery: a piece of property and a woman.”

The convalescent did not capitulate: “Do you know why?”

He did not wait for a reply but allowed his gaze to roam the plain, which was flooded by deceptive mirages. Then, fed up with the mean-spirited mirage, he glanced at the horizon and pressed beyond it, as well, to end with the sky. He tarried there and did not return from this journey until he was burdened by a prophecy: “What is there in our world besides land and women? What would become of this lethal maze we call the desert if we did not find land and a woman in it?”

“Ha, ha . . . you take the earth and you take the woman. But then you mustn't complain when you have to pay for the deal with your body, which a plague has mauled in compensation.”

The man suddenly trembled, however, and asked with strange despair: “But what can we do, master, if departure is this painful? Doesn't our master think the contractual price of migration oppressive?”

“The matter would be simple if smallpox was the only price we paid for the deal. What's worse than smallpox during this slumber is another plague you could call the heart's demise.”

“But, master, in the place we quit we lose things we don't find in the place we seek. That's the hardest aspect of the contract to migrate.”

“This is the price of the message.”

“Message?”

Migration's messenger remained silent for a time. He adjusted his veil across his face to cover even his eyes, as if he were a priest wishing to conceal some emotion, weakness, sorrow, delight, or prophecy. “Yes, nomadism is also a message. Nomadism is a prophecy.”

“What an inhumane prophecy!”

“Has the desert ever known a form of prophecy that was humane?”

“I don't know. But I've never sampled anything with a bitterer taste than nomadic travel. Migration is daily death.”

“But it's also a daily resurrection.”

“I don't consider the spirit world a form of resurrection. The only thing harsher than death is resurrection from death.”

“Do you know why?” He answered without waiting for a response: “Nomadic travel, like life, can only be a message of deliverance, because it is a message of punishment.”

“I'm tempted to call this another curse that differs little from the plague.”

“Travel truly is fire for the body but balsam for the heart. Sedentary life is truly a balsam for the body but a fire for the heart.”

“Fire! Down with fire! Don't remind me of the fire.”

“A person who does not wish to remember the fire that consumes his innards must endure the fire that buffets his skin.”

He fell silent. Then as he watched the mirage on the plain he added: “Even children are careful to refrain from putting their hands in the fire once they've been burned.” His companion remained silent. Then he continued: “I did not save your life for you to forsake me. So, beware!”

His seated companion bowed his head and raked the pebbles with his finger, creating patterns. The master of deliverance asked pointedly: “Isn't it wrong for children to be more astute than we are?”

“Explain.”

“What need is there for me to explain?” But he immediately proceeded to warn: “Don't put your finger in the fire again.”

“Do you want me to avoid setting foot in an oasis ever again?”

“You can stay in an oasis as a wayfarer but don't ever lay aside your traveler's staff there again.”

“Is this a commandment?”

“Yes, the first and last commandment.”

He was silent for a time as he dug a little vault in the earth. Then he erected a building and made some roads around it. Finally he destroyed his creation with a single blow and said, “Thrusting your hand into the fire twice is truly insane.”

“Insanity's worse than death, so watch out.”

“One whose hand has been burned by the fire has no choice but to obey.”

He stared at him. Their eyes flashed. The jenny master asked, “Is that a promise?”

He gazed at him for a long time before mumbling in a voice that was scarcely audible, “Promise. . . .”

She appeared in the dark of night and stood at the entrance to his grotto like a spirit world shadow lounging about the oasis after midnight. An unfamiliar perfume assailed him, awakening a whispered response in his heart. He asked, “Who are you?”

“I should have thought that a woman who has affected a man with the perfume of her heart would not be forgotten.”

“I remember: a jinni among the water nymphs, a jinni who imprisoned with her hips the first fathers and created manacles for those nomads from the tresses of her hair.”

“You're right. I thought forgetfulness was one of men's defects.”

“Ha, ha . . . forgetfulness is a defect of the entire tribe. Forgetfulness is the destiny of all its descendants. The body's perfume in a man's nostrils, however, is truly a talisman; a body's scent, not a flower's, the fragrance of a female, not the desert fragrance of retem blossoms.”

“The body's fragrance emanates in whiffs that a woman does not grant to any passerby. The female fragrance is woman's gift to a man who deserves her love.”

“I won't deny that woman is a riddle, but how can a woman grant her perfume to one man and deny it to another?”

“This is woman's secret. A woman's body does not release her scent unless her heart is pounding with love.”

“Amazing! But . . . what name did you cast in my ear after you cast the whiffs of your perfume in my nostrils that day? Was it Tamalla? Was it Tahala?”
⁶

“I am not Tamalla. I am not Tahala, either. Tahala's my sister, and Tamalla's a name that doesn't appeal to me, since it refers to an illness that destroys with ennui what hatred has not. May the spirit world spare us compassion.”

“How can a tongue that recites poetry praising love ask the spirit world for protection against compassion?”

“Love is compassion's enemy. Love revives whereas compassion slays.”

“Really? I grow more certain every day that beneath the clothing of every woman in this desert is concealed a priestess.”

“If woman did not conceal a priestess in her heart, she would not have been able to train the greatest rogue in the desert: man.”

“Ha, ha. . . .”

He stifled the laughter in his chest and stillness blanketed the earth. High overhead the stars' wrangling seemed significant. The empty plain below was devoid of creatures and even the air lacked wind. All the same, a secret like a melody penetrated the stillness and began to brush against the heart with a subdued whisper. He listened intently as the whisper became ever more ambiguous and contradictory, but the she-jinni's voice suppressed the whisper's puffs with her own quiet provocation: “When a woman comes to a man to reclaim a trust, the man should expedite matters.”

She was seated facing him, at the mouth of the entryway, while stars crowned her head. Her body released its perfume, and her heart was filled with the secrets of priestesses.

In the darkness he smiled slyly and then said figuratively, “Retrieval of a trust is conditional upon disclosure of the token.”

“Token?”

“The secret password. To overcome the talisman protecting the treasure, you must speak the secret password.”

“Tafarat! Tafarat's the password.”

“Ah. . . .”

“I won't conceal from you that I would not have told you her secret if she had not told me how she found her heart's delight through the trust.”

“Did she really find her heart's delight that way?”

“Had she not, I would not be asking for it now.”

“Ha, ha . . . you are a serpent!”

“Serpent?”

“Lust is a serpent concealed within a body. The serpent is lust revealed as a body. Water nymphs know the truth about the serpent.”

“I'm not afraid of snakes.”

“How could you fear snakes when you are one yourself?”

He crept toward her and took her wrist the way a bridegroom takes the wrist of his bride on their wedding night. He inhaled the fragrance of her body. Then he hissed hoarsely: “You didn't know that Serpent is one of my names.”

Singing a sad ballad as if lamenting a death, as if resorting to these verses to free herself from a calamity, she arrived the night the moon became full. He stood erect at the entryway as if to hail her arrival. He sighed deeply, smothered an inner flame, and then overcame his own ardor to say, “Doesn't our mistress fear the ardor of outsiders when she croons songs of longing for everyone to hear?”

She responded immediately as if she had been expecting his question: “When I observed the stranger's ecstasy the day he leapt over the young women's circle like one of the jinn, I grasped the truth about the stranger.”

He laid down a mat for her at the entrance and gazed at the full moon. He said as if he too were singing: “How could the stranger escape ecstasy when the moon shines over the world? How could the stranger retain his sanity when there are young women in the world? How could the stranger stay on track when there is singing in the desert? Look! The night's as bright as day.”

“Were it not for the stranger's frenzy, I would not have grasped the truth about the stranger. Had I not learned the stranger's true nature, I would not have approached him.”

“Haven't you come to seek the trust like your jinni sisters?”

“Had I not grasped the truth about the stranger I would not have approached the stranger about the trust. The trust is truly precious, but the poetry concealed in the stranger's heart is incomparably more valuable.”

“Do you love poetry that much?”

“Poetry is progeny! Why can't poetry be one's offspring?”

“Ha, ha . . . I doubt that desert women share this daring opinion. I doubt that your sister Tafarat would accept our mistress' views.”

“I have no wish for them to share my opinion, because they were created women with women's hearts. I was created a woman with a man's heart.”