Seven Veils of Seth (21 page)

The chief merchant trumpeted: “A boy!”

Amghar, who was still panting, sat down, and the strategist asked, “Have I now fulfilled my part of the bargain?”

“Bargain?”

“Have you forgotten? I received some fodder for my jenny and some food for myself from you in exchange for the glad tidings.”

The head merchant guffawed and then said gleefully, “There are glad tidings even in the homes of some from whom you did not receive commodities.”

“Really?”

“There is a baby girl in the warrior's house.”

Isan shouted, “Tamuli?”

Amghar nodded. After a silence he added, “In the sage's house too.”

Isan asked, “Tahala?”

Amghar nodded yes. He was silent for a moment and then added, “The diviner also will soon receive his glad tidings.”

“Taddikat?”

Amghar nodded yes. The strategist remarked, “But in Ewar's home there is lamentation in place of glad tidings.”

“I'm sad to have that confirmed.”

They were both silent for a time. Then the chief merchant said, “There's lamentation also in the fool's heart.”

Isan asked: “Temarit?”

An anxious silence followed. Amghar gazed at his companion from behind his veil and said in a tone of voice as expressive as his words, “Is there any hope?”

His companion looked back at him and they exchanged a furtive glance. Then the strategist said, “What need do fools have of children?”

The master merchant smiled and said jokingly: “Even fools cannot live without children.”

“But Temarit's not married to the fool.”

“She's the fool's sweetheart.”

“If we let a lover have kids with his sweetheart before getting married, we will distort the Law.”

“But, as you know, it's the Law that forbade the marriage of fools.”

“If the fool acknowledges to the general public that he is a fool, and if the Law does not permit a fool to marry a beautiful woman, by what right do you want me to create for this wretch a fetus in the belly of a water nymph?”

The visitor was silent. Night had fallen and stillness shared joint sovereignty with it. In the distance grasshoppers chirred. The visitor said, “The truth is that I've brought you a message from the people. It's directed to his excellency of glad tidings.”

“Bring it on!”

“After all these households have received glad tidings, the men of the oasis feel certain. . . .”

“Ha, ha. . . .”

“They want their share of the amulets.”

The jenny master laughed hoarsely. It was a long, choking, wicked guffaw, which he finally capped: “I'm afraid the time for that has passed.”

Amghar asked in astonishment, “What are you saying?”

The strategist replied coldly, “The amulets have been exhausted – like the provisions and like everything else in our transient world.”

“But . . . but sterility is currently at epidemic proportions in the oasis. The women's bellies are empty.”

The strategist interrupted him sternly: “When there is no medicine left, there's no way to combat a disease.”

“But the oasis. . . .”

“There's no way!”

Where a master merchant goes, news always accompanies him. Merchants seem to convey the news on their tongues in the same way that their pack animals convey merchandise on their backs. The master merchant brought him fresh information when they met in the market. He reported tersely, “They're migrating!”

A questioning look from his companion elicited this explanation: “The citizens. An entire caravan left the oasis today.”

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“They said that life in a land without water is easier than life in a land where the water's contaminated.”

“I heard the diviner Yazzal repeat a phrase like this once, so bravo and bravo once more.”

“I heard one of them say that when the water is contaminated, it becomes a lethal poison, but the desert without water might bestow water generously.”

“It always bestows water generously. The desert is never stingy with its water for the faithful. The proof is that we have never heard of a nomad dying of thirst unless this thirst was a punishment for an unknown offense or unless a nomad had stopped migrating.”

A childish glee was apparent in his eyes. In the master merchant's heart a suspicion was awakened: “Strategist, all that's left for you to do is to rub your hands together in delight.” He kept his suspicions to himself, however, and jumped to another subject: “The fact is that I've presented you the good news about the migration in order to trade it for something else.”

“Bargaining's the law of the world too, not just of commerce.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that.”

“Make me an offer!”

“The matter concerns the fool's sweetheart.”

“Ha, ha . . . didn't I tell you that fools don't need to bring children into the world?”

“Yes indeed.”

“Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Because fools are not begotten by fathers; because fools are fatherless offspring, hee, hee, hee. . . .”

His hoarse, sadistic laughter rattled on for a long time. When he stopped, he wiped away some tears before he added, “Didn't this fool of yours say he was different, because his father wasn't on earth but in the heavens?”

“That's right.”

“Even so, what I love best in your oasis is your fool. So why would you want me to put a shackle around his neck and produce offspring for him by his girlfriend?”

“As a matter of fact, it's the girl's wish not the fool's.” “Are you her emissary?”

“You can say that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means her sister is the one who proposed this commandment for me.”

“Tafarat?”

“That's right.”

“That she-jinni is crazier than all the others, but . . . but I won't be able to violate the Law, no matter what.”

“The Law can always discover a justifiable exception. The Law always acts as a panacea for the miserable.”

“I'm afraid my amulets may cause harm if I sow an embryo in the belly of an unmarried woman.”

He retreated into the fortress of silence and stole a glance at his companion. Then he said murkily, “Even if the Law allowed it, the amulets wouldn't.”

“The amulets wouldn't?”

“Didn't I tell you the amulets are exhausted?”

“I thought the hyena's den never lacked bones.”

“Don't you think you might be wrong about that?”

The master merchant did not respond immediately. After a period of silence he said, “What a shame that some of the amulets were wasted.”

The strategist turned toward him curiously, and so the merchant explained: “Tamanokalt!”

The strategist looked away and said in a superior tone, “Lost amulets are always a matter of regret.”

Once night had settled, the guest he had long awaited halted by the door to his entryway. Like some spectral jinni, he stood at the entrance without uttering a word of greeting or making any gesture. He did not fall back on any commandment of the lost Law to justify his suspect stance, as nobles generally would have. He stood erect among the stones of the ancient cemetery: as alone, isolated, and deserted as if he were the stubborn holdout from a migratory caravan.

He, too, did not make any movement or hasten to attend to his guest. He did not move a muscle to ease the awkwardness for the other man. Indeed, he continued to sit at the entrance to his vault, gazing out at the emptiness and spying on the spirit world in the stillness as he had learned to do during his eternal wanderings across the eternal desert. Finally, the specter spoke. He heard him declare with the clear enunciation of haughty folk who feel insulted: “I did not come either to beg for reconciliation or to request a truce. I have come to tell you something that the chaos prevented me from telling you once.”

“I'm happy to hear Chief Ewar acknowledge the existence of a concept like ‘chaos.'”

How could I not acknowledge chaos when our life is nothing but chaos in chaos, from beginning to end?”

Without moving or fidgeting, he countered, “In the languages of oasis residents chaos is an innovation. In the language of the desert people, there is no word for chaos.”

“Actually, I have not come to debate chaos theory with you but to ask about certainty.”

He replied in a tone that suggested disapproval, “You ask about certainty?”

“Of the nomadic life.”

“Ha, ha . . . we have spoken more about wayfaring than about anything else in this transitory world of ours.”

“I wanted to tell you that it is the desert that has abandoned us – not we who have abandoned the desert.”

“The desert has never once abandoned anyone.”

“The desert abandons us when it is stingy with its water.”

“This argument is fit only for the masses. People always mention the desert's stinginess with water whenever anyone needs an excuse to justify his own betrayal of the desert's law. Despite all this, I've never heard of a creature who died there from hunger or thirst . . . except for that miserable faction seduced by their selfish interests to violate the desert's customary laws.”

“We'll never agree as long as you continue to construe deliverance as transiting physical space.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that your misery is caused by your certainty that Waw exists in some physical place.”

“I've never said that in so many words.”

“Your entire world view is erected on this certainty.”

“Do you want to sell me the fable about migrations of the heart, which I heard celebrated by your disciple the idiot?”

“Migrations of the heart are easier than migrations of the body. A migration of the heart is of greater significance than a migration of the body. That's certain.”

“We don't migrate across the desert in our heart unless we migrate across it with our body. An exodus of the heart is a heresy fit for fools. If we were to rely on a place free of space's depredations, that would be much easier, but the place to which we resort while attempting to flee from chaos or when attempting to satisfy a yearning must inevitably take a bite out of our heart. Indeed, it may consume our whole heart, even though we possess but one, and a small, fragile heart at that.”

“I would like to share a proverb with you: ‘Wretched is he who searches for deliverance in a physical location.'”

“Ha, ha. . . . I think I've heard that proverb before. Have you borrowed that from the mouth of your disciple, the idiot, too?”

“Wretched is he who searches for Waw in a geographical location. I shall never grow tired of repeating this charm, even if the strategist of all generations rejects it.”

The strategist suddenly released his hoarse, alarming laughter but swallowed it just as suddenly. With surprising sadness, he said, “You should certainly not think that obedience to the call to nomadic migration is easy. Who can proclaim that travel is easy when our hateful but unique body pegs us to physical space in a thousand ways?”

“I'm pleased to hear you move closer toward the truth.”

“The difficulty of a matter, however, never justifies surrender. You know one of the Law's commandments says we must only do what is difficult for us. Likewise, when a matter is difficult, that shows its nobility, since the ancients used to say: ‘The noblest matter is also the most difficult.'”

“Here you grow colder again. Why don't you answer my question: Does true reality exist in physical space or in some other place beyond physical space?”

“Ha, ha . . . you shouldn't have asked me this question.”

“Why?”

“Because to answer it in the negative is a mistake, whereas to answer it in the affirmative is also a mistake.”

“There's no question the master tactician cannot answer.”

“If the master tactician answered every question, he would fall into diverse snares and would lose his title of ‘tactical strategist.'”

“You may consider my question another riddle.”

“I know that the heart is place's secret soul just as I know that place is the heart's veil. Does that suffice?”

“Is this another riddle?”

“The only way to answer a riddle is with a riddle. Similarly, a talisman can only be broken by another talisman.”

“We'll never reach an agreement without clarification of terms.”

“Fine. How can space be the depository of true reality if place is merely a vessel for the heart?”

“I like that.”

“And how can true reality find a home for itself outside of physical space if what is beyond physical space is nothing more than a void in a void?”

“I can grasp this too.”

“In the end, the only alternative left for us is to embrace our truth within our hearts and to flee faraway, across the wasteland.”

“It does us no harm to preserve our truth wherever we settle, if its place is in our hearts, not in some physical location.”

“But the ‘color' of the vessel is affected by the color of the container; so beware!”

“I don't understand.”

“Truth in a heart – like a date at the bottom of a brackish well – is a body requiring physical support, and both are destined to perish sooner or later.”

The specter was silent. He was silent for a long time. Then he asked: “Does this mark the parting of our ways?”

The strategist immediately replied, “Our parting did not begin today. It began the day I brought you back to life after the epidemic felled you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that ingratitude for a good deed always motivates us to take revenge.”

“I can match your unjust suspicion by asking: Isn't it a violation of the Law's code to bring back to life someone the fates desire dead?”