Ibrahim al-Koni - Seven Veils of Seth

She had, however, violated the exalted commandments and fled from the desert and from the hands of the aged sorceresses. She had fled from this faux-flight to throw herself voluntarily into the embrace of the ghoul, her abductor and her spouse. She had offered herself to the man in order to give him the impression that he was receiving her for free, to make him think that he had concluded the most precious deal in the whole world, for she was certain that to a man in whose veins trade flows like blood a woman is merely another deal. In fact, she is the ultimate deal, one that renders superfluous all previous deals. She did not tell him that she had another contract in her pocket. She did not disclose her vulnerable spot to him. She did not discuss with him her longing for a child. She was fated to keep this secret throughout this period, even though secrets do not remain secret forever. The moment for the secret’s predestined revelation arrived when he approached her dejectedly to broach the matter of the antidote with her, for she decided then to strip bare her heart. She decided to defend herself by discrediting what men always assume to be certain, even though she knew that by using this defense she would injure the man’s self-esteem. That night she had no need to tell him she had not fled to his tent on their wedding night out of any yearning to conquer man’s community but instead to gain offspring from his loins. That achieved, it would not matter to her whether she lost on the deal, since she would have acquired life by gaining a child.

That night she did not need to utter a word, for her eyes told him all he needed to hear. She informed him in this way that she would have sought an antidote to allow her to bear a child even if he not raised this subject. She told him with her eyes that a man, in her opinion, was nothing more than a meaningless specter if he did not carry the miraculous seed in his body, that he would never deserve a woman unless the spirit world supplied his loins with this sacred trust and that he was not created to take a woman but to be taken by one, because man’s message resembles that of a male drone destined to perish once he passes on the sacred trust to the queen bee.

She had seen the stranger at the spring one day when she was with her sisters. It had not been hard for her to see what type of man that strategist was. Therefore, she knew what she would do when she went the following evening to receive the antidote from his hands.

Had he exaggerated when he told the jenny master that winning a deal beats even winning a beautiful virgin? In point of fact, he could just as easily have asserted the opposite, since his bitter journey in search of a contract had taught him that a contract not aimed at securing a beautiful virgin is an improvised and pointless one. He had never dreamt of a contract involving a fortune in isolation from a contract involving a beautiful woman. Indeed, he had not begun his journey on this bitter quest for any other purpose than the pursuit of the impossible dream he always beheld in the physique of a beautiful woman. He was now able to state decisively, after many years had been frittered away, that the dream of conquering a beautiful woman had been the original, whispered temptation that had aroused inside him a longing to make a deal and a craving for riches. He had understood since adolescence that a belle is a she-jinni who will not fall into a man’s snare unless it is baited with a fortune. The day he set out to realize his mission, his secret motivation never slipped from his mind, notwithstanding the seductive, tricky stratagems that each trading trip casts before travelers, tempting some to fall by the wayside and luring others to deviate from the true course till they forget their goal and substitute for it another Beloved. Thus an action figure is transformed into the lord of lords, while the Lord of Lords renounces the exalted heights to become a figment of the imagination in the difficult errand. He actually had been reckless on the way but had never ignored the truth. He had attempted to distinguish between the Beloved and the dummy, which we compare with the Beloved so it can nourish in our hearts our passion for the Beloved. He had fought off the demons, struggled with the jinn, and come to blows with battalions of ghouls to consummate a contract. Whenever he made a deal, he would retreat into himself and address in his heart the mysterious Beloved, in order to borrow from His sovereignty a new incentive to assist him in making another deal, because the young beauty for whom his heart had pounded when he was an adolescent and who had jilted him for a rich man, had not left his memory, even though she had left his heart. She had become a sibilant insinuation whispering in his ear, reminding him of his loss. At the outset, his sole reason for embarking on this journey had been to transform this sound into a pining song that would convert his defeat into a victory. Since the journey had begun for the sake of a woman, a woman necessarily became its goal. The day he spotted the beauty bathing naked in the pool at the spring, a lump formed in his throat and a whispered desire stirred in his heart. The cause of the lump was the memory of his first disappointment and the reason for the whispered suggestion was the dream he had cherished so fondly throughout his journey that it had almost become a forgotten secret. Her precious chest was splashed with drops of water and topped by two jaunty, swelling breasts. To her right breast clung some strands of jet-black hair that formed around the shapely, virginal nipple a mysterious, gloomy-colored circle that reminded him, for some unknown reason, of the halo of the moon when it turns full. Her large black eyes, which resembled those of a gazelle in the Massak desert, shone with a dusky radiance. In them glowed a cryptic look suggesting temptation, appeal, desire, hope, or a secret combination of all these. He was convulsed by a tremor — actually an earthquake, one well known to anyone to whom the spirit world has presented the woman destined for him. Afterwards, he found himself involuntarily repeating out loud: “She! She! She’s the one!” Then he emitted a subdued groan before proclaiming hoarsely: “I’ve waited a long time for you!”

His friends, however, let him down the day he mentioned her, for they cautioned him: “If you allow a water nymph to wedge you between her thighs, you’ll be forced to kiss your travels good-bye.”

He considered for a moment. He remembered her precious chest crowned by full breasts sprinkled with drops of water. He remembered her virginal nipple encircled by a charm that resembled the full moon’s halo. Then he sighed and told them: “Traveling is a pain. The day must come when the wanderer lays down his staff, whether he wants to or not.”

That evening he decided to marry her, forgetting a maxim he had learned from business: “What we acquire, inevitably acquires us.” The appearance of a beautiful woman on the horizon of our world constitutes a danger that inevitably causes us to forget both the lessons of experience and the maxims of the past.

When she came to him, once night was fully entrenched, she was spooked by the darkness in the vault. So he took her outside to find a secluded spot, leading her silently over hills strewn with the skulls of ancestors and the tombs of the deceased. The moon gleamed high above while stillness stood guard over the lowlands. He did not even hear the chirring of the grasshoppers that vied musically with each other in the distant field adjoining the spring. All he could hear was the slap of their sandals on the stones of the path. He remembered that women cannot bear silence even when no man is present. What would she think, then, when accompanied by a man? As he tried to devise something to say, he remembered the vault and told her, “Tombs are an inevitable part of life. Anyone who passes through life must eventually pitch camp in a tomb.” He added that he could not see the difference between the wall of a tomb’s vault and a wall that formed part of a house, since both house and tomb are constraining containers. “Houses are tombs for the living, if they are truly alive, and tombs are houses for the dead, if they are truly dead.” He was incapable of assessing which of the two groups should more properly be termed “living” and which “dead.” His sly laughter rattled in his throat. Then choking on his guffaws, he fell silent. He felt like a fool and warned himself that speaking intelligently to a woman is stupid even on normal occasions; how much more so on a night of seclusion. He tipped his turban to the vastness of the sky as if begging for a prophecy. He listened carefully but heard only their breathing. Even the sound of their footsteps was swallowed by slipping sand that guided them toward the secluded area that led to the fields. He said cryptically, “This is a night for poetry. Sing me a song of longing.”