Ibrahim al-Koni - Seven Veils of Seth

“The heart’s a treasure that no secret can conceal.”

“Tell me the truth: Did you try to hide the evidence with the tip of your veil, diligently seeking to conceal your identity?”

“The evidence?”

“Of smallpox. Have you forgotten the scars from the epidemic?”

“Would a son of the desert forget the traces of an epidemic?”

“Just as the son of the desert would not forget the scars of the epidemic, the victim of the epidemic would not forget a hand that pulled him from the mires of that affliction.”

“No payment for the benefactor exceeds gratitude in an age that knows neither gratitude nor loyalty.”

“We must never allow people’s shortcomings to rob us of our trust in people.”

“Should we insist on this out of compassion for ourselves or out of compassion for other people?”

“Both.”

They fell silent and stillness returned to guard them with an even greater authority, for once the pillars of the tongue’s stammering wobbled, silence determined to reassert its sovereignty over the world. As it grew deeper, more cryptic, and more seductive, the two men seated there sensed an indefinable awkwardness. They sensed an awkwardness a creature discerns only after it has hardened into an offense. To free himself — refusing to cling to the coattails of silence — he hastened to use his tongue: “It’s easy to hide a distinguishing feature on your two cheeks; it’s hard to hide one that cannot be hidden.”

“Are you referring to the jenny?”

The jenny master did not reply, and so the guest added, “I didn’t need to see the jenny; nor did I need any other distinguishing characteristic to be guided to the true identity of someone with whom the fates once united me.”

“The day we met in the market you left the impression that you didn’t recognize me and had never seen me before. Was that a snub or a rejection?”

“Neither. The vassals had mentioned other identifying characteristics unlike the distinctive mark any fool could spot on the body, and so I felt perplexed. When the elders met and the messengers related their conversations with the stranger, I grasped the secret and no longer had any need for proof. I did not reveal the stranger’s identity, however, hopeful I could spare the oasis anxiety and fearful the rabble might harm him.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Everyone knows it’s a serious matter when a man leaves home, but a stranger’s success is held hostage by our ignorance of the secret intent he harbors. A secret that has been disclosed is a prophecy that dissipates before it can be fulfilled, and the dissipation of a prophecy means the destruction of the prophet.”

“I’m pleased to hear the Law’s wisdom from the tongue of a person who enjoys wallowing in the mires of oases.” “I’m sorry you still think ill of oases.”

“What does the stranger do when the disciple and friend has given verbal expressions of gratitude but betrayed a solemn promise?”

“Not so fast! Take it easy!”

“We should obey maxims, not memories.”

The guest emitted a hurt groan and raised his head toward the stars in the sky as if searching for inspiration among their twinkling lights. Then the vault’s master said, “The day I rescued you from death, I had only one piece of advice for you: to keep traveling. Have you forgotten?”

“How could I forget?”

“How can I believe that you haven’t forgotten when I see you relishing languor. You don’t even stop there but have agreed to lead other languid folks as well.”

“The problem with rules is that there’s always a good reason to break them.”

“When has deliverance been easy?”

“I admit it has never been easy. The commandments of the lost Law testify to that.”

“Hardship that brings deliverance is easier to bear than ease that brings ruin.”

The visitor sighed with disappointment and remarked ruefully, “Easy for us to say; hard for us to do. You don’t know what it means for a man to put down roots.”

“I know; roots are the greatest evil of all.”

“We absorb a root’s moisture and grow roots without even knowing it.”

“Cursed be the root that serves to destroy us, even if it provides us refreshing draughts.”

“Oh, woe, alack.”

“The noblest element of the rambling man’s heart is his longing. No one fails while longing persists in his heart.” “Longing is what endures.”

“It was longing that permitted our ancestors to perform heroic deeds. It was longing that enabled our ancestors to compose poetry. It was longing that made it possible for our ancestors to etch the Law’s maxims onto the hearts of subsequent generations.”

“Our grandfathers were men; we are merely shadows.”

“Longing is a charm that brings life even to shadows. There is nothing that longing cannot accomplish.”

“Oh woe, alack. You show confidence in rooted people when you attempt to revive decaying bones.”

“The restoration of life to decaying bones is a prophetic mission.”

They fell silent again. The stillness seized hold of them, transporting them far, far away.

No one leaving the oases for the desert has ever been totally free of infection. Similarly, no son of the desert has gone to the oases attempting to escape a drought without eventually returning to the desert carried on the beast of a passing caravan, a feeble shadow of his former self, so famished he barely has the strength to draw his final breaths.

The day a passing caravan carried back to the desert its son Ewar and dropped him in the tribe’s custody, no one imagined that this specter could be brought back to life, not even by a miracle. The wretch who had fled from a prolonged drought that had once settled over the central desert was not merely famished on his disastrous return but carried in his body something worse than hunger. He harbored an affliction even worse than the fires of drought. He had smallpox.

Desert people prefer to receive from the oases a prodigal son who has lost his bodily strength to hunger rather than to receive back a prodigal son who carries an infectious disease. Over the course of the centuries their reason for avoiding the manacles of sedentary life within the walls of oases has been fear of infection associated with house walls, foul air, and virulent diseases.

They consider diseases that come to their dwellings from the world of the oases a lethal threat, since they are certain that these diseases are far more virulent than those carried by the desert’s winds, since the former do not respond to desert antidotes or medicines derived from desert plants. For this reason they have established a law that decrees quarantining a patient in a tent erected for him in a deserted area far from their settlement. Medical experts and herbalists visit him, but if the disease resists their treatments and they despair of finding a cure, they signal people, and the tribe packs up to seek refuge in the desert from this curse, leaving the invalid to his fate, because according to the customary law handed down through the generations, to sacrifice the whole community for the sake of one of its members would be an unforgivable act of ignorance, even though the choice is cruel.

The day the miserable Ewar, who was covered with terrible sores from which oozed purulence and pus, was carried by a mount to the tribe’s encampment, people also gave him a wide berth, set up a distant tent for him, and dispatched some specialists for a diagnosis. Meanwhile, groups of people — men and children — stood at the entrances of their dwellings, apprehensively awaiting a signal. That day the medical examination did not last long. The specialists left the invalid’s tent with bowed heads and stood there with the gravity of priests, clinging to silence while they recited cryptic prayers to the Unknown. Then they departed, dragging their sandals across the earth. Thus people learned that the experts were stymied and that the poor man was to await his fate in the desert world, alone. So the men turned back inside and pulled the tent posts, collapsing the tents on their heads. Children wept together while women hurried back and forth, beginning the process of packing up their belongings. This was not a departure to gain pasture lands in some other desert. They did not depart for the sake of change or because they felt they had stayed in one place too long. Their journey was not to flee from an enemy, as happened during years of armed raids. This journey was terrible in two respects: first, because it reminded one — like any journey — of that journey from which one does not return, and, secondly, because it presaged a death and served as an elegy. Departure meant not only that they were burying themselves in the folds of an unknown from which they might never return but also that they were burying a brother who had sought their help with an affliction for which they had been unable to find a cure. They were burying a son who had sought asylum with them only to have them refuse. Their inability to offer asylum to a relative was not merely a sin but a punishment from which they could not escape, not even by the most grandiose sacrificial offering. Thus with their journey that day they were not merely offering an elegy for one man but for the whole clan. They were not offering an elegy merely for strangers but for themselves, because they had violated the precepts of the lost Law, which prods people to act heroically. These precepts instruct a person to sacrifice his life to save the life of another person hard-pressed by a calamity and to sacrifice his own life in an attempt to rescue a victim of a calamity, even if he fears this will be in vain. They definitely would not have fled from an enemy if that had meant leaving behind them someone whose life would be in danger, even if they were powerless to resist the enemy, because raiders are enemies who originate in the physical world, unlike diseases, which are considered enemies from the spirit world. They had the fortitude to defy death when the enemy could be seen and heard. They had no strategy, however, for combating invisible and inaudible adversaries from the spirit world. For this reason they carried their calamity away with them in their hearts that day, just as they carried away their possessions on the backs of their camels, racing off to seek sanctuary in the great outdoors, which had never disappointed them, more from a hope of burying their rout in its vast expanses than from a hope of finding deliverance for themselves in its labyrinth, because flight in response to a whispered suggestion of the heart is more difficult even than one caused by avoidance of an epidemic.