Ibrahim al-Koni - Seven Veils of Seth

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.”

“Ha, ha. . Don’t women adore poetry as much as men?”

“Woman loves poetry with her tongue. Man loves poetry with his heart. Woman sings the verses with her voice, but man bleeds verses from his heart. For this reason, women love poets more than all other men. If given a choice between a poet, a warrior, and a wealthy man, a woman would choose the poet, without any hesitation.”

“Not so fast. Take it easy. I know women who would choose the wealthy man without any hesitation, if given the choice.”

“I expected you to say this, because you’re a man. Man’s misfortune is that he cannot tell the difference between a woman and the shadow of a woman.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just as we should not attribute the descriptive term ‘man’ to a person simply on the basis of attire, we similarly should not describe a person as a woman based only on clothing, since both women and men are often disguised in the other gender’s body.”

She chanted a song and he began to tremble. She sang softly, as if crooning to herself. In her lament he detected the call of the eternal yearning that imprisons lost time in the flask of existence and that recovers the lost space that one never reaches by wandering. He reeled. He repeated the refrain after her as he swayed to the right and left. He asked melodiously, “What’s the secret of poetry do you suppose?”

She too sang her response: “The secret of poetry is that it enables us to know.”

“Know what?”

“To know what we shouldn’t.”

“For us to know what we ought to know is deliverance. For us to know what we shouldn’t is punishment.”

“Poetry is punishment. Poetry’s not poetry unless it is punishment.”

He kept swaying as she started to sing again. The stillness was humbled. The full moon listened. The bones of dead ancestors shook in hillside graves. The water nymphs who had slipped into the earth’s veins to feed the spring trilled. He chanted too: “I used to think that the secret of the passion for poetry was beauty.”