Ibrahim al-Koni - Seven Veils of Seth

The men exchanged knowing glances, but the accused did not turn his head in anyone’s direction. He looked down at the ground before him and shook his head no.

The sage said, “But you were seen leaving the ruler’s home that night before you went to the stranger’s mausoleum. Did you discuss your intentions with him?”

The accused looked toward the chief, but Ewar did not utter a sound or uncover his eyes. So he bowed his head again and said, “Certainly not!”

“Why not?”

“I was not obliged to discuss my plans with people.”

“Are you sure?”

The fool gazed at him with a hurt expression and did not reply. There was a long silence. Finally the sage proclaimed, as though reciting an elegy: “We have loved you as a fool, because idiocy assures certainty. We have disavowed you as a killer, because murder is a form of insanity. We have acquired you through your idiocy, because in your idiocy is your presence of mind. We have lost you through your loss of your intellect, because when the intellect is lost, the man is lost. So farewell, former comrade. Farewell!”

Isan had finished eating supper and was setting off to roam the empty countryside in response to a call to wander, but a specter blocked his path before he could shoot away. So the two faced off atop the mound, which was composed of the tombs of the ancients and surmounted by the ancient mausoleum. They confronted each other for a long time. In the end, the chief said, “Here I’ve donned the night to visit a man who once saved my life out of hatred not love.”

“Which do you prefer: a man who kills you from love or one who saves your life out of hatred?”

“I can’t begin to answer this riddle.”

He bowed to invite his visitor to be seated. They sat down, facing each other. The jenny master said, “How could the question not be a riddle when everything in this desert is a riddle? Our life is a riddle. Our death is a riddle. Our passage through this world of ours is a riddle.”

His companion groaned with pain. After a silence, he said, “The fact is that I would not have set aside my self-esteem to come to you after we parted had the riddle you mentioned not generated another one.”

The strategist opted for silence and so the visitor completed his statement: “I merely want you to confess to the assembly that you are able to shape-shift.”

“Shape-shift?”

His companion said nothing, and so the strategist asked, “What good would my admission that I can shape-shift do?”

Ewar replied with sudden zeal, “It will help. If you admit that, the penalty will be altered to banishment.”

“Banishment?”

“Exile. He will spend the rest of his days as a rootless wanderer; just the way you’ve always wanted him to live.”

“Can a man become a wayfarer after the time has passed?”

“I don’t understand.”

The strategist was still. After a silence, he said, “But how can the punishment be changed when the result of the crime is the same?”

“The elders think this will lighten the punishment considerably.”

“Do you mean to say that your Law makes a distinction between killing a woman and killing a man?”

“Certainly not.”

“Or that it distinguishes between a stranger and a resident?”

“Certainly not.”

Ewar fell silent. After a pause, he said, “There’s another secret to the matter that I’ll share with you if you tell me the secret of metamorphosis.”

“Ha, ha. . is this a deal?”

“Everything in our world is a deal.”

“How can you ask me to confess to something that I haven’t done?”

“You’re not going to disappoint me?”

They exchanged a look, and their eyes glowed in the generous light of the stars. Each man discerned a prophecy in his companion’s eyes. Ewar said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”

Since his companion did not comment, the chief continued, “Many years ago, when the desert was smothered by grass and by tribes, there lived two close friends who could not bear to live far apart, even though they clashed whenever they were together. Their love for each other was so intense that whenever one fell in love with a woman, his buddy did too. Once, one of them married a beauty from a neighboring tribe and they had a child, who was all the man possessed in the whole world. During the first quarrel that erupted between them, however, the woman confessed to him that his friend had fathered the child. He thought this was a lie she had concocted to sear his heart, since women are capable of transforming a lie into the truth and the truth into a lie, but she reminded him of the snake that he had once found coiled around her body and that had then dispersed like a mirage. She said that this apparition had been a snake only to his eyes. In point of fact, it had been his disputatious colleague, from whose loins she had conceived the child. On seeing the suffering in his eyes, she told him that she had acted in this way for his own good, because a sorceress had informed her that he belonged to that group of men fated never to beget a child for the desert. Do you know what that she-jinni did the day her spouse reproached her for her conduct during the first argument after this admission?”

He raised his head to the stars and let out a moan of distress. With his look still fixed on that void strewn with stars, he said, “She took the child to the pasture and left him in a herd belonging to a neighboring tribe. When he questioned her, she told him she had done that to sear his heart, for she was a person who could have children for the desert, whereas he never could.”

He fell silent, but his eyes clung to the celestial sphere. Afterwards he asked in an emotionless voice, “Do you know who that buddy was?”

“I’m not a diviner. How would I know?”

Ewar said dispassionately, “Me.”

The strategist clung to his silence, but the narrator added, with the same lack of emotion, “And do you know the identity of the faithful friend who fathered a child with my wife?”

When his companion did not respond, the narrator filled in the blanks: “It was you!”

“Me?”

“I found you coiled snake-like around her. So why deny your ability to shape-shift?”

“Ha, ha. . ”

The narrator, however, continued to decode the talismans of the prophecies he beheld in the sky’s stars: “Do you know what became of this child you fathered with your best friend’s wife?”

The strategist braced himself but did not reply. Meanwhile, the narrator continued with the prophecy: “He’s the fool!”

Without meaning to, the strategist yelled, “No!”

“Believe it or not, Edahi is your son.”

He was silent but then added, “Just as he is my son too.”

“Did you make up this story to convince me to confess that I can shape-shift?”

“You yourself do not believe that I could invent a story; why are you so contrary?”

The narrator returned from his travels through the sky, and stillness prevailed. Then the strategist remarked, “I don’t mind telling you that I have felt a greater affection for the fool than for any other man. Is this what people call fatherhood?”

“By confessing, you will not only save my son; you will save yours as well.”

“I don’t believe admitting that I have the power of metamorphosis will help.”

“Rest assured that it will.”

“What makes you so certain?”

Ewar said nothing. He made a visual sweep of emptiness enveloped in darkness. Suddenly he said, “Because if you confess, I will too.”

“You’ll confess?”

“Your confession actually won’t help unless I confess.”

The strategist remained silent while the visitor explained, “Didn’t you once say that we only kill the one we love and only save the one we hate?”