Ibrahim al-Koni - Seven Veils of Seth

“I always say that.”

“I goaded the fool and encouraged him to lift his hand against you.”

The strategist found nothing odd in this. He said coldly, “I was expecting you would do that one day, since revenge is our punishment for doing a good deed.”

“Not long ago we agreed that what you did the day you brought me back to life was not a good deed, but rest assured that my confession to the assembly that I goaded the fool will turn the affair head over heels. . if preceded by your confession.” Stillness prevailed. The strategist raked the earth with his finger, tracing an arcane symbol there, before he replied, “I don’t think I can do that.”

“Would you rather surrender your son’s neck to the rope than renounce your fraudulent arrogance?”

“Refraining from a confession of shape-shifting is a secret matter, not a display of arrogance.”

“But the son. . ”

“The fool is your son, not mine.”

“He’s your son too: my son by the heart but yours by blood.”

“I did not want to have a descendent to recite an elegy one day for me in the desert.”

“What’s that?”

“I wouldn’t have acquired a reputation for cunning tactics had I not refused to leave a trace behind me in the desert.”

They were both silent. The visitor waited for a long time before he said, “We have heard of sons who sacrifice their fathers but have never heard of fathers who sacrifice their sons.”

“It’s hard to forgive a son who has raised a knife to slay his father.”

“Forgiveness is the secret of our happiness. Woe to anyone in our world who does not learn how to forgive.”

“A father can forgive, but the spirit world will never forgive, even if the father does.”

“Is that your last word?”

“I can’t mock my own law.”

“To which law do you refer?”

“‘We should only revive the ones we hate and only slay the ones we love.’ Have you forgotten?”

The night before the fool’s execution, a tempest raged through the oasis. The onslaught of that storm would not have upset people if it had not violated the law for storms. Unknown regions of the western desert had unleashed it — heavily laden with dust — one night, thereby violating an ancient rule, passed down from generation to generation, that chastises the west wind for night travel with this well-known phrase: “I’m not a slave; so why should I travel by night?” The winds from the west, however, traveled by night this time. That was unprecedented and they traveled over night and arrived with malice unparalleled in the memory of the oasis. This animosity was not merely apparent in the storm’s violence but revealed itself as well in the heavy dust borne by the winds. The tempest burst free of its bonds shortly after sunset, like a demonic jinni, and attacked the oasis with a savagery people had not experienced, not even in the pillaging attacks the oasis experienced in ancient times. The tempest continued its painful wailing all through the night, and individuals with psychic powers thought the wailing an ill omen. The storm sent huts on the outskirts sailing through the air, ripped roofs off houses, and flattened some walls. The next morning, the firebrand was visible on the horizon, but dust lost no time in bringing night back to the oasis, and darkness prevailed once more. In the deserted expanses of the oasis, the wind roared again. Residents wandered blindly in search of each other, and the demon felled them in the streets. Others tried to search for their livestock only to be stopped short. The tempest did not calm down until it had taken some of them as its prey. After helping itself to these propitiatory offerings, it quieted down, as if it had decided to cut them a little slack, but this was a threatening respite, since the atmosphere continued to be heavy and gloomy. The enemy seemed to have staged a strategic retreat to muster its forces for a new attack, not for surrender. It was, however, respite enough for the residents to discover the devastation that had descended on their land. People passed on news of livestock wiped out, palm trees destroyed, sword dunes advancing from the south toward the spring, and crops strafed by flying dirt. The residents might have been concerned about the threat posed by the sands’ advance toward the spring had they not been so preoccupied during this lull in the storm with searching for missing persons, whom the wind had carried off to parts unknown. During the height of that chaos, the diviner went to heroic efforts to gather all the elders for an emergency assessment of the catastrophe but only succeeded in contacting the sage, whom he bumped into outside. He tied the other man to his own body with a palm-fiber rope and then ushered him into the nearest building, a deserted house, which had just lost its whole roof, although the walls blocked the wind.

Elelli said, “We loathed the calamity with the water-borne epidemic, but this is an even worse affliction.”

Yazzal said, as he sheltered against the house’s west wall and pulled his companion with him, “No affliction is easy until a worse one arrives.”

“We need to contact our companions immediately.”

“Indeed, we must quickly carry out the punishment.”

The wind was howling as it attacked the wall. The sage shouted back, “What punishment?”

The diviner, who was seeking the wall’s protection from the deluge of dust, replied, “Whoever delays in carrying out a punishment, brings punishment down on his own head.”

“Do you mean the storm’s a curse we acquired by being too slow to punish the fool?”

“If you promise the spirit world a sacrifice, don’t be slow to deliver. This is what the lost Law has taught us.”

“Many disagree with your view.”

“The majority is a handful of wretches who never understand what must be understood.”

“They say that the wind is the spirit world’s angry reaction to the sentence against the fool.”

“Rubbish! The spirit world is only angry when it seeks a blood offering.”

“It has seized many blood offerings. Indeed, the entire oasis has become a propitiatory sacrifice.”

“When people are stingy in their sacrifices to the spirit world, it takes a dreadful toll of victims, whether people like it or not.”

The wind roared; so the diviner shouted, “It’s threatening us. If we don’t make haste, the walls’ turn will be next. Haven’t you heard of the tribe that was too stingy with the spirit world to sacrifice a kid, and so the spirit world sent its messenger the wind to annihilate the whole tribe? The wind always brings a message from the spirit world; so heed it.”

The sage raised his head, but a gust struck him, ramming his skull against his companion’s breast. He muttered to the diviner’s chest. “I fear nothing on your behalf so much as the Law’s effect on you.”

The diviner yelled, “Is the Law’s effect something a man should fear?”

“The Law’s impact on a man is fearsome, because the Law’s commandment is a fetter.”

“Did you say: fetter?”

“A prophetic commandment is true during the moment of inspiration. A prophetic maxim is true while it remains unrestricted. Once we imprison it in a thin-necked jug, however, it becomes a self-parody.”

“A prophetic commandment is a prophetic commandment, no matter where or when. Space and time exercise no sway over prophetic dicta.”

The sage, however, said defiantly, despite the wind’s assaults: “A prophetic commandment is a danger even when time hasn’t touched it; so what if time has?”

“I would not be astonished to hear statements like this from foreigners. What astonishes me is to hear it from a close friend.”