Ibrahim al-Koni - Gold Dust

Now Ukhayyad also understood the meaning of this curse. Before, he had borne the brunt of the blame for what had happened, but now he understood, and his resentment found its mark: Dudu was to blame for what had happened. The famine was to blame for what had happened. Ayur, the child, the Italians, the desert — they were all to blame. My God — when fate sets things up, it spreads blame all around. It can turn everything against you — people, things, the desert — and arrange it so that no one is to blame for any one thing at all. When everyone shares complicity, there are no culprits. How clever fate can be when it wants to hide its tracks!

Dudu had come pursuing a cousin he had loved since his youth, a cousin who had been separated from him by the machinations of fate. Did Ukhayyad have the right to condemn him? If he were in the man’s place, would he treat him as his enemy?

Dudu said, “You came back to check on the giraffe?”

Confused, Ukhayyad asked, “Giraffe?”

“Yes — that is what I call him. The giraffe is the most beautiful animal we have in Aïr.”

Ukhayyad asked if he could see the animal. Dudu shook his head. “That won’t do anyone any good. Soon, you’ll want to come back to him again and again.”

Ukhayyad didn’t get angry, and said nothing. “He’s in the pasture in the western valley,” the strange foreigner finally muttered.

Now Ukhayyad understood. The morning breeze had come up from the east. It had been easy for the piebald to catch Ukhayyad’s scent when he tried to flee at dawn.

As the dreams of night scatter with the glowing embers of dawn, Ukhayyad’s resolve vanished as soon as he saw Dudu wrapped in his blue cloak, standing in the doorway. At that moment, he realized that a person is who he is because of what he drinks in his mother’s milk. He knew it would be difficult to remove the noose, the toy, and the illusion from his head, unless he were to suddenly become another person altogether. “As a person is prisoner to his body, so too he is hostage to his worldly possessions,” Sheikh Musa often liked to say. By that, did he mean that people are unable to change themselves — just as they are unable to trade their bodies for others? But, could he really be content to sell the piebald and surrender himself to them — that noose of a woman, doll of a boy, and illusion of shame? Could he pawn himself to them simply because everybody else does that — abandoning the only sincere friend he had in this world?

Could he commit this betrayal without despising himself?

Descending through the valley, he had no sooner awoken from these thoughts when the Mahri rushed toward him, his forelegs still hobbled, froth spitting, and sweat pouring from his body. There was the old sadness in his eyes. He brought the plow camel to a halt off at a distance, and went down the hill on foot. They embraced.

Ukhayyad meant to be severe with the camel. “Are you a stud or a mare? What you are doing does not befit Mahris. Do you understand? I’ve told you a hundred times: be patient, it is the only thing that can protect you if you want to survive in the desert. Patience is prayer, it’s worship. Have you forgotten our journey to the fields of Maimoun? Have you forgotten our trip to Awal? Forgetting is your weakness and in the desert, it causes nothing but problems.”

The camel’s heart was not soothed. Distress flickered from his fear-stricken eye sockets. Those eyes spoke as eloquently as those of a gazelle.

Ukhayyad continued to talk to the camel, rubbing him gently, consoling him until midday. But no sooner did Ukhayyad leave than the camel bellowed in complaint. It sounded like the moans of a dying man.

To Ukhayyad’s ears, the piebald’s cries were unlike those of any other camel.

And now here he was, surprising Ukhayyad again.

The camel arrived, weak with fresh wounds, conveying a new message from Dudu. It was a cruel proposal, composed simply of wounds and new misery. This wretched skeleton was a warning, a sign, and it filled Ukhayyad with dread. The desert had taught him to fear this secret language, for it conveyed hidden truth, and it never signified in jest. The language of hidden, divine truth can kill.

Did the foreigner want to murder the piebald, or was this just a new stage of his heartless blackmail? Did he mean to extract revenge on the innocent animal for Ukhayyad’s scornful refusal to divorce Ayur, or was torture his method for forcing Ukhayyad into submission?

However much you think about the souls of foreigners, however smart you are, however many times you revise your interpretations, there are always more secrets to be found in them. It does not matter how clever or brilliant you are — the weapons of foreigners are always more lethal than your own. People never go into exile without a reason. The shrewd herder had been right about that.

That day, when the piebald appeared in tatters — emaciated, his bones sticking out — Ukhayyad saw contempt in Ayur’s eyes for the first time ever. No — he was not mistaken, she showed it on purpose. The look of contempt is unambiguous. She did not even attempt to hide it. What did it mean? Had something aroused her jealousy? Her jealousy toward the piebald had not been born just today! He was the splendid mount that had made Ukhayyad’s warrior status complete long before he got married. But he was also the mount that, after Ukhayyad’s marriage, had become like a second wife to her, that is, her opponent and even enemy. She had never dared to talk openly about any of her feelings toward the animal. But with all the hints she gave, it had not been difficult for him to understand where things stood.

They talked one night after dinner, a few months after their wedding, while they were still camping in the Hamada. “In all the desert I have never seen women as jealous as those of your tribe,” she told him. “Do you know what Tazidirt told me? She said, ‘Watch out. You cannot depend on a man who loves his Mahri the way Ukhayyad loves his piebald. It really is the most splendid Mahri in the desert, but when a rider loves his mount that much, no wife should trust him. Either his heart is with his mount, or it is split between his mount and his wife — and that is even worse! When a man loves his Mahri more than his wife, she should know this: she will soon lose him altogether.’ Did you ever hear such a ridiculous thing?”

He laughed that day and told her that Tazidirt was a wise woman who spoke only the truth. She had laughed too — but she never forgave him for turning the matter into a joke.

As soon as the famine began, she found her chance to get rid of the Mahri. At first, she had only insinuated this a number of times. Later, when she could no longer restrain her intentions, she announced her desires plainly and publicly. At the time Ukhayyad forgave her, since he could see what starvation was doing to everybody. He told himself that a mother who had to watch her son crying from hunger certainly had the right to lose her mind.

But now her jealousy was not simply due to his devotion to the piebald. It was because she had seen him struggle so much since pawning the camel to her kinsman. She had seen him advance and retreat as he went back and forth, again and again, between Danbaba and the oasis. She had closely watched his trips there and his returns. She thought it was a disgrace — and that he should be ashamed of himself. This was not just the jealousy a wife might feel toward the mount of a warrior. His stubborn attachment to the animal posed a real danger to her — a danger to her and to the child. She understood this with a woman’s intuition — and nothing is more sensitive than a woman who doubts! Her glance today was a warning and challenge — and it communicated contempt. Yes — contempt now flashed within her scorn. What does it mean to feel contempt as well as scorn? Contempt is stronger and crueler than scorn, and is something one suckles from a mother’s breast, or from the breast of the desert itself.