Bahaa Taher - Sunset Oasis

The terror that you are experiencing now came to me when I was five years old, when Yousif the Westerner set a trap for my father and the sheikhs of the Easterners. He is the Westerner I hate most, yet I concede that he laid his trap well. I understood it only after I had grown up and the chance of taking revenge on him had passed. Nevertheless, I studied every step he took that I might learn.

I think it over, I contemplate it and I memorize it so that none of its lessons or details may escape me. He started by deliberately spreading anarchy in the oasis at a time when the Egyptians had insufficient troops here. He provoked the zaggala of the Easterners into laying siege to the tent of one of the accursed Europeans who had come to steal the antiquities from the temples and tombs, and he put into their heads the idea of killing him and burning his tent and belongings. Before they could carry out what he had put them up to, however, he sent for the man and informed him he had heard that his life was in danger. He then invited him into his home to protect him. When the Eastern zaggala arrived and didn't find him, they plundered his belongings and burnt his tent.

Yousif was aware that the Egyptians gave the highest priority to the safety of those foreigners, more than to that of their own children, so he kept the man in his house for a few days and then took him by stealth to Cairo. And in Cairo, the hoodwinked foreigner said that were it not for Yousif he would have lost his life and been burnt with his tent, so the dupes there rewarded Yousif by appointing him mayor of the oasis and sent with him a large force of Egyptian troops and Bedouin, and this was the cause of my calamity.

The new mayor, with his Egyptian troops, made camp on the outskirts of the town and sent a messenger to the sheikhs of my clan, who had fortified themselves inside the town and prepared their weapons to defend themselves. He informed them that the Egyptians had not come to fight and that if the Easterners were to send a delegation of their sheikhs, they would draw up a settlement with them that would bring peace to the oasis. My people too were taken in by Yousif's trap and a group of them went to the Egyptian camp. As soon as they arrived, however, the Egyptians bound them all with chains and announced that they would hang them if the rest of those who had walled themselves up in Shali did not throw down their weapons and hand over their leaders. When they came to take my father, I cried and clung to him and one of the soldiers hit me with a big stick that cracked my skull and half blinded me.

I remember nothing of my childhood other than those few moments of terror. Even now, in my dreams, countless thick sticks rain down on my head, reminding me of those people, just as my left eye, with which I can now see only shadows, reminds me of them in my waking moments, and just as do my memories of being an orphan and of my helplessness as a child and a boy. But when I was young I learnt my lesson, which was to say nothing and reveal nothing of what I was thinking. At first, this silence was the child of the fear that made me turn in on myself and flee from the company of others. Later it became a useful habit, reminding me of Yousif, who relied on secrecy and trickery to achieve his goals. I made it my aim to be like him so that I could take revenge on his people.

I didn't even let anyone know that I could see only shadows with my left eye. So long as it looked sound, let them think it was sound. And when, after I had memorized the Koran here, my uncles wanted to send me to el Azhar to study, I didn't say that I had no love for Egypt and its people. Rather, I begged them to allow me to study in Tunisia. I have no regret that I studied at the Zeitouna mosque. There I met sheikhs from the south of the country whom I could understand and who understood my language, and who knew my country and its tribes.

There too I met the man who provided me with the book of prophecies. I saw him in the mosque staring at my face so hard that the brilliance of his eyes scared me. He was old and fading but he caught up with me when I went outside and grabbed hold of me so hard I almost fell over. He spoke to me in our language without the accent of the Tunisians and said to me, 'You're the one I've been waiting for!' I realized at once that he was from my clan, but I asked him fearfully, 'And who may you be?' He contented himself by pulling the sleeve of his gallabiya up from his other hand, revealing to me an arm amputated at the elbow. Then he raised his head and I saw a deep scar running from one side of his neck to the other, revealing white flesh not covered by skin, and he said to me, 'You are he to whom the stars have pointed me. You are the one who will take revenge for me and for us all on the Westerners.'

I was afraid of him but did not trust him and wanted to test him. I said, 'There are Westerners who have been wounded as badly as you, or maybe worse, in our wars.' He paid no attention to what I had said but continued his speech. 'I have spent my life here observing the stars and the calculus of the planets and I have read the horoscope of our oasis as though it were an open book. There will be no peace in the oasis until the face of the land has become an unimpeded domain for either us or them.'

His words reminded me of something and I said, 'One of the sheikhs of the Westerners once tried to clear the land of everyone but them and didn't succeed.' I know,' he replied,

'but you will. It is written that you will succeed, and if not, then all these prophecies will come to pass. Until we put paid to our enemies, the fate of those of you who survive will be mine. Warn your people!' Then he provided me with another piece of advice, one of which I was in no need — that I should be ever alert and silent because my clan listened to neither counsel nor warning. Their way was stubbornness and that was the way of the Westerners too, but I would be able to achieve by guile what I could not achieve by fighting. I had learnt this lesson before he told it to me and my thirst for revenge on our enemies exceeded his: I do not remember even the features of my father's face but I remember my hatred for those who killed him. Is it not just that I should seek revenge for him and myself?

I do not know how true the prophecies of this self-exiled Easterner are but I repeat them in the hope that they will come true and I also repeat them to terrorize them with. It is only through fear that I can rule them.

All that my clan has done so far has not assuaged my rancour. True, they killed Mayor Yousif in a battle before he could be congratulated on holding the office for one year, and we were victorious over the Westerners thereafter in other wars. But our victory wasn't what I'd been dreaming of. It wasn't final enough to clear the Earth of all but us, as the writer of the prophecies had wanted. On the contrary, we would beat them and they would beat us. We would make alliances and then break our alliances, and this will continue until God knows when so long as we haven't learnt how to plan even better than Mayor Yousif.

In the past, I thought that the solution was all-out war between the Westerners and the Egyptians, without it appearing that we had any hand in it. That is why I humour both in exactly the same way. I appear to them as the angel of peace and am hoping for the moment when I shall become their angel of destruction, and I try to gain the trust of this disdainful district commissioner who has descended on us, he and his accursed wife, like destiny.

By my enthusiasm for curing Sergeant Ibraheem I also put on a show of solidarity with the family of the child whom he saved, who are from our clan, though I wouldn't have felt sorry for the sergeant if the stone had broken his neck in two. And I seized another great opportunity that my people had, as usual, squandered, when I encouraged them to pay the tax, unlike the Westerners. I know that the holding back by our opponents and the shortfall in the tax will hasten the dispatch of another military expedition, and this time we shall be the innocent party and the war will be between the Westerners and the Egyptians only. I may be able to light its spark from a distance, as did Yousif. I explained to my people, albeit with the greatest caution, what we might gain if we fulfilled our tax commitments and left the rebellion and disobedience to our opponents, but competitiveness took possession of them. 'We shall never pay as long as they don't! How can we take the initiative to pay before they do?'