Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

“How can you be so sure?”

“Commerce, not I, is sure about this. I wanted to say that you all will recognize gold, if not today, then tomorrow, because you won’t be able to accept commerce and reject its spirit.”

“What a sneak you are!”

“Forgive me, master, but I’m still waiting for the trust.”

“What did you say?”

“Your slave hasn’t received the trust that wretch seized.”

“Do you really expect me to return the purse full of coins to you?”

“Does my master intend to seize people’s goods? Does my master intend to retain the assets of others?”

“But I’m not the one who revealed the assets’ secret. I’m not the person who told people that the purse contains a pile of gold.”

“My master shouldn’t forget that the law of trusts supersedes all others. My master shouldn’t forget that the legal system decrees that a trust should be returned to its owner, even if it is gold.”

“Can you persuade the oasis’s inhabitants that this is true?”

“Persuading people is the responsibility of the responsible person.”

“What are you saying?”

“I mean to say that addressing the masses is entirely my master’s responsibility.”

“What a shrewd schemer you are!”

“I just want to return the property to its owners.”

“It’s out of the question that what you consider a legal property should be returned to those you consider its owners, after everyone has learned the true nature of the serpent that the purse conceals.”

“My master is making a mistake!”

“What are you saying?”

“My master isn’t merely injuring my rights or those of the owner, but the rights of the Law too.”

“Speaking for myself, I say regretfully that after seizing the purse and its contraband contents, I cannot restore it to someone who deliberately attempted to conceal it from other people.”

“My master’s making a mistake.”

“Is this a threat?”

The chief merchant did not reply. Darkness overwhelmed the fields and stillness dominated the area, causing the spectral scarecrow to look even more august and eerie. They retraced their steps silently, their feet sinking into the muddy mires. A muffled sound rose behind them: a mocking, suppressed laugh, a sob of lament, or a phrase so choked in a throat that it emerged as an indistinct cry.

All sounds resemble each other when muffled.

All opposites seem concordant when a matter is confused.

1

He chose them carefully. He chose men immune to ecstasy, men unaffected by yearning when they listened to melodies celebrating the full moon’s arrival. They were men who had never been observed to lower modesty’s wing in the presence of women or nobles. They had not passionately endeavored to retire with beautiful female jinn into the caves of the chain of blue mountains.

He chose the men with the toughest souls and the most ruggedly intrepid bodies, gathering them in a retreat where he addressed them in a mellifluous voice as if reciting verses of a satirical poem. “Know that we don’t combat the metal of misfortunes because it has, since the most ancient times, been a harbinger of chaos and that we’re not setting forth today to expel it from our homes out of loyalty to the ancient covenant that our ancestors concluded with the jinn tribes. We embark on today’s offensive with the sole aim of defending ourselves, because even youngsters know that this ill-omened metal’s arrival inevitably devastates a land and turns its most distinguished citizens into the most abject. Will you sanction a disgrace in your homes that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemies? Will you allow your souls to be humiliated by the forbidden dust in a way that you wouldn’t accept even from yourselves? Shall we violate a law that each generation has inherited from the previous one and submit to the wishes of greedy people in order to satisfy insatiable bellies?” He also discussed timing, the best moments to begin, and the importance of surprise. He counseled them to reconnoiter and to beware of underestimating tricky strategies and extolled secrecy at length, concluding that it was the key to the affair’s success. When he raised his right hand toward the heavens, his disciples understood that this gesture marked the campaign’s beginning.

2

The man with two veils was granted permission to enter. His protruding cheeks looked pale. The leader saw true anxiety in the man’s eyes. Behind the fading pastel double veils he detected concern.

This concern was soon voiced.

The chief merchant stopped at the entrance and cast him a rather threatening look. In a voice strained by anger, he said, “I thought we had agreed that day.”

“Agreed?”

“I thought you agreed with me when I told you that commerce is a maiden who becomes beautiful only in the shade of a sovereign’s sword. How can you have forsaken me today and slain her with that same sword?”

He smiled and gestured for his guest to sit beside him. The pallor of the man’s cheeks increased. He sighed deeply, and the sound resembled a serpent’s hiss. He told his guest, “Today you resemble an angry child. It’s not seemly for a rational adult to lose his balance, even if he sees raiders kidnap his beautiful maiden.”

“If only the men kidnapping the belle today had been raiders from hostile tribes! Enemies from marauding tribes kidnap. Internal enemies slaughter!”

“I’m grieved to hear you assert that an agreement was reached between us merely because I tried to listen to you like a friend.”

“I thought words differed little from food.”

“I don’t catch your drift.”

“When a wayfarer meets you in the wasteland and nourishes your heart with a secret that assists you in coping with the terrors of the route, isn’t this secret more precious than the morsel of food he places in your knapsack as provender?”

“I’ll grant you that.”

“Then why have you betrayed a tongue that informed you of something no one else had?”

“I wasn’t trying to entice you to say anything you didn’t wish to say.”

“But you know that the organ housed between the jaws cannot be restrained, even by its master, once it has been set free.”

“Is a man blamed for a defect that originates in human nature?”

“A secret, master, is a covenant, and you’re the one who enticed me to talk about the state of the caravans and to discuss commerce’s secret.”

“Did you suppose I would wait for commerce’s secrets to be revealed before launching an attack on the metal of misfortunes?”

“But the attack on gold was an attack on commerce. Or did the words’ gist escape my master that day?”

“The fact is, I don’t remember much of what was said.”

“In any event, it’s out of the question for noblemen to disdain the trust for which my master was responsible.”

“You’re still talking about the trust and the covenant.”

“You didn’t merely reveal my secret, you harmed the entire oasis by profiting from your knowledge of the secret.”

“Today, you not only resemble a child, but you’re even talking like a kid who has lost his puppet.”

“On many occasions a man must channel the obstinacy of childhood when defending himself. A man must on many occasions borrow childhood’s tongue to dare to speak the truth.”

He rubbed his hands together, smiled enigmatically, and said contemptuously, “Fine. What recompense does childhood ask in exchange for freeing the rational adult from error?”

The man with two veils replied with childish obstinacy, “My master would do well to end the campaign.”

“End the campaign?”

“Today, not tomorrow.”