Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

The leader’s sudden interest was obvious. So the warrior looked round at the nobles’ faces and then continued, “Didn’t my master ask the wretch back then why he had raised an iniquitous hand and stolen from the homes of immigrants a purse accepted as a trust?”

The leader shook his turban no in response to this suggestion. Then Ahallum explained, “My master doesn’t know that the wretch’s only reason for the theft was the lord of all reasons in the desert.”

He fell silent. Eventually, he declared, “A beautiful woman!”

The leader exclaimed involuntarily, “A beauty!”

“Yes, master. A beautiful woman is the cause. The wretch had fallen in love with a girl who had lost both parents. Her guardian was a disgusting woman, a distant relative. The wretch had asked the guardian for her hand in marriage, but the old woman exploited the girl’s beauty to humiliate the young man, requesting such a large sum of money that the lover could only acquire it by theft. After our master banished him from the oasis to punish his foul deed, he returned secretly to the settlement and tried to seize his beloved by brute force. His plot might have succeeded had the guards not cleverly stopped him at the last moment and pulled his poor beloved out of the sack. Then the rascal fled once more, but the wily schemer wasn’t content with this abominable deed and returned some days later to take his beloved to eternity.”

He fell silent. The leader gazed at him in astonishment and asked vacantly, “What are you saying?”

“I mean to say that he slaughtered her, master. He slew her and with the same knife sliced off her right breast before fleeing again.”

“What are you saying?”

“He fled but returned, the way he had each time, because his thirst for revenge would not be slaked till he stabbed the person he held responsible for the calamity.”

“What are you saying?”

“He came back to stab our master, feeling certain that you had caused his suffering when you seized the purse of gold from him.”

“No!”

“We finally found him lurking in the groves in the fields. So we shackled his hands and locked him up. Tomorrow, in public, he’ll receive his punishment.”

“An unbelievable story. A tale fit for ancient storytellers.”

Ahallum exchanged a long, strange, enigmatic look with the chief merchant.

A naughty smile glinted in Imaswan Wandarran’s eyes. In the corner, by the wall, a muffled, evil, hoarse laugh — like a serpent’s hiss — reverberated.

1

The leader’s wretchedness was excruciating.

The leader did not know that, had the wretch been granted a choice, he would have chosen exile over any other homeland. The leader did not know that exile is a punishment only for inhabitants of oases and fainthearted desert dwellers. The leader did not know he had sentenced him to dwell in the other Waw, the original Waw, the real Waw, not the distorted Waw that tribesmen ironically, maliciously, and derisively referred to by this lofty name. The leader did not know. The leader, like all other leaders, was the last to understand that had it not been for the poor creature he left behind in the oasis imprisoned by crumbling structures, the wretch would not have returned and the miserable walls would not have received even a last farewell look from him.

But the beloved changed everything.

The beloved woman changed the desert paradise into a place of exile. His true love converted crumbling walls into a paradise. His true love transformed the real Waw into a despised exile and made the fraudulent Waw seem a heavenly oasis. This ordinary creature would not have been able to perform this magic, this ghostly figure would not have been able to turn the desert upside down, had she been a creature like any other, had she been a beautiful woman like all the others. She was, however, a belle from a different community, a creature from another lineage, and a ghostly figure of another temperament, because she reciprocated her lover’s love.

A belle in love appropriates the female jinn’s potential and turns the desert head over heels. A man who loves a beautiful woman appropriates the secret of the male jinn and in his pursuit of his true love turns the desert upside down.

2

He did not capture her heart by mastering poetry, the way Lotharios are wont to do, and did not win her affections with his brawn, since his mates had criticized his physique and had even sarcastically and derisively nicknamed him “Grasshopper.” He did not take her with the edge of his sword or by any feat of heroism, because he had not received from the heavens any of these attributes. Thus he was not amazed when he fell in love, but he was astonished when his love was returned. How, after all this, did they expect him to fall in love and then forget his true love, the way most lovers did? How could they expect him to refrain from loving his true love a second time and even a thousand times?

3

Yes, yes … he fell in love with her and she loved him too and reciprocated his affection. Then he decided to reward her love with eternal affection and to repay her love a thousand times. He roamed the open countryside for a long time before discovering a ploy. He withdrew from society for a lengthy period while he consorted with Barbary sheep, gazelles, and desert lizards. He settled as a neighbor to the Spirit World’s residents and conversed with the jinn’s priestesses and the Spiritual Kingdoms’ sages before he discovered the talisman and returned to share with her the glad tidings that were his prophecy. He told her he had absented himself for a long time to search for an answer to her question about what it meant for a person to love someone a thousand times over. Then she wept with longing and recited verses to him about her desire to hear this prophecy. He wept too and told her he had heard the mountain peaks, the jinn’s priestesses, and the body language of all the beasts repeat a single phrase in response to this question. He told her that the desert’s creatures had all agreed that loving someone a thousand times means living as if the only being in the desert of whom you are conscious is your beloved.

Oh! If only the Spirit World had granted him poetry’s muse, he would have recited the most exquisite verses about how captivating it is to love someone a thousand times.

4

En route to his thousandfold love, however, he inevitably encountered a ghoul.

It was not an ordinary desert ghoul but a unique type of ghoul previously unknown in the desert’s history. The ghoul was one of a kind, because thousandfold love is unique, as his ancestors had told him in tales. Unlike all the other ghouls, the one that stands guard over thousandfold love cannot be slain by a hero’s sword. It is the sole ghoul that can only be vanquished with treasure, because it safeguards treasure.

The ancestors had warned him about this in their tales too.

5

He set out to gain control of the treasure that would free his thousandfold love from the ghoul’s imprisonment.

The jinn whispered in his breast, and the voices of all creation repeated the jinn’s refrain. The wind hissed the talisman’s secret in his ear. They told him that he would never succeed in gaining the treasure unless he possessed the amulet known as strategic planning. They also told him that this treasure was itself the fruit of strategic planning and that for this reason it would be necessary to rely on strategy to reclaim its offspring.

When he investigated, he realized that caravans traversed the continent, crossing the desert from each of the four directions, bringing from the north loads that were put down en route in oases to exchange for local produce. Then they proceeded further south and marketed their goods within the forestlands’ borders. There they exchanged merchandise from northern and central kingdoms for that coquettish dust. Then they returned by the same route with their find. In the markets of the oases they would display part of their stash, and wizardlike artisans and men with furnaces and hammers would seize the opportunity to transform this dust into gold and to shape the gold into jewelry and coins. Thus the metal increased in brilliance, beauty, and sordidness. The merchants carried their new commodity, their lethal wares, goods that are the only motivation for any conspiracy, the sole reason for which a woman would deceive her mate, a brother would raise a hand to slay his brother, or a prophecy would die on a diviner’s lips. They proceeded with their terrifying wares that had been transformed by wily smiths into a genuine treasure they could proffer as they stormed the central oases and northern kingdoms. He witnessed how it slipped into the oasis and studied the way it drove people insane, disturbing residents’ minds and stripping wisdom from the heads of the wisest sages. He saw its impact on people and believed in its power. Its magic convulsed him, and he began to tremble anxiously whenever he witnessed its gleam. He heard disquieting voices repeat the refrain that the secret’s wares were the market’s destiny. Then someone appeared who claimed these goods were the destiny of oases. Finally, propagandists went even further and avowed that the secret’s wares were life itself. Then he nearly choked in distress, and slipped away from the strongholds of the oasis as though fleeing from a ghoul.