Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

He discerned the sign in the sphere. He received a prophecy from the history of the Camel and the Calf. He perceived the omen and realized that the immortal mother would on the morrow open her arms to him.

In the morning he picked up his meager provisions and set forth before the sun could surprise him.

He did not change course the way careless people would. Instead he chose the same direction he had selected the day before, because setting a new course is an error the desert will not forgive. In the wasteland’s language, insistence on a new route is called oscillation, hesitation, loitering, and walking in place. A traveler who wishes to reach a destination does not circle around an area unless he wants to become that area’s prisoner. An area’s prisoner is not called a traveler in the desert’s customary law; he has become a stray.

Overhead, the sun’s tyranny persisted. In the barren land the mirage’s floods spilled forth, but the eternal, copper-colored wasteland was intolerant and unyielding and did not waive its threat. Into its immortal expanse a new sign descended. In its severe calm a new signal appeared. In the wasteland, in its competition with itself, with its rough body, which continues endlessly and never stops regenerating itself, a new prophecy appeared, borrowing a new veil woven from hurtful indifference. This indifference, which ignored beings and mocked the fates of creatures, paid no heed to whether those afflicted were people or livestock. This indifference is a snare for strays, because it terrifies and disorients them, making them feel desperate. Then they defeat themselves, because they submit to their destinies even before those destinies have judged them. The latent cause is always their ignorance of the desert’s modus operandi. These wretched intruders do not know that when the desert dons a veil of indifference this is a sign of contrition. If the naked landscape disguises itself and hides behind indifference, then the exile, which is multiplied and threatens to endure, struggles against the banished man’s death agony.

He smiled mischievously beneath his veil and surrendered to the expanse the way dry weeds surrender to the wind’s assault or the way straw yields to an unruly flood. He abandoned himself to allow the naked land to lead him to any country it wished. He allowed himself to become the naked land’s pawn, because he knew that the noble wasteland would never renege on a covenant made with a person who surrendered himself as its hostage. He had learned that — from time immemorial — progress through the desert has been like swimming through water, like floating in the spring-fed ponds of oases. You must relax and give your body totally to the water if you want to stay afloat. In the desert, too, arrogant people who act obstinately succumb. In the desert those who think they have been granted enormous knowledge and who therefore debate and resist will perish. The desert takes vengeance on this group with its labyrinth. The other group, those who surrender control to the wasteland and seek the desert’s protection against the desert, survives.

10

His assumption was not mistaken.

At midday, the labyrinth suddenly fell away and he found himself overlooking the lip of an expansive, deep valley. The side from which he had approached was a very high, mountainous cliff, and the far side of the valley was too distant for him to see. In the flat land at the bottom he not only observed dense trees, which twisted through gentle valleys that curved as they ran south, but caught sight of areas covered with plentiful, intensely green grass. These spread along the borders of the clefts in magnificent swaths and encroached on the sides of the gentle valleys that branched off from the main valley, the far side of which was out of sight.

Exile died, and paradise came into view.

With the skill of a Barbary sheep, he descended from the craggy summit, and the scent of flowers, moisture, and fresh grass greeted his nostrils. Overcome by a trancelike vertigo, he thought about the miraculous desert clouds that baffle even the most cunning shepherds — where they originate, how they collect, what route they follow, where they empty their load, or in which sky they then dissipate. These experts not only do not understand the clouds’ nature but are amazed by their ability to flaunt the law of the seasons, because they pay no attention to whether it is winter or summer, spring or fall. They hold back in winter when people expect them, denying their blessing, while generously bestowing their rainfall in a season when sunshine is at its most searing, as in summer. Thus aged shepherds clap their hands together to announce their incompetence when they exclaim, “Not even the wiliest diviner can predict the course of the desert’s rains.”

The paradise where the immortal wasteland ended, the paradise that appeared suddenly in the abyss at his feet, was also a gift of the uncanny desert clouds.

11

He roamed through his paradise for days and nights. In the low-lying lands across the gulches leading down to the ravines, he plucked the fruits of this paradise. He found delicious truffles that made him forget his banishment and propelled him into kingdoms that one rarely reaches, sees, or even contemplates.

In the valleys he ambushed lizards, hunted hares, and gathered eggs from birds.

On the mountainous cliff faces he located caverns that contained pools flooded with running water.

The leader had sent him into exile, and then the most compassionate mother of all transformed his place of exile into a paradise.

He reveled in this gift, enjoying the stillness of his isolation. So he felt happy. Deeming himself content, he committed an offense that everyone savoring the taste of contentment inevitably commits. He raised his voice in worried songs and awakened in those uncharted areas the thousandfold love. It did not merely wake up; it intoxicated him as if he were in a trance. So he found himself trembling ecstatically and struggled with his fever, as if possessed. The carpet of grass disappeared from the slopes and the trees vanished from the valley bottoms. The earth swallowed the truffles, and the gazelles, lizards, hares, and every sort of bird fled from the area. The waters of the pools tucked into the caverns of the cliff faces evaporated, as this paradise turned into a tenebrous abyss.

He resisted for a time. He butted the boulders with his head for days. He charged through desolate wastes as if the jinn had possessed him. He thought he might outstrip his belly’s ghoul by racing, but these measures kindled the flame and the fever’s fire continued unabated. So he shot off running and continued running, running, and running. He did not stop running until the walls of the oasis halted him.

1

He did not consider what he would do until the gate brought him up short. He did not think about the process that had brought him back from the lands of exile till he was slipping into the fields, pushing between trees like a madman. He did not premeditate anything. In the shadows of his affliction he sought no burning ember, because he did not wish to discover in the prisons of despair any fissure that would show the way. After he had left, he had surrendered his affairs to the desert, and the noblest of mothers had provided his heart a carefree indifference — the immortal nonchalance that destroys living creatures, terminates the migrant, eradicates passion, and also exiles the desert from the desert. The desert annihilates itself and watches the wasteland’s creatures from its new homeland in annihilation. Then no one believes any longer that there is an existence for the desert in the desert. No one believes any longer that anyone can traverse a desert that has no place in it for the desert. So the traveler, finally, doubts his own existence and soon migrates to the vicinity of the desert, in annihilation’s homeland, to become a cranny in extinction’s edifice. 5