Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

The traveler vanishes at times when the desert is veiled by indifference’s scarf, but passion refuses to keep company with indifference. The desert thinks that with indifference it eradicates passion the way it eradicates living creatures, but passion — like the serpent — is not eradicated and does not vanish. There is only one way to slay the serpent: to cut off its head. Passion, however, persists, even headless. It is possible to slay the passionate lover this way. It is also possible to deliver a coup de grâce to the beloved, but there’s no way to slay the passion. What is headless does not die, because a headless person does not vanish.

Tribal poets say this about a single passion. So what might they say if they discovered a thousandfold passion? Will they not believe, as I do, that the Spirit World, which is incapable of slaying even once a single passion, will be incapable of slaying a thousandfold passion a thousand times?

2

He hid in the fields till the curtains of darkness fell. Then he slipped out and entered the alleys. He concealed himself in a corner of the yard, waiting for the guardian to leave on a visit to a neighbor or to run an errand, but the despicable demon did not emerge. From his hiding place he listened intently but at first heard only the rumpus of children in nearby alleyways. He transformed his whole body into attentive ears and discerned inside the house a faint murmur but could not make out the voices. He pushed on the outside door but found it bolted from the inside. He inspected the yard’s wall on the alley side but found it was hard and smooth, without any sign of a bulge that might help him climb it. He turned the other way and checked the wall on the side parallel to the buildings down the neighboring alley, discovering that here the wall was shorter. In fact, it became increasingly insignificant the farther back it went. At the far corner, the wall was not only less substantial but rougher and more neglected as well. He climbed the wall and scaled it easily. He leapt to the inner courtyard, where he saw the treasure’s guard by the light of the fire next to the house’s door, which was ajar. She was tending a cauldron set on three stones, adding a stick to the fire at times and then returning to lean over the garment piled on her lap in order to favor herself — and perhaps the beloved, who was squirreled away in one of the house’s corners — with incomprehensible crooning.

He hugged the wall, cleaving to it till he became part of it. He scrutinized the she-demon: she truly was demonic. Her face was marked by deep wrinkles that rent her entire visage, increasing in width as they neared her “trussed” mouth, which was wrapped with another bandage of creases even uglier and more objectionable. Her hooked nose was also coated by a network of lines that resembled the protuberant veins that climbed up her face to encircle her sunken eyes and disguise her features until her whole head seemed to be a block covered by tree bark.

She stopped crooning and moaned an ancient melody. Her thread escaped from the eye of her needle, which she attempted to rethread, struggling for a long time. Then in an anxious and desperate motion, she thrust it toward her companion. At that moment he saw her. At that instant he saw her shadow as if he were seeing her for the first time. At that moment he saw his thousandfold beloved. At that moment a feverish ecstasy possessed him, and he perceived in an exalted flash — like sparks of illumination or a glowing ember of prophecy — that he had been created solely to become the mate of the thousandfold beloved and that the only reason she had been born was to become his. He also perceived that neither the desert’s laws nor the heavens’ fates could alter this situation and separate two creatures who had from the beginning, from before they were born, been a single being in two bodies.

3

He told her, once they were alone, that he had failed to acquire the treasure and that all they could do was flee. She replied in a tone unaffected by girlish shyness, “Do what you will.” He lifted her to his shoulders and carried her through the dark alleys once the oasis slumbered. He took the route beside the wall on the eastern side, avoiding the guards of the western and southern gates. He entered the fields and constructed a ladder from palm trunks. He probably would have succeeded had he not been denounced by the eerie scarecrow about whose conduct the oasis people recount legendary tales.

Today he realized that it had certainly never been a scarecrow. It was, rather, an unruly type of jinni wrapped in a scarecrow’s rags, for he heard a suppressed snicker the moment he finished preparing the trunks and was ready to take flight. This became a hideous chortle that rattled in the chest, sounding like repulsive keening — fit for the spawn of the Spirit World. The insane guffaw did not last long, however, because a commotion followed on its heels, swallowing every other sound. This was a mixture of human clamor, the cries of herdsmen, the chattering of the populace, and a disagreeable shriek like the braying of a donkey. The commotion did not merely cause the walls to vibrate but shook the entire oasis. His terror at what he heard lasted until the guards surprised him and grabbed hold of him.

He did not grasp what happened next.

He remembered only that he broke free before they had conveyed the couple to the first alley. He bolted to the walls, reached the shadows, and then the gloom of the alleyways swallowed him.

When he slipped into her house some nights later, he heard from her lips the same charm: “Do what you will.”

He came to her after losing a sense of whether it was day or night. His struggle with mankind had left him dizzy; his quarrel with the fates had gotten the best of him, and fever, thirst, and fasting had exhausted him.

He came, but not the way he always had before. He did not bat an eyelid. His body did not feel feverish. There was no crazed look in his eye. He came like a ghost, crowding into the corner like any stranger. With eyes that did not even recognize her, he gazed at her by the light of the fire burning in the hearth. Was this a desperate person’s submission, the tranquility of a recluse, or the determination of a hero anticipating his final battle?

He said in a barely audible voice, “I’ve come for the last time.”

She replied in the same whisper, “I knew you would.”

“But I’ll never come again.”

She did not respond.

“Will you come with me?”

“I’ve always come with you. I’ve always been with you.”

“If I don’t take you today, the skin merchant will take you tomorrow.”

“I know. He has made preparations to take me even faster than you think.”

“Are you coming with me?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“Yes.”

A gleam sparkled in his eye — a strange gleam. Was it a spark of inspiration? A flash of prophecy? The omen of an earthquake? This flash glowed with a sign unfamiliar to mankind. For this reason it would have struck terror into the hearts of even the jinn.

The gleam vanished, however. Immense submission returned to pulse through his eyes.

He whispered, “I haven’t wanted to do anything you don’t agree to.”

“I know.”

“The skin dealer won’t take you if you come.”

“I know.”

“No one will ever take you.”

“I know.”

“Your guardian, the leader, and the guards won’t bring you back.”

“I know.”

“Neither mankind nor the jinn will acquire you.”

“I know.”

“We’ll again become the single being we once were.”

Before she could murmur her “I know,” he left his corner quietly, and the look in his eyes blended submission, nobility, affliction, and certainty. He stood over her and removed the scarf from her head. He caressed the plaits of her hair with a cold, steady hand, which seemed an iron rod, not the palm of a thousandfold lover. He knelt down and with his other hand fondled her swelling breast, which tilted up, taut, like a bow. This hand was cold as well, but steady. Then he took her head with both hands and gazed into her eyes with the same stern look combining submission, nobility, affliction, and certainty. He stroked her entrancing neck and her right earlobe before his fingers slipped forward to close her eyelids. He trembled with a sudden shiver, but this passed, because his hands moved to her neck and clamped round her throat with an insane, eternal, iron grip.