Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

She did not shudder or emit any death rattle. She did not experience the pains of a final death agony, because the two hands the commoners had likened to a jinni’s the day they seized him were better suited to achieving this objective than a sword thrust or a dagger blow.

4

This time he did not flee.

This time he did not have recourse to flight, because he saw no reason to flee. He had fled on the previous occasions not to escape punishment, not to enjoy freedom, but because he wanted to return, to seize an opportune moment to win his thousandfold beloved. Today, after he had realized his dream and gained the bride of eternity for eternity, his reason for struggling had been eliminated and his reasons for fleeing had vanished. So he walked on his own two feet to the guards and asked them to fetter his hands.

They shut him up in a dark place for days before they finally led him to the interrogation.

In the temple plaza, the citizens had gathered. On a hill beside the temple’s sanctuary, the chief merchant sat on a leather mat. Around him hovered nobles, guards, and vassals.

They brought him to a halt in front of the twin-veiled man, who began the interrogation. The wily fellow gazed at the setting sun and looked up as if searching the naked heavens for inspiration or a prophecy. He asked with a coolness inappropriate for the hideousness of the alleged crime, “Tell us first of all what you did to the girl.”

He looked around the area and saw that the alleys continued to spew forth bands of curiosity seekers as the crowds grew more congested. He replied just as coolly, “I did what I had been destined to do. I mean to say that I merely undertook to recoup what I lost one day.”

“Wretch, what did you lose one day?”

“I lost the creature my master refers to as ‘the girl.’”

“What are you saying?”

“I retrieved her from your hands. I retrieved her so that no eye could fall upon her. I hid her so she would remain out of sight. I took her from your hands by force; for this reason I understand my master’s anger, since people can’t bear defeat. People never forgive a victor his victory, even if they realize they will acquire something from his triumph.”

The man with two veils wagged a finger at him. “Watch out! We haven’t come to listen to you discuss what people can and can’t bear. We’ve come to hear you answer a question. So, again: beware!”

The temple plaza was still, even though it was packed with people. In the distance, at the mouths of the alleys leading to the plaza, children were making a ruckus.

The chief merchant asked, “You said you took the girl. But you didn’t say where you concealed her!”

“Master, she’s with me. With me for eternity.”

“If what you claim is true, why don’t we see the poor girl beside you.”

“Because … because my master is blind, like everyone else.”

“Blind?”

“Master, we’re once again, as we were one day, a single person.”

“Wretch, what day are you talking about?”

“A day before we were born.”

“What is this prattle?”

“I answered my master’s question.”

“But why did you remove the poor girl’s breast with a sword and conceal it in a feedbag?”

“I never removed a breast and have never in my life carried a sword.”

The man with two veils gestured to a guardsman, who took a step forward and removed a chunk of flesh from a bloody feedbag. It was tender-skinned and quivering. Dried blood and grains of sand had adhered to its underside. He waved it in the air, and the crowd responded with a suppressed snarl.

The accused man, however, was not shaken. He neither denied nor confessed the deed. In fact, it seemed he was not paying attention, because there was no change in his nonchalant gaze into the void.

The chief merchant resumed the interrogation. “Someone who has confessed to killing the beauty with his own hands would not find it difficult to seize the breast to take as a trophy the way tribes in the forestlands take their enemies’ heads. Isn’t this your secret, wretch?”

“I never removed the breast.”

“Didn’t you stab the leader to avenge yourself because he sentenced you to banishment to punish you for your first offense?”

“I didn’t stab the leader and I didn’t remove the breast.”

“Why did you stab the leader?”

“I owe the leader a payment for his benefaction, not an ungrateful stab wound.”

“Wretch, explain yourself.”

“Had I not left my beloved behind, the leader’s banishment would have been the noblest benefaction and I would never have violated his sentence by returning to the oasis.”

“But you did return, more than once, after that.”

“I returned to retrieve a creature with whom I had once formed a single person.”

“Here we’re borrowing words from a fool’s lexicon again.”

At that moment the crowds were convulsed and people spread the news — like women gossiping — that a messenger from the leader was coming. This news spread quickly and reached the hill’s summit before the messenger did. Then the chief merchant leapt to his feet and gestured to a vassal, who drew his sword and advanced toward the lover. At that same moment the man with the feedbag sprang forward and knocked the turban from the victim’s head with a single blow. The bared head revealed a strange, small face, like a frog’s, crowned by a long braid coiled in a heap at the top of his skull. Cries resounded in the crowd, but the man with two veils gestured again sternly, and the man with the feedbag grasped the braid with his free hand. The swordsman’s weapon gleamed in the rays of the setting sun and then people saw the puny, headless body fall to the ground while the head, which resembled a frog’s face, remained grasped by the man, who brandished it on high. It was bathed by the rays of the setting sun, and people saw in its eyes the serenity of a slaughtered animal. Blood dripped from the bottom of the head, falling plentifully over the feedbag where the quivering breast was tucked.

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5. Islamic mystics have used similar language — words like annihilation — in describing their quest to submit personal volition to God’s will.

1

The previous day, the serpent had invaded his solitude again.

It had emerged from a crack in the wall of an impregnable cave, and he had prodded it playfully with a stick. Its puny size deceived him, and he thought he would torment it a little before smashing its head. But the ignoble reptile leapt toward his lap and would have bitten him had he not jumped to one side just then. He saw two fangs in its mouth and remembered the ancients’ counsels that cautioned against small creatures, warning that snakes, like other animals, are all the more vicious and evil the smaller they are. As he started to shake, he attacked it with a cudgel. It did not succumb easily despite his desperate blows. When it finally died and he saw that its hateful body resembled a discarded rope, he stretched out beside it to catch his breath. He lay on his back and looked at the ancients’ pictures on the cave’s ceiling. He journeyed far away with these creatures. Some men wore strange round turbans with feathers on top, and other men — with bodies camouflaged by animal skins and long tails trailing behind them — were hunting Barbary sheep. Giant women had generous breasts. Pygmy-like figures held arrows, spears, and other weapons.

He went a great distance with his ancestors and then fell asleep, or nearly. He actually did fall asleep because he did not notice the fearful body’s emanation from the Unknown, the wall, or the puny body he had slain with the cudgel. He returned from his journey to find above his head a viper cloaked in burnished scales, threatening him with three, four … countless heads, each containing fangs more vicious than wild beasts’ tusks.