Ibrahim al-Koni: The Puppet

4

During the first days it was said that — thrilled by the she-jinni’s beauty — a stranger, whom the oasis had recently welcomed, had sought her out late one dark night, hoping to be alone with her. Later, however, sages acquitted the sons of foreigners of this deed, saying that eyewitnesses had seen a scion of the nobles shoot past in the gloom, fleeing after calling for relief from his calamities.

Shortly thereafter, lips whispered to each other that more than one man had intruded on the beauty’s tent, that one love-struck man had slipped in beside the girl in her bedchamber before the other and had begun to pour into her ear the type of lie that the tribe’s cavaliers customarily poured into the ear of any object of their affection, because they felt certain that lying is love’s talisman and that passion is a treasure attainable only by prevarication. The foreigner’s daughter, however, was rankled by this intrusion and jumped up in alarm. Then the second suitor arrived and lay down in another corner of her bedchamber. When the new arrival discovered the presence of a rival, he attacked. They exchanged insults and drew their swords. The she-jinni’s terror increased and she found herself obliged to avail herself of her fatal voice. So she sang her moaning lament.

The identities of the two rivals might have remained a secret forever had people not noticed that the two most prominent nobles in the oasis were confined to their residences. Thus Aghulli missed the council, and the hero Ahallum did not attend either. So the sages sent someone in search of them, but they both sent their apologies, alleging an unforeseen illness. When the council’s members visited in order to reassure themselves, they found that Aghulli had fastened an imposing bandage around his left wrist and that the hero had wrapped his neck with thick cloths, which he attempted to conceal beneath his veil. The matter might have remained merely conjectures concocted by the imaginations of the populace, who were unable to enjoy life without novel rumors and imagination’s embellishments, had the nobles of the oasis not noticed the frigidity between the two rivals, who had recently been close friends. They now avoided each other. When they did meet and were obliged by the laws of the council to converse, they spoke with an antipathy not lost on discerning individuals. Earnest folk (who always spoke wisely in the tribes’ settlements although no one paid any attention to them) said, “When strife flares between two friends, we don’t need to search for some distant secret, because a beautiful woman, like a serpent that bites and immediately spews out its venom, will be positioned nearby.”

5

Confusion prevailed and wails resounded within the walls of the oasis.

Women howled behind the mute sibyl, and girls and boys cried aloud. The most intellectually resolute participated too by lamenting and weeping for a long time.

Despite the enormous uproar, the she-jinni’s voice soared above the houses with the wings of a bird, descended from the heavens like a revelation, and swallowed the crowd’s voices. It overcame the disorder and was clearly audible, pure, comprehensible, and painful, invoking some undisclosed calamity, presaging seduction, death, and a quest for a distant objective.

In every corner and space people rubbed shoulders, and folks congregated in the temple plaza. The streets were packed, and citizens flooded down the alleyways till the market was jammed. They spread through every open space as far as the bare ground by the well and the heights of the fields adjoining the Oases Gate.

The council convened, and the hostile glances that the two rivals exchanged while they continually wiped away tears did not escape clever people, who were sobbing too. The most steadfast men in the council were content to hold back their tears and sob privately. They carried in the venerable elder on a litter woven from fronds and leafless palm branches. One of the slaves stepped forward and picked up the frail body, which he deposited at the center of the council as if it were a heap of straw. Emmamma immediately sat up and straightened his elegant veil, which was dyed a gleaming blue. After glancing at everyone with his small eyes, he proceeded to stare off into space before swaying and releasing the lengthy moan that could only have emerged from the chest of a creature who had craved the life of eternity and had long been liberated from his painful existence among men. This sigh of other homelands was a balm for those suffering from the thrusts of the jinn’s songs. Later the nobles claimed that Emmamma had demonstrated greater fortitude than they not because of any mysterious power but because old age had deafened and protected him against the tune that poisoned the bodies of the impudent and flattened the strongest men of the tribe. Others went further, saying that the secret lay in the origin of his moan; Emmamma won because he had procured his song from the land where the mute woman had obtained her lethal tune.

On that day, Emmamma spoke with a tongue the heavens plucked from each of the elders, because those who possessed a tongue were resisting the affliction and had lost their minds. He terminated a debate for which people had no strength by saying, “Raise the matter of the woman intruder with the temple’s virgin. Or, have you forgotten that we only resort to that place to appeal for someone to speak to us intelligently when afflictions have deprived us of the intellect’s grace?”

Everyone groaned tearfully, and the council’s messenger advanced, weeping, toward Emmamma.

6

That day Imaswan Wandarran performed a feat recounted for generations and celebrated by female poets in their songs.

They said he had been monitoring the situation from the start, searching for a stratagem that would allow him to counter the threat. So he hastened to a trencher and made dough from flour while trembling with dread, desire, and longing like all the other warriors. Then he stopped up his ears with bits of this dough. Thus the sound and his fever were diminished. The voice did not vanish forever, but he chanted ballads to overpower the song of seduction and to slay the melody. He carried the bowl to the alleys, where people were swarming and wails and roars resounded. He hastened to the warriors and began to shove dough in their ears to restore them to their senses. He found the herald shouting and calling for the nobles to convene a council. So he thrust dough in his ears and rushed forward to rescue as many as he could. He collected a group of warriors and forced his way through the crazed throngs, proceeding till he reached the weeping soprano’s tent. He assaulted the mute woman and gagged her mouth with a piece of linen. Then people attacked him, but the warriors defended him against the mob and expelled the she-jinni from the settlements of the oasis. People threw stones at him, spat after him, brandished swords, staffs, and knives in his face, but he was able to take the female intruder far away.

The messenger returned with the female diviner’s admonition. With tears in his eyes, he read the piece of leather: “The leader sends you the good news that the civil disturbance has been buried, the danger has ceased, and the tribe is no longer in need of counsel.” The nobles did not understand this report until they learned what Imaswan Wandarran had accomplished. Listening carefully, they discovered that the voice hovering over their heads had fallen silent.

7

Informed sources related that eventually people of every age and race trailed after the woman, following her down ravines and over the elevated ridges to the north. Once the burden was removed, the affliction dispersed, and people awoke from their intoxication. Survivors then followed the trail, searching for their kith and kin, but found that everyone who had accompanied the accursed woman had died of thirst and disorientation. As for the she-jinni, they never found any trace of her.