Ibrahim al-Koni - The Puppet

1

In the blacksmiths’ market, he gestured to Aghulli that he wanted a word with him in private.

They silently traversed the alleys leading to the temple plaza, where they saw a throng of nobles standing in a circle and debating with a wariness born of respect for ceremony. The two men avoided the group and went off to the east. They walked along in silence until they reached the secluded area leading to the fields that lay beyond the spring.

There the hero spoke for the first time, “I wanted to share with you what the commoners are saying.”

Aghulli smiled enigmatically and rolled a smooth stone with his elegant sandal. He perused the tracks on the patch of earth: human tracks and those of animals as well. Camels’ hoofprints were superimposed on human footprints, and human feet had trampled camels’ hoofprints. Reptiles crawling through the nights’ gloom had attempted to erase the tracks of both people and beasts. Mice had come to swipe grains of barley from the camels’ droppings, and dung beetles had rolled dung to their lairs.

The smile in Aghulli’s eyes grew more enigmatic. The hero Ahallum spoke. “They came to me yesterday for the third time, repeating what they told me the first time.”

He stopped. Aghulli did not respond, and so the hero paused a moment before saying, “They said they want to have a leader, like all the other tribes.”

He fell silent. Aghulli also clung to the stillness, and their footsteps sounded twice as loud. Their breathing resembled the Qibli’s roar. 1They covered some more distance and entered the thicket of date palms adjoining the spring’s boundaries. Then Aghulli spoke for the first time, “Aren’t they content with the tomb’s leadership?”

“They said they want a leader who walks on two feet.”

“Have they observed in leaders who walk on two feet any wisdom greater than that of our leader who rests in the temple’s tomb?”

“Who can convince the populace? What tongue can debate with the masses? In the past I thought that heroism was demonstrated by the sword’s blade. But in recent years I have started to question this conviction. I have begun to see that true heroism is not achieved by the sword. Persuading the gullible to proceed down the path of wisdom is an incomparably greater form of heroism.”

“How determined do they sound?”

“They not only sound determined but act obstinate.”

“I don’t like this!”

“If you want me to be candid, I’ll tell you that I not only found their conduct to be obstinate but detected in their language the whiff of a conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy?”

“Yes. They debate with merchants, experts, and strangers by night and then pound on the doors of noblemen by day, making heretical suggestions.”

“You’re right. Abandoning the leader’s way seems ill-omened.”

“Worst of all, people won’t continue on the path declared by prophecy much longer.”

“You’re right. In this campaign is concealed a conspiracy that seeks to lead members of the tribe from the true path and send them back to the land of earthly rulers who walk on two feet.”

“For this reason I wanted to consult you before expressing an opinion in the council of nobles.”

“You’ve done well, because they wouldn’t have come to you had they not given up on me.”

The hero stopped and gazed at his companion with genuine astonishment. He was silent for a time. Finally he cried out, “Really?”

Aghulli bowed his head. He perused the secret signs in the tracks of the mice, dung beetles, and lizards. Then he said, “They spoke for a long time and numbed my head with arguments they had dredged up somewhere. They said that people who spring from the earth need an earthly leader, while people of the heavens need a heavenly one. They said that the Law will never pardon the council the error it committed in choosing a creature who had become a heavenly person and appointing him commander over the earth’s communities. They said that the sons of the heavens were created to assume responsibility for those in the heavens, not for those who struggle on their feet in the desert’s desolation. They said … they said a lot and favored me with arguments I almost believed.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know whether jurists would term these whispered insinuations, but to tell the truth, I found a disorienting temptation in their arguments, even though I wouldn’t say they’re right.”

“Really?”

“But tell me how you answered them.”

The hero sighed deeply, the way exhausted and miserable people do. He clasped his hands behind his back, studied the horizon, which was flooded with copious late-morning sunshine, and then said, “What could a man whose profession has been learning how to grasp a sword — not dwelling on matters that require the intellect’s judgment — say? Yes, I told them each time that leadership has never been the responsibility of heroes. I told them that they ought to call on me during a raid and not approach my house during peacetime. I told them that my place is beside the leader, not on the leader’s throne. I told them that they would need to search for a leader among those who have learned to use their heads, not from men who only know how to use their hands.”

“You did well.”

“I don’t know whether I did well, because I detected nothing in their conduct to indicate that they were convinced.”

“It’s impossible for the tongue to convince a man who has decided to achieve his goal at any price.”

“You’re right. And what I realized was that they weren’t thinking with their minds but with their hearts.”

They walked through the Oases Gate. Beyond the wall of the oasis extended a level, barren wasteland that was constantly reborn and crossed by wayfarers gripped by a feverish longing for its eternal horizon.

Aghulli said, “What perplexes me is the use they make of tribal histories when setting their hearts on acquiring a leader who walks on two feet.”

“I’m afraid they’ve derived no benefit from these and are guided by desire, which led earlier generations of commoners.”

“Did you say ‘desire’? I won’t conceal from you my fear of this word … for some secret reason I don’t understand.”

“You’re right to fear desire. I heard a sage say that we will never fear the almighty Spirit World if we don’t fear desires.”

“Are we obliged to surrender to the desire of a people who have adopted desires as their law?”

“We have no choice.”

“Why are we obliged to submit?”

“Because we in the council of nobles are a minority and they in the oasis are the swarming majority.”

“In the wasteland, even though they were the swarming majority there too, the council never yielded to their desires.”

“The wasteland has a law and the oasis another. In the wasteland there is the desert, which is the finest coach for the desires of passionate people.”

“I never thought of that before. It seems the desert is truly sovereign over the hearts of the masses.”

“Don’t imagine that people obey a ruler merely because he’s wise. The desert, however, is a priestess on whom the leader depends more than on the prophecies of the diviner, the opinions of the nobles, or even the dicta of the ancestors.”

“I’ve really begun to share your point of view. In the past, power’s secret lay in the desert’s hand.”

“Today, though, power is in their hands, not the desert’s, because the walls of the oases nourish in people’s souls a ghoul that dozed when we lived in the desert.”

“Why didn’t I ever think of that before?”

“This ghoul is what we metaphorically and cryptically term ‘desire.’”