Ibrahim al-Koni - The Scarecrow

At first the belle did not understand what he meant by saying he would “carry her to the fields” in his arms. She suspected the matter was some sort of joke that foreigners enjoy or an innocent caprice that citizens encounter in the conduct of artisans and that the tribes know in the eccentricities of poets. She was offended, however, and bolted away after doubt whispered in her breast and she grasped the hidden meaning of this allusion. She confided his offer to her girlfriends, who winked at each other, laughed, mocked her, and told their grannies who then asked her, “What’s the harm in that? Will a man do something to a woman she does not want — even if he is alone with her in the fields? Fool, you should realize that the fool we call ‘man’ is merely a puppet that only does with a woman what the woman wants. Which is the lesser of the two evils: letting your herds be destroyed when their destruction entails your own, or going to the fields to play with a doll called ‘man’?”

The beautiful woman hesitated for a time, but her hesitation did not last long because the nightly massacres of her flocks drove her to the cunning artisan.

5

Once the scarecrow was erected in the fields to guard over the herd’s corral, the unidentified enemy vanished.

The enemy did not merely vanish; people were astounded to find a rascal’s corpse stretched out beside the corral a few days later. On the slain man’s neck they found blue marks that clearly showed the wretch had been strangled. Then they spread a rumor that this scarecrow differed from all the others, because it had a real creature hidden inside it. Some went even further and contended that this august body contained the person of the sorcerer himself, who had constructed this fearsome puppet with wooden poles that he clad with camel skin. Finally he stretched strips of fabric and scraps of linen over the hollow body. Then, as darkness fell, the despicable man glided through the twilight gloom to enter his vile hideout, where he spent the night, to emerge at dawn and slip back to his workshop. Others said that slaughtering the entire herd was merely a sorcerer’s trick the astute artisan had used to conquer the poor widow, with whom he had fallen in love the first day. Her livestock corral had seemed the best way to win her, because sorcerers know better than anyone else that a person’s heart is a pawn of his wealth and that a creature’s weak point is what he possesses. When spiteful people pointed out the scarecrow’s true nature in hopes of smoking out the cunning strategist, they were surprised to hear him say, “The scarecrow is twofold. One scarecrow frightens away the wasteland’s beasts and predatory birds. The second terrifies human jackals, who would not be scared if it weren’t the real thing.” Then he released an evil laugh, which was muffled and as hoarse as the rattle of a man choking or the hiss of a serpent. This was the laugh they heard repeatedly from the mouth of his detestable dummy once it was erected in an empty place in the fields.

Sages, trying to be fair to this ignoble man, said that the scion of strangers had not wished to cause any harm, for if his work had not been beneficial, he would not have freed the oasis from the evil of the rascal whose body was dumped at the feet of the scarecrow when it was first erected. Mean-spirited men, however, considered this action a crime of the most repulsive sort and asserted that, since the damn rotter had feared he might be discovered, he had tempted to the site an innocent fool, whom he had killed with his own hands to provide people evidence of the culprit’s existence (to which the seer had alluded), and to dispel doubts concerning his own plot.

If narrators differed about the circumstances of the puppet’s erection and the puppet master’s intentions, they agreed that the specter who emerged to meet the Council of Elders on that ill-omened evening was none other than the scarecrow from the fields. They offered as evidence the disappearance of the sorcerer of the Unknown from his workshop and the fact that no one saw him in the oasis thereafter.

1

“Here are the rewards from Luck’s ally for the good opinion that Luck’s emissaries hold of him.”

He touched the bulging leather bag, which was decorated with magical designs, and held it up toward the elders’ faces as his eyes glinted mischievously. Then he added, “Don’t belittle its size, because within it you will find everything you desire!”

The council members exchanged a look that combined doubt, astonishment, and disparagement. The chief merchant protested, “Our master compensates us for our good opinion of him with a gift that shows his poor opinion of us.”

“Poor opinion?”

“Does our master think we are ascetics to whom he can fling a paltry pouch and then say we’ll find everything we want inside it?”

The new governor rubbed his dark hands together. Then he pulled an intensely black veil around his protruding cheeks as a nasty smile gleamed in his eyes. With the chilly hauteur of residents of the Spirit World descending to the tribes’ hamlets dressed as wayfarers, he retorted, “I still feel certain that each hand will find in my modest pouch everything the soul desires.”

“Does our master know that the soul desires more than the hand can reach? Does our master realize that the soul desires whatever the eye sees and that even this does not satisfy it? Then it also craves whatever it creates for itself in the imagination.”

“I know. Trust me: I know.”

“Then are you still certain that your knapsack can satisfy the greed of a soul that only dirt ultimately fills?”

The enigmatic smile flickered in his eyes again, and he said with great conviction, “The gifts in my little pouch will cure souls of greed and feed nations gold dust, not dirt.”

A laugh escaped from the chief merchant’s mouth. He laughed like a hooligan till he leaned back and his veil slipped from his mouth. Then his comrades observed depressingly black teeth in that cavity. He sat up straight and tightened the veil around his nose before asking, “Does our master wish to persuade us that all the treasures that the residents of the Spirit World have accumulated down through the ages and hidden in unknown reaches of the desert reside inside it?”

“If our venerable companion desires treasures, I will produce treasures for him from the knapsack.”

“But I’m the chief merchant of this oasis and won’t be satisfied, master, with a trinket.”

“I wager that the chief merchant of the oasis will find a gift in the pouch that is fit for the chief merchant of the grandest oases.”

“I am astonished to hear in my master’s speech a certitude that puts to shame any I have ever heard from a man’s mouth.”

“A wise head doesn’t look disdainfully at anything, no matter how trifling it appears to the eye.”

“Now we are hearing the language of the Spirit World’s residents who visit our dwellings camouflaged with the clothing of travelers.”

“Hasn’t the time come for us to discover what these souls desire so we can finally complete this task?”

The chief merchant looked round at his companions’ faces. In his eyes they read a challenge, a call to arms, and a thirst for sport. So he turned back to their mysterious companion, around whose neck the fates had hung the title “leader.” As if reading from an inscription burned with hot iron onto a square of leather, he said, “My longstanding dream has been to fasten around my waist a gold belt. Should I hope to find in my master’s quiver a gift of gold dust fashioned into a belt?”

He leveled a derisive look at the leader and then turned toward his comrades, in whose eyes he observed a supercilious expression. The leader’s eyes, however, acquired the merry look his companions had only witnessed previously in the eyes of adversaries who wait patiently to strike. He patted the leather — which was stamped with amulets — and then stuck his other hand into the mouth of the satchel, from which he extracted an object wrapped in a piece of faded dark linen. Placing the package on his lap, he untied it with the slow deliberation of a person enjoying his task. Finally he reached the item, seized the end of it the way a hunter grabs a rabbit by its tail, and held it up. Then a parlous glint ignited in thin air, and the group saw a gold belt as wide as a knuckle. It was fabricated from very minute pieces the daintiness of which added to the belt’s charm and extraordinary allure. The pieces were arranged vertically in delicate links and spread out horizontally with pieces that were even smaller but all the more captivating.