Ibrahim al-Koni - The Scarecrow

But he knew better than to ask too many questions. He knew that what is covert is the Spirit World’s share and that he had no right to question a matter that time had not brought to the badlands. He knew that stubborn resistance to a sign differs from a hero’s stubborn resistance to enemies with spears or swords. He knew that obtaining a prophecy’s text was easier than expounding it and that the exegesis of a prophecy was easier than searching for the secret behind a prophecy.

But … how could he find a woman in this desert who had known only her husband? In an oasis where nations mixed together, where a babel of foreign tongues was heard, where human nature was up for grabs — would he be able to locate a woman protected by the amulet of faithfulness? Would he discover anywhere in the desert even one woman who had never cheated on her husband — if not with her body surely at least in her heart? Would the Spirit World generously provide news from the Spirit World without inserting into the message an impossible condition? Didn’t the Spirit World say prophetically that woman could deceive even herself — as she was always happy to do — but could not deceive the Spirit World a single time?

But….

But why look so far? Why would he need to hunt far away when the creature whose chastity was discussed in poems and whose conjugal faithfulness her female companions lauded did not live in the homelands of the ancient epics, but slept beside him? Wasn’t his wife the only creature whose chastity would never be doubted — not even by the dread Spirit World — after people’s tongues had spoken of it and crowned her head with chastity?

4

Man’s liquid caused the dispute between the sorceress and her neighbor. Ancient cautionary tales report that the sorceress heard her neighbor disparage the value of this liquid and call it polluted. So she scolded and cautioned her. But like any other chatterbox, this neighbor gave free rein to her tongue in women’s gatherings and thoroughly lambasted and slandered the magical liquid. It was said that she took great delight in vilifying it and spat in disgust whenever her girlfriends mentioned it. The sorceress’s patience with her neighbor was exhausted, and she decided to teach the fool a lesson that only a practitioner of sorcery can deliver. She wandered in the northern badlands by night and conversed with the heaven’s stars. Lovers tarrying in the wastelands heard her loud debate with jinn demons but did not fathom the reason for the dispute till some days later when ischuria afflicted her wretched neighbor, and this human liquid was retained by her haughty body.

She closeted herself in her tent, sent out for salves and macerated herbs, and swallowed juices prescribed by grannies. She drank chamomile tea for three days straight and swallowed wormwood elixir for the next three. Then she stewed colocynth fruit and drank the broth and also consumed the seeds, but the illness was not affected, and the human liquid was retained even more stubbornly by her body. The miserable woman was obliged to descend from her high horse and to send for the herbalist.

The herbalist drew many herbs from his satchel and gave her lots of liquids to drink, but her urine retention persisted. So the woman was burning with fever and began to struggle with bouts of insanity.

Finally the herbalist admitted he could not cure her — as every desert apothecary does when he realizes that a condition’s etiology is mysterious. He told the woman that herbalists were created to treat physical ills the wasteland spawns, but that wasteland inhabitants would be obliged to search for a cure for Spirit World illnesses from the masters of the Spirit World. Then the arrogant neighbor woman was forced to descend from her high horse a second time; she summoned the sorceress.

The sorceress entered her neighbor’s tent and was surprised to find there — instead of her neighbor — a specter … a shriveled, pale, unkempt female jinni, whose large, protruding eyeballs glowed with anxiety, pain, and insanity. In her pupils was that distressing sign seen only in the eyes of people whom time has afflicted with an unexpected calamity so that they find themselves standing before the house of destruction without ever yielding to an unknown destiny or believing that death might be so easy.

The sorceress stood by her longtime neighbor’s head and remarked, “What do you suppose a person in whom human liquid is retained will give if one day a person is found who can expel from the body poisoned by this pollution a single drop of the sacred liquid that purifies man from his defilements?”

The neighbor woman collapsed and howled at the top of her lungs. Wallowing in the dirt at the feet of the longtime sorceress, she begged, “A person suffering from urine retention will give everything her hand possesses to the person who can expel from her body a single drop of the one liquid that purifies man’s body from man’s defilement.”

“I am happy to hear a tongue describe man’s water as sacred today after I heard it accuse urine yesterday of all types of impurity.”

“Man, my lady, is a dull-witted child who does not realize that fire burns till it scorches his fingers.”

“Man won’t be wise, man won’t be happy, till he recognizes the contrary in its contrary.”

“It is pointless to think the haughty fellow will learn that before the day he receives a punishing lesson.”

“Isn’t it astonishing that you described man’s water yesterday as impure and today characterize it as sacred?”

“I would not have admitted that, my lady, if time had not taught me such a severe lesson.”

“Know, then, that man’s water is like a chameleon’s saliva, which is lethal poison for vipers but the strongest antidote for sorcery in man’s body.”

“I have heard that the chameleon overpowers the sorceries of foreigners.”

“The water that exits from the body is a secret like the chameleon’s saliva. It literally kills grass because it is a herbicide, but purifies bodies of their poisons.”

“No creature who exists in the desert could possibly believe my lady’s statement as fervently as the miserable wretch kneeling at your feet.”

“In man’s water resides man’s cure!”

“You’re right, my lady.”

“What is man’s water, which fools refer to as urine? Isn’t man’s water life itself?”

“Man’s water is life!”

5

He came to the temple escorted by two of his slaves, who seated him on the mat in the Chamber of Sacrificial Offerings. Then he ordered them to leave. Alone, he sat erect at the center of the chamber, scouting the stillness and fending off demons in the abyss of darkness. Even so, he did not hear the footsteps of the lady in the thawb .

He did not hear her footstep but did hear her voice. “I never expected to see the token of the disease still around the eyes of the hero of heroes after the prophecy.”

“How futile!”

“I am not disappointed about losing any hope of receiving a payment for the prophecy, because the wealth of diviners is not a gift from the physical world but a prophecy from the Spirit World. What has shaken me is a husband’s disillusionment with his wife’s chastity.”

He moaned expansively, and his fingers trembled violently. Slender fingers, which no longer resembled those that had earned him the title of hero, extended and slipped through the fuzz of the leather mat’s thick hair in an attempt to stifle his emotion and to mask the trembling of his fingers.

He spoke with the nobility of the last of the nobles. “Had it not been for my longstanding confidence in it, I would have doubted the truth of prophecy.”

“Is it right for a champion of the intellect to doubt the Spirit World and instead believe a woman’s word?”