Ibrahim al-Koni: The Scarecrow

“What do you mean to say?”

“Was the leader in the tomb a leader like all the others?”

“What do you want to say?”

“I am saying that the leader of eternity was a poet before he became a leader. The invisible jinni called ‘poetry’ in our language conquered in his chest the ghoul we call ‘leadership’ in our miserable language.”

“It is said that he recited charming poems in his youth, and I don’t deny that in my youth I recited couplets the tribe attributed to him. Everyone knows, however, that the Council of Wisdom stifled the gift in him because it thought poetry a game ill befitting a leader’s majesty. Similarly, on another day, it stifled in his chest his desire to marry the poet, because it thought that she too was a caprice inappropriate for the grandeur of the leader.”

“The sages stifled in his chest the poetry of the tongue, but his poetry flowed out in his deeds and traits.”

“Why not dam the flood head on? Why do you want to tire our heads with hard puzzles? Here, I’ll dam the flow and say that anyone who has settled in the Spirit World to become a poet doesn’t need to change and disguise himself from the world — unlike a worldly leader. The secret doesn’t lie in his being someone who lives only for play — as befits any ruler — but in his being someone who has known from the beginning that he will govern a wasteland in which he discovers the clearly visible face of the Spirit World.”

“Everyone who knew him will acknowledge that he never was playful.”

“Did you all spy on his heart too, the way you spied on him whenever he stood up or sat down, went or came?”

“Playfulness, like passionate love, cannot be concealed.”

“The wise way he ruled the tribe proves that he wasn’t merely playful but a cunning strategist too.”

“People who knew him never found him to be anything but a shining exemplar of earnestness and an icon of severity.”

“Severity flourishes only in the meadows of playfulness.”

“Here we return to riddles via the widest portal!”

“The playfulness to which we refer isn’t the sport of young minds, which is what the masses assume. It is, instead, a great secret no less significant than the Law itself.”

“….”

“If the question of playfulness were insignificant, people wouldn’t have cursed life and wouldn’t have found happiness to be harder to achieve than passing a camel’s neck through the eye of a needle.”

“Do you consider play really to be this difficult?”

“Play, like prophecy, is a heavenly firebrand. If it could be grasped by anyone hustling and bustling on earth, happiness would have been easy.”

“Amazing!”

“Our master, who slumbers nearby, didn’t go to the distant sanctuary to snatch the gift using the sovereignty of the intellect; he did that following the path of a possessed person who went to reclaim a bequest left to him by his ancestors.”

“His ancestors?”

“The Spirit World. For a man obsessed by poetry, the Spirit World is, quite simply, his homeland. I mean that a poet obtains by inspiration what sages do not obtain through the sovereignty of the intellect.”

“Do you think so highly of poets?”

“The poet is the only man about whom there is no fear of his becoming lost in the labyrinth, because he is the only creature who came to this wasteland as a lost wanderer.”

“We merely need to search for a poet to rule over us on our behalf.”

“I fear you won’t be able to find the poet I am talking about.”

“You shouldn’t think so poorly of us.”

“I also fear that our comrade may have gotten ahead of me and thought ill of our master who reclines in the tomb, if he thinks that the leader of eternity deserves the title of poet merely because he amused himself with some vile verses in his youth.”

“The fact is that I have almost lost my way again….”

“I was trying to say that our leader was a true poet. I mean he wasn’t a poet because he recited couplets about passionate love or some other inane subject; he was a poet greater than all the others whom desert tribes have known, because he dandled in his heart a treasure named ‘nobility.’”

“It won’t be difficult for us to find among the people a poet who hides in his heart this quality that you call a treasure.”

“Far from it!”

“What do you mean?”

“I fear we will never be able to.”

“Is it reasonable for us to lack a single noble person in all these dwellings?”

“What I really fear is talking constantly with two different tongues.”

Their comrade fell silent, and stillness pervaded the meeting.

Outside, in a place near the temple’s walls, a muffled, evil, hoarse chortle echoed, immediately reminding listeners of the ignoble laughter that passersby commonly heard when they approached the mysterious scarecrow placed in the fields.

3

“If leadership is so hazardous and dangerous, then our only choice is to go with the slumbering leader.”

Amasis the Younger, out of all the council members, was the man most inclined to yield and most cautious about speaking his mind. So his peers were astonished on each of the infrequent occasions when he allowed himself to leave the redoubt of silence to divulge a diffident opinion to them.

Astonishment washed over them on this day too, and they exchanged meaningful looks. The silence, however, did not last long because this notion provoked a reaction from the chief merchant, who snapped at his colleague’s face: “I find it odd that you did not discern this idea’s danger before allowing it to spill from your tongue.”

“Danger?”

“The gravest danger! Did you, like many others, think me stupid the day I relied on the support of the masses to impose on the council the choice of a puppet who stumbles over the earth on two feet?”

“Actually, I still find it odd that you should have been the first to request a puppet who stumbles on two feet yesterday but today come to threaten us with how dangerous it is to sit on the throne of leadership.”

“What I did yesterday was motivated by a desire to advance commerce, to advance the life of this oasis. What I am saying today about sovereignty stems from a fear that you will all suffer the same fate as Aggulli. Do you find fault with this?”

“No one is finding fault, but it isn’t hard for someone listening to all of you argue to realize that the easiest alternative is for us to rely on the rock of the tomb and to seek a prophecy as we did in the past and as our ancestors did before us.”

“I wasn’t discussing leadership to scare you. I sincerely wished to call your attention to a secret quality that the Spirit World has placed in sovereignty, ever since people first found a sovereign over their heads.”

“No one questions your intentions, but it’s hard for anyone to accept the label ‘murderer.’”

The man with two veils cast him a disparaging look and said sarcastically, “Although I admit you were the last to plant the blade in the victim’s heart, I fear that your hesitation won’t wipe the dead man’s blood from your hands.”

The hero interjected, “We must stop this. We didn’t come to discuss something we did with a single hand to rescue the life of the oasis.”

The chief merchant raised his voice argumentatively: “Why are voices raised in the council in an attempt to send us back today to a place we left yesterday, if our objective truly is advancing the life of the oasis?”

Ah’llum asked, “To what place is our colleague referring?”

“Doesn’t our friend wish us to give up and revert to the old way?”

“We all believe that an oasis without a governor is like a headless body. We all know that commerce without a master is like a herd without a herdsman, because we have become entrepreneurs — like all the other residents of the oasis. But we must find a way to escape from our dilemma. Why don’t you finally say which of us you think is best qualified to become the governor?”