Ibrahim al-Koni - New Waw, Saharan Oasis

When the party ended, the stranger accompanied the tribe’s poet to her tent.

After that, they were frequently observed wandering together in the wasteland and in the valleys near the settlements.

4

She placed the bundle of chaplets in a corner of the tent and hung one luxuriant necklace from the post. She was sneezing, coughing, and struggling with dizziness and a headache. She lay down beneath the tent post, and the garland dangled over her head. It hung down far enough to brush her nose. She closed her eyes, and a smile traveled across her lips — the same indescribable smile that the tribe’s sorcerers consider a characteristic of anyone granted the ability to see clearly into eternity.

Her face soon turned red and then pale. She felt she was suffocating and groaned, gasping for air. She raised her slender fingers in the air as she had done when she received the gift, but her palm fell and landed on the ground. She crawled out of the tent and began to vomit loudly.

5

He came to visit her the next evening. He came bearing a new cluster of garlands, which he placed in her lap before sitting down at a distance. He spoke about the desert’s intentions and the disposition of the Qibli wind but avoided any discussion of poetry. She struggled with nausea and dizziness and felt short of breath. All the same she continued to toy with the mysterious flower petals while suppressing a mad cough in her chest. When the visitor left, she placed the new cluster atop of the other one, which was piled in a corner of the tent. Then she hung a new garland on the tent post as before, and the fragrance of retem blossoms assailed her. She collapsed and knelt by the post. She felt paralysis spread through her entire body and called out to her slave for help. She asked him to summon the woman diviner.

The diviner lit a fire into which she threw a handful of wormwood and another light-colored piece of something with a foul odor. She said it was an efficacious drug for treating illnesses of the Spirit World. When she saw the questioning look in the beauty’s eyes, she explained, “You’ve inhaled the sweat of jinn. You must avoid loitering in the wasteland at dusk.”

6

Neither the handful of wormwood nor the pale-colored piece of something with a foul odor succeeded in curing the malady. In fact, her headache grew worse and she was running a high fever. Strange sores appeared on her body. She began to rave, to sing, and to waste away.

Her friends rushed to her tent and sat near her head. The male diviner was finally summoned. A tall, thin creature approached the tent wearing a somber veil and holding a handful of pebbles. He sat at the entrance of the tent and started to shift the pebbles from his right fist to his left and then back to the right again. The bevy of young women noticed that he leaned over when a pebble fell; he bent down with the concern of someone who has lost a treasure. He searched the dirt and didn’t relax till he found that stone. The women present affirmed that there was some secret about this procedure and that the pebbles were some mysterious sorcerer’s talisman.

The diviner spoke after a long silence. He clenched his fist around the stones and ordered, “Burn the retem!”

No one understood; her friends exchanged glances. The slaves glanced mockingly at the diviner. But the diviner commanded again, “Burn the retem!”

The questioning looks turned into true astonishment; everyone was dumbfounded. How could these extraordinary garlands woven from retem blossoms be burned? The retem blossom is the splendor of the desert and the favorite flower of all the tribes. Hermits have discerned in its fragrance the exhalations of the lost oasis. Virgins wash themselves with retem blossom water on their wedding nights. Parties are thrown to rejoice at its flowering in the first days of spring; poems are sung by the female poets in honor of its beauty. Heroes and mounted warriors speak of its beauty. What was wrong with the tribe’s diviner that he would suspect the retem blossoms and order this sacred body burnt? One of the slaves started to remove the bundles piled in the corner, but the girl leapt from her sick bed and pointed her forefinger at him.

He retreated, but the diviner said, “If you want to be cured, order your slaves to burn the retem and dispatch someone to bring back a scrap of the stranger’s clothing!”

Doubt was still apparent in their eyes; the pronouncements of diviners always provoke doubt. The diviner does not recycle statements or advice. The diviner would not be a diviner if he did not invent a statement that no one else had said before. The diviner must say something uncouth.

He put the handful of pebbles in his pocket, rose, and threw out the piles of retem blossoms himself. He left these outside and returned to the tent pole, but the lovesick woman had reached it first and grasped the garland, which she hid in the confines of her flowing thawb . She swayed and one of her friends steadied her. Then the poetess lay down on her bed and smiled enigmatically.

The diviner lit a fire and fed the retem blossoms to it. He proclaimed with a gruffness befitting his occupation: “If you all don’t bring me a scrap of the stranger’s clothing, the girl will die!”

7

What truly baffled the tribe was that when they sent men and women out that night to bring the diviner a scrap from the stranger’s clothes, these emissaries found no shred of clothing belonging to him. They searched his residence unannounced and scoured the neighboring valleys where he had often gone to make retem garlands for his beloved. They sent a mounted warrior to the distant pastures and another messenger to the dark mountain caves where he had sought shelter the previous winter. But they found no garment in his dwelling, not even a scrap of linen. In the valleys they found no place where he could have hidden anything, and the mounted warrior returned from the grazing lands empty-handed. From the southern mountains arrived a messenger who said he had found nothing in the caves but the paintings of the first people. The sages felt certain that the stranger was a sorcerer and repeated to one another a clause of the ancient Law: “A secret sleeps in the heart of every stranger. There is always a reason when a son of the desert leaves his own people.”

In her tent, the beauty began to expire. The fever intensified, and she experienced difficulty breathing. In the middle of the night she surrendered the most precious gift in life — breath — and began to fade into the distance.

She ebbed away without the enigmatic smile ever leaving her lips.

Her girlfriends said that she had died apparently the happiest person in the world!

8

A throng gathered at the entrance of her tent, and the leader arrived. He surprised the group, and the crowds fell back to make way for him, separating into two lines. He halted in front of the diviner and asked angrily, “What’s the meaning of this?”

The diviner did not reply. He bowed and smiled. The leader repeated his question in the same tone. Then the diviner took him by the hand and drew him out into the open countryside. He said, “I wasn’t the one, Master, who gave the stranger permission to enjoy a stay in the tribe’s encampments.”

The leader shouted, “Do you want the tribes to say I violated the Lost Book and expelled a stranger who asked for safe refuge? Yes. I gave the stranger permission to stay with the tribe; I didn’t give permission to a sorcerer!”

The diviner replied coldly, “He’s not a sorcerer, Master.”

“The whole tribe says he is. If he weren’t a sorcerer, how could he have spirited the maiden away with sacred retem blossoms?”

“Among some tribes in the forestlands, a young man who loves a girl may kill her.”