Ibrahim al-Koni - New Waw, Saharan Oasis

His body became feverish, and he began to tremble again, shaking violently. He complained loudly, “Dementia is an illness, Master. Forgetfulness is a terror worse than the plague, Master!”

The guide insisted stubbornly, “The lethal illness has a lethal antidote. You will never gain life unless you lose a fantasy you have always considered life. So beware!” The leader knelt at the spring, where water leapt from a fissure in the solid rock. Pure water like tears chased through the void in spiraling tongues that joined at times and separated at others, creating a mischievous bow in the air, before falling to the bottom, splashing on solid rock, scattering spray over the banks, and inundating the green, fertile soil that clung to the shores. The leader moved his veil away from his mouth and filled his hands with the deluge as tiny bubbles from the spray glistened and dripped from his hands like teardrops. He raised his palms to his mouth, which was covered by a thick mustache that had turned totally white. Below his mouth a dense beard was even whiter. A few small hairs grew upwards and were interwoven with his mustache, fully covering his lips. He swallowed. He swallowed with the slow deliberation of the noble elders and the ravenous thirst of the masses. Then his eyes were flooded with profound surrender, and the diviner saw in his pupils a gleam like tears of joy. There was a smile in his eyes. The diviner did not catch the smile on his lips, which were covered by the underbrush of snow-white hair. He did, however, capture the smile in his eyes, because the diviner was accustomed to seizing a prophecy from the sparks of a sign. He was searching for the secret of the sign when he found that a handful of the deluge was touching his lips too.

The diviner released a profound sigh before sipping some of the flood from his palms.

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10. Calotropis procera (Asclepiadaceae), also known as the Sodom apple.

1

Gossips quickly spread the news.

The tribe awoke to hear that the diviner had succumbed to dementia’s forgetfulness the previous day. They said he had thrown out his slave girl, whipped his slave, and ordered the herders to bring him his camels because he had decided to quit the tribe’s encampment and migrate to settle in the Western Hammada. The ruckus grew more agitated by late morning. Boys raced from tent site to tent site, women emerged from their tents to watch, and herdsmen left their caravans of camels and retraced their steps to question servants about the news to satisfy their curiosity. Even the sages were compelled to gape as the bareheaded diviner chased teenage boys and the rabble while brandishing his tent pole threateningly. Others related that they had seen him respond to the call of nature between tent sites — still bareheaded — and then hurriedly enter the next tent instead of returning to his own home. The wretched slave girl claimed that he had thrown her out because she had refused to submit to his shameful desire when he groped her and wanted to sleep with her. She made a comment that soon made the rounds and was repeated by every tongue: “Iymmeskal. Ahadagh ar iymmeskal. Awagh wiggegh amghar wazzayagh. He’s been switched. I swear he’s been switched. This isn’t the old man I know.”

The ruckus continued.

The boys realized that the diviner actually had lost his mind and decided to have some fun. They provoked him with the tricks they typically played on madmen and the possessed. He chased them, cursing or waving his tent pole.

The sages consulted and sent each other letters via servants, herders, or teenage boys, but the hero acted before they could. He was the first to drive away the rabble and scatter them. Then he put his arms around the raging diviner and hugged him for a long time. Next he seized the tent pole from the diviner’s grasp and carried him away like a bundle of clothes. He set him down in a corner of the tent, which had collapsed in the center after the tent pole was removed. Ahallum replaced the tent pole and ordered a passerby to bring him both the physician and the apothecary.

Before the physician or the apothecary arrived, the nobles approached the tent with the venerable Emmamma in the lead. They were followed at a distance by Imaswan Wandarran. They gathered on a hillock by the entrance. The venerable elder took a step toward the patient. He leaned forward to examine the ancient soothsayer, resting his veined, twiglike hands on the crook of his staff. His small eyes examined his comrade’s face. The diviner’s head was bare. His skull was crowned by a stern copper baldness, and meager little pepper-gray hairs, which were turning white, sprouted on his temples. White was prevalent and had also assailed the bottom of his beard, which was coated by grains of dust. On each side of his head grew a long ear; they were so long they hung down. These repellent ears resembled a young donkey’s. As for the mouth’s fissure, it was even more repulsive. It proceeded from the far side, setting out from the jaw’s back border, plowing through the front of the face, dividing the heart’s throne of beauty with an ugly creek resembling a woman’s genitals, digging in the full moon’s surface a crater that could never be filled, an abyss that was the reason that the first father, Mandam, was ousted from the homeland, because it swallowed the forbidden fruit. Since then it has not ceased devouring forbidden fruits. It has never eaten its fill since that day. Did the ancestors err when they viewed it as a defect and devised the veil to hide it from each other?

The odious cleft did not stop until it penetrated the jewel, disfiguring the entire face. It gathered by the other end of the jaw at the conclusion of its trajectory and so stamped the man with the brand of infamy. The grandfathers did not err when they considered the mouth to be a defect and covered it with the veil.

Emmamma said, “This isn’t the diviner we know.”

He stared in the soothsayer’s face again and then turned to the nearest man to ask, “Can you recognize a man whose head isn’t covered by a veil?”

Imaswan Wandarran dismissed the idea with a shake of his turban, and bowed his head toward the earth.

Addressing the hero Ahallum, Emmamma said, “I’ve never been good at speaking to a man whose face isn’t covered by a veil.”

Amasis commented, “How ugly the face is when a veil doesn’t cover it!”

The venerable elder gestured to the hero, “Cover his face at once!”

The hero motioned to a slave standing near the tent, and the slave rushed forward as though he had been expecting this signal. He whispered something in his ear, and the slave leapt to a corner of the tent, returned with a black veil from a pile of clothes, and began to wrap it around the soothsayer’s head while the elders sat in a circle inside. Ahallum, however, remained standing beside the diviner, following the winding of the black veil around the head of the poor soothsayer. The slave’s fingers slipped between the folds of the linen as deftly as the wind, gradually circling the head vertically till cloth hung down on either side. Then he drew the coil in the other direction and held the other end right beside the diviner’s mouth, fastening the fabric over the mouth with his forefinger and seizing the clump with his right hand to encircle the lower part of the face first. Then he lifted the tail up and wound it around the summit of the head twice to form the base of the turban. Next he slipped the fingers of his other hand between the folds to test the firmness of the bond without his first hand ever ceasing to pull the linen around the head. The fabric’s tail, which had coiled at their feet like a serpent, diminished and moved to wrap the head with a proud turban that returned the former diviner to the council.