Ibrahim al-Koni - New Waw, Saharan Oasis

By using this small stratagem, I attain peace of mind and win my master’s confidence .

2

I was born a slave like every other being in the desert. The secret of my existence is concealed in my blade, in my tongue. The secret of my master’s existence is concealed in the handle. My destruction lies in my handle. My master’s destruction is in the edge of my tongue. If he seizes the hilt, he obtains life. If he releases the hilt, others seize it. Then the blade becomes his fate. The blade can bring destruction, because destruction entered the desert inside my tongue. That was why the first peoples created the forbidding scabbard to hide my intentions, to restrain my desire, and to suppress my eternal craving for a brother’s throat .

In the short distance lying between the hilt and the beginning of the blade stretches the law of life and the law of death. A person came who succumbed to temptation and yielded to desire; so he took possession of the hilt. The desert bowed down to him because he possessed the hilt. Then he became sultan over the desert. The blade became the fate of anyone who hesitated. These people became slaves, captives, and mamluks in the sultan’s kingdom.

No one in the desert knows how the sultan was able to discover the secret of the hilt and the secret of the tongue. Most probably the jinn tribes whispered the matter to him, because the desert people realize that members of this mysterious tribe become allies of the sovereign once he grasps the terrifying hilt. By night they tell him what he should do during the day. They brief him on the intentions of evildoers even before these miscreants tell themselves what they intend to do. It has been said that the sultan’s desire to possess the hilt originated with the jinn. So he would not go to sleep without first wrapping his fist around the hilt. Later, he fastened his fingers to the hilt with a rope of palm fiber. Later still, he secured his fingers around the hilt with straps of fresh leather, and once these straps dried, his fist and the hilt formed a single hand. It has been said that this ruler surpassed in cleverness even the jinn sages themselves. So their demons feared him, and their clever schemers were afraid of him. Then it came to pass that he subdued them and they became his servants; he put them in charge of his enemies among the people of the wasteland. His sovereignty over the desert was unchallenged because aspirants to power despaired of ever seizing hold of the hilt now that it formed a single body with his hand.

3

The jinn were the first to discover the horror of metal. Then they avoided blades and fled from the tongue to the farthest kingdoms. It was said in one report that they experimented with it. It was said in another report that they weren’t stupid enough to try it themselves but observed its domination over the people of the wasteland when the sultan of the wasteland mastered them with a hand strapped to the hilt. So they read this as a prophecy.

No one knows how their situation was disclosed and how people learned their fear of blades, but the people of the desert soon started using blades to take vengeance on the residents of the Spirit World. They stripped the tongues of their scabbards and affixed lethal blades near the heads of infants, whom the jinn customarily kidnap in their swaddling clothes to swap for children from their own community. Then they terrified the wretches and expelled them to the farthest corners of the badlands.

From that day forward, the body of the dagger has been an amulet. But fools neglected the hilt and left it hanging in the air. Then enemies took possession of it and aimed it at the chests of their children one day.

4

Today, as well, the dagger seeks help from the talisman sketched on the tongue; the ancient talisman finds a way for it to escape from the flask. It dives into the void of the sky, bathes its ravenous tongue in the flood of light, and plucks, from a dusk-time rendezvous, a prophecy that will eventually carve out an existence for it with the edge of the blade.

The dagger emerged from its prison, and the blade rattled in the throat while it licked the blood of the black kid. It rattled with a sarcasm that wasn’t grasped because it wasn’t understood.

The hilt disappeared in the master’s palm, and the blade plunged into the flesh of the neck. It followed its ancient Way, cut the network, severed the ropes of arteries, and penetrated the veins in which the fountain of life flows. It mangled the rough pass, severed the strings, crossed into the stream to drink from the copious deluge. But it would be absurd for the tongue of prophecy to quench its thirst from the spring of the lie.

5

The tongue leapt from the cavity, and the blade fled from the body of the sacrificial offering. It descended nearby and hid its thirsty head in the dirt. The master released the hilt; then the long fettered demon of the blade liberated itself. It circled the heavens in an instant, and when it returned to the confines of the wasteland with a prophecy, the messenger of the Spirit World had ascended the temple mount. He approached the temple stealthily — thin and stern. Bending down, he seized the hilt at once, exploiting the master’s error. So he preceded him to the lethal throne, since the master needed to receive his punishment at once, because the sovereign forgot that the hilt would revert to being a blade if the commander set it aside for even an hour.

The blade settled in the throat of the master of the blade that evening, because the Spirit World wanted to exchange prophecy for the lie and wished to tell the diviner that the person possessing the hilt of the dagger should be extraordinarily cautious, because the sovereign who errs once inevitably errs for the first and last time.

1

The north breathed winds that diffused the fragrance of moisture; the gloomy horizon encircled the northern mountains with a noble belt that always took on the color of dawn; the distant clouds grew thicker, presaging an assault; bolts of lightning ripped through their august gloom with an insistent gleam that twisted in tongues as fast as fiery whips only to die out with a swiftness reminiscent of the mystery of prophecy.

The wait did not last long.

The black clouds assaulted the thirsty wasteland like enemy hordes. The storm advanced as if wishing to caress the naked badlands and threw down at first large drops the size of the foam that fine camel stallions expectorate in mating season. Then the rain poured down. It poured down plentifully. The downfall stirred up dust in the void and the thirsty earth was taken by surprise. It spluttered with the insatiable appetite of someone who always wants more and then, overcome by greed, chokes on his serving and spits back up what he has swallowed. The expanses paved with stone slabs drank first; then the deserts covered with carpets of pebbles imitated them. Next the deluge flooded the terraces and slipped secretly down natural conduits to the ravines, which carried it to washes coated with layers of soft earth. Then the sandy valley bottoms seized the water with the longing of passionate lovers. Meanwhile the clay lowlands drank in less time and the water rose again to collect in level patches, but this stasis did not last long. The ravines pushed down a new heavenly stream, and the earth received from the sky a new supplement. The upper valleys brought a greater share. Then the demon in the flask of the patch of ground grew restless and rushed off on a course that began with a humane, rational chain but that increased in insanity as it advanced. This insanity was fed by the many ravines that intersected the valley’s banks, and the flood borrowed nourishing momentum from the sky. As these gifts accumulated, the frenzy increased. The water abandoned its own name to become a demon that had appropriated the name torrent!