Ibrahim al-Koni - New Waw, Saharan Oasis

Tears of longing stream from their eyes; these are the tears of desert mothers who know with a mother’s intuition that when an infant is born in a homeland called the desert, no mother will enjoy motherhood long, because the infant whom a bird brings into the desert will inevitably imitate the avian community and leave the nest sooner rather than later. Once he departs, his travels will never end. The mother knows that the desert’s legal system is what the Law has established and that it treats the babe in her arms as a bird. 2Once he ventures off alone, she will never be able to reclaim him. From that moment on, the desert will hold him, and the poor fellow won’t return. He will never look back at the tent, at the nest, and his mother will have lost him for good. That’s why the mother holds her nursing infant high and throws him into the air the day the birds land. She weeps and croons heartrending songs in honor of this maze, because she knows, with a mother’s intuition, that once a son heads off into the desert he is not heading off to life — as all mothers hope — but to a maze; he is heading into a labyrinth, one from which he will never return.

The tribe’s celebration starts the night the birds land.

Swarms of girls go out to the open countryside shortly before sunset and form a joyful drum circle, trilling shrilly while women poets sing verses that slay the wasteland’s stillness and awaken the rebel demon of ecstasy in the hearts of the Spirit World’s inhabitants. Then embarrassed female jinn hide in the farthest caverns while male jinn explode with musical frenzy, delight, and anxiety as they approach the group, camouflaged in human garb, and invade the circle to challenge the tribe’s warriors’ prowess as dancers. The moon rises, lighting in breasts a new zeal, the rhythm grows more intense, poems wax hotter, and the poets’ throats become hoarse, although this huskiness makes their voices even more attractive and agreeable. Then the entire encampment is reeling, and the tribe is afflicted by a mysterious frenzy that has perplexed diviners and that not even specialists in the Law have been able to explain.

The singing ends at dawn, but the inexplicable frenzy lasts for days, endures for a long period, and continues for a time that will never be forgotten.

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When the birds approach the desert and alight as guests in the encampment, they do not immediately perch on the roofs of the tents and do not land in the beds of the wadis to poke their beaks into furrows in search of worms. Nor do they alight in the spaces between campsites to rummage through trash to scavenge grain, crumbs, or leftovers like the local birds, which don’t aspire to homelands of the Unknown and haven’t experienced a migratory paradise. Instead, the migratory birds approach the campsites in massive, densely clustered tribes that fly in parallel formations, each trailing a wise leader, who flutters at the front, repeating a pleasant and distinctive refrain that the entire tribe repeats after him as its watchword.

Not far off flap the wings of another tribe that differs in color but heads to the same destination, flying to the same unknown homeland. A leader precedes them, soaring through the empty air, repeating a different tune that distinguishes his tribe from the next. Each melody is a beautiful song when heard alone, and the leaders of these avian tribes must teach their flock this watchword, which the birds must repeat to show that they haven’t strayed from the tribe’s flight path and still follow the tribe’s Law, because any bird that does not belong to a tribe becomes isolated, turns into an outcast and, according to the customary law of the wasteland — the birds’ customary law — becomes a solitary, lost creature. Fear of becoming lost, dread of the labyrinth, motivates each bird in the tribe to cling to the tribe’s sign, its watchword, its melody. So each bird repeats its tribe’s song after the leader. In exactly the same way, a son of the desert repeats his name the first time he goes out to the grazing lands, because his mother has taught him that he will be lost forever if he forgets his name.

This is why the tunes are repeated, why birdcalls overlap, and why there are numerous songs. Then the sweetness of the singing is lost, and the pleasure of the melodies dissipates. Similarly, when girls gather in a circle and each sings her own song at the same time, the musical experience is spoiled and the beautiful melodies become a repulsive hubbub.

Before deciding to land, groups circle over the camps for a long time and then spread through the gullies and pastures. Desert dwellers have noticed that their zeal increases, their hymns grow louder, and their dancing through space becomes more graceful and beautiful during the hours prior to their descent to the earth. The singing of some tribes deteriorates into a fierce squawking, however, and the dancing of some other winged communities becomes a feverish frenzy. Is it because a descent from the sky’s kingdom to the earth’s gullies is so terrible? Or, is the true secret actually the journey, which wayfarers say provides inveterate travelers with a pleasure that so surpasses in sweetness and allure even the ecstasy of musical enjoyment that travelers want it to continue in perpetuity?

A first bird lands on a tent or in a tree in a gully.

The boys yell with glee, the girls’ tongues compete in releasing trills, and the voices of the women poets rise in mournful refrains.

Diviners approach with a fox’s wariness and walk round the bird, intoning spells, giving voice to a truth they normally confess only to themselves: “You’re no bird, bird. Winged people, you are us. Your Law is migratory. Our Law is nomadic. You beat your wings in the sky; we pad over the earth on two feet. You migrate to the nations of the unknown North; we migrate in search of Waw. 3You eventually return from the nations of the Unknown, because you haven’t found the Unknown Nation among the nations of the unknown North; we eventually return from our quest for Waw, because we discover that there isn’t any Waw in the desert homeland. All the same, you don’t stop migrating and we don’t stop searching. You know that heroism isn’t determined by a successful arrival, and we realize that the search itself is heroic. So, community of birds, do you know why we celebrate your arrival? Because all of us realize that you are us and we are you, even though we don’t admit this to anyone else.”

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But can a being accustomed to exploring space, a being whose homeland has become the sky, endure life in the lowlands? Can creatures born and bred between the heavens and the earth enjoy the earth’s lowly realm?

The birds’ stay in the encampments does not last long.

After just a few days, the cry bursts forth.

The leader of each tribe adopts the role of herald, flies over the gullies, and soars over the dwellings, crying the secret watchword, stridently repeating the departure song. The members of the tribe snatch up the watchword, and their voices gleefully chant this refrain. The hour is set, and the muster begins. So melodies proliferate, songs multiply, and voices drown each other out till the chant’s beauty is lost and the enjoyment fades, because feverish travel punctures rapture and the hour of departure swallows the pleasure of the song. When the first wing flutters, forsaking the desert’s soil and rising into the expanse of the morning, this bird’s wings, which are bathed and marked with colors, look resplendent. Behind him assembled wings of the same color take flight. The flock swoops into the glowing light but does not shoot off toward the unknown homeland until it has circled over the gullies and soared over the dwellings to say goodbye. During this sorrowful flyby, in the course of this painful farewell, throngs from the caravan trail after the flock. Then sages sob, girls choke back tears, and children weep out loud while diviners pursue the flock to detect the prophecy inherent in its trajectory.