Ibrahim al-Koni - New Waw, Saharan Oasis

4

After this defeat, he wrote his beloved a note saying that leadership was a curse he had not chosen, that destiny alone, so it would seem, was what had decided his fate by making him the late leader’s sister’s only son and that he had not been able to rebel against the will of the elders back then, long ago, because that would have meant not only a rebellion against the elders but a desperate contravention of destiny’s volition. This passionate woman, however, didn’t recognize logic’s language, didn’t understand the secret of destinies, and considered the Law to be a handful of dead words, of deadly words. If his beloved had been just any woman, it would not have been so hard, but she was both a woman and a poet; she wasn’t just a poet, but a poet in love. What earthly argument could sway a female poet in love? Before she departed and deserted the tribe forever, she sent him a note too, an angry note, a note in which she said that she had decided to do what he ought to have done. She said that self-imposed exile in the far-off wastelands had in the past been a male prerogative but apparently now the situation had changed, just as everything had changed, because men now were forcing women to choose exile, forcing women to be heroic (because the ultimate expression of heroism is self-imposed exile) while they, men, secluded themselves in their homes. Then he received news of her. They told him she had emigrated; she had migrated to an unknown land. After that no one ever saw her again.

He went out to the open countryside to bury his defeat there. He went to the wasteland to contend with the ancient lump in his throat, to sob over this calamity instead of reciting beautiful poems and chanting sorrowful songs, because the bird of poetry had flown away, becoming lost, and the voice of song had choked and died.

5

And here they were — coming to him again.

They came as they had come long ago in expanses of the Western Hammada. They came as they had once come to take poetry from him, as they had come on another occasion to take his beloved from him, taking the poet from him, leaving him alone and abandoned with no companions save solitude, calamity, and a life that time had decimated, leaving it a fantasy like any other.

Here they were coming again today to confiscate something else, but what was there left to take? Were they a group charged to take, a group that would never lack something to take? Yes. Yes, these elders would never lack for something to take from the leader’s dwelling. They arrived one day to take the bird, to take the secret he had hidden in the retem thicket, in the sanctuary’s groves, in the valley he had placed off limits to the hoi polloi when he told the herders, vassals, and slaves: “Anyone entering Retem Valley from today on will have his head chopped off with a sword.” So everyone had avoided it and had kept their herds out of it. He had stationed mounted warriors on its heights as guards. He had done that as a precaution to erase the evidence, to hide his little secret. Had the jurists discovered this little secret too?

Were they too stingy to allow him this play-pretty? Had they come to deprive him of the bird, the song, and the secret — camouflaging their action with the need to uproot themselves in obedience to the law of nomadism?

When they approached, he went out to meet them in the open. He hurried to greet them out of respect for Emmamma, the same Emmamma, the venerable Emmamma, the immortal figure who had accompanied the elders on that first day in the Western Hammada and who had accompanied the group during the second assault. All the former elders had passed on. Time had carried off Asaruf during the third assault, but Emmamma led the way this time too. He was leaning on an elegant acacia walking stick and shaking. He shook and the stick shook too.

Once they finished their attack on him, he requested just a few days before the forthcoming departure. Emmamma took him aside to say, “Don’t think I came because I feared people would say the venerable elder had missed an opportunity to influence the leader concerning some worldly matter, because you know that a person who has turned his back on life will not be much harmed by what is said. I came instead because it isn’t a bad omen for the leader to contravene a time-honored law and refuse to migrate; truly the bad omen would be for the venerable elder to fail to join a deputation of elders visiting the leader’s home.” Then he laughed sorrowfully as he waved his staff before him. He joked, “I have come to you today on three legs. I fear I’ll be forced next time to borrow a fourth leg from the acacia tree in order to reach your dwelling.”

6

That day, during the few hours that followed the bird’s departure, in the brief period after the bird took flight from the groves, rose into the air, and disappeared into space’s labyrinth like a speck of dust vanishing into the ocean of the void, at that time when he felt empty and desolate and experienced a distress that surpassed the calamity of the years, that was greater than the pain of his whole life, he dashed out of the sanctuary. He traversed the valley’s groves, scaled the rugged, rocky scree with the vigor of a young man, and climbed the elevation leading to the encampment. He took long strides, forgetting that the Law had also stipulated how the leader should walk, forgetting that the forefathers had not neglected to shackle the leader’s feet, to teach him to imitate the way cranes walk. He forgot the Law and the forefathers, because he forgot he was a leader. He did not merely forget he was a leader then, he forgot that he was carrying another bird in his right hand. He was carrying the aged bird that old age had prevented from traveling, from joining his close-knit flock. He forgot he had lost that day not only the bird in the groves, the bird that sang, the bird that brought the secret and glad tidings; he had also lost the aged, haughty, indifferent bird that had in recent days been another boon companion for him. Even when he encountered the vassals and ordered them to assemble the nobles for a meeting, he didn’t notice their astonishment, he didn’t notice that they were looking furtively at his right hand, scrutinizing the dead bird. Even when he approached the sages and met with the elders in the tent, with the immortal Emmamma front and center, he did not relinquish the dead bird. He was still grasping its two long legs and dandling the scrawny body, which death had left even scrawnier and less significant, leaving it the size of a small handful of straw.

When he spoke to them that day, he said, “He left. He departed. He has flown away. You can rejoice: he has departed.”

The elders exchanged suspicious glances and looks of amazement and then of disapproval. They did not notice the pallor that had spread over the leader’s cheeks because they were following the movement of his long, thin fingers over the bird’s body, over its feathers.

The diviner had the audacity to ask, “Who departed, Master?”

He did not reply; instead he continued grooming the bird’s feathers with all the affection of a mother combing her virgin daughter’s hair on her wedding night. His eyes circled their faces, moving with the ecstasy of someone moved by singing, because he saw what he wasn’t observing, because he saw what he had longed to observe for the longest time. He didn’t see them. They were all certain that he didn’t see them.

He said, “You can make your preparations. You can dodge the horizons as soon as tomorrow. You can flee from here, but realize that you won’t be able to flee from your souls. I know you want to flee from your souls, but you attribute that desire to the Law, because you are cowards. Yes, you are cowards. Ha, ha, ha. …”

He laughed. The leader laughed. He laughed out loud, actually, offensively.