Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

These designs coated the cavern from the top of the ceiling to the foot of the sides and extended the length of the rock walls, which were cloaked in darkness they ran so deep inside.

Outside I craned my neck, examining the cliff face, until noon and time for the midday heat. Then I decided to take a break and sought refuge in the nearest cave, where, from the entrance, I found myself facing a shadowy figure I could not make out clearly, since it was so dark; as I leaned against a wall of the cavern to catch my breath, I saw, in the gloomy recesses, two gleaming eyes that reflected the light entering from the cavern’s mouth. I did my best to make out the body but failed, since the gloom was too dense. I closed my eyes to listen, but the timeless stillness swallowed everything. All I could hear was my own breathing.

I was quiet for a time. When I reopened my eyes, I found that they had adjusted sufficiently to the darkness for me to see. The figure stood erect in a corner of the cave, as still as a stone statue. There was a weird, unfathomable gleam to its blazing eyes. It had curving horns like those of a Barbary ram, but its body was that of a gazelle, although of huge proportions. It was gazing at me with intense curiosity, but without moving, shying, or even breathing. It might just as well have been an empty hide. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at the creature, but it did not react, bolt, or take flight. I crept toward it on my hands and knees, narrowing the gap between us. Then I saw its pupils expand and enlarge as the strange gleam of its pupils became more intense. I kept staring, and a secret was awakened in my heart. A sharp odor assailed my nostrils, but I did not look away. I was afflicted by a strange trembling and the mysterious whispering spread to my heart. I deciphered in its eyes a prophetic message, which I read without difficulty, although it was wordless. Involuntarily, I mumbled a cryptic, incomprehensible phrase. I crawled out of the cave on all fours and then attempted to rise to my feet but failed. I was forced to continue crawling. I descended the cliff face, still on all fours. When I reached the base of the mountain, I lay quietly on my back and started to shake. The prophecy was making my head pound. As it matured, I felt dizzy and then nauseous. My heart was awash with whispered temptations, and I began to vomit. I threw up for a long time. Then I went into convulsions. I stroked my chest and found its covering soft to the touch and thick enough to arouse suspicions. When I investigated my leather clothing, I discovered that it adhered to my skin, like skin. I tried to strip it off, but how can you pull skin from skin? I cried out for help but heard only a choking rattle.

The composite apparition with the Barbary ram’s head and gazelle’s body showed me no mercy. It overtook me and stood over my head with its glittering, doubt-provoking eyes. I struggled against my despair and gazed into its eyes. The composite creature gazed right back. I continued staring. The dusky coloring of its eyes became ever more intense and they looked more mysterious. I did not budge while the mystery transmogrified. Once the mystery lifted, the prophecy’s distinguishing features stood out more clearly. In the profound, unfamiliar talisman, I saw myself. The stone eyeball was transformed into the surface of water flowing from Heaven’s spring, Salsabil, and I saw myself clearly in it. I saw I was a monster. I saw I was a freak. I saw I was a creature patched together from two disparate animals. I could not believe that I was still myself, and yet I felt certain my essence had not been destroyed. Only then was I freed. I could feel my body becoming liberated. I regained the ability to stand erect and found that I had the power to speed through the air.

THE POWER THAT ENABLED me to speed through the air helped me mingle with the herds, of which I became a member from that day on. In the lowlands I bounded with the gazelle fawns. I ascended mountain crags with the Barbary sheep kids. I nursed beside them, sucking milk from their mothers’ teats, and we competed for the plants that grew on the plains and for the roots of vegetation on the mountain flanks. We shared the dates strewn beneath the palms. The intimidating gazelle with the horns of a Barbary ram had become a mother and father for me ever since the power spread through my heart the day we met in the cavern. She was a creature endowed with a gazelle’s ability to traverse treacherous sandy plains and a Barbary sheep’s ability to clamber up the highest mountain peaks. To attain the steep flanks of the southern mountain I would cling to her meager tail. I would climb on her back to reach the grazing lands of the sandy plains to the north, east, and west. I hung from her neck, swinging back and forth and amusing myself. I had forgotten. I had forgotten my mission. I did not brood about my true nature; I had even forgotten forgetting.

I do not know how long my exile lasted, but the whispered temptation returned one winter day, when the sky was veiled by gloomy, thick clouds and the mountain summits were shaken by a bombardment more ferocious than any I had ever heard in the desert. The herds fled and scattered. The flocks of Barbary sheep sought refuge in their mountains, and the herds of gazelles hid in the groves of palm trees. The thundering did not cease. The clouds started to shoot out terrifying bolts, and the heavens overhead were aflame with blinding fires. The herds grew increasingly alarmed and huddled together. I hid too. I had lost sight of my mother’s tail and sought refuge with a herd of gazelles in a grove. I had squeezed in among them beneath a low palm with bushy fronds when the sky was rocked by such a terrifying roll of thunder that it seemed as if it would crash down and collapse on the face of the earth. Then I observed a gap languishing in the heavenly conflagration. This fissure was ablaze with flames and stretched forth a fiery tongue to strike the tops of the tallest palms, and so the grove began to catch fire. Smoke was everywhere, but my terror-stricken clan stuck together and did not budge or flee. I heard the agony of the palms’ branches, which were caught by lapping fire, but did not catch their toasty scent until the top fronds began to fall on our miserable palm, which burst into flames as well.

The singular fragrance sparked the new prophecy in my heart and roused me, even though it seemed difficult, impossible even, to decipher the talisman. In my anxiety I began to shake. The whispered appeal apparently caused me so much pain that I rushed from the thicket into the fire. As the scorched smell in the air became more pungent, my sense of prophetic inspiration increased, but the prophecy itself did not pour forth. I shot off, racing across plains that were awash with the heaven’s deluge, not knowing whether I was galloping to flee from the conflagration or in search of a stratagem that would illuminate the prophetic message inside me. Yet I never doubted that it was a smell that had excited me: the scents of the fire, of a body being consumed by fire, of mystery, of a prophetic maxim, and of greed. A ravenous appetite, which I could not account for, swept through my body, affecting me like a lethal poison, and I ran as if deranged. My flight carried me far away. I reached the grassy valleys that lie to the north and found them flooded by the heavenly downpour. I lapped the flood water, hoping to extinguish the coal flaming in my belly, but the water, which was created to give life, not to exterminate it, did not douse the flames. I retraced my steps and, without meaning to, returned to the burning palm groves. The herd had cleared out of their hiding place and scattered across the adjacent plain. The thunderous bombardment had ceased, the downpour was checked, dwindling to scattered drops, and the cloud cover had begun to break up, but the fire in the grove burned on. As I approached the palms, that scent grew stronger. I struggled with dizziness. I was trying not to succumb to it, when I observed, beneath the palm’s burning trunk, a wretched, young ewe’s body consumed by flames. Smoke rose from what was left of her corpse. I took another step closer to poke this mound. A repulsive liquid like blood, purulence, or pus flowed out, escaping from the body. I took a stick and scraped charred lumps off her rump. The flesh had been blackened by flames, which had reduced it to bits and pieces, even as smoke continued to rise from some areas. When I plunged the stick into the creature’s thigh, the smoke subsided and the steamy scent wafted from it; the appetizing aroma of the scent that had driven me crazy. I began to tremble once more. So, without any premeditation, I stretched out my hand and feverishly pulled a chunk off the thigh. With my teeth, I tore into the flesh, which — although charred and saturated with blood and dirt — released an appetizing vapor. I savored it thoroughly, bit into the chunk, and began to chew it with the voracity of a sick man. The morsel dissolved in my mouth, and my saliva mixed with the blood, charred flesh, and mud. Then my limbs relaxed, my trembling ceased, and my fever lifted. Calm flowed through my body. Once I consumed the antidote, I heard a supernatural whisper, which was the catalyst for a weird sensation that was a forgotten prophecy.