Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

The sheets of crumbling rock collapsed under our combined weight, and we tumbled downhill. I found myself hugging her body with both hands as we fell. I put my arms around her neck, which I pressed against mine. I sensed the moisture of her snot on my face, her breathing in my ear, her heartbeats in my heart, and the pulsing fetus in her belly with my pulse. We were united during our descent, for I felt she was part of me and I part of her. I regained my sense of wellbeing and composure, since I had regained my feeling of affiliation.

The rocks scraped my skin grievously, and I bled profusely. I did not feel the pain, however, until some time after we landed. The trip down did not take long, but it was long enough for that emotion I learned priests call “happiness” to be sparked for a few moments in my soul. This flighty emotion does not tarry with us long. A boulder blocked our path and brought us to a halt. When we came to a stop, our union terminated and a painful estrangement ensued. Our bodies separated, and exile reasserted its sovereignty over my world. The ewe kicked me in the chest with her two front hooves and forced me, against my will, to release my hold on her neck. She shook herself free and rose to her four feet to confront me. She panted. From her nostrils she discharged dust, mixed with drops of the snot that had spattered over me. She glared at my face. She stared at my eyes, at my pupils, and at whatever lay behind my pupils. She saw, or so it seemed, everything in my eyes. The slow deliberation with which she backed away revealed her terror, alarm, and revulsion. Without meaning to, I crawled toward her. I crept after her to reclaim her. I crawled toward her to restore our harmony and to recreate our bond. I stretched out my hand, both my hands, as if begging, but she backed away from me with a strange zeal, never ceasing to stare at my eyes with that terrifying look.

I trailed after her. I found myself pulled toward her. I could not bear to be separated from her. I could not stand to be parted from her. She continued to retreat. She backed until a boulder blocked her from the rear. Her pupils narrowed. She was swept by a fear greater than any I had ever witnessed. It was a mixture of despair, grief, and impotence. When she opened her eyes, a liquid flowed from them. I saw it glide down her muzzle till drops fell on the rocks of the cliff face. She closed her eyes and began to tremble once more. She shook violently before reopening them. Then I detected a new gleam, a different one, a look of genuine determination and of the courage a creature feels when it decides to terminate a problem and to be heroic. Then … suddenly, she sprang. She shot toward me in a lethal leap, which I dodged only at the last second, by tumbling over backwards. Then I saw her bound into the air and disappear behind the boulder. Before I came to terms with what had happened I heard the heavy crash of her body against the earth. Leaping up, I discovered that only the boulder that had stopped our descent had prevented our conjoined bodies from falling into an abyss. My eyes searched for her from my lofty perch but could not make her out among the rocks below. I bounded down the cliff face, although my progress was hampered by rocks I repeatedly had to sidestep. Eventually I tripped over a stone, fell to the ground, and began to roll down the hill. I tumbled a long way. I tumbled the whole way down till I reached the chasm’s floor. My limbs were bathed in blood, but I felt numb all over. As I stood above her body, I saw that, although she was still breathing, she was dying. Her swollen belly rose and fell. Blood trickled from her muzzle and flowed over the rocks of the pit. Blood also spouted from her rump. She bellowed profoundly while the sides of her abdomen stretched taut and contracted. She discharged a lot of mucous and blood, before discharging the fetus in one fell swoop.

I rushed to the newborn and took it in my hands. It was limp and slimy with blood, amniotic fluid, and threads of mucous. Its eyes were covered by a veil as diaphanous as spiders’ webs. The eye beneath the coating was extinguished. The lamb quivered in my hands once and then a second time before it subsided, forever.

The mother also quivered as she released her final breath at exactly the same moment.

I HEADED FOR THE CAVERN decorated with the wisdom of the ancients and spent several days there. I did not feel like eating and was disgusted by everything, even the hunk of meat that had sparked greed in my heart the day lightning incinerated the ewe formed from the body of a gazelle and the head of a Barbary ram.

Whenever I recalled that taste, I saw in my mind the image of the Barbary ewe that had fled from me forcing from her body her stillborn lamb — a-swirl in fluids — and her last breaths. Then I was unable to keep myself from vomiting till I almost spat out my guts. My only consolation came from kneeling to beg for forgiveness beneath the images that the ancestors’ shamans had traced on the hard walls. I brooded about my situation for two days following the death of the ewe and her lamb. The only cure I could devise was to admit the truth. After a prolonged internal debate, I realized that all along the source of my conflict with the herds had not been, as I had originally tried to persuade myself, my conquest of beauty, but my seizure of prey capable of quieting gluttony’s call in my belly. Yes, greed was the cause. The gluttony revealed by my consumption of the illomened morsel had not only poisoned my body but had stripped me of my camouflage as a member of the herds. That was the cause. So how could I free myself of these poisons and absolve myself of my error?

Yet, it seemed my hunger for meat turned out to be the stronger drive, for my feelings of nausea eventually disappeared, and the image of the ewe and her newborn also faded away, so that I found myself, without any conscious decision, prowling around the herds’ grazing lands once again. I prowled there for a long time without bagging a victim from either species and was finally reduced to employing a different type of amulet, one I dubbed iyghf or “reasoning.”

I brought fresh palm stalks from the groves and began to plait them into a circular form. By trimming away the leaves, I created a perfect circle. Then I crisscrossed the heart of the circle with rows of twigs that I fastened to the circular frame by threads of bast. I called this base fabrication tasarsamt or “trap.” After that, I headed to the pasture where I dug a pit as deep as I could reach and then placed my ignoble handiwork exactly over the mouth of the hole. I spread dry material and plants over the contraption so that it was invisible. Inspecting what my hands had wrought, I found it excellent. Then I retreated to a nearby acacia to relax as a reward for the effort I had taken to craft this excellent device. I rested under this bushy acacia and began to dream of the antidote that had restored my memory until — I do not know how or when — I dozed off.

I slept profoundly and did not wake until dawn had traced its talisman across the horizon. I went back down to the plain but found neither snare nor victim. I searched the area excitedly and discovered near the hole’s mouth some fur tufts that convinced me the prey that had run off with my snare was a gazelle. I followed the tracks through depressions that twisted around before leading to the northeastern valleys. I descended into the low-lying valley bottoms, but their sides soon began to climb and rise to become, in the tracts beyond, trails that would ascend the peaks of the stubborn sand ridges. In the muddy valley bottoms I could see the track much more clearly. My victim had circled an acacia tree repeatedly, as if appealing to it for help in liberating herself from her shackle, but the tree had snagged her body in the form of bits of furry hide stuck to thorns. At a steep bend, where the ravine rose stubbornly to join gullies that came down from the highest reaches, I found blood on smooth rocks that crowded together at the mouth of the ravine like a thicket of boulders.