Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

I discovered dung from Barbary sheep on the sandy blazon encircling the haunch of one of these knobs. When I rubbed it between my fingers, I found it was still fresh, but the ewe’s trail disappeared where the sandy band terminated. So I made for the heights, knowing that Barbary sheep would typically be satisfied with no other type of refuge. I persevered till midday without finding a single ewe. My throat was parched, my tongue and lips were dry, and my body had shed its sweat reserve. I saw that I had forsaken sound counsel when I failed to respond to the inner voice that had advised me all along to desist and turn back before it was too late. I searched for a shrub or boulder that would afford me some shade until the noonday heat passed, but the soil was of that grievous type the tribes say was cursed at some time; a fiery heat emerging from the center of the desert had scorched it, wiping out all vegetation until even plant seeds had disappeared. The only crop its dirt produced was stones.

I resolved to turn back but thought I would never survive unless I found a place where I could shelter from the siesta-time heat. I committed another error for once again I ignored the little voice and went forward, hoping to run across some shade behind the hill, which was bathed by waves of mirages.

I pressed forward, but the hill retreated ever farther away the more I advanced toward it, as if fleeing from me. I remembered the tricks mirages play in the northern desert and felt certain that I had fallen out of the pan into the fire and that confusion had once again led me into harm’s way. My vision was blurred, and I started to see double. My body shook from a weakness that struck without warning. I felt dizzy, dropped to my knees in a grim, eternal solitude, with a scorching earth beneath me and a furnace overhead. Only then did I understand that my crime lay not in venturing farther into the desert than I should have, but in entering the desert in search of anything other than water. I realized at last that although the fates had provided me with everything I needed, I had rebelled and set forth in search of something I had never needed. I deserved the fury and punishment of the sun-baked earth.

I perceived clearly that a sip of water was all I needed. Why had I disdained the bold stream, the springs, and life in general to set out like a madman in search of a figment of the imagination and a lie, substituting for life a shadow of life? Now I had landed myself in life-threatening isolation, where I was searching for a drop of moisture in a rocky desert. I did not even dare to think about the copious supply of water I had left behind, since all I dreamt of was some shade to shelter me from the blazing sky and to preserve in my body all of the lost treasure I could salvage.

I crawled for a distance, but the scorching earth burned my hands. I licked them and fell on my stomach and elbows. I began to wriggle forward on my belly like a snake but was not able to wriggle far. I lay on my back. My face was burned by the punishing sun and my back by the punishing earth. I burned until I no longer felt the inferno. I sensed I was about to pass out. I do not know how long I was unconscious, but the sip of water that saved my life certainly preceded the prophecy I heard from the mouth of the emissary who stood above my head: “It is not wise to neglect what we have in order to search for what we lack.”

He placed the mouth of his water-skin in my mouth, and the water poured down my throat. I could feel it flow through my body and spread into my blood, restoring my faculties to me. I regained the ability to use my hands and grasped the water-skin with thirst’s insanity, attempting to empty it into my belly in one gulp, but the emissary seized it, pulling it away from my mouth. “This is the answer,” he said. “This is the secret. It is all about greed.”

I was thirsty. I had returned in an instant from a trip to the unknown. My dream was to provision myself with more of the antidote that had rescued me from the ghoul’s grip. I made a sign with my eyes. I begged with my eyes, because — like others who have fallen into the ghoul’s grip and then miraculously returned to the desert of the living — I had lost the ability to speak. Even so, the apparition kept the water-skin out of my reach while he proclaimed sagely: “You had a comfortable living bestowed on you, but you betrayed your covenant.”

My tongue, however, stammered with the wisdom of the thirsty: “Water!”

“You received water and betrayed it by setting out on a journey. Where are you heading? Where?”

“Give me a sip, and I’ll tell you a secret.”

“No one who has disavowed his secret has a secret.”

“Did I disavow my secret by setting forth in search of food?”

“We provided you with the fruit of the palm for nourishment. So don’t lie.”

“Dates are a lifeless form of nourishment.”

“Lifeless?”

“Any nourishment devoid of that riddle named beauty is lifeless food.”

“Beauty is a treasure that gives life, not a deadly ordeal.”

“How can one seize beauty, master?”

“Beauty always evades us if we set out to search for it.”

“Master, I have never dreamt of obtaining anything so much as I’ve dreamt of obtaining beauty. When, however, I departed one day to search for my father, I lost my way and was not destined to return, for I found myself stuffed into the jug of metamorphoses.”

“Do you see? This was your punishment. You should not search for anything you do not find in your heart. You are beauty. You are your father. You are prophecy. You are the treasure!”

He chanted his words as if reciting verse. He swayed right and left, as if in a trance. He uttered groans of pain reminiscent of those of people overcome by longing. My faculties were restored and life began to pulse through my body. I said, “I gave up searching for my father one day and decided to look for Targa, but the spirit world cast me into an oasis whose name I don’t even know.”

“What the spirit world wishes for us is always nobler than what we wish for ourselves.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The oasis whose name you don’t know is real, but Targa is a false illusion.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Targa too is a lost oasis.”

“I’ve heard members of my tribe speak of caravans that left for Targa.”

“Caravans that leave for Targa don’t return. It is the lost caravans that head for Targa.”

“Targa is lost, the law is a lost set of prophetic admonitions, and the people of the desert are a lost tribe. Are we, then, bastard children of heaven like Anubi?”

“Each one of us is Anubi; each a fleeting shadow.”

“But…who are you?”

“I am a fleeting shadow.”

Because of my fatigue, dizziness, and ordeal-induced daze, I was not able to make out his features clearly, but sparks in my heart tried to tell me something. “Has the spirit world not brought us together before?” I asked.

He stuck to his enigmatic response: “I’m naught but a fleeting shadow.”

The sparks in my heart illuminated a corner veiled by darkness, and I pulled myself together and struggled onto my elbows. I clung to his blue veil, which gleamed indigo in the twilight. Unaware of what I was doing, I shouted, “Not so fast! You are my father! Are you my father?”

He stared at my face for a time. His eyes narrowed to slits, but when he opened them again I detected an attractive smile in them, the smile of a child who has received what he wants. I struggled against vertigo once more but heard his prophetic admonition clearly: “What need for a father has one whose father is the heavens?”

“I heard a maxim saying that a father is the antidote for misery and that a creature who has never discovered his father will never be happy. So, who are you?”