Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

My former true love was not content to celebrate my return with all this munificence; she sent my way some jinn disguised as people to console me and to dispel from my heart the isolation that mankind terms loneliness. Then she sent my way people masquerading as jinn to show me how remorseless people are. The most precious treat she granted me was the hint of purity that drew me close to my secret reality, however, for it was this exalted purity that brought me to a stop only a fraction of an inch from the sanctuary where I felt that, were I to call, I would be granted a response invisible to human eyes, inaudible to human ears, and unimaginable by the human mind. The past’s pains, with which the desert had once weighed me down to test me and to make a man of me, became the memory of a comforting grace. The delights of lethargy, which the oasis had generously showered upon me, became the memory of a hideous inferno. I saw how hell frequently is transformed into a blessing when it becomes a memory, and a blessing frequently evolves into an inferno in memory; the talisman, apparently, is a pawn to the riddle named time, which deliberately puts us off, delays us, and fails to inform us of the true nature of what transpires on a certain day until it is too late.

I was entranced by this healing and felt myself light as a straw, as pure as a tear; like a person recovering from a lengthy, near fatal illness. I smiled, because I understood that the group of conspirators, who had thought they were harming me, had actually done me a favor. Nonetheless, the nightmare of the oasis soon swept over my solitude to disrupt my blessing and to ruin my situation. Are the wise men of the tribes correct when they say that the spirit world’s envy does not allow anyone’s happiness to last long?

I did not hear the news that troubled me from an emissary or a messenger but from a wayfarer, who casually mentioned it during a night he spent with me before heading north the next day. I met up with him near the edge of the extensive Tinghart desert on the threshold of a terrifying tomb of the type that the ancients customarily built for their chiefs, leaders, dignitaries, and priests. I buried under the ashes of the fire some gray-colored truffles I had gathered during my wanderings in a valley that had received autumn rain from a fickle cloud. As soon as the wayfarer sniffed the fragrance of the truffles, he went into an ecstatic trance and began to moan like a suffering patient. When I pulled out this treasure and set it before him, he gazed at the legendary comestible for a long time. Then, without ever ceasing his mysterious moaning, he started to examine each section with as much curiosity as a diviner hunting for a portent. He did not reveal his secret to me until after midnight. At first he sang about an oasis named Targa. I did not know whether he was singing about my lost oasis or about the Targa that generations have celebrated in the epic songs of the ancestors and that the tribes, so long ago that no one remembers, had lost, so that its name was given by sages to any country that one cannot hope to visit and live to return from. Finally he concluded his song by saying that any legend we believe will become a reality, even if originally it was a fiction, and that whatever a creature covets in the unseen world will be presented to him by the spirit world in the visible world, and that the proof for this is the oasis of Targa, for the desert nations have never seen anything comparable to it. Then, out of the blue, he asked, “Have you heard about the magician who created an image of the lady of the temple from gold and thus mastered her spirit?”

“They say he created the image out of love for beauty,” I answered. “But he fled from the oasis for fear something would happen to a creation to which he had entrusted his spirit.”

“Yes, in the solid metal two spirits met: the lady’s spirit and the spirit of the creator of the lady.”

“I like that!”

“Because the law of the gods, according to the lore of these magicians, is creation of a creature, and the law of the creature is the creation of the gods, and the creator’s creation is artistic creation. This harbors the secret. Here is hidden the insane passion.”

“How creative this is! Are you a poet?”

He did not answer my question. Sprawled out beside me in the open air, he spoke as if confiding to the stars or addressing himself: “The lord of the oasis thought the lady’s lover had fled from the oasis, but would a lover ever flee from his true love? Does the creature flee from his creator? Or the creator from his creation? Far from it!”

“The wretch didn’t flee from the oasis?”

“The lover does not flee from the beloved he has created in his spirit even before his hands shape it. The lover does not flee from his beloved, because the lover is the beloved’s destiny, just as the creator is his creation’s destiny. The lady pulled the rug out from under the feet of the lord of the oasis, because he had given her power but had been stingy with creativity. She threw herself into the embrace of the lover who created her, because he had invented her.”

“What do you mean by saying that the lord of the oasis gave his wife power but stinted on creativity?”

“I meant to say that the ruler gave his wife an oasis but did not give her a heart, whereas the homeland for a woman is a heart, not a land. The fault of the ruler lay in forgetting that woman flees from a wealthy man who gives her a kingdom if he veils his heart from her; and she surrenders herself to a shepherd who offers her a residence outdoors but awards her his heart.”

“Woe is the man who feels secure with a woman!”

“It’s said that after she expelled her husband from the precincts of the country the lady of the oasis abdicated the throne to her lover.”

“Not so fast! Tell me first of all the truth about the lover’s disappearance from the oasis.”

“The lover didn’t disappear from the oasis. The woman hid her beloved in her chamber.”

“In her chamber?”

The way I shouted this almost revealed my identity. The fact was that the news rattled me, because like any man who has been betrayed I was so confident of myself I could not believe this. The poet, however, was anything but merciful in his narration: “It’s said in the oasis that the priestess seized power after her consort, the ruler, denied her the throne, not because she wanted political power but to guarantee the right of the offspring of the mother to inherit the world and likewise to take vengeance on her cast-off husband.”

“Vengeance on her cast-off husband?”

“She wanted revenge on her husband because he, according to accounts, had once upon a time slain her father.”

He fell silent, and then I heard in the night’s silence the muddled hubbub of roaring jinn. I realized that a creature whom the spirit world abandons will never escape the sword’s thrust, not in the farthest reaches of the desert. I tried to eavesdrop on the hubbub in my heart. Then I heard the sojourner prophet continue with his recital: “The creature who fled from the oasis was not the lover but the son.”

“The son?”

“The child of the original leader!”

I could hear my own pulse throbbing but asked, “Where did the son flee?”

“To parts unknown, looking for his father.”

“Did you say he was looking for his father?”

“Yes, indeed; each of us searches for his father. A son who does not search for his father is not worth much. A son who does not search for his father will never be successful. It’s said in the oasis that the boy’s father would never have discovered the treasure that is the oasis named Targa, if he had not been searching for his own father.”

He fell silent. I soon heard his breathing grow steady and knew he had fallen asleep. Yet, I found no sign of him in the morning. So, even today, I do not know whether my guest that night was the wandering offspring of wayfarers or a spectral messenger of the jinn.