Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

He swallowed the water slowly, haughtily, and patiently, even though he craved water intensely. Then he suddenly stopped drinking. He stopped before he had drunk his fill, seized the mouth of the water-skin, and cast me a look requesting a tie. I handed him a strip of leather, and he tied it round the mouth of the water-skin, which he retained. I had him sit down by my kit and brought out some dates. He stared at the plate but did not take a single one. In a murky voice he said, “I’ve got to go.”

Without meaning to, I voiced a question that was racing through my heart, tormenting me: “Where to?”

“Hope lies in keeping moving.”

I felt certain that Anubi’s destiny reverberated in this wanderer’s heart. So I mused: “That’s the voice of longing. I bet I hear the voice of longing.”

“We are all victims of longing.”

“What’s the use of moving about, since the desert is hospitable to hungry people but crowds out people hungry with longings?”

“Even so, we crave no other fate for ourselves than longing.”

“You’re right. If granted the choice, we would certainly choose longing.”

“I have to leave.”

I felt fond of him and feared his leaving. My affection was stronger than that of one descendant of Anubi for another. It was stronger than the affection of an exile for his fellow exile, because the affection aroused by longing, it would seem, is the affection of a unique breed. A person governed by an unfulfilled longing finds refreshment only with a fellow sufferer.

I tried to slow his departure, but he expressed his determination: “I have a long trip ahead of me.”

“You must understand that no matter how far you journey, you will never satisfy your longing.”

“The longing we satisfy is not really longing. Hope, master, lies in the road, not in the destination.”

His language awakened my admiration, and my heart became ever more attached to him. I resolved to search for some other excuse to detain him, if only for a night. I did not realize, until then, that a hankering for anything other than unfulfilled longing is an offense against longing and against ourselves. Clear vision, however, is never possible until it is too late. I committed a fatal error by dispensing with the language of gesture and insinuation. I resorted to the clear expression typical of the masses when I revealed the treasure that I ought to have concealed in my heart: “Don’t parents have a right to enjoy the company of their descendants for a night?”

He stared at me with loathing. He seemed not to have understood, for he clung to his silence. I ought to have taken his disapproval as a warning. I should have stopped in my tracks but found myself tripping farther down the road that would lay bare my secret: “Will you spend the night with me if I tell you who I am?”

By the light of the newly full moon I detected in his eyes an even stranger gleam. I saw astonishment, dismay, and pain there. He did not answer my question, and so I moved closer to him: one step, two steps. I leaned over his head and, in the voice one might use on discovering a well or a spring, I yelled: “You’re Ara! I’m sure you’re Ara!”

In the wink of an eye, everything went topsy-turvy. The slender apparition jumped up from his lair as quick as a demon jinni and trembled in a way I had never seen a creature’s body shake before. I could only compare it to the bodies of ecstatic people long tormented by passionate love. I don’t know what happened after that for certain. I simply caught sight of the blade of the knife bathed in the light of the newly full moon. Then … there was the warmth of the sticky, gooey liquid that was pouring from my neck. I was still on my feet, facing him when I croaked: “But… why? Why have you killed me?”

I heard him reply, “Because you’ll disclose my secret to people if I don’t. Forgive me!”

I pressed my hand to my throat. I felt dizzy, but the blow to my heart was far more severe than that to my body. Defying death, I said: “Don’t you know that you’ve … that you’ve killed your father?”

“Rubbish! Many men have claimed to be my father.”

“Prophecy is credible only when we deem it a falsehood. I am your father!”

“Rubbish!”

“Is the son destined to slay his father?”

“Each one of us, master, is created to slay his father. Who among us does not seek his father? Who among us does not wish to slay his father?”

I recognized in his phrase a prophecy that appealed to me. I fought off my vertigo and stuffed a bit of my veil in my wound. I sat down upon the ground. I decided to utter my prophecy too: “We must slay our father in order to search for our father. We must slay our father in order to find our father.”

I heard him repeat my words as if fascinated: “We must slay our father in order to search for him. We must slay our father in order to find him.”

“Do you know that one day your father did to his father what you have done to yours today?”

He did not reply. The disk of the full moon began to shimmer and to grow dark in my eye, as I favored the shadowy apparition with my final aphorism. “Here’s a bit of advice for you: never raise your hand against a man from whose hand you’ve taken a sip of water.”

He disappeared. I found myself abandoned, left to my stillness as always. My greatest fear was that I would not be able to start a fire to provide enough light so I could complete the final scrap of my life story, which I now understood was not the real truth. My insane desire to transform dream into reality endowed me with sufficient strength to struggle until I was able to light a fire and then trace on a square of leather a final symbol that would provide evidence for future generations of the reality of Anubi, who was neither a shade nor a figment of the imagination but a man, who once crisscrossed the desert.

WHEN WE SCORN a friend’s advice we act according to an enemy’s.

Woman resists man’s seductions only to submit, whereas man risks his life seducing a woman only to withdraw.

The homeland is a phoenix, for its body is in the sultan’s hands, but its spirit lives in the poet’s heart.

We surrender ourselves to a minor death, which we call “sleep” and which can renew our life for another day, whereas we reject the major sleep we term “death,” even though this might renew our life for eternity.

Stars are pinpricks of conscience in the heart of the sky. Pinpricks of conscience are stars in man’s heart.

Frequently what a woman finds attractive in a man also causes their separation.

Ignoble people are born children and die as men. Noble people are born men and die children.

Even hell, once it is only a memory, becomes pleasant.

Some pleasant things, similarly, turn into hellish memories.

Patriots boast of their affiliation with a homeland. The desert dweller boasts of his affiliation with nonexistence.

The desert is a paradise of nonexistence.

For the body, the desert is a place of exile, whereas for the spirit, the desert is a paradise.

Water cleanses the body, but the desert cleanses the soul.

For us to withdraw from the world is heroic. For the world to withdraw from us is disgraceful.

Once desire stirs, the appreciation of beauty ends.

The bodies of mothers become bloated from bearing a great number of sons. The spirits of fathers are bled dry by procreating a great number of sons.