Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

The uninterrupted plain inspired a sense of desolation but also awakened an ill-defined feeling of happiness. An eternal wasteland, reproduced in every direction, was surmounted by an equally eternal sky that mimicked it by reaching out and extending in every direction and that proceeded to kiss the clearly demarcated horizon, which formed a perfect circle. Silence seized the whole land, further suggesting that a conspiracy had been laid, and I felt as insignificant as a pebble. All the same, I would not stop. The gloom that attends sunset spread through the sky, and I did not stop. Suddenly the labyrinth abandoned its arrogant ways, and the earth opened into narrow ravines with alternating patches of green and parched vegetation.

A wretched hare sprang from one of these shrubby areas, ran between my legs as he fled south, suddenly veered to the west, and then stopped. He reared up on his hind legs and turned his head to check behind him. I watched him for a while before continuing on my way but found the caravan trail also veered toward the south and passed by the spot where the miserable creature stood. I walked forward a few steps, came alongside him, and approached him, but he did not move. With his gloomy coloring, positioned there, he resembled a statue. He gazed into my eyes curiously, provocatively, challenging me.

I picked up a rock and threw it at him. He did not move. I took a step toward him and could see his eyeballs clearly, despite the dusk. His eyes were deep, large, and unfathomable, like the eyes of a human being, like the eyes of a foreign priest. A strange gleam pulsed in them, as though the rascal wished to say something. I shut my eyes to avoid seeing his eyeballs. With my eyes closed, I reached out to seize him, but he slipped free. He did not flee as he had the first time. Instead he hopped away briskly. Actually he stumbled off rather clumsily, in a way befitting heavily laden camels. He stopped beside some herbage in a nearby hollow and began sniffing the pebbles and chewing, as if nibbling on grass or perhaps ruminating. I walked toward him until I stood over him. He stared at me, but I did not detect provocation, curiosity, or challenge in his eyes this time. They seemed, instead, to betray a lack of interest. He casually sped past my feet. I leaned over to grab him, but he dodged me deftly once more and put some ground between us. The earth felt softer, and the barren land gave way to thickets of dry plants with green sprouts on the lower branches. A passing cloud had apparently dropped a shower here and brought the dead plants back to life. The rogue took his time going here and there among the herbage, greedily stuffing his mouth in the thickets. Whenever I approached, he escaped and hopped clumsily a short distance ahead, until darkness fell and I could make him out only with great difficulty. I stalked him a little further before I came to my senses and remembered that I needed to reach the well before night fell in earnest, since I had brought no water or provisions with me. I retraced my steps, but only imperfectly, since it was too dark to see my tracks clearly. So I proceeded toward the west, in the direction the trail took.

I covered quite a distance before I found the narrow track dug by the padded hooves of the caravans’ camels. I kept desperately on that trail all night long, without ever reaching the well. I was overcome by exhaustion, and my throat was dry for I had sweated profusely during my trip and felt thirsty, even though the sun had set and a congenial evening breeze was stirring. I moved off the path a couple of steps and, using my hand as a pillow, slept like a dead man. I imagined I heard a commotion and was frightened repeatedly by the howling of jackals. A bevy of girls clad in black approached me. A local girl, our playful neighbor, preceded them, laughing seductively, the way she did whenever we met among the campsites or out in the open. I did not understand how the scamp had transformed herself and assumed the cursed hare’s body to stand before me like an apparition of demonic height but still with the hare’s challenging expression. Then the apparition acquired the features of a man, a real man, a repulsive fellow with fiery eyes and teeth the length of knife blades. I was so terrified I awoke to find that my body, which was bathed in the rays of the god of the rising sun, was releasing its last beads of sweat. On glancing around, I observed the desolate plain, which stretched away with an ever harsher aspect. All the way to the horizon, there was no hint of a well or of life. I surveyed my surroundings and discovered that the trail I had followed all night long was not the caravan route but a track that herds of migrating gazelles had made when driven by drought to seek pasture in another land. Had that illomened hare, exploiting the evening’s gloom, succeeded in leading me astray, luring me into the labyrinth?

I remembered my Ma’s tales about the misfortunes occasioned by the nation of hares, who were not always animals. They originated long ago with a female demon who disguised herself in a hare’s skin when people tried to set her on fire as punishment for luring away the sons of the tribe and selling them to the jinn tribes for treasures of gold dust, a substance this invisible tribe despises. I felt even more unlucky when I remembered that this cursed female jinni had deliberately led me to the gazelle track, because gazelles, as my mother had told me, are the livestock of the people of the spirit world. The jinn like to ride them.

To the west, across the desolate plain, figures were visible along the horizon. Streams of mirages raised them into the air, distorted and dismantled them for a time, and then reconstituted them again. Hope whispered inside me that these figures might be a caravan heading east, west, north, or south, and that I ought to catch up with it before it moved too far away.

As Ragh rose higher in the cloudless sky, the mirages persisted. I decided I ought to hurry before thirst felled me. Though the shadowy images did not vanish, the distance I traversed in search of them brought me no closer. I hurried on at a faster pace and hastened forward until midday, when the desert experienced noon’s conflagrations. At that time, the capricious, fluid veils began to disperse, revealing the true nature of the shadowy apparitions. On the horizon I could make out a mountain chain that interrupted the flat desert’s extension to the west, blocking its endless expanse. The earth’s surface changed and was interspersed with ravines along the bottoms of which were scattered retem trees and some wild plants with dried-out tops, but which underneath had desperately fought to remain green.

I restrained myself from approaching the retem trees’ plumes, which I remembered cause insanity, but could not keep myself from attacking the plants. I stripped off the dry tops and swallowed their green parts. I started to chew and chew and chew. I sucked the sap, paying no attention to all the bitter tastes I swallowed from each plant. I ate for a long time. I ate not to satisfy my hunger but to quench my thirst, although eventually I felt dizzy, dropped to the ground, and began vomiting. I threw up all the different kinds of plants I had consumed, but their bitterness flowed through my body. I went into convulsions and began to shake. I remembered what people say about the desert’s poisonous plants and realized for a fact that the insanity caused by thirst is a greater handicap to clear vision than the insanity that strikes us when we ingest the twigs of retem trees.

I thought I had purged my system of all these poisons, but now my body was overwhelmed by fever. I began to stagger and sought refuge, trembling, in the shade of a retem tree. I struggled with my dizziness, sweated profusely, and then felt hungry and enfeebled, as if I had not been sweating but bleeding. In my dazed condition, I fought off shadowy apparitions and sought to escape an attack from the ugly hare’s fang. He stalked me, assuming at times the body of the playful lass, then of a viper, and of the despicable female demon at other moments. I do not know how long this nightmare lasted, but when I regained consciousness, I found it was late afternoon. I imagined it was the afternoon of the next day, or the third or fourth one, because my thirst had intensified, even though my fever had gone down. It was not merely thirst but a curse more wretched than thirst. I attempted to stand up, but found I could not. So I crept forward on my hands and knees across the soft earth of the ravine, brushing against various plants. Each time I caught sight of one of the green plants, I got the shakes.