Ibrahim al-Koni - Anubis - A Desert Novel

For several days I wandered about dazed, but I could not bear to wait long. I determined that I would vanquish forgetfulness and recapture that lost life, my true life, no matter what the cost.

I went to her tent, where I found her bowing in the direction of the forenoon’s Ragh to plait her luxuriant hair into slender braids. She intimated with a glance of her eye that I should approach, and I crept a few inches closer. The perfume of her body assailed my nostrils. I staggered and shut my eyes to ward off dizziness, but she stretched out her hand and seized me. With a bold palm she grasped me and pulled me into her arms. No, that was not it; I did not find myself in her arms but snuggled against her full bosom. I was inside her flowing gown, in a vale between two astounding breasts crowned with prominent nipples. My body fell atop a taut ivory expanse. I became lost in this labyrinth of ivory and slid ever farther down. I clung to the only outcropping my hand could reach and grabbed hold of her breasts, but they escaped from my hand, because they were larger than my palm. So I struggled desperately and grabbed the jaunty, protruding nipples at the tips of her breasts.

Then I heard her say in the same hoarse, sibilant voice, “The women say you like to fool around. The women say you’ve taught their daughters several games. Even your mother wants you to be playful, because she thinks a playful boy is a successful one. Now you can play. Hee, hee, hee.” She chortled for a long time, until the chortling turned into a deep moan.

While struggling to keep from slipping ever lower, I remembered her promise and shouted to remind her what she owed me. “Dates! You promised to give me dates.”

She crooned, “Is any date in the desert tastier than the one you grasp, rascal?”

The jaunty nipple escaped from my fingers, which had become slippery because of some liquid, either sweat from my hand or moisture oozing from the teat. So I skidded further down the soft, ivory-colored body. I found myself in another valley at the center of which lay a thicket of dense undergrowth. As I grasped this undergrowth, my nostrils were met by a fragrance I could taste with my tongue. It was the secret taste that disperses forgetfulness and lights the path to immortality.

I began to visit her tent every day to savor that taste until the day of separation dawned. I awoke one morning to discover that her tent had been struck and that the mistress of the taste had departed. I could not believe it, perhaps because I had never imagined I could lose this taste and fall prisoner to forgetfulness again.

Forgetfulness felt like a mountain crushing my chest, and I resolved to liberate myself. I asked which way she had headed and set off in pursuit. I raced after her like a madman but found only mirages waiting at the horizons. I became exhausted and dehydrated, while the sun-baked earth scorched my bare feet. I fell to the ground and began to creep on all fours. As I crept forward, the path skinned my knees and hands, and I began to bleed. Finally unable to proceed any further, I experienced bitterness, not the taste of the lost fruit. My only consolation lay in weeping. I wept and wept, until night fell and sleep overtook me.

I SET OUT TO SEARCH for the priest, but he had disappeared from the settlement. I consulted the nobles, but they all agreed that they knew nothing of his whereabouts. I asked the matriarchs, and one of them commented that priests are a race comparable to the jinn’s offspring, who disappear whenever we search for them and reappear only when we do not expect them.

I went to the grisly tomb whose stones the priest had soaked with my mother’s blood, according to the neighbor-girl’s account, but did not find him there either. I traveled to the pastures and questioned the camel herders, who told me he had branded his camel with the sign of the goddess Tanit to protect her from thieves and since then had allowed her to roam untended in the desert of Tinghart for several years. I finally lost all hope of finding him and decided to bury my anxiety in forgetfulness. Since this world was the ablest assistant I had found, I headed for Targa to search for the camel my mother had given me just before that ill-omened day of separation. I had entrusted her to a fellow tribesman who said he was related to me in some way. So I headed out to the open country nearby to watch for caravans heading south.

Using my wrist for a pillow, I stretched out under an acacia tree to spend my first night. I was just drifting off to sleep, as dreams hovered around me, when the priest’s figure appeared, standing above my head. At first I imagined he was a fragment that had split off from a dream. Then I was able to recognize him by the light of the stars, even though he was partially concealed by his garments, which were of a gloomy color. He stood by my head for what felt like a lifetime before he observed coldly, “I was told you’ve been looking for me.”

When I did not reply, he dropped down on his haunches, facing me. I stared at his face in order to read the prophecy in his eyes, to read the certainty in them, but the cloak of darkness concealed their silent expression. So I said, “I thought priests were people like anyone else, not specters.”

Without any hesitation, as if he had been expecting this remark, he answered, “Where would priests obtain their prophecies if they couldn’t change into specters?”

I stared at him again. I thought I detected a glint of covert disdain flash through his eyes. The sight provoked me, but I swallowed the anger I felt like a lump in my throat and said, “Priests have a right to turn into specters or jinn, but they have no right to turn into killers.”

“Killers?”

“You killed my mother.”

I said this coldly, even though my whole body was trembling and shaking. He continued to stare at me calmly. The disdain visible in his eyes seemed stronger. With the same detestable coldness he said, “Of course! Priests also kill. They only kill, however, in order to bring someone back to life.”

My body’s trembling increased as I began to develop a fever. I saw my mother dandling me. I saw her teaching me the names of things. I saw her teaching me the prophecy. I saw her bringing me outside so I could bathe in the light of Ragh and grasping me back to cherish me in her embrace. I began to choke. I tried to speak, but my tongue, which was all twisted up in my mouth, failed me. So he spoke, instead of me. He spoke to complete his victory. Yes, indeed, victory always belongs to the side that speaks. Victory always falls to the side that can make the best use of the tongue. Truth is also the tongue’s sweetheart. He who fails to use his tongue is left falsehood’s side. So, blessings on anyone who makes excellent use of the tongue and woe to anyone who fails to employ it successfully.

The cunning strategist spoke coldly because he perceived that his coldness provoked me and that coldness could slay me, “How could I have brought you back to life without killing her?”

“Rubbish!”

It cost me a heroic effort to spit out this word, even though I knew how silly it sounded. I was certain “rubbish” was something I had uttered and not something he had said. It seems the wily strategist sensed my impotence, for he brazenly demonstrated his mastery over the tongue. “Don’t you know that it was her death that restored you to life? Don’t you know that the birth of children presupposes the destruction of their mothers?”

I heard this statement but did not understand its import. I did not understand, because I suddenly woke up, just as I once woke up to find myself imprisoned by my mother’s embrace. I had stammered then, because I had been deprived of the use of my tongue. So, speaking for me, my mother had told the story, just as the priest was now speaking for me. The wily schemer seized the opportunity to monopolize the conversation. He talked and talked and talked, but I did not understand. Perhaps I did not understand because I did not listen. I did not listen because I was feverishly wrestling a knife from the sleeve of my robe. The fates had it that my dread knife should sink into his throat just when he had finished declaring: “This is the law of sacrifice!” So he became the sacrifice, because the weapon’s blade plunged deep into his throat. The plentiful, warm, viscous blood gushed out and stained my fingers, my wrist, and even my face, flowing down to soak the desert’s earth, which has been thirsty for millions of years. I had to wait a very long time to witness that haughty creature fall upon my lap: a wasted body, empty, and as light as a pile of feathers.