Seven Veils of Seth (11 page)

“Bring him back?”

“Yes; I shall bring him back, since it is the earth that has swallowed his remains.”

“I see you're speaking with the certainty of a priestess.”

“I am woman. I am the feminine. I am the mother. I am the earth. I am the goddess Tanit, whose soul was born from her soul and who created the entire desert from her flesh.”

“Amazing!”

“Your tragedy is that you've never known me.”

“I really don't know you.”

“I am your destiny.”

“My destiny?”

“Woman is man's destiny. Have you forgotten the Law's teachings that stipulate her protection when hastening along narrow desert paths?”

“I've never heard a maxim like this attributed to the Law.”

“Who can claim to know all the teachings of the Law?”

She gazed off across the vacant land, which was flooded by dusk's jagged shadows. She looked exactly like a true priestess reciting a novel prophecy when she declared: “Like the desert, the Law has no beginning and no end.”

Then she adopted a new approach. She began to repeat a new refrain, morning and evening: “You abducted me one day and then abandoned me. Why did you abduct me if you intended to abandon me?”

Eventually, growing sick of her ballad, he flung his rebuttal at her melancholy face: “I did not abduct you. I have not abandoned you. What it amounts to is that I don't want to forsake my principles and renounce the nomadic life.” She was so overwhelmed by lethal sorrow that he forgot what she had done and rocked her on his lap. He decided to terminate both her pains and his own by terminating the farce tribes refer to as “marriage.” He went to the animal pen and milked a camel. The fresh milk was topped by thick froth. From his pack he withdrew a mysterious, herbal powder. Then he dropped a handful of the powder into the milk container, which he took to her. She was complaining of a headache, nausea, and pain in her joints. He squatted near her and watched as she sipped the spiked drink. She swallowed a little only to stop and glance furtively at him. Then she continued drinking from the container as the froth coated her pale lips. When she finished, she set the container aside.

She said, “Don't start to imagine that I'm feeling sick because I'm pregnant. You know why I'm sick!” She leaned her head against his butt.

He murmured, “I know.” His response, however, did not assuage her rancor, and so he decided to ask her, “Why does a woman feel she needs to bear children?”

She replied in a voice that was not her own: “Because woman is a mother, because woman is the earth, because woman is a goddess. Haven't I ever told you that?”

“Why should a woman destroy her children, since she is their mother?”

“Because a woman loves her children.”

“Does a woman kill her children out of love?”

“Yes, of course. The lover must kill the one he loves.”

“Why should a woman give birth if she is destined to kill?”

“Because the sun also shines; it shines only to set. Everything that comes into existence does so not in order to remain but to disappear.”

“Why should a thing appear if it is destined to disappear?”

“A thing must inevitably disappear. If it didn't, it could not reappear.”

Her voice shook. She began to fade away but without any sign of suffering or any complaint. Her voice became muffled. She had trouble speaking. He toyed with locks of her hair and stroked her face. He asked, “Is it better for us to disappear or to reappear?”

“Appearing constitutes a loss, but when we disappear we regain what we had lost in the spirit world.”

“I'm happy to hear that, since you will recover there everything you have lost here.”

She did not respond. He felt her pulse and found the protruding vein limp. Then there was no pulse. He bent over her to examine the expression in her eyes by the light of the fire. He saw a profound surrender in her look. He closed her eyelids and muttered as if addressing the eternal stillness in the eternal wasteland: “Farewell, poetess of the nations! Farewell, priestess of the tribes! Farewell, goddess who gave birth to herself and created the desert from her flesh!”

He adopted the jenny as his mount after a disastrous experience with the malice of camels. In fact, it was the spiteful behavior of this species that drove him to the she-ass. To quench the thirst of some camels in Tassili, he had been busy drawing water from a well, aided by a camel, which he had received from a foreigner in repayment for a loan, without ever imagining that any of the tales of this species' perfidy might come true. Just past noon, when the heat was most intense and when going back and forth around the mouth of the well had exhausted him and apparently that creature too, he was caught off guard by the behemoth's rebellion. When it first veered off course to the right, he assumed it had become disoriented, but once he tried to catch it to guide it back to the path, the camel lengthened its stride and quickened its pace. Then the leather bucket, which was fastened to the well's winch, tore apart, and the camel dragged the rope away behind it. He shot off in pursuit but did not catch it until it had descended into a nearby ravine, where it was halted when its halter rope became entangled in an acacia. He found it frothing and spitting angrily and voluminously as it tried to escape from the trap that the shrubby acacia had devised. He grabbed hold of the nose rope and attempted to calm the beast, but that was not meant to be, for there stirred within it a jinn troupe that – according to the tribes' tales – had concluded an age-old pact with this creature's ancestors. Although he detected a look of overt hostility in its hideous, bulging eyeballs, he freed the nose rope from the tree's root and stroked the camel's flank, caressing it the way mothers caress their babies, for he knew that camels delight in all types of fondling. Then he sang a lament, since he was sure that these creatures dote on songs of longing, but insanity – once awakened – is a demon that does not recognize affection. Frenzy too – once it emerges – is a ghoul that is not seduced by songs of longing. From deep in its chest it released an abominable sound. Then it twisted its neck back in a lightening-swift movement to bite his hand with its vicious teeth, which were filthy with foam and spit. Had he not fallen back at the last second, it would have seized his hand. Instead its teeth raked the back of his left hand, wounding it.

Then the battle flared. He pulled hard on the halter, but the beast reared its legendary neck upward in insane rebellion, severing the rope that twisted round this scoundrel's head. Thus the demon was liberated. At once it attacked him, braying with delight at its liberation, confident of its triumph. Finding no way to defend himself, he retreated with a bound. Since the open countryside offered no sanctuary for anyone fleeing from a raging camel, he leapt aside and took refuge in the acacia. The camel circled the tree, casing it with the rash defiance of one determined to take revenge in some undisclosed way. This circling was also foolhardy and exhausted the beast. Then it paused to growl, bray, and threaten him from the far side of the shrubby tree. When it stretched out a serpentine neck to bite him, he retreated. The demon's rage peaked and, oblivious to the thorns, it threw itself on the acacia's boughs. It crushed the vicious canopy with its body, as thorns penetrated its hooves, and then reached him. At that moment, since his only hope of deliverance lay in the open countryside, he burst off, racing toward the neighboring mountain chain, and the beast sped after him. He came to an area strewn with jagged rocks that skinned his legs and severed the strap of his right sandal, which he cast off. Then the stones lacerated his foot. He stumbled on a hill in the next stretch, lost his balance, and fell. The demon caught up with him, and he rolled across the flank of the hill and used his hands to help him gain his feet so he could continue fleeing.

In the following lap he forgot about himself and so forgot the danger threatening him, because he soon adjusted to running. Indeed, he began to enjoy his flight. Then he realized that man only escapes from danger once he relishes it and grows accustomed to its thrill. He felt exhausted, but the mountain chain was still far away, even though it looked very close. The mountains of Tassili, like those of Tadrart, look a stone's throw away, even when a traveler is days from them.

Exhaustion and thirst got the better of him and he sensed the ghoul's mouth above his head. When the camel's frothy saliva rained down on his arms, he realized that the accursed beast had caught him. He decided to try to outsmart it and suddenly veered to the right. He sped a short distance and then changed course again, to the left. The sly demon, however, kept right on his heels, veering in pursuit of him with the deftness of a bird and the suppleness of a serpent; so he felt desperate. He despaired because exhaustion had overwhelmed him and thirst had betrayed him, casting him into the all-encompassing consciousness of danger once more, for ruination lies in ambush whenever one is conscious of danger while feeling its thrill.

In the succeeding lap, the beast pulled off his veil when attempting to bite his head. So he ran bare-headed across the barren land. In his flight, he descended some gullies, but these led to a steep incline, which he started to climb, gasping for breath, his heart almost leaping from his breast with each breath he took. Had he not used both hands and feet, the beast would have savaged him before he reached the top of the rise.

As he gained the summit, he fell. He fell and rolled across its extremely hard slope. He did not stop to think what he was doing until he reached a depression. Then he found himself in a deep ravine where trees grew at scattered intervals along the valley bottom and livestock grazed. No, these were not sheep or goats; these were donkeys. Half of the herd bolted; the others were startled but did not flee. Nearby, a few paces from where he had fallen, a gray she-ass gazed at him with inquisitive eyes. He detected in her look a mysterious smile. In this mysterious smile he discerned a message of salvation. He leapt to her side and then mounted her with another bound. At first she took offense and bucked in a heroic attempt to free herself, but he clung to her back. In fact he melded himself to her back, for he was certain this was the only straw to which he could cling. At that moment the ghoul reached them. First off, the jenny kicked it with her hind legs to halt its attack. Next she shot away down the valley with insane speed. She went past the trees and then regained the half of the herd that had bolted. In the wink of an eye she had outstripped them to continue her mad flight. She attained the mountain chain in an incredibly short time and deposited him at the foot of a mountain, beside a copious pool, which the torrents of the last rainy season had left and which rocky outcroppings sheltered from the fiery sun. Gone was the barren wasteland, and the beast had disappeared along with it. So he bounded to the pool to drink.

He climbed the slope and stretched out in a cave for a long time. On regaining consciousness, he brooded about the camel's secret. He knew a lot about the wrath of camels but did not remember ever harming this one since receiving it from a noble of one of the tribes of Azjer in compensation for a long-deferred loan. Whatever could have come over it?

The next day he descended to the base of the mountain, drank from the pool, and ate some plants in the valley bottom before he made his way to the jenny. He found her grazing in a southern bend of the ravine. Then he stroked her neck for a long time and sang her an ancient lament. Next he tore apart his garment, which was stained with blood from his insane trip, and made a shackle for her from the strips of cloth. After placing this fetter over two of her legs, he set off to explore the area. He discovered evidence of camels and ashes from the fires of herdsmen but did not encounter anyone before evening fell, and so he relaxed. He climbed the hillside again and sought refuge in the cave. He lay down and immediately fell asleep. He was shortly awakened, however, by a ruckus. He searched to see whether those responsible for the ruckus were at the entrance to the cave but found no one. He crawled outside to find, towering above him, a man wrapped entirely in dark-blue fabric, from his veil to his feet. Rising, he found himself face-to-face with the specter. As desert people normally do when uncertain of the lineage of a wayfarer or of a stranger's ethnicity, he inquired:

“Am I addressing a human being or a jinni?”

The specter replied immediately, “In the caverns of Tassili we frequently meet human beings with the body of a jinni and jinn with human bodies.”

“But we can always rely on amulets. The unintelligible lingo of the ancients reveals a creature's constitution and shreds his veil of dissimulation.”

“Tribes of jinn have buried in the Tassili caves some of the most potent amulets. The only amulet worth anything here is a man who sees no difference between men and jinn.”

“I actually have never detected any difference between them.”

“That's your most authentic amulet.”

“My master may sit with me, but I am unable to offer him food or drink, because I am also a guest in these lands.”

“We are all guests in these regions. Anyone who thinks differently is a scoundrel.”

They sat facing each other at the entrance to the cave. The guest spoke of rain and then changed topic to discuss armed raids, then epidemics, and finally famines. When it was his turn, he spoke about the fortunes of the tribes in the northern deserts and finished with his migration to the central deserts. Then he recounted his bloody ordeal with the camel he had received as repayment for a loan. The guest interrupted him: “Did you say you received it as repayment for a loan?”

“That's right.”

“The secret lies in the loan, not the camel.”

“What?”