Seven Veils of Seth (18 page)

Tafarat objected, “But she's not a man, either.” At this point he decided to intervene in their discussion for the first time: “A woman who does not bear children is neither a woman nor a man.”

A laugh escaped from Taddikat. Tamanokalt resumed crooning the mournful tune.

Temarit inquired maliciously, “A woman who isn't a woman or a man: What type of creature is she?”

Tahala asked disapprovingly, “Is this a riddle?”

Tamanokalt continued crooning the ancient song of longing. For a time, the strategist of every generation repeated her refrains. When none of the water nymphs' offspring took up the words of the song, the spirit world's messenger decided to take charge himself. He started by solving the talismanic riddle: “A woman who does not consider herself a man will never carry a man in her belly as an embryo.”

Tahala continued her attack: “Is this another riddle?”

He intoned the song for a time. He rendered the tune as if the secret was to be found in the melody, not in the physical world. Before the tune carried him too far away, however, he let go of it and said, “A woman who has lost the man inside her is exactly like a man who has lost touch with the woman inside him.”

More than one tongue asked, “Tell us, master of gnosis, about the man who has lost touch with the woman inside him. Tell us, master of intuition, about the woman who has lost touch with the man inside her.”

He stopped humming the song altogether to respond to the question. “Do you water nymphs know why a man throws himself into the arms of a woman?”

They waited for him to continue, and so he added, “A man does that when he has lost track of the woman inside him, for a man feels an unbearable hunger when he misses the woman inside him, not the man.”

Tafarat said, “I never imagined that a man could carry a woman in his belly.”

“Woman, too, does not enter a man's bedchamber until she loses from inside her the treasure called man.”

“I've always assumed a woman carries only a woman in her belly.”

“In her belly a woman carries an embryo that could be a man or a woman. In her heart, however, a woman carries only a man. In a woman's embrace, a man searches for the woman he has lost from his heart. In the arms of a man, a woman searches for the man she has lost from her heart.”

Tafarat marveled: “Did our master search in our arms for a woman he had lost?”

Without any hesitation, he replied, “Certainly. Had I not been searching within you for my lost woman, I would not have granted you those amulets from my loins.”

“Did you say amulets?”

“I gave you my offspring. My offspring are my names. My names are my amulets. My amulets are seeds for journeys, not the kernels of a sedentary life.”

“Have we returned to talk about the law of travel?”

“Every discourse leads to a discussion of the law of travel in the customary law of the Messenger of Travel. Had your covey not been six in number you would not have been able to dominate men.”

More than one voice asked, “What does our master mean?”

“I mean that the spirit world has inserted into your descendents as a talisman the number six. In the arithmetic of the spirit world this is an unlucky number and over the course of time an evil omen for the nation.”

Stillness prevailed. In the sky, a cloud stormed the moon, blocking it from sight.

Tamuli shouted, “We inherited six as a lucky number from our grandmothers.”

“Your lucky number is the secret of your lost coordinate.”

Silence returned. Then Temarit asked, “Does our bevy have a lost coordinate?”

“According to the law of sorcery, six is a dangerous number until we add another unit. So where's the seventh beauty for the bevy of water nymphs, I wonder?”

Tahala stammered, “We've never thought to ask that question.”

“Because . . . because the seventh of you is an unknown coordinate; because the seventh of you is a man; because the seventh of you could not be a man, unless I were he.”

More than one tongue exclaimed, “You?”

“I am your secret. I am your amulet. I am your lost name. I am your lost coordinate. I am the one who searched in your embrace to find himself there. I am the one in whom you searched for your unrecognized man so you could discover in his embrace your lost truth. I am the seventh coordinate.”

“Is Seventh Coordinate our master's seventh name?”

“This is something I cannot disclose.”

They expressed their disapproval in unison: “But you told us about the names and sowed your names inside us.”

“I sowed in your wombs six of the names. I cannot, however, divulge the secret of the seventh name.”

“Why not?”

“Because the seventh name is the only amulet I still retain for myself.”

“Curiosity will ravage our hearts tonight.”

“For your hearts to be ravaged by curiosity tonight is the lesser evil than for my heart to be ravaged by the Unknown tomorrow.”

He was walking back from the fields, when the fool waylaid him by suddenly leaping out of a clump of palms. He stood brazenly in front of him and stared vacantly at him, as if looking in his direction without really seeing him but focusing instead on some more distant point. This look has been perfected only by idiots, prophets, and the walleyed. He did not budge or speak; so the strategist commented: “You're not satisfied with blocking my path on the roads but persist in blocking my path to the people's hearts.”

He thought the fool released a contemptuous laugh, but it was more like a hearty, newborn cough than a laugh of someone with his wits about him.

He would have said more, but Edahi blurted out, “The mission of the street urchin is to bar the street.”

“I've never once called you a street urchin.”

“But the others do.”

“The others to whom you block my way?”

“I knew you would criticize me for that, but idiocy is my blanket excuse.”

“Use that line on someone who has no doubts about your idiocy.”

“I know you doubt everything. I know you raise doubts about everything. I know you believe nothing.”

“Wretch, how can you be so certain about this?” The fool chortled, tipping his turban back, but then straightened to say, “It's the same certainty that leads me to carry loads for other people who detect nothing but idiocy in my intellect. It's the certainty that shows me the truth you're hiding in your heart.”

He examined the fool with interest and studied him for a long time. Then he asked, “What do you mean?” “I mean that your precepts will destroy the life of fools.” The strategist laughed hoarsely, adjusted his veil to cover his cheeks, and asked, “Do I destroy the life of your fools by criticizing lethargy?”

“They're happy with their life; why do you want to agitate them?”

“They're content with their distress, not with their life.” “A person who is content with his level of distress is luckier than one distressed about his happiness.”

“Ha, ha . . . tell me this: Are we the ones who choose our message or is it the message that chooses us?”

“I would have to be the bearer of a message to reply.” “If you weren't yourself a messenger, you wouldn't have blocked the way of a messenger. So stop playing the fool.” A gleam shone in the fool's eyes but he looked down at the ground. With a worn leather sandal he raked the earth into cryptic designs before he finally acknowledged, “Fine, I think the message chooses us, not the other way around.” “Had you not answered in this way, I would not have doubted your idiocy, but one messenger is another messenger's mate, even if some enmity flares up between them. So how can you wish me to set aside something I did not choose myself, since you understand that a message – like a life – chooses us, not ever the other way round?”

The fool, however, obstinately replied, “You didn't choose your message, but I didn't choose mine either.”

“Oh! What intense hatred is sparked by a message!” He groaned with pain and then added, “I'm afraid we'll part without ever concurring. I fear our separation will be eternal.” In a shaky voice, however, the fool interjected: “We'll never part if you leave us on our path.”

“Ha, ha . . . do you mean we'll converge if we go our separate ways?”

Edahi nodded his head in the affirmative. The strategist laughed sadly. Then in a different voice he continued, “It's preposterous to think that two men separated by a message should ever meet. It's preposterous to think that one who comes to rescue the commandments should find common ground with one who wishes to bury them.”

“We often hear expressions of zeal for the welfare of the commandments from heretics.”

“Yes, certainly . . . I don't deny that liars have frequently misled the tribes into the Unknown through a pretense of saving the commandments, but you also will not deny that sedentary life in the oases has destroyed more commandments than have been forgotten over the course of countless generations.” “Loss also occurs with wandering. Migration also entails suffering.”

“The body is wasted by the travel; sloth lays waste to the intellect.”

“Is it a violation of the Law to rest our bodies, if we are still able to migrate in our hearts?”

He stared at him with bulging eyes, although the fool did not even flutter an eyelid. He too began to stare back at the strategist with blank but determined eyes.

With the candor of a priest revealing a prophecy, the strategist declared: “If you find a way to achieve that, you'll have accomplished a heroic feat.”

“Unless a man has traveled with his heart, he's not really a traveler.”

“That is a gift of the elite, not of the others.”

“Why don't we teach people how to protect the commandments with journeys of the heart instead of journeys by the body?”

“This is the message of one who believes in people – not that of a person who has despaired of changing human nature.”

“Is there no way?”

The jenny master sighed despondently and raised his eyes to the horizon, which was being assaulted by the evening's gloom. He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon for a long time. Then he said, “Had I not tried everything over the years, time would have spared me the pain.”

The fool, however, stepped closer, until he almost brushed the stranger with his scruffy turban, and gazed murkily into his eyes.

Then he asked, as if begging the stranger for a favor, “What do you think of me?”

The strategist glanced at him inquisitively; so the idiot said in the same tone of voice: “Has my master discovered any evil in my heart?”

The jenny master shook his head no. Then the fool clarified his question: “That's the merit of journeying with the heart.”

The strategist acquiesced with a glance and muttered, “Certainly.”

“If we don't risk our hearts, we'll never risk anything.”

“You're right, but the others will hardly understand that.”

“Perhaps the best way would be for us to spoon-feed them.”

The strategist shook his turbaned head no and muttered: “Futile!”

The idiot bowed his head. Then the strategist explained, “They'll never have a dynamic heart unless we prod them with a poker as if they were pack animals.”

The fool nodded farewell, turned back toward the oasis, leaving the stranger standing there, and shot off, his head down.

Encircled by a wall that was intersected by another older one, which had once been the oasis' version of a fort, the chief 's house sat on a hill overlooking the homes of the oasis from the north. The exteriors of the walls were topped by the symbols of the goddess Tanit, who was represented by triangular, earth-colored clay panels.

The elders assembled in the heart of this house while voices clamored outside. The assembly, however, was still. Everyone was waiting for the ruler to speak, but Ewar cloaked himself in silence. So the fool volunteered: “Should we expect any good from a man who substitutes a she-ass for a camel?”

Smiles showed in the eyes of some men, while others exchanged knowing glances, which said that when the elders fear to do something, fools will take charge. Although it stirred those men in whom respect for the desert people's customary code had not died out, Edahi's statement also awakened a sense of shame in the souls of the nobles, who had no right to reproach the visitor for substituting a she-ass for a camel, since they had accepted a similar humiliation the day they turned their backs on the desert and chose as their way of life dependence on the land and oasis languor.

Outside, the hullabaloo began to bluster again. Inside, the anxious silence continued. Eventually the diviner said, “I would almost claim that life in a land without water is easier than life in a land where the water is polluted.”

The ruler retorted, “Is this a declaration of surrender to the stranger's will?”

Yazzal looked questioningly at him before replying, “I don't know whether this is a submission to the stranger's will or a surrender to the spirit world's.”

Elelli intervened, “What I know is that a place becomes uninhabitable once the water is contaminated.”

Ewar again disagreed, “If the water becomes contaminated from some unknown source, we would consider the calamity a message from the spirit world, but everyone agrees that the secret is related in some way to the stranger.”

The diviner Yazzal said, “The reality of the affliction remains the same no matter what causes it.”

Ewar straightened himself, fastened his veil across his nose, and breathed deeply, as if preparing for a long debate. Then he said, “I wanted to say that our grandfathers' stories did not teach us to flee from an enemy we can see and hear.”

Elelli retorted gleefully, “But the disease is an affliction that we cannot see or hear, and we have yet to grasp its secret.”