Seven Veils of Seth (3 page)

A full breast escaped from her garment. She had leaned over so long that her virginal breast had lost patience and rebelled, jiggling and slipping down, liberating itself from its humble shelter. What he first saw was the nipple, which was bulging, promising, and as large as a date. It crowned her white, tantalizing, rounded breast, as if planning to escape or to liberate itself by swelling into a new breast atop the old. Sweating profusely, he went crazy and reached out to caress the full nipple that clung to the generous, bulging breast. Then an intoxicated moan escaped from the beauty: a deep, audible groan like the sorrowful lament in a hymn of longing. He drew back and responded to the water's surge with an inaudible remark. The beauty raised her jug from the pool and stood proudly by the spring. She cast her gaze far away, toward the tops of the palms in distant fields, before asking, “Do you realize why the Law stipulated that man should cover his head with a veil?”

“When the priestess speaks, the world can but listen.”

“It's because man's most vulnerable point is his mouth, whereas woman's is her body.”

“I think I've heard a saying like this before.”

“Since the Law proclaims it, not I, how could you have escaped hearing it?”

“But I heard no reference to the mouth in the lesson you gave me a short time ago.”

“We didn't discuss the mouth, because our goal was to skirt the mouth. We did not mention the mouth, because we were obliged to circle the mouth and discuss its milieu, because a discussion of the mouth would have been an attack on its sanctity, or so the Law decrees.”

“An image! A sign! The language of the Law is metaphorical. This is another proof that I hit the mark when I called you offspring of the jinn, not the daughters of human beings.”

“What is the Law save words of advice from the jinn to the desert's inhabitants?”

“Really?”

“Have you forgotten that Mandam, the desert people's forefather, wasn't expelled from Waw until the day his mouth devoured a fruit from the orchard?”

“Oh . . . Mandam. . . .”

“The mouth is the weak spot that led to our expulsion from the orchard and turned our world into a desert. Do you know the status of the mouth in customary law?”

“I'm not a diviner; how would I know?”

“A man's mouth is comparable in every respect to the secret a woman conceals between her legs.”

Silence reigned. He gazed at the faces of the other beauties and saw they really were a troupe of female jinnis. He submerged his body in the water. He dove to conceal not merely his body but head, face, and mouth. He decided to safeguard his mouth by hiding it beneath the water so the torrent would create a veil from its flow, but he heard the she-jinni say, “The mouth is man's weak spot. Beware!”

He dove into the water and disappeared up to his shoulders, neck, ears, and eyes. Then he submerged his whole head. He vanished, and the veil was complete, the veil of water. He held his breath and kept still for a protracted period. He swallowed some water but held his breath as long as he could. Then he sprang up to gulp in the air voraciously. He staggered and tumbled back before gaining his balance. He started to suck in air through his mouth and nostrils again, filling his chest. On discovering that the troupe of beauties had vanished, he assumed they really were children of the spirit world. He remembered what the priestess had said about man's weak spot and laughed. He guffawed tipsily, reveling in the laughter. Then . . . then, rage overwhelmed him. At first he could not think why. Soon he discovered the reason. He wanted Tamuli and she desired him too. She liked his audacity but would not forgive his restraint. So she had decided to punish him, to avenge herself on him. Thus she had recited the myth of the mouth, of the weak spot, and of the grandfather banished from Waw because of the morsel he had stolen from the orchard. She had decided to mock him in front of her companions in order to humiliate and punish him for cowardice. She had decided to say he had no right to reach a hand into woman's orchard unless he was certain he was capable of plucking the fruit, because woman is like an enemy territory, which you do not raid unless you possess the courage to kill, because otherwise you will be killed. She had in effect told him: “Woman, too, is an arena where you will definitely meet defeat unless you resolve from the beginning to conquer.” He had unintentionally insulted her with his idiotic response and had revealed his ignorance of the secrets of passion to the covey accompanying her.

Choked with rage, he beat the water with both hands. Then, hoping they would hear his maxim, he shouted as loudly as he could: “Hear my law, wretched spawn of the jinn: Unless a man bares his weak spot to a beauty, he will never win her.” He guffawed with insane laughter while slapping the water.

Singing water's praises, he crawled out of the spring and remembered the last time he had plunged into a torrent. That had been when the Amehru Ravine had flooded in the Tassili region, more than a year before. He chanted an ancient song in which the poet praised his master – water – in recondite verses. He had previously chanted these refrains repeatedly without ever discerning their secret meaning as clearly as he did now on emerging from the spring-fed pool. He said, “The bard was right to take water for his Beloved, since it's the only entity that traverses the heavens to fall subsequently to the pits, inundating even the darkest, most remote areas. It cleanses itself in lights supernal and returns to hide in the lowlands. It explores the unknown as a creator when it turns to vapor and returns to earth as a created object when it becomes visible.” Then he asked aloud, “Who are you, water?” He answered, “Like us, water, you're on a journey. Like us, you are launched on your migration by a fire. Like us, you recuperate by regaining the homeland.” He lay down under a palm tree and murmured the ancient song for a while. Then he observed, “Fire makes us fathers. Water makes us mothers.” He hoisted himself on his elbows and watched dusk's flood spill over the calm pool, dazzling the eye with a captivating, golden reflection. Two lovers – the sky's light and the earth's water – exchanged a playful and meaningful look. This flirtation continued for a time till prophecy gushed forth in his heart. He grinned with a strategist's malice and then muttered, “Beloved of long standing, I will fulfill my pledge to you. With your assistance, master, I will wreak vengeance, since vengeance is not really punishment unless our master water plays a part.” He inhaled the scent of the field – of the trees, mud, oasis crops and of the humidity that perfumed the air – until he felt dizzy. He laughed quietly before reaching in his kit to extract a dismal-looking cloth. Dropping it on his lap, he focused on his singing again. He leaned over the piece of fabric, never ceasing his mysterious refrain. Like the forest-land priests who never execute their mysterious rites without first reciting spells, he swayed back and forth to the haunting melody as he gazed at the surface of the nearby pool. He reached for the cloth and held it by the end so the rows of charms printed in white lines across the cloth were visible. These had faded, either from wear or perhaps from long exposure to the desert's sunlight. When he fastened this end to his forehead, another amulet was visible in the veil's “tongue.” This charm was stuffed into a case made of an unusual type of leather, which was also embossed with magical symbols. He began to wrap this alarming veil around his head as he intoned mysterious lingo like forest dwellers' cant. Then he fell silent and reminded himself privately that the time had come for him to draw on his inner reserves and to twist his serpentine veil around his head to hide from the world his ears, which the shrew had recently likened to donkey ears. Women are descended from such a wily creature! Anyone who thought he could hide something from this community, even once, was a fool a thousand times over. The beauty had perspicaciously and instantly observed what he had concealed from mankind for ages. She had immediately seen his ears and had similarly discovered his tail. She had not seen the tail hiding behind his back or the one lurking between his thighs; she had glimpsed his real tail, his secret tail, his tail that had eluded the most cunning analysts. From that day forward, he would admit that woman is the mistress of cunning and the sovereign of all tacticians. She had been right to say: “Man should not expose his head.” When he exposes his head he actually exposes his intentions. A man who exposes his intentions is not a man or – for that matter – a woman. The head is man's vulnerable point, not because it is crowned with the two horns that fools perceive as ears, but because it hides secrets. It hides thoughts, which – should they be laid bare – will reveal his true vulnerability. The concealed weak point is in the mouth, in the tongue, in the mystery that hides within the tongue. It is not the same as the body's weak spot, which dangles between the thighs. Glory to the veil! Veils truly are glorious, because a message needs a veil. Prophecy would not be prophecy unless concealed behind a veil.

After fastening the veil securely round his head, he approached the water to inspect himself in its mirror. He leaned over the surface of the submissive pool, which was flooded by the golden dusk and saw another creature there: a haughty, terrifying demon, as unfathomable as a god. Amazed, he remarked: “It's right for desert folks to shun a person who removes his veil. It's right for the desert's offspring to shun a creature who disguises himself that way. The lost Law decreed correctly that any tribesman who sheds his veil should be shunned for this bare-faced disguise. It similarly ordered that any tribesman sporting the veil should be honored, even if he belongs to an alien tribe or has entered the desert as a immigrant.”

He returned to his kit and extracted from the bag a pouch wrapped in leather ornamented with cryptic symbols. He removed a suspect powder, which he examined carefully before returning it to the bag. He thrust his hand into his bag again to take out another pouch also wrapped in leather even less prepossessing than the previous piece. He untied it and stepped toward the spot where the water bubbled up. He stood on the bank and mulled over the significance of the way the light looked on the body of its beloved water. He listened carefully to the silence, which was interrupted only by the songs of the grasshoppers. He recited the charm in a loud voice: “Aid me in the struggle, master water, as I transmit my commandment to people.”

He sprinkled a secret drug onto the water. The suspect particles flashed in the light as they fell and then scattered over the water's surface. He watched them quickly spread
– zealously, like entranced mystics – to contaminate the entire pool.

The evening celebration convened on the night the moon became full. While it was enthroned as lord in a heavenly throne, the maidens turned to poetry's sanctuary and commended their hearts to mournful songs in their ancient longing as a message honoring the Beloved.

Their parched throats released melancholy songs endowed with a longing that was as ancient as the eternal desert and that was dispatched to honor a Beloved as ancient as the eternal sky. The women's circle was located in an open area, which was adjacent to the houses of the oasis on the northeast and which bounded the far-stretched fields to the southwest. The men were present too but did not form a circle. Instead they sat in an impressive row and remained silent so they could – as they usually did when there was a gathering – spy on the women or the spirit world.

With their fingertips, the beauties made the drums speak; a cry emerged from the drums' bellies. The beauties' voices rang with longing, and a prophecy emerged from their mouths. Their fingers touched not only the drums but squeezed their own hearts.

Their throats did not release just voices but gave voice to their very spirits. Once the veil of the Beloved – enthroned in the heavens – was tinged with frenzy and blood, the men's feet began to pummel the ground. They crawled about on their hands and knees in ecstasy. Others fell in the dirt, where in response to their longing they rolled around in a trance-like state of altered consciousness.

Meanwhile he – a stranger through all generations, the poster child of curses, the eternal man with the jenny – hiding behind a sandy hillock, began to observe the festivities surreptitiously. When the timeless rite commenced and the hearts of the young women were decimated by longing, he too quaked. He swayed and rocked with ardors beyond any that creatures of the desert had ever experienced. He released a lethal groan that could have devastated him had he not sped off in search of the vast open spaces. No one could sap the body's strength, thrust a knife in the chest, or crush a breast the way these imbecilic, passionate ecstatics did, but he fled. He fled from the place behind the hill, from the oasis, and from the entire desert. He fled to the orchard. He did not, however, test its defenses. He circled round the place where physical space does not exist and longingly gazed at the Orchard's Master, who had expelled him from his realm one day even before he expelled Mandam from the sacred site. For the first time he grieved at his eternal solitude and wished he had brought the she-jinni Tamuli with him so she could see what she had never seen, hear what she had never heard, and taste what she had never tasted. If that wretched woman acquired a talent or gained a gift from the spirit world and accompanied him on a trip to the horizons, she would grasp the secret. Then she would not dare chide him for criminal ignorance of the Law. She would certainly recognize that the punishment the Master of the Orchard had meted out to the jenny master was immeasurably more severe than that he inflicted upon Mandam, that child of wretchedness.

If there was anything in the desert that could excuse the beauty's offense, it had to be her crazed hymn, which shook him and stripped away his ugly body, allowing him to flee as he did now, exploring the vast expanses of the place that no mother's child had ever reached by any route, since it slumbers in hearts far away and can only be attained via the demon that tribes refer to as “longing.” Is this really you, ancient orchard? Is this really you, river of milk and honey? Is this really you, tree of obfuscation? Is this really you, enigmatic fruit? Is this really you, heavenly lote tree?