Seven Veils of Seth (8 page)

He raised his hand to adjust the end of his veil too, before embarking on his defense: “I have indeed garnered the tribe's suspicions, even though I have yet to allure the masses into deceitful games to lead them to hell's abyss.”

Everyone laughed in unison. The tribe's chief laughed too. Hiding his laughter behind his veil, he asked, “Is this your plan?”

“Ha, ha . . . can a creature rebel against his destiny? I will definitely lead them, but not along the road to the abyss – contrary to the way generations have told the story – but on the path to deliverance.”

“Deliverance! Deliverance! We will never learn the path to deliverance unless we delete this word from our vocabulary. Each recruit for the band of wayfarers claims to be a prophet and announces to the tribes that he is the Messenger of Deliverance. The strategist known as Wantahet also claimed he would carry people on the path of deliverance the day he cast them down the mouth of the abyss.”

“Hell, too, master, is at times deliverance.”

“Did you all hear that?” He drew the edge of his veil over his nose, concealing his pockmarked cheeks, and laughed with childish glee as he leaned back: “Hell, too, is deliverance. Do you mean it's what the masses deserve?”

“Yes, indeed. Don't we burn the body at times with fire to root out a disease?”

The tribe's chief, however, tilted his turban toward him and whispered, “Why not defer our discussion of deliverance until you dine with me this evening?”

“I've promised myself never to share a feast with another person.”

The merry gleam left the sovereign's eyes as he asked in astonishment, “Was that an oath?”

“You could call this nonsense an oath.”

“It truly is nonsense, for the oath should be for us to share a feast instead of to lie in ambush for one another.”

“Renunciation of feasting, master, is not always a conspiracy.”

“But a covenant we inherited from our ancestors said yesterday the opposite of what you're saying today.”

“Ha, ha . . . the covenant we inherited from our ancestors proposed many maxims that, if embraced, would discourage us from devoting much time to building, developing oases, or gathering in marketplaces.”

“ ‘People are a pain, but useful.'
³
That's what the ancient Law said.”

“ ‘No matter where the caravan goes, it will return to its point of origin.'
⁴
The ancient Law also said that.”

“Is that a summons to nomadism?”

“There is no imperative, master, save this.”

“But no matter what, we will pass on. We will inevitably pass away, even if we appease the entire world.”

“The nomadism of appeasement, to which you refer, master, is an ignominious form of wayfaring. It is not the maxim-driven nomadism of which the Law speaks.”

The sovereign groaned in disgust and wound the fringe of his lower veil around his index finger so that it would hide the top of his right cheek. Then he said, “It's not a good idea to hold debates in the market. I've never debated with anyone about the Law's maxims in the congested market. Accept my invitation and I'll slaughter a she-camel to compensate for your vow.”

He laughed to disguise his discomfort, but the JennyMaster declined in no uncertain terms: “Preposterous!”

The ruler shot back defiantly, “Do you derive more human comfort in leaning on tombs than from mingling with living beings?”

The jenny's strategist bowed his head for the first time, but the throng discerned the deeply felt sorrow that he tried to hide before answering: “By sitting with our slumbering ancestors, master, we gain the wisdom of eternal rest, because through their rest they tell us more than worldly people tell us when they pause; they tell us the truth, master.”

“We'll learn that truth one day, whether we want to or not; what's the hurry?”

“Because we don't truly live, master, unless we develop a taste for slumber; because we don't truly live today, master, unless we sleep before death arrives.”

“You astonish me. You awaken in my heart a curiosity I once assumed I had laid to rest. Is there no way to hear the noble guest save in the market square amid this din?”

He answered with a look. Then he bowed his head toward the earth before shooting off. The chief called after him, “Hermits are always right. It's futile for us to try to win a wager with a recluse.”

After leaving the other members of her covey – who were meandering through a grove of palm trees – to gather firewood on the eastern plains, she started to feel dizzy. Her vision was blurred by a dark cloud, and she felt totally debilitated. She began shaking and staggering. She sat down to combat her intense abdominal pain. She closed her eyes and hyperventilated. Sweat beaded up on her forehead. Convulsed by severe trembling, she fell to her knees. She tried to vomit up the clump that blocked her esophagus but spat out only quivering saliva of a sinister hue. As she fought to free herself of this scourge, she emitted a weird groan that frightened her even more than the seizure, for it reminded her of the querulous cry a neighbor woman had released more than a year before, prior to expiring beside her. The disapproving look visible that day in the dying woman's eyes exceeded even the disapproving ring of her groan. Was death that terrifying? Could the other woman have been that frightened by her final passage, even though she had long realized she would die? Indeed, she had repeatedly said she looked forward to death, which would end her pains.

The vertigo diminished and the dark cloud dispersed. Her breathing became more regular. She rose to return to the covey in the grove, but immediately after she passed through the palm trees that spread along the grove's heights, a gray hare bolted between her legs and fled east, toward the sword-type dunes. Suddenly, however, he changed course and flew off to disappear behind a hill that hid him from the grove. She felt awful, haunted by a desperate sense of doom. She hastened on, mumbling the ancients' incantations to drive off evil spirits. Hurrying, she tripped and fell. She stammered, “Bad luck, bad luck.” She kept repeating this phrase in place of the arcane charms. She tried to rise again but collapsed. At that moment, her insides contracted with pain that seemed not acute discomfort so much as a knife slashing her insides with insane malice. She screamed at the top of her lungs. She tried to rise again, but the hideous pain felled her and she tumbled to the ground. She began to writhe as the malevolent blade continued to reap the contents of her belly. She kept pressing on her abdomen with both hands as she twisted about. Her body was suffused with such profuse perspiration that she felt the thirsty sand beneath her grow damp with moisture borrowed from her body. Once the knife ceased cutting, she opened her eyes to discover that the fluid inundating her and wetting the earth beneath her was not sweat but blood flowing from between her thighs. She released such a prolonged and hurt wail that she did not hear the call of a covey member hastening to assist her: “Help, women! Tafarat's swimming in blood!”

After sunrise on a day promising severe heat, a proclamation rang out in the oasis: “Today, oasis dwellers, an affliction has settled on our homes; a malady has affected women's bellies. So perform sacrificial offerings and try to stay calm until the matter is clarified and the affliction's cause is discovered. Those present are duty-bound to inform those absent.”

The fool moved from one neighborhood to another, speedily at times and slowly at others, wiping sweat from his face with the tip of his veil at times and with the sleeve of his garment at others, and raising his voice to call out at times and falling silent to catch his breath at others. He paused repeatedly in front of houses and huts to receive water from women, who watched him inquisitively as he sipped from their jugs or wooden vessels before darting away again. Only the fool realized, however, that what passersby observed in women's eyes that day was not curiosity, thirst for information, or fear of the unknown – which are normally associated with the news of any scourge – but a feeling greater than all of these. Their eyes had an expression of certainty presaging calamity; for the scourge this time not only threatened the women but constituted a conspiracy that threatened to deprive the oasis of offspring – perhaps even the whole desert. The women's calamity, however, did not silence him, for he continued to shout the announcement: “Today, oasis dwellers, an affliction has settled on our homes; a malady has afflicted women's bellies. So perform sacrificial offerings and try to stay calm until the matter is clarified and the affliction's cause is discovered. Those present are duty-bound to inform those absent.”

Boys joined him as he made his rounds. They kept him company, with one line racing along to his right and a second one on his left. Some would fall away whenever he exceeded their range, but others would join each time the procession reached a new settlement. Elders were scattered at the entryways of huts and mud-brick houses, standing there like silent specters or statues; they did not budge till the company had passed by and disappeared from sight in a grove of trees or behind the top of some hills.

Only the visitor to the oasis sequestered himself that morning on the flank of the hill. He watched the procession from the time it left the press of northern houses and traversed the shacks scattered along the plain that led to the dwellings surrounding the market square and circling the hill to the north and east. He did not cease watching until it turned to slip down the narrow alleys where dwellings clung to each other and the houses shared walls, as if protecting each other from an unknown danger.

The public affairs announcement reached his ears too, booming loud enough at times for him to make out clearly every word and then fading into the distance where, in the stillness of the open country, it seemed the buzz of a fly. Even though insolent laughter rattled in his throat from the moment the tour began and the proclamation first rang out, more than once he choked on a tear in response to the tragic ring of the call, which sounded like a lament to him, perhaps because he heard only tragedy in the announcement and could decipher in it only a mourner's admonition whenever it resounded through the tribes' settlements. Were creatures destined to hear from the herald's mouth nothing but an elegy whenever a proclamation rang out in the tribes' lands? Were creatures destined to hear nothing more than a lament from the mouth of the herald? Are glad tidings a voiceless, shameful secret that slips into these lands covertly and diffidently and flees clandestinely from these territories too, as shamefacedly as it arrives?

He nearly choked on his disquieting laughter once more, because he resembled the ancients' legendary jackal, which only grinned when hungry, since it realized that hunger is inevitably followed by satiety, and only wept when satisfied, realizing full well that hunger inevitably follows a good meal. He likewise would laugh till his throat rattled when sad, because he knew better than anyone else that sorrow always ends with joy, and would weep through joyful events, since he knew that joy ends with sorrow.

He swallowed his laughter and descended the hillside to meet – at the bottom of the hill – the chief merchant, who was upset. His anxiety was apparent in his eyes, and his veil, which was pulled back from his mouth, revealed the deep scar of an ancient wound that had marked his left cheek, crossing his upper lip.

He brought the merchant up short with the question: “Has some evil befallen you?”

He glanced up at the stranger absentmindedly before responding: “What is there in our world but evil? The moment we catch our breath from one evil, we encounter another. Didn't you hear the public announcement?”

“I heard the announcement and watched from my vantage point as your herald made his rounds.”

The chief merchant stared at him with red eyes: “Yesterday all the pregnant women miscarried.”

”No!” His disquieting laughter, however, rumbled, and he chortled a bit until he could ask, “Why did that happen?”

“A malady this widespread isn't a medical issue; it's a punishment.”

“And as you know, a punishment is often a message of deliverance. Should we fear it this much and lapse into anxiety?”

Amghar waved his hand as if to drive away flies and then asked desperately, “What shall we do with women whose bellies are barren?” He reached out to seize the end of his veil, which had pulled away from his mouth, twisted it around his index finger a little, then pulled it up toward his left ear and tucked it into the fold so his nose was completely hidden. He asked with an unexpected sigh: “Tell me: Is a woman with a barren belly still a woman?”

Confining his wicked laugh to his chest once more, he replied, “A woman with an empty belly is definitely not a woman, but she's not a man either.”

“Yesterday, after midnight, my wife suffered a miscarriage too.”

“No!”

“I was there when she ejected the stillborn child the way a she-goat ejects a kid.”

“Ha, ha. . . .”

“Writhing like a viper from her pain, she released a sound that reminded me of the bleating of a goat. Then she groaned and the fetus slipped out with the groan.”

“Amazing!”

“I wouldn't feel so bad if I had children, like most men.”

“I don't understand.”

He looked up at the stranger blankly: “She's the third woman to enter my home and the first to become pregnant by me.”

“I'm sorry to hear this.”

“The spirit world has decided to punish me for forgetting my vow.”

“Vow?”

“Yes, absolutely: my vow. I promised a banquet to the goddess Tanit if one of my wives became pregnant. When she suffered morning sickness, began to crave clay, and admitted to me that she was pregnant, I remembered the vow. By the next morning, however, I had forgotten it because I was busy with one of my caravans that had returned with goods from the forest lands. After that I forgot it altogether and never thought of it again until the affliction struck yesterday.”