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.
8 Dawn
WE MET AT THE CURVE of the ravine as she headed toward the pasture with her flocks. When she caught sight of my bloodstained shirt, she gasped in alarm but did not release her index finger, which she sucked to mask her alarm. She was hard to understand while she chewed on her finger. “What’s this? Did you slaughter a kid or a billygoat?”
“Yes, indeed; I’ve slaughtered a billygoat. Yesterday I slaughtered a black goat.”
She stared at me skeptically before continuing: “Was it a sacrifice?”
“Yes, indeed, a sacrifice.”
I gazed at her black eyes, which were as deep as the gazelle’s, before adding, “I slaughtered the goat as a sacrifice for my mother’s spirit.”
Her eyes gleamed with the sparkle we see only in gazelles’ eyes. This sparkle is not to be understood, investigated, or resisted. I turned my face away and allowed my gaze to soar across the open lands in search of some inspiration to help me express my secret, “Didn’t you say he slaughtered her on the tomb the way you’d slaughter a ewe?”
She stopped chewing on her finger. The color of kohl spread through her eyes, and blackness dominated them so entirely that they became even deeper, more beautiful, and more enigmatic. I got the shakes and felt feverish again.
I saw him fall to his haunches, balancing himself on the tips of his fingers opposite me, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. Not a single moan of suffering or groan of pain escaped him when the knife settled in his throat. In fact, he stayed erect so long I was convinced he was a demonic child of the jinn. He fell in my lap, however, just when I had decided to flee. He fell into my lap like a pile of chaff or feathers. He fell into my lap as if wishing to seek refuge with me. He fell into my lap, because the slain person must seek refuge with his killer. He fell into my lap because it is decreed that slain men take refuge with their slayers.
I gazed into her eyes. I gazed until I disappeared into their depths. I pulled the knife from my sleeve and flourished it in the air as if combating an invisible enemy. In a stranger’s voice I croaked, “I stabbed him like this. I stabbed him in the throat. Like this! And this! Ha, ha, ha ….”
I swallowed my laughter and exhaled. I blew out all my breath until I began to suffocate for lack of air. I was drenched with sweat, and my eyes found nothing to focus on until they settled on the knife fouled by the victim’s blood. At that moment I heard her voice and was astonished. I was astonished, because I had forgotten her. I had thought myself alone in the wilderness and so had forgotten her. She took me by the hand and sat me down beside her on a hill overlooking the ravine. She said quite distinctly: “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Then she paraphrased her words in the same authoritative tone, “Oh, if you only knew what you’ve done!”
I interrupted her, with even more authority, “I did what I had to do! I never regret an act I’ve committed.”
She bit her finger and rocked as if ready to emit a wail of mourning, “But it’s an act that makes repentance for any other deed you commit superfluous.”
I did not understand her and kept silent. We were both silent for a time. I tried to catch my breath, but she showed me no mercy. “You’ve killed your father! You’ve killed your dad!”
I thought she was affecting the language that elders use when they speak equivocally. I thought she was reciting a story of past generations, one that would end with a moral, aphorism, or a saying with a hidden reference, but she turned toward me and stated with a clarity that banished all doubt, “Don’t you realize that you’ve killed your father, wretch?”
Dumbfounded, I protested, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The priest was your father.”
I laughed. I laughed even though I was short of breath. I said with great certainty, “If the priest was my father, then I would never have lost my father.”
“You don’t understand.”