I said aloud, “I’ll kill myself if the poor woman has perished before I reach her, because her blood will be on my hands.” I wondered about the secret of compassion while I wept. When I finally reached the point of no return, I found I was too late. I heard an uproar there and then saw in the distance the disorganized caravan that had snatched her away before I could reach her.
8 Morning
FINDING MYSELF EMBRACED by solitude once more, I sang my sorrows, chanted my loneliness, and in verse questioned my true nature. I was tormented by yearnings for the unknown and attempted to work off my longings among the rocky boulders. I contrived to cut solid rock into a splendid statue and determined to erect it as a landmark, thus satisfying an unexplained craving that I sensed as a persistent, hushed call in my soul, even though I had never managed to grasp it intellectually. I thought the statue excellent. Washed each morning by rays from my master Ragh, it whispered to the sky a secret it had borrowed from my hands, from my pulse, and from my heart, after this secret had thwarted my tongue. My sole remedy for my weakness was to stroke its torso at dawn each day and shortly after sunset.
After finishing the statue, I felt another strange need. Was it for security? Was it for warmth? Was it for the tranquility that only a nest can provide? I knew the ways of solitude, which likes to wear many veils. I also knew that my thirst for a statue had been an attempt to defend myself against my true love, solitude herself. I had to recognize that the need for a nest was quite simply another face of this beloved, about whom I could swear I was as hard put to live without as to live with. It was a long time before I grasped that this is true of every authentic beloved. I still do not know whether my need for a nest arose from a desire for my beloved seclusion or from a desire to avoid her. Certainly considerations of heat, cold, or wind were not responsible, since I was accustomed to shielding myself from heat in the shade of the palm groves and from cold or dust storms in the caves of the ancestors in the southern mountain range. I had noticed that this unaccountable need had developed with the passing days into a bitter hunger, a genuine thirst that would need to be slaked. I did not feel satisfied again until I had cut from the palm groves bushy fronds, which I wove into the shape of a cylindrical hut. I thought it was splendid too. I entered it on the seventh day to rest and stretched out in its cavity, which embraced me as a nest embraces fledglings. It swallowed me the way a tomb swallows the corpse. I liked this image so much that I named my cozy nest azkka.
Yes, my tomb truly was cozy, and I grew accustomed to sleeping inside it while I roamed far away in visionary dreams. I sought shelter inside at midday and when evening fell, stretching out on my back and roaming and roaming where there was no barrier to stop me, no barricade to obstruct my way, no rocks to scrape my shin, and no rough terrain to impede my progress. Inside that space, no cares, reptiles, or wild creatures — the offspring of men, jinn, or animals — threatened me. In my nest’s embrace, borne off on one of my trips, I did whatever I wished, without being visited by any harm or disturbed by any whispered temptations. I would shoot off to the east and west, deeply furrow the earth, cut the horizons down to size, plunge into the watery depths, and journey to the sky. I returned once from a journey to the sky with the question: “Who am I?” It tormented me because I could not answer it. I exhausted myself on these journeys, thinking I might find the answer in the unfathomable expanses but returned from each disappointed. Disappointment left me bitter, dispirited, and melancholy; and I emerged from my cozy redoubt one day to find myself banished once again, exiled from my own land, which I had created with my own hands. I ceased journeying on the wings of dreams and exchanged these voyages through the unknown for voyages of the body. As I wandered aimlessly, I would ask out loud, “Who am I?” and the echo from the mountainous caverns would not vouchsafe any response.
The question “Who am I?” shook my sense of wellbeing, and the whisperings returned, destroying my peace of mind. Then I chased every which way. I did not totally abandon my tomb but did not find inside it the comfort I had discovered there when I first created it. A murky sensation would vibrate my chest and bring me back to the nest once more. The hut’s framework continued to taunt me and to fascinate me. My experience is that a fleeting sign always conceals a treasure, which vanishes and is dispersed if we ignore or neglect it. If we strip it bare and wrestle with it, it discloses its secret and gives itself to us. This insight inspired me to resist my murky feeling for a time. In only a matter of weeks its true nature was revealed to me for I saw that I would never feel satisfied or calm or acquire peace of mind unless I married my awe-inspiring stone idol, which I had erected at the foot of the mountain, with the cozy dome, which I had installed in the valley.
I felt that I would put an end to the disruptions, longings, and hunger, if I created a single structure from the two. How could I combine them?
I thought long and hard, and voyaged far and wide in my dreams. When I finished this spiritual investigation, I climbed the mountain and set to work.
I used the noble statue in the foundation and wall for my new dwelling, and it became the house’s cornerstone. Wishing to manifest the dream vision through this structure, I told myself that the house could not be a cozy nest unless through its circularity it resembled the sky, the moon, the lord of light Ragh, and the horizon, which arches to encompass the earth. Thus I constructed circular walls like those of the sepulchers of the ancestors. When I finished the walls, I fetched branches, fronds, palm fiber, and palm leaves from my nest below the mountain and wove them over these walls to fashion for this dwelling a domed roof — inspired by the shape of the sky — as an echo of the sky’s exaltation.
Once I fulfilled the prophecy, I felt satisfied. Once I felt satisfied, my heart was flooded by ecstasy, longing, and intoxication. So I sang. I sang a touching song of praise for my glorious edifice, to which kinsmen would later bow in prayer, designating it a temple.
Part Three Grave Talk
Then I reflected on all the works of my hands and on all the toil I had exerted in my labor. In truth, all was vanity and a grasping at the wind, for there is nothing to be gained under the sun.
1 Early Morning
I STRUGGLED ALL MY LIFE to reach my eternal father in the higher world, but my father would only consent to appoint me his deputy in the lower world. I wrestled all my days to reach him in the heavens, but he chose to appoint me sovereign of a dirt-covered foothill over which roam the shades that burden the earth.
In later times, caravans stormed me. I did not know whether they were commanded by jinn from the spirit world or by the spawn of men. I asked them repeatedly what they really were, but every time they replied, in a tone suggesting veiled condescension, “The fact is that we are none but you.” I also interrogated the nobles about the circumstances that had cast them into my home-place, which was protected by the desert’s wiles. They would smile furtively and respond that cunning prophets had guided them. If I chanced to ask their destination, they would answer ungrammatically, “From where we come, to there returning we go.” Some were mirthful and others painfully stern, but I saw their uniform enthusiasm for late parties at which people sang. They enjoyed spending their evenings with me while recuperating from the terrors of the route and would converse with each other in their pidgin tongue as if exchanging verses of poetry. Occasionally they sang sad laments or launched into long conversations about riddles like hope, heroism, and happiness. At times they continued their chatter till dawn. Before they set off again, they would leave me various types of meat and tools, along with other gifts, in exchange for the water. One of them happened to leave me a present that was responsible for robbing me of my peace of mind and turning the oasis upside down. The gift was some vile dust that danced in the rays of light. The man said it was called gold dust. The leader of the caravan told me that this dust could be exchanged for commodities but could also harm people, change enemies into bosom buddies, buy protection, bolster civilization and destroy cities, transform the lowest to the highest and the highest to the lowest, subjugate the spirit, enslave other people, overcome any redoubt, and work any miracle. He finished by saying that it was a rebellious demon, notwithstanding its gaiety, and could turn into an evil thing, unless its owner handled it wisely. I thirstily imbibed his account. I did not, however, have occasion to use the dust until much later — when the seduction of taxation distracted me from the truth about it — for I bartered my water for the various types of commodities that leaders had devised throughout the desert: food, clothing, livestock, and even other human beings.