Yes, water brought me slaves, vassals, and women of the type known as slave girls. I would cleave to their bodies when I felt a need for warmth, for I discovered by fondling them that their companionship served as an antidote for loneliness. I also modeled on their conceits some amulets that were useful as a balm to heal the body’s ills, even though the conduct of these women and the fluctuation of their humors often agitated me to such a degree that I was reminded of my first she-jinni. I could, now that I was migrating between the embraces of women I owned, diagnose her as having been afflicted by what the sages of migratory tribes call “melancholy.”
The symptoms of this disease I found in the behavior of another seductively beautiful female jinni who arrived at the oasis with a prodigious cortège. She enchanted me with her voice, and I fell in love with her. It seems the gift of song was the secret snare by which this new she-jinni captivated me, not her beauty, since the voice, in its true nature, is profound, whereas beauty by itself, as experience has taught me, is a shell. I am now willing to acknowledge myself a coward, for my attempts to free myself from her were not inspired by her eccentricities but by my fear of loving her. I had cohabited with solitude for such a long time that solitude had become my true love and I was afraid of cheating on her with another playmate. Despite my secret conviction that this was the case, even so, I tried to outwit my certainty and to convince myself that my rejection of the beautiful woman’s passionate love was caused by my eagerness for calm and peace of mind. I used this contrived lie with the questioning men who crowded round me the day I ordered her expelled from the oasis. They obeyed, expelling her one morning as I had commanded, but I was flabbergasted when everyone in the oasis trailed after her. I could not believe it. At first I suspected that the throngs had followed merely to satisfy their curiosity or that they had turned out to bid her farewell as they did for important people. What really affected me, however, was their songs, which were genuine, heart-rending laments. So I dashed after them only to discover that the cause of the tumult was the beautiful woman’s singing. Yes, the she-jinni was raising her voice in a sorrowful song that affected me so deeply I was unable to walk. I halted halfway to them, weeping. My suppressed longing was roused, and I wept some more. Then I stopped my ears with my index fingers to stifle the sound so I could walk again.
With the sound stilled and the impediment of my feet lifted, I set off at a gallop. I rushed up to the weeping throngs. I caught sight of the vassals, who were clustered around her, lamenting and crying. I yelled as loudly as I could, “Bring her back! Bring her back! Bring her back!”
They brought her back, but I did not return. I obtained the lady of song for my home and as part of the exchange lost the lord of stillness. I kept to myself while I pondered my confusion. I did not conclude this self-examination until the spirit world whispered to me another truth, saying that a man passionately in love with solitude will never feel at peace with those passionately in love with women. I discounted this insight and surrendered to her, hoping to be able to forget. She attempted to compound from her embraces an antidote for my malady. She sang sorrowful songs to me in our bedchamber until I swooned. She did everything she could to grant me happiness, an enigma as mysterious as the desert. How preposterous! I perceived that happiness is a talisman that rightfully belongs to others, to people whose knowledge, pursuits, and travels are limited. Devotees of solitude are destined to take solace in silence, because their mission is to keep company with the spirit world. My heart was flooded by longing. I felt stifled and fled to the caves of the ancestors in the southern peaks. There I examined the wisdom that the first peoples had etched on the cavern walls. I argued at length with the spirit world and did not return from my fugue until I had received prophetic guidance. I entered the oasis one night and sequestered myself with the wisest and most trustworthy of my vassals to share the substance of this revelation with him. I could see disapproval in his eyes, but he obeyed. He undertook to bring me what I needed the following day: a leather bag of a depressing color, filled with an even more depressing powder. I hid this in my pocket and waited until the servants brought the food. Then I tossed all the powder into the broth. The she-jinni came, consumed the broth, and then ate. She sang until midnight, even though she had put enough poison into her belly to annihilate an entire caravan.
I awoke expecting to find her corpse, but she disappointed me. I ordered my chief vassal to appear so I could inquire about the effects of the poison. The man said the effects were slow and that I should be patient. After a day and a night she felt nauseous, complained of feeling dizzy, and lay down to nurse herself. I assumed that the hour of release was at hand and wept sorrowful tears, mixed with tears of joy. I was sad because I did not know how I would confront the void she would leave in my life when I lost her. I was as joyful as a child, because I would finally be liberated once my doll had been smashed. Even so, neither my sorrow nor my joy lasted long, because the servant whom I had stationed by her bedside as a spy under the pretense of caring for her informed me the next morning that she had indeed suffered from the pains of fever at first and that she had sweated profusely and combated demons in a nightmare but had sneezed three times after midnight and each time had expelled from her nostrils sinister, evil-colored snot. The dolt added that he believed these discharges of mucous had freed her from her ailment and cured her. I listened dumbfounded to his chatter. Then I found myself repeating, “She-jinni! She-jinni! The lord of lords is a she-jinni.” I went to investigate in person. She gave me a look in which I saw everything. I could see that she knew, and forgave me, but wondered why. In fact, in no time at all, she asked, “Why?”