3 Afternoon
I WAS PROWLING through the caves of the ancestors in the southern mountain range when my slave Hur arrived, bearing good news.
I descended the mountain behind him and heard the hymns of longing before I reached the base of the cliff. Circumambulating the sanctuary were sages preceded by the oldest and most venerable one. He carried a doll, which was wrapped in a hide lined with goat hair, tossed it in the air from time to time, and then caught it again as he raised his voice in a sacred, heart-rending psalm to conciliate the spirit world. The group of apparitions scurrying behind him quickly snatched the tune from his lips and repeated it after him in a melancholy harmony of a sweetness known to tribes only in songs of the people of the spirit world. I attempted to make out the words of the psalm, even though I had failed repeatedly on previous occasions. I failed this time as well. Therefore I assumed that this clan did not use a desert tongue in its songs and was gibbering in the language of the people of the spirit world. Once when I asked one of these sages the secret meaning carried by these songs, he responded with a murky question: “Would hymns be hymns if they were rendered in an earthly tongue?” So I swallowed my curiosity and never asked about their meaning again. Here they were now, swaying, reeling, and chanting incomprehensible gibberish. I must confess that the sweetness of this gibberish is beyond compare and far exceeds that of any language.
I walked ever closer to this congregation and heard for the first times an infant’s cries, which reached my ears faintly — as if rising from the depths of a well — and melodiously, as if mimicking the sages’ hymn to mock them. I stopped to ask myself, “Is it conceivable that this doll they’re tossing in the air is my child?” The conjecture shook me, but I gained control of myself and stepped forward.
Then one of them rushed toward me, took me aside, and said, “This isn’t done. This isn’t done.” When I attempted to free myself so I could reach the people, he stubbornly prevented me, saying, “We mustn’t allow emotion to infringe on our law in any way.” Seeing the determined look in my eye, he gestured to one of the group’s demons. He arrived in the wink of an eye to assist the sly dog. He too blocked my way. The cunning sage said apologetically, “We’re not celebrating the birth of a child. We’re singing to celebrate the birth of the prophecy.” I did not understand. I did not comprehend his riddle but did not ask for any clarification.
He must have detected my silent incomprehension, for he explained, “Today the desert witnesses the birth of the desert. Today creation witnesses the birth of the race that the spirit world wishes to serve as the secret heart of nations.” I remembered a prophetic saying of Tin Hinan and stole a glance to see what the insolent fellows were doing to my child. I saw the swarms of people enter the temple. As I listened intently, the solemn hymn swelled to swallow the newborn’s sobs. I tried to trail after them, but the two sages restrained me once more. The first said, “Not before the spirit world grants permission.”
I was about to ask, “But when will that happen?”
The wily strategist again read my mind, because I heard him say as enigmatically as ever, “Today is not like other days. Today the desert witnesses a birth. You must relax, be patient, and wait.” I waited a long time, for the rites of birth were not concluded until after midnight, when their elder came to tell me that the congregation had only just then finished praying. When I inquired about the prayer ritual, he ignored my question and burst into an account of the purification. He said that the infant’s spirit had been cleansed with a flash from the light of Ragh and that his body had been bathed in spring water, because the spirit is the offspring of light, whereas the body is born of water and clay. Then he chanted an incantation set to music before adding that the congregation had unanimously adopted the name Ara for the infant as a hopeful augury for the future, yielding to the wishes of prophecy. I was upset by this choice but suppressed my anger, for I had decided to give him a different name — Hur — chosen for me by another prophecy. I would take the name of my loyal slave for my good omen and try in this way to deceive the female ghouls that watch for any chance to pounce on the nobles’ sons to abduct and swap for changelings descended from the jinn or from the tribes of the spirit world. I certainly did not know it at the time, but in this fashion I was, unconsciously, countering the prophecy of the female soothsayer who informed me one day that the offspring of slaves would take control of my kingdom and arrogate to themselves my offspring’s due, leaving me to return empty-handed from my journey. I immediately ascribed to my son the name of my slave, hoping this name would protect him against exile. I could not learn until later that this would be his destiny. The termination of the oasis’ celebration of the birth, however, was followed by a confession. I had scarcely stretched out one night when Tin Hinan burst in upon my solitude to tell me a secret. She said that she was not a foreigner and that she had never belonged to the nations of migrants. Rather she was blood kin, and not just related to me but that very sister whom I had once known and who had frequently sheltered me in her embrace. I did not say a word. I stared at her incredulously for a time.
She smiled mischievously and nodded her head “yes” when I shouted, “The priest’s daughter?” I was shocked and voiced my astonishment. She explained that she had deliberately disguised herself in foreign garb to fulfill a prophetic dictum. I was silent. She did not wish to complete her confession. So I quizzed her to learn the import of this dictum.
During a painful silence that lasted a long time, she said nothing. Finally she said, “I did that to safeguard our progeny.”
When I gave her a questioning look, she explained, “You know fathers are figments of the imagination.”
“What?”
“You know better than anyone else how spurious fatherhood is.”
“Fatherhood spurious?”
“You’ve wasted your life chasing after your father and have reaped nothing but the wind.”
“But you told me once that my father was your father, the priest, whom I killed to avenge my mother.”
“You killed your father’s shadow. You didn’t kill your father.”
“What are you saying?”
“You were right to want to kill him; fathers must die, since a father is always a shadow. A father is always a specter. The father we know is not a father. The true father is an unknown apparition. Should he decide to renounce his concealment and to descend on us, bringing us glad tidings of his paternity, we must resort to force and do away with him with our own hands, since he is our father’s shadow and not our father. He is a spurious father, not the legitimate one.”
“A wanderer told me a riddle like this once, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Back then, you killed the shadow of our father, but our father slipped away again. The mother’s status, on the other hand, is different.”
“Tell me about the mother.”
“If the father is spurious, the mother is always authentic.”
“Bravo!”
“A mother we don’t know is not a mother. The father we do know isn’t a father.”