“Would you be willing to show me this poetry?”
He began to stare through the doorway leading to the vacant lands outside. His eyes also looked vacant. No, a frightening anxiety flared in his eyes along with another inner call? A sign? Passion? Latent anxiety? I do not know, but when he finally overcame his hesitation and decided to withdraw the treasure from his garment his hand trembled. He extracted a leather container from the sleeve of his gown. He clung tightly to this with both hands for some time, before relenting and presenting it to me. I accepted the object and withdrew from the wrapper what his irate comrade had referred to as the “vile ingot.” It was a physical creation of a unique, lustrous appearance: strange, rich, with an inner beauty and glory. The metal did not reveal its beauty or glory; these spoke through its solid form the way priests speak through a curtain. They were diffused throughout the metal’s being, where they created an existence the body denied them. Through secrecy, concealment, and absence, beauty and glory revealed themselves completely, becoming existent, alive, and eternal. Was this a metal idol or a sacred shrine? Was this masterpiece a metal rod or the body of a goddess?
Impressed, I asked the love-struck man, “Is this a devotional object?”
His eyes looked off into the distance once more. When I repeated my question, he replied murkily, “The ingot is me, master.”
“What?”
“Before me, master, rests my heart.”
I resumed my contemplation of his creation. As I turned it over in my hands, I discovered that it was almost painfully smooth. Soon a whispered temptation stirred in my own breast, a temptation awakened by the spirit world, which permeated the golden masterpiece. I felt I had seen it before, even though I was certain this was the first time the object had fallen into my hands. Where? When? I tried to squeeze certainty from my memory as I once had when the unknown cast me on the heights above Targa, leaving me to experience forgetfulness. This time, however, the prophecy was blocked, notwithstanding the delight I felt in losing myself in the beauty that flowed through the lustrous body — like the spirit flowing through a person’s body — and in the pleasure I experienced in pursuing its glory, which hid to reveal itself the better and concealed itself to grow stronger. What spirit lay concealed within this metal? What god was camouflaged by this glorious body?
I kept turning the shrine over in my hands. Finally I said, “You have the right to refuse to surrender the ingot, and your companion has the right to receive the gold dust he entrusted to you.”
“I begged him, master, to give me a little time.”
I turned to ask his comrade, “Will you give him a little more time?”
He replied without any hesitation, “Absolutely not!”
I gazed at the love-struck man and said regretfully, “There’s no way around it. You’ll have to give him the devotional object in exchange for his gold dust.”
“Absolutely not!”
I looked sadly at him and asked, “Do you know that a person who trifles with a trust faces the same penalty as one who defaults on a loan?”
“I know!”
“Do you know the penalty for defaulting on a loan under to the law of the oasis?”
“I know!”
“Would you rather deliver yourself to him as his slave than deliver the metal ingot?”
“This body’s not merely a metal ingot, master.”
“I won’t deny its perfection, but what you term a body is an ingot in the eyes of the law.”
“I told you, master, that body is me.”
“What good will retaining possession of your handiwork do you if the law punishes you by making you a slave?”
“I will pledge him my body, pursuant to the verdict, but it’s inconceivable that he should take the pledge I’ve concealed within the body that lies before me, master.”
I reflected a little before asking him, “Will you tell me the divine object’s secret, if I pardon you?”
The lover merely gazed off into the distance without replying.
I returned the devotional object to him and sentenced him to be his companion’s slave for several years. They departed, hurling insults at one another and calling each other names, as my slave Hur later told me. I tried to forget these two wretched adversaries and to drive the whole confused muddle from my mind, but the inspiration of the extraordinary devotional object flowed through my heart the same way the goddess’ unknown beauty flowed through that metal rod. I tried to discover its secret. I slept for a long time, roamed in dreams for a long time, and attempted to adjudicate many disputes fairly, but the divine object’s secret remained a mysterious talisman that never left my heart. One day I was chatting with my consort, who was seated in the chamber beside me. She was gazing out of the palace window toward the open countryside in a way that I found inspirational, and this awakened in my heart a missing sign. The sensation troubled me, and so I went to the caves of the ancestors with a few vassals. There, in the refuge of the original prophetic wisdom, revelation flowed forth and the prophecy that I had awaited and that had escaped me for such a long time trickled into my heart. In a moment, I discovered that the devotional object the wretch had created was a goddess and, in fact, the priestess herself. Yes, yes, the goddess smelted into the golden rod was none other than my consort in worldly matters, my intimate in our chamber, my sister by blood, and my priestess in the temple. Why had it taken me so long to discern the similarity?
I ordered the vassals to fetch the miserable lover at once. When he appeared, I asked him to show me the divine object again. He wept, alleging that he had lost the treasure, but his comrade, who now owned him, denied this, saying the vile fellow had hidden the goddess in some safe place, for fear greedy people would plot to steal it. The lover, however, attacked the other man, saying he was not satisfied with gaining possession of him through the verdict but intended to seize control of the goddess as well. A quarrel flared up between them, and their anger reached such heights that they flung accusations at one another and called each other names. I was going to order the two men fettered and left out in the sun till they calmed down, but instead, set them free and sent spies after them to keep me posted about what they did and where they went. These spies eventually returned to tell me that the owner was also spying on his slave, in hopes of learning where the devotional object was hidden but that the love-struck man was the more clever of the two, for they had seen him mix suspect herbs into his master’s food so the fool would doze off and sleep like a log all night long. Meanwhile the wretch would slip off to the northern, sandy, cliff faces to retrieve his doll, to which he would whisper in a tongue like jinn’s gibberish, continuing till dawn. They also informed me they had tried to find the treasure and had dug through the earth there repeatedly without discovering the trophy. I told myself that the lover hid his worshiped object in the endless sands, where he would find it easily the next time, since he held the landmarks in his heart, not in his visual memory, whereas such signs would be invisible to the heart of anyone searching with his eyes. I grasped this secret and then ordered them to pounce on the wretch during his whispered conversations and to bring me the goddess. In a few days they delivered what I wanted. As I contemplated it, I found that its resemblance to the goddess of the temple had increased. I was astonished I had missed this the previous time. I probed it, examined it, and attempted to extract the poetry from its essence. Beauty spoke so clearly in its bearing and glory was so radiantly diffused through its structure that I felt choked and tears flowed from my eyes. The longing I had not experienced in the refrains of the songs touched me. I began to confide in the goddess object daily, because I enjoyed it more than the priestess in whose image it was forged. Was this miracle caused by passion? Does love create what the human will cannot? Does passion devise what the intellect cannot?