Then, casting me a melancholy glance, he said, “Beware of searching for a father in the desert. This brings nothing but calamities.” He stared at my face for a while, noting my determined and even disapproving expression, and then watched my body tremble. So he decided to yield. He spat forcefully and then said compassionately, “Fine. It’s futile to attempt to dissuade a man from something that is part of his destiny. You can follow the caravan route that heads to the southern oases, if you’re not afraid of thirst. You can attempt to waylay your father at the well of Wanzir, if you’re not afraid of trackless wastes. You can also return home to transform your longing into a song there, if you want to save yourself.” I don’t sing, however, not because I lack talent, but because I’ve never found a tune that can cure a disease. So I set off to the west to lie in wait for my father at the neighboring well of Wanzir, following the advice of the shepherds’ sage.
Hoping to reach the place shortly before sunset, I departed as the time approached for the flocks to head home. The starkness of the earth became even more depressing, severe, and gloomy, and so I turned my eyes to the sky, which was stark and severe too. In the sky’s severity, however, there is always a consolation. As the lavish floods of Ragh washed across it that afternoon, the sky became clearer, bluer, and more profound. On the next leg of the journey, the trail that the caravans’ camels had dug with their heavy padded hooves crossed an area of clay soil strewn with rocks grilled by the punishing, ever-lasting disk, and marked here and there by pathetic water courses, over which rain water had run in the rare rainy seasons. Gullies appeared only to end abruptly and disappear in the next stretch, since the short-lived rains that had carved them had evaporated or had been absorbed by the ever-thirsty earth. Then I would find myself lost in a labyrinth once more. The labyrinth is anything but stingy with the wayfarer; it flings decoys in his path to mislead him. The ancestral sepulchers rise in piles of black stones scorched by the fires of immolations. They do not reach very high; their rocks have been strewn about hither and thither and dispersed by the force of the rains and storms or by the passing days, since antiquity. From time to time, tombs of more recent vintage can be seen. They are larger, and their stones lighter.
The uninterrupted plain inspired a sense of desolation but also awakened an ill-defined feeling of happiness. An eternal wasteland, reproduced in every direction, was surmounted by an equally eternal sky that mimicked it by reaching out and extending in every direction and that proceeded to kiss the clearly demarcated horizon, which formed a perfect circle. Silence seized the whole land, further suggesting that a conspiracy had been laid, and I felt as insignificant as a pebble. All the same, I would not stop. The gloom that attends sunset spread through the sky, and I did not stop. Suddenly the labyrinth abandoned its arrogant ways, and the earth opened into narrow ravines with alternating patches of green and parched vegetation.
A wretched hare sprang from one of these shrubby areas, ran between my legs as he fled south, suddenly veered to the west, and then stopped. He reared up on his hind legs and turned his head to check behind him. I watched him for a while before continuing on my way but found the caravan trail also veered toward the south and passed by the spot where the miserable creature stood. I walked forward a few steps, came alongside him, and approached him, but he did not move. With his gloomy coloring, positioned there, he resembled a statue. He gazed into my eyes curiously, provocatively, challenging me.
I picked up a rock and threw it at him. He did not move. I took a step toward him and could see his eyeballs clearly, despite the dusk. His eyes were deep, large, and unfathomable, like the eyes of a human being, like the eyes of a foreign priest. A strange gleam pulsed in them, as though the rascal wished to say something. I shut my eyes to avoid seeing his eyeballs. With my eyes closed, I reached out to seize him, but he slipped free. He did not flee as he had the first time. Instead he hopped away briskly. Actually he stumbled off rather clumsily, in a way befitting heavily laden camels. He stopped beside some herbage in a nearby hollow and began sniffing the pebbles and chewing, as if nibbling on grass or perhaps ruminating. I walked toward him until I stood over him. He stared at me, but I did not detect provocation, curiosity, or challenge in his eyes this time. They seemed, instead, to betray a lack of interest. He casually sped past my feet. I leaned over to grab him, but he dodged me deftly once more and put some ground between us. The earth felt softer, and the barren land gave way to thickets of dry plants with green sprouts on the lower branches. A passing cloud had apparently dropped a shower here and brought the dead plants back to life. The rogue took his time going here and there among the herbage, greedily stuffing his mouth in the thickets. Whenever I approached, he escaped and hopped clumsily a short distance ahead, until darkness fell and I could make him out only with great difficulty. I stalked him a little further before I came to my senses and remembered that I needed to reach the well before night fell in earnest, since I had brought no water or provisions with me. I retraced my steps, but only imperfectly, since it was too dark to see my tracks clearly. So I proceeded toward the west, in the direction the trail took.
I covered quite a distance before I found the narrow track dug by the padded hooves of the caravans’ camels. I kept desperately on that trail all night long, without ever reaching the well. I was overcome by exhaustion, and my throat was dry for I had sweated profusely during my trip and felt thirsty, even though the sun had set and a congenial evening breeze was stirring. I moved off the path a couple of steps and, using my hand as a pillow, slept like a dead man. I imagined I heard a commotion and was frightened repeatedly by the howling of jackals. A bevy of girls clad in black approached me. A local girl, our playful neighbor, preceded them, laughing seductively, the way she did whenever we met among the campsites or out in the open. I did not understand how the scamp had transformed herself and assumed the cursed hare’s body to stand before me like an apparition of demonic height but still with the hare’s challenging expression. Then the apparition acquired the features of a man, a real man, a repulsive fellow with fiery eyes and teeth the length of knife blades. I was so terrified I awoke to find that my body, which was bathed in the rays of the god of the rising sun, was releasing its last beads of sweat. On glancing around, I observed the desolate plain, which stretched away with an ever harsher aspect. All the way to the horizon, there was no hint of a well or of life. I surveyed my surroundings and discovered that the trail I had followed all night long was not the caravan route but a track that herds of migrating gazelles had made when driven by drought to seek pasture in another land. Had that illomened hare, exploiting the evening’s gloom, succeeded in leading me astray, luring me into the labyrinth?
I remembered my Ma’s tales about the misfortunes occasioned by the nation of hares, who were not always animals. They originated long ago with a female demon who disguised herself in a hare’s skin when people tried to set her on fire as punishment for luring away the sons of the tribe and selling them to the jinn tribes for treasures of gold dust, a substance this invisible tribe despises. I felt even more unlucky when I remembered that this cursed female jinni had deliberately led me to the gazelle track, because gazelles, as my mother had told me, are the livestock of the people of the spirit world. The jinn like to ride them.