Suddenly, he stopped attending the full moon parties.
He stopped attending the evening parties and appeared in the grazing lands, where he long kept company with the herdsmen of the lower valleys. Inquiring minds also followed him there and returned to the campsite to say they had heard him sing unfamiliar songs that reminded them of the drone of the jinn in the blue-black mountain caverns. They had been unable to make out the tunes and hadn’t understood a single word of his songs. When they questioned the herdsmen about the stranger’s conduct, they said he hadn’t sung at their soirées and hadn’t spoken either. When they had asked him to join in their nightly singing, he had replied that foreigners have a different law and different songs. Since, of all the desert people, herdsmen are the most knowledgeable about the behavior of foreigners, they abandoned and avoided him.
He returned to the tribe.
He returned to the tribe, and then gossips discovered his interest in the poetess.
3
Other people said that his infatuation with her began before he went to the grazing lands, because passionate lovers are wont to seek refuge there. Fleeing to the wilderness was something everyone did when time struck them with the blow called in the law of love a “blow with the talon.” This phrase was borrowed by passionate lovers from the lexicon of sorcery to attribute to themselves. Joining the herdsmen was always just an excuse to forget and an attempt made by everyone smitten by this blow, by this ailment that was the only one sorcerers couldn’t treat: love! Meanwhile another group affirmed that the stranger’s ailment had not begun until after his return from the homeland where lovers typically buried their lethal ailment. But everyone knows that foreigners are a group who are extremely hard to fathom. Everyone also knows that the stranger’s secret would not be a true secret if love’s disease did not disclose its nature.
The tribe’s stranger also harbored another secret typical of any stranger, but many thought that his true secret had not begun until he became interested in the poetess. So they repeatedly intimated that love actually was his only secret.
Fate arranged for their first meeting to be at one of the nocturnal festivities when the full moon glowed high overhead and its alternative daylight inundated the wasteland. A bird fluttered in the breast then, and people yearned to reach the land of longing. Since they yearned, they sang, because singing is the only wing that can reach the domain of the homeland and enter the realm of the lost dominion. The poet sang with the ancient voice of longing. Then the bird fidgeted in the cage but did not escape. Other throats repeated the song after her, and the bird fluttered some more and beat its wings feverishly to fly off into space. Tears leapt from their eyes, and their breasts were oppressed by a mysterious sorrow. People conscious of the secret tried to vent their emotions by screaming. They shouted until their throats grew hoarse. Then they leapt about, danced, and raced off into the open countryside. But the captive bird attempted to overpower them; so they beat their heads with rocks till their foreheads flowed with blood. They crawled around on their knees and writhed on the ground like madmen. They achieved ecstasy only after a painful journey.
When the party ended, the stranger accompanied the tribe’s poet to her tent.
After that, they were frequently observed wandering together in the wasteland and in the valleys near the settlements.
4
She placed the bundle of chaplets in a corner of the tent and hung one luxuriant necklace from the post. She was sneezing, coughing, and struggling with dizziness and a headache. She lay down beneath the tent post, and the garland dangled over her head. It hung down far enough to brush her nose. She closed her eyes, and a smile traveled across her lips — the same indescribable smile that the tribe’s sorcerers consider a characteristic of anyone granted the ability to see clearly into eternity.
Her face soon turned red and then pale. She felt she was suffocating and groaned, gasping for air. She raised her slender fingers in the air as she had done when she received the gift, but her palm fell and landed on the ground. She crawled out of the tent and began to vomit loudly.
5
He came to visit her the next evening. He came bearing a new cluster of garlands, which he placed in her lap before sitting down at a distance. He spoke about the desert’s intentions and the disposition of the Qibli wind but avoided any discussion of poetry. She struggled with nausea and dizziness and felt short of breath. All the same she continued to toy with the mysterious flower petals while suppressing a mad cough in her chest. When the visitor left, she placed the new cluster atop of the other one, which was piled in a corner of the tent. Then she hung a new garland on the tent post as before, and the fragrance of retem blossoms assailed her. She collapsed and knelt by the post. She felt paralysis spread through her entire body and called out to her slave for help. She asked him to summon the woman diviner.
The diviner lit a fire into which she threw a handful of wormwood and another light-colored piece of something with a foul odor. She said it was an efficacious drug for treating illnesses of the Spirit World. When she saw the questioning look in the beauty’s eyes, she explained, “You’ve inhaled the sweat of jinn. You must avoid loitering in the wasteland at dusk.”
6
Neither the handful of wormwood nor the pale-colored piece of something with a foul odor succeeded in curing the malady. In fact, her headache grew worse and she was running a high fever. Strange sores appeared on her body. She began to rave, to sing, and to waste away.
Her friends rushed to her tent and sat near her head. The male diviner was finally summoned. A tall, thin creature approached the tent wearing a somber veil and holding a handful of pebbles. He sat at the entrance of the tent and started to shift the pebbles from his right fist to his left and then back to the right again. The bevy of young women noticed that he leaned over when a pebble fell; he bent down with the concern of someone who has lost a treasure. He searched the dirt and didn’t relax till he found that stone. The women present affirmed that there was some secret about this procedure and that the pebbles were some mysterious sorcerer’s talisman.
The diviner spoke after a long silence. He clenched his fist around the stones and ordered, “Burn the retem!”
No one understood; her friends exchanged glances. The slaves glanced mockingly at the diviner. But the diviner commanded again, “Burn the retem!”
The questioning looks turned into true astonishment; everyone was dumbfounded. How could these extraordinary garlands woven from retem blossoms be burned? The retem blossom is the splendor of the desert and the favorite flower of all the tribes. Hermits have discerned in its fragrance the exhalations of the lost oasis. Virgins wash themselves with retem blossom water on their wedding nights. Parties are thrown to rejoice at its flowering in the first days of spring; poems are sung by the female poets in honor of its beauty. Heroes and mounted warriors speak of its beauty. What was wrong with the tribe’s diviner that he would suspect the retem blossoms and order this sacred body burnt? One of the slaves started to remove the bundles piled in the corner, but the girl leapt from her sick bed and pointed her forefinger at him.
He retreated, but the diviner said, “If you want to be cured, order your slaves to burn the retem and dispatch someone to bring back a scrap of the stranger’s clothing!”