Doubt was still apparent in their eyes; the pronouncements of diviners always provoke doubt. The diviner does not recycle statements or advice. The diviner would not be a diviner if he did not invent a statement that no one else had said before. The diviner must say something uncouth.
He put the handful of pebbles in his pocket, rose, and threw out the piles of retem blossoms himself. He left these outside and returned to the tent pole, but the lovesick woman had reached it first and grasped the garland, which she hid in the confines of her flowing thawb. She swayed and one of her friends steadied her. Then the poetess lay down on her bed and smiled enigmatically.
The diviner lit a fire and fed the retem blossoms to it. He proclaimed with a gruffness befitting his occupation: “If you all don’t bring me a scrap of the stranger’s clothing, the girl will die!”
7
What truly baffled the tribe was that when they sent men and women out that night to bring the diviner a scrap from the stranger’s clothes, these emissaries found no shred of clothing belonging to him. They searched his residence unannounced and scoured the neighboring valleys where he had often gone to make retem garlands for his beloved. They sent a mounted warrior to the distant pastures and another messenger to the dark mountain caves where he had sought shelter the previous winter. But they found no garment in his dwelling, not even a scrap of linen. In the valleys they found no place where he could have hidden anything, and the mounted warrior returned from the grazing lands empty-handed. From the southern mountains arrived a messenger who said he had found nothing in the caves but the paintings of the first people. The sages felt certain that the stranger was a sorcerer and repeated to one another a clause of the ancient Law: “A secret sleeps in the heart of every stranger. There is always a reason when a son of the desert leaves his own people.”
In her tent, the beauty began to expire. The fever intensified, and she experienced difficulty breathing. In the middle of the night she surrendered the most precious gift in life — breath — and began to fade into the distance.
She ebbed away without the enigmatic smile ever leaving her lips.
Her girlfriends said that she had died apparently the happiest person in the world!
8
A throng gathered at the entrance of her tent, and the leader arrived. He surprised the group, and the crowds fell back to make way for him, separating into two lines. He halted in front of the diviner and asked angrily, “What’s the meaning of this?”
The diviner did not reply. He bowed and smiled. The leader repeated his question in the same tone. Then the diviner took him by the hand and drew him out into the open countryside. He said, “I wasn’t the one, Master, who gave the stranger permission to enjoy a stay in the tribe’s encampments.”
The leader shouted, “Do you want the tribes to say I violated the Lost Book and expelled a stranger who asked for safe refuge? Yes. I gave the stranger permission to stay with the tribe; I didn’t give permission to a sorcerer!”
The diviner replied coldly, “He’s not a sorcerer, Master.”
“The whole tribe says he is. If he weren’t a sorcerer, how could he have spirited the maiden away with sacred retem blossoms?”
“Among some tribes in the forestlands, a young man who loves a girl may kill her.”
“Kill her?”
“And if a girl loves a young man, she poisons his food!”
“I won’t deny that you know more than anyone else about the tribes of the forestlands, but I’ve never heard about this hideous tribe before.”
“There they think that the lover doesn’t win his beloved unless he removes her from the desert!”
“Fetishists! This is the religion of those fetishists!”
“Our stranger fell truly in love with our maiden; so he took her!”
“He took her?”
“Yes, this is the way they talk. They say, ‘He took her,’ when he has killed her.”
He was silent for a moment and then continued, “If you all had brought me a scrap of his clothing, I would have known how to prevent his foul deed. But the clever rogue understood this and was careful not to leave behind any clothing from the very first day.”
“I sent riders in pursuit of him. They’ll bring him back bound with palm-fiber ropes.”
“The riders won’t bring him back.”
“How can you be so certain?”
‘‘I know this community. They’re never caught.”
“Is he a human stranger or a jinni from the tribes of the Spirit World?”
The diviner was silent. Then he smiled enigmatically. He rolled a stone with his sandal and said almost in a whisper, “But he will return.”
The leader stared at him before remarking, “I see you speak as if this were a certainty.”
The diviner limited his response to a nod. Then the leader asked, “Did you read this in the bones of sacrificial animals?”
The diviner shook his turban no. In his lusterless eyes the leader noticed an inchoate sorrow.
With his sandal he too rolled a stone, as if imitating the diviner’s gesture. The sun bowed to kiss the stern horizon, which extended like a taut bow, and spilled a profuse purple glow over the wasteland. The diviner followed this glow as it poured forth and washed the pebbles, shrubs, and boulders. He admitted, “I confess, Master: I knew he would do this.”
The leader rolled away another stone. He stopped and stared at the void for an instant. As he walked on, the diviner told him, “Master, I heard him say, ‘We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’”
The leader paused and — with the intoxication of the possessed — repeated, ‘“We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’” He fell silent, and his silence was matched by the silence of the desert. It seemed that the wasteland thought it should keep quiet and listen too.
In the leader’s eyes, the diviner saw the leader’s tranquility, a sage’s tranquility, a hermit’s tranquility. This wasn’t normal tranquility; it was something nobler. It was childhood. Yes, the leader wouldn’t be a leader if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. The sage wouldn’t be a sage if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. The hermit wouldn’t deserve the title of hermit if his eyes didn’t channel childhood. Childhood is our lost oasis. Childhood is the oasis we seek. There is no good in an eye devoid of childhood. Do not trust a creature in whose eyes you do not discover childhood.
As though chanting, the leader repeated, “‘We must dispense with things that we love more than we should.’ How harsh that is!”
He took some steps and clasped his hands behind his back the way a man planning to walk a long distance does. In a different voice he said, “Do you know? I’ve always tried to say something like this.”
The diviner acknowledged, “I have as well, but we never hear what we want to say until others state it for us. This is the secret of wisdom, Master.”
“You’re right.”
The diviner gazed at him and discovered moisture like tears in his eyes.
9
Many wadis flowed with water in the northern desert, many cavaliers courted many virgins before the wadis filled with water, and the women poets recited extremely beautiful poems about love, war, and disgrace.
The tribe discovered that it had stayed in that place longer than it should have, and the sages were of the opinion that they should let this land return to nature. So they ordered the drums struck to signal a migration to the north.
The same night that the drums were struck, the herald made the rounds to alert people concerning what had happened at the tomb. Some individuals had gone to the cemetery at the foot of the hill and found the beauty’s tomb empty.