“But. …”
“Iyba—the spirit, Master, is also in a round body.”
“Iyba?”
“Since the iyba, or spirit, is round, we can deduce that the Spirit World is also a round body.”
“Wait. …”
“For this reason, the forefathers insisted on making the first edabni round.”9
“You can construct the building in any form you wish, but. …”
“I, Master, am a creature who has no wishes because I do not intend to disobey the laws of the Spirit World and don’t want to prolong the building process unnecessarily.”
“You’re right. I meant to say that what matters to me is the building. The form of the building is the responsibility of the master builder.”
“I thought the diviner would surpass me in enthusiasm for the Law of the Spirit World, especially when the matter pertains to the form of the rocks that will become a sanctuary for the people.”
“The diviner is interested in every invisible matter, but what is visible and in public view becomes the property of the people.”
The Lover of Stones stopped digging in the dirt and whispered as if to himself, “Wouldn’t it interest the diviner to know that prophecy also has a round body?”
The diviner contemplated him curiously and asked, also in a whisper, “Prophecy?”
But the Lover stood up. He roamed far through the emptiness and transferred his handful of pebbles from his left palm to his right and then back to the left before he shot off without a word of farewell.
4
Before the Lover dispatched an army of vassals into the neighboring hillsides to start digging up rocks, he sent the Virgin a letter stating: “I will build you, by hand, a mausoleum unlike any your grandfathers built for their fathers and more splendid than any the desert has ever witnessed.” It was said that the Virgin smiled enigmatically when she received the message but that this unusual flirtation did not elicit any overt reaction from her. She continued to respond with this mysterious smile whenever a girlfriend reminded her of the missive or whenever the Lover recited the message during their fleeting encounters in the open countryside, between the campsites, or during soirées celebrating the full moon.
The Lover roamed the crowns of the northern heights and harvested stones from the hills, using men who had time on their hands, the hoi polloi, and gangs of youths. When he had finished with nearby peaks, he advanced west, reaching the lower slopes of the farthest mountains. Then he stripped away their rocky surface and scaled their peaks till it was rumored that he was teaching the vassals and encouraging his assistants to imitate the expertise of the birds in making circular nests in order to succeed in chipping a round, beautiful stone. It was also said that he had tugged dolts repeatedly by their ears and led them to places where birds were accustomed to hide their nests — not to demonstrate the birds’ skill in weaving their nests but to pluck from the nests speckled eggs that he thrust in the idiots’ faces, saying, “Have you seen the marvels produced by birds? Don’t you see that they do not merely build their nests in a circular pattern but also lay round eggs? Don’t you see that a body that isn’t born in a round house doesn’t survive? Don’t you know that a building that isn’t round isn’t fit for human habitation? Do you think I’m as crazy as you because I want to teach you to follow the path to which the desert leads us?”
These comments reached the diviner’s ears. Local historians said that he never stopped smiling, perhaps because the Lover, when addressing the masses, hadn’t used the same idiom he had employed when he spoke with the diviner that night. He felt well disposed toward the master builder, who did not slight wisdom by refusing to employ its language when addressing a people who are hostile to wisdom and who doubt the intentions of the people of wisdom.
The Lover finally began to construct the building. He chiseled down the boulders and evened out the solid slabs. In his hands rocks turned into lumps of dough. The people of the settlement gazed at him with admiration when they saw him busy shaping the stones with all the longing of a true lover. Their admiration turned to astonishment when they observed the three linked buildings rise with their noble domes. Over the tomb he built a circular house with a dome. Next to it he built the Virgin’s house and connected the two by an arched doorway, which was also rounded. Thus entering the sanctuary meant transiting the Virgin’s residence. Then he connected to these two houses a third dwelling that accessed the Virgin’s house from the opposite side through an arched door with a round top set in curved walls. He told people that its name was “House of Sacrificial Victims and Offerings.”
The building wasn’t merely a marvel because the offspring of nomads customarily avoided buildings and in their travels saw only the graves of nomads and the tombs of the ancients, but also because the sages affirmed that not even in most of the oases had they ever seen anything that compared to this building in luxury and opulence. Not even the intellectuals discerned the veiled resemblance that the body of the building borrowed from the tombs of their forefathers and the graves of their ancestors. People attributed the building’s form to the fascination of the Lover of Stones with the circular body and his strange belief in the circularity of every spiritual body.
5
When the Lover had finished his work, he sat down with the diviner, who praised the building and repeated, “Great job!” several times. He discussed the splendor of buildings he had seen in the desert’s oases and concluded by saying the domes were truly captivating, although they were more severe than was necessary.
The Lover listened silently. Throughout the discussion he was bent over the ground, gathering pebbles and collecting them in a small pile. He spoke without turning his head, “Doesn’t my master consider severity to be one of the attributes of the Spirit World?”
“You’re right; you’re absolutely right. But don’t forget that we want the building to draw people to the tomb.”
“People won’t be drawn to the tomb by the fabric of the building if a love of prophecy doesn’t attract them.”
“You’re right again, but not so fast. Are you casting doubt on the ability of a vessel to tempt us? Don’t you see that nomads are merely grown-up children who must be lured with dolls if you want them to follow you?”
“I haven’t invented any heresy, Master. Every game or sport has its ancient law.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve said what must be said just as previously I did what needed to be done. I said that we have a duty to discover the symbol in everything. Similarly we must appeal for guidance to the dictates of the ancients when a difference about a matter arises between us. Or does my master belong to the group that only reads these dictates in the remnants of the Lost Book?”
“The truth is that I don’t understand.”
“The tombs of the first peoples are also a sign, Master. The graves of the forefathers are also a message. Everything in the desert is an ancient lesson and information that deserves our greatest attention. What I have done is merely to attempt to decipher the message. I have gone to great effort to decode the symbols of the dictates. The severity that has troubled my master is an indivisible part of the Law of the ancients.”
The diviner did not respond. He drew a symbol on the ground. He dug in the dirt and pulled a stone from the cavity. The Lover continued, “My master should not forget that we didn’t construct the building to honor just the leader; we decided to host the whole sky in it as well. If we want our hospitality to be complete, we must construct a house that imitates and resembles the heavens, because the house’s circularity is borrowed from the circularity of the sky. That first day I told you that all exalted things are circular, because the Spirit World has a circular form.”