This time too they walked along quietly. They walked in silence for a very great distance. They dislodged with their sandals a very great number of stones. They discovered the sign that rolling rocks with sandals conceals. They perceived the secret of the language that doesn’t acknowledge the tongue, that rejects the eye’s winks, that scorns the stupid signals of the finger, because it proceeds far into stillness, disappears in the whispering of the Qibli wind through the groves of the dry land, and bobs around in the open sea of the void with a feverish trance till the prophecy is stolen from the obscure rhythm. Above their turbans a moon swathed in a pale diaper began to spill a meager light over the wasteland.
In the faint light the naked land stretched away, covered with gray rocks that the limited light dappled with despair and gloom.
In the baffling stillness, the bodies of beings turned into ears and began to spy on beings whose bodies had also turned into ears. But the scattering stones wounded the diffident stillness and continued to gather the voices and to erect an edifice of language in the song.
They crossed barren plains, descended into valleys where the trunks of dead trees clung to their bottoms, and ascended heights that all vegetation had deserted, leaving on their summits monuments of solidity and boulders of rock that rose as high as haughty acacias.
Without employing his tongue, he said: “How harsh the drought is, Master! Is there a harsher affliction in the desert than a drought?”
He heard the leader reply, also without employing his tongue, “If it weren’t for the chastisement of drought, the desert would no longer be a desert. In drought, too, the Spirit World hasn’t forgotten to deposit a secret.”
He fell silent. They traversed another expanse. Then in the same soundless language, he said, “But the desert is nobler without drought.”
He detected the scorn in the leader’s response when he heard him ask, “Do you want to deprecate the wisdom of contradictions and to devise for the homeland a law that the sky hasn’t acknowledged?”
He was still again. They traversed valleys and plains. They clambered up copper-colored mountains. Then the barrenness was uniform and rushed away, extending forever. Over this harsh ground the pale light spilled down and proceeded to pursue the expanse until it turned into genuine gloom at the end of the horizon. As though distances had lost sovereignty over time and therefore could not interrupt the dialogue, the leader added, “It’s not appropriate for a diviner to cast doubt on the blessings of contradiction, since he knows better than anyone else the qualities of an affair that fools consider an affliction!”
Smiling behind his veil, he said, “May I be excused, Master — doesn’t the diviner have a right to forget he’s a diviner and speak with the voice of the masses from time to time?”
He heard an answer as stern as a sword: “This is inappropriate.”
He smiled again and replied earnestly: “I know we mustn’t disdain the Law, even if the ignoble Wantahet was the first to give it to us.”
He heard a suggestion of disapproval in the tone of the leader, who replied in the same language that shied clear of the tongue, “Did you say Wantahet?”
He responded at once, “Didn’t the ancients pass down to us the claim that he was the first to say he did not do good because he knew that good would turn into evil and would not do evil because he knew for certain that the law of contradictions would transform it into good?”
The leader said, “When did it become right for people of the Unknown to propound the strategies of the ignoble one as part of an argument?”
He answered, “The diviner did not propound an argument. He repeated for his master’s hearing what has been passed down from the first forefathers.”
The leader said, “The diviner knows better than anyone else that the ignoble one prevaricates even when his tongue’s utterance is correct. So, what about the intellect?”
He replied, “My error, Master, is that I wanted to be liberated briefly from this burden that you referred to as the intellect in order to enjoy peace of mind like the commoners in the tribe.”
The leader retorted, “This is inappropriate.” He rolled a stone away with an angry kick.
2
They traversed further distances.
Suddenly the leader asked, “Do you know why I wanted you to accompany me to the Western Hammada?”
He replied, “I’m good at deciphering the Unknown but have never been good at deciphering my master’s intentions!”
The leader, however, ignored this jest and said with the sternness that has always been a hallmark of leadership, “You’ve always been beside me; I’ve never deferred to anyone the way I’ve deferred to you. You have been my buttress. You’re the only person to whom I have revealed a secret, because you have never betrayed my trust. I have been isolated, and my solitude might have proved lethal but for your presence beside me. I have always doubted whether what is called a friend truly exists under heaven’s dome. Had your conduct not told me that a friend must either be a companion or not, I would have been certain that a confidant was one of the many lies we devise and embrace to deceive ourselves. How can you not want me to choose you as a companion for a journey to the settlements of the Western Hammada since you have been my companion in the wasteland?”
The diviner replied gratefully, “I have tried to live up to my master’s good opinion of me. I feel this is my obligation. If I have succeeded, may my master allow me to express my delight.”
The leader inquired, “Are you delighted even though you know the terrors of a trip to the settlements of the Western Hammada?”
He replied, “My master’s company is something that surpasses delight. My master’s company is something greater than happiness. My master’s company is a treasure in the diviner’s breast that can only be compared to a prophecy.”
The leader probed further, “Are you sure?”
He answered this question with a question: “Does my master doubt the truth of what I say?”
The leader, however, commented sorrowfully, “I’m not pressing this question because I doubt you but because I know how intensely tribe members hate to travel the route to the Western Hammada. I wouldn’t want to compel you to do something you’re not keen on.”
He rolled a stone with his sandal and smiled twice behind his black veil. He said, “I didn’t know that the route to the Western Hammada had a worse reputation in the hearts of members of the tribe than the venom of forest serpents. I also acknowledge to my master my negative feeling toward it, although I have a secret conviction that it isn’t as evil as we think. In fact I’ve often thought that its evil isn’t concealed in the terrors we attribute to it but that we dread it out of our ignorance of it. Since my master has chosen me to accompany him on this unaccustomed route, how can I decline his company, when it is an honor for which he has singled me out?”
The leader said, “I don’t want you to do this for my sake, because the trip to the Western Hammada is the only trip that a man must undertake of his own free will in response to a call, not out of loyalty to a bosom friend.”
He asked, “Does my master think that reading prophecies in the bones of sacrificial victims is an easier job than departing to our homeland in the Western Hammada?”
The leader answered, “I have never trivialized the dangers of prophecy.”
He mentioned the terrors of prophecy in a sad tone that no physical tongue defiled: “Doesn’t my master know that the diviner roams the desert and repeatedly crosses the Western Hammada before reaching the heavens of prophecy?”