The leader answered as sadly, “I have never doubted that.”
Finally he observed, “My master can rest assured that the person he has chosen for a traveling companion is a man who knows the path and has returned from the settlements of the Western Hammada each time he has brought a prophecy.”
The leader repeated solemnly, “I have never doubted that.”
3
The moon didn’t budge at all from its heavenly throne. The perceived distance had not changed once. The horizon had yet to give any glad tidings of the journey’s end. The disc had continued to hang over their heads. The wasteland had continued to generate empty expanse after empty expanse, to spawn hills after hills, to sprout mountains after mountains, to cast forth plains after plains, and to split the earth with trenches, gorges, passes, valleys, and ravines. The two men met chasms face on as the distance swallowed terrifying crevasses, leaving gaping mouths behind them to become part of the opposite horizon. But the distance did not yield, and the dark ravines were interminable. These came from the north, flowing down from the crests of distant plateaus, plowing through the earth to create — with earlier torrents — a path to the southern lowlands before flowing into the waters of the great lake on the shores of which Waw had once stood.
After a silence that lasted an extremely long time, he complained, “How long the distances are! How enormous the desert is! When will the traveler ever reach his destination?”
The leader replied, “The destiny of the traveler is to submit to the route. The destiny of the nomad is to forget about distance. The sole antidote to distance is forgetfulness.”
He asked with amazement, “Doesn’t the wanderer dream of the blessing of arriving one day?”
The leader asked, “How does it benefit the nomad to dream of the blessings of an arrival when he delights in his travel? Won’t travel in this case become the traveler’s goal?”
He yielded to the leader’s argument: “My master is right. I forgot that we are a nomadic nation. I forgot that we are a lineage whose destiny is nomadism, a lineage that does not care to celebrate arrival, because it knows that arrival is a shackle. We travel the path, because ever since antiquity we have made our living as nomads. The root of my fears, though, Master, is a dread of the labyrinth and isn’t based on any desire to arrive.”
The leader rolled away some stones that ricocheted off each other across the expanse, generating a syncopated rhythm. The leader asked, “Why should a nomad fear the labyrinth since he doesn’t think of arriving as his goal? Doesn’t travel in this case become a maze in a labyrinth?”
He replied, “I agree with my master, but my master also knows that the people of the desert fear no trial more than the labyrinth. Half of the talismans fastened to their chests were created to ward off the ordeal of the labyrinth.”
The leader commented, “Desert people only seek what they fear. They passionately desire only what they hate. They only request protection from those they fear. Don’t they attach sticks of torha wood to their dwellings to protect them from the evil of envious eyes,10 even though they know it’s a tree inhabited by tribes of jinn? Don’t they consider the jinn their enemies? Then we see them rush to assist the jinn when wanting to learn news of relatives who have been long absent on trips.”
He smiled beneath his black veil again and said, “You’re right, Master. Nomads are always like this. Probably they have learned to sense the opposite in things because they have embraced the teachings of Wantahet, who taught them sorcery and extolled the capacity of desert lands to hide behind a borrowed veil.”
The leader concurred: “I confess to you today that I am one of the greatest admirers of this ignoble one’s arguments, even though I’m equally certain that the warnings of the Law against his wiles should not be taken lightly.”
He smiled and asked mischievously, “Would my master have been able to state this view publicly while presiding over the Council of Sages?”
He glanced stealthily at his companion, but the leader was quick to reply, “Can a man state in public what he truly thinks after surrendering his neck to other people and allowing himself to be shackled by sovereignty? You know better than anyone else how openly I struggled against the chains of leadership. But I finally yielded, not to humor the nobles — as dolts have assumed — but to obey the will of the fates that made me my predecessor’s sole nephew on his sister’s side. Today, now that the same fates have unshackled me and set me on a path that is beyond people’s control and that the days do not alter, I will not hide from you my delight at my divestment. Oh, my longtime confidant, you don’t realize that divestiture is a treasure; only one who has experienced it knows how sweet it is. Divestiture is the law of those who travel the route to the Western Hammada. So be patient till you try it. Then don’t hesitate to bring me the news of your pleasure! Does my friend think I would choose him for my companion if I hadn’t discovered that divestment is Waw, for which we have exhausted ourselves, searching all the desert’s routes? I have always thought of leadership as a curse I did not choose and have always stated this view in public, because — from the heaven of divestment — I dare say that leadership is a million curses and that domination is an affliction that does not differ from any other plague. So today I acknowledge to you that I not only could not state in public then any opinion about anything — not just about Wantahet — but couldn’t scratch my head in the council without upsetting the sages! So are you upset today that I sing the praises of divestiture?”
He was silent while they covered a short distance. Then, resuming the discussion, he seemed to reconsider his words: “We began by talking about the labyrinth. I don’t know how we progressed in the conversation to divestiture!”
With the same zeal, the leader replied, “Doesn’t the confidant see that the labyrinth is one of divestment’s visages? Be careful, though, not to mix the labyrinth with divestiture in a single vessel, because heaven wanted to raise divestment several degrees above the labyrinth to prevent weak souls from aspiring to it.”
He abandoned this discussion and spoke as if remembering something he had long forgotten: “But doesn’t my master think it’s time to bed down for the night?”
The leader answered casually, “Why should we bed down for the night when we don’t feel tired? Didn’t the forefathers teach us that the noblest trips are nocturnal?”
He responded in a tone that sounded skepticaclass="underline" “Doesn’t it seem to my master that this night trip doesn’t care to end?”
The leader replied immediately, “This is the night reserved for people traveling on the route to the Western Hammada. If night didn’t dominate this Hammada, why would the ancients have dubbed it ‘The Sunset Hammada’? You should learn to forget excessively hot days and enjoy eternally moonlit nights.”
They had not gone much farther along the path when other doubts flooded his breast. “I’ve wanted to draw my master’s attention to a certain matter since the start of our trip, but it slipped my mind for some reason. I’m just discovering that we’ve traveled for a time without any food or water. Can a wanderer forgive himself for a mistake like this?”
The leader responded with a question, “Has my friend felt hungry or suffered from thirst? Does it hurt a wanderer to forget food and water if he is shielded from hunger and thirst? Don’t you know that travelers on this road don’t need to carry food or water?”
He did not mask his astonishment: “The truth is that I haven’t felt hungry or thirsty. If there’s anything under heaven’s dome that can astonish me, Master, it is for a desert wanderer not to need food or water.”