Aggulli reached him. He found him tucked beneath an awe-inspiring slab of white stone that was marked on the underside with arcane lines like a sorcerer’s symbols. It was bisected by a network of minute veins that antiquity had traced inside the slab. Perhaps the pranks of some mysterious creature had dug them, one generation after another, till it became an indecipherable legacy like the talismans of the first peoples carved into walls of caves. He cautiously lifted the slab away and raised the excavator’s head. The lower part of his veil was missing, and his gray beard, coated with mud mixed with pebbles, was smeared with clay. There was an enigmatic smile on his lips, and his eyes expressed profound acquiescence. The blood flowing freely from his forehead mixed with lines from the rogue flood. Even after the victim was pulled out, his bleeding continued. Blood flowed from his forehead, deluged his face, eyes, lips, and beard, and fell to mingle with the deluge in the pit of the well.
Aggulli embraced him for a long time. He continued hugging him even after he wrapped the dread rope carefully around both their bodies. He tugged hard on the rope to sanction the start of their ascent.
The strongest men stepped forward to pull them up. When they reached the mouth, the bond was unfastened in dignified silence. Aggulli too was all bloody. Blood covered his face and arms and stained all his clothes. The men noticed his eyes’ redness, gleam, and tears. They shrouded the deceased man near the mouth of the well, and then Aggulli fled to the wasteland.
Emmamma approached.
He stood over the drowned man and stared at the horizon, which was flooded with dusk’s rays. His beady eyes stared, and then he released a distressing moan like a lament. Finally he said, “I knew he would go before us. I knew the verbal secret would not suffice to obtain water. I knew that blood is the price of blood.”
He began his wailing lament again. Then many people remembered the son’s wails and realized that the boy’s weeping had been a prophecy.
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11. Tamasheq for father, grandfather, tribal elder, or leader.
XIV NEW WAW
There was an ancient city that settlers from Tyre held.
1
During the first years, water gushed from the well nonstop.
The tribe was upset that water was going to waste, and the sages tried to prevent the water from flowing away. They built a sturdy cistern at the spring’s outlet and channeled the overflow between chunks of rock and dams of stones. They allowed neighboring tribes to fetch all the water they needed and set fees for herdsmen who preferred to bring their camels and livestock to this well rather than travel to distant wells in the Western and Central Hammada. Even so, the large daily discharge of water — the deluge they had sought for so long and for which they had offered mighty sacrifices — exceeded the tribe’s needs and those of the neighboring tribes. The water rebelled against their dams, overtopped the cisterns and confinement pools, continued to flow in small streams down the slopes, watering the lowlands separating the well from Retem Valley, and flooded tracts covered with a layer of clay in some places and topped with smooth pebbles in others. Then it descended into the valley, down a low shoulder where the valley’s sides spread out. So the watercourse expanded there, the stream’s banks spread far apart, and the water grew shallow.
In the first periods, thirst was conquered, and the soil swallowed the water and stored some in pools the way it usually did in seasons of transient rains. As the water continued to flow, however, it finally succeeded in transforming the earth’s behavior. Then the retem trees at the bottom of the valley grew greener, and their flowers perfumed all the surrounding desert. Dense undergrowth sprouted between these trees, and the valley was dominated by groves and a forest that extended for a long way. The plateau lying between the mouth of the well and the lip of the valley was also transformed. In the early years, amazing wild plants grew there, coloring all the expanses of land with beautiful carpets. The colors of the flowers that rose from the grass divided these green carpets into sections colored by the flowers. At first it was grazing land frequented by young herders, but herbalists quickly discovered the qualities of the plants and began to pick herbs to use in their mysterious potions.
Later, the sages realized the necessity of utilizing the deluge that was being lost in the open countryside. So they planted wheat and barley and imported from the Southern oases palm seedlings to plant. Their delight was enormous when the plants started bearing fruit the first year. The boughs of the young palms sank under the weight of the most delicious types of dates, and before the end of that season they had eaten genuine ripe, fresh dates — just like inhabitants of the oases.
During subsequent years, the palms rose high, and the pomegranate and fig trees matured. They planted vegetables too and harvested cereal crops, acquiring a surplus that they exchanged with the caravan merchants at exorbitant prices.
The desolate, dead, bare tract of land was transformed into a garden that voyagers could see from great distances. Despite this bounty, the new oasis did not experience prosperity and did not enjoy its golden age until commercial caravans discovered it and changed their former routes. Then the oasis was transformed in a short time into a commercial hub, where caravans coming from all directions met.
2
In the early days they gathered stones to build widely separated houses, constructing the walls deliberately, skeptically, and hesitantly, but their souls’ doubts, which at the outset had stifled any excitement, quickly evolved into a spirit of competition. Then they went to great pains to build at a faster pace. So the plateaus and the string of low-lying areas to the north were dotted with buildings, and these subsequently spread to the plain of the central depression. They also extended west until they overlooked clay-covered earth that was bare of any gravel or boulders and that rain flooded in the winter. Southern breezes generously blew top soil from the badlands over these areas so tender shoots of plants grew plentifully in the spring and the plains turned green. Then the girls went out to harvest the abundant truffles, although herdsmen commented that there were fewer truffles in the fields at the borders of the encampments compared to their plentiful numbers in western sites at greater distances from the dwellings.
In the beginning, anarchy was a hallmark of the construction and placement of houses; random spacing, crowding, and separation were blatantly obvious. This did not escape the notice of anyone who saw them — not even visitors. With the passage of time, however, the city plan became more orderly. Houses were packed together, walls abutted each other as the buildings clung together, and external walls united with each other. Then roads and lanes were established between the dwellings, and blocks of buildings were separated by streets, alleys, and paths. The streets led to plazas and open spaces in the midst of the crush of buildings. Artisans, blacksmiths, farmers, and camel herders arrived and turned empty areas into markets for buying, selling, and bartering. The alleyways were narrow and winding, but the sages of the oasis understood that the winding streets and narrow alleys were a legacy of the chaotic construction boom of the first years.
The use of gray tones — borrowed from the darkness of the neighboring landscape and adopted by the house walls — dated back to that era. In due time, however, the tribe acquired the strategies of civil strife and learned the arts of embellishment and decoration, because rock continued to be a stubborn medium. Then the tribe discovered white lime powder and covered walls with this blinding white color. Then smooth walls gleamed in the morning sun, and in that grim, gray countryside the oasis appeared to the eye of the passing traveler to be an amazing city of the jinn or a unique oasis belonging to the group of lost oases celebrated in the legends of the ancients and said to appear only to travelers who are not looking for them, since they disappear from view when approached by people who have left home in search of them.