The bird fell silent, and stillness settled over the valley — the ancient stillness, the mysterious stillness, the hostile stillness, the lethal stillness, which declares in its mute tongue that the homeland that knows no spatial borders and that isn’t delimited by time is the only homeland for living beings, the homeland appropriate for living beings and for life, because it is a homeland that lies outside life. Why would a creature who one day visits that homeland and then finds himself put back in the cage bounded by feebleness, disability, and old age not weep? Why would the creature who has visited the homeland, to whom the Spirit World has been disclosed, not weep when he finds himself confronted by the eternal, stern, naked wasteland flooded by the mirage’s streaming tails?
2
Forty years ago they tracked him down in the distant grazing lands.
They came to him after he had been gone for some months.
He was afflicted by angst — a curse said to be especially common among poets — and went to the borders of the Western Hammada to find solitude as desert dwellers do when they suddenly discover that they have been afflicted by an incurable disease. But they did not grant him any respite. The elders did not cut him any slack. They came looking for him just days after the leader passed away. They told him that he was the deceased leader’s only sororal nephew and that he was therefore duty-bound to assume the tribe’s leadership. He argued with them. That day he debated with them. He was still young; so he argued with them. He told them he was a poet. He told them he was not merely a poet but an afflicted poet. When Emmamma asked what he meant by “afflicted,” he said naively that he was afflicted by a disease called sorrow. Then all the noble elders began to laugh. They shed their grave demeanor and all laughed together. He heard the elders laugh out loud for the first time. He was stunned that these sages would violate their eternal Law and guffaw in response to a statement that he thought wasn’t very amusing. He thought that they were perhaps laughing for some other, secret reason — not in response to his reply.
They immediately plunged their fists into the dirt to ward off the evil that their laughter might have aroused. They asked forgiveness from the god of the desert, vowing to slaughter a sheep when they returned to their encampment as a sacrifice to expiate the sin of laughter. Then … then they adjusted their veils over their faces, carefully concealing their noses, and brought themselves back into conformity with the Law.
Emmamma asked, “Do you want us to violate a tradition that no one in our community has ever violated?”
“The leader has sons brighter than I am and wiser than most men. Why shouldn’t they inherit the post of leader from their father?”
Asaruf shouted, “Do you want us to pass the drum to sons of a departed leader who leaves a sister’s son in the tribe? Do you want us to violate our forefathers’ decree — which we have inherited — carved on the tablets of the lost Law?”
“But I’m a poet, and poets have never made suitable leaders.”
Ejabbaran spoke up for the first time. Throughout this discussion he had been raking the dirt with his finger, tracing letters of their ancient alphabet. He didn’t reveal their meaning, however, because this wise old man erased these symbols before they spelled out a word. He was bent over his symbols when he observed, “Becoming leader won’t prevent you from reciting poetry, Master.”
Yes, the sage Ejabbaran was the first person to utter this sacred term of address. He was the first person to place the blue band on the youth’s turban and to drop the executive drum, the war drum, before the dead leader’s nephew by using this word, which doesn’t take up much space in the language’s lexicon but which is the final word among desert tribes.
Silence reigned, but the sage continued to trace letters of the alphabet in the dirt, erasing what he had written before the words were complete enough to be read.
He heard Emmamma suggest, “Yes, our sage has spoken correctly: you can recite poetry in secret.”
“I should recite poetry in secret?”
“Yes, you can recite your poems in secret the way the tribe’s elders do, just like all the leaders.”
“Like all the leaders?”
“Yes. Do you think you’re the only desert leader who enjoys reciting poetry? Know that all leaders in the desert are poets.”
“I have never heard a leader recite a poem.”
“You haven’t heard a leader recite poetry, because they recite in secret, as I told you. They recite their poems in secret, attributing them to female poets or foreigners.”
“But does poetry remain poetry if a man recites it in secret? Does poetry remain poetry if the reciter attributes it to someone else?”
Ejabbaran spoke again, “This is what we found our fathers doing, Master.”
He hunched over the dirt, lost in his letters, drawing and then erasing what he had drawn. He would write a symbol and erase it. He seemed to be immersed in his world rather than present with them. This is what made him feel that the expression “Master” was decisive when Ejabbaran uttered it; it seemed that the Unknown had uttered it.
3
Not many years passed before they came to him again.
Water had cascaded down the valleys, and many meteor showers had lit up the sky. The tribes’ poets had recited splendid new poems, and the maidens had sung heartrending ballads. Elders had dozed off, and the tribes had lost wise leaders. Then the elders came to their leaders’ sisters’ sons to place the blue cloth band on their heads, to hail them with the title “Master,” which previously had been said to him in the wilderness when he was named the tribe’s leader. Then they came to him again, just as they had come to him in the deserts of the Western Hammada. Emmamma led them as he had on that day, but wise Ejabbaran was unable to come, because this ancient sage had ceased tracing his symbols in the desert’s dirt and lay in an awe-inspiring tomb beside his ancient ancestors.
The sage was absent this time, but Asaruf came with Emmamma. The leader observed how one messenger’s head would be higher than the other’s only to be outstripped by his partner’s by a turban’s height. Then the first man’s head would gain the ascendency once more, rising above his companion’s by the same distance. He remembered that this noble situation — when companions the same height alternately appear taller than each other on account of their gait, as if they were competing to climb heavenwards — is known in poetics as “Amisarrasan.”7
They came in the evening. They didn’t track him down in the wasteland of the Western Hammada as they had once done. They came to him in the dwelling they had selected for him long ago. They came to him, and he realized at once why they had come. He perceived that secret today with the mind of a leader, the mind of time, which was gushing past with the torrents in the valleys, vanishing like the early afternoon mirages, and carrying away his whole life. He perceived today the secret he had not perceived that day when he employed a poet’s intuition, that noble insight, which is tender and delightful and which they had come that day to seize from him. They had stifled it in his breast forever. They had stifled the poetry in his heart on that ill-omened day. Then he himself had smothered. He had kept trying to breathe, gasping for air, hoping to bring back his lost bird. He had been wheezing all this time, breathing laboriously with a distressing sound — like someone wailing and trying not to weep — because when a man suffocates, he finds no way to draw in air; all he can do is weep. The eternal desire to breathe, to reclaim his lost bird, caused him to forget the ceremonies preordained for him and to ignore the law of leadership. He committed another error, one the elders thought inappropriate for a leader. So they contacted each other, consulted with each other, reached a decision, and came to him. He knew what they would say on this occasion. Time had truly taken his life but in exchange had granted him a small talisman, which the Law called by many names: experience, intellect, and wisdom. By means of this talisman he was able to decipher the prophecy. Yes — they would say, “This is inappropriate.” They would say that the leader’s life was the tribe’s life and that it was inappropriate for the leader to be married to a poet now that he had reached a mature age. They would say that the leader’s destiny was to sacrifice himself in order to improve the tribe’s fate, to sacrifice happiness just as he had previously sacrificed his solitude and poetry one day. They would say that a man who enters the tent of leadership must forget about love, just as he had previously forgotten solitude and poetry. In the leader’s tent there was no room for any fantasy, and love is a fantasy. Love is a great fantasy; love is the greatest fantasy.