“Amazing! I’ve always thought we fell captive to those we love, not to those who love us.”
“That’s the logic of the masses. That’s the language of weaklings, who don’t know why they love the ones they love. They have no strength or ability to stop loving those they loved when they realize the truth about them.”
“Does my master have the power to extirpate love for one he loves on discovering that person’s true character?”
“The ability to extirpate love belongs to the loser, not to the person who hits the mark. Normally I don’t ever love until I have first grasped the true character of the one I love.”
A giant confronted them. He was turbaned with twin veils, which were doubled over, and armed with twin swords stuffed into twin scabbards stamped with amulets and ancient magical signs. In his right hand he gripped a long, gloomy-colored lance with a deadly tip. The chief merchant introduced him respectfully: “This is our master the warrior Emmar.”
4 Heroism
With a palm the size of a camel’s hoof, he shook the stranger’s hand with noble condescension, but said nothing, in keeping with the nobleman’s etiquette. Therefore, the wayfarer decided to employ praise to make him speak: “Meeting warriors is always a good omen. In which campaign did our master gain his exalted title?”
The alleged warrior did not respond, however. He sauntered along beside him in the crush of people, kicking a stone with his sandal and shoving people aside with his colossal shoulders with admirable indifference.
He waited a long time for a response. Finally the head merchant volunteered an answer for him: “The hero Emmar has never participated in a military campaign.”
“Then hasn’t he defended the oasis against raiders?”
“No, never.”
“Hasn’t he hanged miscreants from palm trunks?”
“He’s never hanged a miscreant from a palm.”
“Hasn’t he punished highwaymen with his lance?”
The chief merchant and the warrior glanced stealthily at one another. He noticed in the giant’s eye a mocking smile, as if he were granting the other man the right to speak for him. “He hasn’t struck down any highwaymen with his lance, either.”
At this point the visitor suddenly stopped and adjusted his turban with his hand, “I remember: our comrade inherited his imposing title from his ancestors; that’s for sure.”
The chief merchant, however, denied that too: “No, not at all. The warrior didn’t inherit his title from his grandfathers.”
He released a throaty cough before saying, “This is a riddle! I swear it’s a cunning riddle. Save me from trying to undo the talisman, for I confess I can’t.”
He suppressed his hideous laugh, and the head merchant replied nonchalantly, “Our master Emmar felled a gigantic jinni in a competition and thus earned this heroic and fitting epithet.”
He glanced at him from behind his veil, but the chief merchant did not respond. So he asked, “Is this a joke?”
“Not at all!”
“I thought you were kidding.”
“Why should I kid you? Do you think that casting down a giant from the spirit world is a negligible feat?”
“Ha, ha. . I don’t consider it a heroic one, though.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Heroism’s something else. Heroism is felling your self, not felling the jinn.”
“Explain.”
“Heroism’s doing what you don’t want to do.”
“I thought heroism’s doing what you want — not what you don’t want.”
“Nonsense! A person who does whatever he wants in this world will eventually fail.”
“I remember wanting to have a fortune when I was barely more than a babe in the cradle. I heard a voice urging me to join the caravans and to become a merchant. So I did. I did what I wanted, because I realized that I was destined to be a merchant and that the whispering voice was my prophecy. Had I not been certain of this, I would not have succeeded. I would not have become — as you see me today — the chief merchant in the oasis and possibly in all the oases.”
“Ha, ha. . but commerce isn’t heroism. Indeed commerce’s the opposite of heroism. Heroism, chief merchant, is the renunciation of trade and the divestiture of wealth.”
“Divestiture! Divestiture! If we all embraced divestiture, the world would not exist as we know it and the oasis wouldn’t pulse with life the way you see before you now. Commerce, Mr. Stranger, is life.”
“If commerce is life, then there’s no doubt that heroism’s the opposite of life.”
“Do you mean that heroism’s tantamount to death?”
“Right. Heroism is to die, not to live, but. . not so fast; not so fast, why doesn’t our master the warrior answer my questions? Is he dumb?”
“It’s because warriors don’t speak.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Didn’t you just say that heroism is death and that heroes are dead men?”
“Ha, ha. . ”
A group of nobles blocked their way. A portly man of medium height, enveloped in dignified blue robes stood in the center. The chief merchant hailed him reverently, as if reciting a panegyric ode: “This is our chief, our sovereign, our master, the Venerable Ewar.”
5 Deliverance
With smiling eyes, the tribe’s chief advanced toward him and came so close he almost bumped into the stranger with his imposing turban. Then he noticed pockmarks left by smallpox on the cheeks of the chief, who gazed at him with laughing eyes before teasing him, “Do I behold the stranger who came to our community on a jenny’s back?” He pulled the bottom of his veil tighter and higher and then folded it over to provide a double covering for his lips in the fashion affected by nobles and tribal leaders. Then he threw back his head as he attempted to suppress a merry laugh before continuing: “How can you expect our elders not to think ill of you when you arrive on the back of a jenny, as if you were the accursed Wantahet, who has been the butt of jokes for generations?”
He raised his hand to adjust the end of his veil too, before embarking on his defense: “I have indeed garnered the tribe’s suspicions, even though I have yet to allure the masses into deceitful games to lead them to hell’s abyss.”
Everyone laughed in unison. The tribe’s chief laughed too. Hiding his laughter behind his veil, he asked, “Is this your plan?”
“Ha, ha. . can a creature rebel against his destiny? I will definitely lead them, but not along the road to the abyss — contrary to the way generations have told the story — but on the path to deliverance.”
“Deliverance! Deliverance! We will never learn the path to deliverance unless we delete this word from our vocabulary. Each recruit for the band of wayfarers claims to be a prophet and announces to the tribes that he is the Messenger of Deliverance. The strategist known as Wantahet also claimed he would carry people on the path of deliverance the day he cast them down the mouth of the abyss.”
“Hell, too, master, is at times deliverance.”
“Did you all hear that?” He drew the edge of his veil over his nose, concealing his pockmarked cheeks, and laughed with childish glee as he leaned back: “Hell, too, is deliverance. Do you mean it’s what the masses deserve?”
“Yes, indeed. Don’t we burn the body at times with fire to root out a disease?”
The tribe’s chief, however, tilted his turban toward him and whispered, “Why not defer our discussion of deliverance until you dine with me this evening?”
“I’ve promised myself never to share a feast with another person.”