He did not worry about trying to answer his question but hopped up and leapt into the water. He waded a few steps beside the bank, playing in the water with both hands at times and dousing his body with splashes of water at others. He dawdled and frolicked like a child before he told himself out loud: “The fact is that only a desert lover can grasp the true nature of water.” He walked out to where it was deeper before immersing himself. The whole spring-fed pool was convulsed and flooded the banks and the nearby sand spits.
Although he lingered for a long time in the beloved’s embrace, once he emerged he immediately withdrew the leather purse from the sleeve of his garment. With the composure of a zealot, he loosened the fastener and then eyed the mysterious herb’s particles, which were interspersed with yellow-colored florets. He approached the revered spring to scatter over its depths the malignant contraceptive powder. Shortly after sunrise he returned by the same route, but no sooner had he left the grove’s thick vegetation and crossed the irrigation ditch than the fool jumped out at him from behind a pomegranate bush.
PART I Section 6: The Interrogation
1 Play
In the crowded market the elders gathered around him. First, the chief merchant Amghar approached, accompanied by the self-styled warrior Emmar, his preternaturally large frame held ramrod straight. Emmar’s hands, which resembled camel hooves, were clasped behind his back. He had hunched his huge shoulders so that his tiny head, which was lodged between them, seemed from a distance a spherical colocynth lodged between two boulders. The chief merchant stammered a greeting, which the stranger could not make out, since people’s clamor, tongues’ chattering, and vendors’ cries drowned his words, swallowing everything. He was astonished that the series of miscarriages, which had shaken the entire world and turned life upside down in the oasis, had not negatively affected this jinni called commerce.
To make himself heard above the frenetic deal-making, he shouted at the top of his lungs: “The epidemic’s long arm has touched everything in the oasis, but not even an epidemic can rattle the market. I wonder which jinni commerce harbors?”
The chief merchant came several paces nearer, shouldering men aside on his way. He replied, “Commerce’s secret is identical to life’s, for in this desert of ours whenever one man meets another, a contract is always a third party.”
“Is that true?”
“We never meet, master, except to make a deal.”
“I know that when we meet to fight we deal in casualties.
I also realize that when we meet for love we consummate a contract of glad tidings. I don’t understand, however, what we do when we meet to do nothing; I mean when we meet to play.”
Amghar answered without any hesitation: “Play is also a contract!” He rolled a pebble out of the way with his sandal before he added with a bow, “Indeed, honored guest, play’s the biggest deal of all.”
The visitor stopped dead in his tracks and suddenly confronted the other man. He faced him as if intending to attack, flee, scream, or do all of these at once. In total surprise, the warrior retreated several steps and then stretched out his calamitous hand, the camel’s hoof, to find the hilt of his sword. Meanwhile the strategist was standing right in front of the chief merchant. He proudly drew himself erect and glared at the other man but did not speak. The situation would not have been so threatening had he spoken. All three men seemed to feel that any action or gesture issuing from this riddle called man would not only remain ambiguous but would even become threatening, unless the man supplemented it with a comment from his tongue. Yes, indeed, man is a tongue,5 for when a man lacks the ability to speak, he becomes a shadow, a specter, and an apparition.
Finally the tongue spoke. Finally the man within the strategist asked, “Is it appropriate for a devotee of commerce to play?”
Amghar gave him a questioning look and the strategist repeated the question a second time, without once relaxing his provocative, threatening pose. At last the chief merchant countered, “Is there anyone for whom play is inappropriate?”
Only at that moment did the two other men notice that the stranger was trembling, even though he made a heroic attempt to stifle in his chest a mysterious tumult for which they could discern no cause. He croaked out an indistinct, questioning noise, to which the chief merchant responded. This time he sounded as if he were singing. He waxed poetic, since he was discussing his beloved commerce, and cited again his childhood dream, which the stranger had already heard mentioned. Then he switched to contracts, praising them with a zeal comparable only to that lavished by ancient poets on epic battles. He spoke at length and chanted for a long time, until he finally observed that commerce is life and that anyone for whom play is unsuitable is unfit to live.
He stopped singing to catch his breath but immediately added the final stanza of this epic: “Anyone who does not excel at commerce will not excel with contracts. Anyone who does not excel with contracts will not excel at play, and in this desert anyone who does not excel at play will not excel in life. So, woe to anyone who does not excel at play.”
2 The Scheme
The strategist did not yield, however. He decided to open a debate with the merchant about the difference between the physical world and life by asking one simple question: “Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for an advocate of free trade to say that commerce is our world rather than to finish by saying that commerce is life?”
The trade advocate was not ready to yield, either: “This debate could take a long time, but I would like to end it before it leads to a quarrel, as always happens. With my master’s permission I wish to conclude it with a single sentence: for a merchant, commerce is a commandment, and each commandment creates a life for anyone who cherishes it. Am I on the right track?”
“You’re right. My question contains the germ of a lengthy debate. Why haven’t you mentioned the epidemic?”
“As is always the case, an epidemic is followed by chaotic confusion.”
“Confusion?”
“And confusion, as you know, is a blind witch that does not distinguish between proximate and remote causes.”
“I really don’t understand.”
“I mean the confusion has touched our master as well.” The stranger cast an inquiring look at Amghar, who abandoned his recondite language to explain, “The finger of suspicion has been pointed even at our master.”
“Ha, ha. . ”
“The footprints of some strangers fill with heavy rain. The footprints of other foreigners are cracked with drought. On the heels of some strangers comes joy. On the heels of others comes foul play. Each step a stranger takes contains a secret.”
“This has been said forever and a day.”
“People associate the women’s miscarriages with your footsteps.”
“Really?”