She did not tell him her real reason that night. She did not reveal her secret to him. She left him in his triumphal swoon at his imaginary victory. She was not uncomfortable about allowing him to presume what he wanted, because she knew instinctively as a woman that nothing is easier for a clever woman than to introduce happiness to the heart of a man, who is more like a child than a man, because it takes little to make a man feel happy. It merely takes a presumption, provided that the cause of this presumption is a woman rather than a man. Women can rest assured that a man requires nothing more than a doll in order to enjoy the legendary condition called happiness, provided that this doll is a woman. An astute woman does not need to borrow a doll for him from the temporal world or a puppet from the physical world, since she can transform herself into an action figure for him. This is woman’s secret. This is the difference between an astute woman and a dumb one. She had given herself to him that night like a doll. He had not needed to wait for her to be brought back from a flight to the desert for a night or even for several nights, during which time he would have submitted to a vexing interrogation by old women, who would not have handed over to him the maiden he had chosen as his spouse until after negotiations during which he might have surrendered half of his wealth, or even all of it, to pay them for delivering her, in keeping with the dictates of the lost Law.
She had, however, violated the exalted commandments and fled from the desert and from the hands of the aged sorceresses. She had fled from this faux-flight to throw herself voluntarily into the embrace of the ghoul, her abductor and her spouse. She had offered herself to the man in order to give him the impression that he was receiving her for free, to make him think that he had concluded the most precious deal in the whole world, for she was certain that to a man in whose veins trade flows like blood a woman is merely another deal. In fact, she is the ultimate deal, one that renders superfluous all previous deals. She did not tell him that she had another contract in her pocket. She did not disclose her vulnerable spot to him. She did not discuss with him her longing for a child. She was fated to keep this secret throughout this period, even though secrets do not remain secret forever. The moment for the secret’s predestined revelation arrived when he approached her dejectedly to broach the matter of the antidote with her, for she decided then to strip bare her heart. She decided to defend herself by discrediting what men always assume to be certain, even though she knew that by using this defense she would injure the man’s self-esteem. That night she had no need to tell him she had not fled to his tent on their wedding night out of any yearning to conquer man’s community but instead to gain offspring from his loins. That achieved, it would not matter to her whether she lost on the deal, since she would have acquired life by gaining a child.
That night she did not need to utter a word, for her eyes told him all he needed to hear. She informed him in this way that she would have sought an antidote to allow her to bear a child even if he not raised this subject. She told him with her eyes that a man, in her opinion, was nothing more than a meaningless specter if he did not carry the miraculous seed in his body, that he would never deserve a woman unless the spirit world supplied his loins with this sacred trust and that he was not created to take a woman but to be taken by one, because man’s message resembles that of a male drone destined to perish once he passes on the sacred trust to the queen bee.
She had seen the stranger at the spring one day when she was with her sisters. It had not been hard for her to see what type of man that strategist was. Therefore, she knew what she would do when she went the following evening to receive the antidote from his hands.
4 Amghar
Had he exaggerated when he told the jenny master that winning a deal beats even winning a beautiful virgin? In point of fact, he could just as easily have asserted the opposite, since his bitter journey in search of a contract had taught him that a contract not aimed at securing a beautiful virgin is an improvised and pointless one. He had never dreamt of a contract involving a fortune in isolation from a contract involving a beautiful woman. Indeed, he had not begun his journey on this bitter quest for any other purpose than the pursuit of the impossible dream he always beheld in the physique of a beautiful woman. He was now able to state decisively, after many years had been frittered away, that the dream of conquering a beautiful woman had been the original, whispered temptation that had aroused inside him a longing to make a deal and a craving for riches. He had understood since adolescence that a belle is a she-jinni who will not fall into a man’s snare unless it is baited with a fortune. The day he set out to realize his mission, his secret motivation never slipped from his mind, notwithstanding the seductive, tricky stratagems that each trading trip casts before travelers, tempting some to fall by the wayside and luring others to deviate from the true course till they forget their goal and substitute for it another Beloved. Thus an action figure is transformed into the lord of lords, while the Lord of Lords renounces the exalted heights to become a figment of the imagination in the difficult errand. He actually had been reckless on the way but had never ignored the truth. He had attempted to distinguish between the Beloved and the dummy, which we compare with the Beloved so it can nourish in our hearts our passion for the Beloved. He had fought off the demons, struggled with the jinn, and come to blows with battalions of ghouls to consummate a contract. Whenever he made a deal, he would retreat into himself and address in his heart the mysterious Beloved, in order to borrow from His sovereignty a new incentive to assist him in making another deal, because the young beauty for whom his heart had pounded when he was an adolescent and who had jilted him for a rich man, had not left his memory, even though she had left his heart. She had become a sibilant insinuation whispering in his ear, reminding him of his loss. At the outset, his sole reason for embarking on this journey had been to transform this sound into a pining song that would convert his defeat into a victory. Since the journey had begun for the sake of a woman, a woman necessarily became its goal. The day he spotted the beauty bathing naked in the pool at the spring, a lump formed in his throat and a whispered desire stirred in his heart. The cause of the lump was the memory of his first disappointment and the reason for the whispered suggestion was the dream he had cherished so fondly throughout his journey that it had almost become a forgotten secret. Her precious chest was splashed with drops of water and topped by two jaunty, swelling breasts. To her right breast clung some strands of jet-black hair that formed around the shapely, virginal nipple a mysterious, gloomy-colored circle that reminded him, for some unknown reason, of the halo of the moon when it turns full. Her large black eyes, which resembled those of a gazelle in the Massak desert, shone with a dusky radiance. In them glowed a cryptic look suggesting temptation, appeal, desire, hope, or a secret combination of all these. He was convulsed by a tremor — actually an earthquake, one well known to anyone to whom the spirit world has presented the woman destined for him. Afterwards, he found himself involuntarily repeating out loud: “She! She! She’s the one!” Then he emitted a subdued groan before proclaiming hoarsely: “I’ve waited a long time for you!”