He wandered through the open terrain, which was strewn with rough stones of comparable height and size. These were copper-colored and scattered across expanses stretching in all four directions, limited only by horizons swamped by the tails of mischievous mirages. No rise of earth burst from the plain and there were no dips. There was no hint of a hill and no promise in the distance of a mountain or an acacia. As far as the eye could see, the earth’s surface did not decline downward in a gulch or ravine and showed no willingness to reveal any hint of life through a blade of grass or even a dry tuft of weeds. It did not provide the least indication of good will. Indeed, to the contrary, it confronted him — scowling, threatening, and hostile — the way it does any wretched stranger ignorant of its secret. However, it is absurd to think that the desert’s ruses would dupe a creature born of the desert. It is absurd to think that a mother would deceive a son whom she had carried in her belly, fondled at her breast, and borne on her back. It is absurd to think that the ruse would trick a being whose entire training in strategies was provided by the desert, whose only passion in life was for the desert, whose first and only world was the desert, a person who never recognized a flesh-and-blood mother until the desert granted him permission, because she was not a mate, a mother, or a beloved. A creature who was not part of the desert but the desert itself — could this being defile the law of existence and plot against himself? Would he accept — like doltish travelers — that what he saw was what recluses refer to as annihilation? Would he believe that the first mother might one day reject her ancient offspring and cast before him snares woven from death’s ropes? Would he not be the first to know for certain that what seemed to outsiders a scowl was actually a smile, that what fools deemed sternness was diffidence on her part, and that what terrified strangers in her hostile expression was actually a promise and a renewal of a covenant? Did she not once tell him that she is a belle who gives herself only to those who have been faithful to the covenant and who only find themselves and discover their lost spirits when they rely on her and unite with her?
9
He rushed off, trailing the playful liquid that bubbles up in the wasteland to tempt fools, strangers, and masters of ignorance. He pursued it for a day and a half and spent the night in the heart of the obstinate maze that spreads and extends in every direction without ever promising anything. He passed the night but did not lose heart. Indeed, to the contrary, his smile never left his lips while he stretched out on his back, lying in wait for information from the life of storms. He was spying on the desert and listening to her mysterious voice. She was menacing her prodigal son — as was her wont. She was chiding the son who had ignored her and had followed the tribes that adopted houses not unlike stone prisons for their residences. She threatened, browbeat, and brandished the penalty in his face.
He listened humbly to the anger of this most ancient of mothers but smiled surreptitiously and enigmatically, because he knew this language in the same way he knew the mirage’s trajectory. He knew the language of mothers. He also knew the hearts of mothers. He knew that the language of mothers is one thing and the hearts of mothers are something else. He knew that strangers, or even relatives, grow angry and then hurt you when they threaten. He knew that only a mother instructs when she threatens or punishes; so he smiled. He smiled at the wretchedness of the deluded and began to read his mother’s messages in the stars’ trajectory, because she had once taught him to read her reports in the heavens’ storms, in the prevailing tendencies of the Qibli, or in the murmurs of the Spirit World’s inhabitants. He carried his reading to the extreme. The Camel captivated him and he followed behind her until he spotted the Calf fastened by a weak thread spun from colored wool. The poor fellow was hungry and thirsty for the mother’s teat, and the mother was inflamed by longing for the Calf, but for the mother to meet the Calf would cause the destruction of the desert and the heavens. The Calf’s escape from the wool tether is the mothers’ extinction and the sons’ annihilation. Can fragile wool thread prevent the Calf from escaping? Will the mother bear separation from the Calf for long? Or — were the sorcerers right when they declared that the era when a thirsty calf takes the camel’s dug, when the Camel consents to meet him, is our own era, the era of us creatures of dust, because in the law of the higher spheres, this era lasts no longer than the wink of an eye, whereas in our reckoning it seems a timeless eternity?
He discerned the sign in the sphere. He received a prophecy from the history of the Camel and the Calf. He perceived the omen and realized that the immortal mother would on the morrow open her arms to him.
In the morning he picked up his meager provisions and set forth before the sun could surprise him.
He did not change course the way careless people would. Instead he chose the same direction he had selected the day before, because setting a new course is an error the desert will not forgive. In the wasteland’s language, insistence on a new route is called oscillation, hesitation, loitering, and walking in place. A traveler who wishes to reach a destination does not circle around an area unless he wants to become that area’s prisoner. An area’s prisoner is not called a traveler in the desert’s customary law; he has become a stray.
Overhead, the sun’s tyranny persisted. In the barren land the mirage’s floods spilled forth, but the eternal, copper-colored wasteland was intolerant and unyielding and did not waive its threat. Into its immortal expanse a new sign descended. In its severe calm a new signal appeared. In the wasteland, in its competition with itself, with its rough body, which continues endlessly and never stops regenerating itself, a new prophecy appeared, borrowing a new veil woven from hurtful indifference. This indifference, which ignored beings and mocked the fates of creatures, paid no heed to whether those afflicted were people or livestock. This indifference is a snare for strays, because it terrifies and disorients them, making them feel desperate. Then they defeat themselves, because they submit to their destinies even before those destinies have judged them. The latent cause is always their ignorance of the desert’s modus operandi. These wretched intruders do not know that when the desert dons a veil of indifference this is a sign of contrition. If the naked landscape disguises itself and hides behind indifference, then the exile, which is multiplied and threatens to endure, struggles against the banished man’s death agony.
He smiled mischievously beneath his veil and surrendered to the expanse the way dry weeds surrender to the wind’s assault or the way straw yields to an unruly flood. He abandoned himself to allow the naked land to lead him to any country it wished. He allowed himself to become the naked land’s pawn, because he knew that the noble wasteland would never renege on a covenant made with a person who surrendered himself as its hostage. He had learned that — from time immemorial — progress through the desert has been like swimming through water, like floating in the spring-fed ponds of oases. You must relax and give your body totally to the water if you want to stay afloat. In the desert, too, arrogant people who act obstinately succumb. In the desert those who think they have been granted enormous knowledge and who therefore debate and resist will perish. The desert takes vengeance on this group with its labyrinth. The other group, those who surrender control to the wasteland and seek the desert’s protection against the desert, survives.