When citizens inquired about the secret of the venerable elder’s recovery of his sense of sight (a sense that those who knew him personally asserted he had never lost), the elders responded to the question with a question: “If Emmamma has recovered his sense of sight thanks to the purported rebirth, why hasn’t he regained his sense of hearing too?”
5
“Today the council is entitled to convey glad tidings to a person who has always been an amulet for the council’s head,” Imaswan Wandarran bellowed into the venerable elder’s ear and then leaned back to sit erect. He snuck a glance at the man with two veils and then finally heard the response of the scion of eternity: “Oo … oo … oo … oo … ooh….”
He groaned for a long time and swayed right and left as he customarily did when a powerful sorrow overwhelmed him. Then he proceeded to release a moan of multiple pains, repeating it with the intoxication of the possessed till it slipped out of the council, circulated through the crannies, and descended to the realms. Then the Spirit World lodged it in the expanse of the homelands. The moan finally rose into the void — heartrendingly, feverishly, piercingly, like every ancient tune.
The moan departed, but its echo lingered in the air. Then the frail body lying in a heap on the rows of poles responded to the echo with a shudder like that of people dancing ecstatically.
Imaswan looked at all his colleagues in turn and then leaned toward his neighbor’s ear to elucidate the significance of the message: “Today the council can boast to the other tribes about the selection of our master to head the council. So may we hear from his mouth a thought about this puny gift?”
“Hey … ey … ey … ey … ey….”
Imaswan exchanged a look with the council members and then leaned back toward the scrawny body that time had consumed till it resembled a sheaf of straw. He thrust his mouth to Emmamma’s ear till his lips touched the venerable elder’s veil, from which desert suns had sucked the blue color till it faded, vanished, and turned a melancholy white.
He shouted in a repulsive voice: “Do I understand from this cry that our master endorses the council’s choice?”
“Ah … ah … ah … ah … ah … ah … ah … ah….”
The cry became a genuine song — like the opening of the grief-filled ballads that the tribes’ women poets call asahagh. Then the wasted body began to rock to the cry’s beat.
Imaswan watched him with despair. Then he retreated. From the precincts of the council a voice rose: “Our master is tiring himself.”
The peers looked up to find standing above them a dark giant whose black tunic’s sleeves revealed muscular arms on which lingered the murky glow that gleams on the skins of intensely black lizards. In this spectral giant the noblemen recognized the mamluk who bore the venerable elder’s stretcher and who always walked at the front while his shorter partner always walked at the rear. It was said that Emmamma had established this rule ages ago to keep his head raised high and thus allow him to watch the ebb and flow of creatures with his sharp, beady eyes, which the ghoul of time had vanquished — along with every other part of him.
In response to people’s questioning looks, the giant explained, “My master will never hear.”
Ah’llum taunted him with a sarcastic question: “Didn’t the rabble fill our ears with the legend of his rebirth?”
“My master hears when he wants to; he doesn’t hear when he doesn’t want to.”
“What are you saying, wretch?”
“My master hears what he wants to hear. He doesn’t hear what he does not want to hear!”
“Have you seen, wretch, any creature under the moon who doesn’t want to hear one day that the fates have smiled, finally, and seated him on the throne of leadership?”
“Actually, I know nothing of the nature of creatures, master, because I’m a slave who thinks with his hands not his head. But I can convey to my master the council’s offer, if the lords of the council agree.”
“What are you saying, wretch?”
“I’m saying that my master’s secret lies in his eyes not his ears.”
He put a hand in his breast pocket and drew out a highly polished stone tablet. He thrust his other hand into his tunic pocket and extracted a long piece of charcoal, as smooth as if it had been trimmed by a dagger’s blade. With this charcoal he drew letters of the ancient alphabet on the polished surface. Then he knelt facing his master and raised the tablet to his eyes.
The nobles watched this cunning strategist’s movement with curiosity. They observed the stillness that settled over the venerable elder for a moment but that did not last long, because his eyes suddenly narrowed, and his scrawny body responded with a tremor that did not continue any length of time, although the look from his wretched eyes afterward was not one the noblemen would ever be able to forget. Did it express astonishment, suffering, disdain, or genuine torment? Or, was it a mixture of all of these?
What the nobles remembered was that Emmamma took a handful of dirt and threw it in his poor mamluk’s face as a sign of disgust. Then he drew the upper portion of his veil down over his eyes, shielding them entirely, and released a feverish gasp like his last breath, before stretching out on his back in the litter and pounding his palms on the poles as a signal to depart.
6
Before the oasis witnessed the birth of a new dawn, before the full moon came out that night, and before the council meeting adjourned that day, a messenger came to the sanctuary.
He stood in the darkness at the entrance, clenching his rough fingers together and shaking like a man with a fever.
The noblemen struggled by light from the hearth’s flames to distinguish the specter’s identity, and only made out the black giant after a lengthy effort. The giant spoke with the voice of a diviner conveying a prophecy to the people: “Our master has preceded us!”
Stillness settled over the place. Stillness settled over the place and proceeded to dominate every cranny of the room, the whole temple, the oasis, the wasteland beyond, and the desert — for which no one knew the beginning and no one perceived the end.
The stillness extended further, and the sticks of firewood ceased complaining as they burned in the fire’s flame. The tongues of flame ceased their turmoil, which normally expressed their delight with the sticks of firewood. Chuckles died in the chests of the riffraff in the alleys. Women stopped whispering slanders and rumors, and children swallowed their rowdy shouts. The indecipherable murmurs vanished from the lips of babes in arms. The livestock stopped chewing their cud and listened despondently as their bodies turned into ears.
At that hour, the lords of the people heard news like a prophecy that was repeated by the tongue of the Unknown: “Our master has preceded us.”
Finally they exchanged dumbfounded looks. After some time they discovered that the specter had vanished and that darkness threatened the place. So they fed the fire more wood.
A voice ended the long silence: “This is an evil omen!”
This voice sounded to them like another prophecy. They did not know who among them had delivered this prophecy, because they had wandered far away and their fugues lasted a long time.
The unidentified voice returned to say with the tongue of the Unknown: “The disappearance of venerable elders is always a harbinger of evil!”
Without raising his eyes from the tongues of fire, the man with two veils said: “The death of the sage forces people to discern a prophecy in his disappearance. Here he is saying to us that the honorable man prefers to lie down beside his ancestors rather than mount the world’s thrones.”