The wretch suffered from insomnia — an insomnia he had not experienced even during his years of commercial speculations and of making deals in the markets of the oases and distant cities. He suffered from insomnia, and the insinuating whispers persisted in his breast. He felt exhausted and depressed. He neglected his herds, his commerce declined, and his stocks found no market. Then he lost his close friends, his family, and even his slaves. All he had left was ill health. He suffered with his disability for a long time, until the day sparks exploded inside him. Then he went to the residence of the man who had been his benefactor, guided by an obscure inspiration to kill him by strangling him.
Since then, successive generations have considered gift-giving to be a lethal danger. One person said that it is tantamount to spitting in a person’s face. Others said that since it is a debt to the jinn, no man can repay it to another man. A third faction viewed it as a cause for civil strife and a down payment on enmity. The tribes’ cunning strategists repeated a cryptic characterization of it as the Spirit World’s curse.
3
It is said that when the nobles accepted gifts from the cunning strategist, he told his close associates that he had only presented these gifts as a form of self-defense, because the Law of Gift-giving grants a right of revenge to conspirators who are good to people and befriend strangers with presents and gifts. When experience taught him that time inevitably reveals peoples’ hidden intentions, he saw that people rush to their demise instead of waiting for the preordained sword thrust on a day when no amount of planning will help.
Gossips attributed the death of the chief merchant (who was found strangled by his gold belt) to his excessive greed and his impudent bickering with a wayfarer whose secret he did not know and whose goal he did not perceive. He had forgotten that the being who sat before him enveloped in black was a newborn delivered by the Spirit World the previous day from the loins of the twilight before he became the creature to whom they pledged fealty that day. Then the wretch met a hideous destiny that was a far cry from the wisdom people attributed to him. Indeed, it was even said that the Spirit World’s emissary, who came to the oasis disguised in the garments of a wayfarer, had punished the man with two veils in the worst possible way — first and foremost to expose this arrogant man’s claim to wisdom, and secondly to teach fools the proverb that says the wisdom of a person destined to annihilation is as bogus as all the trifles destined for annihilation.
Imaswan died from being stabbed by the spear — which had a shaft studded with red gemstones — he had sarcastically asked for on that ill-omened day.
Of Amasis the Younger, tongues related how a tremor had affected him at the time of the distribution. His veil had dangled around his lips, his mouth had foamed copiously, and his eyes had glittered suddenly with a strange moisture that his peers had never observed there before. His voice had quavered with genuine emotion when he exclaimed, “Truffles! Truffles! If you found truffles for me in your bag, I would give you my whole life!”
The messenger of Luck smiled in the mysterious way that almost became an identity or a metonym for him. This was a cunning smile that only strategists have perfected. Then he thrust the hand of certainty into his frightful knapsack to extract three medium, round truffles of various colors. These were marked with mysterious, cryptic indentations that might have been drawn by the hand of a sorcerer or a diviner. Clinging to them were clods of moist, fresh, dark dirt — as if the hand of the jinn had dug these treasures from the earth of the Western Hammada and brought them from that distant land to place before this man, who was a passionate connoisseur of truffles. He began to inhale the aroma of the legendary fruit. Then he muttered guttural, unintelligible sounds and swayed east and west, weeping tears of ecstasy, affliction, and longing. The next morning they found him pop-eyed and bathed in foam and saliva. His face was spotted with suspicious blue marks herbalists said appear only on the bodies of people exposed to the most virulent poisons.
The fate of the hero Ah’llum differed from those of his comrades.
On that day Ah’llum was silent for a long time. The messenger did not entice or goad him, appearing oblivious to his existence. Unlike his comrades, the hero did not ask the sultan of gifts to produce a prodigy from his wonder-sack. Finally the hero wiped his eyes with the dark scrap of cloth and said, “Master, I have learned from experience that I lose the battle whenever I desire booty. Combat, master, is my profession, but I have learned to leave the spoils and the captives to the cowards. This principle is not merely the secret of my heroism but is also the secret of my salvation. I won’t deny that I am a creature who has desires like anyone else, because I have never been as passionate about anything as my health. Indeed, I admit that good health is my true love. Couldn’t my master produce from his satchel a salve or some other remedy that would heal my vision?” The mysterious creature smiled enigmatically and thrust a knowing hand into his dread sack to extract a small purse of dark cloth decorated with suspicious embroidery. In the purse the hero found coal black ashes that the master of ceremonies assured him was kohl that would restore his vision’s health in the wink of an eye.
But this alleged kohl blinded him instead of healing his sight.
In spite of this affliction, the hero was the only creature destined to attend the last meeting of the Council of Nobles inside the temple that day and then also to hear the herald cry as he toured the oasis the next morning: “The soul is slain only by what it desires, and man is destroyed only by what he craves.”
THE EDICTS
1
Everyone finally concurred with what the elders and sages had once said — that the disappearance of justice was preordained for life in oases. These men seemed the only faction who thought they had a right to express an opinion about life in the oasis, because they had lived another life in the wasteland before time frowned on them and forced them to settle. Then they had found themselves held hostage by enclosures, buildings, and rows of stones.
The generations who were reared within the ramparts were astonished to observe wise men tremble and shed tears when the saga of the desert flowed from tongues. These youngsters did not understand the adults’ secret. So they would run after them to ask, “If abandoning the desert is this painful, why don’t you return?” But these afflicted people found no answer for the question, because they themselves did not know what bound them to an earth that denied and rejected them, that made them feel they were strangers and enemies while their beloved wilderness stretched before them with all its nobility, discretion, pride, submission, affection, nonchalance, and charm. They had never discovered its secret or found anything comparable to its beauty and magic or even any explanation for these qualities. So why didn’t they rush off? Why didn’t they go to embrace the paradise that awaited them beyond the city walls? Why didn’t they pass through the city gates and cast themselves into the labyrinth of the homeland of longing?