3
Just as the newborn’s scream is a sign of childbirth, a genuine prophecy must be preceded by a sign.
Shortness of breath and gasps like death rattles were his first sign.
He did not recognize how, when, or why the labor pains began. What he did perceive was a vision like the inspiration of a prophecy. Sparks like a flint’s shot from a location in the vast ocean of tenebrous depths. There was no flame. There was no flash of lightning, no firebrand like that preceding dawn’s birth. There was, instead, an insignificant light — a depressing, faint, meager glimpse, a snuffed-out gesture lacking even a shadow to celebrate the light or to remind a person of greedy fires; but this feeble gesture lit a blaze in his breast on that day.
The blaze began the moment the spark fell into the ocean of blackness. Then it faded, waned, and almost vanished. Soon, however, it ignited in the heart a strange tingling that long before had become part of forgetfulness. The tingling proceeded to blaze, to accelerate, and to grow large enough to swallow the entire continent of dark recesses. Light flowed out, inundating every space. Then he found himself leaping naked into the air the way young boys celebrate the arrival of a cloudburst, raising his hands high to catch beams of the noble light in his palms. The heavenly deluge showered his naked breast, scoured his skin, and washed it with its rays. He was cleansed by the beams of light and imbibed this lost light like a thirsty man imbibing drops of rain after a drought. Golden strands woven from the linen of innocence, translucence, and diffidence crisscrossed to traverse the body of the creature who had no body, to transform his body into innocence, translucence, and clustered diffidence, to exchange places with the gift, to turn the light into a body, to transmute his body into a cluster of charm, translucence, and light, so he became light and that light became a creature called the hero.
But … but the inspiration died, and the sign soon died out.
The sign was extinguished, and so the illumination vanished.
The tenebrous darkness descended and became more tyrannical than at any prior time. He searched for the prophecy. He sought out his lost true love. Then the darkness exhaled a viper’s hiss into his face. His chest constricted, and he began to choke. He gasped for breath. The fire blazed in his chest. So he leapt and roared like the forestland’s lions.
He kept rubbing his eyes as mercilessly as if wishing to pluck out his eyeballs. He roared with a ferocity no one had ever experienced from him before that day.
4
His slaves came to help, assuming that their master had been stung. They gathered around him in alarm, but he kicked one of them and drove others away with his left hand. His right hand was still digging into his eye sockets in a lethal attempt to pluck out his eyes.
During this struggle, the haughty hero, who in the oasis was exemplary for his dignified conduct, screamed in a horrid voice that could only be compared to the sounds produced by prime camels when herders crouch over them to remove their testicles: “Ah … ah … ah … ah … ah … ah….”
The hero’s wife fled from their home in alarm while men, slaves, herdsmen, boys, and gawkers approached their dwelling.
Then the hero was able to escape into the alley, shaking off the slaves while continuing his lethal attempt to pluck out his eyeballs.
Abanaban, the chief vassal, arrived and went to the head of the group. He asked, “Is the man possessed?”
No one replied, because at that moment the group saw the hero seize his beloved mamluk’s neck, which he gripped, and drag him along while he bounded around. The poor man began to foam at the mouth, to choke, and to rave as his eyes bulged out and his veil fell off. “Master! Master! Master!”
Someone shouted, “Watch out! The wretch will die at his hands!!”
A band of slaves rushed to save him, but the hero brushed them aside as easily as if they had been a swarm of flies and returned to his painful song, even though its secret meaning escaped them: “Ah … ah … ah … ah … ah….”
The hero proceeded to hop and leap from place to place while retaining his stranglehold on his favorite slave and continuing to dig at his eyes with his other hand. Short, potbellied, and breathless, Tayetti — leader of the attack on the forbidden currency long ago — approached. He shouted as loudly as he could: “Ropes! Where are the raffia ropes? Where are the men? Where are the guards?”
As some individuals galloped off in search of ropes, he cautioned the remaining group, “Watch out! I think the wretch is dying!”
Some members of the crowd summoned their courage and rushed to save the slave, who continued to struggle to free his neck from his master’s grip. Finally his powers failed him, and he went slack. He yielded, despaired, and foamed profusely at the mouth. Two large eyeballs — red with terror, astonishment, and blood — protruded from their sockets.
Some men grabbed the hero’s two hands, and the demonic afreet jerked them across the earth for a short time. Then he hurled them into the void, and they flew through the air like a couple of scrawny puppets stuffed with straw.
They landed far away.
Men carrying coils of rope arrived and assailed the hero from two opposite directions, grasping their savage, twisted rope. Tayetti gave them a stern signal. So they exploded and galloped round the afreet, employing the strategy customarily used on raging camels in seasons of rut. They tightened the rope around the afreet. Then they stopped and waited for another signal. When Tayetti was slow to give one, the men stopped waiting. Screaming like madmen, they pulled the ropes right and then left in a heroic effort to topple the hero.
But the onlookers saw the group’s iron men thrown to the earth, while the hero continued to run around and roar like a jungle lion.
Someone called out the desperate prophecy, “I fear the wretch has died!”
The group grumbled, and the strongmen felt desperate. Then the leader appeared.
The crowd made way for him. He advanced through the plaza in a black garment — like a crow from the badlands — and stopped only a few feet from the hero. Stillness descended on the plaza — a stillness broken only by the afreet’s screams.
The leader asked sarcastically, “Instead of fetching waterskins, you send for raffia ropes?”
Tayetti approached inquisitively. Then the leader scolded him indignantly, “Don’t you know that fire’s enemy is water — not ropes?”
Tayetti replied like an idiot, “We actually didn’t understand, master.”
The leader chided him, “Put out the blaze! Bring water!”
Astonished, Tayetti retreated, and men rushed to fetch water. It was said that the hero calmed down and collapsed once people had poured two skins of water over his head, but the poor slave had been strangled by his grip.
WANTAHET
1
It is related that the hero — once he was liberated from possession by the jinn — retreated to a corner of his house and wept for his dead slave there for days. The herbalist came to treat his bloody eyes, which he had almost plucked out during his temporary insanity on that ill-omened day. He found his patient swaying side to side like a person in an ecstatic trance. His veil was dangling down, revealing the lower half of his face. From his chest rose a muffled, painful wail, and with his fist he was pounding a monotonous beat on the house floor — which was covered with skins — as if keeping time to an unknown tune no one else could hear.
The herbalist hovered around him for a time and then knelt nearby. He flung his supplies on the mat and stretched out a lean, dark hand marked with veins, creases, and old scratches, to examine the bloody eyes — even though his feverish patient never stopped pounding the hide with his mysterious beats, which he paired with a vague dance and an inaudible tune.