Seven Veils of Seth Page 13
“I don’t know. But I’ve never sampled anything with a bitterer taste than nomadic travel. Migration is daily death.”
“But it’s also a daily resurrection.”
“I don’t consider the spirit world a form of resurrection. The only thing harsher than death is resurrection from death.”
“Do you know why?” He answered without waiting for a response: “Nomadic travel, like life, can only be a message of deliverance, because it is a message of punishment.”
“I’m tempted to call this another curse that differs little from the plague.”
“Travel truly is fire for the body but balsam for the heart. Sedentary life is truly a balsam for the body but a fire for the heart.”
“Fire! Down with fire! Don’t remind me of the fire.”
“A person who does not wish to remember the fire that consumes his innards must endure the fire that buffets his skin.”
He fell silent. Then as he watched the mirage on the plain he added: “Even children are careful to refrain from putting their hands in the fire once they’ve been burned.” His companion remained silent. Then he continued: “I did not save your life for you to forsake me. So, beware!”
His seated companion bowed his head and raked the pebbles with his finger, creating patterns. The master of deliverance asked pointedly: “Isn’t it wrong for children to be more astute than we are?”
“Explain.”
“What need is there for me to explain?” But he immediately proceeded to warn: “Don’t put your finger in the fire again.”
“Do you want me to avoid setting foot in an oasis ever again?”
“You can stay in an oasis as a wayfarer but don’t ever lay aside your traveler’s staff there again.”
“Is this a commandment?”
“Yes, the first and last commandment.”
He was silent for a time as he dug a little vault in the earth. Then he erected a building and made some roads around it. Finally he destroyed his creation with a single blow and said, “Thrusting your hand into the fire twice is truly insane.”
“Insanity’s worse than death, so watch out.”
“One whose hand has been burned by the fire has no choice but to obey.”
He stared at him. Their eyes flashed. The jenny master asked, “Is that a promise?”
He gazed at him for a long time before mumbling in a voice that was scarcely audible, “Promise. . . .”
PART II Section 3: The Names
1 The Serpent
She appeared in the dark of night and stood at the entrance to his grotto like a spirit world shadow lounging about the oasis after midnight. An unfamiliar perfume assailed him, awakening a whispered response in his heart. He asked, “Who are you?”
“I should have thought that a woman who has affected a man with the perfume of her heart would not be forgotten.”
“I remember: a jinni among the water nymphs, a jinni who imprisoned with her hips the first fathers and created manacles for those nomads from the tresses of her hair.”
“You’re right. I thought forgetfulness was one of men’s defects.”
“Ha, ha . . . forgetfulness is a defect of the entire tribe. Forgetfulness is the destiny of all its descendants. The body’s perfume in a man’s nostrils, however, is truly a talisman; a body’s scent, not a flower’s, the fragrance of a female, not the desert fragrance of retem blossoms.”
“The body’s fragrance emanates in whiffs that a woman does not grant to any passerby. The female fragrance is woman’s gift to a man who deserves her love.”
“I won’t deny that woman is a riddle, but how can a woman grant her perfume to one man and deny it to another?”
“This is woman’s secret. A woman’s body does not release her scent unless her heart is pounding with love.”
“Amazing! But . . . what name did you cast in my ear after you cast the whiffs of your perfume in my nostrils that day? Was it Tamalla? Was it Tahala?”6
“I am not Tamalla. I am not Tahala, either. Tahala’s my sister, and Tamalla’s a name that doesn’t appeal to me, since it refers to an illness that destroys with ennui what hatred has not. May the spirit world spare us compassion.”
“How can a tongue that recites poetry praising love ask the spirit world for protection against compassion?”
“Love is compassion’s enemy. Love revives whereas compassion slays.”
“Really? I grow more certain every day that beneath the clothing of every woman in this desert is concealed a priestess.”
“If woman did not conceal a priestess in her heart, she would not have been able to train the greatest rogue in the desert: man.”
“Ha, ha. . . .”
He stifled the laughter in his chest and stillness blanketed the earth. High overhead the stars’ wrangling seemed significant. The empty plain below was devoid of creatures and even the air lacked wind. All the same, a secret like a melody penetrated the stillness and began to brush against the heart with a subdued whisper. He listened intently as the whisper became ever more ambiguous and contradictory, but the she-jinni’s voice suppressed the whisper’s puffs with her own quiet provocation: “When a woman comes to a man to reclaim a trust, the man should expedite matters.”
She was seated facing him, at the mouth of the entryway, while stars crowned her head. Her body released its perfume, and her heart was filled with the secrets of priestesses.
In the darkness he smiled slyly and then said figuratively, “Retrieval of a trust is conditional upon disclosure of the token.”
“Token?”
“The secret password. To overcome the talisman protecting the treasure, you must speak the secret password.”
“Tafarat! Tafarat’s the password.”
“Ah. . . .”
“I won’t conceal from you that I would not have told you her secret if she had not told me how she found her heart’s delight through the trust.”
“Did she really find her heart’s delight that way?”
“Had she not, I would not be asking for it now.”
“Ha, ha . . . you are a serpent!”
“Serpent?”
“Lust is a serpent concealed within a body. The serpent is lust revealed as a body. Water nymphs know the truth about the serpent.”
“I’m not afraid of snakes.”
“How could you fear snakes when you are one yourself?”
He crept toward her and took her wrist the way a bridegroom takes the wrist of his bride on their wedding night. He inhaled the fragrance of her body. Then he hissed hoarsely: “You didn’t know that Serpent is one of my names.”
2 Gnosis
Singing a sad ballad as if lamenting a death, as if resorting to these verses to free herself from a calamity, she arrived the night the moon became full. He stood erect at the entryway as if to hail her arrival. He sighed deeply, smothered an inner flame, and then overcame his own ardor to say, “Doesn’t our mistress fear the ardor of outsiders when she croons songs of longing for everyone to hear?”
She responded immediately as if she had been expecting his question: “When I observed the stranger’s ecstasy the day he leapt over the young women’s circle like one of the jinn, I grasped the truth about the stranger.”
He laid down a mat for her at the entrance and gazed at the full moon. He said as if he too were singing: “How could the stranger escape ecstasy when the moon shines over the world? How could the stranger retain his sanity when there are young women in the world? How could the stranger stay on track when there is singing in the desert? Look! The night’s as bright as day.”
“Were it not for the stranger’s frenzy, I would not have grasped the truth about the stranger. Had I not learned the stranger’s true nature, I would not have approached him.”
“Haven’t you come to seek the trust like your jinni sisters?”
“Had I not grasped the truth about the stranger I would not have approached the stranger about the trust. The trust is truly precious, but
the poetry concealed in the stranger’s heart is incomparably more valuable.”
“Do you love poetry that much?”
“Poetry is progeny! Why can’t poetry be one’s offspring?”
“Ha, ha . . . I doubt that desert women share this daring opinion. I doubt that your sister Tafarat would accept our mistress’ views.”
“I have no wish for them to share my opinion, because they were created women with women’s hearts. I was created a woman with a man’s heart.”
“Ha, ha. . . . Don’t women adore poetry as much as men?”
“Woman loves poetry with her tongue. Man loves poetry with his heart. Woman sings the verses with her voice, but man bleeds verses from his heart. For this reason, women love poets more than all other men. If given a choice between a poet, a warrior, and a wealthy man, a woman would choose the poet, without any hesitation.”
“Not so fast. Take it easy. I know women who would choose the wealthy man without any hesitation, if given the choice.”
“I expected you to say this, because you’re a man. Man’s misfortune is that he cannot tell the difference between a woman and the shadow of a woman.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just as we should not attribute the descriptive term ‘man’ to a person simply on the basis of attire, we similarly should not describe a person as a woman based only on clothing, since both women and men are often disguised in the other gender’s body.”
She chanted a song and he began to tremble. She sang softly, as if crooning to herself. In her lament he detected the call of the eternal yearning that imprisons lost time in the flask of existence and that recovers the lost space that one never reaches by wandering. He reeled. He repeated the refrain after her as he swayed to the right and left. He asked melodiously, “What’s the secret of poetry do you suppose?”
She too sang her response: “The secret of poetry is that it enables us to know.”
“Know what?”
“To know what we shouldn’t.”
“For us to know what we ought to know is deliverance. For us to know what we shouldn’t is punishment.”
“Poetry is punishment. Poetry’s not poetry unless it is punishment.”
He kept swaying as she started to sing again. The stillness was humbled. The full moon listened. The bones of dead ancestors shook in hillside graves. The water nymphs who had slipped into the earth’s veins to feed the spring trilled. He chanted too: “I used to think that the secret of the passion for poetry was beauty.”
“Like you, I used to think that hankering for a spatial Waw was the secret of poetry. Then I thought that the craving for the temporal Waw was the secret of my passion for poetry. Next I realized that the place Waw is not one we can locate in space and that the Waw era is not one we can bring back in time. Poetry, Mr. Stranger, is a punishment because it teaches us what we ought not to know.”
“It teaches us the truth?”
“Yes indeed. The truth is what we ought not to know, not what we ought to know. Woe and woe again to anyone who knows the truth.”
“Is this why poetry is so inhumane?”
“Contrary to the claims of critics, poetry’s lack of humanity is not related to beauty’s inhumanity. Poetry is inhumane because the truth is.”
“Oh! How cruel truth’s inhumanity feels to a man’s heart. What impact does its cruelty have on a woman’s?”
“The redeeming grace is that the only woman who suffers this punishment from poetry is one with a man’s heart, not a woman’s.”
Her tongue poured forth poetry. She sang stanzas from past generations’ epics for which she retained the ancient tunes. She proceeded far down the path of melody, the path of lament, into the vast expanses of longing, into the sacred cloister of the truth. Then everything else disappeared, leaving in the desert only the song.
At some stage in this journey he decided to disclose his secret to her: “Do you know? My name’s Isan or Gnosis too.”
“My name’s Tamanokalt. I’m a jinni, one of the water nymphs.”
“Gnosis, as you know, is my veil. Gnosis is one of my most important names.”
3 The Demon
The fourth was Tahala, who said that she was suffering from anxiety and had found no cure. She also said that she could even forgo the trust if only he would find her a cure for her depression, since she realized that having children would not provide deliverance to a person plagued by anxiety. She cowered inside her wrap like a hedgehog as a wave of sorrow overcame her. She burst into tears – like a person lamenting on suddenly being confounded by a calamity.
He waited until the attack had calmed and then asked her point blank: “Is Tahala the name you were given when you were born or is it a nickname the world has assigned you?”
Holding back her tears – like a child who has lost a doll – she replied, “It’s said that I didn’t stop crying for the first seven days after I was born. People took that as a sign they should call me Tahala.”
He observed her with interest, trying to discern the expression of her eyes in the dark, but she immediately averted her face in fright and shouted: “He’s following me! Here he is now, standing behind you.”
He turned, but all he could see was the mouth of the vault. So he asked, “Who is following you?”
She pulled her wrap over her face before replying: “The demon!”
“Is he a demon from the spirit world?”
She nodded yes. Then he exclaimed in a defiant tone: “Ha, ha. . . . No demon from the spirit world will dare hide from me.”
“He threatens me with his hateful fingers, tipped with blue nails.”
“Know that to the demon master, every demon of the spirit world is nothing but a shadow.”
“But he’s hideous! He’s more hideous than a scarecrow.”
“Forget him; tell me whether this specter is responsible for your tears.”
“I don’t know.”
“When did the demon first appear in your world?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Has he ever harmed you?”
“He likes to stick out his ugly tongue at me. A viper emerges from inside him, not a tongue.”
“Has he ever joined you in bed?”
“I don’t know!”
“I wager you found his tongue entertaining.”
“Entertaining?”
“Haven’t you learned – over the course of time – to enjoy the sight of the viper he harbors?”
She was silent for a long time before she stammered in a faint whisper, “I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you ever grasped the secret of the tongue?” “What’s that?”
“The tongue is a viper concealed in the mouth and the viper is a tongue scurrying across the desert.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Haven’t you consulted the sorcerers?”
“The sorceress said. . . .”
She hesitated, and so he encouraged her to confess: “What did the sorceress say?”
“The sorceress said that I would only find a cure from the demon in a man’s embrace.”
“Ha, ha. . . . The sorceress was right.”
“What?”
“I mean I’ll liberate you from the demon once and for all.”
“Really?”
“I’ll pluck him from your world the way a thorn is plucked from the foot.”
Then he added as he crept toward her and took her in his arms: “Don’t you know, water girl, that Spirit World Demon is one of my names? But he’s a demon who frightens only to entertain and who does evil only to do good.”
4 The Curse
When Taddikat came in search of her amulet, she decided to tell him her story: “I’ve inherited a curse from my ancestors.”
“Who among us has not inherited a curse from the ancestors?”
“My great-grandmother was the fifth of the seven maidens.”
“This is a story of nomadic wandering.”
&nbs
p; “After wandering away from the hamlets, the miserable women were overcome by hunger.”
“The bevy of naughty girls might have perished of thirst had they not happened upon the spring.”
“They found water but had no way to feed themselves.”
“This is the law of things: We never obtain exactly what we desire. If things are in order one day; the next they start to fall apart.”
“It’s my great-grandmother who confided to the other six naughty girls how to trap Wannes, the brother of the seventh woman, Tannes.”
“Oh! Conspiracy is the worst thing the intellect has ever dreamed up.”
“When they were alone, she whispered to the others that they should entrap their companion with a gift. So they gave her the remaining dates to keep her beloved brother Wannes alive.”
“Malice is an offense the spirit world detests.”
“The period of wandering lasted for a long time, and hunger turned to temporary insanity that drove the six wayward young women to demand that Tannes slay her brother Wannes in return for the gift of dates she had received from them.”
“Charity is worse than a contract. What we obtain today from luck’s hand we hand back tomorrow as an offering to luck.”
“The only recourse the poor woman had to save her beloved brother was to repay the debt by slicing from her own thigh some flesh she gave them to redeem her wretched brother Wannes’ blood.”
“We pay a huge price for a gift that comes with strings attached.”
“Tannes cursed them before she left to roam the desert, and the spirit world honored her cry.”
“An innocent person’s curse ensures a punishment that may be delayed but will not be ignored.”
“A prophetic oracle announced that the curse will afflict descendants of the fifth member of the bevy of naughty girls down to the seventieth generation.”
“For children to inherit the sins of their parents is a blind exercise of will.”
“I’ve always seen myself as a redemptive sacrifice the fates have demanded to ransom my ancestors.”
“The best medicine for a disease is a disease. The only relief from a curse is with a curse, and Curse is one of my names.”