To the west, across the desolate plain, figures were visible along the horizon. Streams of mirages raised them into the air, distorted and dismantled them for a time, and then reconstituted them again. Hope whispered inside me that these figures might be a caravan heading east, west, north, or south, and that I ought to catch up with it before it moved too far away.
As Ragh rose higher in the cloudless sky, the mirages persisted. I decided I ought to hurry before thirst felled me. Though the shadowy images did not vanish, the distance I traversed in search of them brought me no closer. I hurried on at a faster pace and hastened forward until midday, when the desert experienced noon’s conflagrations. At that time, the capricious, fluid veils began to disperse, revealing the true nature of the shadowy apparitions. On the horizon I could make out a mountain chain that interrupted the flat desert’s extension to the west, blocking its endless expanse. The earth’s surface changed and was interspersed with ravines along the bottoms of which were scattered retem trees and some wild plants with dried-out tops, but which underneath had desperately fought to remain green.
I restrained myself from approaching the retem trees’ plumes, which I remembered cause insanity, but could not keep myself from attacking the plants. I stripped off the dry tops and swallowed their green parts. I started to chew and chew and chew. I sucked the sap, paying no attention to all the bitter tastes I swallowed from each plant. I ate for a long time. I ate not to satisfy my hunger but to quench my thirst, although eventually I felt dizzy, dropped to the ground, and began vomiting. I threw up all the different kinds of plants I had consumed, but their bitterness flowed through my body. I went into convulsions and began to shake. I remembered what people say about the desert’s poisonous plants and realized for a fact that the insanity caused by thirst is a greater handicap to clear vision than the insanity that strikes us when we ingest the twigs of retem trees.
I thought I had purged my system of all these poisons, but now my body was overwhelmed by fever. I began to stagger and sought refuge, trembling, in the shade of a retem tree. I struggled with my dizziness, sweated profusely, and then felt hungry and enfeebled, as if I had not been sweating but bleeding. In my dazed condition, I fought off shadowy apparitions and sought to escape an attack from the ugly hare’s fang. He stalked me, assuming at times the body of the playful lass, then of a viper, and of the despicable female demon at other moments. I do not know how long this nightmare lasted, but when I regained consciousness, I found it was late afternoon. I imagined it was the afternoon of the next day, or the third or fourth one, because my thirst had intensified, even though my fever had gone down. It was not merely thirst but a curse more wretched than thirst. I attempted to stand up, but found I could not. So I crept forward on my hands and knees across the soft earth of the ravine, brushing against various plants. Each time I caught sight of one of the green plants, I got the shakes.
As I continued crawling, the earth grew firmer with slabs of rock here and there. Next to a shrubby retem, on some rocky ground, I discovered a pile of dung. The dung was fresh, so fresh that moisture dripped from it as I crushed it between my fingers. Beside the pile of dung, on the hard surface, there gleamed an astonishing liquid that seemed a legendary treasure. Vapor hovered over it, and I feared it would all evaporate. I fell on it and began to lap it up. It tasted bitter, but I consumed all of it. As I felt it circulate through my body, my blurred vision began to clear. When I regained my sight, I noticed the gazelle, which was standing beside the retem tree, looking haughtily toward me. No, that’s not right: its haughtiness was suggested, rather, by its posture. What I observed in its large, intelligent, black eyes was an inscrutable mystery. Were they really eyes, or, a strange well that spoke in that painful language, the true language: the forgotten language? I felt inspiration course through my body just as the gazelle’s urine had. I found within me the ability to understand, the ability to comprehend the forgotten language, which reconciled my tongue with the gazelle’s, united my destiny to the gazelle’s, and created from my spirit and the gazelle’s a single spirit. It was only at this moment that the coal burst into flame and that the revelation achieved a perfect form in my heart. I remembered that a tragic story from bygone generations recounted how Wannas turned into an odious creature with the head and body of a ghoul, because he had disobeyed the advice of his sister Tannas and — when overcome by thirst during his return to the campsite where he had forgotten his amulets — had drunk the urine of a gazelle. Still chewing, the gazelle’s spectral figure advanced toward me. Perhaps she was chewing her cud. She drew ever closer with her haughty figure. She was gazing into the unknown, and this expression added to the profundity, seduction, and splendor of her eyes. It was a splendor we observe only in eyes that have gazed into the eye of eternity till absence becomes second nature to them. Her black eyes grew wider and turned into a brilliant, distressing, unfathomable lake. I drank as greedily from them as I had drunk the urine moments before. I began to liberate myself, not only from pain, bitterness, and weakness but from my body as well.
I threw myself into this lake, into the sea of brilliance, distress, and mystery. Instead of a sweet sense of being inundated, I felt myself become a feather, fluttering back and forth between earth and sky.
4 Late Afternoon
I AWOKE FROM my sleep, feeling shattered … the way a person feels when wresting himself from the jumbled confusions of a nightmare. My body seemed sunk in the ground, as if buried under a mountain, and my limbs felt like rocks. My head throbbed with unbearable pain, and my tongue was paralyzed. Although I could open my eyes, my tongue refused to budge. What was the meaning of this?
I found myself imprisoned inside a tent within a tent. Even though I was restrained, I could see outside, through the entrance, and discern the time of day. I observed that the prophecy of Ragh was a timid flow moving through the empty countryside and therefore assumed it was morning. Was it a birth? Was it my first birth or my second? If it really was a birth, it must have been my second, since a quiet voice informed me that I had been born before. Light’s prophetic message, which my eyes discerned outside, was not a lie, because its root was a hidden revelation, planted so deep in my heart that I had no right to doubt it. Another revelation was unveiled in my chest, saying that I could doubt anything except my inspiration, no matter how much I wanted to, since this would mean betraying myself.
Then … then my heart’s revelation unveiled another treasure, for I remembered a matter of sublime importance; I remembered that I had been free. How had I become a captive? I remembered that I had liberated myself from all my burdens and had shot off. I remembered that I had floated freely through space, because I had been able to rid myself of the snail’s shell that harbored me. What cunning had trapped me in the snare once again? How had my liberation been effected, how had it so transformed me that I could roam freely with neither body nor tongue, and how had this liberation changed into a tribulation that constricted my breathing as if I were weighed down by a mountain?
Then I heard a voice say clearly, “This is the price of departure.”
At first, I thought that this voice issued from my chest rather than my tongue, because I was certain that my tongue was paralyzed and had not stirred. This prophecy, however, was repeated with even greater clarity, and I was able, with some effort, to ascertain that it originated with a figure — crouching in a corner of the tent — who had borrowed his features from the denizens of the spirit world. A black veil enveloped his head, and an amulet chain, which was thrust into a leather pouch, protected his body. His head was crowned with a talisman, as were his shoulders. His chest was decorated with an awe-inspiring string of these talismans. His forearms were also safeguarded by two more. Had it not been for this alarming concentration of charms, I would have assumed he belonged to one of the jinn tribes that populate the desert from Tinghart to Tiniri, but concern with the forefathers’ symbols buried in these districts is a matter reserved for human priests alone.