They exchanged a look, and their eyes glowed in the generous light of the stars. Each man discerned a prophecy in his companion’s eyes. Ewar said: “I’m going to tell you a story.”
Since his companion did not comment, the chief continued, “Many years ago, when the desert was smothered by grass and by tribes, there lived two close friends who could not bear to live far apart, even though they clashed whenever they were together. Their love for each other was so intense that whenever one fell in love with a woman, his buddy did too. Once, one of them married a beauty from a neighboring tribe and they had a child, who was all the man possessed in the whole world. During the first quarrel that erupted between them, however, the woman confessed to him that his friend had fathered the child. He thought this was a lie she had concocted to sear his heart, since women are capable of transforming a lie into the truth and the truth into a lie, but she reminded him of the snake that he had once found coiled around her body and that had then dispersed like a mirage. She said that this apparition had been a snake only to his eyes. In point of fact, it had been his disputatious colleague, from whose loins she had conceived the child. On seeing the suffering in his eyes, she told him that she had acted in this way for his own good, because a sorceress had informed her that he belonged to that group of men fated never to beget a child for the desert. Do you know what that she-jinni did the day her spouse reproached her for her conduct during the first argument after this admission?”
He raised his head to the stars and let out a moan of distress. With his look still fixed on that void strewn with stars, he said, “She took the child to the pasture and left him in a herd belonging to a neighboring tribe. When he questioned her, she told him she had done that to sear his heart, for she was a person who could have children for the desert, whereas he never could.”
He fell silent, but his eyes clung to the celestial sphere. Afterwards he asked in an emotionless voice, “Do you know who that buddy was?”
“I’m not a diviner. How would I know?”
Ewar said dispassionately, “Me.”
The strategist clung to his silence, but the narrator added, with the same lack of emotion, “And do you know the identity of the faithful friend who fathered a child with my wife?”
When his companion did not respond, the narrator filled in the blanks: “It was you!”
“Me?”
“I found you coiled snake-like around her. So why deny your ability to shape-shift?”
“Ha, ha. . ”
The narrator, however, continued to decode the talismans of the prophecies he beheld in the sky’s stars: “Do you know what became of this child you fathered with your best friend’s wife?”
The strategist braced himself but did not reply. Meanwhile, the narrator continued with the prophecy: “He’s the fool!”
Without meaning to, the strategist yelled, “No!”
“Believe it or not, Edahi is your son.”
He was silent but then added, “Just as he is my son too.”
“Did you make up this story to convince me to confess that I can shape-shift?”
“You yourself do not believe that I could invent a story; why are you so contrary?”
The narrator returned from his travels through the sky, and stillness prevailed. Then the strategist remarked, “I don’t mind telling you that I have felt a greater affection for the fool than for any other man. Is this what people call fatherhood?”
“By confessing, you will not only save my son; you will save yours as well.”
“I don’t believe admitting that I have the power of metamorphosis will help.”
“Rest assured that it will.”
“What makes you so certain?”
Ewar said nothing. He made a visual sweep of emptiness enveloped in darkness. Suddenly he said, “Because if you confess, I will too.”
“You’ll confess?”
“Your confession actually won’t help unless I confess.”
The strategist remained silent while the visitor explained, “Didn’t you once say that we only kill the one we love and only save the one we hate?”
“I always say that.”
“I goaded the fool and encouraged him to lift his hand against you.”
The strategist found nothing odd in this. He said coldly, “I was expecting you would do that one day, since revenge is our punishment for doing a good deed.”
“Not long ago we agreed that what you did the day you brought me back to life was not a good deed, but rest assured that my confession to the assembly that I goaded the fool will turn the affair head over heels. . if preceded by your confession.” Stillness prevailed. The strategist raked the earth with his finger, tracing an arcane symbol there, before he replied, “I don’t think I can do that.”
“Would you rather surrender your son’s neck to the rope than renounce your fraudulent arrogance?”
“Refraining from a confession of shape-shifting is a secret matter, not a display of arrogance.”
“But the son. . ”
“The fool is your son, not mine.”
“He’s your son too: my son by the heart but yours by blood.”
“I did not want to have a descendent to recite an elegy one day for me in the desert.”
“What’s that?”
“I wouldn’t have acquired a reputation for cunning tactics had I not refused to leave a trace behind me in the desert.”
They were both silent. The visitor waited for a long time before he said, “We have heard of sons who sacrifice their fathers but have never heard of fathers who sacrifice their sons.”
“It’s hard to forgive a son who has raised a knife to slay his father.”
“Forgiveness is the secret of our happiness. Woe to anyone in our world who does not learn how to forgive.”
“A father can forgive, but the spirit world will never forgive, even if the father does.”
“Is that your last word?”
“I can’t mock my own law.”
“To which law do you refer?”
“‘We should only revive the ones we hate and only slay the ones we love.’ Have you forgotten?”
4 The Messenger
The night before the fool’s execution, a tempest raged through the oasis. The onslaught of that storm would not have upset people if it had not violated the law for storms. Unknown regions of the western desert had unleashed it — heavily laden with dust — one night, thereby violating an ancient rule, passed down from generation to generation, that chastises the west wind for night travel with this well-known phrase: “I’m not a slave; so why should I travel by night?” The winds from the west, however, traveled by night this time. That was unprecedented and they traveled over night and arrived with malice unparalleled in the memory of the oasis. This animosity was not merely apparent in the storm’s violence but revealed itself as well in the heavy dust borne by the winds. The tempest burst free of its bonds shortly after sunset, like a demonic jinni, and attacked the oasis with a savagery people had not experienced, not even in the pillaging attacks the oasis experienced in ancient times. The tempest continued its painful wailing all through the night, and individuals with psychic powers thought the wailing an ill omen. The storm sent huts on the outskirts sailing through the air, ripped roofs off houses, and flattened some walls. The next morning, the firebrand was visible on the horizon, but dust lost no time in bringing night back to the oasis, and darkness prevailed once more. In the deserted expanses of the oasis, the wind roared again. Residents wandered blindly in search of each other, and the demon felled them in the streets. Others tried to search for their livestock only to be stopped short. The tempest did not calm down until it had taken some of them as its prey. After helping itself to these propitiatory offerings, it quieted down, as if it had decided to cut them a little slack, but this was a threatening respite, since the atmosphere continued to be heavy and gloomy. The enemy seemed to have staged a strategic retreat to muster its forces for a new attack, not for surrender. It was, however, respite enough for the residents to discover the devastation that had descended on their land. People passed on news of livestock wiped out, palm trees destroyed, sword dunes advancing from the south toward the spring, and crops strafed by flying dirt. The residents might have been concerned about the threat posed by the sands’ advance toward the spring had they not been so preoccupied during this lull in the storm with searching for missing persons, whom the wind had carried off to parts unknown. During the height of that chaos, the diviner went to heroic efforts to gather all the elders for an emergency assessment of the catastrophe but only succeeded in contacting the sage, whom he bumped into outside. He tied the other man to his own body with a palm-fiber rope and then ushered him into the nearest building, a deserted house, which had just lost its whole roof, although the walls blocked the wind.