10
His assumption was not mistaken.
At midday, the labyrinth suddenly fell away and he found himself overlooking the lip of an expansive, deep valley. The side from which he had approached was a very high, mountainous cliff, and the far side of the valley was too distant for him to see. In the flat land at the bottom he not only observed dense trees, which twisted through gentle valleys that curved as they ran south, but caught sight of areas covered with plentiful, intensely green grass. These spread along the borders of the clefts in magnificent swaths and encroached on the sides of the gentle valleys that branched off from the main valley, the far side of which was out of sight.
Exile died, and paradise came into view.
With the skill of a Barbary sheep, he descended from the craggy summit, and the scent of flowers, moisture, and fresh grass greeted his nostrils. Overcome by a trancelike vertigo, he thought about the miraculous desert clouds that baffle even the most cunning shepherds — where they originate, how they collect, what route they follow, where they empty their load, or in which sky they then dissipate. These experts not only do not understand the clouds’ nature but are amazed by their ability to flaunt the law of the seasons, because they pay no attention to whether it is winter or summer, spring or fall. They hold back in winter when people expect them, denying their blessing, while generously bestowing their rainfall in a season when sunshine is at its most searing, as in summer. Thus aged shepherds clap their hands together to announce their incompetence when they exclaim, “Not even the wiliest diviner can predict the course of the desert’s rains.”
The paradise where the immortal wasteland ended, the paradise that appeared suddenly in the abyss at his feet, was also a gift of the uncanny desert clouds.
11
He roamed through his paradise for days and nights. In the low-lying lands across the gulches leading down to the ravines, he plucked the fruits of this paradise. He found delicious truffles that made him forget his banishment and propelled him into kingdoms that one rarely reaches, sees, or even contemplates.
In the valleys he ambushed lizards, hunted hares, and gathered eggs from birds.
On the mountainous cliff faces he located caverns that contained pools flooded with running water.
The leader had sent him into exile, and then the most compassionate mother of all transformed his place of exile into a paradise.
He reveled in this gift, enjoying the stillness of his isolation. So he felt happy. Deeming himself content, he committed an offense that everyone savoring the taste of contentment inevitably commits. He raised his voice in worried songs and awakened in those uncharted areas the thousandfold love. It did not merely wake up; it intoxicated him as if he were in a trance. So he found himself trembling ecstatically and struggled with his fever, as if possessed. The carpet of grass disappeared from the slopes and the trees vanished from the valley bottoms. The earth swallowed the truffles, and the gazelles, lizards, hares, and every sort of bird fled from the area. The waters of the pools tucked into the caverns of the cliff faces evaporated, as this paradise turned into a tenebrous abyss.
He resisted for a time. He butted the boulders with his head for days. He charged through desolate wastes as if the jinn had possessed him. He thought he might outstrip his belly’s ghoul by racing, but these measures kindled the flame and the fever’s fire continued unabated. So he shot off running and continued running, running, and running. He did not stop running until the walls of the oasis halted him.
THE CONSPIRACY
1
He did not consider what he would do until the gate brought him up short. He did not think about the process that had brought him back from the lands of exile till he was slipping into the fields, pushing between trees like a madman. He did not premeditate anything. In the shadows of his affliction he sought no burning ember, because he did not wish to discover in the prisons of despair any fissure that would show the way. After he had left, he had surrendered his affairs to the desert, and the noblest of mothers had provided his heart a carefree indifference — the immortal nonchalance that destroys living creatures, terminates the migrant, eradicates passion, and also exiles the desert from the desert. The desert annihilates itself and watches the wasteland’s creatures from its new homeland in annihilation. Then no one believes any longer that there is an existence for the desert in the desert. No one believes any longer that anyone can traverse a desert that has no place in it for the desert. So the traveler, finally, doubts his own existence and soon migrates to the vicinity of the desert, in annihilation’s homeland, to become a cranny in extinction’s edifice.5
The traveler vanishes at times when the desert is veiled by indifference’s scarf, but passion refuses to keep company with indifference. The desert thinks that with indifference it eradicates passion the way it eradicates living creatures, but passion — like the serpent — is not eradicated and does not vanish. There is only one way to slay the serpent: to cut off its head. Passion, however, persists, even headless. It is possible to slay the passionate lover this way. It is also possible to deliver a coup de grâce to the beloved, but there’s no way to slay the passion. What is headless does not die, because a headless person does not vanish.
Tribal poets say this about a single passion. So what might they say if they discovered a thousandfold passion? Will they not believe, as I do, that the Spirit World, which is incapable of slaying even once a single passion, will be incapable of slaying a thousandfold passion a thousand times?
2
He hid in the fields till the curtains of darkness fell. Then he slipped out and entered the alleys. He concealed himself in a corner of the yard, waiting for the guardian to leave on a visit to a neighbor or to run an errand, but the despicable demon did not emerge. From his hiding place he listened intently but at first heard only the rumpus of children in nearby alleyways. He transformed his whole body into attentive ears and discerned inside the house a faint murmur but could not make out the voices. He pushed on the outside door but found it bolted from the inside. He inspected the yard’s wall on the alley side but found it was hard and smooth, without any sign of a bulge that might help him climb it. He turned the other way and checked the wall on the side parallel to the buildings down the neighboring alley, discovering that here the wall was shorter. In fact, it became increasingly insignificant the farther back it went. At the far corner, the wall was not only less substantial but rougher and more neglected as well. He climbed the wall and scaled it easily. He leapt to the inner courtyard, where he saw the treasure’s guard by the light of the fire next to the house’s door, which was ajar. She was tending a cauldron set on three stones, adding a stick to the fire at times and then returning to lean over the garment piled on her lap in order to favor herself — and perhaps the beloved, who was squirreled away in one of the house’s corners — with incomprehensible crooning.
He hugged the wall, cleaving to it till he became part of it. He scrutinized the she-demon: she truly was demonic. Her face was marked by deep wrinkles that rent her entire visage, increasing in width as they neared her “trussed” mouth, which was wrapped with another bandage of creases even uglier and more objectionable. Her hooked nose was also coated by a network of lines that resembled the protuberant veins that climbed up her face to encircle her sunken eyes and disguise her features until her whole head seemed to be a block covered by tree bark.