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34
ibrahim al-koni
invalid’s head.
He started to bandage the
eyes carefully and remarked
in the same enigmatic tone,
“I wasn’t stingy with advice
for my master yesterday.
I haven’t been stingy with
advice for my master today.
My master would do himself
a favor if he went to the
diviner or sorcerer today, not
tomorrow. The stubbornness
of heroes, master, is useless
in combatting diseases from
the Spirit World.”
He emi t ted a l ong ,
heartrending groan, and
tears formed in his eyes. He
traveled far away—the way
lovers, hermits, wayfarers,
poets, and ecstatics do. He
hummed as if singing a stanza
of poetry from an ancient
epic.
“Physical pains afflicted man
one day, and the herbalist
arrived in the desert. Secret
pains afflicted man one day,
and the herbalist couldn’t find
a cure for them in the desert’s
herbs. So man was about to
go extinct. Then the spiritual
worlds collaborated and sent
the sorcerer to the wasteland.
When man was afflicted by
other, even more mysterious
diseases, and was threatened
by annihilation once more,
the Spirit World intervened
and man found that the
soothsayer had settled in
the wasteland—as if he had
sprouted from the belly of the
dirt like grass or truffles or
had fallen from the sky like
rain or specters of jinn.”
2
He went to visit the female
diviner.
She appeared and sat with him
in the Chamber of Sacrificial