Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

ibrahim al-koni

The enemy did not merely vanish;peoplewereastounded to find a rascal ’s corpse stretched out beside the corral a few days later. On the slain man’s neck they found blue marks that clearly showed the wretch had been strangled. Then they spread a rumor that this scarecrow differed from all the others, because it had a real creature hidden inside it. Some went even further and contended that this august body contained the person of the sorcerer himself, who had constructed this fearsome puppet with wooden poles that he clad with camel skin. Finally he stretched strips of fabric and scraps of linen over the hollow body. Then, as darkness fell, the despicable man glided through the twilight gloom to enter his vile hideout, where he spent the night, to emerge at dawn and slip back to his

workshop. Others said that slaughtering the entire herd was merely a sorcerer’s trick the astute artisan had used to conquer the poor widow, with whom he had fallen in love the first day. Her livestock corral had seemed the best way to win her, because sorcerers know better than anyone else that a person’s heart is a pawn of his wealth and that a creature’s weak point is what he possesses. When spiteful people pointed out the scarecrow’s true nature in hopes of smoking out the cunning strategist, they were surprised to hear him say, “The scarecrow is twofold. One scarecrow frightens away the wasteland’s beasts and predatory birds. The second terrifies human jackals, who would not be scared if it weren’t the real thing.” Then he released an evil laugh, which was muffled and as

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