Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

ibrahim al-koni

chapter vii - wantahet

It is related that the hero— once he was liberated from possession by the jinn— retreated to a corner of his house and wept for his dead slave there for days. The herbalist came to treat his bloody eyes, which he had almost plucked out during his temporary insanity on that ill-omened day. He found his patient swaying side to side like a person in an ecstatic trance. His veil was dangling down, revealing the lower half of his face. From his chest rose a muffled, painful wail, and with his fist he was pounding a monotonous beat on the house floor—which was covered with skins—as if keeping time to an unknown tune no one else could hear. The herbalist hovered around him for a time and then knelt

nearby. He flung his supplies on the mat and stretched out a lean, dark hand marked with veins, creases, and old scratches, to examine the bloody eyes—even though his feverish patient never stopped pounding the hide with his mysterious beats, which he paired with a vague dance and an inaudible tune. When he loosened the bandage wrapping the eyes, he found that the linen had adhered to the eyelids as the blood dried. Then he, too, began to sway back and forth, as if mimicking the hero, and released a long, barely audible moan. He plunged his fingers into a container filled with a dark, viscous liquid and began to anoint his patient’s eyes. He continued to moan his mysterious song till he

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