Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

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

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