Things Gone And Things Still Here by Paul Bowles

Author:Paul Bowles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0.86001.630.7
Published: 2016-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

Istikhara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat

IN THE SAHARA, where the air, the light, even the sky suggest some as yet unvisited planet, it is not surprising to find certain patterns of human comportment equally unfamiliar. Behavior is strictly formulated, with little margin allowed for individual variations. If circumstances offer the opportunity for attack and pillage, the action is expected; indeed, custom demands it.

This is common knowledge. What may be less well-known are the two institutions of istikhara and anaya. The first is an invocation, offered up just before going to sleep, in which the supplicant implores Allah to send a dream which will make it possible for him to solve his difficulties. The prayer must be uttered in full four times over before the request is made for the specific revelatory details that will determine the sleeper’s course of action when he awakens. The orison may or may not be answered. It is up to the supplicant to decide whether his dream is a result of istikhara or not, and, if it seems to him that it is, to interpret its material correctly. The practice seems a sound one: not only does it assume that dreams can be therapeutic, but it offers Moslems a practical technique for producing them.

Anaya, on the other hand, is a custom devoid of meaning save in a feudal society. It is the last feeble hope left to a soldier defeated in battle. If he can manage to crawl to one of the enemy and get his head totally under the folds of the other’s burnous, he is automatically saved from death. His pardon, however, involves him with the wearer of the burnous for the rest of his life, or until the wearer dies. He becomes his enemy’s permanent possession and responsibility. At the time when the events cited here took place, which is to say roughly a hundred years ago, anaya still functioned as an integral part of Saharan military etiquette.

A man named Medagan appeared one day in Ouargla, accompanied by seven of his sons. They sat with the Chaamba and told them of how for some misdemeanor or other their own tribe of Kelkhela Tuareg had driven them out of their homeland in the Hoggar, and how they had wandered and suffered ever since. The Chaamba listened and took them in to live with them. First they lent them some of their camels, and later let them have large quantities of dates and wheat on credit. This gave the Tuareg the mobility they seemed to require. For several months they lived in the vicinity of Ouargla, hunting and getting themselves into good health. Then they went back to Ouargla and robbed the Chaamba of twenty of their best camels, which they proceeded to drive off into an uninhabited region. There, hidden in the deep ravines of the desolate Tademait country, they lived for two years or more, moving out of their lair only to attack caravans that passed nearby. At length, apparently considering themselves

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