Anubis by Ibrahim al-Koni

Author:Ibrahim al-Koni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2011-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

8 Morning

FINDING MYSELF EMBRACED by solitude once more, I sang my sorrows, chanted my loneliness, and in verse questioned my true nature. I was tormented by yearnings for the unknown and attempted to work off my longings among the rocky boulders. I contrived to cut solid rock into a splendid statue and determined to erect it as a landmark, thus satisfying an unexplained craving that I sensed as a persistent, hushed call in my soul, even though I had never managed to grasp it intellectually. I thought the statue excellent. Washed each morning by rays from my master Ragh, it whispered to the sky a secret it had borrowed from my hands, from my pulse, and from my heart, after this secret had thwarted my tongue. My sole remedy for my weakness was to stroke its torso at dawn each day and shortly after sunset.

After finishing the statue, I felt another strange need. Was it for security? Was it for warmth? Was it for the tranquility that only a nest can provide? I knew the ways of solitude, which likes to wear many veils. I also knew that my thirst for a statue had been an attempt to defend myself against my true love, solitude herself. I had to recognize that the need for a nest was quite simply another face of this beloved, about whom I could swear I was as hard put to live without as to live with. It was a long time before I grasped that this is true of every authentic beloved. I still do not know whether my need for a nest arose from a desire for my beloved seclusion or from a desire to avoid her. Certainly considerations of heat, cold, or wind were not responsible, since I was accustomed to shielding myself from heat in the shade of the palm groves and from cold or dust storms in the caves of the ancestors in the southern mountain range. I had noticed that this unaccountable need had developed with the passing days into a bitter hunger, a genuine thirst that would need to be slaked. I did not feel satisfied again until I had cut from the palm groves bushy fronds, which I wove into the shape of a cylindrical hut. I thought it was splendid too. I entered it on the seventh day to rest and stretched out in its cavity, which embraced me as a nest embraces fledglings. It swallowed me the way a tomb swallows the corpse. I liked this image so much that I named my cozy nest azkka.

Yes, my tomb truly was cozy, and I grew accustomed to sleeping inside it while I roamed far away in visionary dreams. I sought shelter inside at midday and when evening fell, stretching out on my back and roaming and roaming where there was no barrier to stop me, no barricade to obstruct my way, no rocks to scrape my shin, and no rough terrain to impede my progress. Inside that

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