The Color of the Curse

Description

“The night’s pill concealed the alteration of fate’s imprint, so the wretch struck his head against the walls of the columns of Julius Caesar’s ruins until the blood on his face formed a mark akin to the symbols of sorcerers. All creation heard him pierce the stillness of the night with the howl he habitually uttered whenever misfortune befell him. No one imagined that the land of that night could drive the descendant of darkness to use that elixir to which the despairing resorted to cure any ailment! He crept forth, cloaked in the darkness, and vanished into the alleys of the ancient city. He soon returned from his journey, bound by a terrible rope twisted from the fibers of envy. He stopped upon the bridge. He bent down, clearly contemplating the flow of water in the river’s course. He gazed at the river for a long time. Then he cast his eyes upward, and clusters of stars shimmered before him. In their glimmer, he saw what he had never seen before, just as he had seen moments before what he had never seen in the water. He realized that life is that enigma whose truth is revealed to us only in the moment we decide to make it.” To abandon it forever.

He saw poetry embodied in the rushing waters, in the waters’ flexibility, in the waters’ tolerance, in the waters’ cunning, in the waters’ twists and turns as they avoid the rocks, in the waters’ song as they surge, quarrel, or harmonize, in the waters’ power, and in the waters’ fragility as well. He saw poetry in the waters’ course and was certain of the waters’ wisdom, even their divinity. And now, he gazes towards the kingdom of heaven, and caravans of stars rush to meet him, speaking to him in verses of a different kind. They speak to him in another tongue, in another gesture, and he experiences a profound longing, the likes of which he has never tasted before. The longing seizes him, and he trembles, staggers, and gasps like one struggling for the last breath. He gasps, and utters poetry. He recites the poem in two lines, as he used to do in the past when seized by the fever of nostalgia. His verses aroused the curiosity of the locals, even winning the approval of some, while in the hearts of the envious, they awakened various forms of hatred (as usually happens whenever A new generation of brilliant minds rose upon the world, and these people began to revile and mock them, to the point that one of them drew a comparison between his poems and those composed by the tyrant Nero on the day of the fire that consumed Rome. Nero had climbed the hill overlooking the city and sung verses born of his diseased imagination, celebrating the demise of the “Mother of the World.” The unknown phrase, and tears glistened in his eyes as he gazed sometimes at the stars high above, and sometimes at the migrating waters of the lowlands. Beyond the eastern hills, a pale, waning moon emerged.

Ibrahim al-Koni takes you into a world teeming with magic and legend through his central character, “Shalam” or “Shalom,” whose lineage may trace back to a branch of an unknown tribe called “Hatum.” This tribe stormed the desert in a campaign of conquest and mastered the flourishing caravan trade of those years. Shalam traveled with them deep into the continent, reaching the very edge of the jungle where tribes lived, bartering a handful of gold for a handful of salt. Legends have been passed down through generations that this cunning man was the first to discover the secret of these hidden tribes on his first journey into those depths, after he had a dream in which he read a call. There is one thing on which people agree, indeed, they all concur: that the cunning man went on that nighttime journey as a human and returned as a demon. Yes, all agree that the foundling called “Shalam” returned from the darkness of that night a different being, having sold his soul to the king of darkness.

Ibrahim al-Koni continues his explorations with a masterful pen, portraying things through a lens steeped in antiquity and a rich imagination brimming with diverse narratives drawn from the depths of a memory charged with a magnificent desert heritage…