預言者Yunusの冒険談
Chapter VII & VIII
Accordingly, Yunus arrived in Joppa (a sea port of the kingdom of Israel, and a part of modern-day Tel Aviv). His injured arm had stopped aching by this time. The captain and the company on Allah’s Ark earned profound wealth from the profits on maritime trade as well as the passengers’ fare, so that they were enabled to provide Yunus with substantial amount of bonus for his journey ahead. (Incidentally, on her return voyage, Allah’s Ark was loaded mostly with lumber of Lebanon cedar along with accessories of gold, various spices and parchment to be sold mainly in Tarshish, where the prices of them were the highest than elsewhere in the course. Incidentaly, Yunus did not approve of their trading in slaves.)
As Yunus went ashore, he wished Allah’s blessing upon all the passengers and the sailors on Allah’s Ark. He took with him an oarsman called Miguel, who was also a Hebrew and had been captured by a pirate group, put on sale in Tarshish, and purchased and liberated by the company of Allah’s Ark. He was a short but sturdy man about the same age as Yunus. The prophet employed him as his guide to Ninuwa, for he had claimed to know the shortest cut to the city, which no one else had ever known. According to him, the shortcut was only useful during the dry seasons for a substantial part of his shortcut consisted of wadi, a valley which is dry except in rainy season. And the time was now entering one of the dry seasons. So, Yunus decided to take the shortcut with Miguel, and promised to pay him the wage daily and give him a bonus when they reached Ninuwa.
After staying at Joppa for two days, during which Yunus purchased enough provision and equipment including an ass in preparation for the inland journey to Ninuwa, they departed the port town with luggage laid on the ass.
At each Israeli town on the way, Yunus was welcomed by the people, for he was a renowned prophet, despite his unbearably fishy smell resulting from the submarine voyage in the whale. He was asked to stay longer by townspeople, but did not spend more than a night at each stop.
One sunny and hot day, he and Miguel left a highland town called Bethel, and as they went down to a flat land through which River Jordan went zigzag, they came across an old man seated under a leafy terebinth. The man had an ass, which looked as old as he. It appeared the man was too tired to continue his journey, nor was the ass seeming strong enough to continue it either. So, Yunus asked the old man if he needed any help, if he was not hungry or thirsty, and said, if so, he would give him some food and drink. But the old man said that he had enough food and water but not the appetite to take any. According to him, his ass had stopped in the shade of the terebinth and would not move ahead, and therefore the old man had gotten down from it and sat in the shade to rest too.
Yunus again asked the old man if there was anything he could do for him or his ass and which way he was going. Then, the old man said that he was a prophet of Allah, and was returning from Judah to his home in Bethel. He had been to Judah on an errand ordered by Allah concerning a certain deceased prophet of Judah. Then, he asked Yunus what he was and where he was going.
Yunus replied that he too was a prophet of Allah, and was bound for Ninuwa to prophesy the destruction of the city and its citizens but for their repentance.
Upon this, the old prophet cried out, “Blessed are you, my brother, for you have a most worthy mission to perform! Of all prophecies, there is none like prophesying against the destruction of the people. How blessed you and your assistant are! You are chosen to be saviors of people, rescuing hands of Allah, the Almighty. Hasten to Ninuwa, my sons, and save all the citizens, and your reward shall be great and lasting!”
Then, Yunus said to the old man with a concerned look, “But you look too weak and pale to get back to your hometown without an assistant. Let us first bring you to Bethel, to which you are returning.”
Upon this, the old prophet said, “Never ever do that! Never retreat even a step back, but go straight to Ninuwa, and do not even slacken your pace to look back as you go! Look! I am a living witness to what Allah would do to his prophet if he does not obey Him forthwith!”
Yunus did not respond. Then, Miguel said, “The sun is hot and you and your ass do not look strong enough to go up to Bethel. I can at least myself accompany you until you reach the gate of Bethel, if not your home, while my master continues his journey. Then, I can hurry back and catch up with him. How about that?”
“No, my friend, that means a delay for your master. He has a mission far greater than my life - a mission I envy more than anything else. The sinful Ninuwans are waiting for you to help them repent from their sins. If I delay your progress a moment, I will be damned!” the old man began to cry. “I did a wrong to the deceased prophet from Judah I mentioned and this very situation here reminds me of what I did to him. I brought him back to Bethel when he was going away from it, which proved to be his death. No, my friend, it is better for me to stay here and perish, if it is my doom; I know I deserve it justly. No, never give me a hand and escort me to Bethel, or you shall have a similar doom as mine, and I shall be doubly damned!”
Then, Miguel said to the old man again, “My father, we need to rest here for a while anyway. So, let us sit by you a minute and see if we can give you some consolation.”
Then, the two sat by the old man and shared him food and drink, but he did not take anything, not even water. Nor did the old man’s ass take anything.
Then, Yunus asked the old prophet about the deceased prophet from Judah to whom he had said he did some wrong. Thus, the aged prophet told the following story:
About a year ago, this prophet from Judah heard word of Allah and came to Bethel to prophesy it. There were many pagan shrines on the hill-tops in and around the city of Bethel, and Jeroboam king of Israel had the people sacrifice to the statues of the pagan gods enshrined in them, instead of going up to the house of Allah at Jerusalem in Judah. Upon arriving in the city, the prophet from Judah came directly to a shrine and found the king standing by the priests, who were preparing a ritual of sacrificing a child as a whole-offering to Baal. Then, the prophet cried out and prophesied that a time would come when Allah would have the priests of the hill-shrines sacrificed upon these altars. The king in anger pointed to him from the altar and ordered the guards to seize the prophet. But immediately his hand pointing at him became paralyzed so that he could not even draw it back. The king appealed to the prophet to pacify Allah and pray for him that his hand might be restored. The prophet did as he was asked. Then, the king’s hand was restored and was free to move. The ritual was stopped. The king invited the prophet to his home for dinner and a present. But the prophet said, “I will eat and drink nothing, o king, for Allah’s command to me was to eat and drink nothing in this paganized place.” Then, he left Bethel, riding on his ass. But, sons of the old prophet (who is telling this story) heard about this in Bethel and reported it to his father. Thereupon the prophet rode on an ass and went after the fasting prophet. He found the prophet seated under a terebinth (the same one under which this story is being told). The old prophet found the man weak and starving, for he had not eaten for a long time. So, he asked him to come to his home in Bethel and eat with him. Then, the prophet from Judah rejected the offer, saying to him the same thing he had told king Jeroboam. To this the prophet of Bethel said, “I also am a prophet, as you are, and an angel commanded me by the word of Allah to bring you home with me to eat and drink with me.” This was a lie, but meant for the good of the prophet from Judah, for he had thought that the prophet would starve to death before he reached the next town on the way to Judah. “Besides,” added the old prophet, “we never eat gentile food in my house.” The man from Judah went back with him and ate and drank in his house. While they were still seated at table the word of Allah came to the host prophet, and he cried out to the guest prophet, “Alas! this is the word of Allah: ‘You have defied my word and have not obeyed my command; you have come back to eat and drink in the place where I forbade it; therefore, your body shall not be laid in the grave of your forefathers.’” The following morning, the prophet from Judah left Bethel to go back to Judah on his ass. As he went on his way, a lion met him and killed him, and his body was left lying in the road. The ass was not attacked and stayed with the carcass of its master, while the lion also stood by it. A traveler saw this scene and brought this news to Bethel. When the old prophet heard it, he cried out in tears, “Alas, it is the prophet from Judah who defied the word of Allah, and this is to fulfill the word of Allah which I prophesied to him!’ Then, he set out on his ass and found the body of the prophet from Judah lying in the road by the terebinth (the same one under which this story is being told) and the ass and the lion were still standing by it. Thanks to the presence of the lion, the body did not seem to have been touched by any other creature of prey. Then the old prophet got off his ass, lifted the body of the deceased prophet and laid it on the back of the ass of the latter, whereupon the lion left the place. Then he brought the body back to Bethel to mourn over it and bury it. He laid the body in his own grave and he and his sons mourned for him. The prophet said to his sons that when he died, they should lay his bones beside those of this prophet.
The old prophet sighed, rested awhile and continued his story:
One year passed, and the old prophet heard voice of Allah again and followed it, that is, he went on his ass together with the ass of the deceased prophet to Judah to visit the family of the deceased prophet so as to report to them about his death and to restore the ass belonging to the deceased prophet to his bereaved family.
“And, my brothers, here I am, a miserable minor prophet, on my way back from this errand of Allah,” said the old man. “But do not let me keep you any longer for you have a great and urgent errand to run for Ninuwans. I hear they skin war prisoners alive and sacrifice children to ancient gods too. Do hurry and stop them from doing evils! The earlier you get there, the fewer the victims will be!”
Yunus and Miguel said goodbye to the old man and left there. But when they had gone less than half an hour, they came across a strange but familiar scene – a scene they had imagined not long ago. They saw in a distance a lion and an ass standing by the road; soon they also saw a small human body lying between them, partly hidden behind the grass, all of the three flickering and floating like ghosts. When the two travelers came closer to them, the effect of road mirage disappeared, and they found the human body was blood stained, and it was the body of an old man dead. Yunus wondered if he was not seeing ghosts, for the dead man was none other than that old prophet he had said goodbye to only half an hour ago. While he was wondering about the scene, Miguel went and stood by the body, not seeming to be afraid of the lion. (It was then that Yunus began to suspect that Miguel was one from Allah.) Then, Miguel gave the ass food and water and, while it was refreshing itself, he carefully put the body of the old prophet, doubled and well-balanced, over the back of the ass. When the ass finished eating and drinking, it started walking in the road toward Bethel and, seeing this, the lion also left there, slowly walking and ascending toward a distant forest, flickering off the ground. Yunus now knew that what he had seen under the terebinth was the ghost – the old man and the ass, a doppelgänger in the case of the latter.
Chapter XI
On his way to Ninuwa, Yunus did not fail to visit Samaria hoping to meet his family. But there he could not find them; his relatives told him that his wife and son had been taken to Ninuwa as captives during an attack a couple of years earlier. Accordingly, Yunus again declared he would not prophesy for Ninuwans, nor would he help Ninuwans avoid their destruction. But nonetheless he and his guide Miguel hurried toward Ninuwa in order that Yunus could find and rescue his family as soon as possible.
Despite his impatience, it took them much longer to reach Ninuwa from Joppa than his voyage from America to Joppa. Soon after departing Samaria, they were attacked by bandits on horses, and lost most of their belongings. Yunus could only keep the ass and the emptied sheepskin bag. He became penniless and said to the companion that he could no longer pay him wages and that he could only give the ass to him. The guide agreed to accept the ass as the complete payment for his guiding him through to Ninuwa. Thus, from there Miguel rode the ass and Yunus walked.
The next day Yunus bathed in a lake to cool and wash his body, but a large fish came to catch him. It started swallowing his left foot. Yunus yelled out for help to the companion, who jumped in the lake and dragged the prophet ashore together with the fish. He hit the fish’s head with a stone and let it give up Yunus’ leg. They killed and cut it into pieces, and cooked some and salted the other parts. Moreover, Miguel singled out the fish’s gall bladder and preserved it for medicine in Yunus’ sheepskin bag. The fish meat lasted a couple of days and prevented the two travelers from starving. However, Yunus’ left foot, which had been swallowed by the fish, began to swell and was not healed even by the fish’s gall.
Two days later when their fish meat had been consumed and there was nothing left to eat, they met a caravan bound for Ninuwa, consisting of twenty-odd men, and were recruited in it, thanks to Miguel’s knowledge of the shortcut to the city. The caravan provided free meal to the two; moreover, the chieftain of the caravan lent a camel to Yunus, for he had gradually become unable to walk properly due to his left foot sucked by the lake fish. So, he rode the camel and went side by side with Miguel on the ass, who guided the caravan.
However, on the next day, as they were traveling on a flat highland in the afternoon, a sandstorm rose from the east and they had to go down into a nearby valley where they camped to let the storm pass over them. Only after the sunset the storm was gone. But then numerous amounts of lightning and thunders followed together with a heavy rain, which soon filled the dry bed of valley with running water. Some of the caravanners had to remove the tents to higher parts of the valley to avoid drowning. Thus, the caravan stayed in the valley overnight. Some thunders attacked the valley and one fell in their vicinity.
As soon as the sun rose the next morning the caravanners went to search the spot struck by the thunder and found it had hit the river. A part of the bed of the stream as well as its shore were gouged and burnt black. A strange small sparkling thing lay in the stream, which was dark yellow and half-transparent and presumably of high density as the rather rapidly running water had failed to carry it downstream. “A fossilized lightning!” said the chieftain, picking it up from the water. “At last, at the long last we found one! How lucky!” It was roughly a hollow tube with tiny branches, resembling the shape of lightning itself. Its length was about that of man’s foot.
As nobody, even the chieftain, knew how a fossilized lightning was created exactly, Miguel explained as follows:
“A thunder, when it hits the earth, at once melts the earth and when the melt is cooled a new material is produced, and if the earth is of pure white sand, as in the case we just witnessed, the result would be a highly transparent glassy substance, like that Chieftain is holding. If you look at it carefully, there are some branches extending from the main body and hence some call it fossilized lightning. Depending on the kind of the earth the lightening hits, the result could be something as beautiful as precious stones. There are skilled workmen who mold valuable things from fossilized lightning such as a beautiful see-through cup.”
“This,” Miguel said, having received it from the chieftain, and bringing the fossilized lightning close to his eyes to see the rising sun through it, “is yellowish but highly transparent. Would be a good tribute to the king of Ninuwa when you meet him. I think the running water quickly cooled this and thus helped it acquire such high quality. Could be worth the gold of the same size.”
After breakfast the caravan returned to the highland from the valley, but the landscape there was altered and the path they had been taking was hidden under the sand brought by the storm; so, they lost their way. Miguel, however, had said that the valley where they had spent the previous night was one he had once travelled through years ago before he had discovered the current best shortcut. So, they went down into the valley again and Miguel took them downstream the valley, where water was running now.
By and by the valley opened into a wilderness and they saw a strange object looming in the distance. The air of the wilderness containing the vapor rising from the rain-wet ground magnified the object in their view. It was tall and wide. They wondered, “Is it a hill or a pyramid?” Miguel said he did not remember seeing such a thing last time he had been there.
The caravan headed for it and found it was a ruin of what seemed to have been an ancient fortress. It was a tall and huge donjon or a citadel having the shape of a truncated cone, built with courses of bricks, which were mortared together with bitumen. The higher the altitude was, the steeper was the tower’s profile, such that if the caravanners had been modern-day Europeans, they would have thought it was a nuclear power plant. Some of the lower part of the ruin was buried in the sand. It had a steep ramp, an inclination of about 18 degrees, formed to the outer side of the towering ruin. The ramp went up encircling clockwise the structure four and a half times spirally and stopped where the ruin was truncated. Thus, it was thought the primary purpose of the ramp was to help the construction workers build the tower higher and higher.
Miguel said that he thought this ancient fortress must have been entirely buried under the sand for ages, and that was why he did not see it the last time he was there, but that it was now exposed as the storm of the previous day passed there, carrying away most of the sand that had buried it.
In fact, the sandstorm also took away enough sand from the neighborhood so that an ancient water conduit lined with bricks was exposed, which seemed to run through the ruin, and a thin stream of water had begun to flow in it again, although the stream was stopped in the vicinity of the ruin where the water conduit went under the sand, and the stopped water was forming a pool there.
The caravan decided to halt there for they wanted to see if they could find some valuables in the ruin.
Hoping to find a way inside the ancient donjon, some of the caravanners together with Miguel climbed it along the ramp, for they had been unable to find an entrance to the donjon on the ground level. (Yunus did not join them for his leg sucked by the fish was still aching.) The ramp was made of the same bricks as the donjon was made of, and they were firmly mortared and thus had a stepped surface. Over this stepped surface were laid a pair of - what one might call rails for chariots - continuous series of hewn flat and long stones. The width of the ramp was barely large enough to pass a one horse-chariot, but there were occasional widened lengths, where two chariots could have passed each other or a chariot could have made a U-turn. There were extra bricks and hewn flat stones placed here and there irregularly on the ramp, as if they had been abandoned there while being carried upward.
There was one place where the ramp was disconnected. Obviously there had been some bridge there to connect the disconnection, which probably had been removed by the sandstorm of the day before. The explorers made use of one of the abandoned flat stones long enough to span the void. Thus, they made an unsteady bridge, and each caravanner had to crawl on it carefully to cross over the void. Thus, it took nearly half an hour for the first arrivers to reach the summit of the donjon.
At the summit, the explorers found that the donjon was hollow inside, and marveled at the sight therein, much like a man does when he has climbed to the top of a volcano and sees inside the deep crater.
It was apparent that the sand storm of the day before used this fortress as a source of its ammunition. Miguel even proposed a theory that the flights of the ramp (four and a half in number presently) guided the strong winds of the storm, hitting the fortress from whatever directions, to rapidly soar and twist clockwise so that it was quickly turned into a tornado above the hollow ruin, which accordingly sucked the sand from within it.
The storm seemed to have sucked away most of the sand from the hollow of the ruin so that almost everything in it was exposed. In the bottom of the hollow, there was an ancient small town with a round plaza in the middle, eight streets radially extending from the plaza to reach the inner wall of the fortress, and a handsome small shrine was embedded in the inner wall at the end of one street. Opposite to the shrine was a stage also partly embedded in the inner wall. Besides these there were many layers of houses formed in the inner wall of the fortress, each house being connected to respective common stairways, which reached the streets. There was a public pool next to the stage and a water conduit, similar to the one the caravanners had witnessed outside the ruin, extended from this pool through the middle of the town, and entered into the inner wall.
All the structures looked brand-new, probably because they had been preserved by the dry sand. There was a section along the water conduit where a small furnace-like thing stood, and many scales and measuring cups of various sizes were around it, so that a Medieval person would have thought it a laboratory of alchemists.
If the water conduit was entirely uncovered and water was let to run through it, one would consider the ruin a livable one.
However, the caravanners found the construction of the fortress itself had been far from completion, for they had seen many piles of unused bricks and hewn stones at higher levels. Furthermore, at the top of one of such piles, they found a stone tablet, carved in relief, of what seemed to be a construction plan for the tower. According to this, the building had been intended to become a nearly complete cone, whose profile consisted of two symmetrical slopes akin to a pair of geometrical curves represented by equations xy = 1 and xy = -1, respectively, where y > 0. Hence, if there had been a Japanese among the caravanners, it should have reminded him of Mt. Fuji.
But the most conspicuous part of the fortress, shown on the tablet, was an eye which suspended in the air just above the truncated top. There were even an eye brow and eye lashes. The tablet did not show how the eye was enabled to float in the air except that it was emitting many rays in all directions.
According to the tablet, there should have been twelve flights of the ramp to reach the top of the tower from the ground, had the construction been completed. On the back side of the tablet, they found letters inscribed all over, but none of the explorers, who consisted of various races, had ever seen such letters before.
They wondered what could have been the cause for the ambitious builders to give up completing the great tower. Was it the great sandstorm that buried the entire structure? Or was it some pandemic that undermined their health? But there were no traces of human victims inside or outside the fortress. Nor traces of animal victims. Miguel said there was something amiss, and that they should not expect much from the ruin, for it could be under some curse.
“Look at this eye,” he said, pointing at the eye on the tablet emitting rays like the sun, “I suspect they were trying to create their own god - a god that could see you wherever you are, and thus they designed the grand fortress and tried to put the gleaming eye over the summit by some trick. And with this far-looking eye god they hoped to propagate their religion all over the world and rule it. But something happened to thwart their ambition.”
Then, a man said, pointing at a corner of the town in the fortress, “I see a large wooden gate there, and it seems the only exit from the fortress, and its doors are wide open. I think the residents abandoned the fortress in haste for some reason without even thinking of closing it. If it was the great sandstorm that ended their building work, then would they not have closed the gate doors and stayed inside the fortress to be less harmed by the sandblast? But those doors are open and we see no remnant of human victims lying on the ground or anywhere. So, the ancient dwellers must have abandoned the fortress for some other reason, and later the great sandstorm came and buried the emptied fortress.”
The explorers looked at the doors. The gate was in the inner wall facing the public pool, and its two doors were flung open, as the man had mentioned.
The caravanners wanted to go down inside the fortress, but they could not find any passage to do so. Nor had they found a passage to enter the fortress from any part of the spiral ramp. They walked round the summit to reach the position below which the gate was. Then, they threw several coins to land on that part of the sand outside the donjon close to the inner gate, for they expected an external gate to be found buried there.
The men descended the tower retracing the unfinished spiral ramp and went to the place the coins landed. Then, the caravanners began excavating the position and soon found and exposed a pair of huge handsome but dilapidated external gate doors fully open in the sand. They cleared the entrance way and found a tunnel, which was dark, for it did not go straight into the mini-town.
Many caravanners lit their torches and went into the passage, which soon forked in two ways right and left. Then, another fork and so on, and they found themselves in a maze. The chieftain of the caravan cautioned that they should come back at once lest they be lost in it. But already some went too far into the maze to know the way back.
A search was made to rescue them. Two rescuers were sent, one to the right way and the other to the left at the first fork. They were tied to a very long string so that they themselves would not get lost. When they found a lost one, they sent him back along the string. Those rescued did not fail to bring back things of value such as a handsome sword and armors which they found lying on the passages of the maze. Now, a few had gone too deep or astray for the rescuers’ strings to reach and they were shouting. One was saying he had come to an underground tomb where he saw many coffins, another was saying that he had reached a storehouse full of ancient goods. Then, one who had penetrated the maze and reached the plaza said that he found a golden statue of some god in the shrine. These words triggered the caravanners one after another to rush into the maze following the strings.
Thus, the caravanners were trapped in this ruin, and it appeared it would be a long while before they could come out and resume their journey to Ninuwa. So, Yunus and Miguel, eager to reach Ninuwa as soon as possible, said to the chieftain, who was the only one of the caravanners that resisted the urge to rush into the lucrative maze, “Please call your men to come out soon and resume our journey, or we shall have to go without you.”
To this, the chieftain replied, “Yunus and Miguel, my friends, I am not their commander. I am only authorized to judge and settle a dispute when it arises among them, such as about which person is the right owner of a certain property. If one wants to leave the caravan he can do so anytime freely, and he can rejoin us anytime he wishes after paying us an amount. And it appears they are now more inclined to stay here than to go to Ninuwa, for we seem to be able to gain more wealth here than at Ninuwa far from here. You may stay with us here to earn some wealth yourselves or leave us and continue your trip to Ninuwa. Only, my friend Miguel, promise me to come back as soon as you can to lead us out of this wilderness. We will deal generously with you then.”
By then many caravanners seemed to have reached the plaza, for they were heard praising the golden statue or various other precious things they had come to possess.
Miguel went into the maze with a torch, took the right fork of the passage, and went as far as the lifeline string guided him. Then, he shouted into the passage, “Fellows, are you not going to Ninuwa?!”
To this the caravanners only laughed. Miguel continued, “You must remember that you are still in the middle of the wilderness, a great maze created by Allah where no wealth can buy you an exit. I led you here, so I am responsible for taking you out of here. Be satisfied with what you already have acquired and come out soon!”
Then, the caravanners in the plaza were heard to start discussing among themselves. Some said they should get out of the donjon for now. Others complained that they had only arrived a moment ago and had not yet collected enough; and still others said they needed to find something better. Then, the discussion died away and the men seemed to have resumed their contest of plundering the ruin.
Miguel came out of the maze and shook his head.
The chieftain said, “If you two must go now, you may need some weapons during your long lonely journey for protection; so, take with you some which my sons have found and brought here. You can also pick some armors too. And that camel also,” now he said to Yunus, “which I have lent you. You will need that, and Miguel can come back on it.” Then, he now took Miguel’s hand and added, “I beg you, please do come back here at your earliest convenience to lead us out of this wilderness. Our food may last ten days or so. We will reward you greatly.” Miguel promised that he would be back perhaps in a week.
So, Yunus and Miguel started preparing for departure from the camp. Meanwhile the chieftain brought the camel laden with armors to them. But, then, a shout was heard through the maze, saying, “It’s me that found the golden statue you are holding! So, it’s mine and you better give it to me now!’’ And to this the accused one shouted back, saying an opposite thing. Similar quarrels followed as to who the right owners were of certain precious items. The more they quarreled, the more they spoke nonsense. The louder their languages turned, the less were there meaning in them. Thus, among the plunderers the words lost wings and became babbles.
Soon, sounds of metals hitting upon metals started with shouts and groans. The turmoil continued and pitiful howls and weeps of pain echoed.
At this the chieftain said, “I must go and rescue my sons,” and lit up a torch and ran into the maze, although Yunus and Miguel tried to stop him.
The chieftain put down a coin at each corner where he turned, after he had passed the end of the lifeline string, so as to show himself later which turns he should take to come out of the maze.
A few vultures came and started circling above the ruin. Then, the clamor in the fortress was hushed by a howling of a wolf, which showed up at the top of the fortress. After a moment or two, sounds of men, running and shouting and crying re-started. But at length the sounds went weaker, and only groans and crying were heard.
Although they had finished packing, Miguel and Yunus lingered to see if anyone would come out at the gate. When the sun was setting, Yunus collected wood pieces which had been parts of the decaying gate and put them between the doors of the gate and made a bonfire so as to prevent wolves or other animals from entering the maze and attacking any survivors.
Then, he heard a sound of slow but heavy footsteps approaching from the maze. The prophet went in the maze and said, “I am here. Come this way, my friend.” But no voice came to him. Yunus stepped deeper into the passage and turned at the first fork to the left, for he had smelled torch smoke coming from there. Then, his eyes met with a big eye glaring at him. It had a brow so that it was like a human eye. But the eye was wobbling. He then saw a man holding a torch shaking in his right hand and a conical thing containing the eye in his left arm; it was the light of the torch that caused the eye to glare at him. The man’s body was shaking too. Then, Yunus found that the man was the chieftain and he was oddly aslant forward. Yunus ran to him. The chieftain said nothing and, handing the conical thing to Yunus, fell with his face on the ground, when a lance, thrust deep in his back, stood up in front of the prophet. Yunus quickly picked up the torch still held by the chieftain before the fire died. He stood it against a wall of the maze and inspected the chieftain; but he seemed dead. Yunus called Miguel to come.
Then he picked up the conical thing. It was heavy in his hands although it was small and hollow. He put it down and shook the chieftain and called his name loudly, but he did not respond.
Miguel came with a torch. They pulled the lance off the body of the chieftain and carried the latter out of the maze.
Then, they returned and brought the cone and the lance out. They found the cone was made of gold except for the top part, in which the eye was put. This top part was made of a transparent material like a pure crystal and a black eyebrow was painted all around on it in a manner such that from whichever direction one sees the cone the eye is seen to have an eye brow like a human eye. It was easy to understand that the cone was a miniature replica of the fortress, and Miguel said the inhabitants could have worshiped it as their god.
“Ah, how strange it is” said Yunus, looking at the statue of the eye-god, “that only this abominable ancient idol that cannot walk a step on its own or cannot even see could come out of the maze unharmed!” He threw it in the bonfire, and saw the transparent thing crack in pieces and, as he added more wood to the fire, he saw the transparent thing melt down onto the ground together with the deformed eyes.
Miguel and Yunus dug a hole and buried the body of the chieftain together with what had been the ancient idol.
Then, the two men called into the maze and asked if anyone was trying to come out; but no reply came from the dark maze, which was now loud with the noises of the vultures fighting for food.
After availing themselves of some of the food stock left by the caravanners, and after the sunset, the two, now both in ancient armors, left the camp, Yunus on the camel, holding the lance upright in his right hand, and short but sturdy Miguel on the ass, inspecting the stars for navigation. The new moon rose above the far horizon of sand, and its light together with the starlight showed the two travelers the beautiful dune ahead, on which the elongated pale shadows of them were cast. They went away from the fortress along the exposed ancient water way, and when it disappeared under the sand, they followed their own shadows.
On the next day they reached another valley, which, Miguel said, must lead them back to the short cut he had mentioned. This passage mainly consisted of a dried river in the bottom of the valley. They went down to the floor of the valley and traveled along the dried bed downstream. Having at last arrived in the area familiar to Miguel, they now traveled only daytime, for there was no need to be navigated by the stars.
At a place Miguel halted his ass, and pointed to a pit and said to Yunus, who was following him on the camel: “From here, you should never step aside the path I am taking, for there are plenty of pits like that in this valley. They are bitumen pits, and many are hidden under plants or sand surface. Once a person falls in a deep one, it would be most likely the end of him, for usually it is impossible to pull the body out of the sticky bitumen or tar. Only if the pit is shallow, you may be rescued.” He added that owing to this dangerous passage, people had avoided entering this route.
Miguel, although he had knowledge of many of the risky points in this valley, borrowed the lance from Yunus to sound the path to avoid the pits, just in case.
When they came to a turn of the valley, they saw a bird of prey circling above; then, they heard a pitiful crying of an animal. They went round the turn and found that it was a mountain cat trapped in a large pool of tar. In front of its blood-stained mouth was a dead body of its prey, a horned deer, more than two thirds of which was submerged in the tar. The cat was trying hard to pull its legs off the tar, but the more it stirred the deeper it sank. Then, the bird of prey swooped down and landed on the bloody carcass of the deer and started eating its meat. “Aha!” Miguel said, “here comes another to perish.” The cat growled to scare away the thief, and the big bird tried to escape but already its talons were dipped in the tar so that it could not take off. Miguel said, “They will all perish. If not from drowning, from starvation.”
Thus, Yunus went with much care following Miguel closely until they came out of the valley of tar before dark.
The next day, another great storm came and this time it was a storm of locusts, which lasted nearly a week. At the peak time, they could not see more than several meters ahead even at daytime. But, Yunus and Miguel kept going on slowly but steadily along the wadi, for the latter could know which way to go whenever the wadi branched into two ways or so. When they ran out of food, they caught and burnt the locusts and ate them. As for water, if they dug the dry bed of the wadi to make a hole with a sufficient depth, and waited long enough, they could acquire some water in it.
When they came out of the valley the wadi disappeared, for the sand carried here by the sandstorm had buried it and there was no water to drink. The swarms of locusts had devoured all the vegetation that grew in the wilderness. The locusts rested on the bodies of the two travelers but thanks to the armors, they were not much harassed by this. However, the flying insects sprayed dark liquid in the air as they flew, and Yunus got it in his eyes repeatedly and it kept hurting his eyes. Finally, Yunus came to lose his eyesight and asked his companion to help him.
Miguel inspected his eyes, and found they were covered with a white translucent film. Accordingly, he took out the gall bladder from Yunus’ sheepskin bag and squeezed some of the pasty material from the bladder onto the tip of his left forefinger. Then, he spat on it and kneaded it between the forefinger and the thumb. When the paste became fluid enough, he applied it to Yunus’ eyes. In several minutes, the white film on his eyes hardened and warped and came off the eyes, whereupon Yunus recovered his vision. Now, however, they decided to camp there until the locusts were gone.
Then, early next morning Yunus was awakened by the braying of the camel and saw a green hill in a distance. The crowd of the locusts were on the ground except a few early risers and thus he could see far away. The hill had a truncated pyramid-like shape with a dazzling white statue standing on top of it. Yunus knew the hill. It was the famous hanging garden of Ninuwa. It was only about a couple of kilometers from where he was. It was strange that only the elevated garden maintained the greenery despite the attack of the locusts in the area.
“Miguel!” shouted Yunus, “we are already at Ninuwa!” But then he found the ground under a tree where his companion had been sleeping was vacant. Nor could he find the ass. They seemed to have gone away while he was asleep. He was left with the camel, which he had planned to give Miguel also as the reward when they got to Ninuwa. There were not even footsteps to show which way they had departed. Could he find Miguel in the city, he wondered, or did he retrace toward the ruin to keep his promise with the now deceased chieftain of the caravan?
Continues to Chapter IX
