The Tale of the Blind Dervish and the First Flute

Kifkef began:

"You will appreciate, my friends, that life in the desert is something far from easy. If you do not die from thirst, the heat, exposure to the wind, fever or random attacks from murderous nomads - Then there is always the chance that your mind will crack open under the sheer pressure of the infinite expanse bearing down on you from all sides.

Yet my tale concerns a holy man long ago who was fond of wandering alone in deserts of shifting dunes of sand. In these places any map was at best a general guide and the anonymous territory yet only partially explored. Some of the less educated still maintained that the Edge of the World lay in wait out there. Yes, my friends, the desert was no less formidable or mysterious a prospect than the ocean appeared to your medieval sailors in search of new continents. Within the desert, too, there lived rumours of lush islands of fertile plenty and the few that were discovered remained closely guarded secrets.

Yet as dangerous and unfathomable a domain as the desert was and still is, the hero of my tale often wandered into its heart alone. The first rule of journeying through the Sahara is to join with others to increase the odds of survival - But this man ignored the warnings of the wise and frequently made voyages of astounding audacity and courage.

His accomplishments were in no small way augmented by the fact that he was blind from birth.

This portion of the dervish’s tale concerns the time that he set out from the hills of Chad, walking north to the secret oasis of Azsabada. He strode up and down the sloping dunes, occasionally stumbling but always heading dead straight. His eyes were like white marbles and were directed up at heaven for guidance. Thin cloths covered his body, head and most of his face in Bedouin style and he carried a small knapsack containing just three water skins, a blanket, a bowl and a knife.

For the dervish, the desert was a place of great peace. There he was spared from the psychic babble and endless gossip of the towns and cities.. Out here, there was no one to ask him irritating questions as to how and why a blind man could walk his way alone in the world - there were enough dangers for those with the luxury of sight.

These questions saddened him by the lack of faith that they showed - did these people really imagine that Allah would abandon a true believer? Did they not know that the true devotee is never without a guide?

The dervish did not need eyes to find his way - as though that were the only sense given to man. Without the distraction of vision, he was never tempted by objects of desire. Instead he was able to listen to the true voices of the world which most people never heard.

No one could ever trick him with a sweet tongue or a pretty face. In fact, when a person spoke, he didn’t even listen to the words any more, his attention attuned only to what they were really saying behind all their dressed-up talk.

His clarity and wisdom were so esteemed that the law courts begged him to take charge in tricky cases, offering him many luxurious posts within the system. But as much as he could hear the truth in the words of people, he also heard loud and clear the sounds of things. The hammer of the judge echoed dull rot and the legal talk rattled with rusty chains.

When he walked in the streets each house tried to tell him the story of its life and there just wasn’t enough time to listen to every tale. The streets told him of the previous kingdoms that had rolled down their cobbled ways and he was embarrassed when the clothes of the people in the street would whisper the bedroom secrets of their wearers.

Things of gold called out conceited invitations for his attention. Blades muttered dark threats from their scabbards. Towering minarets criticized his unorthodox spirituality and the nearby slums begged for his mercy and spare dinars.

So it was that he loved most of all to roam through the dead wastes of the desert. The sand, if it had a voice, kept mercifully silent. Almost nothing lived out here to jabber useless history in his ears and the deeper he walked into the dunes, the more serene he became. The winds whispered to him which way he should go, their whistling tongues curling in his ear lobes to correct him each time he wandered off course.

But winds are shifty, unreliable creatures and, as with people, you can meet good and bad. The guides that accompanied him now seemed reluctant to accompany him north to the oasis. And as he insisted upon his journey, the pressure in his ears thinned by the mile. One by one, the breezes abandoned him to find his way alone.

Soon he was without any guidance and he stopped in his tracks to consider his position. The better part of the day had been spent walking and he’d already drunk most of his water - Even if the winds would help him on another course he could not hope on making it without supplies. Whatever their motive, he realised they meant to leave him out here to die. He raised his hands to supplicate the will of God and cried:

‘Allah hu Akbar. Leilahahillalah.’ He pressed on with only his Faith to guide him.

After three more hours of stumbling across the sands with the prospect of failure thickening at the back of his dry throat, the dervish suddenly raised himself onto his toes and threw back his head. Then he relaxed with a smile - His nostrils informed him that, despite the treachery of the desert winds, he’d hit on the right bearing. The scent of bamboo and orange blossom wafting towards him announced that he'd arrived on the brink of Azsabada.

Using his nose now to guide him, the dervish picked his way towards the fertile groves. He raised his hand in salaam before him to greet any obstacle with his fingers rather than with his face. The deep shafts of water at the well called out to him with the promises of cool relief and the last few metres seemed like miles. He lifted the stone lid and hoisted up a full bucket from the source some fifty metres below.

His thirst satisfied, he gave thanks to God with a ‘hamduluallah’ and then meditated upon a corn wafer, considering how he could best teach the winds a lesson. He had trusted in their good word, delivered his safety into their hands and he could not allow their betrayal to go unpunished.

He realised that the first thing to do was to cool down. With all the anger and lust in his mind he'd never work anything out. Sure enough, once he'd emptied his mind, the answer became clear to him and he set about his task with a cool, clear head. He strolled over to where the bamboo grew and cut himself a length as long as his forearm. Then he sat himself beneath a date tree and set to work with his knife through the falling night. By the time the sun returned to warm his blood, chilled by the desert night, his work was completed.

He held up his virgin flute for the sun to see and give its blessing of amber light. The winds saw him and coasted in, curious to see what the strange blind man was up to. They would have liked to whip up waves of sand and bury him where he sat. But the serenity of the oasis was a sacred law that even they respected and so they resolved withhold violence until his departure. Still the winds were also welcome at Azsabada for the relief they brought from the heat and they curled like cats around the dervish.

-Whhaaat is thisss sstick you have made with five holesss? They asked, -We haave not sseen anything like it before - Is it for prayer?

-It's nothing. The dervish replied absently, -Nothing at all.

And he continued to bend his entire attention on smoothing the finger holes.

-Tell usss, The winds blustered with growing excitement, ‘-ss it a weapon to destroy demonss or an oracle to learn the future?

-Oh no, The dervish assured them, -Really, it's just a stick with nothing of any interest inside.

-What'ss insside? They cried, desperate to know and they gushed in through the end of the flute. In one swift motion, the dervish put his fingers and thumb to the notes and his mouth and spare hand to each end. He whispered the name of God inside and the prayer sealed the exits, trapping the winds inside.

-Let uss out. They whimpered, -We're ssorree. But the dervish answered:

-For too long, now, all who have lived in the desert have listened to your sermons. You have spoken temptations in the ears of the people as they slept at night, buried whole tribes alive in storms of sand and led countless wanderers astray in the wilderness. Now it is your turn to listen and so it shall be forever more.

He applied his lips and blew whispered praises from the Qur’an through the flute. The winds found themselves overcome by the depth of the dervish's heart and perceived their sinful ways with shame. He inhaled the breath of Heaven and gave it a voice through the length of bamboo. The winds inside could not help but sound this purity that they dared not corrupt.

The dervish waited by the oasis until the next tribe of nomads came by some ten days later. He made them cut sticks of the bamboo and showed them how to make the flute. He put each new instrument to the end of his own and, with a puff, passed on a part of the spirits inside. Every true flute in the world is a descendant of this original.

Chapter 20