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Alchemists and oracles –

Destiny is a universal conspiracy

Created by Khaled Diab

Haflata	Talking drivel
Aflatoun	Plato
Haflatoun	Drivelling Plato

Part I – Alchemists and oracles

Part III – Doing Goha’s donkey work

Time to zero hour: 22.01 hours

Place: Siwan roads

Without a moment to lose, I rush to the nearest dirt road where I wave down a passing motorcycle taxi and jump on behind Khamees signalling him to go-o-o! The rickety Jawa quivers and shivers and slithers and chuckles and buckles along the dirt tracks, kicking up plumes of dust as it weaves through the fellahin walking home their cattle and the donkeys taking twilight strolls along the lake. I close my eyes tight, not to block out the children we might hit at any moment, but to continue the deep, spiritual contemplation I had begun before Umm Uref called.

We are rapidly decelerating, I realise as we fall back behind a buffalo we overtook a couple of minutes ago. Then we come to a choking halt. “You weren’t in a hurry or anything, were you, Haflatoun?” asks Khamees, whose name means Thursday but his manner is easy like Friday morning (Sunday, in other parts of the world).

“Well, I think I was needed somewhere to avert a major emergency,” I say.

“Tamam! Tamam,” he ponders, tugging on his moustache. “Well, it’s nothing to worry about. This country has been in a permanent state of emergency for a quarter of a century and it’s still not the end of the world. Besides, Siwa is almost like another country.”

Another country? My God, has word of Kahka’s plans seeped out, I think to myself, as I look around to make sure no secret agents have crawled out of the woodwork. But trees don’t have ears.

“Here, in Siwa, we have our language and culture and we’re a world away from Cairo.”

“What if disaster strikes this time?” I demand.

“That’s unruly qada’a and qadar for you. Fate has this habit of getting in the way when you’re chasing after your destiny. Why only the other day, Jiji, my Jawa here…” he says, looking affectionately at his temperamental bike while clearing a space amongst the palm fonds to plonk himself down and weave his yarn.

A gust of wind blows in some sand from somewhere out in the vast, insurmountable desert. This forms a neat pile in Khamees’s clearing and, extraordinarily, there is a single sandleprint moulded into the golden grain.

“Do not ridicule fate, it only delivers your destiny,” a disembodied voice booms, before its mysterious owner, who had obviously been blown in on a wind travelling at slower than Mach I – i.e. the speed of his words – catches up and reclaims it as his own. Resplendent in black silk from his turban down, he lands on one foot, which fits perfectly, Cinderella-style, into the single sandleprint. He spins softly around like an Arabian ninja ballet dancer until he faces us.

“Fate is maktub, written, but it is not inevitable – it is not set in stone, it is like the desert sand,” he says.

“Bless your mouth!” cheers Khamess. “I did not mean any dis – neither -respect nor -honour.”

Annoyed that this uninvited stranger – who is this weirdo? – should be trying to outwit Haflatoun in the wisdom stakes, I retort: “The only inevitability is that everything is evitable.”

“What happens once will never happen again. But what happens twice will surely happen a third time,” he says optimistically. God, even here in this remote oasis, they read Paulo Coelho, I reflect, no wonder he’s sold 35 million copies of The Alchemist. “I have heard of Kahka’s FDA. I have come to see if it is anything like the plans we once had for an Alternative Society.”

“If an idea’s worth having once, it’s worth having twice,” I quote Tom Stoppard, realising that it might be Coelho behind that alchemist’s veil. Forget about turning lead into gold, this Brazilian novelist has found the true secret of alchemy: he has uncovered the modern-day ‘philosopher’s stone’, a new age elixir, by turning trite and glib spiritualism and simplistic stories into massive bank balances.

“The darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn,” the strange stranger tries in a bid to mystify me. “Kahka must not give up, no matter the obstacles.”

Stumped momentarily, I fumble about for the bright idea switch. “But if you sleep with the light on, you need not fear the darkness,” I counter.

“I can’t stand around exchanging profoundities with you all day, Paulo. I have to go and find Umm Uref before it’s too late and the nightmare begins,” I remind him, and myself.

“The desert takes our dreams away from us,” he bemoans. “Those who don’t return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything... They become the soul of the world,” he adds, revealing the latent desire of the superstar to blend into the woodwork.

“Don’t worry, Paulo, I won’t tell your fan club nor the media nor Madonna you’re here – and the Brazilian junta is long gone. You have as much right to your privacy as anyone else.”

Knowing that the game is up and that Haflatoun has penetrated his mask, Paulo removes the black silk scarf covering his nose and mouth to reveal his silver temples and goatee beard. I see a single teardrop travel like a pearl down his tanned face to join the sweat beads gushing down from his temples. “I just need some peace and solitude. I thought out here, in Siwa, I could get away from my own celebrity and be at one with the soul of the world. Do you think Kahka will let me join her community?”

“Find her and ask her. Now I have to find some alternative transportation to get to Umm Uref.”

“When you really want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it,” he says instead of a simple ‘good luck’.

“Enough new-age conspiracy theories,” I sneeze in an instinctive allergic reaction to his flowery philosophy. “The universe does no-one any favours, okay? It sometimes helps and it sometimes gets in the way. In my case, it tends to obstruct.”

Was I not following my destiny when I ran in the presidential campaign, I ask myself? Where was the conspiring universe then? Why did it conspire in favour of the status quo? Why did a straightforward trip to Athens land me in Guantanamo? At the outset of my quest to track down my beloved Luna, why did I fall into the cloying clutches of PAPA instead of her tender arms?

As a peace offering, the neo-alchemist shaves a piece off his philosopher’s stone (i.e., he writes me a massive cheque). “Perhaps this, then, will help you on your way.”

Ahh, Luna, remember our time here in Siwa, I sigh as I pocket the cheque?

Luna’s favourite animal comes galloping past in all its pointy-eared splendour. At that moment, I realise she may be watching over me, wherever she might be. My ride is getting away, I realise, as the donkey kicks up a small cloud of dust in its hee-hawing wake. I give chase and leap on its back rodeo-style. It does not try to shake me off.

“Take me to Umm Uref,” I command and, nodding in apparent comprehension, the animal heads off in the direction of Amun’s temple. There is something ungainly about riding a donkey, sitting there on the low-backed animal with your feet almost scraping the ground.

Part III – Doing Goha’s donkey work

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