Seven Veils of Seth by Ibrahim Al-Koni

idiocy is the boundary between insanity and reason, between liberation and restraint, and between shackle and prophecy.”
    â€œDid my master mention prophecy?”
    â€œCertainly. Prophecy. Occasionally idiocy is prophecy.”
    â€œWouldn’t that assertion count as blasphemy against the lost Law of the ancients?”
    â€œNo, certainly not. Occasionally idiocy is prophecy.”
    The crowd murmured excitedly. The uproar lasted a long time. Then the strategist proclaimed decisively, “Reasoning that allows us to say that idiocy is prophecy also lets us say that prophecy is idiocy.”
    â€œProphecy is not merely idiocy. It is also insanity.”
    The strategist clapped his hands together while the marketplace shook with people’s commotion. They did not limit themselves to a restrained objection but shouted their protests out loud.

PART I Section 7: The Secret

1 The Nomadic Life
    When the jinn she harbored in her breast stirred one day, she protested: “You’ve destroyed me! Chasing after you through the deserts has destroyed me.”
    He did not disapprove so much of the thought expressed then as of the inflection used, for she had repeatedly said even more scathing things but had never dared to express them in the tone she used for this complaint. A comment’s tone is our only evidence for its veracity – just as the music of its words is our only evidence to support a declaration of love . . . or of hatred. This time, she had revealed her hatred in the ring of her voice.
    He let his gaze wander then into the eternal wasteland, which had never promised him anything save liberation. Then he asked with the calm typical of a recluse, “What do you want us to do?”
    She replied immediately, as if she had been expecting this question: “We’ll do what everyone does.”
    â€œWhat does everyone do?”
    â€œThey abandon the nomadic life and settle down on the land.”
    â€œBut if we give up nomadism, we’ll perish.”
    â€œDon’t say we’re nomads because we must search for grazing lands in the great outdoors. Don’t say we must migrate to stay alive, because you know that everyone searches for grazing lands outdoors, but they settle on the land for a time to ensure that they have a life, too. So don’t say that only wanderers truly live and that people with an easy life are specters and zombies, as you like to claim.”
    â€œYes, I’ll never be ashamed to repeat that sedentary people are really dead even while alive and that nomads live on even if they perish.”
    â€œWe’re nomads, but not because we search for pasture in arid lands; we migrate to search for our selves. We become nomads to flee from our selves. Do you deny that?”
    â€œThere’s no need to deny it. Indeed, I’m happy to repeat along with you that we migrate to search for our selves. Indeed, we’re nomadic because we flee from our selves. I wonder who you heard reveal this maxim. Ha, ha. . . .”
    â€œI didn’t hear it from my mother or father. I didn’t hear this aphorism until I learned the nomad’s tale, because hearing maxims is the only good point about nomadism.”
    â€œI’m delighted to hear you confess that nomadism has a good point.”
    â€œI’m not embarrassed to acknowledge that the nomadic life teaches maxims, but it sells us these aphorisms at the most outrageous price, since it demands our lives in return.”
    â€œAny maxim for which we don’t sacrifice our lives is fraudulent.”
    â€œWe could afford to sacrifice our lives for prophetic counsel if we lived more than once.”
    â€œNonsense! We must pay for a prophetic maxim with our lives, even if we live only once, even if we live but half a lifetime, even if we don’t live once, because our true life is in the maxim, not in this physical world for the sake of which you want us to throw down the