2

If I fade in this mirage’s deceit
My spirit could shimmer in Sahara’s dunes
Like Djinn’s illusion, fleeting and beguiling
Permit me to fade or endure, comprehend that in fading I’ll manifest
I’m not Ra or the nomad’s oath
I’m Sahar’s illusion
And if I endure, I’ll fade and manifest anew
My spirit lingers amid:
To evaporate or to persist
For the tribe’s welfare, I’ll persist
For mine, I’ll evaporate
Evaporate to the boundless oasis

Now, it lures: ‘Approach, indulge in my illusions, for here you’ll wander in perpetual mirage.’

‘No, I’ll not approach, no I’ll not. Fade from me, Mirage’s Deceit. Fade, I command,’ I refuted.

‘Sh sh sh sh sh sh sh. You can’t when I ensnare your senses and spirit, Sahar.

Approach, taste my visions,’ it whispered.
Entranced by Mirage’s allure, I wavered, languidly treading to its deceptive horizon to confront the Master of Phantoms.

‘Grasp, drink my illusions, for the revival of your perception and essence. Perform this in veneration of me. And my mirages too, consume, for clarity and enigma. This in veneration of me,’ intoned Mirage’s Deceit.
I stretched in delusion, silent, wavering.

Suddenly, I captured palm leaf and ink reclined, sketching the illusions clouding my deceived mind, plaguing my parched awareness, maybe to quench my illusory frame. But where the vitality to sketch? Shall I drink its illusions and consume its mirages? For what veneration? Veneration that it’s miraged my soul in the desert of deception? What specter is that? I shall sketch, I affirmed, drawing the final drops from my parched veins and sand, or dissolve immediately.

Then, sketching I began:

My visions are blurring
My visions are shifting
My visions are false
My visions are scorching
My visions are blurring
Can you see the haze?
My visions are shifting
Can you follow the change?
My visions are false
Can you detect the lie?
My visions are scorching
Can you feel it drier than dune’s heat?
My visions are…

‘What sketches these?’ inquired Mirage’s Deceit slyly. ‘View,’ I offered the leaf. It examined with eyes like shifting sands, drifting apart. Then it mocked mentally: ‘Illusion. Vanish it!’ My leaf was scattered, and as I strained to gather from the sandy expanse, Mirage’s Deceit held me closer, my frame dehydrating drier and drier.
Mirage’s Deceit, swathed in shimmering veils except my dust-caked sides on the arid mat, the aroma of my body wafting parched earth and my breath smelling sun-baked stone, undulating deceived me utterly, miraging reality.

‘You’re a faithless wanderer, Sahar. After I’ve conjured the imaginative oasis in your spirit. Unperceiving my sway creating you a mystic storyteller. You’ll wander lost. For your doubt and scorn. You. Will. Wander.’ Mirage’s Deceit hinted, cunning yet unswaying me.

I considered how for eight suns, feeling infinities to it, it deluded me with arid phantoms. I thirsted in hallucination; such deceptive entity. Shimmers, heats, falsities, all conspired to mirage my sacred caravan.

At last, Mirage’s Deceit freed my clasp. I shuffled disoriented from the mat to a camel-hair cushion, gasping for truth and longing for water. I prepared dual skins of date wine, gulped thirstily, sank into the well, remaining till twilight’s fall.

I awakened; merely a mirage. My throat scratched with dryness. I recall Mirage’s promise of wandering. Wandering for what? My body, my body, truly parched earth? My breath, my breath, truly sun-baked stone? I taste my hand’s sweat. My sides, how encrusted? O my robe trembling beneath the nomadic sundial in the tent’s haze: veiled, unclean. O, Desert Winds, I whisper toward my rest, dispel this mirage’s deceit, if thy whisper, let this mat be my dune grave.

Written by Oluwatosin Akinrinde, a prose poet, a playwright, an experimental writer, and a literary & cultural writer