Seven Veils of Seth

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In the ancient Egyptian religion, Seth is the evil god who out of jealousy slays his brother Osiris, the good god of agriculture, to seize the throne. Isis, the goddess wife of Osiris, then searches everywhere to recover the pieces of her husband’s body and secretly raises their son Horus, who eventually challenges his uncle. Seth is, however, also the god of the desert and therefore a benevolent champion of desert dwellers like the traditionally nomadic Kel Tamasheq, better known as the Tuareg. The world-renowned, Libyan, Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni, who writes in Arabic, has drawn on the tension between these two opposing visions of Seth to create a novel that also provides a vivid account of daily life in a Tuareg oasis.

Isan, the protagonist of The Seven Veils of Seth, is either Seth himself or a latter-day avatar. A desert-wandering seer and proponent of desert life, he settles for an extended stay in a fertile oasis, where he adopts a tomb’s vault as his domicile. If Jack Frost, the personification of the arrival of winter, were to visit a tropical rain forest, the results might be similarly disastrous. Isan first upsets the good citizens of the oasis by substituting a she-ass for the usual camel as his mode of transport and by rejecting their offers of hospitality. He is surprised bathing naked, without even his typical Tuareg man’s veil, in the spring-fed pond that serves the oasis, by six young beauties, each the spouse or sweetheart of a local notable. These six belles both captivate and infuriate him, and he swears revenge.

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