1
The child waited till the woman lifted aside the blanket at the entrance to the tent and slipped outside. Then he got up quietly, pulled a length of cloth around his shoulders, and went out himself. There was no edge along the top of the hills. The occasional animal cry breaking the darkness seemed to trace their outline for a fleeting moment. But the velvet of the desert and the sky swiftly cleaved together again, as if the land were succumbing to the moonās caress.
The child watched the womanās dark shape hurrying through the night. From time to time a star stole a muted spark from the little coins edging the gossamer fabric along her forehead, or picked out the sheen on the bleached chicken bone stitched close to her temple. Her veil and robes billowed around her bare feet. The woman untied the donkey and left the village, heading away along the path through the cotton fields. The child followed her. By the light of a reddish moon just tipping over the horizon, the woman and her donkey made brisk progress. The child followed behind, keeping his distance and ducking aside when momentary patches of light in the sky threatened to reveal him. With every step the path became less distinct, yielding to the sand of the dunes and the ebb and flow of stones that appeared in successive waves. This brought them to the foot of a hill where the world seemed to come to an end.
Eventually the woman turned around and the child saw her face. Walking alongside the donkey, she started climbing up the bank to head back to the encampment. Droplets of water dripping from the containers gleamed in their tracks. When they reached the child, he hid behind a swell in the sand. The chill of the ground seeped through his thin clothes. He would have liked to stay there, melting into the ground, dissolving in the darkness, forgetting his sorrow and his fear. Not moving a muscle. As motionless as that barely breathing body back there in the village, under the tenting ā¦ But he was just a child. When he got back to his feet he realized he was alone. He ran to catch up with the shadows. As he raced along, he fled his thoughts, and the speed sharpened the raw cold still on his skin.
With no embers left to burn
2
The child understood the old manās words but his tears wouldnāt fall. He would have liked to feel them roll over his cheeks, to rest in their warmth, to follow their progress from eyelid to lip and on down to his chin. But they stayed locked deep inside him. He felt strangely relieved, almost happy. Heād listened to the women coming and going all night. Now the waiting was at an end.
He went over to the darkest corner of the tent and sat on an undyed wool blanket. The stub of a candle shed its trembling light over the middle of the tent. From time to time chattering silhouettes walked past, briefly masking its unsteady flame, their long veils wafting haphazardly, reminding him of evenings filled with feasting and dancing.
The body had been laid out in the far corner of the tent, opposite him. But he couldnāt see it properly because a fence of sunflowers had been erected around it to hide it. If he watched carefully, though, he could make out the womenās busying hands as they poured water and moaned softly.
With no embers left to burn
With no embers left to burn
On those nights, people often gathered under a tent like this one. The men made themselves comfortable, folding their legs under them, and forming a square around the glowing embers in a fireplace. The women made tea, poured it into glasses, and put them on a tray which was passed from one man to the next. The constant hubbub of voices was sometimes smothered by the whistling wind that announced a storm. Then, out of nowhere, a long silence would settle over them. The storyteller had arrived. Making his way through the rows, he would sit in the middle, book in hand.
The child loved these occasions. He too stood on tiptoe to peek through the shoulders and shawls. But he was still too small. Although he couldnāt see, he could hear. He listened intently to tales of horsemen from lands whose names no one knew, men who traveled over deserts and plains, crossed rivers and seas, always courageous, always conquering, subjecting other men to their laws by the thousand, killing them by the hundred, and carrying their standards and their faith ever farther.
Sometimes the storyteller would flatter the head of the family playing host to him by giving the manās name to the hero, and the story would catch the child by surprise. It made his head spin: these familiar people, these men he came across on dusty paths every day, they were suddenly being credited with fantastic exploits! These people he knew, whose weaknesses he knew ā¦ and yet for now, for a moment, they became great warriors.
The following day, and for a few days after that, he would make a point of monitoring them, with a sort of respect mingled with suspicion. He hoped to catch them in mid-transformation and in a flash see them clothed in embroidered cloaks and flanked by huge black horses that they would mount and spur on toward the horizon in a single bound. He would spend hours like that, watching them, waiting forāand also dreadingāthe miracle. But the miracle never came and he ended up doubting there was any magic at all.
Over in the far corner, the manās voice grew shrill, waking the child from his reverie. The boy shifted, drawing his legs up to his chest and rolling himself up in the blanket, hugging his tightly crossed arms to his chest. A pleasant sensation tingled the tips of his fingers, a feeling as sweet as the one that had swept through him when that other hand had reached for his and brushed over it gently. The hand he would never feel again.
3
His mother had called him over.
āCome on, come here.ā
He hardly slept at all now that she was ill. People came to see her, exchanged a few words with her. But she tired quickly. When they left, they lingered outside the tent, chatting. They never referred to the illness, hardly even mentioned it, and talked in the past tense: āShe had a sad life.ā
A sad life! They talked about it as if it was inevitable. Which is why the child didnāt resent them for it. But the grandmother never disguised her rancor and this upset him. What did her complaining matter when he could see his mother was dying? Yes, his grandmother had done everything for her daughter. Yes, she had managed to find the best possible match for her, a man from the neighboring village, the only one with a solid house of bricks and mortar, standing facing the tents covered with ācob,ā sun-dried earth reinforced with straw. A man who had the only radio in the region, and even a truck. Yes, sheād succeeded in putting her daughter forward, and this despite the hostility of a first wife with whom the man already had three children. But no, it wasnāt true, his mother hadnāt been ungrateful because sheād failed to keep this lucky match. No, his grandmother shouldnāt criticize her for being driven away and for coming home with only one of the two children she had from the marriage.
Surely everyone in the village knew the match had been based entirely on the grandmotherās self-interest? Was there anyone who didnāt know sheād arranged it with the sole aim of showing off and being feared and respected? Besides, she hadnāt lost any time before trying to marry her daughter off again. But she hadnāt found anyone with enough land and a big enough flock; the few remaining possible husbands had refused to take a woman whoād already been repudiated. They knew perfectly well her repudiation had no basisāother than the jealousy and scheming of the other wife, whoād eventually won her husband over. But whatever the reason, a repudiated woman was a fallen woman. No one would want her.
In desperation, the grandmother had agreed to give her to a man from a similar background.
When the childās mother had remarried, heād been left on his own, in his grandmotherās care. He would sometimes accompany his young aunt when she fetched water with her donkey. But in the evenings, as the sun went down behind the hills, he lay awake in the dark and thought of his mother, far away, in a cob-walled house on the edge of the village.
He went to see her as often as he could. Heād realized she wasnāt well. Heād never known her to be very strong: sheād fallen ill just after he was born. And then sheād had two children from her second marriage, a son and a daughter, and that had taken even more out of her.
āMy stomachās hurting a bit,ā sheād said with a smile so as not to worry him. āI wish I could spread it out on the banks of the river like a djellaba, and wash it down with lots of water.ā
She screwed up her face again when she sat down. As time went by the pain grew worse, racking her stomach and making it difficult for her to talk for minutes on end. Then one day, she stayed in bed.
āCome on. Come here.ā
In the quiet of the night, dogs could be heard calling to each other in long anguished howls, from one flock to the next. In the middle of the tent, in a hearth dug out of the ground, straw and dried cotton crackled, throwing up sparks.
Heād gone over to her. Sheād reached out her hand, trying to find his, and had turned to look at him. In her eyes he saw birds, and big white flowers bending to the wind, and cool shadows. He saw the memory of times when they used to talk to each other, when she would take him in her arms, a surprised little boy who didnāt understand what she was doing. Sheād looked deep into his eyes without a word, but oh, how much heād read in her gaze! It was then that she brushed his hand with hers with aching gentleness. The child was so moved he started shaking. Then his motherās hand lolled slowly to the floor. She had fallen asleep.
Heād stayed by her side watching her for a long time, then slipped away without a sound. Outside, the sky was motionless, the stars frozen in place, shining for themselves alone; the wind had dropped; and the dogs had stopped yelping. The desert had no soul.
4
The child had never really believed the storytellers, never really accepted that someone could always win like the heroic soldiers in their tales. But heād listened to them so often heād eventually convinced himself that, if you fought, you could always hope. And now, as the women carried on weeping for his dead mother, heād just discovered that even hope isnāt always rewarded.
Movements in the darkness, fleeting shadows, the old manās keening, the lamp glimmering ā¦ it was all over now, propelled into the past. The sun had dissipated the anguish and the village was back to its usual occupations. There in the dust, a few devoted villagers were preparing the body. The child didnāt feel it had anything to do with him. This certainly wasnāt indifference, though. No, it was more that he seemed to be absent from the world. His hurts and ordeals bore down on his young shoulders and he was bending like a reed under the suffering.
When a shadow was eventually cast through the entrance to the tent, she thought her husband had come to see his son at last. Too weak to sit up, she managed only a tentative smile. It was him standing before her, but he seemed preoccupied and had a group of uneasy-looking men with him. Without looking at the baby, without even asking after him, without any kind words, he delivered his message. Seven times over he told her he no longer wanted her as a wife. Seven times over he threw a stone onto the beaten earth before the witnesses heād summoned to escort him. Heād respected the rules. The childās mother was repudiated, forever. Just like that, for no reason.
Not one of the witnesses protested. And she kept quiet throughout the repudiation ritual. She didnāt utter a single reproachful word. Didnāt shed a single tear. She waited till her husband had gone; then, despite her weakened condition, she wrapped her veil around herself, swaddled her baby in a scarf, and left. Hunched over her child, exhausted, she walked away, slowly, painfully, every step an ordeal. For a long, long time people could still see her heading deeper into the desert.