Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [4]
Very well. He set the child down for a moment, pulled himself up to his full height, and then bowed in the direction of the red turrets they had just put behind them.
Then turned to the west.
To the west!
The day grew hotter as they traveled with the sun, though the animal moved so slowly that the sun eventually left them behind in a growing ocean of shadows of scattered river-shore plants and trees. Where did the sun go? The jar-maker knew there was an ocean some great distance in that direction, he had heard of it, yes, this vast body of water filled with a life of its own that led to other mysterious bodies of land. And his mind wandered toward it as they plodded along, and he wondered if he would ever see it. For the moment he gave his best attention to the river. The jar-maker, more and more aware of his wife’s fatigue and the children’s bewilderment, wanted desperately to make a crossing, but the water ran too deep in this season, and though they came to a ferry he decided it would be unwise to call attention to themselves by making the trip.
Red mud, dark water, now and then a flight of white birds that broke across the face of the fleeing sun, leaving, or so it seemed from the point from which they watched, a blanket of red clouds resting just beneath the still fiery light. As much as he would have liked for them to have kept moving, the jar-maker understood that it was time to stop. He helped the family from the animal’s back and took the bag of food as well before weighing down the beast’s rope with rocks he found at the waterside.
“I’ll bathe the children,” the weaver said, and she took them to the river while the jar-maker gathered wood for a small fire. Once the sky faded into the growing shadows of the night out here in the flatlands near the water the air would turn cooler by the hour. However dangerous it was, and just how dangerous he did not really know, no father wanted his children to catch a chill and fall sick. He watched them play in the water, enjoyed listening to their laughter. Here was the difference between animal and man—the small fire he built, daring the odds of discovery, so that the children might stay warm in their sleep. Immediately upon considering this thought he sank into a deep pit of gloom.
“I could smell the fire,” the weaver upon returning with the children. “I wonder if it is safe?”
He told her what he believed, and she acquiesced.
In a moment she was serving the figs and flatbread she had snatched from the larder during their last moments in the house. Not long after the food disappeared, the children lay down near the fire. It was good that they settled themselves, because long before sunrise they all must be awake and traveling again. However his daughter Zainab, a pale-skinned girl, tall for her sex, and prone to upset, could not find the handle of sleep. The weaver tried to soothe her, without success. In desperation her mother asked the jar-maker to tell the girl a story.
“I can make shapes and designs,” her father said, “but I am not good at telling stories.”
“I want a tale,” the restless girl said, speaking in a voice her father found slightly intimidating because of its new impersonal tone. “And I want a story.”
“Is there a difference?” her father said.
“Yes,” the girl said.
“What is it?” said her father.
“I don’t know,” the girl said.
Zainab pulled herself upright and sat waiting for her father to speak.
“A tale, perhaps,” her father said, “tells about people you do not know. A story tells you about people you do.”
“I want both,” the girl said.
The jar-maker cleared his throat, trying to rise above his awful feelings of despair and desperation at the thought