Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [5]
The air grew restless. Somewhere out in the star-lit dark a bird called and in the farther dark another bird answered. Suddenly the breeze rose, rustling the reeds and grass around them.
“Tell me,” Zainab said.
With her urging he began to speak, telling a story he had heard from his own father, who once told him that he had heard it from his father, who had heard it from his father, about a young man who scratched at rocks with a piece of metal, inscribing three horizontal lines and one vertical on the side of a large boulder near the great rift in the earth near where he was born. The boy had a good life, beloved of his parents, his father who was a farmer, his mother who gathered herbs, and—
“Why do you stop?” his daughter asked.
The jar-maker was listening. Beyond the farther dark, where the last birds called, something made a sharp barking noise.
“What?” said the weaver, who also had been giving her attention to the story, and now listened along with him for something else in the night.
The weaver stood up and reconnoitered their little campground.
“The animal is gone,” he said. “I did not tie it well enough. In fact, I did not tie it at all.”
“Do not worry,” his wife said. “Now we have one less mouth to feed.”
In the distance more barking.
“Is that the donkey?” his wife said.
“A jackal,” the jar-maker said.
“Will the fire be enough to keep it away?”
“It will have to be,” the jar-maker said.
“Papa?” Zainab said from where she lay.
“Yes, the story, I know.” Again, he cleared his throat. And he knelt back down near her, and talked on, until the girl had fallen asleep, his wife sagged against his shoulder, and the fire had dwindled to a few swirls of sparks that whirled about now and then in the light breeze.
He eased his wife onto the ground and lay down next to her, settling into an old and familiar comfort, despite the roughness of their bed and the fear in his mind. Here, where the late stars gradually asserted themselves in the sky, burning brighter and brighter as the fire diminished, he saw patterns he had not noticed before while living in the city, shapes and forms, also, though the law of God forbade such things as these. An animal head. A hunter’s arm, holding a bow. A belt holding at the waist of a figure so large it stretched across a quarter of the night sky. But, oh, God was so strong, all-powerful, it was blasphemy to make any figure because figures suggested the possibility of grasping an awareness of God’s face and being. And he grew ashamed, and then worried, and then repentant, and then disturbed, and then angry, and then calmed himself by taking out from his bag the small stone with the old markings and turning it over and over in his hands as he recited a prayer he knew, calming and calming himself with its repetition until he fell asleep.
He awoke at the bark of a jackal. The fire had died. Stars flickered brightly high above but gave no heat. An insect made a chirring noise nearby. In the marsh waters a fish, or snake, splashed like a stone hitting the water. Did fish sleep at night? The jar-maker wondered at the thought. His wife and children lay as quietly as creatures in the grave. Ay! Who wants thoughts such as that? They were merely sleeping, and, with God’s help, he would save them. Perhaps he did not pray as often as he should, putting so much time and care into his work as he did. But he never did anything against God. No, no, no. And if he was not free, why, then how could any man say he was truly free, because all men belonged to God? The sheik, for whom he had labored, also belonged to a Master, as did all the citizens, free and slave, in the town. Each of us has his own degree of enslavement, and all of us ultimately call ourselves the creatures of God.
His wife sat up.
“What is it?” she