The Haj - Leon Uris [153]
7
I am Ishmael,
You laugh and you say,
Who is this stupid little peasant boy?
But before your laughter consumes you ... remember ...
I have been to Eden
I have seen glory
That you in all your years
And in all your wisdom
Will never know
It is frightfully quiet
Nothing living moves
Except a drop of morning dew
And a snake slithering from its nest
To bask in the warming rays
Still, so still, so very still
But you are never alone
The night creatures, the bats and owls
Have bid us farewell
And overhead
The griffon vulture, the buzzard
The kite and the serpent eagle
Assume their circling patrols
Gliding on waves of rising simmering air
Then ... careen ... screech ... snatch
The unsuspecting hare or skink
As the morning chill gives way
To a relentless legion of devouring heat
I go to our springs
That gush cold, clean sweet water
And I see the parade of little foxes
And wild asses and goats
And the haughty ibex
Devour the stuff joyously
We are always boxed in
By the jackal and hyena
Who cringe us with their bloodthirsty cackles and howls
I retreat
A gazelle flits by more quickly than a shooting star
Even in the blaze of noon
When everything must surely be dead
I am not alone
The gecko, the lizard and the chameleon
Have become my good friends
I speak to them by name
As they clean our cave of centipedes
I have seen the midday horizon beyond Jordan
Suddenly blacken
As a low and distant hum thickens to a roar
And a solid wall of locusts
Storm like avenging armies
Over the sea
And bash themselves on the mountain rock
You are never alone
At evening I climb very high from the cave
To a ledge that is my ledge
From here I can see Mount Nebo
Over the Dead Sea
That place where Moses gazed to the Promised Land
Then died ...
The dull sky brightens
The water turns an eerie azure
And purple flows in veins through the barren mountains
And they all fuse together
In a violence of sudden color
That is a hymn to the dying sun
It is darker than dark now
And every night
The clarity of ten trillion stars
Unfettered by human lights
Display themselves tauntingly
Asking questions that men can only speculate
Some nights I count a hundred comets
Hurling themselves from infinity to infinity
It is now that I am eternal as they
I am the desert
I am the Bedouin
Do you still think I am a stupid little peasant boy?
Well, you will never see my cave or my ledge
But remember
The greatest of ancient men knew of my cave
And sat on my ledge
And watched the shower of stars
What treasures did the Essenes hide deeply in my cave?
What defeated Hebrew rebels fleeing Rome came upon it?
I sit on the very throne that King David sat
When he fled from Saul
I sit where Jesus sat
When he went into the wilderness
I know of things you will never know
And when I am remanded to paradise
Surely Allah will allow me to return to this cave and this ledge
Forever ...
We Arabs are an infinitely patient people. Add that to a natural lack of ambition and we had a combination of circumstances that made our living in a cave a rather pleasant experience. At least it was that way in the beginning. We had a stock of staples that would last for months and firewood, water, and small animals and birds to augment our diet.
There were certain routine chores of gathering wood, hunting, standing guard, and a daily trip to the springs. We built a series of descending dams of stones. When one would fill, it would overflow into a lower one and that into another lower one. The trapped water would eventually end up in a large cistern that was carved from solid rock and could hold water indefinitely.
For the most part, we were deliciously idle. We would all often retire to our individual ledges, perches, or private niches when the midday heat made work impossible and simply stare at the sea and the desert for hours.
I got to know my brothers better. Kamal would always harbor some hatred for me for having taken his natural place in the family order. But he was limited in both the resources and the courage to