Wolves of the Crescent Moon

by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed

  “Do you know me?” snapped the woman.

  “No,” he replied stupidly, “I don’t know you, but…”

  “Well, go help yourself, then,” she interrupted, “before you help other people.”

  He withdrew, defeated, and noticed that the passengers scattered around the few seats in the waiting room were sizing him up, pondering his shabby clothes and the shmagh tied around his face as if it were part of his anatomy. That woman was the last thing he needed. “I won’t go back to my seat,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll go straight to the ticket counter, and when the clerk asks me where I’m going, I’ll tell him I’m going to Hell.”

  The Secret of the Sad Singing

  THE WAITING ROOM STARTED TO YIELD to darkness and tranquillity, having rid itself of the throng of passengers who had minutes before gathered at the door of the bus, then boarded and departed. Still, there were new passengers arriving through the main entrance all the time, while others, who had taken their places in the hall earlier on, had laid their heads on their bags and were immersed in deep, dreamy sleep.

  Turad stood in the middle of the waiting room, slowly deciphering the names of the cities and the numbers of the buses on the huge electronic signboard. He could not find Hell among them. His breathing faltered and his footsteps became heavy, as it occurred to him that Hell accosted him on all sides and surrounded him wherever he went: Is there a worse Hell than this, Turad? Will you remain a fugitive wherever you are? He turned his stooping frame to the seat where he had been sitting but found an old man had taken his place. Next to him was a little girl cradling a bottle of Coca-Cola in her hand. She had taken off her shoes and socks and placed them on the table next to the glass of tea that Turad had left there moments before. As soon as the old man saw him, he shifted nervously in his seat as if to apologize. Turad motioned to him to stay where he was. He did not need to sit there. He picked up the glass of cold tea and was about to move away when the old man called to him. Turad turned to see the gentleman waving a green file, which he hadn’t noticed when he had been sitting there a little while ago: “You’ve forgotten your file.” Turad took it, concealing the unease that fluttered between his slightly bulging eyes, so as not to offend the old man by denying his connection to the file. He accepted it cautiously, as he had the abandoned glass of tea. The owner of the glass of tea must have been reading the file before they announced the departure of his bus, and he had hurried off to make sure he got a window seat, leaving the tea and forgetting the file. Turad thought to himself that it would help him pass the time on the long boring journey through the night.

  Outside the bus station, on the sidewalk wet with drizzle, Turad stood and contemplated the dark sky, which seemed so close he reached out to touch its textured surface. When the sky comes that close to someone does it mean his end is near, and a cloud that looks like a riding camel will spirit him away? Suddenly two young men walked past him with their bags slung over their shoulders. They were laughing loudly, and he immediately turned toward them, but they walked on, paying him no attention. He placed the green file under his arm, and with his free hand checked that his shmagh was well wrapped around his face. He always felt extremely annoyed with anyone who laughed too loudly; it reminded him of the unbearable humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the young men at the ministry. Damn! What am I supposed to do about this missing ear? Wherever I go and however far I travel I will always meet people, and they will discover my secret even if I do keep this shmagh wrapped around my head.

  A neon sign shining opposite the entrance to the station caught his attention. He crossed the road toward the small snack bar nestled under the flashing sign and ordered a chicken shawerma without pickles. As the Turkish shawerma man sharpened his long knife, Turad gazed at his clean, finely defined ear, which glowed red in the light and heat of the flames. The Turkish shawerma man swaggered proudly, showing off his beautiful ear as he carved tender slices from the huge cone-shaped column of chicken wrapped around the spit, piled them up with his spoon, added some fries, and spread a dollop of mayonnaise on the bread. His other ear glowed with every jolt of his body, thanks to the strong light of the halogen lamp that was positioned just above his head and the pile of chicken. And all the time the Turk was singing a sad song in a language Turad could not understand; he just kept staring at that captivating left ear as he wondered about the secret of the sad singing. How on earth could someone who possessed such a wonderfully perfect ear be sad? Wasn’t it enough that he could walk down the street and hold his head up high, without having to hide his face in a shmagh or a ghutra or a kufiyya, and no one dare be sarcastic or make fun of him? True enough, his hair was thinning slightly around the temples, but baldness is a distinguishing feature of mature men. Men in their forties and even some in their thirties are prone to baldness, and women don’t find anything wrong with that. But who in the world suffers from a missing ear except me? It’s true that I explain to everyone who discovers the matter of this accursed ear that it’s a deformity I’ve suffered since birth. It’s true that some have consoled me with the fact that there are other people in the world with missing ears, either as a result of deformity from birth or war wounds. But what caused you to lose your ear, Turad? Aaah, if only you’d been in some courageous war and it had been blown off…not just your ear but your head, too.

  Turad took the shawerma, wrapped in paper, and paid the Turk three one-riyal notes that had become covered in sweat as he held them in his palm. He stood on the sidewalk by the corner of the snack bar. There were no seats or tables inside or outside. The place was so small that there was room for only the shawerma grill and a small counter with trays containing scrambled egg, liver, kidney, and deep-fried falafel arranged in a row behind a glass screen. Flies roamed freely over the food, or landed audaciously on the Turk’s shiny red ear, and he shooed them away every couple of moments with his bare arm while his hand gripped the sharp knife.

  Turad unwrapped the paper from the top of the shawerma as a police car raced past with sirens wailing. Its grim blue light slapped the sides of the street, Turad’s face, and the Turkish shawerma man’s ear. Turad cursed as he bit into the shawerma: Who are the crazy bastards after now? Are they going to arrest a thief? Then what? Will they pluck his ear off like you pick a flower? Or will they chop off the hand he stole with? Or will they throw him in some cell where clean water, fresh air, and people will never reach him?

  After two bites of the shawerma, Turad’s thick mustache was covered in mayonnaise. He wiped it with the back of his hand, and his eyes followed the knife of the Turkish shawerma man as it whistled through the air like the sword of a hardened and courageous warrior. It made him wonder whether he should grab the knife and cut off the arrogant Turk’s ear. But then, he thought to himself, what would I do with it? Plant it where my missing ear once was? Then I’d have two ears, one dark and one red. Good Lord, son of Khazna! Would that put an end to your tragedy? Of course it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t change a thing. What would you do with that red ear, then? I’d throw it to the dogs or the wolves.

  A black cat walked past, stopped, and meowed as it rubbed its body against Turad’s leg. He tore a piece of chicken from the shawerma, as if he were ripping off the Turk’s ear, and threw it to the cat. It swallowed the morsel and then walked around him again, meowing continuously, until finally it sat in front of him on the sidewalk, leaving him under no illusion that it would stop staring at him as long as he was devouring the shawerma. He threw it what was left in his hand and walked off along the sidewalk, cursing all the cats in the city. Does the damn thing want me to cut off my only ear and throw that to it? He remembered the guys in the ministry. They had likened him to a Dutch artist named van Gogh who had cut off his ear and given it to the woman he loved. And you, Turad, you dog, would willingly give your only ear to a stray black cat.

  He darted out into the road without looking, and a speeding car almost ran him over. The brakes screeched, the horn blared, and the driv
er cursed and spat, but Turad didn’t turn to look at him. He just hurried onto the sidewalk, the shmagh wrapped tightly around his face, gripping his old olive green overcoat and the green file. When he reached the other side of the road he noticed that the spray of rainwater thrown up by the car’s tires had splashed the bottom of his thobe.

  He turned into the bus station, shuffling along in his wet muddy shoes. But this time, instead of heading for the ticket counter or the signboard with the names of the towns and bus numbers, he found himself walking to the end of the waiting room near the toilets, where he sat down far from the other passengers and people waiting. He slouched in the seat and raised his head toward the ceiling. Having eaten, and feeling the warmth and security of the waiting room, he was overcome by a sudden drowsiness. Without straightening himself up he turned to one side and was shocked to see a huge mural that took up two-thirds of the wall. He tried to explore the details of the painting. At the bottom were thick undulating lines that looked like waves on the ocean, or sand dunes. Perhaps because the colors ranged from brown to light and dark yellow to orange, they resembled sand dunes more than anything else. In the center of the picture he could see abstract figures walking in a line that appeared to be a caravan of she-camels. Above them, an orange sun was setting. On the right side of the picture a man—whose features could not be clearly discerned—was walking and dragging a stick behind him as if he were drawing lines with it in the sand. To the far left were three dogs or wolves. They were more likely wolves, because their muzzles were raised toward the horizon.

  As soon as Turad’s eyes fell on what looked like wolves, he shut them tight. “Damn,” he muttered, then thought to himself, Where did those wolves come from? What stupid artist painted this picture and put howling wolves in it? Could it be the one those fools in the ministry said looked like me, the Dutchman van Gogh? No way! Someone like him who lived in Holland would paint only trees and fields and flowers. He wouldn’t have anything to do with deserts, camels, and wolves. I wonder if he really cut off his ear and gave it to his lover, gave it to a woman, a mere woman? God! Is there a woman anywhere who deserves one of us to cut off a body part and give it to her, especially an ear? You idiot, van Gogh! You cut off your beloved ear that allows you to hold your head high and not be ashamed. You willingly cut it off and sent it to a woman. You must be mad. True, I cut off my ear like you, or to be more precise I lost it one night, but not for a woman. Never! Even if I had three ears, not one, or even two like the rest of mankind, I would never offer one to a woman, whoever that woman was.

  A woman bordering on plump emerged from the ladies’ toilets nearby. As she walked past him the two eyes peering from behind her black veil cast him a glance. She looked like the woman he had tried to help earlier, before she had cursed him and chased him away. It was indeed the very same woman; he recognized the tender white hand that his own hand had grazed when he had tried to take the handle of her heavy suitcase. He watched her pass, but his mind was elsewhere as his eyes focused on her huge posterior. In fact, the face of Tawfiq the Slave had appeared to him, glistening with a flood of tears. It was the first time Turad had seen him cry as Tawfiq bemoaned the fate that had plucked him out of the Sudan and cast him forth upon the high seas for so many days that he thought he would never again set foot on dry land.

  The first time I saw him was in the tea and coffee room at the ministry. At first I thought he was either an idiot or a mute, for he never answered anyone who spoke to him or joked with him. He simply responded to the demands of the staff and made the morning and afternoon tea. Even so, he showed me how to prepare coffee with cloves, and tea with mint, ginger, and cinnamon. Then he taught me how to make the tea with sage that the director liked, and how to arrange the coffee and tea tray by placing, for example, the glass of tea on a small glass saucer with a lump of sugar and a small gold spoon on the edge; he showed me how to carry the tray in my left hand while my right hand lifted the glass and set it down on the table in the director’s office; and he told me how to interpret the director’s gestures and facial expressions when he was engrossed in conversation with his guests. Amm Tawfiq, as they called him, taught me the secrets of the trade. He even warned me not to fall into the trap of reacting to the sarcasm of the staff, or of getting worked up about their jokes and pranks, otherwise they’ll enjoy making fun of you when they’ve nothing better to do. That’s what he told me, but I didn’t take his words seriously, and I became a plaything for the guys. In the end I was obliged to escape. Yes, it was escape and defeat.

  Silence was Amm Tawfiq’s approach, and there was wisdom in his silence. His face was stern, never laughing, not even smiling. I used to wonder if he could laugh or smile with anyone when he left the ministry building. Did he cry when he was alone? Did he carry a secret deep inside himself that he could not reveal to anybody? I asked myself these questions when I first got to know him. I used to watch his face as he prepared the coffee and tea. He had a plump, round face full of old pockmarks. But despite that he had two intact ears, broad and flat, that looked like the ears of an elephant. He took great pains to keep his beard clean, and every two days he removed any white hairs that had sprouted. The hairs in his mustache he left, although he trimmed it; his thick lips always seemed cracked and swollen. On his head he wore a white ghutra that had turned a miserable yellow, and underneath it a skullcap with gold guineas embroidered around the rim that covered the frizzy hair on his temples.

  The Journey of Eternal Torment

  “SIXTY YEARS AGO, OR MORE, I WAS IN the village of Umm Hibab. I was eight years old at the time. The village was more or less in the center of the Sudan. There weren’t many huts in it, and I lived in one of them with an old man and his wife. I had lost my mother after she ran away from her master, Ahmad al-Hajj Abu Bakr. One night the slave traders came and burned down all the huts. I managed to escape toward Shindi and Barbar in the north, but my uncle Fadlallah Adam, and his wife, Bakhita Uthman, were taken away. We were asleep when we heard the screaming. I jumped through the door and saw the hut of Idris al-Sayyid, the cripple, engulfed in flames. His wife, al-Sabr Zayn, was trying to drag him out. He was screaming at her. I didn’t know if he was screaming from the fire that was burning his head and clothes, or because he wanted her to leave him to die. Before I disappeared into the jungle I saw al-Sabr Zayn running around her burning hut. She was like a human torch running around the hut screaming, after her hair had caught fire. Can you believe it, Turad, even now, after sixty years or more I can still hear her screams before I sleep?”

  “So where did you escape to?” asked Turad.

  Amm Tawfiq gestured to me to be patient, stood up, and moved sluggishly across the room to the stove. The tea had been boiling for a long time. He took off the wooden shelf two glasses with the Kraft cheese label still stuck on them, washed them, and poured tea into each one, taking care to lift the old brass teapot high into the air so that he could enjoy the steam rising from the stream of poured tea.

  “I, my friend, I went into the jungle. I’d walk through the bush by night and sleep by day so I wouldn’t fall into the hands of the slave traders. The country was awash with traders in human beings, and the tribes that dealt in slaves were everywhere: the Kababish in the region of al-Bitana, the Ta’ayasha in Kurdufan, the Ruzaiqat and Musairiya in Bahr al-Ghazal, and the Rashayda in Port Sudan and Sawaken. The slave traders were crawling over every inch of the Sudan. Anyway, after a few days I reached al-Hasahisa. I stayed there for more than a month. I got to know a lot of people, mostly runaways. Some were branded on their backs or necks. We were just like animals, living off grass and vermin. Hunger began to take its toll, until we fell into the trap.”

  “How?”

  Amm Tawfiq stood up, walked two steps over to the window, and pulled it shut. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “Riyadh nights are terrible in November. Now, you were asking me about the trap. Listen, my friend, it was a pleasant time, I mean, the weather was mild, like the daytime now, a
nd there was a lovely breeze. There we were, a bunch of people who couldn’t find anything to eat, and suddenly the breeze carried to us a wonderful aroma, a sweet smell, the smell of delicious cooking. We stood up and set off in a long line toward the smell. The farther we walked the stronger the smell grew. It went up our nostrils and made us dizzy. We wound our way between the tree trunks, and if a clump of bushes or a thicket of trees got in our way, we didn’t go around it for fear of losing the smell but rather climbed straight over it and trampled the thorns with our bare feet. Eventually, in the distance we saw a fire surrounded by small stones on every side. We couldn’t see the spit because the smoke was too thick and the wind was blowing it in our direction. The smell was driving us wild. We were just about to rush toward the fire when one of the older and more mature members of the group signaled to us to stop. He said the fire might belong to the slave traders or some similar armed band. Someone else said, ‘Why don’t we send one of us to investigate. If they catch him that’ll be only one and the rest of us can escape.’ Everyone said to him, ‘You go and have a look!’ but he refused. Then we all agreed to pounce together. If we didn’t find anybody we’d steal the food and run, and if the owners of the food attacked us we’d stand and fight together. So we charged all at once and ran up to the fire where the skewers were grilling, and stopped. There was no one there. Then just as we were about to grab the food, we were surrounded by masked men. Some were carrying rifles; others had chains and ropes over their shoulders. One from our group, a young man named Bakhit, launched himself at two of their men. He was well built and powerful, and he sent them flying, but before he could reach the trees one of them picked up his rifle and took aim. A bullet whistled through the air and thudded into Bakhit’s back. He fell onto his face and lay there silent as a stone. We all stood where we were, unable to utter a word. Some fell to their knees in fear. The men carrying the ropes rushed forward and began to tie our hands, while those carrying rifles continued to point them at us. Imagine what they were cooking? The bastards had put lumps of fat on the skewers and placed them on the fire. See how they tricked us, Turad? With fat and gristle roasting on the fire. They couldn’t even be bothered to trick us with real meat.”