Wolves of the Crescent Moon

by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed

  “After two months Khairiya began to get dizzy spells, and she suffered nausea and constant vomiting. Then her mother noticed how quickly her belly had swollen. At that point the story of Khairiya, the moon, and the underwear spread through the alley. The young girls started to hide their underwear, not just from the moon but from the light as well, and from all eyes, the moon’s, and the people’s, even those of their own families.

  “In a matter of months the story of the quarter of al-Mazlum was on everyone’s lips. Even the old port was awash in it. All the locals and the foreigners had heard the story of Khairiya the perfume-seller’s daughter, and the moon daughter, so named by the people after the child’s father, the moon. Indeed, little Khadija was pale and plump, with a round face just like the moon.

  “Khairiya needed a servant to see to her needs after her mother fell ill with her heart. Her heart had been fragile and trembling, and no sooner did she learn the truth about Khairiya than it weakened and gave out. As for the father, he no longer went out to spend long days in his perfume shop in the center of town.

  “That’s when Amm Abu Yahya spoke to me: ‘Tawfiq, my boy, people are for people and neighbors for one another. Your uncle the perfume-seller is in need. Go and see what he requires.’ So I went to live in the perfume-seller’s house. I used to help Amma Khairiya with everything; she would hold my hand when she got up to go to the bathroom, and I would stay with her for ages in her room on the second floor. The room contained a carved wooden bed with a striped counterpane, and the walls were freshly painted. On the wall opposite the bed there was a picture in a gold frame of my uncle the perfume-seller when he was a young man, and on the wall opposite the door hung the Koranic verse al-Falaq, embroidered in shiny gold letters on black velvet.

  “She did not seem at all bothered by my presence. She would even undo the buttons of her cotton nightgown in front of me, take out her firm white breast, and place her brown nipple in the little one’s mouth. The baby would clutch it tightly while Khairiya looked wistfully through the carved wooden roashan at the light outside.

  “After two full months of service, she hardly even noticed if I entered the room. Then one night I went and stood by her head. She was lost in thought, looking at a black-and-white photograph of a young man with a ghutra neatly arranged on top of his head, sitting with legs crossed on a high reed chair in a local coffee shop. When she saw me she flew into a rage, screaming at me not to creep up on her again or look secretly at her things. I was disturbed and went out of the room; I spent the whole day in the corridor. The next morning she called to me, ‘Tawfiq, come here.’ I went in. Her eyes were swollen and red. She pushed a ten-riyal note into my hand and whispered, ‘Ya Tawfiq, don’t tell anyone about that photo!’ motioning toward the drawer of the bedside cabinet. I nodded my head. It did not occur to me at that point that there might be a link between the photograph and the moon that had smelled her panties with the little red flowers on them. Instead, I shot off to the nearest street market, after I had found out where it was, and, passing the perfume and gold shops, I bought a white ghutra, which I arranged on top of my head like the locals do.

  “After several months Amma Khairiya began to open up to me. She would ask me to keep her company, and to make her green tea or tea with mint from al-Madina. She talked to me at length about her life and her boredom with the house and its four floors, which to her was more like a prison. She also talked about the treasure Abu Yahya al-Halawani had found. She said he used to sell pastries on the sidewalk. ‘Imagine, Ya Tawfiq, this man who owns land and property and buildings used to be a humble pastry-seller; he didn’t even have a shop. When he started off he used to lay out his wares on the sidewalk. Then he bought a wooden cart with wheels, and he put trays on it with glass covers, full of pastries. And now, Ya Tawfiq, after he used to shoo the flies from his pastries, he needs servants to shoo the millions from his face. And you know what? He told everyone it was the treasure he found.’

  “I asked Amma Khairiya about the secret of the treasure. ‘You know how there were people before us,’ she said. ‘I mean, centuries ago, really rich people who had gold and lots of jewels. Whenever they feared that raiders and thieves who used to threaten the country would come and steal their treasure, they went and buried it underground. And when the enemies attacked the country and killed the people, they found nothing worth mentioning, and they did not know that the gold and the treasure were underground. That treasure stayed underground for years, and no one knew where it was. Some local people, when they dug into the ground to build their houses, found the treasure, like Abu Yahya al-Halawani.’

  “He owned one of the new quarters, which he had decided to call Al Halawani Development. That’s all thanks to the treasure he found in bags stamped with the seals of tribes and peoples from long ago. They say that he gathered all the people of the quarter of al-Mazlum and threw three bags and a rusty casket among them, and said that he wanted to prove to them that he had discovered a part of the treasure of Solomon, or Goliath, or the treasure of Bani Hilal. When I was little I thought of running away from the perfume-seller and Abu Yahya and escaping into the desert to look for treasure buried in the sand. I believed the whole story, just like I believed at first that the moon had bedded Khairiya and sowed his seed inside her womb, and it had taken the form of a little girl of overpowering beauty who looked like the moon. Isn’t it natural that she would look like the moon if he were her father? And like the other inhabitants of the quarter of al-Mazlum, I believed that the damn moon had done it after her panties hanging on the clothesline had led him astray. But I discovered the whole game when I found Khairiya hiding the black-and-white photograph of him wearing his carefully arranged ghutra. Sometimes she’d put it under her pillow, sometimes in the drawer of her bedside cabinet. Was that young man the moon? And were we—Jawhar and Anbar and I, and all those who had been snatched before us, and those who would be stolen after us—were we the treasure? The treasure that Abu Yahya had discovered, that made him burn his pastry cart, and his shop in the town center, to buy land and property with the price of us, and undertake new development projects in the country?”

  Prisoners of the Sand

  OUR HEADS, NAHAR’S AND MINE, STUCK out above the sand like two stones in the desert night, like two black stones reflecting the moonlight. Damn moon, who slept with Khairiya, the perfume-seller’s daughter, and who trod on our heads with his light, exposing us to all the wild beasts in the wilderness. Is it your light, Moon, that reveals our predicament in the sand, or is it the smell? That smell, the smell of roasting that led you, Amm Tawfiq, into the trap of the slave traders, the smell of the narcotic that sent your childhood into a haze so they could cut off your organ and the manhood that awaited you. That delicious smell, the scent of a woman’s perfume that blew your father’s mind, Nasir who was found in the street, and deluded your mother, Salha, so she gave him warmth and crazy convulsions in a dark back alley? Is it smell that cost Khairiya, the perfume-seller’s daughter, so dearly, sleeping with the moon after she’d shown him her panties with the little flowers?

  Is it smell—gorgeous, noble, and alluring, with its long intertwining strands like a spider’s web—that trapped them all like flies? Is it smell, too, like a child leading a blind man down a dark road, that led the sightless wolves in the desert silence as they trotted along the Shafallah Trail, hurrying toward the stench of perspiration and fear? Sweat pouring copiously from the scalps of Turad and Nahar, revealing human scent and exposing the hapless prey to starving animals on the prowl?

  What can we do? How do we get out of this one, brother? These were the questions they began to ask after the palpitations of the heart slowed down and their spirits stilled, while the smoldering brand of intellect burst into flames. Is there a solution or a way out? Nothing shone out in their minds, their hands tied fast, buried up to their necks in the heavy red sand. The same sand that they had embraced for so long became, that distant evening, their jailer, paralyzing
their movement, holding them from roaming freely through the wilderness.

  When Turad was alone in the desert, all the creatures were his friends. The sand served as his bed; the dune, the hill, and the plateau knew him well. The caves opened their hearts to him and offered him shelter. The riverbeds and springs watered him and washed his body, the pasture lands and the fresh desert shoots recognized him when he passed. The acacia and the awshaz and the sidr offered him shade. The burning embers of ghada logs and samr roots kept him warm on cold desert nights. Not even the wolves thought to attack him, for they shared his food. Edging up to where he sat, he would throw them pieces of the game he had just hunted, and they would withdraw a little and stand on top of the hill, watching the moon without howling, which was not their habit. It was as if they were standing guard over him against misfortune or wild beasts and desert snakes. They even kept a watchful eye over him when other humans were about.

  After he had battled with Nahar for hours and they were both exhausted, each of them discovered that he was merely engaged in combat with a hardened warrior and courageous fighter, and they decided to become friends, each protecting the other and defending him. From that time forth, Turad changed his relationship with the noble creatures around him. He mocked the sand and insulted the wadis and chopped the awshaz and acacias; he killed the hungry, panting wolves.

  Turad remembered all of this, and the thoughts were like a wild wind raging violently inside his head that sprouted through the sand, the sand that was avenging its dignity, pressing down with all its weight on his body, surrounding him on all sides so that he could not move. Even the shafallah bushes stretched their branches arrogantly and yawned in disdain at Turad, betrayer of the trees, the desert shrubs, and the pasture and the wolves.

  The shafallah bushes could have crawled on their bellies toward him and his friend, stretching out their foliage to conceal their heads from the hyenas, wolves, and snakes. The winds could have stopped driving their scent through the lowlands and over the mountains and hilltops. The sand could have alleviated their plight, shifting its weight from their buried bodies so that they might extricate themselves from its heavy embrace. The wolves, too, could have protected and guarded them as they had done in the past. But none of this happened. All creatures abandoned them, all conspired against them, and against their survival.

  If some caravan or other were to happen along the Shafallah Trail, they thought, would it rescue them or turn away in fear and horror, seeing two heads sticking out of the sand like stones? If they asked the travelers for help, would they turn their backs, having made up their minds that these were two dwellers of the underworld. “Yo, fellow travelers, we are not genies. Come! Pull us out of this sandy grave; free us from its creeping onslaught, which is like the aggression of vipers. Rescue us, or we shall die of starvation, or fright, or fall prey to the animals.”

  As they whispered together, and the sweat dripped over their faces and down their necks in the desert stillness, they heard a long howl in the distance. It was an autumn night, and the winds were blowing, diffusing the smell of human in all four directions—five, in fact, if you included the sky, which during the day would be teeming with hawks and vultures.

  The scent streaked like a snake across the sand, while the howl trembled on the breeze, and gradually drew nearer. As their horror increased, their sweat poured more profusely, and the eager winds transported the mannish smell to the muzzles of the wolves prowling in every corner of the land.

  Then in the distance they spotted a wolf, hurrying through the darkness. He stopped, sniffed the ground with his snout, and stood for a moment before stretching his head into the air. He let out a piercing howl, then hurried toward them. Where are you going, wolf? What battle will you engage in with them? What kind of battle will it be if it isn’t even? Between one free and unconfined, all his weapons at the ready, razor-sharp daggers in his mouth, pointed arrows at his feet, and those imprisoned in the sand, who possess neither their hands nor legs, neither strength nor a stick or club to ward off harm and wolves. Damn you, wolf! What malice do you hide behind your shining eyes? What depravity would make you take on two men stripped of all defense save their screams?

  I remember one time the heavens opened, and Nahar and I took refuge in a cave. We smelled a scent we could not mistake; a wild animal had used the cave. We decided not to run away, but rather to settle the matter in its dwelling, and to stand and fight like men. I took a corner by the entrance, and Nahar took the corner opposite, carrying a sharpened dagger with death glistening on its edges. The place where I was crouching meant that anyone entering would have to pass me first, so I resolved to attack the wolf with my bare hands, and then Nahar would rush in with a thrust from behind. Our fear was that there would be more than one, but the evidence we found indicated that the wolf was alone.

  When the wolf entered, its smell and breath preceded it. It, too, was apprehensive, as if it had smelled human scent. Letting out a piercing scream that resounded around the cave, I leaped upon it and grabbed its snout. It tried to struggle free and flailed its left paw at my shoulder, tearing at my forearm with its claws and leaving lines of blood. Nahar attacked from behind with the speed of lightning and cut open the beast’s belly with his knife. Its intestines poured out, and it fell to the ground, its legs in the air like a bloated corpse.

  Now, Nahar, it’s not the same story. The hands with which I grabbed his muzzle, the repository of his razor-edged daggers, are now tied behind my back deep inside the sand. And so your hand, that bravely brandished the dagger, is also bound with ropes and buried beneath the sand. Nahar, have you ever seen a more desperate and dreadful death than this? For your enemy will display such artistry as he kills you, putting you to death with great deliberation, savoring each mouthful as he devours your face organ by organ, and each time he lunges, you will scream with all the strength your tongue can muster, for its turn is yet to come.

  The Journey of Thorny Dreams

  “I WAS SAD. THE SUN WAS DRAWING ITS golden mantle across the shoulders of the houses in the quarter of al-Mazlum. They had just pushed me into the back of a Ford truck with a pile of furniture and household items: rugs and blankets, and pillows with colorful linen covers. I took one and placed it under my head as we drove along through the darkness. It was stuffed with feathers, and the sharp quills scratched my face. Ah, if only I could put the feathers along my arms and fly. Slowly I would ascend, little by little, until I was a bird in the open sky. I would cross the Red Sea and circle over the Nile. I see it now—the women standing along its banks, washing their pots and pans, scrubbing clothes, and singing. I see the naked children in the river, splashing one another and swimming. Onward I fly and see the forests and jungles, I see the huts of small scattered settlements, and I see the slave drivers mounted on swift horses, some holding sharp spears, others aiming rifles and firing. I see the slave traders marching a herd of slaves to the Shindi market. I see my mother escaping through the bush and her master, Ahmad al-Haj Abu Bakr, as he rapes her again and again. I see the Eritrean man pushing me on my face and shoving his cock up my backside until I almost choke. I see Bakhit trying to escape from the slave traders and the bullet whizzing through the dry forest air and thudding into his back. I was a bird in the sky over Sudan until one of the slave traders pointed his rifle at me. A fearsome bullet came speeding toward me, and I couldn’t avoid it. The white feathers scatter into the sky as they fall off my body, and I plunge to the ground, a lifeless corpse.”

  The Ford jolted along some rough dusty track, heading east. In the back Tawfiq slumbered indifferently, a child who does not know what fate has in store. Frightful dreams and nightmares accompanied him, and the smell of sheesha coming from the old coffee shops outside the town hovered around him. A few days later he found himself in a new and unfamiliar city. He ended up in a huge palace, which differed greatly from the houses with many floors and roashans he had known in the quarter of al-Mazlum. The green expanses and the lu
xuriant trees surrounding the palace were the first things that he noticed. It was these gardens that he was to work in later on as a gardener. But first, for the years of his childhood and adolescence, he worked in the palace as a servant, side by side with a number of slave girls who serviced the many wings. He was allocated to the wing of Amma Madawi, as an assistant to two slave girls, Zahra and Umm Kalthum. Zahra, or Zuhayra, as they always used to call her, was just a few years older than he was. She was black and smooth skinned with protruding breasts, like suppressed anger waiting to be released. Her lips were full and ripe, just ready to pop open like a freshly picked fig. In fact, they did pop open one afternoon in the pantry, after she had called young Tawfiq to help her move some sugar, tea, and coffee into the kitchen. In the commotion of the sacks and chests piled on top of one another, she fell upon his lips and urged him to pluck that ripe fig of hers.