by Chris Dolan
“You sound like your uncle.”
At last Aliyyah stopped. Beside a little fountain, still in working order, the clear water splashing gently into a basin surrounded by miniature stone lions holding up a stone shelf that served as a seat. She sat at one end, leaving space for Haldane.
“And you, Aliyyah. Were you raised here, in this house?”
“I have been to the town,” and she nodded past his shoulder, northwards. “But not much further. The war began when I was little.”
“There is a town?” Haldane surprised himself with the question, and looked behind him. It felt rude, when he should have sympathised with her being a victim of the war.
“A day’s walk away. Although I remember my father driving there when I was very little and it seemed to take only minutes.”
“You’ve been cooped up here all your life?”
“Cooped up?”
He had become so used to Duban’s and Ma’ahaba’s excellent English that it hadn’t occurred to him there would be gaps in their, or Aliyyah’s, knowledge of the language. “Closed in. Confined.”
“I do not feel confined.”
“A young woman like you?”
“The war will end. I have my uncle. And Ma’ahaba. I have many things.”
“Ma’ahaba. She is your mother?”
Aliyyah laughed cheerfully. “I hope you have not asked her that! She is much younger than her sister who was my mother. We feel, Ma’ahaba and I, that we are the sisters now.”
“Then where is your mother?”
She fixed him with her green eyes. “No one knows. We must assume she is dead now. But perhaps when the war is over… She disappeared one day, when I was very little. In the early years of the fighting. There was a skirmish here. Perhaps she was taken, by one side or the other. Or perhaps she was killed that day and her remains spirited away.”
“…a little fountain, the clear water splashing gently into a basin surrounded by miniature stone lions”
“I’m sorry.”
“I am too. But nothing ever goes away completely. No one vanishes into thin air. It’s true, isn’t it, that matter never goes away, it changes, but doesn’t… unmaterialise. Everything there is, all that we see around us, is only there because of what went before. What it grew out of.”
“I suppose. But losing you mother is still hard.”
“I don’t just mean atoms and particles. Where do words go once they are spoken? They vibrate in the air, do they not? And thin out, disperse. All the words ever spoken are all around us now, like the birdsong we’re hearing. Including my mother’s words. The words she spoke to me, though I cannot remember them.”
“It’s a beautiful idea.”
“And perhaps, though we do not know the science of it yet, the same is true of every caress, and every thought.” Aliyyah smiled. “I know what you are thinking, soldier man. Then the same must be true of every insult and blow and hateful thought. Well perhaps that is the arrangement. The covenant.”
“Perhaps it is. I’m not sure what I make of that. But you still have your father? General Deimos? What happened after his wife disappeared?”
“He asked his sister-in-law to return from her studies to help with me. Some years later they married. And very soon after he was called to the capital and has been unable to return much since.”
“It’s a terrible situation.”
“Ma’ahaba has adapted I think. And this is all I know. Or, for the moment at least, want.”
“But you must dream of leaving? Seeing the world, finding friends…”
“Friends and the world lie beyond a curtain of bullets and bombs and hatred. I fear that more than I need them.” She paused. “No, not fear. Or not mostly fear. Life is short. I would rather remain here in peace. I have much to do here.”
“Like what?”
“I have my lessons to complete with Duban. I have songs still to learn, and those I already know to perfect. I understand so little.”
“What does Duban instruct you in?”
“Everything.”
“English? He’s done a good job.”
“We speak, all three of us, some days only in your language, some days in others. Days can go by without uttering a word in my own tongue.”
“What else does Duban teach you?”
“Knowledge, of all kinds. Although I believe that knowledge lies in the soul, like a seed in the soil. A teacher brings light, learning is the flower. But this is boring, Tom.”
“Not at all. I’m fascinated.”
“I’m not,” and he saw under the silk her teasing smile.
“Just as I cannot claim to be a physician nor would I profess to be a teacher.” Duban and Haldane were sitting outside the great chamber, a plate of supper in their hands. “In her words, Aliyyah and I learn about many things together. Knowing one’s own ignorance is the best part of knowledge, Thomas, don’t you agree? Only a fool has found wisdom, the wise seek it.”
The time between being with Aliyyah and being with Duban had somehow evaporated. How she had left him, and how the old man had found him was unclear. The dull ache had returned and the soldier felt tired. All he could remember of the walk back to the house was his blurry vision giving a creamy, faded aspect to the trees and fruits and the ground beneath his feet.
“You say you are a priest, Duban.”
“It is the title you used, I believe. And it seems to… impede you in some way. You know that it derives from an ancient word meaning old man,” Duban threw up his arms and cackled. “In which case I am most certainly a priest!”
“Of what creed?”
“Of the creed of this land, of my people. But in the end all creeds are the same. All those that ponder the Divine and wish to know it.”
“So you and Ma’ahaba and Aliyyah are all religious?”
“The manner in which you say it, Thomas… I detect a displeasure?”
“You shouldn’t. Though I have no religion myself.”
“Of course you do my friend. We all do. No one can wake and negotiate the day without a degree of faith. If only that death will not happen today. The most rational of us ignores on a daily basis the one fact – a fact!” Duban clapped his hands gleefully, “That we know to be immutably true. We will die. This moment or the next.”
“I don’t see how that is religion.”
“It is a problematic word. Let’s talk instead of a set of decisions, of observances, that help guide our steps, and how we read the world around us. Are you, for instance, like Plato believing that the almond tree there is not the real almond tree but its shadow? Or that it vanishes the moment you turn your gaze? Even without knowing it you have taken decisions on the nature of things in order to live.”
“But a priest judges the world according to some higher power.”
“And you do not? Even in the unlikely event that mankind, as a whole, reaches complete understanding of the cosmos, no one man can possess and compute all the necessary information. Therefore you have faith in the teachings of others – those who decipher signs and language and systems beyond your ken – most of them dead now, and mix them with your own experience of the world.”
“They are not the same thing.”
“Are they not?” Duban looked genuinely concerned. “We like to think that we humans are struggling to reach our true destiny. Peace and understanding. Progress. It is a form of redemption, don’t you think, Thomas? An idea that is dear to people like me – and which you have borrowed from people like me.”
“I’m not looking for any redemption, Duban.”
The older man stopped smiling, put his palms together and waited for Haldane to explain, his old eyes shining like a child’s. “But you think, I am sure, that humans are the highest of animals. Take away the divine, and humanity itself departs. All you have done is replace the Mystery with a flattering image of us.”
“By that reckoning, Duban, anyone could defend any madness.”
Duban looked crestfa
llen. “And you, I ask again, do not? Defend your madness. It is you, Captain, who are fighting this war, not I. Beyond these gates, Madness reigns.”
“Half the reason – no, more than half – for this damn war is people believing crazy things.”
“Ah but which ones are crazy? I grant you, terrible things have been done in the name of piety. On the other hand I do not contend that the gun is the fault of science.”
They spoke for a while more, Haldane, as in the memories of the argument with his father, hearing the sounds both men were making but not the words. His own voice sounded confident and calm, as did Duban’s, but where their conversation led them he couldn’t tell.
Recon. The word came back to him as he lay in his bed, the room infused with ambergris or some aroma that reminded him of incense in chapels. His job – in the army not the air force – was recon. Reconnaissance. He knew – though he couldn’t recall any of it now – a lot about weather and terrain. And about equipment, though apparently not radios. Most of his time in the base camp, he was sure, was spent writing reports, communiqués, calculations.
He hadn’t thought they were overly deep into enemy territory the day Michael and… Simon! That was it. The door gunner. Simon, and Mick the pilot. They were laughing about something. It couldn’t be they had flown over this actual house? He had an image in his head of seeing a woman lying in a clearing, sunning herself. Was that what had cheered them up and had them joking and laughing? He was getting things mixed up, surely.
And then there was a noise, not an explosion. More like when a car prangs. Nothing too alarming. Had something gone wrong with the engine? There was no one below that he could remember who could have hit them with bullets or shells. But the engine noise kept changing and their laughter turned to looks of concern, Michael anxiously pushing buttons and pulling levers. At first the ’copter seemed to float upwards. Then it swooped, swirling them about inside, throwing them around in their seats. Haldane thought maybe his safety belt had come undone. There was shouting, a rush of wind as a door opened somewhere. Did Simon jump out? Was he shouting at them to do the same?
And then the plunging. Not just falling but being sucked down. And into darkness, though it must still have been daytime. Not dropping but being pulled, as if some force below, some beast, below even the ground itself, was reaching up and grabbing them, tearing them from the sky.
Haldane’s skin froze as he remembered. And the ache in his neck, from his head being forced back into his seat, returned with a vengeance. He tried to summon up the image he had dreamed of Ma’ahaba taking the reigns and driving them out of their fall and back up into the air, but she would not come. He tried imagining Aliyyah there instead, but the terror of the lurching, the headlong dive, the suction from under the earth, obliterated everything else in his mind. He was shivering on his bed, violently, like a fit, and he thought that, if he should have died then, he was going to now instead. Then there was darkness. Like oil, crude and stinking, devouring, decomposing him, until he was no longer there. Not in his bed, or in the infinite blackness. Just a knowledge that in that nothingness there was the idea of him, somewhere in the wide darkness.
Just before he woke, or as he was waking, the darkness seemed to change. Soft, velvety. Then the smell of pear, pomegranate, and he opened his eyes to his white walls and the window with the single green tree and its crimson blooms.
Aliyyah and Haldane walked the path that led back from the old entrance to the main gate. He saw now that no path had ever been laid in brick or tarmac but simply a dust track that had been stamped and hardened by the traverse of boots and shoes over many many years.
“I heard you singing.”
“Oh, I try and practice far enough away for no one to hear. I am not very good.”
“I’m sure you are. But, yes, it was in the distance so I couldn’t hear well. It sounded charming. What do you sing?”
“Old songs and new songs. Mainly old songs. Since we lost power here I cannot listen to new songs. There is an old gramophone so now I have to learn my songs from there.”
“Songs in your own language? Or would I know any of them?”
Aliyyah stopped for a moment and thought.
“Be happy, relax. Cares eat away at the heart. Abandon this and live in happiness.”
This time she dared to sing a little louder, an energy and decisiveness in her voice. Only a line or two but as she sang her mantilla fell from her mouth and he watched entranced as her lips moved, but only just, her eyes peering into the trees, glistening.
“The sun has gazed upon me. Now dawn has appeared.”
Where before the soldier had thought the young woman bonny he now felt her beauty; it tightened his chest and seemed, suddenly, like a barrier between them. Her voice dropped off and she looked at him and gave him a broad, happy smile, before casually replacing her shawl and walking on.
The path was longer than he remembered and they strolled on far beyond the point he had expected to arrive at the gate. She recited scraps of poems, mostly in her own tongue, and then she insisted that he too must know some songs or rhymes.
“I don’t think it’s my memory,” he laughed, “I’m fairly certain I’m a terrible singer. Poems…?” One came to mind though he didn’t know where he had learned it. “I see her in the dewy flowers, I see her sweet and fair: I hear her in the tuneful birds, I hear her charm the air.”
Aliyyah was delighted. “Did you make that up for me?”
“God, no. I wish. I imagine I’m a worse poet than a singer. It’s an old song, I think, though I can’t remember the tune.”
At points the track became rough and stony and once Aliyyah, wearing only brightly beaded slippers, stumbled and allowed Haldane to steady her, their hands clasping for a moment.
“Why are we walking here?” she asked. “It is the least pretty part of the grounds. Beauty is like goodness, don’t you think, Tom? The nearer we get to the gates the more ugly everything becomes.”
Turning the next bend they arrived at last at the gate itself. “But it’s also beautiful – out there. Those mountains. The… bigness, the openness of it all.”
Aliyyah stared out at the vast landscape beyond the bars of the gate, stopping and standing still.
“Do you think they know they are there?”
“What? The mountains?” Haldane burst out laughing. “I have never heard anyone talk the way you do, Aliyyah. Not even your uncle.”
At the mention of Duban, Aliyyah furrowed her brow. “I should go back. I hate to keep him waiting.” She turned and quickened her step down the narrow lane, Haldane following on.
“What is your lesson this afternoon?”
She did not turn but spoke with her back to him. “A book, I think, he wants to show me. One I’ve never seen before.”
“What kind of a book? Is he training you for something?”
At that she glanced round. “What could he possibly be training me for?”
“I don’t know. But he is instructing you in his beliefs.”
“We talk. We consider. And we read. Yes, I learn from him. And, yes, Duban has a particular wisdom, that stretches back to ancient times, if that is what you mean?”
Arriving at the old porch, which came upon them much sooner than he’d expected, Aliyyah turned to the soldier. He thought she might take a step towards him but she remained still. Instead he advanced and bent his head towards her, the fabric of her veil soft on his skin like a whisper.
That evening, at table, Ma’ahaba sat and let Haldane serve her from a ready-prepared salver of leaves and nuts and spices.
“It seems that Duban has been waylaid this evening, Captain,” and she smiled, “you have been left alone with me.” It registered with him that this was most definitely a family. They shared certain expressions and gestures, and of course their accents were similar, though fainter in Ma’ahaba’s case. “Does that discomfort you?”
“Not at all. Why should it?”
“A fig
hting man like you, unused to female company other than canteen ladies, I imagine.”
“Women are soldiers now too.”
“So I’ve heard. A great woman once said, ‘Give a girl the right shoes and she’ll conquer the world. So now it’s combat boots.’”
“You disapprove, Ma’ahaba?”
“Wasn’t there a woman warrior from your land? One who mustered men for battle? Only everyone then said she was merely the consort of the king, a foolish woman in love.”
“I don’t know the story.”
They ate for a moment in silence. “So how do you find my stepdaughter, Captain?”
“She’s very lovely. But I can’t pretend to understand her.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t try to do that. With anyone.”
“Why doesn’t she dine with us? Is it because I am here? She would normally?”
“No doubt your presence will have a certain influence. Though whether it’s you yourself or just the appearance of someone unexpected is debatable.”
Ma’ahaba leaned forward and smiled. “May I change the subject for a moment? For my own part I’m delighted to have someone new here for a while. But I should point out something a little delicate to you…” She put her hand to her mouth, girlishly. “While you were comatose, Duban nursed you and washed you. The night we changed your bandages we refreshed you again. But that’s a day or two ago now. Forgive me for pointing out… there is by the east side of the house a fountain that serves as a shower. There are several but that is the nearest to your room.” Ma’ahaba laughed. “It is not entirely dislikable, Captain, but even soldierly muskiness should be regulated.”
Embarrassed, Haldane sought out that night the fountain she referred to. Exiting by the door of the great chamber and turning immediately right then right again and behind an old wall he’d thought was the remainder of some old outhouse, there was indeed a taller font than any he had seen before. A basic, rough stone, unadorned like the other springs and bowls and decorations around the gardens. Being dark and concealed behind the old wall he thought it safe to strip and wash thoroughly. The jets of water, however, were clearly designed for display and not for bathing. Most of the water splashed wide of him and only a sharp single stream fell directly on his head. He had no soap and he realised that not only was his hair longer now than army regulation but that his beard had grown. What a disagreeable presence he must be! And though still wincing at Ma’ahaba pointing out his deterioration he found himself laughing at her mocking and teasing remarks, saying she was worried they were running out of sweet-smelling oils for his room.
