by Manai, Yamen
He knew his preventive strategy was far from a permanent solution.
“God only knows how many nests there are. It’d be presumptuous to say we’d gotten all of them. But that’s no reason to sit on our hands.”
He took a deep breath and pulled on his mule’s bridle. “Come on, Staka, we’ve got work to do.”
The week had gone by without incident.
Sidi’s Nawi backup showed up every morning and kept watch while he scoured the neighboring fields and scrubland without finding any trace of the beasts. When he had announced to the villagers his intention to explore the mountain, Douda took him aside.
“Don’t go!” he implored.
“But I have to.”
“It’s dangerous,” Douda choked out, weighed down by his secret.
Sidi remembered his confrontation with the hornets and the aggressiveness they had displayed in battle, but that didn’t dissuade him. He folded his double ladder and loaded it in his cart next to his tools and his white beekeeper suit.
“Don’t worry.”
He was ready.
Flushing out a nest of hornets in the mountains might have been an uncertain undertaking, but only if one didn’t take into account the plan he had devised to improve his chances. A simple plan he hoped would be effective. He was well aware that hornets can pick up the smell of honey from miles in all directions. He had what he needed to lure them.
As he left the steppe, he heard, as he had during his last expedition, the sounds of engines and tires coming up the road. The convoy of border guards finally came into view, and once again it matched its speed to his donkey’s. He still felt like he was seeing children in shrouds.
He recognized the young soldiers, and the same one addressed him. This time, he said, “Morning, sir!”
Now that’s much better, thought Sidi.
“Morning,” he responded.
“You going hunting?” asked the captain.
“I’m not going poaching, if that’s what you mean.”
“Be careful out there!”
“You too.”
The cars raced off.
The heat was scorching on this April day, flooding the air with the smell of pine and brush and panicking the insects whizzing by.
Staka was pulling the small cart behind his master. Sidi was leading the way, paying attention to the smallest detail, drawing on each of his senses, ears perked, scanning his surroundings. He entered the heart of the mountain and began to ascend. As they advanced, he spotted footprints on recently treaded paths. A few cigarette butts crushed in food cans.
“Bipeds,” he muttered, bowing to the evidence.
He had a bad feeling and soon changed direction.
“Let’s head right, Staka.”
The donkey followed without protest, Sidi still leading the way, taking side paths. When he judged they were at the right height, he looked for a spot to set up his trap and chose a small shaded plateau.
“Stop, little Staka!”
The donkey stopped, flicking its ears. Sidi unloaded his tools and changed his clothes. He took his red kabbus off his head and removed his blue polyester jacket, slipped on his white beekeeper suit, and displayed his bait: a small wooden crate in which he had placed an entire honeycomb frame, taken from one of his hives. He set it down, wide open.
“Come on out. I’m waiting . . .”
But very quickly other insects picked up the smell of honey. He immediately chased them away. “Shoo! This isn’t for you.”
The wait was trying. Minutes turned into hours during which he battled every insect around except the ones he had come to track. His reason and intuition finally persuaded him that he was on the wrong side of the mountain, so he put away the honeycomb, loaded the cart, and summoned his partner.
“Come on, Staka, let’s go.”
The small cortege moved on.
By dusk, Sidi was on the right side of the mountain, facing the border and the western wind. After a day beneath the cloak of the hot sun, the forest was groggy and sweating. Both he and the donkey were exhausted. In order to make it here, they’d had to abandon the cart and climb up the mountain slope like a pair of bucks.
He set up camp, gave Staka some water, and made a bed for himself. He took off his shoes and knelt before the fire. Suffering from a headache and a few knots in his back, he massaged his head, pressing on his temples, and stretched his muscles and old bones. It had been a wearing week, but this wasn’t the moment to succumb to the consequences.
Before falling asleep under the stars, he ate his fill and drank until he was quenched, did his ablutions, and prayed to God, the God of bees, the God of books, to guide him, to grant him luck, and to place His strength and His wisdom in his hands.
The next morning, he woke before sunrise and warmed up his limbs.
From his new position on the border side, Sidi took out his bait and began the same wait as the day before.
This time, it wasn’t tiresome but brief and fruitful. Midmorning, he heard a distinctive, bloodcurdling sound. A heavy buzzing that filled the air and drowned out everything else.
“They’re here!”
Two giant hornets emerged from the brush flying in formation. They confidently moved into the open, sure of their supremacy, cleaving the air with their enormous wings like two bomber planes. Once level with the crate, they carried out a stationary observation flight before beginning landing maneuvers. They settled on the edge of the box.
“Yes, good, now mark it,” said Sidi, observing them attentively.
The two hornets strutted along the walls of the lure, shaking their bodies, spreading their scent. Once their dance was complete, as they were preparing to take off, Sidi caught the larger one by its wings while its partner resumed flight.
“Freeze!”
Like the last time, the captive hornet displayed tremendous aggressiveness. Trapped between Sidi’s fingers, it nervously twitched its hairy feet, clicked its jaws over and over, and frenetically extended and retracted its stinger.
“Calm down. I’ll let you go in a second.”
He took a thin red ribbon from his pocket, which he carefully tied around the creature’s giant abdomen.
“Here. Now I can track you.”
Before releasing his captive, Sidi cleaned the crate and closed it, then addressed his donkey: “Don’t move, I’ll be back.”
He opened his fingers and the hornet immediately flew away, trailing the little ribbon in the sky. Sidi ran after, not letting it out of his sight, marking the trees with a piece of chalk along the way.
“Lead me, but not too quick! I don’t have the legs of a twenty-year-old anymore.”
Handicapped by the marker encumbering its wings, the insect lost speed and stopped several times on the way to its nest. Yet Sidi, hustling behind, still had trouble keeping up.
A breathless half hour of scrambling over hedges and vines later, the hunt ended at the foot of a dizzying pine tree some fifty feet high. The insect labored to reach the top, where a nest was suspended like a giant chandelier. Sidi watched the creature ascend and let out a long whistle. “Well, well. There must be thousands of hornets in that thing! And this double ladder isn’t going to do much to help me get to them.”
He judged the nest’s diameter to be around three feet and guessed at its weight. Dislodging the hornets’ home and bringing it down would be a perilous undertaking. Aware that he was at the limit of what a man even in his prime could accomplish, Sidi, bold, didn’t waver.
“It’s still within your reach, old man.”
And if failure proved to be fatal, then His will be done. Sidi believed that every man had his hour, and he wasn’t going to wait for his beneath the shade of an olive tree. He was acting for the sake of his girls, whatever the cost. He returned to his camp and came back with his tools and Staka as backup.
He spent the rest of the day observing his adversaries, analyzing their behavior, and studying how their fortress was situated. It was p
erfectly sealed, with a single hatch on the lower half allowing access.
He circled the pine tree several times like a mountaineer nervous about an ascent. He carefully studied its winding trunk, dense and solid foliage, and large crown hanging like a parasol.
“You see, Staka, I’m going to do something that you’ve never seen me do because in all my life, I’ve never done it. I’m going to climb this tree to that massive nest. I’m going to dislodge it and bring it back down. If I fall and break my neck, I’m counting on you to carry my body back to the house and organize a lovely funeral.”
Staka flicked his ears and gazed at his master cheerfully, as if saying, “Don’t worry about that and get climbing already!”
“Going after the nest by day would be suicide, but so would climbing this tree at night,” he admitted.
“What are you planning to do?”
“Two birds, one stone,” responded Sidi. “At dawn, I’ll have some visibility and they’ll still be asleep. That’s when we’ll surprise them.”
He camped out a few feet away, biding his time, finishing his preparations. He diluted clay powder in water and worked the mixture until he had a soft dough.
Clay from clay, he thought. Knead, knead. Knead what you were and what you will be. Knead, knead, while you’re still alive!
Under a star-studded dome, as the crescent moon got lost behind a few clouds, Sidi too felt lost, asking himself the ultimate question, for which he found no answer.
Was he a just man?
He eventually fell asleep, and his sleep was soothed by a lovely dream in which his girls were happy, dancing in hives transformed into celebrating villages. Not even the appearance of a hornet scout with a hideous beard could ruin the fun. No panic! Maestro, more music, please! The bees, joyful as ever, jumped on the intruder, formed a ball, and merged their bodies to form a blazing red ruby of unrivaled brightness, so hot it reduced the unwanted guest to ashes.
But though this dream remained lodged in his unconscious, he gained no lessons from it. He gained nothing but a restful sleep, necessary for his plans for the following day.
32
Dawn was making its entrance in the sky and between the mosque minarets, illuminating beautiful Venus and prompting the muezzins to call out, when Sidi began to pray in his fashion. He slipped on his white suit and beekeeper helmet, wrapped a sheet and a rope around one shoulder, and hung the heavy bag of clay dough around his neck. He wedged his donkey against the tree and hoisted himself onto his back to climb the first branches. He nearly tumbled down a few times, unstable on the wet bark. Below his feet, Staka was watching as if to encourage him to continue the ascent.
Everything was silent. There was just his internal voice urging him to give it his all. He had no idea that lower down the mountain, a commander was urging Toumi and the members of his katiba to destroy the patrol of border guards.
“My brothers! Today is a blessed day. Today we declare war on this state that refuses the law of God and observes its colonial borders. This morning, we will put our training and our plan into action. We will attack this patrol of apostates! We will exterminate every last one of them! God is great!”
“God is great!”
“God is great!”
Inside his protective armor, Sidi advanced slowly and reached the top of the tree without waking the monsters. Face-to-face with their nest, he was even more impressed by its size and outer bark: a true fortress for a huge colony.
“Nice work. But this masterpiece must have a flaw.”
He examined the surface and found the breach.
Holding his breath, he grabbed a handful of clay from his bag and took a step, but almost fell.
“Careful! You’re almost there.”
He tried again, and this time he was able to coordinate his movements and plug the hatch. He took a breath. Then he added another layer of clay.
“This’ll stop you coming out . . .”
The next stage was more delicate.
Perched on his high branch, Sidi placed his hands on the hornet fortress. Its walls were sturdy, which reassured him. He grabbed the nest and, in one motion, detached it. It was heavy, much heavier than expected. He nearly dropped it and for a second imagined the nest tumbling to the ground, breaking, and being his ruin. But he resisted. He resisted the weight of his years and the weight of the hornets and managed to stay upright, leaning against the trunk, as he wedged his troubling prize in front of him, in the thick foliage. Despite his precarious balance, he immediately began coating the entire nest with the clay mixture to better contain the calamity it held.
When he was done, he wrapped the nest in the sheet, then wound the rope around it like a net, which he lowered very, very gently.
His back and arms were rudely tested, but his will and steady hands didn’t weaken.
Once the nest was on the ground, a breathless Sidi released the rope.
“Now it’s my turn to return to dry land,” he panted.
Coming down from such a tree was as dangerous as climbing it, and he was starting this final stage with only the meager energy he had remaining. He gauged the void beneath his unsteady feet and after taking a large breath, he began.
“Come what may!”
Alternating between a kind of rappel and crisscrossing side steps, he finally set his feet on the hard soil, where he collapsed. Staka came over and sniffed him.
“Bravo, old friend! You see, I didn’t have to organize your funeral after all.”
His master remained motionless for a second, recovering from his efforts.
But Sidi was unable to savor his victory.
Sitting across from the clay-engulfed nest, which looked more like a tomb, he wondered what he would do with it now that he’d doomed its inhabitants.
Would he let his enemies suffocate to death?
Though basic logic was telling him to do just that, the idea struck him as indefensible. Who did he take himself for, thinking he could eradicate them just like that?
What was his true role in this story? Beekeeper or God?
His whole life, he had restricted himself to the former, a role in which he found fulfillment. He had raised his girls, breeding into them the behaviors necessary for their survival and defense. If only he could teach them the ardent swarm. If only he was a queen capable of imparting that precious secret.
But only a queen had that gift. He was merely a man, and his duty was to destroy. A nest of hornets, but living hornets. Was duty the only solution?
The question was sparking a crisis of conscience.
“Oh God, help me be good!”
He removed his helmet and attached it to his belt. He placed the nest on Staka’s back, stabilizing it with ropes, then pulled on the bridle. He had the whole way back to debate with his inner voices and resolve his moral dilemma.
“Come on, Staka. We’re going home. I don’t have the strength to get the cart. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
They descended the side of the mountain so they could reach the road and return to Nawa.
They were only a few feet above the path that ran along the border when Sidi noticed the three patrol jeeps below him. They were conducting their morning round in single file, and as he watched, they leaned into a narrow turn. He continued to descend the slope, deep in thought, when an extraordinary noise interrupted his rumination, causing Staka to rear back far enough to knock Sidi to the ground. He stood up, a little dazed, and witnessed the scene.
The border guards had just entered an ambush.
A powerful homemade bomb exploded under the last jeep in the convoy. Catapulted into the air, gas tank ablaze, the vehicle landed roof down and transformed into a ball of fire.
Taken by surprise, the two jeeps in the lead braked abruptly. That’s when the katiba lying in wait burst out, in front and from the sides, screaming that God is great. Fifteen men began emptying their Kalashnikovs and tossing grenades into the first two jeeps blocked by the third one in flames.
&
nbsp; The narrowness of the bend rendered all maneuvers to escape or reverse hopeless, and the vehicles collided.
The attackers continued to close their trap. They slowly advanced on the patrol, firing steadily. Automatic weapons spit out death at high speed. Bullets riddled windows and sheet metal and ripped apart flesh and bones. The ground was drenched in crimson.
After several minutes, the shooting stopped and the monsters’ voices thundered out.
“Victory! Victory!”
“God is great!”
“God is great!”
Sidi could hear them from where he was standing. But what God were they worshipping?
Toumi and his comrades opened the battered car doors. Inside, a bloodbath of mutilated bodies. All the patrol guards had been hit by several large-caliber shots, and a few had been dismembered. Some had taken a bullet in the head and died instantly. Others were taking their final breaths on the jeep seats.
The commander took out a camera and turned it on.
“Slit every one of their throats!” he ordered.
Inside the frame, Toumi and the others laid the bodies stomach down, stood behind them, holding their victims by the scalp, and took out long knives.
Toumi had ended up with a dying guard. When he took him by the hair, he glimpsed a bloodied face and eyes flirting with death. He was like Toumi, in the spring of life, barely a reed, soon to be cut. Toumi shut his eyes. He didn’t want to look at his victim. He pressed the knife against his throat.
“Abu Bouk, now you’re going to unfurl the black flag behind them. Wait for me to give the order. I don’t have you all in the frame,” said the commander, walking back a few steps. He was focused on his screen, and once he was satisfied with the shot, he began to record. “Today, on this day of glory, thanks to God, we . . .”
But he was interrupted by a figure that appeared in the background. He looked up and saw an old man dressed in white coming toward them, carrying a large jar made of clay.
“Where’d he come from?” he said before shouting, “Who are you?”
Startled by this improbable presence, everyone froze. Sidi stopped between the jeep in flames and the other vehicles, now metal sieves, amid pools of flesh and blood, here where men were about to slit the throats of other men.