MIHYAN IBN KHALAF
The Flood of Death, the Flood of Birth
What should a lonely person like me do when he cries?
I’ve never left the mud house. How could any man in his right mind break one of his children into pieces? And the mud houses are my children! This is why I’ve lived between walls of mud, breathing air that has the same scent I’ve been accustomed to since the time when I was born. It’s a peculiar scent. I remember it in moments of joy and sadness, and in moments of longing. I remember it when I’m thirsty, and when my thirst is quenched. Sometimes I’ll be at the meetinghouse surrounded by people, when suddenly that same scent comes to me. It comes to me, and I remember the loved ones I lost. I remember the graves. I remember my father, my mother, my wife, and my son.
When I’m alone I say to myself, “Mihyan will die right here, in this house, far from all positions of leadership. Suddenly death will sweep him away, and he’ll disappear without leaving any sign that he ever lived! When I’m alone, I also remember the flood. I say: The flood is stronger than death, because it’s taken nine-tenths of me, and left death only one-tenth. Death comes alone. As for the flood, it brings a thousand deaths with it. The flood has also given something to me, whereas death gives nothing. The flood is stronger. The flood is stronger.
Fifteen years have passed like the moments of a dream, and the flood still terrifies me. That night after the flood when the two full moons disappeared, the full moon in the sky, and the full moon in my spirit—my own flesh and blood—an era began. When I think back on that late afternoon, I wonder: Didn’t Mihyan recognize the signs of grief, death, and the flood in the abnormal color that filled the sky? A strange color somewhere between gold and ashes and the color of mud filled the sky, and the atmosphere turned oppressive. There was no cloud above the village. However, the shrouded distance, where the ravine springs up, was hazy. My insides shrank and trembled. If I had heard the summons of the mud and believed the scent, if I hadn’t left my house, death would have found no way to my heart. That day Badr’s mother had said, “You’re going to take Badr and me out for a picnic in the ravine! Agreed?” Badr giggled with delight. He was four years old. He was so happy he did a little jig and hopped into my lap. “Are we going to have a cookout?” he asked. I said yes by giving him a kiss. The summons inside me said, “The sky augurs a disaster, Mihyan. Believe the mud’s scent. Don’t go.” But I didn’t listen. How could I refuse Badr a single request?
We got everything ready and went down together. We chose the spot carefully and spread out the picnic mat, a shiny mat that was also the color of mud. We had cut up the meat in the house and mixed it with local spices. All we had left to do was to arrange the pieces of meat on skewers made from palm branches. Badr’s mother took care of this job while I dug a hole to serve as a grilling pit and walled it in with rocks. Badr liked fires built inside holes. He also liked the way I walled the hole in with rocks from the ravine.
He sat there looking at me intently for a long time, paying no attention to the fire. A couple of tears glistened in his eyes. I figured it was on account of the heat from the fire. I chuckled, saying, “Get away from the fire before it dries up all the tears in your eyes!” But he didn’t take his eyes off me. He kept staring until the two tears trickled down his face. I left the fire and went over to give him a hug. With his head on my chest, I asked him, “What’s wrong? In just a few minutes you’ll have some yummy shish kebab.” With my right hand I stroked his soft hair. He moved his head away and kept staring at me. He heard his mother calling him to come help her get the skewers ready. He ran over to his mother and began handing her the pieces of meat so that she could arrange them on the skewers. She handed me the first skewers, and I placed them over the rocks. The juices started dripping into the pit, making that distinctive hissing sound, and the familiar, happy aroma began wafting through the air. Badr’s mother recounted portions of biographies she had memorized as a child, and which she was accustomed to recounting to me and Badr whenever we had a cookout. Meanwhile, the sky hadn’t lost that peculiar hue.
The red twilight glow was supposed to disappear, heralding the arrival of the village’s night. However, the sky had retained its strange hue. If someone who had been sleeping all day had woken up just then, he would have thought it was late afternoon, not after sunset.
The first skewer went to Badr—he was used to getting that one—the second went to his mother, and the third to me. Then we went on taking turns in the same order. After we’d finished, we went wandering through the ravine. Badr and his mother headed for the springhead, while I headed to the mouth of the river. It was in a recess in the cliff wall that sloped up toward the bank leading to the village. When I reached the recess, the rocks and boulders enticed me to climb them, so I took off my sandals and began climbing. Badr called to me from a distance. I turned and he waved to me with both hands.
Suddenly, a flutter went up from the sparrows as though it were morning and they were about to set off. Some of them actually began flying away, which made me uneasy. Then a wind blew up and put out the fire in its hole. Now I was even more uneasy. How could the wind have broken through the wall of rocks? I heard the voices of people from the village. Walad Sulaymi stood at the edge of the ravine and called out, “Anybody who’s spending the evening in the ravine, the flood is coming! Run for your lives!”
If it had been anybody other than Walad Sulaymi, I would have been sure it was a joke. But Walad Sulaymi would never joke about a thing like this. Without pausing to think, I started hurrying back down to rescue Badr and his mother. The rocks made gashes in my flesh. Hot blood flowed from my feet. I kept going down, but the flood arrived before I did, carrying with it everything in its path. It carried away loose branches and trees, livestock and people. All of a sudden, a hand drew me backward. It pulled on me as I resisted, trying to go down to rescue my family, to whom I’d lost the way in the midst of the flood. I tried to struggle loose from the hand’s grip, but it pulled me back forcefully. Another hand contributed by hitting me on the head. Then everything faded out.
I woke up and found myself in Walad Sulaymi’s house. He stood over my head, with Zahir Bakhit nearby.
“Where is Badr?” I asked. “Where is his mother?”
No one answered.
“What time is it now?” I continued.
“It’s noon,” Walad Sulaymi replied.
“And the flood . . . was it a dream?”
“No. It was real. It’s noon on the day after the flood.”
“Where is Badr? Where is his mother?”
“I don’t know. Everything the flood took goes back to the sea. We’re still searching for everyone who’s missing.”
I got up, but Zahir Bakhit took hold of me, saying, “Calm down. You have many wounds.”
“My son! My wife!” I cried. “I want them now, here! Let me look for them!”
“Stop,” Zahir replied. “Don’t cause yourself more wounds.”
I broke loose from his grip and left the house. I headed for the ravine, which was the last place we had parted. The ravine was filled with silt. The rocks were barely visible. As I descended, I sank into the silt, which clung to the bandages that covered my feet. My progress began to slow. I came to the place where we had had the cookout. There wasn’t a trace of anything. A hand grasped my shoulder. I turned. It was Zahir Bakhit.
He said, “Be patient. The search is still going on.”
“Have they found anyone alive?” I asked.
He shook his head. I fell onto his chest and started to cry. On the day when the sky frowned, had it known things would end this way? And Badr, had he sensed that his departure was imminent? I had heard of sages who, knowing that their end was near, had prepared everything. Why had he stared at me for so long? Why had he cried? Why had he raised his hands in farewell? He had known. He had known. Some little children are sages. Some little children are inspired. Badr had been inspired, a sage who had sensed death before it ar
rived.
The search went on for days. The sole survivor was a three-year-old black boy who had been found inside a large copper-colored washbasin. No one knew the boy’s family. Were they from another village? Had they drowned in the flood? No one had any answer to these questions. A delegation was sent around to all the villages that overlooked the ravine. Still, no one was able to determine where he had come from, so they brought him back to the village. They met repeatedly to discuss the matter of who would raise the boy, and there was plenty of disagreement.
Walad Sulaymi came and said to me, “You’re the only one who’s lost his entire family. You’re all alone now. Why don’t you be the one to get the reward for taking care of this orphan?” I agreed. Then another argument broke out over what name we would choose for him, and whose family he would be associated with.
To start with, no blacks lived in the village any more. They had all moved to distant villages at various times, and we knew nothing about them. Even so, the village had never stopped discriminating between whites and blacks. As far as the people of the village were concerned, a black person was nothing but a slave who was attached to a particular tribe. Such a person wasn’t allowed to bear the tribe’s name, although he could be identified as one of its servants. So, for example, someone who was a slave of the Sharbus tribe would be referred to as “So-and-so, son of So-and-so, servant of the tribe of Sharbus.” He would not, like the free members of the tribe, be called “So-and-so, son of So-and-so the Sharbusite.” The pledge I had made to sponsor and care for the child raised an issue the village had never faced before. I wouldn’t be allowed to identify him as my own son, since he was black and I was white. At the same time, he couldn’t be referred to as “So-and-so, servant of the tribe of Mihyan,” since he wasn’t the tribe’s servant. Nor did we know anything about his origins. Hence, his situation was different from that of a slave. Rather, he was a child being raised in Mihyan’s household.
We decided to solve the problem of the name first. Hamid Dahana suggested the name Noah, inspired by the story of the Prophet Noah’s having been delivered from the great flood of old. Muhammad ibn Sa‘id objected, saying, “This is a little boy who came along in a washbasin. That makes him more like Moses, upon him be peace. So, let’s call him Moses.”
Walad Sulaymi wasted no time in telling them off. “Anybody who sees how keen you are on the names of the prophets will think you read the Qur’an so often that it’s fallen apart in your hands! I’ve told you a thousand times not to use the Qur’an and its stories as a front for your impiety and negligence. We’re not going to name him either Noah or Moses!”
Now Suhayl—who at that time hadn’t yet been dubbed “al-Jamra al-Khabitha” (Anthrax)—jumped in, saying, “Let’s name him Khadim. That’s right: Khadim Walad al-Sayl—‘Khadim, Son of the Flood.’ That will solve both problems. This name indicates his origin, and at the same time it associates him with the flood, even though we don’t know where it brought him from, which relieves us of having to associate him with Mihyan’s tribe.”
Everyone cheered and agreed to the suggestion. “All right,” I said, “if that makes you feel better. From now on his name will be Khadim Walad al-Sayl.”
I have to admit, I didn’t really like the name. I only agreed to it in order to solve the problem of associating this little boy with our village. For the first several years after this event I called him “Boy,” so as not to hurt his feelings. As a matter of fact, though, he loved his name, and got used to hearing it from the people of the village.
After searching continuously for several days, I’d found no trace of either Badr or his mother. Convinced that they were lost to me, I performed the prayer that’s recited for the dead in absentia, and held a wake. Ever since then, Khadim has lived with me. The women of the village took turns looking after him in my house until he could depend on himself. But from the time of that flood, Mihyan hasn’t been himself. The flood took two spirits from him, and gave him only one. The flood is stronger. The flood is stronger. I haven’t eaten shish kebab in the ravine since they left me.
Khadim has gotten bigger and started sleeping by himself in his own room. As for Mihyan, he’s gotten older, and his loneliness has gotten bigger.
KHADIM WALAD AL-SAYL
Son of All, Beloved of No One
The flood is my father and my mother. Life has caused me to be everyone’s son. It has also caused me to have no cherished companion.
When I was a little boy I discovered that I was different from all the children around me. At first I considered myself better than them all, since I thought my master Mihyan was my real father. I also considered all the women of the village to be my mothers. Every day I was taken care of by a different mother. Sometimes I would play with children that I thought were my brothers and sisters. The next day I would find myself playing with other brothers and sisters. Did I ever call Mihyan “Baba” or “Father”? I don’t remember doing so. All I remember is that from the time I was small they taught me to call him “Master.” When I was four years old I began to understand that my real father wasn’t present in the village, and that my mother wasn’t there either. When I realized this, I began to feel inferior to the other children.
I was always thinking: “Who is my father?” I asked my master, Mihyan, and he said, “Your father is the flood.” After that I started asking him constantly, “Where has my father gone?” He would reply, “He’s around somewhere. He’ll come to see you one of these days.”
Then I would say to him, “And my mother?”
“She’ll come with him,” he would answer.
As time passed I came to know well who I was: Khadim Walad al-Sayl. That’s who I was! The one whose body had been handled by the largest number of women in the history of the village. Women from every household in the village had poured water over me or massaged my body from head to toe—with the exception of the women of Mihyan’s house! Every household in the village knew the details of my taut frame. Whenever I look at any of those women now, I hang my head in embarrassment. I remember how, when I was a little boy, I would lie naked waiting for my bath, and I remember the hands that passed over my body, dousing it with water over and over. If for a moment I got the urge to be wild and the imp inside me woke up, the hands would tighten up. At that moment a hand might get revenge on me by pretending to rub my eyes with water when, in fact, it was deliberately getting soap in them so that I couldn’t see, and so that the temporary blindness would distract me from my fit of insubordination.
Once, after seeing how unruly I was, Ayda’s mother said to me, “Woe to us! Woe to the hands that have fed and clothed you! Are you really a little boy? If you are, then what will you be like when you’re a young man?”
After saying this, she avoided sending Ayda to play with me. However, this just made me fonder of the girl. I also remember how much I loved Khalid Bakhit’s mother, since she was the only one who didn’t use soap on my face. When she gave me a bath, my eyes would feel comfortable, and I always waited impatiently for her turn to come around.
I remember a lot from my childhood. Parts of it were pleasant, and parts of it were frightening. But of all the childhood scenes I remember, the one that frightened me the most was the time when, just as Ayda and I—both of us five years old—were locked in an embrace, the door flew open and her mother came charging in, framed by the light that emanated from outside the room. She yanked Ayda away from me, saying, “What are you doing to my daughter, you nigger?”
Raising her hand, she brought it down hard on my right cheek. It was the first time I had ever been slapped. It stung badly, and tears streamed out of all of our eyes. Then she sent me out of the house.
That night, the sky filled with clouds and there was a heavy rain. Then the flood came. It was overwhelming and tempestuous, and it uprooted many trees. Many people fled their homes. My master Mihyan took me to the mosque. Not understanding what was happening, I asked him, “What is this?”
�
�The flood,” he said.
Amazed, I replied, “So is this my father?”
Mihyan gave me a bewildered look. A few minutes later he said, “Yes, it is.”
He wasn’t the way I’d imagined him to be. Still, I was delighted with him, because he had frightened everyone. I was so delighted, I forgot to ask, “Where is my mother?”
Two days later the flood receded. Ayda’s mother didn’t tell anyone about the embrace or the slap. Looking back on it now, I suspect she understood the flood’s message, and believed that it had come to avenge me.
After that event I started to miss my father and dreamed about him frequently. When I felt sad at night, I would call out to him and imagine that he was coming to see me. He didn’t visit us all the time. So once I asked my master Mihyan, “When it doesn’t rain, where does my father go?”
He said to me, “He lives in the distant mountains.”
When I was eight years old, our neighbor Ibrahim passed away, leaving three young children. They used to cry a lot. When I saw this, I was afraid. I went and asked my master Mihyan, “Will my father die, too?”
“No,” he said. “The flood doesn’t die. It will stay alive as long as the earth is alive.”
I was happy to know that my father wouldn’t die. After that I started liking to go down into the ravine whenever there was a full moon. I would contemplate the rocks and look out at the distant mountains. I would lie down with my eyes on the sky and say, “My father might come to see me.”
Before the night was over, lots of people passed by where I lay and shouted, “Khadim! Walad al-Sayl! Don’t sleep at the bottom of a ravine even if it’s full of gold.”
But I just closed my eyes and didn’t say a word.
Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs Page 7