In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees

by Jeff Talarigo

  Our food rations have been cut noticeably and it has been nearly a week since they have washed us. Several times the gazelle has taken me up on my offer of him sleeping under the tree—with less food his tiny frame, having lost its natural insulation, becomes colder. Although I have said nothing, there is an odor, not yet entirely unpleasant, on him. I am certain that I too have an ever-growing odor about me, but there is no reason to remind one, particularly a friend, of what he already knows.

  Tonight, however, I feel the coursing of a little energy, both in myself and in the zoo, for we have been told that tomorrow several groups of school children will be visiting us. Never have I imagined it would be the case, but I do look forward to the children’s candy-sticky fingers through my wool, the cry of their voices, even the agitating tickle of their hands near my ears has a slight appeal to it. And now, without the parrots, and the zebra back to being a donkey, I will, once again, be more of an attraction.

  I sleep very little on this night. It is not the anticipation of the children coming to the zoo that makes me restless, rather it is the scouring of fighter jets, fiery tails spitting out their ass-ends, and the bombs they launch, although striking other parts of the Gaza Strip, still clatter the cages in the zoo. I remain under the tree and cover my eyes with my front hooves, but this does little to help, in fact, it just makes it more uncomfortable for me. I would like to hurry over to the gazelle, but I feel safer under the cover of the tree.

  Not until very late in the night does the bombing stop and I drift into an eddying sleep. Soon, that is also shattered when the call to dawn prayers splinters the calm, but this is not the normal call to prayers from atop the minaret, one that rarely awakens me, but rather a warning. The voice of the muezzin shouts to the city that the soldiers and tanks have amassed at the border.

  I scurry over to the gazelle, nodding to the donkey, who has not been the same in the head since being struck that night. The gazelle doesn’t see me, as he is busy digging a ditch.

  “Some night,” he says, without turning around.

  “Yes,” I am surprised that he knows I am behind him.

  “What are you digging?”

  He stops and comes over to me. I give myself a good shaking and the gazelle begins to pick through my wool, removing, with his mouth, as best he can, the leaves or twigs that have become matted in there during the night. I envy his thin, shiny coat and how easy it is to keep clean. He pauses and sniffs the air.

  “Do you smell that?”

  “I can smell smoke in the distance.”

  “Yes, and it has a chemical odor to it.”

  The gazelle heads over toward the gate and I trail. He turns and walks back to where we just were and back again to the gate; each time we shorten the trip until we are pacing, almost walking in tight circles. We stop at the gate and look across the way and see the peacock with its beak poking through the bars—a face of gloom. His colorful feathers are closed, making him an ordinary creature. Off to the right, the monkeys squat quietly on rocks. One hangs by his tail from a tree limb.

  “Even the consummate entertainers are subdued today,” says the donkey, who has been moved back to the petting zoo with us.

  The three of us return to the ditch the gazelle was making.

  “It feels like those cold, foggy mornings here in Gaza when the cages and fences seem much closer to us than normal. When the cages are cold and you can feel the coldness even without touching it.”

  We look, collectively, to the brightening sky as though it holds in it the answers to the day ahead. And maybe it does: high clouds have etched their designs above us and there are some lower clouds as well, but these are darker and swell like soft scabs, and it is these, the man-made clouds, which scream much more of the days ahead than those that nature has given to us.

  And the children do not come to visit on this morning. Or on the next. As I, the donkey and the gazelle lie down for the night, in the ditches we have dug, waiting for another night of bombings, I can’t imagine there will be any children visiting us tomorrow or on the many tomorrows that number the calendars.

  “What’s that noise?” I ask of the clanking that grows closer.

  “Tanks; the ground invasion must have begun. Stay in the ditch.”

  I do as the gazelle says, but my curiosity keeps my eyes just above the lip of the ditch. I notice that the gazelle, and the donkey, are peeking as well. And before I see the tank, I hear and feel its crunching feet crumbling through the pathways of the zoo. I see the fence to our pen trampled beneath the tank, like a biscuit in the mouth of a camel. The tank stops, pirouettes, and fires into the cage housing the birds. Peacocks. Doves. Herons. Pigeons. Ostriches. None of us breathe in the ditches. We wait for a call from the birds, but the only sound is the passing of the tanks and the skulking boots of the soldiers.

  “Do you think they will come in here?”

  “I hope not. Besides, what would they want with the three of us?”

  “What did they want with a cage full of dead birds?” I ask.

  “Maybe nothing more than to show that they could do it.”

  In the glow of the burning fires I see coming toward us a lion and he runs full sprint then a single shot castrates the night and the lion crumbles hard, a throaty grunt or growl pierces the zoo and it is over. My eyes tear and I cannot be sure if the gazelle and donkey are also crying or if it is just my eyes that make it appear as such. My nose begins to run profusely and my throat is scoured with heat. The gazelle crawls into my ditch and tells me to cover my face with his body and he does the same against me.

  “Tear gas,” he squeals.

  My face is buried deep into his bony flanks and his in mine and we don’t move and I wonder whether we will be next for the animal-thirsty soldiers. A quiet has detained the zoo. Perhaps the soldiers have moved along. Still I keep my face buried into the belly of the gazelle.

  Night is the time for bombing and it begins again. Immediately I can tell that it is closer than on the previous nights. One bomb strikes so close that we are lifted from the ditches. When I peek, I see a fire has erupted just beyond our pen and in its glower I see that the tree, under which I have spent nearly every night of the past seven months, has lost its leaves. The first time I was shorn, the nakedness I felt, comes to mind, and this, I think, is what the tree must now feel. I look to the gazelle and he is looking at me. From the corner of my eye a glimmer, whiter even than the beautiful underbelly of my friend, illuminates the sky. Thinking it is only from the fire, I try to ignore it, but its brightness harasses me. I turn toward the magnificent light and watch it drift toward us.

  Those summer nights, back in the Sinai, I think. How a group of us sheep, if the gate was left open by mistake, would sneak into the grazing field and watch the dashing of the stars across the coal-black cheeks of the sky. They seemed so close, until tonight that is, when these late December stars parachute out of the sky, so slowly, as if they are taking their time, moseying, in order for us to savor their beauty. Near us, they drop. Their glow softens as they nestle on the ground; some have become like leaves in the tree. Before tonight, I used to imagine stars being cold, but now I see that they still hold the heat from their long, long journeys. Silently they continue to drop, silhouetting a minaret to the east, the monkey cages, the long-necked giraffe that is still leaning against the fence.

  Without warning, the donkey leaps out of the ditch.

  “Something is burning me!” he yells as he runs.

  I chase after the donkey, which is in a panic and darting in circles before falling to the ground and rubbing his side in the dirt.

  “What is it?”

  “Something is burning me.”

  “Turn over and let me see.”

  When he does, the donkey again begins to squeal and rolls back onto his side and rubs viciously into the ground.

  “Let me have a look. Just quickly.”

  When he turns over and exposes his injured side, I see immediately a glow, mu
ch like the stars we watched fall only minutes ago, around which oozes greenish pus.

  “It is one of the stars that is burning you. Let me try and remove it.”

  I put my mouth close to the wound, all the while the donkey squirms.

  “Hold still. I can’t get at it with you moving.”

  “I’m trying, but it is burning me.”

  I bite at the small glowing ember and leap back as it brands my tongue. I poke at it with my hoof, but it doesn’t come out, as though it is embedded in there. I try to pinch it between my two front hooves and that doesn’t help.

  “I can’t get at it,” I say, my mouth already forming a blister. “Let’s go back to the ditch before the soldiers see us.”

  We hurry along; in the ditch, the gazelle is wheezing from the tear gas.

  “It is eating away my insides,” the gazelle whispers.

  The bombing has let up and I haven’t seen or heard the soldiers or the tanks for some time now. Fires still flicker, but the stars no longer fall. The donkey is curled in upon himself, as if trying to smother the buried star.

  “I’ll go for help.”

  The gazelle turns his head, but doesn’t open his eyes.

  “Be careful, the soldiers are still out there.”

  “I will be back soon.”

  I reach out my hoof and am about to touch the donkey, but stop, afraid that I will cause him more pain. My left hoof remains poised above him for a moment before I place it on the ground and it leads me out of the ditch. I head toward the flattened gate, trying not to look at the dead lion. My throat and lungs still burn. I need a long drink of water.

  Outside the pen, not paying attention, I slip on a cluster of feathers. One of them, a peacock feather, is stuck to the bottom of my hoof. I try to shake it off, but it won’t come loose. I go to the wall and scrape against it until the feather has fallen. I come to the monkey cage, hoping that their human-like hands can help me with the donkey, but it is quiet; only a crackling fire from a work shed utters a sound. I see nothing inside.

  “Are you okay?”

  Nothing. I look down; what I at first think is a branch turns out to be a tail of a monkey. Back against a rock I see two monkeys embracing each other in a death hug; one has his mouth open in a hideous final scream. From somewhere in the zoo comes a shrill, almost like that of the peacocks during mating season, but, no, that is not possible. Once more, the shrill. I don’t know what to do.

  I must get the gazelle and donkey out of here. I see the giraffe’s gangly legs splayed, that long, rubbery tongue hanging lifelessly from his mouth. I stare at this miracle of the Gaza Zoo, somehow brought in through those same tunnels through which I barely fit.

  Not paying attention, I nearly step in the bird feathers again. I begin to trot, and as I round the corner, my pen comes into sight and I see a small fire in the distance. I step over the broken gate and head toward the ditch. As I get closer, the fire is a little larger. Faster I move and before I arrive at the ditch, I know what the fire is that chants softly in the night.

  Above the donkey I stand. His body burns, not angry flames, but blue-green fingers, which are respectful, almost. I begin to kick dirt atop the donkey, to smother the flames as much as to bury him. The gazelle crawls out of the ditch and weakly helps me. I listen, but there is nothing to hear. Could it be that we are the last living animals in the zoo? When finished, I pause, not in prayer, for what good is prayer in all this madness? And even if I did believe in something beyond this place, way out there, somewhere deep in that black void from where those stars dropped, would I want to go to such a place, where such vengeful stars litter the earth with their poison?

  I step away from the donkey and a flame pokes out of the ground. A little more dirt I shovel atop it, but another finger is born. And another. Another, until a tiny sacristy has appeared. I turn to my friend and we take one last look at the pen and we walk away, along the paths, past the animals in this zoo, all, like the both of us, from a distant land, caged within the cage of Gaza itself.

  On the tank-crumbled paths we continue, where, not that many days ago, children ran and stopped and laughed and forgot, for a little while, their lives; adults did so as well, I imagine. We pass silent cages. As we near the entrance, we stop. The both of us need a rest; our lungs have been weakened by the tear gas. I lean against a cage and wait until the tightness in my lungs and throat subsides.

  “Are you okay to move on?”

  The gazelle nods, but doesn’t speak.

  We take only a couple of steps before a voice halts us.

  “Hey, sheep.”

  I turn to the voice. There is a broken birdcage on the ground, and not until I hear the voice again do I see the dirty pigeon in the back corner of it.

  “Can you help me?”

  The cage is ajar and I wonder why the bird doesn’t let himself out.

  “The door is open.”

  “My wing, this one here.” He motions with his beak to his right wing. “It was injured when the cage fell.”

  I look at the pigeon’s feet, which, unlike many of the pigeons I have seen in my years, are in good condition.

  “Why don’t you just walk out of the cage?”

  “What’s a bird that cannot fly? Especially me, for I am no ordinary pigeon. I come from a long linage of carrier pigeons.”

  Everyone has a story, I think. I go to the cage and lay flat on my belly. The pigeon stares at me.

  “Are you going to get on or not?”

  The pigeon leaves the cage and hops onto my back. I stand and go in the direction of the entrance and, leaning against the gate, there is a man. Closer, I see it is the warden, one of the men who tied my legs together and placed me in the zoo, all those many months ago. Farid, his name, the one who also painted me.

  Puddled beneath him, a sticky mess of blood. When he hears me, he looks up and chuckles, bringing a grimace to his face. Toward the open gate I look, then back at him. With great pain he tilts his head toward the gate and says: “Go on, little sheep. You are free; I am the warden of the free.”

  I thank Farid, but I doubt he understands me. Turning toward the gate I see the gazelle twenty yards ahead and running. I want to shout for him to wait, but don’t, thinking that I will catch up to him later. Against my neck I feel a pecking and I twist my head and look at the pigeon and he fidgets and pokes at his back.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  He doesn’t answer, but then lets out a long, mournful high-pitched coo. At first, although I know it isn’t true, I think it is one of the many wailing ambulances. I turn to the pigeon and see a small flame licking at his back. Surprising me, he begins to flap his wings, even the one he says is injured. Then he is airborne and both wings are afire now and the more he flaps, the more he fans the flames. I watch, mesmerized, as the pigeon climbs as high as the telephone pole, then, the only thing left in the sky is a puff of smoke where, seconds before, the pigeon was. I gaze at the cloud of smoke, as though I have just watched the performance of a sadistic magician, and I wonder if the pigeon was ever on my back at all.

  Through the broken gate I look out into the city. Nowhere do I see the gazelle. You are alone, I think, and I step through the threshold of the entrance, now an exit.

  Border Shearing (Epilogue)

  For now, the missiles have stopped. Hassan and I step into the dark, the dark of war, the dark of childhood nightmares. Off in the distance, over by the sea, billows of smoke have been spewing into the sky after the bombing of the sewage treatment plant forty-eight hours ago. Our excrement pours unabated into the water—our sea, their sea; it doesn’t matter. The waves bow and crash as they have always done, but now the tide races upon the shore, recedes, filling its soul with our filth.

  Hassan and I leave the clinic where we have taken shelter. We walk past the silhouetted cages; enough of the city is burning to give us some light. The first cage we pass is that of the monkeys; Hassan takes the keys from his belt and opens the lock. We ste
p inside a mass grave. Together we pass birds, a horse, a camel, the only zebra in Gaza. On and on, the litany continues. After coming upon the petting zoo, Hassan puts his arm on my shoulder.

  “We need to somehow dispose of them.”

  I look at him as though he is an idiot. I say nothing.

  “Shafiq?”

  “Yes. Of course, that is what we must do.”

  Now, more than any time in my life, what I need is to be alone. The darkness no longer frightens me, nor does the animal graveyard.

  “Go and get the wheelbarrow and you can begin at the west end and I will gather the animals at the east end. Bring them to the front of the clinic.”

  “What will we do with them?”

  “We’ll have to burn them. There is no other way.”

  We hurry back toward the clinic. Hassan stops and gets the wheelbarrow from the shed and returns to where we have just come from. I enter the monkey cage. I don’t know where to begin. So much joy they brought the children, no, all of us here in Gaza. There was always laughter around this part of the zoo. That is why we placed the monkeys near the front, where people could enter with laughter and take a little of it back with them, whether to the city or Jabaliya or all the way to Khan Yunis, embrace that joy for an hour or a day or allow it to nestle into their nighttime dreams.

  I go around to the back of the cage and slide to the ground behind the rocks where the monkeys chased one another, caught the peanuts tossed to them, performed their magic on the people. I bury my face into my filthy jacket and tears choke me and they won’t come all the way out, they are just trapped there gathering until they are like a hundred little hands all trying to strangle me; I don’t attempt to fight them off. I welcome them, in fact. And it is like this for I don’t know how long. Any love that I have is also trapped between my head and heart, coagulating into a sticky lump along with hope and hatred and sadness and love. I can neither swallow nor throw them up. But then, and I don’t know how it happens, a scream from somewhere inside me erupts—a forty-year scream—and it is long and mournful and goes on and on until everything is out and the only feeling that is a part of me is numbness, if that is a feeling at all.