by Nahum Megged
I decided to go back to my hut.
Once I finish writing these pages, I will continue my study of the Yarkiti language. They have eight different words to describe various types of shadows, but even though they dream ceaselessly and their dreams serve as a doorway to the fantastic, their language does not have a single word for “dream.” To describe their dreams they use a word whose meaning is “the first light of dawn in the forest” — as if the dream exposes what the second light, the one that immediately follows, conceals.
The time of the great heat began. Clothes stuck to my body with sweat. I understood why the Yarkiti preferred nakedness. It was stifling inside the hut, but whenever the wind snuck its way between the branches the air cooled for a little while, and I could sit on the log that served as my chair and write. I had recently been filled with a great pining for my distant home and family. When they had first heard about my plan to commence this journey they were extremely concerned, but they also understood my need to do it. In order to achieve a different consciousness and identity, I had to follow the way of the shamans and die in my old world before being reborn.
My daughter had already matured into a young woman, perhaps she needed me this very moment. When I looked at Yakura, I sometimes envisioned her, even though my daughter is a few years younger. They each have a mane of black hair and a special look that holds many others in it. My eldest son is watching over her, I suppose. That is what he’d promised when I told him I needed to embark on an especially long expedition into the heart of the forest, to work, remember, and forget. And here they both are, with me, companions in my loneliness.
Nighttime. After a long drought, the rain was falling at last. At first, the dense canopy of the trees prevented the drops from reaching the ground. But soon, the rain grew so heavy the water fell and shattered on the forest floor like the waterfalls at the gates of creation. A clamorous noise, obscuring all others, thundering from every direction. According to Yarkiti belief, the openings through which the first rain comes admit the spirits of the ancient ancestors as well. This is why the joy over the coming of the rain is mixed with fear.
The spirits drift about undisturbed between the huts in which the people cower. The ancient ancestors are kindly spirits, yet everyone was afraid of them. Something strange and mysterious happens when those who belong on the Last Mountain walk among us, there in the place where the water springs are born. The Yarkiti are afraid the dead will return and take the place of the living. It was possible the tribespeople thought the coming of the rain was related to the ceremony in which Yakura had been purified in the river, or the discovery of the clasped hands, and they were afraid the angry rain would also bring the wrath of the snake — the water father — the viper that had been followed to the cryptic stone.
Meanwhile, the rain continued to lash at the earth, and whether I paced about in the darkness of my hut or tossed in my hammock, eyes wide open or shut, I perceived no sign of the image that had haunted me on the previous nights. I lost consciousness momentarily, closed my eyes, and reached the gate of the first light. I saw Yakura there, walking naked among the trees and extending her hands to me. A warrior crashed through the trees, brandishing a spear, and cut off the hands of the girl. Yakura issued a wail that echoed across the universe, while the warrior took her amputated hands, and with resin he scraped from a tree glued the hands to the rock. I ran to try to recover the hands, and on my way past her, stroked Yakura’s head. As I paused, a snake wrapped around my legs, trapping me. I was afraid the resin would harden before I could get to the hands and they would remain there, glued to the rock forever. The snake raised its head from time to time, both an observer and an attacker, and Yakura continued to bleed and the blood gushed from her wrists like waterfalls…
The rain continued its assault on the earth. I decided to extinguish the candle and try to sleep instead of only dreaming. No longer visited by the shadow of the warrior, I might get some much-needed rest.
The downpour continued as Yakura, soaking wet, scurried into my hut. I woke up immediately. With great excitement, the girl told me Xnen had summoned me because something important was happening. I followed her outside, sleep still clinging to my eyes. I knew there must be an emergency, because the Yarkiti believe a dreaming man must never be woken; his shadow might not return from the realms on the other side, close to the first gate.
In a hut illuminated by torchlight, lay a moaning woman. A brief glance told me the reason for the urgency. The woman was in labor, and while the baby struggled to emerge into the world, her condition indicated the child would journey through life motherless.
I rushed to my hut for the first aid kit that I take with me on all my travels. When I returned, I washed the woman’s face and massaged her belly. The baby’s feet were sticking out from between her legs. The danger was clear — it was a breech birth, and the baby could strangle to death before its head left the birth canal. Xnen chanted hymns, danced, and smoked a necklace of leaves containing sun seed. Washed with sweat, he battled the evil Sekura that wanted to transform the baby into a Noneshi. His two young assistants stood next to him, clawed at their throats, struggling with the invisible hands trying to strangle them. Their eyes were clouded and they cried out frantically. One of the helpers suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed to the ground. With the aid of his friend, he got back to his feet and continued with his struggle.
The war continued in both worlds, the visible and the hidden. With the help of Xnen’s wife, I continued to pull the baby from between the mother’s legs. I pressed on the mother’s abdomen and tried to resuscitate her at the same time, wanting to postpone her last journey as long as possible. Her suffering was great, but I did not want to sedate her, so as not to weaken the muscles still pushing the baby. Her young husband stood in the corner and watched us. The cry of a new life suddenly broke through the worry and brought joyous smiles to all our faces. Then Xnen’s wife cut the umbilical cord with a stone knife. The woman screamed in pain. I injected her with a sedative, and Xnen breathed some potent-smelling smoke on her. She relaxed, and a few minutes later embarked on a journey to the mountain of birthing mothers. The ancestors who spoke from Xnen’s throat gave the child the name Storm Born.
A shiver passed through me as I realized how meaningful the events of the night were. The fact that I had been summoned to the hut of the birthing mother to complete the work of the shaman and his helpers indicated that the tribespeople regarded me as a virtuous man who could keep his head in a crisis.
Yakura accompanied me to my hut, and without a word I dropped into my hammock and fell asleep. In my dream, I saw the young mother walking alone on a treeless plain. Black clouds covered the sky, and the sun struggled to push its way through to give its light to the world. On the horizon I saw the mountain still shrouded in shadows. On the mountain, people danced around a god, the lord of the mountain, who waited for the first pilgrim. Smoke drifted from the mountain, and the dancers sniffed sun seed and howled like animals struggling against a predator, knowing they had reached their final moments. When the woman began to climb the mountain, I saw a pair of praying hands embedded in the rock. The mighty and terrible god of the mountain suddenly showed his face, and a great fright gripped me. The god awaiting the birthing mother was white, and his face looked just like mine.
The next morning, they held a funeral ceremony for Oxon, the woman who had died while giving birth. The bonfire, prepared in advance, was not ignited the traditional way, but the Nave way. The eldest of the tribesmen took out the wondrous instrument from its hiding place beneath a pile of branches — a gas lighter, and lit some leaves that had remained dry through the rain. After the fire caught, everyone fed it with moist and dry branches and a stifling smoke was trapped between the trees.
On the body, they placed leaves that delayed decomposition. They painted drawings on it to direct the immaterial element rising with the smoke. The women sat around the
deceased, bewailing the bitter destiny of the young woman turned Noneshi and the little motherless baby, now sleeping in the lap of the wet nurse — the woman who would foster him until he grew to adulthood, or until she herself became a Noneshi. The young husband huddled in the corner, grieving and forlorn, observing the happenings taking place in his own hut like a stranger, as if the disaster had struck someone else. The wailers placed banana bunches around the body, and the hunters left fish and game next to the bonfire, all procured especially for the death ceremony.
Oxon was born in another village, upriver, and her marriage had marked reconciliation between the two settlements. When I had last stayed in the area, not many years ago, it was enough for one of the villagers to accidentally pass through the territory of the rival village for a manhunt to immediately follow. Now the conflict might flare up again, and this time it wouldn’t be fought only with bows and arrows, but with the rifles the Nave had brought with them. Oxon’s family would demand explanations and compensation, and only the shaman with his special gift could make sure the tragedy that had happened during the night would not lead to greater distress. And at the outskirts of the forest, on the borders of tribal territory, the white settlers waited, wanting to conquer the place with its precious trees and the soil to be uncovered beneath them, so they could send their livestock herds into new grazing territory.
The white settlers and the people of other tribes said the Yarkiti were cannibals. There was a blessing in the tribe’s terrible reputation. Because everyone feared them, the Yarkiti could rule over large territory. I lived among them and had no doubt the rumors were false. They were not man-eaters or skull hunters. The bitter conflicts between villages belonging to the same tribe had originated in the struggle for survival, especially during the difficult times when food is scarce. Of all the tribe’s customs, only one had to do with the consumption of humans, and I was now about to witness this ceremony again.
The name of the ritual translates as “the burying of the dead in his living family.” The deceased is burned in a bonfire, and the ashes are mixed with banana paste. His nearest relations swallow the paste and promise the deceased he will live inside them forever and his spirit can peacefully and safely move on to the Tepoi, the Last Mountain. The deceased, just like the god, does not wish to be alone. The consumption of his ashes saves him from an eternity of loneliness that would result were he separated from everything and everyone he had known.
Xnen began to tell in a monotonal singing voice the story of Omauha, the Great God, creator of the world and human beings, who grew tired of being lonely and created the world so that the many would rise from the one.
Once there was only him, lonely he was,
All was in him when only he was,
And loneliness, the loneliness closing the circle of night
Filled his heart with sadness…
I wrapped myself with the sound of Xnen’s singing, the crying of the wailers, and the noise of the women preparing the banana paste, and suddenly I wasn’t in the forest, and I didn’t see the flames of the bonfire battling with the daylight stealing its way through the trees.
I was back in that other place, next to you, next to your body, covered by a sheet concealing the nakedness that had been so beautiful only the day before. Merciful hands cleaned the blood and prepared you for burial in the bridal clothes worn by those about to make the crossing. Someone softly told me how it had happened, but I couldn’t hear. I wanted to turn into ashes too, so you could take me wherever your road led you. But you didn’t take me there, and like the Yarkiti, I became a man-eater, because I mixed your remains with mine, I swallowed the salty paste and carried it inside me like tear-drenched bread.
I sought Yakura. I didn’t see her among the wailers, or among the women preparing the banana paste, or chanting with Xnen and his two assistants. Where was she? What was her role as the god’s bride?
Oxon’s body was placed on the fire, and her children now understood their mother wasn’t sleeping or resting. They broke into heart-wrenching tears, forgot the tribal formalities, and tried to storm the bonfire. But the women surrounding the body stopped them, so they wouldn’t be snatched by the spirits of death as well. Only the father appeared distant and continued to stare about. His eyes, clouded with sun seed, indicated that he was trapped in some Tepoi, wandering among the dead and waiting to be given his place among them. When he woke up, he would need to swallow his wife’s ashes and would carry them in his body even once another woman had come into his hut.
My eyes had gone dry, but I continued to weep without tears and scream without voice. I wanted to tear the screen and understand that which cannot be understood. Neighbors were watching over the children, and when they were allowed to approach me, I felt their wet kisses, intended for her. She who would never again feel the touch of their lips. The tears burst through when I couldn’t understand why I should pray for a “God full of mercy” when mercy had left my house, and the body was lowered, the earth covered it, and the eyes of the world were shut.
The fire consumed the body, the moist leaves wept, and the smoke tore an opening into the sky above the forest clearing. Yakura came, proud and beautiful, and looked at me from afar. It could be she was forbidden to come to me while Xnen was chanting and dancing and stabbing his mysterious staff into the ground, his eyes turning completely white. The whistles that normally served for the hunting of monkeys now served as musical instruments, and their music accompanied the struggle of death with those who were left behind, the struggle of the living remaining in death.
And they covered your body with earth and everyone picked up the shovels and added dirt on dirt, and without understanding a single word I said the Jewish Kaddish prayer, and the children were no longer able to hold back and were racked with sobbing again. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,” said the voice, and I knew that from that moment on I would carry the burden of what had not been swallowed by ashes and dust on my own, alone in my world, an orphan. And I must have lost consciousness, just briefly, because I saw worry-filled eyes around me, and I immediately said, “Nothing happened, I’m fine.”
The husband looked up, then came closer to the fire. Xnen placed what hadn’t been burned into a bamboo container, and mixed the ashes with banana paste. Oxon’s husband was the first to eat, and her brothers and sisters, who had come from the village upriver, ate next. Each bite of banana paste served as both a sacrifice and a living burial. The ashes were mixed with a tobacco drink, which was swallowed too. They promised Oxon they would never leave her and cried bitter tears, and the tears of pain and sorrow mixed with the wailer’s lamentations, and Xnen went to the husband and held his hand and stroked his arm, and the children embraced their father’s legs…
And as I rose from the earth, I felt my daughter’s trembling hand on my back. She was crying silently, and my son was holding both her hand and mine, and I felt that I was naked and the tears and caresses seemed to seep through my skin…
Yakura was stroking my back, crying silently, as if she were traveling with me to my far-off lands.
2
The Cave
Nighttime. Rain struck the earth and sleep eluded me. I was worried, and my cares drew my waking moments deep into the night. I dreaded the negotiations taking place between the two villages, fearing war and bloodshed would follow. The shaman of the village upriver remained close to our camp, accompanied by a group of warriors from Oxon’s family. They were housed in a remote hut full of night spirits, who used all their benevolent powers to involve the gods and prevent a war.
Despite my anxiety, it appeared the negotiations were going well. The shaman of Oxon’s village was willing to give the widower another wife, in return for the axes the white people had left, planting sticks, and magic feathers. The new wife was the deceased’s sister, as demanded by the tradition of that remote village. That way, the tenuous alliance between the two villages could be
renewed. Xnen tended to agree, but times had changed. Since the appearance of the white people, the authority of the shaman had weakened, and there was no guarantee the young father and his close family would accept the spirits’ judgment.
Meanwhile, the heavy rain continued. After the earth had drunk its fill and the forest had swallowed twice as much as it needed, the streams and rivers began to fill and would soon overflow. An obscure whispering wind was telling me we had entered a new age of floods. The connection with the gods, masters of balance, had been disturbed.
I sensed a presence in the water-filled gloom outside my candlelit hut. An animal? A man? I did not go to the hut’s opening to find out. The thick darkness concealed whoever was approaching, and I was in the midst of a moment of grace allowing me to write. I looked up to find one of the shaman’s helpers standing at the door.
“Xnen wants you to come,” he told me.
I reluctantly left my writings and accompanied the young man.
Later On
Before long, I was drenched. The path was muddy, the torch extinguished, and I wasn’t always able to see the young man walking ahead of me. A strange sensation overwhelmed me after we left the village, getting farther from the place where Omauha guards the people, and the spirits of the ancestors maintain the breath of life. The water continued to pelt the earth angrily.
Suddenly, the young man leading me disappeared. I sought him in the darkness, but couldn’t find him. I whistled to give my location. A hand reached through the blackness and gripped me, pulling me aside, and the rain ceased all at once. I didn’t recognize who had yanked me into the sheltered space — a cave, I soon realized. A small campfire burned inside, painting shadows on the walls. When my eyes accustomed to the faint light, I observed a few people, some sitting, others moving about with dance-like motions. Beyond the dancers were stone pillars, whose carvings were impossible to make out in the shadows. It felt good to have this respite from the barrage of raindrops.