by Paulo Coelho
The ragged people cheered and embraced one another, crying and laughing at the same time.
"Who are you people?" insisted the trader. "And who are you?" he asked, pointing to their leader.
"We are the young warriors of Akbar" was the reply.
THE THIRD HARVEST had begun, and Elijah was the governor of Akbar. There had been great resistance at first; the old governor had attempted to return and reoccupy his position, for such did custom dictate. The inhabitants of the city, however, refused to admit him and for days threatened to poison the water in the well. The Phoenician authorities finally yielded to their demands; after all, Akbar's only importance was the water it supplied to travelers, and the government of Israel was in the hands of a princess of Tyre. By conceding the position of governor to an Israelite, the Phoenician rulers could begin to consolidate a stronger commercial alliance.
The news spread throughout the region, carried by the merchant caravans that had begun circulating again. A minority in Israel considered Elijah the worst of traitors, but at the proper moment Jezebel would take on the task of eliminating this resistance, and peace would return to the region. The princess was content, for one of her worst foes had in the end become her greatest ally.
RUMORS OF A NEW Assyrian invasion began to arise, and the walls of Akbar were rebuilt. A new system of defense was developed, with sentinels and outposts spread between Tyre and Akbar; in this way, if one of the cities was besieged, the other could send troops overland while assuring the delivery of food by sea.
The city prospered before one's very eyes: the new Israelite governor had created a rigorous system, based on writing, to control taxes and merchandise. The old folk of Akbar attended to it all, using new techniques for supervision, and patiently resolved the problems that arose.
The women divided their time between tending to the crops and weaving. During the period of isolation, to recover the small amount of cloth that had remained, they had been obliged to create new patterns of embroidery; when the first merchants arrived in the city, they were enchanted by the designs and placed several orders.
The children too had learned the writing of Byblos; Elijah was certain that one day this would be of help to them.
As was always his wont before the harvest, he strolled through the fields that afternoon, giving thanks to the Lord for the countless blessings bestowed upon him for all these years. He saw people with their baskets filled with grain, and around them children at play. He waved to them, and they returned his greeting.
Smiling, he walked toward the stone where, long ago, he had been given a clay tablet with the word love. It was his custom to visit that spot every day to watch the sunset and recall each instant that they had spent together.
"AND IT CAME TO PASS AFTER MANY DAYS, THAT THE WORD OF the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth."
FROM THE STONE WHERE HE SAT, ELIJAH SAW THE world shudder about him. The sky turned black for an instant, but the sun quickly shone again.
He saw the light. An angel of the Lord was before him.
"What has happened?" asked Elijah, startled. "Has the Lord pardoned Israel?"
"No," answered the angel. "He desireth that thou return to liberate thy people. Thy struggle with Him is ended, and--at this moment--he hath blessed thee. He hath given thee leave to continue His work in that land."
Elijah was astonished.
"But, now, just when my heart has again found peace?"
"Recall the lesson once taught thee," said the angel. "And recall the words the Lord spake unto Moses:
"And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee to humble thee, and to prove thee. To know what was in thine heart.
"Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God."
Elijah turned to the angel. "What about Akbar?" he asked.
"It can live without thee, for thou hast left an heir. It will survive for many years."
The angel of the Lord disappeared.
ELIJAH AND THE BOY ARRIVED AT THE FOOT OF THE Fifth Mountain. Weeds had grown between the stones of the altars; since the high priest's death no one had gone there.
"Let's climb it," he said.
"It's forbidden."
"Yes, it's forbidden. But that doesn't mean it's dangerous."
He took him by both hands, and they began climbing toward the top. They stopped from time to time to gaze at the valley below; the absence of rain had left its mark throughout the countryside, and with the exception of the cultivated fields around Akbar, everything seemed a desert as harsh as those of Egypt.
"I've heard my friends say the Assyrians are coming back," the boy said.
"That could be, but what we have done was worthwhile; it was the way that God chose to teach us."
"I don't know if He bothers much with us," the boy said. "He didn't have to be so severe."
"He must have tried other means before discovering that we were not listening to Him. We were too accustomed to our lives and no longer read His words."
"Where are they written?"
"In the world around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life, and you will discover where, every moment of the day, He hides His words and His will. Seek to do as He asks: this alone is the reason you are in the world."
"If I discover it, I'll write it on clay tablets."
"Do so. But write them, above all, in your heart; there they can be neither burned nor destroyed, and you will take them wherever you go."
They walked for some time more. The clouds were now very close.
"I don't want to go there," the boy said, pointing to them.
"They will do you no harm: they're just clouds. Come with me."
He took him by the hands, and they climbed. Little by little, they found themselves entering the fog. The boy clung to him, and although Elijah tried to talk to him now and again, he said not a word. They walked among the naked rocks of the summit.
"Let's go back," asked the boy.
Elijah decided not to insist; the boy had already experienced great difficulties and much fear in his short life. He did as he was asked; they came out from the fog and could once again discern the valley below.
"Someday, look in Akbar's library for what I wrote for you. It's called The Manual of the Warrior of Light."
"Am I a warrior of light?" replied the boy.
"Do you know what my name is?" asked Elijah.
"Liberation."
"Sit here beside me," said Elijah, pointing to a rock. "I cannot forget my name. I must continue with my task, even if at this moment all I desire is to be at your side. That was why Akbar was rebuilt, to teach us that it is necessary to go onward, however difficult it may appear."
"You're going away."
"How do you know?" he asked, surprised.
"I wrote it on a tablet, last night. Something told me; it may have been my mother, or an angel. But I already felt it in my heart."
Elijah caressed the boy's head.
"You have learned to read God's will," he said contentedly. "So there's nothing that I need to explain to you."
"What I read was the sadness in your eyes. It wasn't difficult. Other friends of mine noticed it too."
"This sadness you read in my eyes is part of my story. Only a small part that will last but a few days. Tomorrow, when I depart for Jerusalem, it will not have the strength it had before, and little by little it will disappear. Sadness does not last forever when we walk in the direction of that which we always desired."
"Is it always necessary to leave?"
"It's always necessary to know when a stage of one's life has ended. If you stubbornly cling to it after the need has passed, you lose the joy and meaning of the rest. And you risk being shaken to your senses by God."
"The Lord is stern."
"Only with those He has chosen."
ELIJAH LOOKED AT AKBAR below. Yes, God sometimes could be very stern, but never beyond a person's capacity: the boy was unaware that they were sitting where Elijah had received an angel of the Lord and learned how to bring him back from the dead.
"Are you going to miss me?" Elijah asked.
"You told me that sadness disappears if we press ahead. There's still much to do to leave Akbar as beautiful as my mother deserves. She walks in its streets."
"Come back to this place when you have need of me. And look toward Jerusalem: I shall be there, seeking to give meaning to my name, Liberation. Our hearts are linked forever."
"Was that why you brought me to the top of the Fifth Mountain? So I could see Israel?"
"So you could see the valley, the city, the other mountains, the rocks and clouds. The Lord often has his prophets climb mountains to converse with Him. I always wondered why He did that, and now I know the answer: when we are on high, we can see everything else as small.
"Our glory and our sadness lose their importance. Whatever we conquered or lost remains there below. From the heights of the mountain, you see how large the world is, and how wide its horizons."
The boy looked about him. From the top of the Fifth Mountain, he could smell the sea that bathed the beaches of Tyre. And he could hear the desert wind that blew from Egypt.
"Someday I'll govern Akbar," he told Elijah. "I know what's big. But I also know every corner of the city. I know what needs to be changed."
"Then change it. Don't let things remain idle."
"Couldn't God have chosen a better way of showing us all this? There was a time when I thought He was evil."
Elijah said nothing. He recalled a conversation, many years before, with a Levite prophet while the two awaited death at the hands of Jezebel's soldiers.
"Can God be evil?" the boy insisted.
"God is all-powerful," answered Elijah. "He can do anything, and nothing is forbidden to Him, for if it were, there would exist someone more powerful than He, to prevent His doing certain things. In that case, I should prefer to worship and revere that more powerful someone."
He paused for several instants to allow the boy to fathom the meaning of his words. Then he continued.
"Still, because of His infinite power, He chose to do only Good. If we reach the end of our story, we shall see that often Good is disguised as Evil, but it goes on being the Good, and is part of the plan that He created for humanity."
He took the boy by the hand, and together they descended the mountain in silence.
THAT NIGHT, the boy went to sleep in his arms. As soon as day began to break, Elijah carefully removed him from his bosom so he would not awaken him.
He quickly donned the only garment he possessed and departed. On the road, he picked up a piece of wood from the ground and used it as a staff. He planned never to be without it: it was the remembrance of his struggle with God, of the destruction and rebuilding of Akbar.
Without looking back, he continued toward Israel.
FIVE YEARS LATER, ASSYRIA AGAIN INVADED THE COUNTRY, this time with a more professional army and more competent generals. All Phoenicia fell under the domination of the foreign conqueror except Tyre and Zarephath, which its inhabitants called Akbar.
The boy became a man, governed the city, and was judged a sage by his contemporaries. He died in the fullness of his years, surrounded by loved ones and saying always that "it was necessary to keep the city beautiful and strong, for his mother still strolled its streets." Because of their joint system of defense, Tyre and Zarephath were not occupied by the Assyrian king Sennacherib until 701 B.C., almost 160 years after the events related in this book.
From that time on, Phoenician cities never recovered their importance and began to suffer a series of invasion--by the Neo-Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Seleucids, and, finally, by Rome. Even so, they continue to exist in our own time because, according to ancient tradition, the Lord never selected at random the places He wished to see inhabited. Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos are still part of Lebanon, which even today remains a battlefield.
ELIJAH RETURNED TO ISRAEL AND CALLED THE PROPHETS together at Mount Carmel. There he asked them to divide into two groups: those who worshiped Baal, and those who believed in the Lord. Following the angel's instructions, he offered a bullock to the first group and asked them to call out to the heavens for their gods to receive it. The Bible says:
"And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
"And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.
"And there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded."
Then Elijah took his animal and offered it, following the angel's instructions. At that moment the fire of heaven descended and "consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones." Minutes later, a heavy rain fell, ending four years of drought.
From that moment, civil war broke out. Elijah ordered the execution of the prophets who had betrayed the Lord, and Jezebel sought him everywhere, to kill him. He fled, however, to the eastern part of the Fifth Mountain, which faced Israel.
The Syrians invaded the country and killed King Ahab, husband of the princess of Tyre, with an accidentally shot arrow that entered an opening in his armor. Jezebel took refuge in her palace and, following several popular revolts and the rise and fall of various governments, was captured. She preferred leaping from a window to giving herself up to the men sent to arrest her.
Elijah remained on the mountain until the end of his days. The Bible says that one afternoon, when he was conversing with Elisha, the prophet he had named as his successor, "there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven."
Almost eight hundred years later, Jesus bade Peter, James, and John to climb a mountain. The Gospel according to Matthew relates that Jesus "was transfigured before them; and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him."
Jesus asks the apostles not to speak of this vision until the Son of Man be risen from the dead, but they reply that this will happen only when Elijah returns.
Matthew 17:10--13 tells the rest of the story:
Zd his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?
"And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed.
"Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist."
MARIA CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN, PRAY FOR US WHO call on Thee. Amen.
About the Translator
CLIFFORD E. LANDERS is professor of political science at Jersey City State College and a premier translator of Latin American fiction. He has translated into English many of Brazil's top writers, including Jorge Amado, Rubem Fonseca, and Chico Buarque. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULO COELHO is an international bestselling author whose books--The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, The Valkyries, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, and The Fifth Mountain--have sold more than 25 million copies in 117 countries and have been translated into 43 languages. He lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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ALSO BY PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
The Pilgrimage
The Valkyries
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
CREDITS
Cover design by Doreen Louie
Cover photograph (c) 2000 by Colour Library<
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE FIFTH MOUNTAIN. Copyright (c) 2006 by Paulo Coelho. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition (c) JUNE 2006 ISBN: 9780061843525
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