Читать книгу Goat Mountain - Habib Selmi - Страница 7

In all honesty, I was not as thrilled as I had expected to be. A slight tremor ran through me but nothing more. Then again, I have always been that way. I become feverishly engrossed, my entire being absorbed. But soon I lose interest and end up feeling hollow and empty. The truth is that I combine many such contradictions imperceptible to all but me: headstrong but ambivalent, level-headed but flighty. Do I deliberately conceal them? Perhaps. I have a capacity for dissimulation which sometimes takes even me by surprise. That day, I read my letter of appointment twice: first when I received it and later when I withdrew to the solitude of my room.

That evening my brother played quietly and happily, and as my father performed the sunset prayer I felt that he was, for the first time, reciting the fatiha at ease, relishing every word. The scent of grass drifted through the open windows, accompanied by the gentle croak of frogs and a trill in the distance, echoing like a woman’s mournful wail. Goat Mountain. I do not deny that it was the name itself that had intrigued me, and, without giving a thought to the actual place, a mammoth-like goat, with long, thick legs and a great udder swollen with milk enough to nourish the entire village had materialised before my eyes. What other reason could there be for that name?

***

Bleached animal bones lay at the bottom of steep slopes. The bus was pungent with the scent of juniper and the wheels rumbled as it laboured up the sharp rises. Stretching out to east and west were endless expanses of tall dry grass and pine forests. In a fleeting dream, I saw myself sinking slowly but surely into a coffee-coloured land, oozing mud.

My fellow passengers kept to themselves, seated as far from one another as possible. They had the mournful, reticent look of contagious invalids on their way to quarantine. Leaning back, I glimpsed the pallid features of my own face reflected in the spattered window pane.

After four hours, the bus pulled into a marketplace lined with wooden stalls. The engine grew silent.

“Al-‘Ala!” the driver called, preparing to descend.

The passengers surged towards the door and disappeared into the darkness while other men, who I later learned were merchants, surrounded the bus, electric torches in hands. Others still, barefoot and girded with leather belts, clambered on board and began unloading wares amidst the clamour and the cries.

The following morning, Al-‘Ala village appeared larger than it had done the previous night. I was escorted by the bus driver to one of the shopkeepers who greeted me warmly and instructed me to follow him. We crossed the square at the far side of which stood a dusty tree, encircled by an iron railing. At the end of the row of stalls, we found ourselves surrounded by several houses with low doors. In a corner, a pair of goats stood tied to a metal ring and beside them mules were grazing on straw. I remained motionless, completely absorbed by the sight of the goats, one of which was endowed with a startlingly large udder. The merchant, who had gone into one of the houses, emerged with a smile on his face.

“Stay here,” he ordered me.

As I watched him disappear, I reflected on how lucky I was.

My mother had said so too, weeping with joy at the news of my appointment. Later, after staunching her tears, she had reminisced about events from my childhood, grown hazy in my memory.

***

A voice drifted from the house, muffled as though it were coming from underground. The scent of moisture and damp straw hung in the air. As I walked towards the building, I had the distinct impression of approaching a holy shrine. Crossing the threshold, this impression increased as I found myself in a room, its floor covered in mats and its corners shrouded in darkness. A man was kneeling motionless on an old rug, a pitcher of water to his right. He was facing a wall on which hung a small lamp, its light reflected by the surrounding stone. I retreated and the man immediately rose to his feet and followed me out. I remember his smile clearly. It was a broad, friendly smile but something about it disturbed me, though I was incapable of saying what. He saddled two mules and we set off. Having reached the far side of the marketplace, I turned to look back and saw the shopkeeper watching us leave. I waved to him and he waved back. To this day, I feel certain that he still remembers me.

After leaving the village, we mounted the mules, crossing through wide fields and trotting past shuttered houses and farmers herding their livestock. My companion stared straight ahead, thrusting his chin forward every now and then to indicate the direction. I glanced at his face, observing his wide dark eyes, ruddy lips and short hair, parted neatly down the middle with a precision that suggested an inordinate amount of care.

Having reached the top of a sandy rise, we began to descend the other side and I was forced to pull tightly on my reins and sit bolt upright for fear of falling from my mount. As I did so, the man turned to me.

“Be careful,” he murmured, “The path’s bumpy.”

The sun rose in a crystal clear sky and my body began to trickle with sweat. During the first stretch of our journey, we occasionally glimpsed men on mules and donkeys, conversing with one another in raised voices that drifted to us in the distance. Then, quite suddenly, we were confronted by nothingness. The ground stretched into the distance, bare but for several lone shrubs. The sound of the mules’ hooves striking rhythmically on the ground rang clearly in my ears, lulling me to sleep. Although it was still morning, the heat was intense. As I raised my face to the sky, I felt as though we were the sole recipients of the sun’s infernal blaze. Every particle of its heat seemed to be bearing down on us and us alone. My hands began to slacken and, every now and then, I was forced to release my grip on the reins so as to wipe drops of sweat from my eyes. Since receiving my letter of appointment, I had not once thought about what Goat Mountain might actually be like. How could this have escaped me? I gazed around at the silent, rosy landscape. For the first time I felt fear, tinged with regret, and heightened by the silence of the man leading me through that vast emptiness to an unknown destination. He remained taciturn, rigid on his mule as though fastened to it by leather straps.

We crossed a parched valley fringed by oleanders. The hooves of our mules sunk swiftly into the deep sand which bore no trace of man or animal as though we were the first to set foot on its virgin surface. The man tugged on his reins, halting his mule by a carob tree that rose up incongruously in the arid landscape. I assumed he intended to rest but he remained motionless, gazing at the tree as though seeing it for the first time.

Then, without turning to me, he spoke:

“Here, seven men were slaughtered, their corpses left for the crows.” He dismounted and began stirring the sand with his foot.

“Here they lie,” he repeated, “here they lie.”

“Who slaughtered them?”

“The Pasha,” he murmured, as though to himself.

He stood tense and unmoving, then, stretching out his hands and closing his eyes, several tears slid down his cheeks. As though sensing my discomfort, he brushed them brusquely away.

“My grandfather was among those men.”

“Why were they killed?”

“For rebelling against the taxes,” he replied after a short silence, speaking low as though divulging a secret.

He paused again, before embarking on a long speech, in which, with increasing relish, he described his grandfather who had married three times and fathered eighteen sons. Five of them had travelled to the city and lost all contact with home. Others had died in tribal wars.

At first, his speech captivated me and I began to picture the corpses decomposing beneath the blazing sun. Then, quite at random, I felt a wave of hatred rise within me, prompted by his tears. As I watched him, his face began to change, his features blurring into those of my father. This was a man about whom I knew nothing, except that he was the grandson of a rebel slaughtered in an obscure, mysterious land.

As we progressed steadily up a steep rise, the rocks around us multiplied and the path became too narrow for the mules to walk side by side. We moved forward in single file. Then, wending our way down the other side, we reached a small stream. Without a word, we pulled our mules simultaneously to a halt and dismounted.

The man seated himself on the bank while I plunged my head into the water before scooping it up and splashing it onto my chest. I finally decided to immerse myself entirely, sinking happily under. Watching me, the man laughed.

“And what will you do in Goat Mountain?” he asked.

His question troubled me, perhaps because he had not asked it straight away. I stopped splashing and, for a moment, considered not replying. Then, looking him squarely in the eyes, I answered.

“I will teach the children.”

Without a word, he looked away then rose to his feet and mounted his mule.

“So now they’re worried about the children . . .” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm as we set off once again.