Отрывок из книги
1. THE STONE ICON
There are no animals on land or birds flying on their wings, but are communities like your own.
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Asouf still took pleasure in the jinn faces in the mountain caves. Fleeing the scorching heat, he'd take refuge, panting, among the hollows of the rocks. There he'd lie for a time, then crawl to the rocky wall and start taking off the layers of dust, until the lines painted in the rocks would begin to appear. Still he'd go on, wiping away at the mighty walls, until at last the faces would appear, masked or long, or else animals fleeing from the arrows of the masked hunters: waddan, gazelles, oxen and many others, huge in size, with long legs he never saw in the desert today.
In time he began calling the wadis and chasms and mountains by the names of the figures painted on their rocks. This was the Wadi of Gazelles, that the Path of the Hunters, that the Waddan Mountain, that, again, the Herdsmen's Plain; until, finally, he'd discovered the great jinni, the masked giant rising alongside his dignified waddan, his face turned toward the qibla,iii awaiting sunrise and praising Almighty God in everlasting prayer.
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