Seeds of Corruption

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Sabri Moussa. Seeds of Corruption

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Cover painting ''Al Hada'' (1987) by Yussef Jaha, courtesy of The Royal Society of Fine Arts, Jordan Gallery of Fine Art, Amman, Jordan.

IF IT WERE POSSIBLE TO LOOK DOWN on the Darhib like a bird flying high, careful not to collide with the mountain's rocky crests, it would be seen as a huge crescent, like a meteor that had fallen from its place in the heavens long ago and landed on earth, shattered and petrified. The huge arms of the crescent would embrace an arid valley scarred with crevices and craters, formed by the winds and erosion of a thousand years.

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Remembering, Nicola feels the old agony again. He twists his neck and wipes away the dusty sweat that covers his body.

The sun paints the yards in front of the wooden houses in its particular brightnesses, changing the dust and sand into embers on the flaming rocks. Nicola enters his wooden house. The house consists of a single room. In one corner is an iron bed, similar to those used by the sick in hospitals or by miners and army officers. The room contains an eccentric collection of stones and instruments, relics from the life of a mining engineer; and there are maps of the desert on the wooden walls. Nicola has not eaten this day. He remembers that when he sees a can of fish on the iron table. He purses his lips in a gesture of denial and lifts a liquor bottle only to find it empty. He picked it up yesterday and also found it empty; and he will do the same thing again later and again find it empty. For where would liquor come from, in this desolation?

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