Abdel-Ghafur
by J.P. Apruzzese
Servant of the Forgiver
Not long after he arrives in the oasis, he sees the haloed figures flicker across the bedroom wall in the middle of the night for the first time. Each time they appear it’s the same, he sits up in bed, shivering, sweat amassing on his back like a colony of ants, his eyes tracking the halos until they’re no longer there. Each time, though he wants to see them, though he searches the dark walls for them, there’s nothing, not a trace, though he’s hoping, hoping they’re more than passing headlights or reflections in a mirror or something he’s never noticed but should have – a presence, but of what? Until one day, the haloes vanish from the walls, and he hears something else he shouldn’t, at that hour and in that place: a car engine idling outside. He takes feline steps from the bed to the window where the pungent smell of petroleum pinches his nose and there, in the penumbra, he sees a black jeep with black windows and black headlights sitting in the dirt driveway awash in moonlight. He watches, unable to move, wondering if someone isn’t watching him in turn from behind its black windows, when the vehicle shifts into gear and follows the road into the oasis. A local, no doubt, he thinks, and goes to the bathroom to towel the sweat from his body, still wondering, who could be watching, how could they have found me.
The next morning, he’s unable to pull himself from bed for pre-dawn preparations and do what’s right; instead, he cuddles closer to Nour beneath their camel wool blankets and falls asleep, and there they remain, cuddling until, much later, he hears the prayer rise above the oasis and he stirs from bed and walks to the back of their adobe home. On the horizon, a purple tint punctures the darkness like a light cast onto the recesses of his soul. Walking toward the incipient day, at about a hundred paces out, he places a prayer mat on the sand in the direction of the qibla and, next to it, a tin bowl with water he’s taken from the fount. He could use sand but dislikes its graininess. As a light breeze enwraps his body and slaps at his clothes, he bends to wash, hands, mouth, nose, arms to elbows, face, dabbing the water over his head, his eyes closed, before he resumes, ears and feet, three times, he counts, and says the words he’s learned – al-wudu – so he won’t forget the name: ablution. The water feels like a cleansing and, he hopes, will impart a certain forgiving.
He finishes and stands erect, his feet apart, his back straight to the earth, barefoot on the small prayer mat, and draws his palms open to his ears and says, Allahu akbar, repeating it in a whisper, but its power on his tongue resonates down his spine, and each time it’s the same. Each time he says, takbir, again, not to forget what should not be forgotten and forgetting what should, across his chest, his right hand over his left, he speaks the words from the surah he’s been taught, pronouncing the supplication as best as he can, bows and places his hands on his knees, stretching his fingers out, as he’s been told, arching his back until its parallel to the earth this time, then straightening up, he utters the words of praise, before falling to his knees in prostration, his nose, forehead, palms to the ground, and stays like this in silence for a long time.
Nour is still asleep when he returns. He climbs beneath the covers and presses his body to hers, gloating in her warmth, reaching his hand out to touch her belly, when she takes it in hers and turns to kiss him. She is three months pregnant, and eager to sense the life of their growing child inside her, he falls asleep in their embrace, only resurfacing sometime later when camel grunts awaken him and he remembers, today is the camel market. He’s heard much about it from the locals and is impatient to see it first-hand. It’s almost eight o’clock, and Nour is in the small kitchen adjacent their bedroom moving pots around. He goes to her and again presses himself against her, her body rises, her head tilts back toward his. She’s sweeter than the molasses she scoops with her baladi bread, he tells her, your eyes, the color of dates, your hair, the tint of a sulfured pool, he says and in his native tongue, says, la tua pelle è come un’oliva setosa, ne voglio arrotolare la lingua sopra, to which she laughs – kiffeyah! – and slaps him on the chest: keep your tongue to yourself, sporcaccione, she scolds, pronouncing every syllable like he’s taught her – SPOR – CA – CCIO – NE – as eloquently as she always does, and hearing her do this calms him, regardless of the deeper truth, that he is what she says he is: filthy and unclean. They sit outside on a felled palm trunk sipping thick coffee and munching on stiff fresh dates and hardboiled eggs in the morning sun. Soon it will be Ramadan, he tells her, so he’s keen to eat as much as he can in preparation for the long days of fast. They warm their faces in the sun and say little, as he takes sips and savors the coffee’s aroma, reminding him of his resurrection, or what he prefers to call his awakening.
He was still alive when he opened his eyes at a small medical clinic in the oasis 200 kilometers north of here, some two years ago, following acute dehydration, and his first thought is, where is Nour, followed by the knowledge, she’s in Cairo photographing the protests, and me, worried about the upheaval and violence, I came to live with her cousin Badr in the desert outside his oasis home. Then one day, against his advice, I decide to take a trip with a group of Bedouins across the Western desert to the Great Sand Sea and Gilf Al-Kebir, to Wadi Bakht, kilometers deep into the Libyan Desert, because there, at the far end of the known world, I am sure, I’ll be able to make amends, and if not amends, then at least I’ll be in the perfect place to end a perfectly mediocre existence, when one evening, disgusted with myself as usual, I leave our small caravan and keep walking, the earth, you see, is a mere sliver beneath the vast galactic ocean surrounding me, and I believe at that moment, at that very moment, in a quick painless evaporation into everything around me, and why not? Blip, and I’m gone. Five days later, I’m told, they find me lying in the sand on the crest of a dune, my face scorched by the sun, my limbs flail and waterless, and later, learning the details of what’s happened to me, I’m told the Great Sand Sea was born of great planetary violence and awe that no one was there to witness, and so I conclude that my death should come through violence without witness. My only witness, God.
Nour takes his hand. Ta’ala, habibi? she says, and he goes to her like a child. They walk to Badr’s home in the oasis center and along the way he drops his hand from hers fearful what the locals will think, even though she’s his wife, and she plays along dropping three paces behind him, more insolent than ever, he thinks, shaking his head, slightly enraged, fully embarrassed, smiling to himself, until he spots what he believes is the black jeep that was idling in the driveway during the night, and Nour notices it too.
What’s wrong? she says.
That jeep, it was in the driveway last night, its engine on.
It’s just some people come on safari, she says.
Diplomatic plates catch his eye and two men with blondish hair speaking a language he doesn’t understand open the front doors and jump in.
Sah, he says in Arabic, and she giggles, in English saying, I’m always right.
When they reach Badr’s home, Nour stays to talk with her aunts, and he goes to the village mosque to meet with the sheikh, a short, thin man of fifty with a trim white beard that makes his skin appear raw in the desert sun. He finds it hard to describe the sheikh without depicting some clichéd nomadic character, and he thinks, so much seems clichéd in my life, as they sit on the ground in the shade of the mosque’s interior courtyard, the sheikh smelling of mold and dust, an odor coming from his crotch, he thinks and marvels how the sheikh has his priorities straight, no “cleanliness close to Godliness” business. He likes talking with the cleric and finds his mix of Arabic and English enchanting, welcomes how he’s always able to make sense out of the moral conundrum of his life, how he’s able to find the moral path, the back way through the dense forest of irredeemable actions he cannot mention. He tells the sheikh enough about himself so he can offer advice, though he hasn’t yet mentioned his worst offenses, his life in the System, which he reserves for God alone, as the cleric has instructed. Like on most occasions, today their conversation is about forgiveness and punishment and, from what the sheikh has told him, he understands that God is all-merciful and forgives the penitent heart, no matter the offense. The sheikh says that God will even reward sincerity of heart, an idea he finds impossible to conceive. Forgiveness, yes, he thinks, but reward? He stares at the sheikh’s curiously straight-lipped smile as he repeats the three conditions of forgiveness: I must first recognize the offense and admit I have committed it before God. I must commit to not repeat the offense. And I must ask God for forgiveness.
But this seems too simple, he tells the sheikh, it’s not possible. He feels the urge to confess to the sheikh and ask him for forgiveness.
But the cleric shakes his head. In our religion, he says, the believer speaks to God directly. There is no place for anyone else in this exchange.
I understand, he says, but feels a shameful desire to push the sheikh, to find out what level of atrocities God is willing to forgive. He leans in to ask him but is unable to express himself well enough in Arabic, afraid he might bungle a profound notion of spiritual morality.
What if, he says in a whisper, I hurt another person?
The cleric doesn’t flinch: in that case, you must first recognize the offense before the person you’ve committed it against, then you must vow not to repeat the offense, and do whatever is necessary to rectify it while asking forgiveness of the person you’ve offended. He pauses. But you must then ask God for forgiveness. The offended person’s forgiveness is not enough. He wiggles his finger in the air as a light breeze ripples the waters in the ablutions fountain.
What is bothering you? the sheikh asks, always these questions about forgiveness. It is why you took this name, Abdel-Ghafur, when you came to us, no?
A breathy, raucous, contagious laugh rattles the sheikh’s tongue, and Abdel-Ghafur smiles before lowering his gaze, and staring at the sheikh blankly, somewhat idiotically, he says, but we do so much that is wrong.
The sheikh wipes his nose. You must trust in God, he says, He saved your life in the desert when you were almost dead, and He sent you and Nour a child when you could not have one.
The evidence is overwhelming, he thinks. Two miracles ever since he converted.
Outside, there is only the sky, immense, blue, and suffocating, and he walks quickly to meet Nour. She is waiting for him at the jeep with Badr. He drops his prayer mat in the backseat next to her and, seeing her strange look, says, I want to pray while we’re at the camel market, to which Badr grins, shifts into gear and takes the back road through the desert. Across tortuous terrain the vehicle rattles and shakes, clouds of sand and dust spurt like minor explosions around them, and the jolting makes him worry about the baby but, stretching to look back at Nour, he sees haloed lights flash across the car’s ceiling for a second before he is blinded by the desert sun. He emerges from this sudden confusion to find Nour puckering him a kiss as mushroom rock formations hobble by in the window behind her. Badr slips in a cassette and croons into the dust, forcing the 4×4 into sudden twists and turns.
Nour is pregnant! he hears himself yell, too excitedly.
Badr laughs even louder: She’s a Bedouin woman, stronger than an ox! He lifts a hand from the wheel and grabs his shoulder. One day your boy will kill a camel, drink its blood, eat its flesh, Badr says, gesturing to his mouth as if consuming food before unleashing an even more hoarse outburst of laughter.
And if it’s a girl?
Impossible, Badr howls. In our family, the firstborn is always a boy.
He dismisses Badr with the wave of a hand as the sun washes the landscape a mustard yellow and now, with the oasis behind them, the earth vanishes into the sky. He rests his head on the door and barely closes his eyes when he hears Badr say, Look! And there, in the distance, a mass of palm groves creeps onto the horizon and, as they draw closer, tiny four-legged creatures emerge like phantoms floating in the billowing heat. The crowd at the desert outpost comes into view. Where did they come from? he asks, and Badr motions to a well-trod sand road on the far side of the market where other off-road vehicles and flatbed trucks are stationed. The jeep pulls to an abrupt stop.
The camels sit in packs in yogic-like postures, seemingly indifferent to their presence, masticating arugula-like grass piled in mounds, their jaws rotating in elliptical movements, as they emit menacing grunts and groans. When someone so much as motions toward them, these sounds rise in volume and their eyes blacken, as their masters – in white galabeyyas and twisted headdresses – stand nearby, gripping wooden sticks, ready to prod, poke and whack the animals at the first sign of insurgence. Nobody wants to irritate a camel, Badr tells him, their memory is irrepressible, and ruthless. But his brothers have the upper hand, he adds, as he watches them smoke and drink, banter and laugh, wage and haggle, and break into fireside song. A scruffy herdsman pulls one disheveled beast to him and kisses its hairy lips drooping with saliva; they release a rasping cry in unison, both exhibiting their full set of yellowed teeth.
Not far away, he sees Nour squatting, her Nikon’s zoom extended just above her protruding belly aimed at the camels and the circling Bedouins. A light black veil covers her hair, but he can see a hennaed tuft jutting out the side, swaying in the wind. Her presence, or rather that of her camera, seems to go unnoticed; the pregnant girl and her camera in the middle of the chaotic camel market, he thinks, and is reminded of the village cleric’s warning: superstition – forbidden in Islam – is rampant in the community, and they should be careful not to raise suspicion, even though Nour is one of their own. You are a foreigner after all, the sheikh tells him. But Nour is oblivious to his call for discretion and says, devi sempre fare il macho, basta! He is about to go to her when from the distance he hears a terrible cry and there, just beyond Nour, a group of men wield thick, woven ropes, taut in opposite directions, struggling to wrestle a camel to its knees. Their features are rigid, their forearms brown and stretched. The rope tears at the camel’s neck, another its hind legs, as it tries to burrow its feet in the sand, and from somewhere behind its clamped yellowed teeth, it releases a long, guttural bawl. But the knife, pointed and glittering, is already in the air and, in a second he watches as it plunges into the camel’s neck and carves a deep wound – the animal continuing to twist and bend to save itself, but its blood is already gushing from its neck forming a river that reaches his feet and, when he turns to move away, he’s startled to find Nour, unmoved, crouched a short distance from the animal, taking photos, the camel’s terrorized eyes staring right at her. He steps back and plummets rear-first into the sand. The herdsmen’s collective gaze pummels him, and they burst into laughter as the camel surrenders and collapses into its own blood. Numb and confused, he manages to wipe the sand from his clothes without looking at them and heads to the jeep to get a bottle of water and his prayer mat. From the distance, he hears the call to prayer resounding from the oasis. He finds a calm spot behind a dune and places his mat on the sand, closes his eyes and begins the prayer. His mind however replays images of the camel’s terrified eye staring at him, pleading, and he wonders how these men can murder the animals they appear to love like their own children, and the images return, breaking his prayer, flooding him with memories of the day he left his former life.
He is barely seventeen and the world is dead. From his mother’s fifth-floor apartment in the old palazzo, he stares out past the razor-edge corners of two concrete high-rises at the shimmering waters of the Bay of Naples, just like he does every night, musing on his father’s death and the promise of another world. Above, commercial jetliners, like apocalyptic birds, thunder across the evening sky on their way in and out of Capodichino, and then, as always, Silvio calls from below. Uè, zingaro! He crosses the hallway past his mother’s shrine to la Madonna Bruna and makes his way downstairs where Silvio ambushes him at the entrance, drives his knuckles into his scalp, calls him zingaro again, because he says his father is a dirty gypsy. He hits Silvio in the chest and grabs his throat – a bit too violently – and Silvio backs off to catch his breath. O, lascia, zing’, sto pazzian’, he says, twisting his neck back into place. Down the filthy streets to the car, they prance like jackals and drive, smoking ice and drinking tequila, projecting globs of spit out the windows, until they reach a desolate street in Scampia where Silvio kills the engine, and they wait. Two hours pass before they get the call. Silvio turns to him: Mo’ tucca a te, he says, and hands him the piece. What’s the reason this time? Silvio shrugs: No reason. Send a message, maybe, he grins, shows his silver incisor with pride, lights a cigarette, then looks at him with his half-moon eyes: You still feel something, zing’? His question short-circuits his brain. He gets out and walks through a small alleyway. As usual, he feels he’s in an altered state when he does it. The killing itself never feels real. Only this time, he stays and watches as the blood explores the floorboards like a hesitant animal, sniffing its way into crevices. He kneels and with his finger dabs a word with the warm blood on the white walls: MESSAGGIO, unsure he should add anything else. He thinks for a moment then exits through the backdoor and keeps walking until he comes to the port and there, he boards a cargo vessel to Suez, just as he imagined he would, then, watching the city disappear in the morning mist, he already knows. He’ll never escape.
After praying, he ventures in the direction opposite the market, and because the sun is scorching and because his forehead, neck and arms are scarlet, he takes refuge in the shade of a limestone rock formation when he sees a lone camel limping across a flat expanse of desert, and without thinking, he decides to follow it in what he assumes is a circle, circling back to the oasis, but when the sun is well past its 3 p.m. and the camel continues its relentless trek to nowhere, he tries to retrace his original tracks until he realizes the wind has removed them. He’s suddenly dumbfounded by his own stupidity and thinks, this is what happens to animals who trust and who linger in that dangerous space – close to us – until the moment they realize they’ve been duped all along: your friend, the killer inhabiting your garden, readying you for what’s to come. He stands unable to move, in a sort of semi-conscious supplication, without thinking, for a long moment, and then, in the distance, he hears the roar of an engine and sees furious wheels kicking up sand and dust until it reaches him. Nour jumps out before the jeep comes to a stop, her body rigid, her face contorted, but running to him, là, she speaks from afar, and only in Arabic, mara tanya? she yells, là, again, and là, mesh momken, slamming her fists into his chest, kan andak haqq, her rage turning to tears, and he doesn’t see how it’s not his ‘right’, why she’s speaking of ‘rights’, as she grabs his face and looks at him, ana behebak, fahim? she says, and again, hayati, fahimni, behebak? She collapses into his arms and gurgles something he doesn’t quite understand, and he tells her, no, it’s not what you think, Nour, it’s not, amore, until Badr comes and helps them both into the back seat, and she says, kiffeya…basta…enough, their last words before they reach the oasis.
The greatest hypocrites, the Prophet says, are those who miss Fajr and Isha’a prayers, so he’s keen to make good on this last devotion of the day because while God may have made him a killer, he’s no hypocrite, never. He brings Nour to their room. She lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling. I’m sorry about what happened in the desert, he says, but it’s not what you’re thinking, and she exhales heavily, and what was I thinking?, but it’s not that, he says, wallahi, I swear to you, and yet she astounds him again and says, you need to lighten up, habibi, we’re having a baby and all you talk about is God. Her voice is unwavering but he senses she’s not telling the truth, so he sits on the bed next to her and places his hand on her stomach and says, I would never do that to our baby, to you, never. Kill yourself? she says, fixing him with her eyes, I think you can, I’ve seen what you’re capable of, her face flush and wholesome in the lamplight, her eyes worried, an expression that seems to point to what she wants to say but can’t, as she looks down at his hand, as if marveling at an instrument or tool, and he tells her, but it’s not what you think, again, and seeing her doubting eyes, he says, what happened is, I saw a camel out there and I needed to follow it, it was the animal they killed this afternoon, and she came to me…
Nour freezes, her eyes searching his face, before she can speak: I want to go back to Cairo.
But I thought you wanted to have the baby here, near your family, just like your ancestors.
She shakes her head: you can’t stay here, it’s not good for you. And maybe, she hesitates, maybe this is the most important moment of our lives, she says, pausing as if to underline her next thought, and you’re making us miss out on it all and – she grabs his hand – besides, the hospitals are the best in Cairo. Here, if something happens?
But I thought, he says and stops himself.
She turns away: the baby may be in danger. Then, as if she’s another person, she throws him an accusatory look, and he immediately thinks of the camel and, in logical progression, of the face of the man he killed on the margins of the protest just before he brought the knife down on him. (Who he was, why he was there, were never clear; he remembers only that it was the first time he hesitated.) And then, in the silence that followed Nour’s look, he sees a flicker on the walls of the bedroom, a sudden ripple of light, and he rushes to the window. What do you think it is? she says in frustration, it’s just the reflection in the mirror, and turning to her he sees her eyes are full of ridicule half-bordering on concern. It’s nothing, she repeats in a kinder voice, as a gust of wind rattles the door, and he says, a reflection? Of what? The call to prayer rumbles low across the rooftop and into his bones. He looks at his watch.
Go, Nour says.
But he can’t move. She turns to the wall and says, how did you become like this?
He takes her hand but he’s thinking of his mother, alone in Naples, her faith in Jesus staunch and, for him, impenetrable, and what he remembers is this, her talking throughout the night, blabbering on and on to no one, because he knows there’s no one with her, until he realizes she’s speaking to Jesus, speaking and pausing, pausing and speaking and then, stark silences resonate throughout the house, followed by endless conversations that frighten him, until one night, late, when he hears her wailing in her room, a wail that rattles and shakes the floorboards, shifting between lament and affliction, rising and falling through bursts of hair-raising screams to breathy whispers of supplication – Dio, perdona ! – and he, terrified, tiptoes to her room, sweating in his pajamas, to find her corpse-like on the floor, and too petrified to go to her, he has no idea what to say once he is standing above her, aware even as a child of her source of suffering, his father’s death at the hands of the System, and he knows that at this moment, as he hesitates to follow the call to prayer, she is still praying, praying that Jesus will save his soul, he can hear her say, followed by the word he doesn’t quite understand as a child – misericordia – but in the way she speaks it he knows it is to spare him the torment of Jahannam, and seeing him standing on the threshold of her bedroom, she tells him papa is Muslim, and no doubt he would welcome her calling on the prophet Jesus to protect him, but now as he sits on the edge of the bed and extends a hand to touch Nour’s, he sees no room for his mother’s dynamic in his new faith, no tolerance for what he sees as sorcery and suffering and self-immolation, no room for the System, or so he reasons, and it is why he has made his decision to convert, certain it’s what his father would want, none of which he shares with Nour, because he can’t, can’t tell her he needs it more than he needs her.
Is the praying helping? she says, turning back to him.
But he’s unable to look at her, because he has no good answer and finds little solace in trying. It’s no coincidence to him that the day he told her he converted is the same day she tells him she’s pregnant, almost spitting out the coffee she’d just sipped. They’re sitting in Beanos Café in Mohandiseen looking through her latest protest photos around Tahrir, friends mostly, fists raised, gripping the eerie slogans they’d etched in red ink, in Arabic and English, how they were convinced they were on the right side of history, until things turned violent, and everything he said he would never do again, he does, almost as if he’s fulfilling a prophecy, but who’s?
And he hears her ask, do you think conversion will change anything?
He’s staring at her photos of ransacked storefronts and ravaged streets and picks one up, is this what we’re about? he says and sees a shadow drape over her face, and she says, we’ve come to the point where violence must be met with violence – there’s a pause in her breath – we tried peace, she adds, talking like a middle-aged woman, and where did it get us? He looks around the café, worried someone might be listening, because haven’t they promised never to speak of these things in public, hasn’t he explained his previous life in the System. He takes her hand: So, you’re with the others on this? He is about to tell her violence is not the answer when she cuts him off, and he feels the irony of his thoughts. Do we have a choice? she says, gripping his hand, and then, is that why you want to convert? Do you think religion is the solution? she says, pulling her hands away to air-quote “solution,” the Brotherhood’s slogan, but it has nothing to do with that, he counters, nothing at all, ever since he moved back to Egypt he has been interested in Islam, he tells her. In converting? I don’t remember this, she retorts, to which he feels the need to state the obvious, but you were raised Muslim, no? And you, Christian, she says and holds the final word: Isn’t one as good as the other? Either one is just as good or just as bad. But that’s not what this is all about, he ventures, is it? She gives him a half-smile and delivers her revelation: I don’t want our child to grow up like this.
He doesn’t understand at first until her smile stretches upward and her black eyes lighten. Then he understands, more than he wants to.
He leaves Nour in the bedroom, all things unresolved, and enters the mosque. The swept and spotless stone floor warms the bottoms of his feet, and he leans against a pillar and tells the village sheikh what he’s been unable to tell anyone, certain the sheikh will understand and forgive him. Abdel-Ghafur, he says, his pruned skin shining in the lamplight, so this is what you’ve been hiding in your heart all this time? The sheikh shifts in place and swallows, his hand holding prayer beads, the soles of his feet dry and calloused. This is why you have taken this name, he says again, nodding, cleaning his wrinkled lips with his palm, though this time there is no pleasant irony in his voice. A long silence. His eyes shift from the cleric’s to the black sky overhead and he feels the sudden need to tell him everything. It was many years ago, he says, in another country but hearing himself speak his revelation, his sin, out loud cripples him and he stops short of a full confession. The sheikh is still nodding, still swallowing, still fixing him through his mental deliberation, and he wonders what he can add to prompt his response. I was young, foolish, not myself, he stutters, and nobody knows, not even Nour. He bends and twists and leans to kiss his hand – as is proper, he’s been told – but the sheikh pulls away in one swift baffling movement, and he finds himself prostrated before him, his forehead to the ground, in the full posture of penitence he was taught long ago.
I am seeking your forgiveness, he says.
I know, the sheikh says. I may forgive you, Abdel-Ghafur, but can God?
He pulls himself from the ground and looks at the sheikh, his words and their consequences pressing on his chest. It’s not what you, sheikh, have told me, he says. Or has he missed something? Their eyes lock.
Was this man a Muslim? The cleric says without hesitation.
His question confuses him, seems misplaced, plunges him into the dark world of the killings. I have no idea who he was, he says. (Who any of them were, he wants to add.) But I don’t believe he was Muslim.
Was that the only time?
He hesitates long enough to raise the sheikh’s suspicion. Of course, he assures him.
The sheikh stands with some difficulty and walks a few steps, his back to him, and without turning, he says, go home, Abdel-Ghafur, and tell Nour the truth you have told me.
Sheikh, he says, Is He not all-merciful?
He hears nothing but the shuffle of the cleric’s feet on the dry stone pavement and he falls to the ground and remains prostrate in the quiet of the courtyard, powerless to rise and open his eyes, and when he does and looks up the sky is so black, the air so light, so drained of oxygen that he stumbles outside into the emptied, dust-ridden street, unable to breathe, and everything in that perfect creation, everything before his eyes, he is certain, is rising, gaining strength, coming together to make right what for so long has been wrong.
The darkness is thick on the horizon when, close to midnight, he returns and sits on a felled palm trunk next to a fledgling fire as Badr digs a shallow hole where he places unleavened dough in disk form, buries it with sand and, on top, piles twigs and branches, then sparking the fire, he lights a cigarette. The bread will be warm and tasty in the morning, he says. A flock of birds sails just above the oasis, the smell of burning palm fills the air, and he’s thinking, there are others performing the same night ritual, when Nour comes, cuddles next to him on the palm trunk and pulls out her Nikon. She flips through a series of photos she took of the camel slaughter and comments on them, professionally, speculating where she can crop, where she can hedge, and after first turning away, he leans in to look and sees the camel in agony, its blood a fiery pool on the white sand, its eye terrified, caught in the lens – but seeing the photos elicits no response in him, until a chill curls up his spine. He imagines Nour in bed with their child, how losing her must be his penance, as the fire burns heavy, as Badr plays a soft melody on a reed flute, as the same sensation comes over him – that should the darkness of oblivion come, then let it be so – as he kisses Nour on the cheek before standing and helping her to their room, as he tells her he will come back, as he closes the door and walks out past their adobe home to the desert, as he feels so close to the earth now and realizes there is nothing in this world she cannot bear and cannot swallow, no sin, no crime, no fault, as he feels forgiveness to obliteration, as he thinks, Abdel-Ghafur is my name after all, with a half-smile, the one of the Prophet, as he walks and keeps walking, as the stars hang, weighted, in the night sky, and the first traces of infinity appear.
And at that moment, to his surprise, he sees a series of haloed lights flicker far above the horizon in the overhanging spectacle he’s failed to notice, amid the myriad galaxies and hovering planets, and unsure where and how and what and why, he turns to look at the oasis, lingers and stares at the swaying palms, studying their contours and colors, as they present themselves to his eye, as he’s seeing them now, though again there is nothing, not a flash, not a projector, not a trace of light reaching through the darkness, but when he turns and looks above, the flickering lights are still there, there and flickering, and more baffled than before, he lowers his gaze and sees a lone camel watching him from just beyond a low dune, and they stand there, watching each other, unsure, until they meet sometime later, but not much later, in a spot and in a way neither imagined possible, and it is then with his hand on the camel’s neck, that he notices a dark object idle in the shadow of a dune – a jeep – and before he can even realize, he feels hands grabbing his legs and arms, pulling them in different directions, stretching his body outward, uncertain if they’re the hands of men or the hands of God, and so he burrows his feet into the sands, grounding himself to the earth, burrowing deeper, looking upward, seeing the flicking haloed lights, grounding downward, drawn in many directions, knees to feet, elbows to hands, waist to neck, until he knows they’re neither the hands of God nor the hands of men, but those of the Forgiver, and the sands wash over him and he vanishes without a trace.
†††
J.P. Apruzzese writes fiction, poetry, and book and art reviews. His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Brooklyn Magazine, Burning House Press, PANK Magazine, Public Seminar, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, among others. He holds an MFA in fiction from The New School and is the Translation Editor at LIT literary and arts review.
Image source: Flo P/Unsplash
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