read by Misra. Once I even made a punâmy future is in my blood. The funny thing was Uncle Qorrax misunderstood it as meaning that my destiny was the destiny of the family of which he was head. Well, I didnât correct him. We had a laugh, Misra and I. The poor man did not know that she had read my future in blood.
As for water. Have you ever watched a storm of rain? Imagine this: every drop of rain is escorted by an angel who keeps it company until it touches the earth, the angels who make certain that seasons change for the better when it rains, that people prosper, the dry brown grass turns green, dust into mudâand human beings pray in thankful offerings, slaughtering beasts for their carnivorous tablesâand Misra is thus enabled to tell a futureâwhich is past.
For Misra, and therefore for me too, everything had a past, a present, and a future. The earth had its history, the sun its life, the moon its pattern of behaviour. Blood. Sand. Dry leaves, dry twigs. Papers, yellow with age and roaming the open spaces, riding the dust and the wind â everything told of a future. One had to know to read it. Or so said Misra.
And stones had faces, spiders souls, serpents ideas, lizards intelligence. Human beings are not the only living and thinking beings. Rivers have memories, she said. They remember where theyâve come from, they have allegiance to the people in whose country they rise. The wind recalls whom it has met in its journeys across the vast deserts, it exchanges greetings with some, turning an unhearing ear to the salutations reaching it from others. A reed possesses a mind of its own and holds steadfastly to this, even if, at times, the wind makes it go dizzy, lose its head and balance as it somersaults over rocks, sandbanks, etc. The earth draws strength from the sky, the sky from the earth â and the living from the dead. The history of the earth can be read in its eclipses, that of the sun from its being partially or completely obscured by the shadow of another body â the earth or the moon.
I continue, since I have heard her recite the âOde to Natureâ so many times: a child is to its mother what the sun is to the moon; what the heavens are to earth. Yes, Fm quoting her. The mother is what the moon is to the sun; what the earth to the heavens. A mother receiving little, giving a great deal. It makes a mother take delight in the giving and the child (or man) in the receiving. The shock is greater when one learns one must giveânot always receive. A shock so great, it is like falling suddenly and unexpectedly from a great height, onto the lap of death. Amen! The living draw strength from the dead, donât they? And those who are asleep receive sustenance from those who are awake. Amen! And rememberâthe Prophet has said that men are asleep. Itâs only at their death that they are awoken. Amen!
VI
She looked like a corpse when asleep â motionless, with her hands folded together across her chest, her eyes closed and hardly a snort, or even a sound, issuing from her nostrils. But I told myself she neednât have worried, when all others die, she wonât, I would say to myself. So long as I lived, she would too. Either in me, or she would live a life independent from mine. And I would watch her stir, then rise, as though from the dead, every morning, after I had been awake for hours. She would dust her dress and walk away â as if she had woken from the dead, from her own grave. Every morning, the same thing. At times, she would take a nap in the afternoon. And Aw-Adan would come and he would pull up a chair by her head, and sitting quietly, would read a selection of suras from the Koran, as though she were dead and he were reading a devotion or two over her. If she didnât look like a corpse, I would turn her into one, I said to her one day
âBut why?â she asked, disturbed.
âOr I would kill you. So you would be a corpse
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