The Spider's House by Paul Bowles

fingers pointing skyward, and the hills on both sides were visible, with their raw earth and their rows of tiny olive trees. But the bowl where the center of the city lay was still brimming with the nocturnal, unmoving fog. He stood awhile looking, letting the fresh early air bathe his face and chest, and he said a few holy words as he turned his head in the direction of Bab Fteuh. Beyond the gate was the waste land by the cemetery where he played soccer, and then the village of reed huts where there were many goats, and then the wheatfields leading gently down toward the river, and then the mud villages under the high clay cliffs. And if you went farther there was a sort of canyon-land all made of clay, where in the spring after the rains the water rushed through, often carrying with it drowned sheep and even cows.
    In this region there were no plants at all—only the clay with its deep crevasses and crazy turrets made by the rain. Beyond this were great mountains where the Berbers lived, and then desert, and other lands whose names only a few people could tell you, and then, of course, behind everything, in the center ofthe world, shining in an eternal unearthly light, there was Mecca. How many hours he had spent examining the bright chromolithographs that lined the walls of the barber shops! Some were of historic battles waged by Moslems against demons; some showed magnificent flying horses with women’s heads and breasts—it was on these animals that important people used to travel before they discarded them for airplanes—some were of Adam and Eve, the first Moslems in the world, or of Jerusalem, the great holy city where Christians and Jews were still murdering Moslems every day and putting their flesh in tins to be shipped abroad and sold as food; but there was always a picture, more beautiful than any, of Mecca, with its sharp crags above and its tiers of high houses topped with terraces and studded with balconies, its arcades and lamps and giant pigeons, and finally, in the center, the great rock draped with black cloth, which was of such beauty that many men fainted, or even died, on beholding it. Often at night he had stood in this very spot, his hands on the wall, straining his eyes as he peered into the star-filled darkness of the sky, trying to imagine that he saw at least a faint glimmer of the light which streamed up forever into the heavens from the sacred shrine.
    Usually from the terrace he could hear the shrill voices and the drums from the market at Sidi Ali bou Ralem. Today, what with the fog, only the sounds from the immediate neighborhood were audible. He went back into his room, lay down on his bed, resting his feet against the wall above his head, and began to play his flute: no particular tune—merely an indeterminate, neutral succession of notes with an occasional long wait—the music for the particular way he felt on this cool, misty morning. When this had gone on for a while, he suddenly jumped up and dressed himself in the only European outfit he owned: a pair of old military trousers and a heavy woolen sweater, along with a pair of sandals he had bought in the Mellah—these last he slipped under his arm, as they were to be put on only when he got into the middle of town, away from the danger of enemy attacks in the streets of his own quarter. It was easier to fight, and to walk, for that matter, barefoot, unencumbered by the weightof shoes. A friend had given him a leather wrist strap which he wore on gala occasions, pretending it had a watch with it. He looked at it for a moment, decided against it, combed his hair carefully, glancing into a pocket mirror which was hung on the wall, and tiptoed down the two flights of stairs into the courtyard. When his mother saw him she called out: “Come and eat breakfast! You think you’re going out without eating first?”
    He was extremely hungry, but without knowing why, he had wanted to get out of the house immediately, before he had to speak