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fiction
published in Reed

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by Paul Pekin
 
 
 

 On certain days when the sky was clear and entirely blue, you could see the trails of jetliners invisibly making their way across the continent.  Then, if you still had the heart of a man, if the sun and the sand and the devastating stench had not crushed your spirit forever, you could brush away the flies, rise up, and clench your fist.  Almost no one did it anymore.

 The young man's name was Habib, an unlikely choice but it will have to do.  The old ways were so long lost it hardly mattered.  Even Allah, it was claimed, had fled.  But this young man, Habid, clenched his fist.

 A city had grown up around the Field of Gifts, a city so great no one knew its numbers, a landscape of huts, of shanties, of tents, of plastic, of cardboard, of sheet metal, of every material known to man.  It crowded close to the barriers; it engulfed the Mound of Yesterdays; it continued on into the plains for as far as anyone one dared to imagine.  Those silent jetliners marking the sky above, could anyone aboard even guess what was below?

 "If one ever fall,"   Habid told his companion,  "I am who wish him here alive."

 The man beside him was from the far zones, a Yoro, or so he claimed, about thirty; his skin was dark, his nose birdlike.  Only this morning, out of nowhere, he was at Habib's side.  "Wishes can come true,"  he said.  "Until then, let us have our Gifts."

 Habib checked his watch.  He did not wear it on his wrist but kept it pinned beneath his white shirt where the rogues would not see it.  A gift like a watch was a gift best kept out of sight.

 The crowd had been gathering since dawn.  They were docile, patient people and if their bellies were not always full neither were they always empty as it had been in the days before the Gifts.  Habib could not remember these days but there were those who could.  They spoke in tongues young people were quickly forgetting and they told of swollen bellies and dreadful pain, and to hear them talk you would almost think such things were worse than what had taken their place.

 "I would please die,"  Habib said.  "If I may take a man of white with me."

 "I have hear some are black," the Yoro said.

 "Their hearts do be white.  That I say."

 When the soldiers arrived, as they did every morning, they roared their trucks through the crowd, recklessly scattering all who stood in the way.  The soldiers were young men, younger even than Habib, dressed in khaki shorts and fatigue shirts, carrying automatic rifles they liked to fire.  Sometimes people were hit by bullets or struck by a truck and when this happened the soldiers would laugh and exchange high hands.  Then you would hear such a moan from the people as might make you imagine a large wounded animal, no longer dangerous but in very great pain.  Today was fortunate; only a girl was knocked to the earth where she lay quietly, blood oozing from her eyes.

 "Hey, fool people,"  the soldiers cried.  "Stand back or we kill all!"

 The time was near.  Habib could feel a curious tingle crawl up the back of his neck.  He had seen the Gifts arrive many thousand times and it was always so.  There are feelings you cannot describe, moments when your heart swells and your bowels grow cold, when something rises up in your throat and makes you want to cry.  To be part of this multitude, this great flood of living people, to feel the quickening of their uncounted hearts, to feel their sorrow, to know their shame, to share these things and stand with them, this gave Habib a strength he would not have exchanged for all the wonders and wealth of the world he did not know.  We are one, he told himself.  We are one living creature and we cannot die.

 Then the Ark of The West appeared.  It was seen first as it was always seen, a silent glint in the sky.  Ahhhh, the crowd moaned, and out of the Mound of Yesterdays rose more thousands of birds than Allah himself could have imagined, circling and white winged, crying out with voices sharpened by greed.  Ahhhh, and the crowd took a single step forward, just a tightening, and the soldiers fired their guns, spasmodically, peevishly, aimlessly: it meant nothing.   A thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand faces were turned upward and they saw it, a shaft of silver falling like a star that had lost its way, dropping soundlessly, as it always did, vertically, as it always did, and at the very moment when the people were about to cry out, it opened its engines and stood on its own tail of fire and slowed and slowed and slowed until it came to rest upon the blackened earth.  Then there was that moment when it stood covered with flame but the flame finally drew back and all was ready.

 Wingless, seamless, and smooth like a bullet, the Ark  was higher than a hundred men, it was of the purest cleanest silver polished so brightly it turned back the light.  It waited and the crowd waited and the birds began to circle, a urgent halo of wings that cried out in a single strident voice.
 The Ark opened as a flower opens.  Habib had never seen a flower but there were those who had and this is what they said.  Six great doors folded down like petals and came to rest on the sand, each displaying a brilliant red roller belt that reached inside where all was black and hidden.

 "They do say it flies alone,"  the Yoro said.  "In their land it is loaded with the things they do not want, they touch a button and it flies here without them."

 Habib spat.  "And the soldiers take what is best!"

 There was frenzy in the sky even before the belts began to roll, the birds shrieking and swooping low, and you could feel the crowd draw in its breath and grow tense.  Then the belts began to move, and the Gifts were on them and the soldiers were picking and grabbing, cursing, quarreling, and shouting with glee.  One of them held up a silver dress as long as himself and sniffed it, doglike, before throwing it upon the truck.

 "All for the privileged ones,"  Habib said bitterly.

 "They will leave the bread that has worms,"  the Yoro said.

 "And the scrapings of plates."

 "Things that do not even have names!"

 When the soldiers had filled their trucks they mounted up and drove through the crowd.  "Back, back," they cried.  "We kill!"  Habib saw a young man, now clad in a silver dress, firing into the people.

 Then the rush began.  It took skill and strength to pass through the barricades without injury.  The sick, the weak, the old, the young, would have to wait, and the sickest and weakest would have to wait until what remained had been shoved into the Mound of Yesterdays. With the birds and the rats and the flies they could share it at their leisure.

 There had been many times when Habid told himself he would he would never come here again, that he would squat by his hut and wait until death closed his eyes.  To fight for the Gifts was to forget what you were, a man who lived among men and treasured his hatred, to fight for the Gifts was to turn that hatred upon flesh that was as your very own.

 It took skill, strength, and an absolute denial of brotherhood to fight your way to the mounds and hold your position.  The people who were your own people became your enemies, even less than enemies, they became no more than arms and hands clutching beside you.  It was dangerous work; the white men did not sort their Gifts, broken glass, jagged metal, and the needles they used to inject their drugs lurked everywhere; caustic substances bubbled out of half filled containers; live rats sometimes leaped straight at your face, and still it was astonishing what you would find, hardened chunks of bread, cooked animal bones, half eaten sausages, the cores and rinds of fruits, bits of vegetables, the remains of entire meals packed in plastic cartons; was it any wonder people no longer starved?

   When Habib stepped back from the mound he looked for the Yoro.  An interesting man who said thoughts.  It would be good to speak to him again but, in the confusion and turmoil, he had disappeared.  It was this way always.   You spoke to a man, then he was gone.  You lived in the multitude, but you were always alone.
 

 -2-

 When the sun was in the center of the sky there was little that moved in the city.  After Habib had exchanged a container of hardened potato fries for a liter of bad brown water, he crouched through the crowd toward his lean-to.

 Women tugged at his trousers.  "Oh, young father,"  they begged.  "You surely have a crust?"

You could have any woman for a crust.  You could have her diseases too.  There was not a woman left without disease.  Habib, whatever the pain, meant to keep himself pure.

 The rows between the huts were narrow.  The soldiers could not come here with their trucks.  They made their own roads with tanks and kept to them.  They soon forgot they too had once been of the people.

 There was no place Habib knew of where there were no people.  The city went on, it was said, until it reached the next Field of Gifts, and then on until it reached another, and on and on until it reached the white man's sea, poisoned with salt.  Beyond that there was the white man's world but you could not go there, ever.  A man's life is what is given to him.  He cannot have another.

 Habib's lean-to was made of bright metal he had retrieved from the Mound of Yesterdays.  The brighter the metal, the better it reflected the sun, and then you could lie in the shade if you were careful not to touch that metal.  Metal was plentiful. Even the rogues seldom troubled to steal it.  Mostly they stole what was easy to carry, and even then they often dropped it after a few minutes.  It was said if a rogue steals your umbrella, follow him until he tires and throws it down.
 Habib stretched out and began the long wait for night.  He ignored the flies.  There was no way you could avoid them and if you had no open sores where they could lay their eggs they did no harm.  Nor did the stench which you would quickly forget if it did not change so often.  Today there was something new to smell.  Several rows down, the young men had burned a witch and his hut.  It was surprising how much a man smelled like meat.

 He had not lain long before he heard a voice,  "Will you share the shade with a brother?"  When he looked up he saw the Yoro.

 "I thought you lost,"  he said. He  was glad to see this man he had only met a few hours ago.  "Were the Gifts good for you?"

 The Yoro opened a plastic bag and brought out six metal coated cylinders.  "Batteries."

 "You have a light?"

 "I have better.  Come with me tonight and you will see."

 "They will not work."

 The Yoro touched a battery to his tongue.  "They have strength.  You will see."

 Habib was disappointed.  Only fools carried around the white man's batteries and tried to make the discarded toys work.  At night there was plenty of light in the city.  There was the moon and the stars and the glow of the dung fires.  There were the thousands of little lanterns people made of grease and rags.

 The Yoro chuckled.  "I know your thoughts, little brother.  Why do you think I followed you?

Tonight, with these batteries, I will show you the West."

 Habib shook his head.

 "You will see.  I have a television.  These batteries will make it light."

 "No television does light.  The white men do not give us that kind."

 "This one, little brother, does light.  I have seen it and tonight you will see it too."

 Habib and the Yoro lay in the shade talking.  The Yoro had been to far places and seen other Fields of Gifts.  "It is true,"  he said,  "I have found no place where the city is not.  Our people cover this land."

 When the sun is high you cannot talk long, nor can you think of dangerous complicated things.  You do well to lie still and wait, holding your mind empty.  Habib and his companion shared the water and slept and when the shadows came they rose and walked back to where the Ark, its petals closed and perfect, was ready to rise back into the sky.  The 'dozers had shoved all the remaining Gifts into the Mound of Yesterdays and there were only a few weak minded people still searching the field.  When the warning whistle sounded all but one fled behind the barriers.

 "There is one who will burn,"  the Yoro said.  The weak minded one, still scrabbling among the litter, anxiously glanced over his shoulder at the great Ark.  "Get out, fool!"  Habib cried.  It was too late.  At that moment the fire burst out of the Ark and the man disappeared and the Ark lifted from the blackened earth.  It rose in a roar so deafening you could not hear your own shouts, and dwindled into the sky until it was gone.

 And there was nothing left of the weak minded one.  Nothing.

 -3

 With shadows the city began to stir.  People came out of their shelters and began the fires.  You could hear the shouts of vendors and the cries of women who wished to sell their bodies.  You could hear screams as the rogues began their nightly rounds.  Habib and the Yoro, making their way through the rows, encountered several bands of them but they drew back at the sight of two men who seemed ready to fight.

 As they drew further and further way from the Field of Gifts the City began to change.  Here lived the weak, the helpless, the dying.  There was a new stench and it was of that.  Great birds hovered above and swooped down and sat on the peaks of huts with their naked heads inclined.  From time to time you would come upon a flock covering something in the street and you were careful not to disturb this.  It was taboo to disturb these flesh eating birds.  The penalty for this was fire.
 "You see,"  the Yoro said.  "We reach the first huts of the next zone."   Habib had heard it was not safe to visit another zone.  "Not so,"  the Yoro insisted.  "We are all one people.  We suffer the same."

 The Yoro and his friends had built a barrier around their huts and there were men who asked questions before you were allowed to enter.  "The soldiers do not come this far,"  he explained.  "We should not be permitted this if they did."

 The Yoro's friends were young, some little more than boys, and they had the thin leathery limbs of those who eat of the Gifts sparingly.  "Tonight, little brothers,"  the Yoro said.  "Tonight we see the west."

 Habib had never seen a hut so crowded with objects.  There were bottles and pots and utensils, bits of mysterious machinery, books no one could read, musical instruments no one could play, containers for materials no one could imagine, pictures of scenes too unfamiliar to understand.  "I am a man pleased by objects,"  the Yoro said.

 He squatted on the floor and opened the bag of batteries.  One by one he touched them to his tongue.  "They are weak,"  he  said.  "But for a time we shall see the white man's world."
 The television was small and silver and had a handle by which it could be carried.  The screen could have been covered by a man's hand.  The Yoro opened the back, inserted his batteries carefully, and pushed a button.  He bent close to the television, listening, nodded, and then pressed the button again.

 "We shall see it.  We shall take it outside and show as many people as possible.  Then their anger will burn away all sorrow."

 Habib followed the others.  Young men formed a cordon around the Yoro, almost as the soldiers would do for the privileged ones.  A long wire was brought and attached to the television, the other end raised high upon a pole.

 People began to gather and the young men, taking up their positions, held them at length.  "Let them come closer,"  the Yoro ordered.  "They will not harm me."

 When all was ready he was facing a crowd that extended far into the night.  He made himself tall and spoke.  "My people.  My people.  My people.  My people.  My people!"

 The crowd responded with a murmur.

 "We are one,"  the Yoro said, and the crowd replied,  "One."

 "Tonight we look into the white man's world.  The batteries are weak, the picture will be small.  Not all will see but those that do will tell their brothers.  The pictures will not last, but what we see will last. Watch a little and give up your place to another.  We will see how those who send our Gifts live, and we will tell others and we will not forget.  My people, my people, my people!  Let your will be strong!"

 The Yoro stepped down and placed his hand upon Habib's shoulder.  "You will not give up your place.  I have seen you raise your fist, and now you must see why."

 At first the television did not make a picture.  Instead there was a shifting pattern of electric color, a shower of sparkling flakes, and then a series of picture moving upwards so swiftly one could not quite make out what they showed.  The Yoro touched buttons and dials and exhorted the television with his voice.  "My people!"  he cried.  "I need your will!  Now!  Together!  We must will our strength into the batteries!"

 The crowd groaned with the effort.  Gradually the little screen stabilized, gradually it became clear.  Then they were looking into the white man's world.

 Something in red flashed on the screen, a car was moving, a bright open car carrying three young white women with their long hair blowing.  The car moved like a flying thing along a great sweeping drive that passed buildings so tall they ended in the clouds.  Young men looked up at the young women, and shouted their approval, a policeman bowed low.  The young white women stopped their car, stepped out, and began walking, arm in arm.  They tossed their heads this way and that and made their lovely hair swirl.  Habid had never seen such hair.  The three young woman walked arm in arm and swirled their hair and the picture changed to show something that came in a bottle.  A voice, speaking in a language Habib did not understand, spoke with great passion.  "The voice explains,"  the Yoro said.  "That is what they put on their hair to make it straight and beautiful.  The voice explains that, and how they must sell their bodies to get it.  Thus all white women are beautiful."

 The picture changed.  Now was seen the vast ocean and the land that ran into it, covered with sand and young white men and women, half naked, dancing to fierce pulsing music.  The young women were thin, almost starved, and all had long thick hair.  "They eat,"  the Yoro said,  "They drink.  And they never grow stout."

 Indeed the young white people were eating.  Trays of fowl and meat were simmering on coal fires.  Living creatures with claws and many legs were being boiled in kettles.  An iron chest was opened revealing hundreds of cans of cold beverages.  "Beer,"  the Yoro said.  "It is their staple."  The young white men and women drank copiously, the music played faster; then the picture changed.
 A white man in a white suit with a white hat atop his white head was standing before a heavy wooden table, knife in hand, a large green dish and a mound of fresh vegetables before him.  He began cutting the vegetables into slices and speaking in that language Habib could not understand.  The vegetables were red and  green and yellow and orange and people knew of them from the Field of Gifts.  Whenever the man cut away a part he did not want and discarded it, the Yoro would say,  "There, my people, is our portion."

 "Let him come here,"  Habib said.  "I am one who would like him here."

 Now the picture changed and became a game the white men were playing with a ball.  Wearing helmets that covered their faces they lined up and threw themselves upon each other and crushed each other into the earth.  The people cried out with joy, but then the picture changed for the final time, and as if faded into darkness Habib saw a white woman alone on the screen talking in her strange language.  Her hair was as bright as the sun, her lips red as blood, and she seemed to be speaking directly to him.

 For a long time the people sat in silence although there never could be any real silence here in the city.  There was always this restless murmur and the distant shouts and screams and the occasional gun shots from far far away.  If you listened carefully, it was possible to believe that the earth itself was sobbing.  The Yoro squatted next to Habib.  "Well, little brother?"

 Habib closed his eyes.  He could still see the white woman with the sun-bright hair and red lips and he felt his heart fill with hatred.  "I will lie awake always thinking the way I might kill her."
 
 

 -4-

 In the City that is forever a city, one day follows another and no day is special.  But this morning the soldiers were off fighting one another and there was no one to hold the people back.  They gathered early and waited for the Ark to appear.  By dawn they were tense and ready and there was a danger in them.  Habib could feel it in the pressure of the thousands and thousands at his back.  When the Ark appeared, he set his feet to resist the oncoming rush but there was no holding back what happened when it touched earth and the fire drew back.  With a terrifying roar, the entire crowd crashed through the barriers and charged.

 There was a moment when Habib was sure he would be crushed. Then, somehow, he found himself lifted and carried above the mob; he saw the sky whirling and turning, he saw a lacy white jet-trail spinning round and round like the hands of a clock gone mad, and then, with an accuracy that almost seemed deliberate, the people he called his people hurled him directly upon the roller belt, face down amidst the reeking gifts.  Blinded, he felt fingers sharp as metal snatch away his clothing and tear into his flesh.  There was no way to resist, no other escape than to ride all the way to the end and drop naked and bleeding to the earth and lie there while the Gifts that followed showered down and down and down until it seemed he would be buried alive.  At last a hand closed upon his wrist and pulled him free.  It was the Yoro.

 "Well, little brother. Look at them, our people, they will tear each other apart."

 The struggle around the roller belts had turned into chaos, men and women alike slashing and striking at each other, some even climbing up to enter the Ark.  Habib recalled stories of people who had flown this way to the white man's world; always they had returned dead among the Gifts, whether the white men had killed them or the voyage had killed them was something no one living knew.

 "Come,"  the Yoro said.  "I have food for you and then a task.  You do not belong here."

 He had a bag of bread rolls that he had somehow won.  "These are from a restaurant, little brother.  Do you know what a restaurant is?  It is a place where the white men go to eat and the food that is given them is more than they can finish. "

 "I will eat no more,"  Habib said.  "I will sit by my hut until my eyes close."

 The Yoro closed his bag and stayed silent until they reached Habib's lean-to.  From somewhere he produced a shirt and forced Habib to pull it over his bleeding shoulders.  "You must eat, little brother,"  he said.  "These are our most sacred Gifts that the soldiers fight the hardest for, the bags from the white man's restaurants.  I have seen things in them that you would not believe.  You must know now, that I have been a soldier, that I once was in the pay of the privileged ones."

 "If you are of them, then I must wish to kill you."

 "No, no, no, little brother. Save your hate for those who send Gifts."

 Habib clenched his fist.  "If I could but meet one!"

 "You shall,"  said the Yoro.

 Habib accepted a roll.  It was soft and covered with little seeds that he could crack between his teeth.  He had never tasted anything quite so delicious.  "How shall that be?"  he said.  "No one can ride the Ark alive.

 "No one need ride the Ark.  Tonight, with me, you shall meet your white man."

 "I will kill him,"  Habib said.

 "You have been chosen to kill him,"

  -5-

 That night the journey was difficult; there was fighting in the lanes, and huts the soldiers had set on fire, and Habib, stiffening from his injuries, found himself moving like an old man.  From the time of the first shadows until the time of the new sun, they walked, and they continued on long after it had risen into the sky.  It was true, there was no place where the city was not, there was no place where the huts and shanties and lean-tos were not, no place where you did not smell the stench and hear the cries, no place where you did not encounter the evil birds, no place where the women did not offer their bodies.  The path they followed took them over ground that grew steadily more rocky, up parched hills and over dry gullies, and there was no place that the city was not.  Finally they came to a compound that was guarded by armed men.   "If the soldiers come here," the Yoro explained,  "it is to be with us.  Thus we have their weapons.  Thus we increase our numbers."

 The men at the gate saluted them with high hands.  They were young men and very thin and there was a look in their eyes that made Habib glad he had not come here alone.   Inside the gates, older men greeted them in the old way, with ceremonial bows and speech in the old language.  They spoke to the Yoro for long minutes while Habib stood by, not understanding a word.  Waiting, he felt his skin come alive.  It was flies, feeding where his flesh had been torn.  His heart was filled with shame.

 At last the Yoro turned.  "They ask about you, little brother.  They wish to know if you are pure enough to act.  Will you kill the white man?"

 "With my hate, I will kill him."

 "No, my brother.  It is not so easy to hate a living face."

 Habid remembered the images on the television, the young women dancing and drinking beer, the man in the white hat chopping vegetables and throwing parts aside, the helmeted ballplayers crashing into each other.  Yes, he could hate a living face.

 The old men led them into the largest of the huts.  There was gloom inside, and steps that led into the rocky earth, and suddenly a room lit with smoking lamps.

 Three men squatted on the floor playing the bead game.  Since it was forbidden to interrupt a player during his turn, the old men waited, and while they waited, Habib's eyes adjusted.

 The white man was very old, so old there was nothing about him that was not white.  He was dressed as the people dressed, in a ragged shirt, knee length trousers, and rubber sandals.  His white hair was cut short and his white beard trimmed close to his chin.  When he looked up his eyes were a perfect and astonishing shade of blue.

 The beads were put away.  The white man stood and embraced his fellow players; their skin as dark as his was not.  Then he faced Habib.  "So this,"  he said,  "is to be the one."

 "It must not be,"  one of the men who had been playing beads said.  "A vote must be taken again."

 A second man replied.  "The vote has been taken many times."

 "Let the circle decide,"  the first man insisted.

 Habib felt a hand upon his shoulder.  It was the Yoro.  "Little brother,"  he whispered.  "All this talk, it must be."

 The old men formed a circle and squatted.  Habib remained on his feet, facing the white man.

"You have been injured,"  the white man said.  "These wounds must be cleaned.  Have you--"  he spoke to the men in the circle,  "--no pity for this boy?"

 The old men lowered their eyes.  Then one of them spoke in the old language and the white man nodded.  "Come with me,"  he said.

 There was another room connecting to the first.  Habib had never before seen such a thing.  "You needn't fear,"  the white man said.  "I could not escape if I wished, and I have no such wish."  He filled a basin with brown water and dipped a rag into it.  "Look how your body is torn.  Who did this, the soldiers?"

 "I am here to kill you,"  Habib said.

 The white man nodded and began to wash the dried blood from Habib's body.  No man had ever been so tender.

 But when he was done, and Habib was clean and dry in fresh clothing, the meeting was still in progress, the old men still squatting in their circle.  "I speak again,"  the man who played beads said.  "My brothers, we have taken this man and held him for half a lifetime.  He is the last of the white men, the only one we shall ever have.  He must be traded for something, this has always been our intention.  When we destroy him, we destroy our last hopes."

 "When we destroy him,"  the Yoro interrupted,  "we destroy your friend.  Do not deny you have made friends.  Could it be any other way?  But duty is not to friends, duty is to our people.  How and for what can we trade him?  His own people no longer want him, or even know he exists!  He can serve only one purpose.  He must be sacrificed to our hatred.  Our hatred!  What have we left to remind us we are men?  Think, my brothers, our hatred, the hatred of all our people, rising out of the sand.  They will feel it on the other side of the world.  It will cross the poison sea and enter into their dreams and eat away their happiness.  We must not be weak."

 "You talk nonsense,"  the man who played beads said.  "All our hate and we can harm only one white man, one who has become as one of us."

 The Yoro shook his head.  "You love him.  And so do I!  As a brother I love this white man.  There is not one of us here who could kill him.  But it must be done!"  He turned now to Habib.
"Little brother!  Speak and let us be done with this.  Have you the strength to kill this white man?"

 Habid's reply was a whisper:

   "It is all I have."

 The white man was as old as the sand, as pale as the moon, his beard as soft as a baby's hair.

"Then let it be,"  he said.  "A man cannot play beads while others suffer."

 The old men were silent.  The Yoro drew a knife from his belt and offered it to Habib, hilt first.  The white man dropped to his knees and waited.

 Habib remembered the roller belt, how he had felt tumbling helplessly among the stinking Gifts with a thousand crazed hands clutching at him.

 "I will not take your knife,"  he said.  "It must be done other.  Where all can see.  Where all can know.  Give this white man to me, and follow if you dare."

 -6-

 Habib and the white man stepped out onto the burning earth.  The white man walked slowly, his legs weakened by years of confinement.  "Since last I saw it,"  he said,  "the city has grown.  My friends treated me well, but they could not, and I understand, let me loose among the people. I am grateful to you for this final chance to see the City."

 Habib kept his jaws together.  It was better not to speak at all.  When he looked behind, he could see the old men following, and the young men who had guarded the compound, and new people who had crawled out of their huts and lean-tos, as great a crowd as anyone had ever seen moving in the high sun.

 "Father, oh fathers, a crust,"  the women cried, but when they saw the white man's white skin and they fell silent and joined in with those who followed.  Habib could feel them behind him, his people, by thousands and uncounted thousands, pushing him forward.  Night came and they moved on, stopping only for a sip of water or to rest the white man's feeble legs, and the crowd behind grew and grew until even the rogues had joined.

 It was dawn when they reached the barricades and joined those already in place.  "What is this?"  people grumbled when they saw the approaching multitude.  "Are we to share the Gifts with these new ones?"  Then they saw the white man and those who saw him told those who did not and the voice of the crowd became low and wonderful moan.

 "I have heard of this place,"  the white man said.  He was staring at the Mound of Yesterdays, reeking, steaming, circled by birds.  "May God forgive us all."
 "White man,"  Habib said.  "Do not take my hate."

 Those who stood before the barricades stepped aside and let them through.  Then they were alone on the Field of Gifts and no one dared follow.  Habib led the white man over the blackened earth until they reached the target, a circle of sand so scorched it had turned to glass.  "I see what you mean to do,"  the white man said.  "Yes, it is right.  All must see.  You needn't fear, I will stand fast."

 Habib did not reply.  He glanced upwards, squinting.  The time was drawing near.  Already the birds had begun to rise from the Mound of Yesterdays.
 When the soldiers arrived, firing their guns and bullying their way to the barricades, they saw two men, one white, one black, standing naked in the center of the target.  "Hey!  Fool people!"  they cried, but then they understood.  The soldiers put down their guns and joined the people.

 A speck had appeared in the sky, silver, slender, delicate as a falling seed, and the birds, already winged, began to circle the field crying out angrily; people who remembered this day would always remember how angry the birds had become.  It was as if at last they possessed souls.

Then the Ark, falling, falling, grew huge, and those who watched set themselves for the fire.  On the ground Habid and the White Man embraced, there were some who saw this, there were some who did not, but there was no one on that days that followed who would ever admit he had not seen what happened next.  The Ark dropped, and dropped, as it always did. vertically, soundlessly, as it always did, and opened its engines, as it always did, at the very moment when it seemed it must crash into the earth.  That was the moment when the people saw, before the flames engulfed them, Habib and the white man standing side by side, each raising his fist.  Then they were gone and it was as if they had never been, but something else remained, a new thing, and if there were a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or a million faces watching, there were a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or a million hearts that felt it, a pure and shining hate that even silenced the birds in the sky.

 The Ark came to rest.  It opened its shining petals.  It began to pump its Gifts out onto the sand.  The people waited and savored the thing that was more precious than a full belly.  When at last they stepped forward it was slowly and with great dignity, and that was almost as good as hope.

 the end

copyright  1999 paul pekin