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Chapter 10
She wakes up in the shade of the Terebinth tree, thinking she fell asleep drawing water. At her age she has no business with this kind of foolishness. Mother will be angry.
Then she feels the little boy sleeping against her chest, and remembers she has not come here to draw water, and this is probably no Terebinth tree. This is not the sacred shady grove where the prophets rested, the place she sometimes sleeps and dreams the holy tribal dreams.
Indeed she rests in the sandy bed of a dry waadi, not unlike those in her sacred home across many seas. But over this ephemeral watercourse stands a wall of dark stone on which squiggles, swirls and crescents are carved, the dank memes of the ancients. Centuries ago other prophets came here and left behind their wisdom, but they definitely were not the prophets of her people, just as this shade was not made by the Terebinth tree of her people.
Severe dehydration grips her body and that of the little boy using her body for a pillow. This dryness of body and spirit muddles her thoughts. But her principle confusion comes from the fact that this place looks so much like the dry steppes she comes from. The wind whipping and whistling above the wash is the same wind that scours the Syrian sand. It blows whispered messages in from the jinn dwelling back there among the ancient rocks and trees of the old world. The voices rolling in in gusts from 7,000 miles away taunt and tease her. You abandoned the graves of your ancestors. What do you expect but this misery?
As similar on the surface as this land is to that distant, abandoned one from which she and the boy rode on a foul wind over endless oceans, it is still only a warped, distorted version of the place where the blessed prophets roamed on naked feet that never tired and never bled. Had she been inclined toward scientific speculation, she would say it was a relativistic version, skewed and warped along the axes of space and time. She has never seen a Dali painting, but there is a Daliesque touch to this place. There are Terebinth trees, but they are stumped and twisted hobgoblins of Terebinths. They offer shade, but only a dismal, mocking shade that holds no hope of life giving water in the ground beneath. There are pastures here, but they are mirage pastures that offer only thorns to desperate travelers. There are prophets, but they are dead prophets of a dead, trampled religion that reveals there is no holy land for any man. The indecipherable revelations of these obscene seers and scribes are written on the stones that wall in the waadi. Perhaps they offer some sort of warped wisdom, but their meaning has perished with their prophets.
The boy opens his eyes and looks about with dull indifference. He should cry, the mother thinks, but he does not. It is remarkable how war squeezes the tears out of babes. Eighteen months and he does not cry, neither does he walk because he can never roam far or free enough to learn. His entire life has been spent pressed tight against mother's lap in some cramped bunker or basement.
Her eyes shift to the horizon. The bleached Earth of the desert is like a mirror that reflects the sun blindingly back toward her. Even in the shade of the anti-Terebinth she has to shade her eyes to filter the glare. But by squinting she can see the tower, standing like a holy minaret of hope, though no longer transmitting the blinking red lights of its call to prayer. In this land everything is reversed. In the black of night the tower summons the faithful, those steadfast devotees of the water cult, to come bow down and be refreshed. Now in the day it is rendered powerless, its red plastic bulb covers with the sacred blinking lights nothing but cheap children's toys glued to the top of a plastic pole.
She is told about the towers via hand gestures and pantomime by those who migrated here before. At first, she looks upon these nomads as ugly brown trolls who are incomprehensible of speech. Yet soon she finds they can be kind, gentle, and generous with what little they have. The migrant women delight in the blue eyes of her half-Circassian baby, and take turns holding him. With the icebreaker of her child creating tolerance they somehow communicate the idea that there is water at the towers but beware the white wolves that lurk about. If the wolves catch her scent, she and her child are doomed.
In quest of the tower she finds herself imprisoned in a dizzying limbo where day blends into night, dreams blend into waking, and the chronological order of events has no meaning. But even in this disorienting, pitiless world between worlds she sees no discernible signs of the wolves of which she is warned. Is this another false hope? The god of this desert is not the sacred one of the holy book, it is the god of false hope. It lures people into a hostile wasteland with visions of glittering, watered cities, but these cities are forever out of reach, like the cursed tree of Zaqqum in the eternal fires of Jahannam.
The water of the twinkling towers seems also forever out of reach, but she has to try. Another day without water and they are dead.
She lifts the boy, who squirms uncomfortably as they emerge from the shelter of the tree into the sun but still does not cry. Even if he remembers how to cry, there is not enough water in his little body to produce tears. She lugs him through the sand of the waadi, up an eroded crack in the opposite bank, then onto the endless creosote plains that lay between her and the tower with its lights hanging inertly in their sockets, like martyred prophets strung from a high place as a warning.
As she plods across the waterless, windswept pavement of the desert, she thinks back to when this began, in that holy spot beneath the real Terebinth. She is tending the family's flocks, what meager remnants remain after the depredations of rival armies. This is normally a job for her numerous brothers, but they are all conscripted into one side or the other - who can tell the difference, and it is left to the women to protect the tribe’s livelihood.
The Terebinth shades a well used by the same, unchanged bands of nomads for thousands of years. It is said that father Abraham watered his flocks at this well when his people wandered from wicked Ur of the Chaldees to the sacred promised places. It is a well not unlike the one into which Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, was later thrown by his jealous brothers. The flow from such wells is blessed by angels then cursed by evil jinn in turn, filling the hearts of men who stop there with alternating waves of goodness and malice.
She finds one such fallen angel unconscious beneath the Terebinth. He must be an angel, she thinks, because his hair is so fair and his light skin is unscathed by punishment from the sun. Perhaps he has been cast down from the battles in heaven, which those on Earth are but poor imitations. So fixated is she upon his complexion, a lightness of coloration that casts a warm glow through the shade, that she fails to notice his soldier's uniform.
She wonders how he arrived here. While still dozens of yards away, while bringing her flock up, she looked toward the well as a precaution, because these days there are dangerous men taking refuge in such places. Normally her sheep bleat out the presence of strangers, but they are silent.
This man is a miracle who fell from nowhere. Angel or not, it is clear he needs help. His camouflage jacket has a dark stain in the shoulder area. His face is sullied by soot and grime, which dulls but cannot extinguish his radiance. His hands are scratched and his pants worn at the knees, as if he had been squatting in brush for long periods. His lips are parched and cracked.
Overwhelmed by pity and perhaps other feelings best kept guarded in her heart, she cannot take her eyes from the stranger's angelic countenance. As she stands petrified by wonder, the angel begins to mumble words in a language she cannot understand, further proof that he comes from the world beyond the veil. Then, where the wind and sun of the steppe could not, the adoration from her awestruck eyes wakes the angel, who stirs, turns toward her, then slowly opens his eyes.
"Are you an angel?" he asks, once in his mysterious angel tongue and then, sensing confusion, in Arabic.
Startled, she quickly covers her face, then stumbles backward. Her serene, silent flock spreads out on the hillside. The angel man groans and grasps his forehead. The tormenting flies, always buzzing about the spoils of war, do not bother him. An angel he must be.
“I am alive," he says, sounding somewhat disappointed.
At length her tongue recovers from the shock of finding a fallen angel at her feet. "You are hurt," she says. "I will bring you water."
The angel drags himself up painfully against the trunk of the tree. She moistens his lips gently with water from the sacred well. "You are not afraid?" he asks her.
“ Of what?" Truly she feels no fear.
"Of helping a stranger who could kill you. Of helping the wrong side and being punished for it by the other side."
She says nothing. She knows nothing of geometry, nothing of sides, nothing of the ideas that stir the vortex of wars into motion. She only knows wars are a storm that blows across and scourges the desert. Most of the men in her tribe were conscripted, some by one side, some by another, then had blown away to be swept up in that scourge. One day some of them would blow back and life would continue as before. No one would ask what side they were on.
As the angel speaks he gradually looks more human and vulnerable. The act of speaking weakens him. After drinking, he groans and sinks back down beneath the tree. She knows now he is human and is losing life-giving blood, so she gathers in her flock quickly and moves swiftly home for help.
The law of the desert prevails over the laws of men. Each side in the confusing geometry of this multi-faceted struggle declares it a crime to help any of the other sides, but the code of the desert cuts deeper. Long before Rashil ministered to Yaequb at such a place, resting travelers were welcomed and protected at this well without being asked what side they were on.
The angel is taken into the village. He is bathed, fed, and his wounds are tended to. On the third day he arises and tells his story.
It turns out he is of the fair-skinned Circassians. Once a captain for Assad, during the Arab Spring he refused the order to fire into protesters. Instead, he and most of his men fled and joined the FSA, where for months they fought for the city of Homs. From there he was sent to stir up opposition in the Hamad desert, to look for backing among the Bedu. This operation turned sour when his men were ambushed by Assad-backed militiamen, then quickly assaulted by ISIS, who did not discriminate between pro and anti-Assad soldiers. The two enemies joined forces against the greater evil, but were overwhelmed. The angel was shot trying to recover a wounded man of the pro-Assad ranks. With all of his soldiers killed or captured, he hid in a wadi, which he traveled down by night to escape. Morning found him beneath the Terebinth.
The politics of the war are incomprehensible to the humble tribesmen, scraping out a living in the hard packed soil of the Hamad. They find no reason to condemn their wounded visitor, but instead conceal and shelter him for weeks. Giggling Bedu girls sneak into his tent to peek at his pretty blue angel eyes, but the Circassian only has eyes for his own angel, the water drawing maiden who saved him from being buried beneath the Terebinth.
But the angel cannot stay forever. The prophets endured seven years tending flocks to win the hand of a shepherd maiden, but the prophets are now all conscripted into one army or the other. The war has rendered the tribesmen desperately poor, their flocks thin and scattered. Tribal custom dictates that the maiden belongs to a second cousin, but where is this second cousin? He is presumed dead. The patriarchs dig deep for precedents, then out of practicality let her marry her angel.
When they marry they do not ascend the boughs of the Terebinth back into the heavens, from which the angel had fallen. They go to Aleppo. The angel’s wings have been clipped.
In those early days of the civil war, the rebels are emboldened by success to move on Aleppo. Aleppo is the oldest city in the world, and the most fought over.. Its citadels have been battered by Turks, Mongols, Arabs and Crusaders. In ancient times it has been controlled by Rome, Constantinople, and Paris, lately by Moscow and Damascus. It is a giant city commanding a rich plain, but despite its grandeur remains one of the great what-ifs in history. Aleppo has had five thousand years to realize its full potential, but has disappointed. As such, Aleppo suffers from an inferiority complex. It is a city with a chip on its shoulder.
Far from the magic of the Terebinth, the angel changes to match resentful Aleppo. In the warzone he becomes cruel and demanding. Beneath the sacred aura of the tree he loved his shepherd maiden dearly, but within the dismal, smoking wreck that Aleppo has become, love loses its meaning. The protection of the prophets does not apply here, the city is ruled instead by war machines. The angel transforms into an agent of these sinister beasts. He no longer laughs or delights in flowers, birds and poems. Instead, to his bride he delivers long, weary, harangues about a freedom that does not sound free. The bride listens obediently, but thinks that the freedom she enjoyed on the steppe as a birthright had been surrendered in Aleppo. Here she is confined in a small basement, cowering under the whizzing of bullets and the rumble of bombs.
The angel treats her like an object, another piece of gear stuffed into his rucksack. He disappears for days, then returns and forces himself upon her. When she does not conceive he blames and slaps her. If her tormentor had been just another typical dark-eyed brute she could have tolerated the abuse better.. But when a fair-skinned, blue-eyed storybook angel is beating you then the world is upside down and without hope. Even nomad shepherd girls dream of Disneyland. Even nomad shepherd girls are crushed to discover that Prince Charming is only a myth.
She cannot understand why this angel-man, her husband of mysterious origins, wants to bring a child into this nightmare. She takes precautions taught to her by other women in the bunker. Her womb remains barren.
Then one night the angel comes to her in a dream. He descends through the ceiling, lowering himself by the rusty pipes in the basement as if they are the branches of the Terebinth. He kneels above her, glowing his angel glow, then gently lifts her veil and kisses her. For the first time she becomes aroused. For the first time she lowers her defenses and let's him sow his angel seed. He lays there through the night, embracing and kissing her tenderly. In the morning he is gone. She never sees him again.
But his angel image persists in the little boy he sows within her. The little boy is raised in the cellar, an angel born in hell that rarely sees the sun. His only playthings are postcards taken from an abandoned curio shop upstairs, a relic from a time when tourists pass through the ancient city to marvel at the architecture of a city that does not age, even through the urban renewal of war.
The bombs bursting overhead and the Russian jets cleaving the air above are part of the little boy's world. The sounds do not frighten him because they belong to the natural order. He spends hours ignoring the destruction above, perusing the pleasant postcard sky framing Aleppo's fabled streets, towers and mosques, wondering if they have any connection to the gray, smoking ruin he sometimes glimpses outside. The boy gathers his pile of postcards under his thin pillow at night, where by osmosis they enter his psyche.
One day a soldier comes and tells them they have to leave quickly. Aleppo will fall, Assad is coming. The shepherd woman knows Assad to be the mask worn by a legion of inhuman beasts called Alruwsia. The Alruwsia have wings, like demons, and they spit fire. Or do they shit fire? There are competing theories. She believes the Alruwsia cannot find her out on the steppe, because of the protective shield of the Terebinth. "I want to go home to my people," she says.
"Your people are all dead," the soldier tells her. He does not say how, she does not ask. These days, everyone knows the cause of death in advance. What goes without saying is that the Terebinth has been uprooted, the prophets have been banished. "Your husband made arrangements for you,” he says. “We're getting you out of the country. Gather your things."
There is not much to gather. All of their clothes fit into a small bag. The boy jealousy carries along his little collection of postcards. In minutes they are gone, wandering down the once picture postcard streets that are now piles of twisted concrete rubble. Aleppo has lost again, beaten up by big bully Damascus.
They are shipped to Somalia like so much freight. For weeks she and the boy live among pirates who eye them suspiciously, unconvinced they own nothing worth stealing. From there they are dispatched to Mexico, packed into crates like produce. Mexico does not look like Mogadishu, the people have an air of civility and some are genuinely kind to her. But the air she breathes everywhere is heavy with the same oppressive fear that has enveloped the planet since the day she left the shade of the Terebinth.
The day comes to cross the border. The pollitos she travels with call it "La Frontera," the word singing off their tongues as if it is a magical Oz that will solve all their problems. She, the boy, and a couple dozen more are packed into a produce truck that is stifling by day and freezing by night. Meanwhile, all she knows about her destination is that it a place called New Jersey, and her husband’s refugee sister dwells there. She asks one of the other pollitos where New Jersey is. He has to think about it, never having heard the word himself, but so as not to appear bruto he says - Cruzando la frontera, luego caminando dos, tres dias, about two or three days walk across the border.. This gives her hope. She has walked for weeks on the steppe. Two or three days afoot to New Jersey will be easy.
Even though they are kept in complete silence and darkness in the back of the truck, the pollitos seem to sense when they are approaching la frontera. The atmosphere grows tense. The friendly attitude of the pollitos changes. She and her boy are now competition, they won’t be weighed down by her and her baby. They are different, they are a danger. Terroristas, it is murmured. Being captured with them will be bad. Que Dios te bendiga and goodbye.
The uneasy suspicion of the pollitos in the back of the truck infects the coyote drivers up front. Yeah, they have been paid extra to carry this puta madre terrorist bitch in the back, and yeah, now that she ditched her headdress you couldn't tell if she was Gloria from Guadalajara from Baghdad Betty, but the militia they pay off to look the other way draws the line at towel-heads. Where the sand niggers are concerned, …. Making America Great Again is not for sale.
So they unload her and the boy two miles short of the border. She is pointed in the general direction of New Jersey and cut loose. She assumes this is the way things are done. A Bedu afoot is not unheard of. Without realizing the scope of her journey she starts walking across the sand with her baby on her back.
The concept of frontera is alien to her. Her people cross freely between Iraq, Jordan and Syria but these are only names learned in school that carry no meaning. There is no frontera that defines the land of her birth. She isn't even sure in which of the three she has been born. She cannot comprehend that calling herself a Jordanian makes her a harmless traveler, but being from the other two marks her as a dangerous terrorist. Unlike here, the Bedu do not draw such lines on paper, they govern their movements by the natural contours of the land and the mostly friendly agreements among tribes. All of this hiding in trucks to cross from one parched patch of land to another equally parched patch makes no sense. In her view, you protect land where there is running water or good grass. You don't protect bare dirt.
But she is pointed to a patch of bare dirt in the distance that is somehow infinitely more valuable than the dirt where she now stands. At first the going is easy enough, but she is a woman, not a camel. The coyotes give her no water, no food. She does not store water in a hump, and though she sees some green winter grass, she does not graze. Also, years of hunkering in Aleppo basements have made her weak.
Sometime in the late afternoon she crosses the invisible line on the planet that subdivides the dirt. She sings a gentle shepherd's song to the little boy to calm him, but he needs no calming. He is a good, sweet, gentle child and she loves him even to lay her own life down. People love their children, she thinks, no matter which side of the ever shifting sand it is their fortune or misfortune to occupy.
Walking down a well traveled wadi, she trips a motion sensor without knowing. She finds a washed-out hole in one of the banks and decides to stop for the night, not knowing that by tripping the sensor she has set men in motion. Although their journey has barely begun, she and the boy already suffer from extreme thirst. His little pink lips are shriveled and cracked.
Somewhere in the distance, she thinks she hears the rumble of a motor. She pushes back deeper into the hole, not knowing what kind of men dwell here. In her desert there is a code of hospitality for travelers, but she was shown no hospitality by the coyotes who dumped them on the roadside, and she expects no hospitality on this side of la frontera, either. Better to play it safe and stay hidden.
When the sun goes down she can see the gently blinking red lights of which she was told, singing to her softly of the wonders of wetness. The promise of water gives her hope, but an incredibly vast distance seems to separate them from the beacon. Can they endure the torment of thirst one more day?
Even though she hears unseen things move in the darkness, they are soothing desert sounds like those she is used to and they lull her to sleep. In her restless dreams the Terebinth burns without being consumed, but there is no voice coming forthwith. The voice is dead.
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