She looked dully at the chocolate we had brought, the tea and the olive oil. We moved in, and we began telling her that she would have to come to the city with us. Life is too hard in the South for an old woman. She had the arguments that you expect—her friends were here, she must wait for her son; she could not survive in the noise of the city. But she knew and we knew that she would be joining us in a week.
We went to bed. It seemed that I had no more than closed my eyes, when the house was filled with sound. A gendarme came looking for the fugitive brother. He knew a man was in the house, he had seen, he was nobody’s fool. Naema was yelling he was mistaken that I was her husband fresh arrived from the city, and I was staring a gun pointed at my face, being told to rise and dress.
The gendarme said that I did not dress as a city dweller.
And that was that.
Since my lot was cast before I could speak, I chose not to speak. I knew his type, the same sort of bureaucrat that I deal with everyday. There would be no argument. I would be held until Saturday and then sent by bus to the city where all things would be resolved. So I went along meekly. I would sleep in the jail. Not much different than my mother in law’s, except that I could perhaps hope for a more comfortable bed. Besides this served my plan well. Naema would see the sort of things the war could lead to and abandon her notions.
However the gendarme awakened me at dawn. I kept up the pretence I could not speak French, and he told me in halting Arabic that I must go with him to school. In did not understand this sudden need for education, but saw his gun as checkmate in our little game.
He tied my hands together and we set off. He rode on a donkey and I was pulled behind, at a very slow pace, so that I could walk unhurt. Suddenly I realized that we were leaving the village. Perhaps he meant to kill me, I would be sad to die where I could not see a tree or any green thing. I was very tired I tried to tell myself that I would be dying for the sake of my family, because I thought if I had a reason, I would at least have inner way out of this absurd situation.
I walked a long way. Longer than I had ever walked. Maybe I would simply walk across the great emptiness and dissolved into it. The gendarme began to speak to me. Since he thought I was ignorant of his tongue I known that he merely talked to fill the void with words.
He was Corsican, a countryman of Napoleon. He tried to tell me what good things the French had brought to the land. How their law was better than Berber law or Islamic law. How I would have a trial and everything would be fair.
I liked it better then there was only silence in the vastness. The snow was thin, but it made my feet very cold.
At last we came to another village, so like the one had left I wondered if we had merely gone in circles.
We went to a schoolhouse where a pale and weak looking schoolmaster signed for me like a shipment of grammar books. I listened to them discuss me. Was I one of the rebels? The schoolmaster was to deliver me to yet another village, where perhaps justice waited for me. Like a camel they tied me to a post outside of the school. The schoolmaster showed me his sidearm, no doubt useful in classroom discipline.
After a decent interval the gendarme departed and the schoolmaster took me inside the tiny school. I could see that he didn’t want to have me. He did not relish the job of jailor. I realized that many French might be as uncommitted as I. Perhaps together we could muster enough apathy to leash the dogs of war.
He fed me, and told me in passingly good Arabic that he too was born here. The words did not inspire any brotherly feelings in me. He asked why I had done it. By “it’ he meant of course the stupid murder by my stupid brother-in-law. So I muttered some nonsense. He did not ask me my name. I doubt that Arabs often have names, but then I did not ask his.
He took me to his bedroom for the night, pointing at a cot with his pistol, which by now I was sure had never been and would never be fired. I undressed and lay down. He did the same and shortly thereafter began to snore. Sleep did not come to me. I am not an adventurous man. I did not know how to plan an escape, or consider that I could pull the pistol from his sleeping hand, and make my get away. Where would I go? If I fled I would be a criminal. If I went through this charade I could possibly clear my name. I lay awake until I needed to make water.
I rose and went to the courtyard.
There in the moonlight was Naema, her brother and another man.
She spoke quietly and quickly, “Don’t worry Fadlan! Tomorrow he will take you to Tinguit. We will be on the road and free you. Courage. We can’t take you now.”
They turned and ran into the moonlight. So strange had the scene been to me, that I stood there wondering if it had been a dream. It was not a scene from my life, and all I wanted was the scenes from my life back. I made my water and returned to my bed.
We rose the next day. I saw that he was lost as I was. We were brothers in our lack of commitment. I wanted to say something, but what can you say to your reluctant captor? My numbness, my emptiness comes out when I opened my mouth. I let him tie me up and he lead me out of the village to a limestone cliff at the edge of the Plateau. He had taken me to a path, one branch leading east and the other south. He surveyed the two directions. There was nothing but sky on the horizon. Not a man could be seen. He turned toward me, and I tired to share my emptiness with him. He could at least know that he was leading one like himself. He handed me a package. Not understanding I took it. “There are dates, bread, sugar. You can hold out for two days. Here are a thousand francs too,” he said, “Now look there’s’ the way to Tinguit. You have a two-hour walk. At Tinguit you’ll find the administration and the police. They are expecting you.” He took my elbow and turned me rather roughly towards the south. “That’s the trail across the Plateau. In a day’s walk from here you will find the pasturelands and the first nomads. They’ll take you and shelter according to their law.”
I thought I should tell him that I would be saved by my family if I went east. I wanted him to know that it was not too late to avoid action, which will only take us form the things we love. That we could hold onto our routines and not have war. Because when war comes, it will eventually call us to its service. “Listen,” I began.
“No, be quiet,” He said. And he was still the man with the gun, even if he did not believe in that which had given the gun to him. He waked away. I headed east. I saw him look at me with some something like horror.
I laughed, but I knew he could not hear, in fact could not hear when he had been standing besides me. I was walking to a temporary peace, but war would swallow us up. The day would come when I would believe and he would believe, and an unseen hand will lift all the chess pieces on the board, and our silent days of waiting and our nights of dreaming our own strange games would end.
THE JOY OF COLA
It was Austin, Texas, but it could have been anywhere in the shadow worlds.
The crazy kids were the same age as Bill. They lived across the street in the dirtiest worst smelling house he had ever seen., It had a graywater system that meant they used their bathwater to poop in, and they only flushed when there was a lot of poop and the whole damn house smelled like ma privy. The kids were activists. The leader of the pack was some girl that got books for prisoners. Project Inside Out or Upside Down or some damn thing. Not educational books, books by Stephen King and murder mysteries. Yeah those guys need that. They were in prison, they aren’t supposed to read.
Bill never had any damn time to read. He worked for $10.00 an hour which meant he could pay his mortgage, buy his diabetes medicine and have basic cable. He used to read. The girl had come by yesterday asking him for used paperbacks. He had offered her The Book of Mormon. He wasn’t Mormon, but the kids further down the street kept dropping them off. The girl was offended and went off about loving prisoners. He shut the door in her face.