Photo@ Masahisa Fukase, Solitude of Ravens

The day he shot the helicopter down, Ali Obeid was sniping at angels. It had been a season of strange events.

The sharqui had rarely let up over the past months. Some days the sun disappeared for hours; for one week Ali and Zainab hardly saw it at all and the roosters never ceased crowing, thinking it was perpetually dawn. Two date palms outside his courtyard came crashing down under the immense weight of their shawl of red dust from the southern desert.

In his heart, and his ears, Ali heard hyenas howling outside the village, a rare event, as hyenas had not been heard for years in those parts. And other noises came to him through the wind; the roaring of a thousand savage beasts over the hills; a metallic clanging as of hundreds of blacksmiths working their forges. He could put no names to any of it. Ali began to think a chasm had opened in the earth and the creatures of hell had climbed out, as if Iblis himself were abroad, prowling the fields.

Even more alarming were the shapes that drifted through the desert dust; ill-defined creatures shambling over the horizon on foot, vehicles that you just caught sight of and then melted into the wind. Cutting barley in his fields, he caught sight of them out of the corner of his eye and the hair stood up on his neck. When he looked again they were gone.

The morning of the day he shot the helicopter down his wife told him; ‘If they come here, we will resist. We will resist even to the dead in the cemeteries. They will rise up and help us repel them. They will help us throw the invaders back into the sea.’

The first calls of the muezzin floated in to them from the other side of town. He looked at her sharply and said; ‘Don’t talk such foolishness. The dead will not rise up.’

‘They will,’ she told him. ‘And what’s more I have told the world.’

‘What?’

‘When I was in the village last week a foreign news crew was in the street talking to people. They put a microphone before me and asked me how I felt. I grew angry, Allah forgive me. I told the foreigners that’s what would happen. That the dead would rise up.’

Ali considered Zainab’s words carefully and after morning prayers he climbed into the attic where he kept his rifle. He found it there wrapped in an old towel, as he had left it three years earlier, and he sat down in the dim, musty air of the attic. It was already growing hot and the wind whistled and he knew he had work to do outside, but this was urgent. If Zainab had spoken a week ago there was now no time to lose.

He pulled the rifle to pieces. It came apart easily with a few dry clicks. He always oiled it after he used it and, although in the dust-dry space above their house even the oil had dried and congealed, the gunmetal was still in good condition.

He polished and oiled each piece meticulously with a soft green cloth, holding a magnifying glass to each one, considering it with great care. He hummed quietly as he worked. He reassembled the weapon and held the comforting weight of it in his arms. Then he took his box of cartridges from a shelf. It was a wooden box his grandfather had used in the campaign against the British, and the smooth weight of it in his hand gave him courage. He counted the cartridges (he had one hundred and seventy-three, which he took as a good omen), and climbed back down the ladder.

Zainab had already left for her work in the village, and he shouldered his rifle and shovel, took his canvas bag with his midday meal, put the box of cartridges in it, filled a bottle of water and left.

The day was clear. The wind he heard in his attic had dropped and the air brought the foretaste of summer. Two small clouds shaped like pigeons drifted overhead, and that, too, Ali Obeid saw as a good omen.

He walked down the path outside the mud walls of the village, keeping to the shade of the palm trees growing on the edge of the fields. Puffs of red dust rose with each footfall and clung to the hem of his djellaba. When he reached his fields, he sat down at the side of the road. The sweet smell of mown barley floated to him as he loaded the rifle, the cartridges clicking into place.

Just as he had finished packing the ammunition box back into its bag, and thinking about his son and daughter, his friend Ja’afar rounded the crest of the Hill of Ajeeb. Ja’afar sold coffee to the morning worshippers at the mosque, and the baskets on his donkey’s back clinked and tinkled with canisters and porcelain cups. Ali watched Ja’afar approaching and laid his rifle on the ground.

He had known Ja’afar for more than thirty years, but all the same these were bad times and Ali felt he had to be careful about what he said, even to friends.

‘Good morning,’ said Ali.

‘Peace be upon you,’ Ja’afar said, his face covered in sweat.

‘You’ve had a good morning?’ Ali enquired.

‘As may be expected. Many people are staying at home.’ He waved his arm vaguely to the south. ‘What with everything that’s happening.’

Ja’afar tied his donkey to a stump and sat in the shade beside Ali. His chest was damp with sweat and his sandals were smothered in red dust.

‘What’s the rifle for, Ali?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to throw out the invader single handed?’

Ali was quiet a few moments, then he said; ‘Could I have a cup of your fine coffee?’

Ja’afar sighed, stood, and rummaged through the baskets. He poured two cups of thick black liquid from a dented steel thermos and settled himself back beside his friend.

‘Aaah,’ he said, smelling the coffee.

‘Evil is descending on our country,’ Ali said, gazing up the road. 

Ja’afar shrugged. ‘Evil has always been with us,’ he said. ‘It all depends whether you can cheat it or not.’

‘My wife is creating difficulties.’

Ja’afar laughed and sipped his coffee. ‘And when does that not happen?’ he said.

Ali told Ja’afar what his wife had told him that morning. As he spoke two ravens landed up the road from them and stood panting in the sun. Ali took that as a bad omen. They were of a shiny blackness and they sucked in the daylight around them.

‘You see what I mean,’ Ali said when he had finished explaining what Zainab had said.

Ja’afar was quiet a few moments, watching the ravens.

‘They are ugly birds,’ said Ali.

‘If Allah made them man can find a use for them,’ Ja’afar said. Ali scoffed and sipped his coffee.

‘And what do you propose to do about it?’ Ja’afar asked at last.

‘I have my rifle. I will do only what I can.’

‘You know, everything that happened three years ago was decreed by Allah.’

‘I am not sure of that even now,’ Ali said.

‘Trust in Allah,’ said Ja’afar.

‘But tether your camel first,’ Ali said quietly, and he put his hand on the butt of his rifle.

Ja’afar spat, tipped the dregs of his coffee out in the dust and stood.

‘Here, my cup,’ Ali said, holding it up, squinting into the sun.

‘Keep it,’ said Ja’afar. ‘We have not had this conversation. I have not seen you this morning. I would have been better off to have passed you by and continued on my way unmolested. Now I have a heavy heart. You bring down something terrible on your head.’

He untied his donkey, slapped it on the rump and walked off up the road.

Ali sat for half an hour in the shade of the palms, watching the ravens hop back and forth, scratching in the dust. They had been a scourge over the past year in his barley and sesame fields, and he had poisoned many of them.

***

Photo@ Masahisa Fukase, Dream Island, Tokyo, 1980

The boy had been in love with his adopted sister from their earliest days. As children Ali tried to stop them. He told himself they would stop, that they were young and foolish. But as they grew up they lay together, and to his unending grief he had discovered them. ‘Allah has forbidden such outrages,’ he screamed at the boy. ‘And man has condemned them.’

He was a handsome boy, only eighteen, good at his studies, a career in medicine before him. But when Ali argued with him, he just laughed. 

‘We will be dishonoured forever!’ Ali told him.

But their passion for each other knew no boundaries. Their souls yielded to the prompting of Iblis.

Life is a dream. When we die we wake. What had followed was like a terrible dream, yet Ali was still waiting to be woken. They were the vilest of bad dreams congregating inside his head every night, the horrors of hell crawling up to peck his flesh, for what he had seen and done three years ago. It was so horrible there were no words to describe it. Azrael, the Angel of Death, turns the world this way and that, just as men turn money in their pockets. Every night he woke in a cold sweat.

Ali considered that nothing could occur without the intervention of angels. Even every raindrop that falls is accompanied by an angel. For even a raindrop is a manifestation of being. He thought of that as he took up his rifle and climbed over the fence into his field of new-mown barley.

He felt surrounded by a vast sea of golden light, as if the angels were already descending. He turned his face to the blue sky and scanned. He knew the odds were against him and he could see nothing, but he trained his rifle heavenwards and began shooting. 

Just before midday prayers, with the calls of the muezzin ringing in his ears, and with half his shells gone, he had luck. With a crash that shook the ground and a shattering as of broken glass, an angel came to earth in his field, not twenty metres from where he stood. His heart pounding in his throat, he ran up to it.

It was covered in hairs of saffron from head to foot. Tears fell from its eyes which, as they dropped, transformed into bright Kerubim, incandescent splashes of light that took to the air and flew away.

The angel had a baffled expression on its face, and its knees and hands were filthy where it had broken its fall. Ali stood dumbfounded. The angel’s hair was in long tresses. It wore a red robe embroidered in green and its wings were of green topaz, embedded with grains of red chrysolite. Its face was as beautiful as a rose, and its brow was encircled with a diadem of light, on which was written There is no God but Allah. Ali squinted to block out the brilliant golden light emanating from the angel.

‘I shot you down,’ he said, trembling.

‘You didn’t shoot me,’ the angel said indignantly, turning sharply as if it hadn’t seen him. ‘I’ve been having trouble navigating with all the dust.’

‘It’s not dusty today,’ Ali said, glancing at the sky. ‘Up there.’

The angel cleared its throat. ‘All the same,’ it said, ‘you didn’t shoot me.’

‘I didn’t shoot you?’ Ali shook.

‘You were trying to?’

‘Forgive me. I am poor for the mercy of Allah. I am a poor farmer. I lost my children – ’

‘I know who you are,’ the angel said impatiently, standing up and dusting down his djellaba. ‘And I know what happened to you. Or rather, what you did.’

‘I did not want my dead children to rise up. That’s all.’ Ali looked at the angel and saw that one of his wings was broken. Ali could see a bullet – his own – lodged in the feathers, and around it the skin was broken and feathers were stained with blood. The jagged edge of a broken bone stood out from the feathers.

‘I did shoot you,’ Ali said, quivering. ‘Allah forgive me.’

‘Aah, you did!’ the angel exclaimed. He reached with his hand into his feathers for the bullet, but could not quite grasp it.

‘Could you help me here?’ he asked, and obligingly, Ali reached in and removed the bullet. Its feathers, ruffled gently by the breeze, were gloriously soft and warm, a thousand times more so than goose down.

‘Allah forgive me,’ Ali said again, rolling the ball between his fingers. It was hot to his touch and he felt ashamed. His face burned.

‘Don’t trouble yourself overly,’ the angel said. ‘I see it as an occupational hazard. Especially in these times.’ He nodded vaguely to the south. He shrugged his shoulders and checked his wings for take off.

Ali looked at his back where the bullet had been and the wound had already healed, the bones knitted.

‘I beg your mercy,’ Ali said.

‘You have it. I am a messenger of Allah, and He is the most merciful. And you know, of course, there is no strength or help save in Allah most high?’

‘I do.’

‘Then we have no disagreement.’

‘I shouldn’t want to disagree with you,’ Ali said. ‘I only wanted to wrestle you down. To stop you.’

The angel laughed and smoothed his wing feathers. ‘Aah,’ he said. ‘The perfect man is the one who has wrestled with the angel of his own inner being. Are you a perfect man, Ali Obeid?’

Ali stared at the ground. ‘I’ve tried to be perfect,’ he said.

‘But you haven’t been.’

‘No.’

The angel stared hard at him.

‘I could judge you harshly,’ he said, adjusting his wings again and looking over his shoulder at them. ‘I could punish you. The earth and sand are burning. Put your face on the burning sand, on the earth of the field. Do it now, Ali Obeid.’

Ali dropped his rifle and lay heavily on the earth.

‘All those who are wounded by love,’ the angel continued, ‘must have the imprint on their face, and the scar must be seen, for by their scars are known the men who are in the way of love.’

Ali felt the earth burn into his face. ‘I thought I understood the world,’ he sobbed, ‘but what happened to me was so pointless I am struck dumb and it has defeated reason and knowledge.’

‘Be thankful it wasn’t Iblis flying past, or Azrael,’ the angel continued, ignoring him. ‘They’d never have spared you, and there wouldn’t have been much anyone else could do. Not even Allah.’

He spread his wings.

‘Wait,’ Ali said jumping to his feet. His cheek was burned and weeping. ‘Tell me – ’

‘What you seek you will never find,’ the angel said, lifting off the ground. ‘When Allah created you he let death be your lot. You and your kind.’

‘What should I do?’ Ali yelled as the angel rose higher.

‘Do?’ the angel called, his face creased in amazement.

‘Yes!’ Ali cried. ‘What should I do?’

The angel shrugged. ‘Let your every day be full of joy. Love the child that holds your hand. Let your wife delight in your embrace. Those alone are the concerns of humanity.’

And the angel rose higher and higher into the sky until it was gone. Ali was overcome with grief and stood in his field sobbing. He remembered the horror of that night three years ago when he had forced his son and daughter out of the village at gunpoint and then it had gone badly wrong. He remembered the struggle with his rifle, the flashes of light in the middle of the night, and the blood on his hands.

‘Father, what’s wrong?’

He opened his eyes and looked down. He was holding the hands of two small children, his very own Safaa and Riad. The children stared up at him with wide brown eyes, frightened by their father’s weeping. He knelt down in the field and held them to his breast.

‘My children,’ he said, and they jumped onto his lap.

‘What happened to your face?’ Safaa asked him, holding her hand to the burnt skin.

‘A lesson I learned,’ he said, and he embraced the children. He picked up his rifle and scanned the field. Not thirty metres away a helicopter sat nose down in the dirt. A thick cloud of dust had risen around it. Two foreign airmen were frantically scrambling out of the cockpit. He pointed his rifle toward them and took aim. He had the pilot clearly in his sights, could see the foreign flag on his jacket, and a moment before he squeezed the trigger, he lifted the barrel to the sky. A shot shattered the air. The two panicked men jumped out, ran off towards the copse of date palms on Salim Al-Hamouri’s field.

A raven tumbled out of the sky, shot clean through the breast by one of Ali’s bullets. He laughed, took his children’s hands, and walked home.

***

Andrew McKenna has been a journalist for more than 30 years. His fiction has been published in Australia and the USA, and his plays have been performed on stage in Australia and on national radio.

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