The Last of the Angels (13 page)

While everyone was preoccupied with hatching intrigues and conspiracies, using the construction of the road through the cemetery and the Baghdad trip to meet with the king as a pretext for rallying any type of support, even if merely verbal, Khidir Musa stepped from his house after slinging over his shoulders a piece of camel hide embroidered in green and red that the Jiburi tribe's chief, to whom he was related, had presented to him, even though winter was almost over and the weather was mild. Since he had returned from Russia, he had grown accustomed to wearing this whenever he wanted to be alone. Ideas were surging and clashing in his head as he walked along Piryadi Street, heading for the Valley of Adam's Horse. It was said that Adam had landed there, mounted on his horse, when he descended from paradise. As he proceeded, Khidir Musa passed by the tannery, which opened onto the street, and its stench stopped up his nostrils. In the past, that smell had seemed normal, back when he carried skins from his sheep on his back. He had received a quarter dinar for a lamb's skin and more than that for a ewe's. He was not in a mood to visit his former friends and greet them, but one of them recognized him and called to him from a distance, “You don't bring us skins anymore, Khidir. Have your lambs run away from you?” So Khidir Musa replied, without moving closer, “No, I'm the stray runaway. I can't trust my hand with the knife anymore.” He went along a path that cut through a field of cucumbers. Leaning down, he plucked one and wiped it on his sleeve before biting into it. When he reached the lettuce bed, he returned to the dirt road to avoid the shit that the city's night-soil men carted to the lettuce patches, whose owners paid them ten fils a barrel.

Khidir Musa found himself outside the city in an area frequented by quarry workers, who cut chunks of stone from the rocky earth and carried them on their donkeys to the city, where these blocks were used to build houses. The quarrymen left behind them many pits, which filled with rain water and became dangerous ponds where children from nearby communities swam when it was scorching hot. No summer passed without a child or two drowning. The quarrymen, who were known for their sexual perversions, would stand on protruding boulders to try to attract the most radiant youth. This time there were only a few masons breaking rock with their pickaxes in the distance. Khidir Musa climbed the rocky road, looking at the scarecrows in the fields that lay on the slope of the Valley of Adam's Horse and at the crows that were scattered over the rocks. He was wondering how to escape from the crisis into which he felt himself slipping. He could simply choose the people he wanted to accompany him to see the king. He realized, though, that this approach might expose him to the wrath of the city's elite, toward whom he felt a special respect and whose wrath he would definitely like to avoid. At the same time, he was afraid that the zealous young men of the city would resort to violence when confronting the municipal workers or would even clash with the police, thereby calling into question his relationship with the state, which had demonstrated its trust in him. What made him most anxious of all was the possibility that the king might reject his effort, or merely ignore it. He understood from long experience and from his grasp of life's realities that this was not out of the question. His walk eventually brought him to a fig tree in front of a cave on the flank of the mountain. He removed his camel hide, spread it on the ground, and sat down cross-legged upon it, after taking off his shoes and setting them to one side. Then he began to gaze at the wild flowers that grew from gaps between the rocks to announce the imminent arrival of spring.

Khidir Musa raised his head to contemplate the blue sky, which was dotted with white clouds that scurried by in the wind. Some birds rose slowly, flapping their wings and then gliding high overhead for a time before swooping back to the grass-covered plains that extended to the horizon. Khidir Musa reflected on his life's trajectory: its decline and rise, poverty and riches, humiliation and glory. “That's the way the world is, Khidir ibn Musa; that's the world. Don't be beguiled by its perfidious smile.” He bowed his head, held his forehead with his right palm, shut his eyes, and contemplated nothingness. In the gloom that encompassed him, in that nameless darkness, he succumbed to an intense bout of weeping. He wept for himself and perhaps for the world. “Weep, Khidir ibn Musa, weep for yourself.” He began to sob under the stormy influence of emotions and memories from throughout his past. Then as he remembered words his grandfather had spoken while holding him as a small boy in his arms he felt suffused with a new peace. His grandfather had said, “Weep, Khidir, for tears cleanse the soul.”

He was weeping silently, and his soul felt inebriated by the scent of spring, which was descending upon the mountain, when he sensed a hand pat him on the shoulder. A gruff voice said, “Stand up, son. You'll be my guest in this cave of mine.” The livestock dealer, who had not been expecting anyone, was startled and glanced up at the person who had interrupted his weeping. “I didn't know anyone lived here,” he said. The old man who had emerged from the cave had a thick beard. His clothing was black and his skullcap red, and he had clogs on his feet. He replied, “This is God's cave, which is open to all His creatures.” The old man entered the cave followed by Khidir Musa, who had been taken by surprise by the man's invitation and thus prevented from thinking of an excuse to decline it. The entryway was a gap between two boulders. Then a brief hall led to an extensive, marble chamber with a fountain spouting water at its center. The cave's resident said in an almost compassionate voice, “I was performing my ablutions when I heard you crying. You've done the right thing, Khidir, for tears cleanse the soul.”

Khidir Musa was startled: “You know my name, too.”

The old man responded rather gravely, “Yes, Khidir, and I've heard that you are going to visit the king and are concerned about the whole affair. Don't worry, Khidir. We'll find a solution for your problem.”

Overwhelmed by anxiety, Khidir Musa said, “If I weren't a Muslim, I would believe you're God.”

The aged dervish looked down at the ground for such a long time that Khidir imagined he did not care to reveal his identity. Finally he looked up and, gazing at the aged livestock dealer with eyes that were suddenly all ablaze, said, “No, Khidir, I'm Death.”

Khidir Musa began to tremble. His whole body was shaking, but he gained control of himself and said, as if to himself, “So, this is Death. I did not expect him to be so gracious.”

The old man known as Death guffawed till he showed his dentures, which were clearly visible to Khidir Musa. He felt suspicious about Death's need for dentures. The man grasped Khidir Musa's uncertainty and asked him jestingly, “Did you think time would leave no mark on me? Even I age, Khidir.”

Khidir Musa shook his head again: “So this is death: a cave a man enters accidentally.”

Death said, “Death is something totally different, Khidir. Don't be alarmed, for you are still at the cave's entrance and will return to your family.” Then he rose and gently grasped the shoulder of Khidir Musa, who no longer understood anything. He said, “Come look at death if you wish.”

There was an opening covered with thin glass, in the wall of the cave. Through it poured light that created a shadow in the room. The old man cast a fleeting look through the pane and then drew back, saying, “Go ahead and look. You may learn something from what you see.”

Khidir Musa's heartbeat felt irregular, but he stepped forward and peeked into the other kingdom, the kingdom into which he too would pass one day. He was astonished by what he saw. Countless groups of men, women, and children, all with sad, pale faces, were shoving past one another on an endless bridge, screaming soundlessly. He stepped back and asked the cave's master, “Where do you suppose all these massive crowds are heading?”

Death smiled and said, “Not even I know the answer to that question.”

Khidir Musa peeked through the aperture again. Then he said, “My God, they're miserable. They don't seem the least bit happy.”

Khidir Musa leaned against the curving wall of the cave as he floated on an invisible wave that beat against the pit of his soul. In the pale light filtering into the cave he looked like an alien from another world. The old man, whose clogs clicked against the marble floor as he walked, granted him time to catch his breath after he had glimpsed something no living person had ever seen before. Death wondered whether the sight was more than a man's nerves could bear. Khidir Musa knew that he too would one day walk along that bridge that had no end. Since he had not opened his eyes, Death addressed him in a voice that was determined but tender. Khidir Musa opened his jet-black eyes and looked attentively at the man's face, which was devoid of any expression. Then his pale lips opened, and he asked, “If my hour has not come, what do you want from me?”

Death was silent for a moment before he replied, “Nothing at all.” Then he looked at Khidir Musa as though he wished to remind him of something he had forgotten: “I thought you needed me.”

Khidir Musa did not venture a response because he could not understand how he could need death. Death, with his thick, black beard speckled with white and his lanky physique, seemed rather embarrassed when he asked politely to be included in the delegation heading for Baghdad to visit the king. Khidir Musa, who was surprised by this unusual request, which almost made him laugh, felt compelled to ask, even before the smile left his eyes, “But why? What distinction do you lack that you would seek to meet the king?”

Death, who seemed to understand Khidir Musa's reticence, said, “I have learned to distrust distinctions that are destined to disappear, that are a ‘concern and a striving after the wind.'”

This man who called himself Death had excited Khidir Musa's admiration with his calm, humility, wisdom, and eccentricities. All the same, Khidir Musa waged an inner struggle to resist giving in to him, for if this resident of the cave represented annihilation, he himself represented continued existence. There ought to be a counterweight, at least as long as he remained alive. Death said, “I have more right to join your delegation than anyone else. Don't forget that the matter concerns the dead first and foremost, not the living. The dead too have a right to voice their opinion. Isn't that so?”

A fleeting radiance glowed inside Khidir Musa's mind, for the idea dazzled him and he felt Death was right. So he shook Death's hand and said sincerely, “Sir, I'm honored for you to join my humble delegation.” He headed toward the cave's entrance, preparing to leave, but twirled around suddenly as if he had remembered something and asked, “Do I need to hunt you down here when I want you?”

Death replied, “You will never discover this cave a second time. You will find me wherever you need me. Don't tell anyone what you have seen because people lend greater credence to phantoms of the imagination and superstitions than to self-evident truths.”

Khidir Musa answered, as if setting down a basic axiom: “There are some secrets that a man keeps to himself forever; you know that for certain.”

When Khidir Musa walked outside the cave, he was dazzled by life, which he felt he was seeing for the first time: in the rocks on which green moss grew, in the blend of voices he heard from afar, and in the awe that filled his heart. He descended once more to the wide valley that led down toward the city, startling some wild doves, which soared off into the distance when he approached. He heard a roar in the air and automatically looked up to gaze at the birds fleeing from a helicopter that was flying toward the city. He would have liked, as he returned to the Chuqor community, to forget what he had seen, but the sight of the dead people crowding against each other on the bridge that extended perhaps to infinity was still stuck in his mind. It haunted him. In that massive crowd he thought he had seen—despite the distance—faces of people he had met in his lifetime, but he was not certain: If living people resemble one another, then so do the dead. He felt he could still hear the faint, monotonous wail that rattled his skull and that originated in the kingdom of the dead. It might have been the screech of a siren or a distant, subdued music playing outside of time.

He turned to cast one last look at the cave where he had seen Death, perhaps to satisfy himself that what he had seen had not been a dream. The cave was on fire. Then he heard an explosion that shook the ground beneath his feet. He saw boulders rise into the air and then disappear into the white clouds. The quarrymen working at the far side of the valley raised their heads to study the explosion, which had taken them by surprise. Then they went back to work again, assuming that some other quarrymen were responsible for the blast—a common occurrence for them.

At that moment, when Khidir Musa saw the cave collapse and suddenly disappear, only a thin thread held him fast to life. In his heart there was something that seemed greater to him than life itself: life's secret, which he had seen in the face of the cave's master—that buffoon who called himself Death. What he felt was not fear of death, or even alarm at being in its presence, but an indescribable sense of power resulting from his rapprochement with Death, who would be a member of his delegation, which was going to visit the king. The cave's master had inspired in him a high degree of wisdom. Thus although Khidir Musa returned to the Chuqor community without a definitive list of those who would accompany him to the royal palace, his indecision did not last long, for that afternoon, while he sat in the coffeehouse near Nakishli Manarsi, he observed a portrait on the wall of an awe-inspiring man who had thick hair and a thick beard and who made a person think of the saints. When he asked Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri, who was sitting beside him on the bench, about the man, the mullah replied with a smile, “He's the greatest poet Kirkuk has ever produced. This is the great Dada Hijri.” Then Mullah Zayn al-Abidin al-Qadiri started reciting stanzas of his poetry, composed in Turkmen, as Khidir Musa felt his spirit soaring into a different sky inhabited only by angels. Khidir Musa remarked, “I think we ought to include him in our delegation.”