— We’re insects thrown into this vast expanse.Mountains … as we climb them, we become little.
— That’s a lie. We get bigger and the mountain becomes little. That’s what they always say: Man in Nature is like a tiny insect. But it isn’t true.
— I’ve grown taller, said Salem.
— I’m the tallest man in the world, said Sameer.
— We are the real kings, said Talal. But we share the throne with these two mules.
The lithe young African boy was running. Slow down a bit, I told her. But she ran on, the sand flying up from her bare feet. She dropped to the ground. I’m going to put you in a little box and put the little box in my pocket. Because you don’t deserve any better. She laughed. I don’t like prisoners.
— And I don’t like prisoners either, but I’m forced to.
— Forced! That’s what all tyrants say; when the truth embarrasses them, they start telling you the story of their troubles and it boils down to their being forced to be tyrannical. You’re just like them.
My foot was getting bigger, the snow lined my shoes. Look, said Talal. The colors of the rainbow spilling into one another. All the colors that I’ve ever seen and those I’ve never seen. The mountain opens its mouth and the sun tumbles out. A mountain rolling through the clouds. The colors resemble the sea but the sea is flat. Colors forming circular gaps. My hand reaching out, catching nothing. The perforated mountain moves. We run toward the valley. The valley embraces my body, cuts it in two halves, and the distant sea enters the clouds. I raise my hand to my face. My face is a big, wizened apple. And my hand rises toward the sun that falls into our eyes as it tumbles between the flames and the mouth of the whale that is about to swallow it.
The villager-fighter carried his shoes and walked barefoot. Yesterday, the sun burned us; today, the fog and the rain have come and taken the sun to the bottom of the valley. But the problem is these damned shoes. They stay wet. I walk as though I were carrying the mountain in my leg. My toes are so swollen I can’t feel them anymore. Snow is against war. He carried his shoes and entered something like a tent. Water everywhere. The smell of sodden wool is like the smell of sheep before their slaughter. By God, it’s the butcher that’s king. What does he care? He does whatever he pleases. Slaughtering and selling, he can eat until doomsday.
What kind of food rations are these?
My tongue was dry and my insides burned. I went into the tent and found the villager-fighter talking politics with Nazeeh. Propped up on his left hand, Nazeeh was shivering with cold. His face was red with sun and fog. His raised right hand gesticulated as he talked on and on.
The Eastern Question must be settled once and for all. For three hundred years now the West has been driving the knife into our side in the name of the Eastern Question and the rights of minorities. We should be done with the question for good.
I sat next to them and listened. Then the discussion began to heat up. The villager-fighters voice rose. I looked at him, he was holding an orange which glowed in the dark tent. The orange took part in the debate in its own way, shifting in slow motion from left hand to right. As the argument flared and abated, the orange would step in to cut the silence in a quick sleight-of-hand as if he had become a trickster who puts an orange in his ear and has a tree come out of his mouth. He put the orange on top of the sodden blankets all squashed together. Nazeeh leaned over and reached out but the villager’s hand was quicker. He grabbed the orange, it danced between his hands, then he let it roll a little.
— But where did the orange come from?
He ignored the question. Then his voice took on a special inflection.
— Weapons have to be cared for in this climate. Water seeps into them. The important things to keep on fighting. That’s what you want. I agree. Provided that we don’t stay up here on the mountaintop in this unbearable cold. The orange rolled away. Talal grabbed it. The villager-fighter leaped to his feet.
— I want the orange. Its my own private orange.
— There’s no private property in the revolution.
He pounced, grasped the orange and wrenched it out of my hand, and sat in a corner of the tent all by himself with his orange. We advanced on him. He put the orange behind his back.
— We should go to Baskinta. We’d find houses and things to eat there.
The sky flashed with the sound of distant rifles. Nazeeh stood up. The battle has begun. We should eat this orange before the battle, split it between the three of us. Talal rose to his feet and grabbed his rifle. The villager-fighter slipped the orange into his pocket and began trying to put his shoes on. We were all set. But the orange had escaped. He disappeared and then came back, smelling of orange. Reeking of orange from head to toe.
— What happened to the orange?
— The orange turned into a tree. The man has become a tree.
They were in front of us but they weren’t like humans. Of course, they were ordinary men. But no. We opened fire, they fell theatrically. I couldn’t see properly. But they were falling. It was going into slow motion. A man falling as though he were play-acting. I’m not sure it’s man. We’ve done an excellent job. No one can take this mountain. We are the guardians of the snow and the cold. But I don’t know, maybe that wasn’t clearly understood. I’m sure of it, killing is something else. Here, it’s as if I were shooting at stones. Actually, I was shooting at targets, mere targets. And the targets behaved like targets. That’s all there is to it …
Talal took off his glasses, wiping away the mud mixed with sweat. Nazeeh came. The tree has died. The villager-fighter, with his oversized shoes, and his face burned with snow and fog, approached, slung across a mule. Asleep, with three men leading the white mule holding onto him.
The mule stopped in front of me. Talal bent down. The smell of death is like the smell of oranges. Death is an orange tree. When I die I want to smell like an orange tree.
We returned to the tent. Talal went to the villager-fighter’s bag. He opened it.
— Look, another orange was waiting for the end of the battle.
Nazeeh took the orange, divided into two, took half and squeezed it, the drops trickling into his mouth and onto his beard.
— A toast to the martyrs. Why don’t you have some?
— I can’t.
— You’re a romantic. Don’t you want to smell like a tree?
I put the orange in my mouth. It tasted really sharp. I ate it without peeling it, all of it. The tent began to smell like the vast orange grove stretching from Saida to the end of the world.
The last option is me, I told her, our footsteps striking the streets of the dark town. Clothes rustling, words spoken in silence. Cruising ahead of us, a Land-rover filled with ammunition and food. Walking along, whispering to each other and listening to the whispers of the villagers gazing at us in awe. Pleased with ourselves, full of pride, just as we used to dream we would be when we were little. We are little but we are just as proud as we should be.
A long line of fighters who’ve come from everywhere to the wedding that hasn’t started. We filed into the seraglio. They said it, alone, could fit the hundreds of fedayeen that’ve come from all over. Candle-lights, long corridors. We moved in and on in, not understanding where we were. We found ourselves in a very large, long room with high windows fenced off with barbed wire.
— We’re in the prison. We came to fight and find ourselves in prison. On principle, I don’t agree. We can’t sleep in the prison, even if it is empty. No way — even if we abolish prisons. A feda’i can’t sleep in prison. That’s a matter of principle. I’m not about to agree to it.