Raduan Nassar - Ancient Tillage

‘Be quiet! Our water doesn’t flow from this fountain, nor our light, from this darkness, your haughty words aren’t going to destroy now what it has taken millennia to build; no one in our household will speak with presumptuous profoundness, mixing up words, tangling up ideas, disintegrating everything into dust, because those who open their eyes too wide will only be blinded; furthermore, let no one in our household suffer from a supposed and pretentious excess of light, for it can be just as blinding as darkness; nor should anyone in our household set a new course for that which cannot be diverted, let no one ever confuse that which cannot be confused, the tree that grows and bears fruit with the tree that is barren, the seed that drops and multiplies with the grain that does not sprout, the simplicity of our daily life with unproductive thoughts; I’m telling you to hold your tongue, I will have no depraved wisdom contaminating the ways of this family! It was not love, after all, but pride, scorn, and selfishness that have brought you back home!’

My father mixed so much bitterness in with his anger! And how foolish of me to have exposed the skeleton of my thoughts to him, to have ground a few shavings of bone onto that strange table, so scanty before the powerful strength of his figure at its head.

I was shrunken, and at one point I felt my mother’s presence at the kitchen door, checking on the heated discussion, probably trying to interfere in my favour; even without turning around, I could clearly sense the anxiety on her face, begging my father with her anguished eyes, ‘That’s enough, Iohána! Spare our son!’

‘I’m tired, Father, forgive me. I admit I’m confused, I admit I was unable to make myself understood, but now I’m going to speak clearly: I have not returned with my heart bursting with pride, sir, as you believe, I’ve come home humble and submissive, I have no more illusions, I know all about loneliness now, I know about misery, and I also now know, Father, that I shouldn’t have ever taken one step beyond our front door; from now on, I want to be like my brothers, I’m going to give myself over to the discipline necessary for my assigned tasks, I’ll be out in the field to till before sunlight falls over them, and I’ll stay long after sunset; I’ll make of my work my religion, of fatigue my inebriation, I’ll help preserve the union of the family, from the bottom of my heart, Father, I want to deserve all your love.’

‘Your words have touched my heart, dear son, I feel new light on this table, tears of joy in my eyes, erasing the bitterness you caused when you left home, erasing all at once the nightmare we’ve just experienced. For a minute I thought I’d sown long ago in infertile land, in gravel or in a field of thorns. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate the son who was blind and has now recovered his sight! So, go rest, it’s been a long journey and your homecoming has been filled with emotion, go rest, dear son.’

Then I was immediately further compensated for my apparent change of mind: unexpectedly, my mother, who was by then standing behind my chair, took my head in her hands; I surrendered like a child to those thick fingers pressing my cheeks into her breast, my old resting place; leaning over me, she rubbed her eyes, nose and mouth into my hair, smelling it noisily, and spilling out the tender words she had used to address me in her ancient language since I was a child, ‘my eyes’, ‘my heart’, ‘my lamb’, and relaxing in that cradle, I noticed my father heading out into the back yard gravely, as if her effusive tenderness went against his will; he was carrying the same knife he had when he came in, and was now going out in back to join my sisters, who were standing around the rustic table in the shed, caught up in excited flurry, preparing the meats for my party; looking out towards them, I was asking myself why I had come back and I was still unable clearly to discern the dubious outline of my reasons when I noticed, beyond the patio, just inside the woods, Pedro’s shadow: with his head bowed, he was walking slowly through the trees, seemingly solemn and taciturn.

My father always used to say that suffering is good for man, that it strengthens the spirit and increases sensitivity; he implied that the worse the pain, the greater the opportunity for suffering to play out its most noble role; he seemed to believe that man’s resistance was boundless. For my part, I learned when I was very young that it is difficult to determine exactly where resistance ends, and I also learned very young to see resistance as man’s strongest trait; but it was also my belief that in strumming the string of a lute — stretched to the limit — a highly tuned note would resonate (assuming that it would be no more than a melancholy, shrill twang), yet it would be impossible to draw any note at all from the same string were it to be stretched until broken. That, at least, is what I thought until the night of my homecoming, having never before suspected that from a broken string, yet a different note could be drawn (which only confirmed my father’s belief that man, even when broken, has not yet lost his resistance, although there is nothing to prove that he has become still more sensitive).

I hadn’t seen Ana yet when I turned in (her taking refuge in the chapel upon learning of my return was easily understood), nor my youngest brother, since I had not dared break my silence to ask after his whereabouts. As I entered the bedroom, although I found it somewhat strange, I was not exactly surprised to see Lula in his bed, lying on his side facing the wall, covered by a white sheet from head to toe. The bedroom slept in peaceful penumbra, the clarity from outside the house was diluted, seemed even more calm, diffused as it was by the slats of the Venetian blinds; I didn’t turn on the light since I knew my way around the bedroom without difficulty, besides, I had been wearing my pyjamas since my bath, so there wasn’t much left for me to do: close the door behind me, set my bags over in the corner, kick off my slippers, and slip into bed: weary of scaling mountains, I wanted only to imagine a great grassy plain, to lose myself in drowsiness, to fall sleepily into my dreams, and nightmares, and to wake up the following day with clear eyes, perhaps, as my grandfather used to say, even able ‘to distinguish a strand of white thread from a strand of black thread in the early dawn light’.

Having taken care of the baggage, I immediately noticed that the box I had brought along was missing; still, I didn’t give it much thought, even though its contents were so bizarre, the very items I had exposed to Pedro’s abashed eyes during that extremely tense encounter back in the distant boarding-house room; the hemp string had been tossed on to the floor, making me wonder about the hasty hands that had torn open the box without bothering to untie the string (an unheard-of technique in our household) and carried it away only after its contents had been hurriedly studied; sitting there on the bed, I was wrapping the string around my fingers mechanically to save it, using them as a spool in my father’s manner, when it crossed my mind that perhaps the box had been stolen to satisfy Lula’s pubescent longings; looking over my shoulder to the other bed, I noticed not only was Lula feigning sleep but, with his insolent movements, he was very definitely letting me know that he was not asleep at all, and was merely showing me his full disregard by lying there facing the wall, ostentatiously turning his back on me; I sat there for a good few minutes sounding out his ingenuous, inexhaustible reserve of theatrics while he occasionally kicked away at his sheet, until finally I got up, and walking around my bed, went and sat on his: by then, the sheet was completely still; instead, all of a sudden, I began to hear someone snoring thunderously; slightly surprised at how distracted all of this was making me feel, I put my hand on his shoulder.