Raduan Nassar: Ancient Tillage

Father!

and from a different voice, a densely desperate, hollow moan, Father!

and from everywhere, from Rosa, from Zuleika, and from Huda, the same defenceless weeping

Father!

it was strangulated bleating

Father! Father!

where is our shelter? where is our protection?

Father!

and from Pedro, prostrate on the dirt

Father!

and then I saw Lula, still a child, and yet so crazed, writhing on the ground

Father!

Father!

where is the union of our family?

Father!

and I watched my mother, losing her grasp on her mind, pulling out her hair by the fistful, grossly baring her thighs, exposing the purple cords of her varicose veins, beating her stone-like fists against her breasts

Iohána! Iohána!

Iohána!

and all the cries for help were to no avail, and, refusing any consolation, wandering among those crushed, murmuring groups as if she were lost among ruins, Mother began to wail in her own language, drawing out an ancient lament that to this day can still be heard along the poor Mediterranean coast: there was lime, and there was salt; her cragged plea carried the sand-filled pain of the desert.

(In memory of my father, I transcribe his words: ‘and every once in a while, each one in the family should take time from more urgent tasks to sit down on a bench with one foot planted squarely on the ground and, bending over, your elbow resting on your knee and head resting on the back of your hand, with gentle eyes, you should observe the movement of the sun, the wind, and the rain and, with these same gentle eyes, observe time’s mysterious manipulation of the other tools it wields to effect all transformations, and you must never once question its unfathomable, sinuous designs, just as upon observing the pure geometry of the plains, you would never question the winding trails shaped by the trampling of the herds out to pasture: the cows always head for the watering pit.)

‘It is written.’