Late afternoon was the time for fencing, so the men set out to do their strenuous exercises with wooden sticks. That was after they had come back—men and women alike—with a little money and some simple food, after a long and exhausting day of work. Qassem was the most enthusiastic, and he loved seeing his men’s zeal and energy in preparation for the crucial day. There were strong men among them, but they harbored a love for him that their hate-torn alley had never known. The sticks resounded, clacked and landed in powerful exchanges, and the boys watched and imitated them while the women relaxed or prepared supper. The line of huts had grown longer with the arrival of new men in the new neighborhood; Sadeq, Hassan and Abu Fisada had proved to be expert recruiters. They lay in wait for the men of the alley where they were most likely to be found, and stayed with them until they had persuaded them to join up. They quit the alley secretly, with a hope in their hearts that they had never known before.
“I can’t guarantee that all this activity won’t lead our enemies to us,” Sadeq would tell Qassem.
“The only approach to us is the narrow passage. They’ll be wiped out if they try to come through it.”
His lasting happiness was Ihsan when he played with her, rocked her and sang to her, but this was not the case when she reminded him of his late wife; those occasions immersed him in gloom and the hot sighs of yearning. She had been taken from him at the outset of their journey, and left him prey to terrible depression whenever he was alone; or to regret, as when he had been on the mountainside, the day he drank the coffee, the day of the shy smile, as soft as an afternoon breeze. One night, he could not fall asleep, and he fell prey to tormented depression and insomnia in the dark hut. He got out of bed and went outside, strolling in the open space between the huts, under the stars, to breathe in the sweet night air, the mountain air of the summer midnight.
A voice called to him. “Where are you going at this hour of the night?”
He turned and saw Sadeq approaching. “Aren’t you asleep yet?”
“I saw you when I was lying in front of the hut, and I like you better than sleep.”
They walked side by side to a mountain ledge, and stood there.
“Sometimes I can’t stand being alone,” Qassem told him.
“I can’t ever stand it!” laughed Sadeq.
They watched the horizon, the glittering sky and the earth sunk in blackness.
“Most of your men are married or have families,” Sadeq resumed. “They’re never lonely.”
“What do you mean?” Qassem asked suspiciously.
“Someone like you cannot do without a woman.”
“Marry, after Qamar?” The objection in his voice was as strong as his feeling that the man was right.
“If she were able to make you hear her voice, she would say the same thing I’m saying,” said Sadeq sincerely.
Qassem was disturbed, though excitement boiled within him. “It’s like treason, after her love and caring,” he said, almost to himself.
“The dead can do without our loyalty!”
What does this good man intend? To speak the truth or justify my pleasure? But sometimes truth has a bitter taste. You cannot face yourself with the same candor with which you faced conditions in your alley. He who settles these matters in your life is the same one Who set these stars in the sky. The indisputable truth is that your heart is still beating, as it always has. He sighed audibly.
“No one needs a companion as much as you do,” said Sadeq.
On the way back to his hut, he saw Sakina standing at the door, looking at him questioningly.
“I saw you go out, when I thought you were fast asleep!” she said worriedly.
So intense were his thoughts that he burst out, with no preface, saying, “Look at the way Sadeq is trying to make me get married!”
“I wish I had said it before he did!” Sakina said, as if snatching a long-awaited opportunity.
“You!”
“Yes, sir. It hurts my heart to see you sitting all alone, lonely and thinking.”
“They are all with me,” he said, pointing to the sleeping huts.
“Yes, but you have no one for you in your home, and I’m old. I have one foot on the ground and the other in the grave.”
He sensed that his hesitation was a sign that he accepted what she wanted, but even so, he did not go into the hut. “I’ll never find a wife like her!” he lamented.
“That’s true, but there are some very fine girls!”
They exchanged a look in the shadows, and there was silence. Then the slave said, “Badriya! What a sweet girl she is!”
“That young girl!” he said, surprised, his heart pounding.
“She looks pretty ripe to me, when she brings you food or coffee,” she said, hiding a sly smile.
“You demon!” he said, turning away from her. “God’s curse on your begetters!”
The news echoed joyfully throughout the mountain community. Sadeq nearly danced, his mother made the desert ring with her trilling and Qassem was showered with congratulations. The whole neighborhood celebrated the wedding, without having to hire any professional entertainers. The women danced, Umm Badriya among them, and Abu Fisada sang in his pleasant voice, “I was a fisherman, and fishing for fish is fun.”
The wedding procession wound around the huts, lit only by the lights in the heavens. Sakina moved to Hassan’s hut with Ihsan, to leave Qassem’s hut for the bride and groom.