STEPHANIE KALLOS
IT BEGAN LIKE THIS, WHEN the girl was smaller and had about her less sadness, less confusion, less heaviness of spirit, and the old man who was like her father but not her father moved with greater ease.
Habib—who should technically be Habibah (but how was the old man to know, and besides, such things as sexual identity have long ceased to matter)—used to see them every day, when she began her long journey home to the rookery at the top of the hill.
A city dweller by choice (for Habib has always found humans endlessly fascinating, and not nearly as stupid as many of her kind believe) she liked to take her time going home, observing the humans along the way—for this was her work then: to observe, to learn, to apprentice herself to the ways of people so that, eventually, she could be of some use.
Habib would fly for a while, then loiter, greedy to learn as much as she could about these flightless, featherless creatures—above on the wires or fences or roofs, or below on the pavement—always making a great deal of noise. (Habib learned early on that humans are irritated by noisy animals, concluding that they are stupid, and thereafter ignoring them. This can be a great advantage for one who is in the business of observing.)
The old man with the ponytail and the girl walked the same way at the same time every day—from a small neatly groomed brick building where there were many young humans to a tall wooden building with the shabby look of a molting bird where there were no young humans, just more old ones like the man. And a woman with sparkling feet! They were an odd pair—the old man and the girl—hardly birds of a feather.
And yet there was between them a rare kind of connection, something sensed, invisible, a bond not comprised of language or gesture but something wordless and unseen and—in that sense—very like the bond between animals.
The girl even hopped like a bird in those days! And spun and skipped and flitted, dashing a few steps forward, but never too far from the man, as if she were tethered to him, and the shadow that shrouded the old man would lift a bit, a loose-fitting garment being teased away from his body by a breeze.
Habib’s rookery at that time was in a park at the top of a hill in an old part of the city. She chose this—to reside among humans, and in a big city—but not for the reasons some of her fellows did, which was because of the easy access to an endless variety of food and the plentiful opportunities to annoy, taunt, and humiliate. (Habib has never been proud of these tribal tendencies; just because it is easy for crows to mock humans does not mean that it should be done).
Habib (who has had many names before and will have many more) chose to live in the city because she is intrigued by humans—chiefly by their insatiable craving for suffering.
She chose this park specifically because of the plays.
In this park, each summer, actors put on the plays of Mr. William Shakespeare. Battles and romances, all the dramas and absurdities of human life, played out under the trees where Habib sleeps. And so often in these plays there is talk of birds!
“The crow makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse. . . . It is the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale. . . .” Ah, Shakespeare! Now, there was a human who appreciated crows—not only writing about them, but in the very rhythms of crow-speak: cuh caw cuh caw cuh caw cuh caw cuh caw!
One evening another time, not as long ago as the first, Habib heard a pounding noise like the hammering of a bachelor thrush trying to attract a mate (although the season was wrong) and looked down and saw a light in a place where there had not been light before: a window, a patch of gold on the dingy roof of the old hotel where the hopping girl lived with the old ones and the one with sparkling toes. (Habib had been longing for an excuse to get closer to that one!)
Habib circled, spiraling down.
Standing squarely in the rectangle of light was the old man, the shrouded one; he was the source of the pounding noise. He was doing something that required him to look up and strike against whatever it was that was above his head.
Habib was intrigued. She perched on the nearby chimney, where she could continue to observe.
The old man talked to himself as he worked: a nonstop babble that seemed to serve no purpose other than to make him more and more angry.
And then, from another place in the building came the sound of what Habib had come to understand was human song. It was the voice of the girl, Habib realized.
The old man stopped banging, stopped making himself angry with words, and sat down on the floor. He lit a cigarette. He stared beyond the window, up at the sky. Habib had not seen him like this. She had not seen his face, his blue eyes, his essence: He had the look of a man who was earthbound but longed for freedom. The look of a man who had been staring at his own shadow for too long and didn’t know how to stop.
That is the cause of human suffering, in Habib’s opinion: Humans are like the Crow of legend, Crow who became obsessed with her shadow, pecking at it, tearing at it, scratching at it, until she woke her shadow up and it ate her so that Crow is now dead and her shadow is alive.
Humans cannot stop staring at their own shadows, at some shape they think is fixed, a shape that they come to believe is real. Everything constricts to that shape; they become only that, nothing more, and then they are dead.
Oh, life for humans on this planet would be so much less fraught with sadness if they could know one thing: that shape is an illusion. The woes and angers, the confusions and pains—all these are born of that narrow vision, that staring into the unchanging shape of one’s own shadow.
There are worlds beyond this one. There so many other shapes to fill.
So there he was, the old man, looking up into the sky as it began to darken, wanting to see to something beyond himself—building a window to the stars!—but unable to see anything but his own sad shadow.
When death came to that place where the old man and the girl lived, and Habib heard him crying over the one with sparkling toes (who must have been his mate) she hurled herself against that very same window when she knew the old one was there to hear, and she let herself fall into that dark, dirty, treeless alley, knowing that she was saying good-bye to the park and the broad, open views of water and sunsets and her comrades in the rookery and the actors and the words of William Shakespeare.
But she was happy there, as much as a crow with a broken wing can be happy. She loved the colored glass in the old man’s room and the strange lingering smells that they contained, and his cawing, excitable voice, and riding on his shoulder and being so close to other humans.
And she grew strong and she watched and learned and she was of use. She commanded a rescue, shattered glass, witnessed grief, returned what was lost, whispered what wisdom she could to the living and the dead, and now this intervention was over.
Habib knows it is over, because she is looking down at the girl (who is, after all, still a girl) walking through a park with another father who is not her father. An animal bond is forming between them. The girl is learning to fill a new shape.
And that is all Habib can hope for.