He raised his pounding, aching head from the wet lawn. The dampness was blood: his own, dripping down the blades of grass. Ashe’s head was heavy, echoing with a strange wind, like waking in the blank afternoon after a bad dream. There was a stabbing in his eyes and a wall of noise in his ears. He was shaking, unable to focus, like a child in pain, whimpering, sick. He started to vomit onto the lawn.
Smoke and dust filled the air. In the distance: the screech of an alarm system. An old brick fell from Ashe’s back as he tried to get up, still vomiting, coughing, bleeding. He fell backwards, closing his eyes again, nauseous, dizzy. He rolled over and coughed up rancid remains of lunch mixed with bile and wine; his throat stung. He opened his leaden eyes and caught a beam of sunlight as it stole through the brick dust and billowing fragments of cement.
There was something in his hand. A mobile. The line was dead. Ashe passed out – somewhere to forget the pain and the sickness. It wasn’t happening. It wasn’t him. It must be something else… someone else. The sun again. Gone.
S
Remember the Snake
And know
The Serpent has the power
From the root of the tree
To the Tower
From the scorpion to the flower
Thousands of miles away, in a mountainous valley in northern Iraq, a man the local Kurds called ‘the Kochek’ awoke from a dream.
Seated on the pale, dusty grass in the shade of an olive grove, the wise old man scratched his long, grey, matted beard, gently wiped his folded eyes, adjusted his large turban and carefully rose to his feet. As he brushed some fallen leaves from the white woollen meyzar pulled tight around his shoulders, his sharp eye caught the sun, beginning to set over the mountain to the north. He kissed the fingertips of his right hand and drew them to his forehead. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and bowed to the sun three times.
The Kochek removed his shoes, then bent to kiss the threshold of the mazar in front of him. The mazar had no door; it did not need one. He entered the shrine, poured olive oil from an old petrol tin into a brass standard lamp, and placed four wicks into the grooves around the top of the lamp.
A tiny flame floated above a pool of oil in a window recess. Taking a taper from beside the flame, the Kochek ignited it and brought its light to the standard lamp. Concentrating, he brought the fragile flame to the dry wicks. A beautiful golden glow lit the heart of the little shrine. A soft wind chanted quietly down the blessed valley.
The elderly Kochek touched his fingertips to his lips and his forehead once more, then stepped gingerly back over the threshold. In the distance he heard the echo of a rifle shot bouncing from rock to rock in the south. The Kochek smiled. He was thinking of Sarsaleh, the imminent Spring Festival, wondering how many would come to him this year with their dreams. The past years had been hard, but they had been harder in the greater past. He was alive; that was good. But martyrdom put you in good company: alongside the ancestors, buried under stones, watching.
His loving eye surveyed the yellow rock-roses, the gladioli, the buttercups, the red and yellow Adonis, the hyacinths, all crying for life and straining to break through the gleaming pebbles and grass of the mountains. His eyes penetrated the greening hills to the north, south, east and west, now touched with a fiery light. And he thought of the four wicks, the cross, the flames of the sun, bringing new light and life to good and bad alike and blessings for those who knew.
He had been with the angel and the angel had warned him, as he had warned his ancestors.