FROM THE HILLSIDE above the ruins of El Walarieh one could watch the surf breaking along the shore, and although the grass was sparse, thin goats grazed among the occasional clumps of brushwood high on the hill behind me. It was a strange and lonely coast, not without its own wild beauty.
Three times I had been there before the boy approached. He was a thin boy with large, beautiful eyes and smooth brown skin. He squatted beside me, his shins brown and dirty, looking curiously toward the sea, where I was looking.
“You sit here often?”
“Yes, very often.”
“You look at something?”
“I look at the sea. I look at the sea and the shore, sometimes at the clouds.” I shifted my position a little. “It is very beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” He was astonished. “The sea is beautiful?” He looked again to be sure that I was not mildly insane.
“I like the sea, and I like to look at those ruins and to wonder who lived there, and what their lives were like.”
He glanced at the ancient, time-blackened ruins. “They are no good, even for goats. The roofs have fallen in. Why do you look at the sea and not at the goats? I think the goats are more beautiful than the sea. Look at them!”
I turned my head to please him. There were at least fifty, and they browsed or slept upon the hillside above me. They were white against the green of the hill. Yes, there was beauty there, too. He seemed pleased that I agreed with him.
“They are not my goats,” he explained, “but someday I shall own goats. Perhaps as many as these. Then you will see beauty. They shall be like white clouds upon the green sky of the hillside.”
He studied the camera that lay on the grass near my feet. “You have a machine,” he said. “What is it for?”
“To make pictures. I want to get pictures of the sea and the ruins.”
“Of the goats, too?”
To please him, I agreed. “Yes, also of the goats.”
The idea seemed to satisfy him, yet he was obviously puzzled, too. There was something he did not understand. He broached the idea to me, as one gentleman to another. “You take pictures of the sea and the ruins…also of the goats. Why do you take these?”
“To look at them. To catch their beauty.”
“But why a picture?” He was still puzzled. “They are here! You can see them without a picture. The sea is here, the sky, the ruins…the goats, too. They are always here.”
“Yes, but I shall not always be here. I shall go away, and I want them to remember, to look at many times.”
“You need the machine for that? I can remember. I can remember all of the goats. Each one of them.” He paused, thinking about it. “Ah! The machine then is your memory. It is very strange to remember with a machine.”
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. “I think you have machines for many things. I would not like that.”
The following day I was back on the hillside. It had not been my plan to come again, yet somehow the conversation left me unsatisfied. I had the feeling that somehow I’d been bested. I wanted the goatherd to understand.
When he saw me sitting there, he came down the hillside. He saluted me gravely, then sat down. I handed him a cigarette, and he accepted it gravely. “You have a woman?” he asked.
“No.”
“What, no woman? It is good for a man to have a woman.”
“No doubt.” He was, I thought, all of thirteen. “You have a woman?” I asked the question gravely.
He accepted it in the same manner. “No. I am young for a woman. And they are much trouble. I prefer the goats.”
“They are no trouble?”
He shrugged. “Goats are goats.”
The comment seemed to explain much. He smoked in silence, and I waited for him to speak again. “If I had a woman, I would beat her. Women are good when beaten often, but they are not so productive as goats.”
It was a question I did not wish to debate. He seemed to have all the advantage in the argument. He undoubtedly knew goats, and spoke of women with profound wisdom. I knew neither goats nor women.
“If you like the hillside,” he said at last, “why do you not stay? The picture will be no good. It will be the sea and the ruins only at one time, and they are not always the same. They change,” he added.
“My home is elsewhere. I must go back.”
“Then why do you leave? Is it not good there? I think you are very restless.” He looked at me. “Have you goats at home?”
“No.” I was ashamed to admit it, feeling that the confession would lower me in his esteem. “I have no goats.”
“A camel?” He was giving me every chance.
“No,” I confessed reluctantly, “no camel.” Inspiration hit me suddenly. “I have horses. Two of them.”
He considered that. “It is good to have a horse, but a horse is like a woman. It is unproductive. If you have a horse or a woman, you must also have goats.”
“If one has a woman,” I ventured, “one must have many goats.”
He nodded. I had but stated a fact.