It was still dark outside when Khaldoun woke up. His mother was fast asleep. Her snores, heavy and intermittent, sounded to her son like waves breaking softly on the shore or the singing of a boiling kettle. He opened the door slowly, careful not to make any noise. The door resembled a lion opening its wide jaws and yawning loudly. His mother tossed in her creaking bed, trying to find a comfortable position. The boy grudgingly made a mental note to oil the hinges the following morning. Closing the door behind him as swiftly as he could, he exhaled deeply and leaped out into a night that was only too eager to embrace him.
He stole a quick glance at the sky before fixing his gaze on the ground. This was the night before the full moon appears, the night when the sky loses its shine as the light from the stars begins to wane. When he reached the well, he turned right and counted the fifty steps that would lead him to a large rock under which a few days ago he had hidden a bag with secret contents. Khaldoun’s heart was beating frantically against his chest and he felt a bout of vertigo closing in on him. Now wait a second! He still had plenty of time to kill, didn’t he? Yet his feet forced him to rush ahead.
The rock was certainly less heavy than it was, but that was probably because all his senses had been so mobilised for his mission that a heavy rock now seemed to him like a small pebble. Opening the bag quickly, he carefully emptied its contents onto the ground. In what appeared to be a ritual of some sort, the boy undressed and placed his shoes and clothes neatly in the bag before returning it to its hiding place under the rock.
‘Lord, this is how you created me,’ Khaldoun said standing completely naked in the darkness. He felt a strong urge to remain like that with the soft breeze caressing his skin, rubbing against him endearingly like a family cat. If someone were to spot him then and there, the onlooker would have fled the site immediately, mistaking the well-built boy for a genie out of a fairy tale. The bucolic people in the countryside were, after all, quite gullible folk. Such a strange sight would have seemed to them a hallucination, created in a moment of divine wrath. A cold waft of air stung Khaldoun’s cheeks, so he set to work immediately. The ritual was completed by wrapping a long cord he had removed from the bag around his waist, leaving his hands free to engage in the task ahead.
Soon he felt suffocated and out of breath. The cord around his waist cut into his flesh, making breathing difficult. Khaldoun removed it but then put it back on again making sure it would not hinder his breathing this time. After all, this was not part of his plan.
Thoughts of his demanding and overbearing mother gnawed at him, eating at his insides like worms that feed on human flesh. Some days she would bless him and kiss his face, saying she was privileged to have such a wonderful boy, such a strong man. Yet if a day passed when the food cupboard was empty because Khaldoun had been unable to find a job, he would automatically become a stigma of ingratitude and shame to his widowed mother, who depended on him. She would say that even his dead father must be angered by his son’s irresponsible behaviour. His mother’s tirades seethed continuously in his mind as his naked body moved silently into the night.
Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine. He stopped in his tracks and covered himself with the crude rag cloak. At first, Aadla had been reluctant to make the cloak for him, but eventually, when he threatened to leave, she yielded to his request and asked him the inevitable question: why did he want a woman’s cloak? Then she volunteered to make him a proper jacket embroidered with silk thread, but the boy had refused and with a piece of charcoal he sketched the crude cloak required.
‘You must be out of your mind, Khaldoun!’ The girl was exasperated with what he had drawn on her bedroom floor. ‘This thing looks like the uniform of those fraternity people,’ she protested. ‘It doesn’t even have a hood or buttons.’
But Khaldoun persisted and Aadla finally agreed to make the cloak of rags and not say a word about it to any living soul.
Unhindered by the tiny pebbles that bit into his feet as if to stall him or lead him in the wrong direction, the boy proceeded under cover of darkness. He carried his secret and was eager to meet whatever destiny awaited him at the end of his journey.
Translated by Sleiman El-Hajj