Chapter 10
Yazan ~ continued from Chapter 9 | Know Your Master
“A wadi,” he looked back at his friend. “You ask me what a wadi is?”
He chuckled slightly.
“Yes,” Shimea said.
“You are asking Yazan what a wadi is?”
“Yes.”
“So you don’t know what a wadi is?” Yazan laughed.
“No.”
Shimea blushed, his ears bright red against the head scarf tied below his chin.
“And do you think that a boy, no a man, of your age should know what a wadi is?” Yazan asked.
“Yes,” Shimea said.
“What is a wadi?” Yazan smiled. “My father once told me that.”
He could not control his laughter and it rang out over the rocky high plains and desert ridges that they climbed down and through.
He turned back to Shimea.
“It’s like your gulch, only larger, and water flows through from the mountains.”
Yazan turned back to the desert as they started to climb the high plains. They traveled to 200 feet above sea level before they stopped.
“We will reach Wadi Do’an by nightfall. We camp outside the village.”
Yazan drank from the water bag and passed it back to Shimea.
The boys arrived at dusk to Wadi Do’an, Southern Hadhramaut region, high in the mountains with great cliffs of sand that towered over the high plains and desert floor. The sunbaked plains and rocky, narrow strips of trail led higher and higher to a village built into the side of the great cliffs.
Narrow mud huts jutted from the cliffs with windows like eyes that watched over the valley below. And they rose even higher until some huts seemed like they would topple into the sands below.
Yazan slowed Baby on the narrow trail.
“We rest here tonight,” he said. He touched Baby softly and she stood on the trail. “We must stay outside and go in under darkness.”
They picked a flat area with brambles and rough plants to bed down the camel and rest before night fell.
After Yazan took off the saddle, he gave Baby water from a water bag and allowed her to graze on the plants and bushes that grew in the rocky terrain.
She brayed and watched Yazan as he took off his blanket and laid it on the desert floor. He took out a date and held it high until she plodded over and took it from him.
“What’s a wadi,” he laughed and laid down on the camel hair blanket, his hands behind his head with eyes to the now-darkening sky. “A wadi.”
Shimea, ever the farmer, was picking up the soil and rubbing it with his thumb and fingers.
“Very rich,” he said as he looked down in the valley. “Very fertile, good rain.”
Yazan was snoring and Baby was eating all that was in her reach.
Shimea looked down from the massive cliff tops and watched as the sun dipped low over their valley. His heart sank with the day as he thought what he might have to tell his mother, how she would wail and cry at losing her youngest child but he fought back those feelings and knew that he must find his brother if only to bring his body back to Bethlehem.
He turned his gaze back to the small village with its brown, sunbaked huts and little windows jutting out from the mountains. He felt awkward about being in a village again. He had known such small town life in Bethlehem — the running between blacksmiths and millers, and village women running errands, but that all seemed so far from him now. The farming fields and barns were lost to him and the deep, rich soil of his home was not his anymore.
The night air was cold and the mountain winds began to pick up. Shimea wrapped himself in his camel hair robe and thought, “I am no longer a farmer. I am an outcast.”
There in the growing dark, he knew what he was becoming and this gave him strength. He imagined himself becom- ing a great tribal chieftain living off the desert while on an endless journey.
He breathed the mountain air deeply and remembered what his mother had said about the battles being fought all around him and knew now that this was true. Behind the highest walled city or in the deepest glade there was a large, powerful argument between light and dark. It had raged for centuries and those who chose to ignore it were fools. But how simple it was to live your life in ignorance, to pull the threshing board across the threshing floor, to bring in the crops, to drink beer and not worry about such things.
Deep in the valley the last sliver of light burned brightly.
Shimea turned back toward his campsite with a new powerful image of himself and knew he would find David.
At dawn Shimea and Yazan awoke to the sound of braying camels and men. Five men stood drinking and preparing their morning meal around a fire. Fresh bread was passed around and they were drinking a strong, local tea with sugar.
Shimea stood up quickly and reached under his robe for his long knife. Yazan rubbed his eyes in the brilliant morning sun.
The men looked at the boys and laughed while they continued to eat and talk.
Shimea blinked away his morning haze and refused to back down but the men continued talking calmly. One of the men pointed to the vultures that circled overhead and nearby.
“Dogs,” he said.
He drank his tea and motioned for Shimea to take some tea.
“Eaten by now,” another responded as he ate his bread.
The men were tall and full of muscle. They wore bracelets around their biceps and each carried a large scimitar tucked outside his robe.
“Come,” said the one man as he motioned Yazan and Shimea closer to the fire.
Continue reading… Chapter 10 | Jews Hope for Camels
[…] Chapter 10 Yazan ~ continued from Chapter 10 | I Am An Outcast […]