It was not easy to have a conversation tête-à-tête with Jadaan. Despite this I tried several times without despairing. Every time I stood impotent before his harsh, sunken eyes as he drew the barrier of silence over them. When I was at last able to sit beside him on his low wooden bench, I had not in fact intended it. I had arrived late and forgotten my keys at a friend’s house, so I sat waiting.
“I should have gone to sleep early tonight. Tomorrow we are going hunting.”
“Hunting?” Jadaan asked the question coldly, absorbed in rolling his tobacco in the thin paper.
“Yes. Hunting gazelles.”
“How do you hunt gazelles?”
“In a car, as usual.”
He shook his head and went on rolling the tobacco. As though talking to himself, he said:
“You overtake the poor gazelle with the car, cut it off from its herd, you hunt it for hours until it is exhausted and stops, you get out of the car and catch hold of it as though it were a chicken….” He lit a cigarette and drew a deep breath from it. He looked straight into my eyes and firmly said:
“It’s a disgrace.”
I suddenly felt as though Jadaan intended to insult me. I spoke impetuously:
“A disgrace? How do people hunt gazelles? With a gun?”
“No. That’s a disgrace.”
“Well, then?”
He took another breath and through a cloud of his thick smoke his harsh gaze swept over me. He said quietly:
“You must never hunt gazelles, Abdallah, either in a car or with a gun.”
“Why?”
He looked at me suddenly as though my question had wounded him. He shook the cigarette between his fingers in my face and his eyes flashed.
“Have you ever tried sitting in the desert, and the gazelle comes to you of its own accord? It rubs its head on your arm and stretches out its muzzle to your neck. It walks round you, looking at you with its wide eyes, and then it goes away. Have you tried that?”
“No. Have you?”
As though he hadn’t listened to my question, he murmured mockingly:
“And you talk of hunting!”
I could bear his pride no longer, and burst out:
“Weren’t you a hunter?”
“Yes. A long time ago, Abdallah. A long time ago.”
I went a step further.
“How did you hunt gazelles?”
He shook his head sadly and repeated:
“Yes, you catch it as though it were a chicken. Listen, Abdallah….”
He turned to face me. Raising his legs, he sat cross-legged on the bench, putting his rough hand on my knee. Across that darkness the voice came from far away.
“Listen, Abdallah. Twenty years ago I hunted gazelles. I had a wonderful falcon called Nar.* He was the best falcon the tribe had heard of for many years. When he flew, his wings blotted out the light of the sun, and he would fold them and drop like a stone. People would say: ‘Jadaan’s Nar has burnt the gazelles.’”
Silence reigned, and I imagined that he had stopped speaking; despite the darkness, I was sure that his face, at this moment, was clothed in the unknown happiness that a man’s face wears when he speaks of things that he has loved, and lost a long time ago. But the voice returned, weak and scarcely audible:
“Twenty years ago … I lifted the leather hood from Nar’s eyes and he flew off, circling round. There was only one gazelle within reach, and I could make out its color from afar. It was reddish, verging on brown. No! It was the color of a gazelle; you can’t have seen that color ever. It’s the color of a gazelle, a color that can only be that of a gazelle. Nar had flown very high, then he swooped, like a stone, holding in its wings. When he was close above the gazelle he spread out his wings … and froze in the air for a moment. Then he slipped sideways, spread out like a sheet of paper, until he almost touched the earth. Again he circled round, and flew high, while the gazelle stood as though rooted to the ground. I thought that Nar was simply exhibiting his prowess before the wretched animal, as all the strong do, but he made the same show more than six times, with extraordinary violence, and then he began again, circled round, and flew back to me. I saw him stretch out his huge wings, alight with haughty languor on his wooden perch planted in the sand, and close his eyes … while the gazelle came after him on its thin legs as though a hyena were after it.”
I grasped Jadaan by the shoulder and woke him up, for it seemed to me as though he had been asleep.
“What then?” I asked.
“I went back to my people. At first I thought that Nar did not want to hunt that day. You know, falcons have their particular character. But what happened was more terrible than that. Nar did not leave his perch at all afterwards. He stayed standing with his proud breast and his hooked beak in the shadow of the gazelle, which kept close to him. He did not eat for an entire week, although I tore the leather hood from his eyes; he didn’t look at any piece of meat I put in front of him. He didn’t even look at the gazelle, which stood motionless beside him, gazing silently at him. Each time I went to try to feed Nar, the gazelle came unexpectedly and hovered round me, like a baby, rubbing its pink nose on the back of my hand, stretching out its muzzle to my neck, rubbing its head on my arm. Then it circled round and came quietly to stand beside the wooden perch.” Jadaan stood up, and walked round the wooden bench, bringing out his rusty box and beginning to roll his tobacco again. I could not distinguish his features in the darkness, but I heard his voice, as if from a distant cavern:
“One day I woke up to find Nar lying beside his wooden perch. His breast was thin and bare and his eyes were closed. I could not find the gazelle. Most likely it had gone away during the night, after Nar had died.”
I got up from my place, and stood in front of him. He had finished rolling his tobacco and I lit a match, asking:
“I wonder where the gazelle went.”
In the pale light of the match I saw his face as it had always been: thin, harsh, cold. His lips moved:
“It went to die among its people. Gazelles like to die among their people. Falcons don’t care where they die.”
______________________
* Meaning “Fire.”