He asked the permission of the village elders, though he didn’t tell them where he was going, then he rode the train south and climbed the hillside. The day dawned over him and his fellow seekers after visions, and he watched as they stared and wept and sighed and called out the names of their loved ones. But all he could see was the sun’s glare off the rock. Then the sun departed and the people with it. He stayed on two nights more, but nothing came of it, like he was the only blind man among them.
Back to Wahda, his hopes dashed. When he arrived, it felt like things were missing. A lot of things. There were no cars or carts, no trash in heaps, no children’s toys; it was as though some gigantic hand had reached down and swept through the village streets, wiping them clean. When the elders came to him that evening he still didn’t know what he’d say.
He welcomed them in. Stared at his feet. Then he heard himself speak: “I saw my father walking on water, laughing, and I saw us following him.”
Joy and resolve gleamed in the eyes of those assembled, and each man rose and went away to spend their final nights at home.
On the appointed night, they went down to the sea, and Ahmed went with them. On the outskirts of the village he paused to help two young men uproot the sign and smear it with dirt.
They camped on the shore, and when the boat came they all climbed in, Ahmed and the young men helping the elderly and children aboard, but by the time the anchor was raised he had vanished into the darkness. Deep in a stand of palms he watched the boat pull away, laden with people and memories: a little nation riding the waves. He noticed that none of them looked back.
He didn’t go back to the abandoned village. He went farther: back to the hillside in the deep south with its hidden wall. Not praying for guidance this time, but for confirmation. A sign from his father that he hadn’t sent them to their destruction. He wanted a nod, a smile, some small gesture free of disapproval. Unlike the other pilgrims to the wall, he stayed, assisting visitors like a devotee at a saint’s shrine, and still he saw nothing, and still he didn’t know why. And then one day, the two strangers came, and they saw. Or at least one of them did, then slept. The older man, the little one, was scribbling things down and looking around. He even told Ahmed his story. But as for the younger man, well, he was fast asleep, absent from this world and motionless, without the slightest tremor stirring him, and this was the sign that he’d seen.
8
