A Boy Like That
Here settlements are divided into areas where different religions live separately. A detached existence makes sure groups don’t intermingle. Thus, wars are now only live in minds as bitter memories. Yet animosity is never quite gone. Many peaceful years not completely eradicating people’s unease. So, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews cooperated enough to ensure a 6m high wall’s construction. Building teams, from all religions paid reasonable amounts; Thanks to government benefit schemes. Engineers and planning committee members negotiated and succeeded in gaining access to local sandstone from a quarry producing a variety of different sized blocks, ‘like materials used since times when Egyptian Pharaohs built the Pyramids …’ said a corporation spokesman.
With passing years since barrier raised up out of wastelands settlements developed within each area, further removed according to wealth. Nearer walls live those with limited incomes and minimal resources. Perhaps resettled families of construction workers unable to find further employment, but loving, admiring their wall, desiring closeness. Or residents under its shadow out of limited other options. Or perhaps place took away a family member’s strength so much other relations remained close because towering blocks of rock stood memorial to lost virility once integral to a father, uncle or sister.
Those who made a life in the barrier’s vicinity existed a wealth rain-shadow. As if such fences also functioned to prohibit financial gains. Some individuals tried to lighten wall ambience by painting scenes of bliss, but as time strode by dust settled and muted colour. Time dulled positives energies that emanated from those token aesthetic efforts. The wall’s pristine qualities also faded in many summers of unceasing sun, washed too in chill winters storm borne rains.
Ali’s father often complained about wealthy Jews who might live beyond his side of the wall. But Ali could only wonder what such riches might look like. Would such people have fountains inside courtyards, peacocks wandering through date orchards or silk cushions upon which to recline like some of ancient images of affluence he’d seen?
Patrolling border walls are men with guns. Ali listened to and hear warnings, ever since he was a tiny toddler. Voices of authority saying, ‘stay away from the wall!’ Posters with those exact words in school rooms, depicting uniformed guards with their head scarfs and dark sinister presence.
‘Wall guards are trained to shoot to kill.’ Teacher’s whisper with reverence. So, Ali is well aware close to these barriers are a place declared as no-go zones. Still as he grew older Ali felt such prohibitions weren’t a God given rule.
Young Ali loved to walk alone on those hills. His feet stepping on land, dry and dusty because these places lay uncultivated. Weeds chopped away, scrubs poisoned, or taken for fire wood. Bare lands most close to the wall grew to resemble their Badlands title. Still this boy did not believe negatives reaching his ears. These places called to him, became his own lands, drawing frequent returns.
Today a wind whipped up bits of straw and general cast-off things like tissues. Plastic bags danced, tossing about in swirling hot air. Even empty water bottles migrated past rolling on unseen siroccos.
These hills became Ali’s playground while his mother waited for darkness to begin meal preparations. Cutting, chopping, laying out and lighting fires for the first meal since before school. Breakfast consumed in pre-dawn darkness, so the eye of God wouldn’t see. Ali was expected to be seated and served an evening meal rubbing shoulders with all his brothers; dipping fingers into ground beans, on special occasions meat glazed with juices, dotted with charcoal. Women sitting separately, while everyone prayed, giving thanks for sustenance. They always ate together as a family. Ali’s walks were a diversion, a way to stay occupied; a way to forget hunger pains.
Ali mimicked what he imagined to be a border guard’s evening; in which he donned that recognizable dark uniform and distinctive head scarf, all neat, tidy and formal. Down to tying leather boot laces, then Ali pretended to head out on patrol, marching along the wall’s fringes. Eventually acting out a return. As his now dulled boots stepped back in from dust and rock heat into cool guard houses for quiet talk and cigarettes. Guns placed in dull corners with reverence. These weapons, though out of the guard’s hands still stood ready to signify possession of such weapons also meant possession of inordinate power.
From history lessons Ali knew a time when guns were used to hunt game on these brown-grey hills. Killing a goat meant a new richness added to evening stews. Ali’s mouth reacted to thoughts of such a change to meals predominantly lentils or dried peas. Ali told himself not to think on this because to savour, be tempted by such things meant sinning. Also, bubbling saliva, pin pricking thoughts behind his eyes lengthened these empty afternoons even more.
Once rifles also expressed joy, at births of new boy children, or to celebrate a marriage. Wedding guests shooting skyward to augment euphoric shouts and whirling dances. Now all this noise locked in a noisy past. Under the wall’s gaze an uneasy silence settled, making days spread out, contain more hours. Now guns meant killing another man.
Another reason Ali wandered in the wall’s shadow is because sometimes found shells in the rock. These discoveries sent Ali into a fantasy world where he imagined being a famous scientist, finding fossils no-one else identified. New species, long extinct life forms, many he projected now bore his, acknowledged discoverer’s name. Notions of Badlands as once an edge of ancient oceans fascinated the boy. Ali thought he could grow up to be an archaeologist who tinkered with evidence of a long-gone race, found trinkets or ancient animals to educate uninformed masses about another society living in this very place once a shoreline.
‘Here is where they put their small boats into the ocean...this greyish rock a one-time cooking fire.’ Ali spoke to gathered awe-struck journalists and students following his professorship, keeping his voice above muffled gasps of wonder.
Ali enjoyed these games, found them refreshing after hours spent sitting cross-legged and hearing droned mantras of his class reading Qur’an passages. Out here he freely wonders why this numbing activity was scheduled just before student’s dismissal. Likewise, boy questioned points raised in spirited discussions about benefits or otherwise of being a martyr. Even hymns of praise to a generous, enlightened God and his prophet could fall away. Ali felt his day contained too much impassable things. Draped in silence, the Badlands empty spaces were peaceful bliss. Such a magical thing endlessly open compared to religious ropes keeping the boy tied for long hours. Nothing bad about these lands in Ali’s mind.
Sure, craving something else not a magic potion to bring about such desires. Still Ali often wondered what it would be like to live near city centres, be rich or live beyond his wall. Would they have water-cooled courtyards and tame leopards wandering around lush gardens, smells of ripe apricots permeating through rooms, peacocks howling in gardens. Such people might spend days out hawking on these empty hills. Ali often filled entire afternoons visualising what might exist beyond the wall.
Ali did have a friend, on the Jewish side, Daniel. That’s the only name he knew befitting a Jewish boy his age. Would his friend worry if people called him Dan? He’d heard men from the other side of the wall also wear beards, just like his own father. Ali also knew Jewish men grew side bits and curled them into ringlets. Would Daniel too have long wavy pieces of hair which should eventually become cork-screw shoulder length grown to adulthood? Ali had never been in close enough to know for sure. Soon enough, not many years from now, they would both sport thick manly beards, but not yet. Ali rubbed his chin to feel if any hairs were growing. Then he began another game. In his head Ali scripted dialogue. Whole conversations helping to fill lethargic passage of time, slowed down by dragging dust, and sun stalling its dip toward evening’s horizon.
Just now he saw Daniel’s wave against light from a setting sun, the other’s silhouette dark yet clearly visible, against golden beams marking heat dulling, sucked out of afternoon’s brightness. Ali returned the greeting. Just because they lived in different regions didn’t mean boys had to hate each other.
Ali often felt confused about the whole idea as to why religions lived apart, even though such traditions were a cornerstone of his world and everything about the wall’s existence. In his way of thinking no need for such segregation. Times he pictured fronting a group of squatted men, important dignitaries clad in soft silk robes, speaking his views on removing walls. Living together and cultivating Badlands, or preserving these spaces for scientific and historical research.
Off in the distance, Daniel’s outline looked large; he must be growing lately, putting on a teenage growth spurt, another thing Ali desired. Dan also dangled a stick by his side. Perhaps he’d found a tree, kept a branch as a walking stick or to use as a sword? Or just to enjoy stick swishes in sand, making dashed tracks for future scientists to ponder. Ali began to talk about his own treasures, ‘I found a blue shell today,’ he directed toward Daniel, sure the other’s sunburnt nose, wide smile and brown eyes were discernible. ‘It looks fake because the colour is too bright. What have you found today?’ Then Ali mouthed Dan’s possible reply – ‘Just an interesting piece of wood that might have drifted on an ocean once. But be careful Ali, I think the guards are here, I saw them close by.’
‘Come on Dan, when have we ever seen them? They are all sitting about in guard houses way over there.’ He pointed eastward, well past broken stones and old rock quarries. ‘Guards are drinking iced apple juice or smoking, out of winds. Sheltering from heat. Are they even real?’
The first bullet hits Ali’s shoulder, before the boy hears a shot’s crack. He watches blood tumble out, hot running down his arm, sticky drips fell off fingertips. Impact more like a stone than what he expected from such a deadly weapon. Another bullet hit his chest. Ali dropped to his knees, as if praying in a blue Mosque. Motes of dust swirling down cool chambers. Blood, bitter, metallic came into his mouth. He swallows, and then remembers...maybe a silent prayer will help. Ali tries to place his brow to the ground. Struggles to kneel and take correct position because various parts of his body won’t seem to co-operate. Still he manages to gasped out as almost audible words. ‘...Oh, Holy One, Allah Auakbah...Oh Divine One - - - Astagfourallah ....’ Also adding his own prayer, ‘I didn’t mean to break rules... I know it’s Ramadan - - - and it’s nil past my lips.’
After Ali’s funeral, when wailing finally ceased, Ali’s mother took to wandering edges of the walls, spending night awake, gazing out into empty moonlight outlining dead blocks of sandstone. Cursing this seemingly perfect world which took her youngest son.