Desert tales

The sycamore tree

It was not yet dawn when he knocked: he was desperate.
-Rha'el,Rha'el please, open the door! I'm begging you!.
It was Yehochoua the farmer, who had a farm not far from here, to the north of the village. He broke his back every day on that poor land. A land which was hardly more than a stony ground, especially poor in food. Yehochoua had seven daughters, all females, a real disgrace to him. But his greatest misfortune was Sarah, his wife, a greedy harpy.
I immediately understood that he was here to talk. When he came for other reasons, his knocking was soft and light.
- Shut up, you can't come in, there is someone with me.- I told him.
He cried and banged his head against the wall as he mumbled:
-I am a worm, I am a worm, she sold them. She sold them! She sold them and I did nothing to stop her.
- Calm down now, she sold who?
He threw his arms around my neck hugging me as if I were his mother and sobbing he replied:
-Yehoudith and Myriam, my eldest daughters.
Yehochoua was a fragile dreamer, not all are born warriors. I buried him there, under his sycamore tree. When he wanted me, he came over at dusk with a basket of fruit, left it on the porch and went back home. Then, later, in the middle of the night, he came back. He was an odd man: he spent more time dreaming out loud than making love. I loved that mad man. His fruit was not so good, it was almost all to throw away. He stole it from his wife; I never told him that I would have welcomed him anyway.
He told me everything: about his debts, his daughters, the earth, the rain, the sun and the water. His land was dry and he had to work it to exhaustion but he talked about it with love and poetry: I have already said that he was a dreamer. His voice hardened only when he spoke of his wife. He married when he was a child and he remained so, his wife led him with a whip.
- Please let me in.
-I have already told you: I can't, I have a client. Speak quietly, please, or you'll wake him up. Tell me, what can I do for you?
-Nothing, nothing, I'm a worm - he answered shaking his head in despair. - Sarah has sold two of my little pearls who are my only reason for living to some camel drivers. I couldn't stop it. She told me that it is because of me, you know? She said that I don't work hard and that our land grew poor because I am incompetent, you know? I, who bite some bread and throw it away, and I must have plowed all that piece of land before taking another bite. I, who do not know the taste of the pigs I breed. I had to slaughter her instead of pigs. She is heartless, loveless, stingy and barren like her land. She, who was incapable of bearing at least one son. But I didn't stop her. What kind of man am I? What worm am I?
Tell me, Rha'el, tell me,you, the only one who listens to me: do I deserve my life?
-Ooohhh, Yehochoua, can't you reach them and free them? Chase them, maybe you are still in time.
- Free them? Me? I couldn't even stop Sarah from selling them. What do you want me to do? I am a coward, a useless person.
-Stop acting like this, you can do it. You go and free them at night and then you run away.
-Yes, in the desert and on foot, they would reach us the day after and kill us all. They are armed, they have the blood of the marauders in their veins. Better slaves but alive. There is no solution, I have lost them for ever. Sarah is right, I am a wretched man, I'm good for nothing.
He ad stopped sobbing and began to speak in a raspy voice, looking at the ground.
- Let me in, please. I want to sleep next to you, you are my only refuge.
He wanted to enter but I blocked him. That dark spot over there, on the threshold, is his blood, I never wanted to get rid of it, he had come out without shoes and his feet were bleeding.
-No! You can't -, I cried, and from inside the house:
-Rha'el, Rha'el. Where are you?
-I'm here, Shaul, I'm coming, it's nothing.
Shaul, the priest, appeared at the door a few moments later. There was a beautiful moon that night. He looked at the poor man covered with rags from head to toe and said scornfully:
-Who is this beggar, send him away. I'm not paying you to waste your time. Hurry up, come back! And you, whoever you are, go away if you don't want me to hit you. I paid for her tonight and she's mine!
I glanced at Yehochoua in search of understanding. He looked at me in despair, with his big black eyes, swollen with tears, begging for help; but I closed the door behind me.
I found him at dawn, he was hanging from the sycamore, hanged with his own rags.
He envied me for that big tree, for its flourishing fruit and for its shadow. "Ah, if I had your water...!" he was always telling me.
I buried him down there, I thought it was the right place for him; I didn't give him back and I didn't even let his wife know. She didn't deserve it. Life was too hard for him. There is no place down here for the weak, and not even for the dreamers.
Maybe, if I had let him in, maybe... but I'mjust a whore, and I live in a house on the edge of the desert.
I was a mother, a lover and a confidant for you, but it was not enough.I loved you, Yehochoua, I loved you so much.