The Lost Army Read online

  ‘How can we get her there?’ asked Mermah again.

  I had an idea. ‘Take your clothes off. No one can see us anyway.’

  The other girls did as I asked, realizing what I had in mind, stripping off until they were almost naked.

  I laid out our clothes and knotted them together to make a kind of sling that we laid on the ground next to the woman. We gingerly eased up her arms and legs and shifted her onto the cloth. She gasped when we pulled her off the ground; her limbs must have been shattered. We lifted the sling as gently as we could. That poor thing was as thin as could be; she wasn’t even heavy for girls like us, and we managed to carry her to the hut without much trouble, stopping every now and then to catch our breath.

  We made a bed for her, using a mat and some straw and hay. We washed her with cool water and covered her with sackcloth. She wouldn’t catch cold, because the night was warm, but that was the least of her problems anyway. None of us knew whether she’d live through the night, or whether we’d find a corpse the next day. We decided there was nothing more we could do for her then and that the best thing to do was to get back before our parents realized we were gone. We washed our own blood-stained clothes in the stream and took them back home with us, hoping they would dry before morning.

  Before splitting up, we made a plan for helping our protégée, if she survived. We’d bring her food and water in shifts until she was able to take care of herself. We swore that we would tell no one our secret. We would not betray her for all the gold in the world, and would protect her with our very lives.

  We hadn’t a clue what this actually meant, but an oath was an oath, and must contain solemn promises. We left each other with long hugs; we were tired, worn out by the emotions that we’d experienced that day and that night, yet so excited that we were sure we would never get back to sleep.

  The wind started blowing again during the night and continued until dawn, when the crowing of the cocks woke the inhabitants of Beth Qadà and of the other four Villages of the Belt.

  The first thing everyone noticed as they made their way to the fields was that the stoned woman had disappeared, and this threw them all into a panic. The strangest rumours spread from one person to the next, most of them terrifying, so terrifying that no one dared to investigate further: it was better to forget the bloody deed that had tainted them all. Their superstitious fear would make it easy for us to look after the woman we’d saved from certain death, without anyone noticing, we hoped.

  We were just past our girlhood but what we’d done was much bigger than we were. Now we were frightened of the repercussions. Would we be able to keep her alive? We didn’t know how to heal her wounds, nor how and where we could get food for her, if she did manage to survive. Mermah had an idea that got us out of this fix. There was an old Canaanite woman who lived all alone in a kind of den dug out of the embankment that kept the stream from overflowing when it was in flood. It was said that she gathered herbs to prepare unguents and potions that she used to cure burns, coughs and malignant fevers in exchange for food and the rags she dressed in. She was called ‘the mute’ because she couldn’t talk, or maybe didn’t want to. We went looking for her the next night and took her to the hut.

  The stranger was still breathing but it truly seemed that every breath might be her last.

  ‘Can you do something for her?’ we pleaded, crowding around. The mute woman seemed to take no heed of us, but instead leaned closer to the dying stranger. She took a leather sack from her belt and poured its contents into the bowl hanging from her cane, but then she stopped. She turned towards us and rudely waved us away.

  We looked into each other’s eyes as if to consult about the wisdom of this move, but when the old woman raised her cane and shook it at us we ran out in a flash. We waited outside until we heard a loud scream coming from the hut, so loud we were petrified. None of us made a move; we stayed put where we were, sitting on the ground, until the old woman came out and beckoned us to enter. We peeked in the door and could see that the stranger was sleeping. The old woman signalled that we should come back the next day, and bring some food. We nodded and left reluctantly, stealing backward looks at the hut. The mute woman wasn’t following. We thought she would probably stay there with the stranger all night.

  The next day we came back with some goat’s milk and barley soup. The old woman was gone but the stranger opened her swollen eyes as we came in and the look she gave us was intense and full of suffering. We helped her to eat the little food we’d brought and stayed there watching her long after she’d fallen asleep again.

  Days passed like this, with the mute woman coming and going, and we never opened our mouths the whole time. We kept our secret and were very careful not to do anything that would make our families, or the other people in the village, suspicious. The stranger was healing very slowly, but we could see some improvements. The swelling had gone down, the bruises had paled and even her wounds were starting to scab over.

  She must have had a number of broken ribs because she took very short breaths and could never seem to fill her lungs. There was probably not an inch of her body that didn’t hurt, that hadn’t been hacked by those cruel stones.

  I WAS ALONE with her when she opened her eyes one morning in mid-autumn, at the first light of dawn. I’d brought her barley soup and some pomegranate juice we’d made for her. She said something. It was ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m so happy you’re better,’ I answered, ‘I’ll go to tell my friends. They’ll be as happy as I am.’

  She sighed and turned her head towards the window where a little early sun was streaming through.

  ‘Can you talk?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘My name is Abira and I come from this village, but you may not remember me.’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re from here? Why did they stone you, then? Why did they try to kill you?’

  ‘Because I did something that an honourable girl should never have done, and they never forgot. They recognized me, judged me and condemned me to death.’

  ‘Was what you did so terrible?’

  ‘No. I didn’t think so. I don’t think I hurt anybody, but there are laws that everyone accepts and we’ve managed our lives by those laws for a long time now; it’s not right to break them. Especially us women. The law is always harder on us.’

  I could see how tired she was, so I didn’t ask any more questions then, but little by little, as I could see she was getting better and regaining her strength, my friends and I would come and listen, day after day, to her story. Her adventure.

  A number of curious circumstances had led her far away from home, and she’d met people from all different walks of life, but it all started because of a young man, handsome and mysterious, the very one we’d dreamed of as we loitered at the well. She had met many men and women who told her what they knew or what they had learned through the course of their turbulent lives, and so many stories flowed together in her that they had joined to become one great, terrible story, as when in the rainy season every dry stream bed becomes a torrent and all the torrents rush into the river, which swells and roars and finally breaks its banks and spills over into the countryside, sweeping everything away, houses, people, herds . . .

  Her story thrilled us as she told of danger and wonder, of love and of death, of exploits that had stirred up thousands and thousands of people and had completely overturned Abira’s own existence, tearing her away from the tranquil, unchanging life of Beth Qadà, her village and ours, one of the five Villages of the Belt. But at the beginning, that story, so grand and so compelling that nearly the whole world was soon caught up in it, was only . . . the story of two brothers.

  2

  ‘WHY DID THEY want to stone you?’ I asked her one day after she’d regained her strength.

  ‘Was it because of those two brothers you told us about?’ Abisag chimed in.

  ‘It was my own fault,’ she
answered. ‘But it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the two brothers.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Back then,’ she began, ‘I was just a little older than you are now. I worked for my family in the fields, took the sheep to pasture and went to the well to draw water with my friends, just as you do now. Life was always the same, the seasons came and went. My parents had already chosen a husband for me, a cousin of mine. His hair stuck out all over and his face was full of pimples. But we had our clan to think about, and we had to earn a living. I wasn’t at all upset by the idea of getting married, and my mother had already told me what would happen afterwards, after the wedding, that is. I’d keep working as I always had done, and my cousin would make me pregnant and I’d have his children. That didn’t seem so terrible, after all; it was what women do, nothing to fret over. Once, one of the very rare times that my mother was in a good mood, she told me a secret: that there were women who felt pleasure when they did that thing with their men. This other feeling was what people called love, which usually didn’t happen with the husband your family chose for you, but could happen with other men that you liked.

  ‘I really didn’t understand what she was getting at, but as she spoke her eyes lit up and seemed to be chasing distant, long-lost images.

  ‘ “Did that happen to you too, Mama?” I asked.

  ‘ “No. Never to me,” she answered without looking me in the eye, “but I know women it happened to, and from what they say it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, and it’s something that can happen to anyone. You don’t have to be rich, or noble, or be educated, all you have to do is meet a man that you like. That you like so much you’re not ashamed to take off your clothes in front of him and when he touches you you’re not disgusted. Just the opposite. You desire what he desires and his desire joins with yours and liberates a powerful energy that’s more inebriating than wine. It’s a sublime feeling, an ecstasy that might only last a few minutes, or maybe just a few instants, but it makes you feel like an Immortal. It’s worth years and years of a dull, monotonous life.”

  ‘I realized that my mother was trying to tell me that even the life of a woman could – at certain moments, if only for a very short time – be like the life of a goddess.

  ‘Those words filled me with longing, but also with a very deep sadness, because I was sure that my cousin with the pockmarked face could never make me feel those emotions, not in a whole lifetime. I knew I’d have to put up with him anyway, because that’s the way life was. Nothing more, nothing less.

  ‘The day that would unite me with him for the rest of my life was getting closer, and the nearer it got the more I felt distracted; I just couldn’t seem to concentrate on the everyday tasks I had to do. My mind was somewhere else. I couldn’t stop thinking about the man who could make me feel the way my mother had described. The man I would want to show my body to instead of hiding it, who I wanted to hold me in his arms, who I’d like to find lying next to me on my mat when I woke up, licked by the light of the dawning sun.

  ‘I would cry, sometimes, because I desired this man so much and I knew that I’d never meet him. I looked around, thinking that he must be hiding somewhere: maybe one of the many boys who lived in our villages. But I wasn’t too sure about that. How many young men could there be in the Villages of the Belt? Fifty? One hundred? Certainly no more than one hundred, and every one of them that I saw or met stank of garlic and had chaff sticking out of his hair. I finally became convinced that the whole thing had just been dreamed up by women who were tired of the same old life, pregnancies, giving birth, toiling day after day, getting beaten to boot.

  ‘But then it happened.

  ‘One day, by the well.

  ‘First thing in the morning.

  ‘I was alone. I’d lowered my jug and was pulling it up on its rope by leaning on the other end of the pole. I was shifting a big stone to get the pole to stay down when I felt the weight of the jug being lifted at the other end and I raised my head.

  ‘He looked the way I’d always imagined a god to look. He was young, handsome, smooth-skinned. He was broad-shouldered, muscular but harmonious, his hands strong and gentle at the same time, along with a smile that was just enchanting. It blinded me like the rays of the sun rising behind his back.

  ‘He took a drink from my jug and the water ran over his chest, making it shine like bronze, then he looked intensely into my eyes and I didn’t look away. I looked back at him, with the same intensity.

  ‘Later I would learn that you can live the life of a beast or of a god; it depends on the place that destiny has chosen for you to be born. The same place you’re likely to die, when fate has humbled your desires and denied your hopes. A good life can nourish your body with athletic contests and with dancing and illuminate your gaze with the passion of dreams and adventures. That was the light I saw in the eyes of that young man with the jug in his hand, at the well of Beth Qadà, one late summer morning in my sixteenth year, but at that time I thought that the energy I saw sparkling in his eyes and the beauty that shone from within him could only belong to a divine being.

  ‘Yet here was the man my mother had been talking about, the only man I could desire and want to be desired by. At that moment, as I stood up and let go of the pole I knew that my life was changing and that it would never be the same. I felt immense excitement and great fear at the same time, a giddy sensation that made me gasp.

  ‘He came closer and managed with a great deal of difficulty to pronounce a few words in our language as he pointed to the horse standing behind him, hung with his weapons. He was a warrior and he was the first of a huge army advancing behind him at a few hours’ distance.

  ‘We could only speak with looks and gestures, but we both understood. He touched my cheek with his hand, and brushed my hair, and I didn’t move. He was so close I could sense what he was feeling, like a vibration that ran through me at that quiet hour of the morning. I tried to tell him that I had to go, and I think the expression on my face let him know how sorry I was about that. He pointed to a little palm thicket near the river and drew some signs in the sand that were his answer: he would wait there for me in the middle of the night and I already knew that I would be there at any cost, no matter what happened. Before accommodating my cousin and his stink of garlic into the intimacy I was so jealous of, I wanted to know what making love was really like and – even if just for a few moments – find out what it felt like to be immortal, in the arms of a young god.

  ‘The army arrived as night was falling and the sight left everyone stunned: old people and young, women and children. I dare say that the entire population of the five Villages of the Belt had run to see what was happening. No one had ever seen the like. Thousands of warriors on horseback dressed in tunics and long trousers, carrying sabres, pikes and bows, advancing from the north and heading south. At the head of every division were officers wearing the most extravagant outfits, their weapons glittering in the setting sun. At the head of them all, surrounded by bodyguards, was a tall, slender young man with olive skin and a black, well-groomed beard. I wouldn’t learn until later who he was, and I’d never forget him: he was one of the two brothers I told you of. Brothers and enemies. Their bloody struggle would overwhelm the destinies of countless human beings, sweeping them away like logs in a raging river.

  ‘There was one division of that army that struck me most of all: men dressed in short tunics with bronze breastplates. They held enormous shields made of the same metal and wore red cloaks over their shoulders. I would later learn that they were the most powerful warriors in the world: no one could stand up to them in battle, no one could hope to beat them. They never tired and were heedless of hunger and thirst, heat and frost. They advanced on foot with a cadenced step, singing softly to the rhythm of flutes. Their commanders marched alongside them, and the only way you could tell them apart from their men was because they walked outside the ranks.

  ‘New divisions kept arrivi
ng, hour after hour, and when the first had already pitched their tents and eaten, the last were still on the march towards their rest stop: our peaceful villages.

  ‘This unfolding of events made my crazy plan possible: the village men were so overcome with curiosity that no one wanted to return home for dinner; they had their women bring the food to them so that they wouldn’t miss an instant of what was happening. No one noticed when I slipped off, or maybe my mother did, but she said nothing.

  ‘The moon was out that night and the chorus of crickets sang louder and louder as I drew further away from the villages and the vast camp that continued to expand in every direction, gobbling up any free, open space. I had to keep far away from the well because there was an unending line of men, asses and camels laden with jars and skins, waiting to quench the thirst of that huge army. I could see the palm grove in the distance by the river, its fronds swaying in the evening breeze. The water glistened in the moonlight, hurrying to join the great Euphrates, far to the east.

  ‘Every step that brought me closer to that place made me tremble with emotion. I was filled with a sensation I’d never felt my whole life: an anxiety that took my breath away and a heady excitement that made me so light-footed that I might take flight at any time. I ran over the last stretch that separated me from the palm trees and looked around.

  ‘No one was there.

  ‘Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, or maybe I had misinterpreted what the young man had wanted to say with his gestures and signs, in those few words spoken in a language that wasn’t his own. Maybe he wanted to trick me and was hiding behind the trunk of a palm tree and would pop out and frighten me. I looked and looked but there was no sign of anyone. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t come. I waited. I don’t remember how long, but I watched the moon sink towards the horizon and the constellation of the lioness disappear behind the distant peaks of the Taurus. No use waiting any longer. I’d been wrong about him and it was time to go back home.