From the early roots of the young writer, at the end of adolescence.
A spider killed a fly. A cat killed a mouse. A wolf killed a lamb… And a human being killed another human being.
A rainbow arched over the forest, its trembling colors stirring the branches with pride, and stirring my own with joy. My cells awakened, and my arm moved with the grace of a ballet dancer preparing to meet a long lost beloved. Life began to sketch a smile on my lips…
But the moment I lifted my gaze, I saw a massive black serpent coiled around the trunk of the mother pine. The smile withered, and fear, mixed with disgust, rose behind it.
How could this ancient tree, rooted in the roots of the earth itself, allow a serpent to squeeze the life out of it? I stood helpless, watching the long body slide away, inch by inch. I searched for a human to help me kill it, but when I raised my hand for aid, I saw people hiding behind the short trees, indifferent to my call.
The forest trees were spaced evenly, separated by patches of dry sand. Each man hid behind a trunk, shrinking himself, curling inward, doing strange things. I turned my face away, only to find another man doing the same. I turned again, unable to escape what they were doing. There was no refuge from such a sight except closing my eyelids; only then did I hear the murmurs, like someone trapped in the bottom of hell, tormented not by fire, but by the suffering of others.
I always wondered: Why do men hide behind decaying trunks to do things they would be ashamed of when they move from one trunk to another? The question stayed suffocated in my chest.
The pine tree towered above the forest, overlooking a hysterical frenzy. Surely it could see what lay behind the trunks. I wished I could climb to its top and see what it saw. Isn’t knowing what people hide a great thrill? But the coiled serpent prevented me from climbing.
I returned to search for help. The bone of my leg burned as I searched. A child’s head appeared in the distance, and I rushed toward it, only for the head of a huge man to rise beside him, hateful, forcing me to retreat. Birds sang at the top of the tree… while I remained at the bottom, unable to leap or fly.
A man moved lightly from one trunk to another, carrying a small rifle the length of his forearm. He followed another man. I thought they were hunting the serpent, clearing the way for the men to climb the tree. My hope grew with every step. Surely they had invented that rifle to kill the serpent.
The man in front ran heavily, as if something pulled him down despite his small size. He kept looking back, his eyes bulging whenever he saw the serpent—or the man chasing him. The one with the rifle stumbled, the second paused for a moment, then resumed the chase, forcing the first to run again.
Had they killed the serpent, I would have climbed the great pine tree, sung with its birds, and forgotten the gray sand. And the men would have finally seen what lay behind the rotting trunks.
The unarmed man hid behind a massive rock and vanished, except for a few strands of hair lifted by a breeze toward the fading rainbow.
The man with the rifle crouched behind an old trunk and aimed. When he fired, the serpent’s hiss rose to the heavens, and the explosion thundered from the rifle’s belly. The rock vanished… And the man behind it vanished… A dark haze swallowed the view.
My feeling stopped entirely. I could neither cry nor laugh. The haze began to clear, but the noise kept deafening the world. The rainbow disappeared, and the birds fell silent.
My pen was dry, so I dipped it in my blood and wrote a message on a piece of my skin, then cast it into the sea waters. I lived watching the waves, hoping that the one hiding behind the decaying trunks would one day discover the secret of the sea and read what I had written in that message.
Only then… I will climb the pine tree.
Zouheir Shalabi