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Authors: Lawrence Osborne
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the word reversed . It was typical. Of course the infidels reversed. They didn’t want a witness to their blundering, their crime. They covered their tracks. It was unsurprising, and it was probably unconscious on the part of the foreigners.That was the most incredible thing about it. Just as you would swat a fly.
“The police have done nothing,” one of them commented, rubbing his index finger against his thumb.
“What do you expect them to do?”
Money: that was the issue. The foreigners always had it.
Five
HEN THE SCAR ON THE DEAD BOY ’ S LEFT HAND WAS mentioned, some of them, thinking back with care, remembered a tall boy with a subtle distraction written across his face, an anger that they recognized but which in him was more prolonged, more deepened by events that were not disclosed. Perhaps, they thought, that was him. A loping, tense boy who worked in the prepping yards in Erfoud and who had a scar on his left hand from an accident with a lathe. It was him, they thought.
His name was Driss. He had emigrated to France some time back. When he returned, he had gone to work at the Mirzan quarry at the same wage he had enjoyed a year earlier. He lodged in Erfoud. Ismael, the younger boy who had stood with him that night by the road as the Hennigers drove up drunk and wild-eyed, sometimes saw him preppingoutside near the telecommunications tower in the center of the town. His head covered with sacking to keep the sun off him and chipping away with his meticulous technique at Tridents he obtained on the black market. He had prepped all his life, like Ismael. It was what he knew, and for that reason he hated it.
Ismael watched. Driss seemed badly dressed and irritable, as if his French adventure had failed, and he smoked a lot of kif in the evenings with the boys from Alnif who worked in the prepping yards. He looked thinner and more anguished, and he talked without the loose charm that had once made him a favorite with the girls. Such transformations, Ismael reasoned, happened among the unbelievers.
Ismael saw him at the Green Coconut and the Hotel Tafilalet talking loudly at the ammonite bar, boasting about the money he made from tourists at the five-star ksour hotels on the outskirts of town. Soon they were hanging out. Driss came to the quarry on off days, and he was there before first light, squatting by the entrance with his teapot and his harmonica waiting for the little girls to come down and give him pieces of bread from the foreman. They worked in the intolerable afternoons chiseling out a great ancient fish that a customer from Spain had commissioned for a private bar. They stayed till after dark, making fires on the top of the cliff and looking down at the walls studded with ammonites and crinoids that remained half emergent, their demonic provenance so obvious that it did not merit attention. Nightmare forms that no human, and certainly no reasonable God, could have dreamed up. They were demons that had fallen long ago from the skies and lain for thousands of years among humans, not part of God’s created world. They came from another dimension, from the malevolant spirit world. Their faces were supernatural, it could not be denied. They caused nightmares to appear among the believers, they were hostile to love and peace. Violence was their fruit.
Is was then that the flies dispersed at last and Ismael and Driss lay under the honey moons with their pipes and Driss talked about histime abroad. It was as if he had never talked about it with anyone. It was because Ismael had known him when they were kids. They were always together in those days and they had started at the quarry together.
“The problem with you,” Driss said as they lay watching the sunset after the quarry workers had left for town, “is that you stayed a kid. You never left the bled . It’s too bad.”
“I’ll leave one day.”
“Yeah, but you never left until now. What counts is what you did, not what you’re gonna do.
“The police have done nothing,” one of them commented, rubbing his index finger against his thumb.
“What do you expect them to do?”
Money: that was the issue. The foreigners always had it.
Five
HEN THE SCAR ON THE DEAD BOY ’ S LEFT HAND WAS mentioned, some of them, thinking back with care, remembered a tall boy with a subtle distraction written across his face, an anger that they recognized but which in him was more prolonged, more deepened by events that were not disclosed. Perhaps, they thought, that was him. A loping, tense boy who worked in the prepping yards in Erfoud and who had a scar on his left hand from an accident with a lathe. It was him, they thought.
His name was Driss. He had emigrated to France some time back. When he returned, he had gone to work at the Mirzan quarry at the same wage he had enjoyed a year earlier. He lodged in Erfoud. Ismael, the younger boy who had stood with him that night by the road as the Hennigers drove up drunk and wild-eyed, sometimes saw him preppingoutside near the telecommunications tower in the center of the town. His head covered with sacking to keep the sun off him and chipping away with his meticulous technique at Tridents he obtained on the black market. He had prepped all his life, like Ismael. It was what he knew, and for that reason he hated it.
Ismael watched. Driss seemed badly dressed and irritable, as if his French adventure had failed, and he smoked a lot of kif in the evenings with the boys from Alnif who worked in the prepping yards. He looked thinner and more anguished, and he talked without the loose charm that had once made him a favorite with the girls. Such transformations, Ismael reasoned, happened among the unbelievers.
Ismael saw him at the Green Coconut and the Hotel Tafilalet talking loudly at the ammonite bar, boasting about the money he made from tourists at the five-star ksour hotels on the outskirts of town. Soon they were hanging out. Driss came to the quarry on off days, and he was there before first light, squatting by the entrance with his teapot and his harmonica waiting for the little girls to come down and give him pieces of bread from the foreman. They worked in the intolerable afternoons chiseling out a great ancient fish that a customer from Spain had commissioned for a private bar. They stayed till after dark, making fires on the top of the cliff and looking down at the walls studded with ammonites and crinoids that remained half emergent, their demonic provenance so obvious that it did not merit attention. Nightmare forms that no human, and certainly no reasonable God, could have dreamed up. They were demons that had fallen long ago from the skies and lain for thousands of years among humans, not part of God’s created world. They came from another dimension, from the malevolant spirit world. Their faces were supernatural, it could not be denied. They caused nightmares to appear among the believers, they were hostile to love and peace. Violence was their fruit.
Is was then that the flies dispersed at last and Ismael and Driss lay under the honey moons with their pipes and Driss talked about histime abroad. It was as if he had never talked about it with anyone. It was because Ismael had known him when they were kids. They were always together in those days and they had started at the quarry together.
“The problem with you,” Driss said as they lay watching the sunset after the quarry workers had left for town, “is that you stayed a kid. You never left the bled . It’s too bad.”
“I’ll leave one day.”
“Yeah, but you never left until now. What counts is what you did, not what you’re gonna do.
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