Aghan from Kifre

It was in a desert town but only desert from the lack of water and vegetation, peoples were everywhere, bringing fruits from far away places, eating scrub soup or munching on dry white breads that filled the stomach till food could be had. The mud houses rose from the sand as if meant to be there, perhaps like the sand they came and went with the desert winds, but they seemed still enough for most days to last long enough for a visitor to think them from far back. Next to the dwellings a plaza arose where the noisy traders sold their goods for pennies on the cheap enough to feed the camels on the trips back to the cities, where they would gather yet another load and do so six times per year with more reliability than the length of centuries.

The desert town hailed from another time, it was placed there built through a long banished oasis of water and vegetation, only now it was held together by custom, this custom was called Kifre. Some poets had written about Kifre but they remained largely unknown perhaps because of the subject matter, romantics didn’t travel this far, the traders were not given to repeating verse, they were more likely to drink vast quantities of tea and to watch the night retreat expecting tomorrow to happen simply because Kifre had happened. These nomads inhabited Kifre year around, for them the end of the world didn’t exist, they were after all at one of its outposts; there wasn’t much need for singing, small verbal gestures accompanied by comprised hand movements would settle any arguments or title deeds; exchanges were brief for, “the desert sand gets into the mouth that talks.”

I came upon Kifre because of a dark haired woman Aghan, that had her sixty something years on her and still she brought me here with more spirit than a camel; we walked, it took us eight days of walking through the night, during the day we would huddle under our garments or bury ourselves under an unusual rock formation, our water finely measured lasted only six days, we were able to make seven with our urine, but the eighth was only survived by the possibility of reaching Kifre.

Aghan had been young around the time that Kifre became a town of small renown because it would hide those that had made themselves an ill reputation in the city; in Kifre you could hide, you didn’t need documents, if you just sat there the sun would roll over you and no one would care. One day you could die, things would eat you up, things that could not be seen by the naked eye, you didn’t have time to rot, everything silently went into something, you didn’t even rot.

The nomads welcomed any new comer that brought little things they could amuse themselves with, matches were popular, a box of matches always a good gift; and then there was something else in Kifre, the Kifre women were renowned for their inability to feel, something that certain men in the city found fascinating. Aghan was one of those women that made trips to the city to display her unmovable emotions, she could do anything to herself and not feel it, she could do anything to you and not hurt, she was a show, a private and a public show, she didn’t really know what it all meant or where all the amusement was, some wealthy men paid her to insult them with grasping tools, others would ask her to do painful things to herself; Aghan from Kifre, didn’t care, she just did the things, it was like a camel carrying its load, it was a thing to do, you didn’t complain, you didn’t ask why, you did it, it didn’t matter who or what it was all for.

She recounted some rabid sex tales and spoke as one that had never known any earthly pleasures and her eyes were of stone; her hands were brittle from age, at one time she had been a handsome woman, strong features lingered in her corrugated wrinkles. She agreed to bring me to the town, I was your average curious student traveling abroad looking not so much for adventure but for something that would mark my life, perhaps I would write about the Kifre nomads, perhaps I would study their history and perform the first official translation of their muted language, a grant could be had for such things, I was finishing grad school and I knew I didn’t want to work a normal day, Kifre offered such possibility.

Aghan made the contrast even more interesting, a nomad desert dweller catering to the cruel insensitivity only possible in a city, where everything was fun and everything was doable and one had to keep an open mind enough to think everything and anything; nomads in Kifre thought of nothing in particular and only did a few things a day, and every month that went by they moved and did a little less and less until they too stood still like their desert habitat.

After quenching our thirst slowly, “the water is always to be drunk slow,” Aghan told, “drink the water fast and you don’t get its spirit” her hands gesturing throughout her throat and mouth, after quenching our thirst slowly we went to the plaza. The nomad enclave could have no more than 250 inhabitants, I asked for a specific number but Aghan didn’t offer facts, “many men, many women, no children.” Distressed I retorted, “No children?” her gentle but coarse reply, “They come from all around here, Kifre is fed by all those that need some time away,” while her eyes were looking around and to the sky, “those that need some time away come here.” I supposed that if I bunched those around the plaza into groupings of thirty, there were probably over 400 people around the place, I marveled a nomad dwelling constantly drawing its population from without, keeping them within because they needed to get away from something. I kept thinking how I could feed myself on such a lot with a grant.

We walked around it was obvious that I was seen as a stranger but in a different way, they put their heads down so as not to look at me, only to surreptitiously search me with cavernous eyes, and it was in all done in a way that noted that they knew I wasn’t getting away from anything; they were saying, “you are passing through here don’t touch us, we are not to be with you, you are not to be with us, let him pass, don’t touch him, let him pass.” Nomads don’t like to become attached to things that aren’t going to be around, the sand always has representatives, I didn’t, that is the way they saw me.

Aghan they saw differently, she was from here, when she walked by they wouldn’t look at her, they would simply show an ineptitude at getting out of her way, she could stumble into them and they very well acted as if no one had touched them; she was another one of them like the sand she was in their nostrils and in their ears, her essence stroke them with a gentleness, a rugged gentleness that even when she wasn’t here, when she bailed to the city, the sands remembered her and put her in their throats and ears.

I was amazed to see a plaza with nothing really much to sell, a plaza empty of fish or meats, a plaza where the only thing you saw was mostly men talking to men, something was being traded, a nut perhaps, or some frown, or a mental image of some place gone, or simply the whiff of the long unwashed fellow and his garments; the receptions were brief, they spent more time saying nothing, more time saying nothing.

At that lapsing moment I stumbled into something, a cart, a cart being pulled by a skinny bearded fellow, I stumbled into him, he begun muttering in a foreign tongue that I could not assimilate, perplexed I reached for Aghan and she explained, “you have broken his cart.” I briskly replied, “He bumped into me!” and then to be clear, “He bumped into me and how could I break anything in a wooden cart.”

Aghan translated, the skinny fellow pointed to a place right near where the handles used to pull the cart joined the major cargo area; there was a sort of box like structure, no more than twelve by twelve inches square, made of light colored wood, and it had six rows, yes I remember clearly six grooved rows and strangely water was flowing from all of them, except two that were smashed; the wood chippings made it obvious that water would not run through damaged grooves, and this fellow was touching the damage and looking at me as if I had killed his first born.

Aghan noted that there was indeed damage, “I don’t think you were watching where you were going, and he rightly says that you could change direction a lot easier than a two wheel cart and a skinny man.”

Aghan proceeded to demonstrate with her hands, “You rammed here like this, and the Hijon does not take pressure, smashed, you see you smashed it.” Her hands dangling off into the sand as if that explained fallen treasures of water.

Where I sternly replied, “The Hijon, what is a Hijon? What are you talking about?”

Both Aghan and the man pointed at the box, now I understood the box was the Hijon.

Aghan explained, “There are only three Hijons in the whole of Kifre and this one had the most fountains before you smashed it.”

“But I didn’t smash it!”

“A man is culpable of his deeds, when you walk on the sand you step on many creatures and you kill them, and that is you killing them or not?”

She said it so forcefully I was coerced into agreement, “Well yes I am the one that killed them but it is unwilling I don’t see them, I step on them and I cannot help it as I have to walk the desert, and when I do that has unwanted consequences.”

“Well maybe those creatures don’t call upon you but here in Kifre, the Hijons are the primary source of our water, we depend upon them, and you have smashed this one, and we must call upon you to pay attention to your deeds.”

“Your only source of water?”

“Yes, watch?”

And the skinny fellow begun to show how the whole thing created water out of thin air, the wooden square somehow melted the humidified water in the air, and it rained through and from the groves and wow, I could not believe them till I drank the drips of drops of fresh flowing water.

“Then you see now you must pay for the damages.”

Endearing myself to the travesty, “How can I do that?”

“You must buy it from this man, you have stolen his livelihood, you must buy it to make good of the wrong you’ve done.”

“How much does he want for it?” I was thinking that no amount would be too much.

“He wants 100 Pebbles of Gold, but I think that is too much offer him 30 and settle for forty.”

And this I did and then man and Aghan both raised their hands towards the sky and rendered these words, “Just is the man that pays for his deeds.”

Finishing her assistance with the transaction Aghan noted she had to return to her mud-hut, where then among the dunes she disappeared. I stayed with the Hijon, only it ceased pouring water; I am here two days going long, and still the smashed grooves nor the good ones dribble water from the air; I move it here and there, there were no instructions and again it is just a piece of wood with groves on it, and no water yet.

RC