Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs: An Omani Novel

By Abdulaziz Al Farsi

Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs opens with the return of Khalid Bakhit, a government employee, to his hometown in Oman after a time away in the big city, and concludes with his return to the city with a new maturity born of a series of wrenching encounters with reality. Khalid's return home, sparked by his flight from a painful love affair, coincides with events that reveal the force of long-established traditions that have a stranglehold on the town: from racial prejudice, to religious bigotry, to ossified patterns of leadership. Khalid's awakening and transformation are catalyzed by his encounters with a certain "Saturnine poet" who, in the course of chasing after an elusive ode, has stumbled upon this unnamed village. For a period of time "the Saturnine" becomes Khalid's closest companion: listening to his woes, helping him see himself with new eyes, and imparting to him a wisdom from a world beyond untainted by human smallness.

"As the full moon listened in, Walad Sulaymi said, 'Thirty years ago I heard my grandfather say to my father (God have mercy on them both), "If God allows a country to be chastised, He causes everyone who has left it to come back." So here you are again, and with your return, that completes the number of those who left the village and have come back. Mark my words: the chastisement will descend soon.'"

• Language: English
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781617973383

Book preview

KHALID BAKHIT

The One-Line Song

Alone I was, O homeland of mine, and you with me,

Traveling in me, living within me . . .

I was singing my only song, the shortest song the history of defeats has ever known, and the longest sorrow absence has ever clung to. I don’t claim to have written it, but there’s no doubt that I gave it a tune that was flowing in my blood and part of my voice. One day they asked me, Who wrote it exactly? Closing my eyes with utter confidence, I replied, A poet from Saturn. I refrained from making any further comment. The people of my village intersperse their conversations with lots of questions, but they’re defeated by curt, superficial replies. So, because they were afraid to say We don’t understand or We don’t know, they ignored the Saturnine poet and left me to sing.

I sing in hopes that the sun will bring some warmth to melt away the snow inside people’s souls here, or some light to chase away the darkness in my homeland, enshrouded atop a shadow. The night carries my voice to the edge of the distant ravine, to the boundaries of my village, which fell by mistake out of hell, and is bound to end up back there again, as Walad Sulaymi declared to the people of the village one frostbitten evening. They’d gathered in Mihyan ibn Khalaf ’s meetinghouse as was their custom after the final evening prayer. Cups of unsweetened coffee were being passed around, kindling the hearts and senses of those present, when Walad Sulaymi added, You might as well not pray or engage in any other rites of worship. After all, you won’t be called forward for a reckoning with the Almighty, and you won’t pass over the razor-thin bridge that leads to Paradise. Instead, God will command one of His angels on the Day of Resurrection to take this village and everyone in it and throw them straight into the Fire.

If a stranger had happened along that evening, he would have concluded that everyone present—including Mihyan and my grandfather—agreed with Walad Sulaymi, since no one uttered a word in protest. All they did was shake their cups in silence and give them back to Khadim, who was pouring the coffee. However, scenes like this were nothing unusual, especially when Walad Sulaymi commented on the issues of the day! Even in this council I felt a loneliness I couldn’t shake. The only thing I felt close to was the homeland. I went traveling through it the way I’m traveling now, singing the one-line song. The cold, the night, the dogs’ barking, and the wolves’ howling only made me cling all the more tenaciously to the night of this village of ours. I stood on the balcony contemplating the dry, rigid palm trees around the mosque, and the abandoned houses that extended along one side in a row that ended near my house. Across from them was a parallel row of modern houses whose residents had turned out their lights, perhaps as a way of consoling the old, abandoned houses! The mosque’s minaret alone had adorned her head with a dim lamp that peered out diffidently at the night sky.

In my country, winter and death are two faces of the same desire. And in the soul, my village and Antarctica are two faces of the same homeland. This night was sketching my bewilderment in the shape of paths of annihilation. If I shouted, my voice would collide with the minaret and bounce back wearily to my ears. Even so, it was bound to waken these sleepers. So I shouted, Woe to what has passed of your life! How I’ve agonized over your loss! What will become of me now that you’re gone? As I uttered the last word, lights began coming on, until the village was a mass of light. The men rushed over and stood under the balcony, while some of the women looked out at my house from their balconies. When they had all taken their places, I said, Sorry. I know you don’t wake up at midnight unless one of you has died, and no one in my family has died. Sa‘id Dhab‘a said, So who were you wailing over at this time of the night, you good-for-nothing? I was wailing over my homeland! I said. My reply descended upon them like a thunderbolt. Every one of them started looking from side to side. If they had found rocks to pick up, they would have thrown them at me. Hamid Dahana shouted, So you wake us up in the middle of the night just to wail over your homeland, you buffoon! Wouldn’t it have been better for you to stay in the city? Ever since you and your Saturnine poet came around, we’ve been going downhill. I made no reply. Instead, I changed the subject: Did you know that spaceships are taking pictures of you now? The pictures they take will be broadcast on satellite television, and the village will appear as a mass of light. So you can thank me for this free service! Muhammad ibn Sa‘id clapped his hands. The man’s lost his mind! The man’s lost his mind! Walad Shamshum chimed in spitefully, Your homeland’s died, then, and we’ll have a peaceful, happy life from now on. It hasn’t died, I shot back. I was only lamenting the fact that it’s left. It leaves me every night, and comes back the next morning. It’s sure to come back. It’s sure to come back.

Thoroughly exasperated, they turned to go home. The lights began going out, until the village was engulfed once again in its riotous darkness. You’re the losers! I screamed, certain that they heard me. The pictures will appear on satellite television, and the village will be a mass of pitch darkness! I was sure they wouldn’t make any reply. I scanned the horizon, trying to get another look at the towering palm trees on the plantations next to the abandoned houses. They were repeating my song. Then I looked back toward the ravine beyond the new houses. The other side of the ravine looked wounded in the dark unknown. I took a deep breath and lifted my voice in song: "Alone I was, O homeland of mine, and you with me, traveling in me, living within me . . ."

A Billion Years of Passion

Dawn is this village’s legend and its inexhaustible mystery. The heavens diffuse it over the east, and it brims with radiance.

The men turned out the lights in the houses and presented their calumnies against me and my sanity as offerings to their wives. They whispered, We’ll teach that lunatic a lesson tomorrow. Then they were swallowed up in the fragrances that emanated from soft beds, surrendering consciousness to the sultan of sleep. As for me, I didn’t sleep after the lights went out. My throat melted into the bereaved song, and everything in the village—everything, that is, but its human inhabitants—melted with me. The trees sang with their towering sorrow, and the waves danced in the embrace of the fine sand along the magnificent shore just beyond the palm-tree plantations.

God had given this village all of nature’s most marvelous elements: the sea, the palm trees, the ravine, and the mountains that stretched beyond it. Clouds whispered in the mountains’ ears all year round, while gentle rains and refreshing winds visited the village in turns. When the sun shone through the clouds, the village would receive a rainbow that stretched from the mountains all the way to the sea. Whenever Walad Sulaymi saw a rainbow, he would say, Glory be to you, O God! You’ve given this village the best of the natural world, but deprived it of the best of people!

I don’t recall exactly when I fell so madly in love with the village. Sometimes I imagine that the love was born and raised with me. But, like everything else that’s nearby, I didn’t notice it until I’d lost it. Then, when I went to the university, I lost this village. I remember that the weather in the village gave me terrible allergies and severe bouts of shortness of breath. As a boy I had always hated the weather in the village. I’d hated the village, too, and wished I could leave it for the city, where the weather was dry and moderate. I recall the huge effort I made on the secondary school exams, since I was determined to get a score that would qualify me to live on campus and get away from the village. However, my motive was also mixed with a desire to flee from pressure at home at that time. I quite enjoyed living on campus, and would only visit my family once every month or two. Even so, I wasn’t about to let any stranger criticize my village. I was so utterly out of my right mind, I even put up with having to repeat a sociology course three times because I shouted in the professor’s face when he described my town as a forgotten village whose people live a backward existence. You’re a liar! I said.

The result was that I failed the course twice in a row and had to graduate a semester late. I didn’t manage to pass the course until I’d written a letter to the president of the university requesting that I be taught by another professor. My allergies got worse at the university, and wouldn’t respond to any of the medications I was taking. There was only one treatment they responded to: coming back to the village. Once I was here again, I was as healthy as could be, and breathed in the delicious air without the slightest difficulty! Nevertheless, when I was given a choice after graduation between working in the village and working in the city, I chose to move back to the city.

Sometimes I say I’m not in love with the village. Instead, I just flee to it from the women of the city. It’s a flight that was provoked by the Abir inside me—Abir, who was all women, and the only woman in my life. It’s an enjoyable flight that negates and renounces the entire world. At the same time, it immerses me in memory, and in an unconscious repetition of her name. It’s a silent flight that fills me with a din whenever I find myself alone.

The day I saw her for the first time, it felt to me like my first love. It was the kind of feeling that suggests familiarity and the absence of barriers. She came up, greeted me, and handed me her papers. I returned the greeting. I read her name: Abir. Then I signed the papers without bothering to read the details of her case. She took the paper and read my name.

She asked, Aren’t you going to read the application?

I’ve read your eyes, and that’s enough.

The rest of the conversation was silence, the silence that passes between two people who have known each other for a billion years or more. Two people who’ve lived in the same wilderness and caves, visited the same deserts, spent their evenings talking on the same bank of the sweet river, lived through the evolution of civilization moment by moment until they stood at the top of the pyramid contemplating each other, looking for the wrinkles of the years, remembering all those who have passed away, counting the dead and the living in the long journey of their lives. In my silence, I said, This is what the human race has come to, Abir. How short the journey has been! It’s as though we hadn’t lived a billion years. She smiled, and her eyes regarded me with tender affection.

Our reverie was interrupted by another applicant who wanted to finish his paperwork. I took her papers out of her hand and, pretending not to have finished with her case, said, Come back tomorrow. She smiled collusively and left, while I turned my attention to the other applicant.

The next day she came in ten minutes before closing time. I handed her the papers and we left together. As we got to the door of the office, I said, I’ve been waiting for you ever since I saw you yesterday.

I’ve been waiting for you, too, she said.

I invited her to lunch, and she accepted. I opened the car door for her, and we headed for the restaurant. On the way there we talked about everything. However, none of the things we asked each other was for the purpose of getting acquainted. Instead, our exchange seemed to be based on a previous acquaintance, like a conversation between a couple of friends who had just seen each other the day before. Once in the restaurant, we discovered that we both liked the same dishes. And as we ate, we saw all sorts of ways we were alike. After lunch I took her back to the office parking lot, where she got into her car—sky-blue just like mine—and drove away.

There was no need for me to declare my love for her in words. This is what I had concluded, and I acted accordingly. After all, a woman who reads everything inside you and knows the mundane details of your life after seeing you only once must also know the most intimate details as well, such as whether you love her or not. She had behaved toward me like a sweetheart, and treated me as one. She had filled my life with song, and with sensations as sweet as childhood. Consequently, I grew attached to the city. A woman can make someone fall in love with something he used to hate.

I forgot the village for months. I lived my life in the city with Abir’s voice and her presence. We memorized every tree in all its parks, and engraved our names on the trunks of many of them. Our spirits grew closer and closer.

Then one wintry night Abir invited me to her house. She told me to come at the time for the dawn prayer. She described the house, which was at the edge of town, saying, There’s a mosque with three minarets, and it’s the only house near it.

Shortly before the dawn call to prayer, I found myself at her back door. The door was open, and I went in. She led the way to a narrow corridor between the kitchen and her room. She went into the room and I followed her. She sat down on the wide bed and made room for me to sit down next to her. I sat down. The lighting was dim and the penetrating aroma of her perfume sent shivers through my limbs. She was wearing a tight dress that revealed her arms and her neck. I imagined how soft it must feel. She let her hair down over her chest. I was seeing it for the first time. There had been many times when, as we had been wandering about here and there, I had longed for her to remove her headscarf so that I could catch a glimpse of her silken tresses. She looked at me and I felt disconcerted. She said, I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. Nearly a billion years. This heart of mine is filled with longing! As she spoke, she pointed to her chest. Then she went on, Come on, smile! After all, we’re together! You know? Every cell in my body craves the touch of your hand. But you like to play hard to get! You haven’t touched my hand since the day we met.

I thought I’d done that a number of times over the last billion years, I whispered.

No, you haven’t.

Do you have proof?

Yes. Just ask the cells in this body of mine. Any spot you touch will melt in your hands. Put your hand out.

She came closer, but I retreated, laughing. Not now!

When, then? she asked coquettishly.

After the second billion years, I replied.

She came still closer to me and tried to grab my hand, saying, I haven’t got that kind of patience. Come over here!

I’d decided at that moment to be contrary. In a flash I wriggled over to the other side of the bed.

Then suddenly, all my senses came to a halt. My heart stopped beating. I stopped breathing. I was transfixed. I thought I’d seen a man looking at me—a tall man dressed in a flowing white dishdasha with a turban on his head. I couldn’t make out his features. In fact, he had no face. I jumped up, panic-stricken, and lunged for the light switch. I fumbled with it frantically until light flooded the room. I saw the dishdasha and the turban, but I didn’t see any man. What I’d been seeing was the clotheshorse next to the bed. The dishdasha was draped over the clotheshorse and the turban was perched on top of the dishdasha. I looked over at Abir in horror. My whole body was shaking madly. She came toward me. Crazed, I looked her in the eye and asked, Whose clothes are these?

My husband’s! she replied.

The whole world came crashing down before my eyes. Abir was married! When had this happened? A billion years earlier? Before I’d met her? My tears came pouring out, and I flowed out with them. I turned into a huge teardrop that went plunging into a deep abyss, toward the unknown. It couldn’t be! Maybe she wasn’t his wife any more.

I asked, You mean your ex-husband?

No, my husband. I’m still married to him.

Why didn’t you tell me?

I thought you knew. Haven’t we known each other for a billion years? It happened some time in the last billion years. Or, to be more exact, in the last year, two months before I met you.

You’ve got to be kidding. It can’t be, Abir. I love you, and I know you well. You’re not married!

"But I am married. I’m my husband’s second wife. He divorced the first one after having five children by her. He went to my father and enticed him with money. My husband is seventeen years older than I am. He’s thirty-seven. I don’t love him. He brought me here just to humiliate his first wife, and so that I could be a nanny to his children."

I buried my face in my hands. I sat there in silence, watching the world crumble inside me.

But how? I said. I didn’t see any ring on your finger. How did you manage this sort of balancing act, and how is it that I never found out you were married all these months?

I heard her reply, Because he works as a policeman in the capital. He does two days’ duty, and has two days off. So I would visit you on the days when he was on duty. He left for work a half hour before you got here. You don’t believe me? Come, and I’ll show you his children. I locked them in the other room.

She got up and opened the door. Then she went to the other room and opened it. I looked inside and saw them sleeping, cuddled up next to each other to keep warm. They were immaculately innocent. At that moment I wished a lightning bolt would strike me dead. I saw the years melting away, and Abir melting into them the way cotton candy melts in one’s mouth. Only the taste was bitter, bitter as colocynth. She went back to her bedroom, and I followed her.

So, I asked, are you hoping to be freed from your husband and marry me?

I hadn’t thought about that yet.

So what have you been thinking?

About endless passion, about being close to you.

She approached me once more. But when she did, a volcano of rage erupted between us. Its lava flowed down, destroying millions of illusions.

She added, I think about touching you, about how my cells long for you. Haven’t you known that since the moment we met?

I no longer saw any reason to stay. I fell upon her with blows. All I was thinking about was the fact that even a billion years of passion hadn’t been long enough for me to discover that my beloved was someone else’s wife, and that she had betrayed him.

Stop, please! she cried. What are you doing?

Shedding hot tears, I retorted, I’m satisfying your cells’ longing for a touch from my hand.

That was the first and last time I ever touched Abir! She fell to the floor. I shuffled heavily out of the room and headed outside. The first signs of morning had broken into the cosmos. I got into my car and drove away.

I lived for two weeks in a state of defeat. I went walking through the city, sticking close to the walls. I missed work. Everything in the city tasted like Abir. The streets, the stores, the trees, the cars, even the exhaust fumes. Abir had me surrounded in that city. It was only then that I started missing the village again, and I wished I could go back. So I put in a request for a transfer to any place besides the city. The ministry rejected my request. I told them that if I wasn’t transferred, I would quit. And in fact, I started staying home from work. Offering to help resolve the issue, my immediate supervisor suggested that I take three months’ unpaid leave until my request could be studied properly and a suitable alternative could be found. I agreed.

I left all my personal effects in the city and went back to the village: alone, in love, and maybe on the run. Then one day the Saturnine poet paid me a visit and let me hear the poem. Trying to persuade me to forget, he said, The only place you can escape from the hell of the homeland is in the embrace of a female, and the only place you can escape from the embrace of a female is in the hell of the homeland.

So, I had escaped. But from the time I came back to the village I kept on waiting, every dawn, to be able to breathe again, and to see the birth of a new day without Abir.

The hopeful signs of dawn began to appear and the cock crowed. As it crowed, I saw the figures of two men who looked as though they were in a race. The first figure was tall and thin. With his arms folded over his chest, he passed quickly between the old and new houses in the direction of the mosque. The second figure was short and fat. He crossed the ravine from the other side, likewise moving toward the mosque. They were clearly racing. Their strides grew longer and faster the closer they got. Then they went into the mosque at the same moment.

The Call to Prayer Duo

I couldn’t make out the two faces clearly, but I recognized both of the figures. A minute later the call to prayer sounded. I heard a lovely, refined voice imbued by the years with a delightful roughness that went straight to the heart. This was the voice of Ubayd al-Dik (‘Ubayd the Rooster’), the village’s longest-serving muezzin and the owner of the tall, thin body. His voice connected me to the days of my early childhood when I