Abigail – The Avenging Agent: The agent appears again (11 page)

            He recalled the stories of
his grandmother and the adobe houses and quickened his strides deciding to look
for the settled Kurdish villages.  He decided to search out and find the people,
who lived in houses that offered protection from the sun, the wind, and the
rain.

            Stretching
out before him, as far as the eye could see, was another tent encampment and he
stopped hesitantly.  For lack of choice, he continued walking towards the camp
and strode around for hours between the thousands of tents. 

               
Sheep with meager wool
and skinny cows were roaming around just like him when he noticed a yellow dog
near one of the tents.  His ribs were visible under his skin and his curly ears
lent him the appearance of a sheep.  Karma bent down and petted him, stroked
his silky neck and affectionately patted his skinny ribs.  When he continued
walking, the dog followed him like a shadow. The dog became his companion and
Karma knew that he now had two mouths to feed – his and the dog.  The animal
brushed up against his legs and looked at him submissively.  In the distance,
Karma saw a group of sheep coming towards them.  They surrounded a dirty water
trough and he immediately questioned whether it was wise to drink from it.  He
was very thirsty but decided not to take a chance.  His dog ran ahead of him
and lapped up the water eagerly and came right back, wagging his tail.

            Towards evening, Karma was exhausted
and sat down beside one of the tents.  His dog lay down beside him, panting
fast with his tongue hanging out.  Karma looked at him and decided to name him
Abdul after the Father he loved.

            An old woman came out of the
tent, said something that sounded like “Shu, Shu,” and waved her hand to chase
the dog away, but Karma pulled the dog closest to him.  He wanted to stand up
and go away, but he was too weak, tired and hungry.  The woman looked at him,
disappeared into the tent and reappeared, extending some food for him in her
hand and mumbling words he didn’t understand.  It was the only food that
entered his mouth that day. He tore a piece of the food he got and offered it
to his dog.  The dog grabbed it in his teeth, chomped it down quickly and
begged for more with his eyes.  The woman went back into the tent and Karma lay
down on the ground, the dog stretched out beside him and they both slept.

Intense cold spread around them and
Karma woke up, his whole body shivering.  He clapped his hands together.  It
was still dark and all at once he smelled smoke that irritated his throat.  He
coughed and looked around.

A small fire flickered near one of the
tents and Karma stood up and moved quietly towards it.  A woman stood by the
fire and busied herself with it.  The smell of something baking rose in the air
and saliva filled his mouth.  Stealthily, he crept closer to the fire like a
hungry animal but the woman noticed him and recoiled.  The meager light from
the coals illuminated the face of the scrawny boy and she relaxed.

Karma continued standing and, for a
moment, he thought he would grab what was cooking on the fire and run away, but
the woman preempted him.  She tore a piece off the large flat pita bread that
lay on the ground beside her and held it out to him.  Karma pulled it from her
hand and bit into it hungrily.  A high-pitched wail from the dog reminded Karma
to tear off a piece and throw it to him on the sand.

He carried on, chewing the rest of the
pita and ignoring the dog, who leaped up in the air and growled to demand more
of the food he saw in his young master’s hand.

In the weak light of dawn, that began
breaking through the receding darkness in the distance. Karma saw rows of
narrow leaves and crowded bushes and realized he had reached a source of
water.  He did not know it was the continuation of the same stream from the
mountains that also flowed between the tents of his childhood, in which he
played and caught fish with his bare hands.

A group of children sat a distance away
and their laughter was heard ringing out of the awakening day. Karma slowly drew
closer to them, preparing for and fearing their reaction.  None of them took
any notice of him or his dog and Karma sat down beside them on the bank of the
river. One of the children glanced at him.  He was grasping a fish that was
writhing and Karma put out his hand to him.

“Would you like me to cook that fish for
you?”

The boy was silent and kept standing. 
The fish jumped out of his grasp and fell on the sand, as it continued writhing
and jumping.  More children joined them and stood in front him.

“I know how to light a fire and cook
fish,” Karma announced.

The children still had not responded. Karma
looked around him and began collecting dry twigs that were scattered around and
a minute later saw how the children joined him to gather more firewood.

“Let’s dig a little well in the sand and
put the wood we have collected in it,” Karma suggested aloud and immediately
began to dig, using a branch and his fingers.  Within a few minutes, a mound of
branches formed in the little well and Karma looked at it and scratched his
head.

“Hey, is there a fire here?”  He
inquired. “We can take some embers from it to light this pile of twigs,” he
said, glancing at the children.

One
of the kids ran to the tents and a few minutes later returned, followed by a
tall youth, who was holding something.  He was the kid’s older brother, who
came running with smoldering embers on a piece of canvas, which he threw on the
pile of firewood in the well.  He looked up at Karma gleefully.

At first, nothing much changed. Then, an
orange light flashed from within the woodpile, small yellow tongues rose from
the branches and within a minute the pile of twigs collapsed and sank down into
the well as a merry fire got going.

“Quickly, bring more firewood!” the
children yelled, dispersed and returned with more branches and threw them on
the little bonfire.

Karma pointed to the fire and the fish
in the children’s hands and they threw them on the glowing embers. Within minutes,
the aroma of grilling fish filled the air, accompanied by the joyful cheers of
the children.

No adults came out to see or check on
what their kids were up to.  The children treated Karma like one of their own. 
They were accustomed to seeing youngsters roaming among the tents and it was
not a rare occurrence.  Only this time, they took pleasure in the bonfire and
the initiative this boy had brought with him.

At sunrise, the air warmed and Karma was
thirsty.  He leaned over the river bank and drank from its contaminated waters,
grimaced and spat. When he got up to leave, his belly ached but he ignored it
and went on his way.

He carried on marching for four days.  On
the way, he would bend down and drink from the muddy waters of the streaming
river that flowed alongside him all the way.  It disappeared from time to time
and reappeared once more at the next bend in the road.  When he bent down to drink,
he picked and sucked the fruit of thorny bushes, wounding his thin arms.  He
wiped the blood with the ragged clothes he wore.

The evening
loomed when he was surprised by the roar of the motor of an approaching truck. 
He jumped into the road, facing the vehicle, and the driver stopped and looked
at him.  He nodded to him to climb on the back.  Karma climbed up, clutching
his dog under his arm and discovered other people already there.  This group of
people resembled him.  They were also disheveled and dirty and made room for
him.  During the journey, they pulled out bags and offered him pitas with olive
oil and threw pieces to Abdul, his dog.  One of them offered Karma some
lukewarm, turbid water from a filthy bottle, which tasted as bad as the river
water he had been drinking for the past four days.

Darkness descended on everything and,
after a few hours, waves of cramps rose from Karma’s stomach and he began
trembling.  He knocked on the window of the driver’s cabin and motioned him to
stop.  Karma jumped off and watched the truck disappearing as it continued on
its way.  Nausea rippled through his stomach and he threw up.

He turned to the side of the road and
lay down in the sand.  His stomach ached so badly that went and stood near a
tree, dropped his pants and defecated on the sand.  Afterward, he cleaned
himself with some of the broad flat leaves that had collected to form a soft
bed under the tree.

At night he slept on the layer of
leaves, hallucinating and sweating and he knew he was ill.

He had an attack of the chills and he cringed
and shivered with cold.  Minutes later he was feverish and blazing hot.  He lay
with his eyes shut, hovering between life and death while, Abdul, his loving
dog, licked his sweaty face lovingly and did not allow him to sink into a death
sleep.

The boy lay there like that on the bed
of leaves under the tree for two days.  He would get on his feet and throw up
from time to time, then move away a little from where lay to relieve himself
and return to rest under the tree, his whole body trembling.

Vehicles
traveling in both directions on the dusty roads passed by him and no one took
any notice of him.  People were accustomed to seeing neglected children
everywhere.  They were aware that many Kurdish children were orphaned or were
on the road looking anywhere in the world for a place to live.

On the morning of the third day, Karma
was exhausted from the struggle to survive.  He got up and proceeded slowly,
using his instincts to look for the river.  He recognized the vegetation that
grew on its banks.  When he discovered the water, he lay down on the ground,
felt the dampness of the plants on his chest, wet his face with the palm of his
hand and enjoyed its coolness.  His dog crouched beside him and lapped up the
water with his long tongue.  Later, Karma wandered along the bank of the river,
looking for wild berries and sucking them hungrily.

Karma returned to his tree trunk that
had been his home for the past two days and leaned up against it.  He picked up
a broad leaf, rolled it into a tube and blew into it, eliciting sharp high
whistling sounds that made a kind of tune.  Abdul, the dog, accompanied the
sounds with long howls like a fox baying at a full moon at night.

Seven days after he left the tent settlement
that had been his home he arrived at the town of Wan.  Of course, Karma did not
know that this was the place of his birth and the home of his grandfather and
grandmother, the parents of Naziah, his mother whom he never knew.

Many children wandered around in this
city and Karma assimilated with them felt as if he had always lived among
them.  Their appearance was similar to his, neglected and barefoot and they
constantly rummaged in the piles of garbage on the streets, like stray cats. 
The open sewage canals flowed freely in the streets and a sickening stench
filled the air for miles around.  There were piles of garbage everywhere, but
they served the children well.  They burrowed in the stinking heaps, using sticks
and sometimes with their bare hands and Karma would join them.  He was hungry, as
they were, and learned how to survive.  He also taught Abdul, his dog to sniff
out and look for food as he did.

Karma also saw adults roaming around and
understood that they were refugees, who had fled their villages for fear of the
soldiers, who were pursuing them.  The skirmishes between the rebels and the
army continued incessantly and Karma was reminded of Nana Kahit’s stories.

Sometimes he would pass through built-up
roads and he would peer into the buildings in which people sat at tables,
allowing another idle day to pass.  He went down the steps and glanced at little
dark bars.  He saw people drinking from beer bottles and smoking cigarettes
they rolled from dark tobacco leaves, which he recognized from the fields where
he had worked with his mother and grandmother.

One day he followed the smell of food
cooking and reached a tavern where groups of people sat playing cards while others
played dice with dotted cubes.  Cigarette smoke wafted everywhere and the
people sipped tea noisily from glasses as they talked and chattered away.  The
atmosphere was that of a social gathering.

Karma slipped into the room and stood
behind the backs of the dice players.  He followed their hand movements, trying
to understand the method.  When the game was over and the shuffling of the
cubes for the next game began, he smiled and requested:

“May I?”

“Sure, why not?  Pull up a chair and
join us.”

They made room for him at the table and
he was amazed how easily he fits in with them. 

The truth was that Karma was different
from the other children, who milled around in this area for years.  His skin
tone was lighter. Honey-colored eyes, bequeathed to him by his beautiful mother,
lent him the appearance of a foreigner and he displayed a unique other-worldly quality. 
Karma had a special smile that spread out on his face to reveal perfect white
teeth, which were also inherited from his noble family he was unfamiliar with.

They drank and talked and Karma brought
one of the bottles to his lips and filled his mouth with the bitter beer for
the first time in his life with the height of panache.  He grimaced.  They all
laughed when he was overcome with a spasm of coughing and slapped his back.