Horses of God Read Online Free PDF Page A

the living, and Yemma a woman in love. After a while, she recovered herself.
    â€œYour brother Hamid was uncontrollable, incorrigible, king of the mischief makers. That was whyI constantly kept my eye on the river. I’d catch him throwing himself off the bridge all the time. The water wasn’t deep and there was every chance he’d hit his head on a rock. It was no good me shouting myself hoarse, or shaking my arms at him, he just ignored me. The little fiend did exactly as he pleased. Your father objected, telling me to let the boys be, but I couldn’t stop worrying. Looking back on it, I don’t think Yussef should have taken his little brother to the river. There was danger everywhere. Ali was just five and Yussef only slightly older. Omar the coalman’s last-born was his pride and joy; he treated him like a prince, despite his miserly ways. He’d never come home at night without a little treat for him, chickpeas or sunflower seeds wrapped in newspaper. Inevitably, Yussef was jealous, but he loved his brother. He’d certainly have stopped him jumping off the bridge if he’d known he would disappear forever. It wasn’t fair of Omar the coalman to call him a murderer. So many little kids flung themselves haphazardly off the bridge. I saw them with my own eyes. They’d resurface a little farther down, unharmed. But not Ali, the little devil. Keen to show how brave he was, he raced to hurl himself off first, with a roar. And then he didn’t come back up. The river had just sucked up his shouts and his childish laughter. Forever. And yet the water wasn’t deep. Maybe a little rough that day, but Ali could swim. It wasn’t the firsttime he’d followed his brother to the river. How could Omar the coalman, having just lost one son, annihilate the other with such lethal words? ‘Murderer!’ he shouted, to anyone who’d listen. The many witnesses spoke of an accident, not a crime. A rock must have shattered the little one’s skull and the current took care of the rest. At first Yussef thought it was a joke; Ali used to delight in scaring him. Then, with fear in his gut, a frenzied fear he’d never known before, he threw himself in too. He looked for his brother everywhere. Wide-eyed, he dived down into the cloudy water and dived again. Nothing. He stayed submerged in the water for hours, frozen and trembling. The little body had disappeared, as if swallowed by the shifting clay; the hungry, malicious clay had devoured the laughing little boy. Some local shepherds set to work, raking the river from bank to bank. The boy was nowhere to be found, it was as if he’d vanished. It took the men of Sidi Moumen several days before they fished out the corpse a mile away from the scene. It was not a pretty sight, he was all decomposed; a fistful of mud , his mother moaned, rolling herself in the dust, scratching and tearing at her face. ‘Give me back my mud,’ she murmured, in a voice that gave you goose bumps. As for Yussef, he ran away, disappearing for a whole week because he knew how violent his father could be. He trailed around near Chichane and Toma, unable toface the fury that he knew was unavoidable. In fact, he’d almost been forgotten, the grief-stricken household was in complete disarray, with people filing in and out from morning till night. If the imam had not intervened, his disappearance might have lasted for eternity. It was the imam, a man respected by everyone, who went to fetch Yussef from the other side of the dump, promising him his father would be merciful, and who made the coalman swear, with his hand on the Koran, to spare his son the punishment he felt he deserved a thousand times over . . .”
    My mother broke off; sobs were blocking her throat. I too felt like crying but I stopped myself.
    â€œTell me, Yemma, why did Yussef change his name?”
    My mother wiped her nose on the edge of her gandoura and went on: