The Spider's House Read Online Free PDF

on the highway beyond the canebrake, this corner of the orchard lay in complete silence. Because he did not want to imagine what such a place would be like once the daylight had gone, he slipped his feet into his sandals, stood up, shook out his djellaba, inspected it for a while because it had belonged to his brother and he hated wearing it, and finally flinging it over his shoulder, set out for the gap in the jungle of canes through which he had entered.
    Outside on the road the sun was warmer and the wind blew harder. He passed two small boys armed with long bamboo poles, who were hitting the branches of a mulberry tree while a larger boy scooped up the green berries and stored them in the hood of his djellaba . All three were too busy to notice his passage. He came to one of the hairpin bends in the road. Ahead of him on the other side of the valley was Djebel Zalagh. It had always looked to him like a king in his robes, sitting on his throne. Amar had mentioned this to several of his friends, but none of them had understood. Without even looking up at the mountain they had said: “You’re dizzy,” or “In your head,” or “In the dark,” or had merely laughed. “They think they know once and for all what the world is like, so that they don’t ever have to look at it again,” he had thought. And it was true: many of his friends had decided what the world looked like, what life was like, and they would never examine either of them again to find out whether they were right or wrong. This was because they had gone or were still going to school, and knew how to write and even to understand what was written, which was much more difficult. And some of them knew the Koran by heart, although naturally they did not know much of what it meant, becausethat is the most difficult thing of all, reserved for only a few great men in the world. And no one can understand it completely.
    “In the school they teach you what the world means, and once you have learned, you will always know,” Amar’s father had told him.
    “But suppose the world changes?” Amar had thought. “Then what would you know?” However, he was careful not to let his father guess what he was thinking. He never spoke with the old man save when he was bidden. Si Driss was severe, and liked his sons to treat him with exactly the same degree of respect he had shown to his own father fifty or sixty years before. It was best not to express an unasked-for opinion. In spite of the fact that life at home was a more serious business than it would have been had he had a more easy-going parent, Amar was proud of the respected position his father held. The richest, most important men of the quarter came to him, kissed his garments, and sat silent while he spoke. It had been written that Amar was to have a stern father, and there was nothing to do about it but to give thanks to Allah. Yet he knew that if ever he wanted anything deeply enough to defy his father, the old man would see that his son was right, and would give in to him. This he had discovered when his father had first sent him to school. He had disliked it so much the first day that he had gone home and announced that he would never return, and the old man had merely sighed and called upon Allah to witness that he himself had taken the child and left him in the aallem’s charge, so that he could not be held accountable for what might come afterward. The next day he had wakened the boy at dawn, saying to him: “If you won’t go to school, you must work.” And he had led him off to his uncle’s blanket factory in the Attarine, to work at the looms. This had not been nearly so difficult as school, because he did not have to sit still; nevertheless, he did not stay, any more than he had stayed at any one of the several dozen different places where he had worked since. A week or two, and off he went to amuse himself, very likely without having been paid anything. His life at home was a constant struggle