I
Apparitions
It’s an image I’m pursuing, nothing more.
—Gérard de Nerval
A Small Thing Appears
The wind is blowing hard,” I say.
“Let it blow,” says Zahra Bayda, who doesn’t trust my anxious tendencies.
She’s brought me here so I can look out from the heights and fathom that I’ve reached the end of the world. I look around and I see nothing, or better put, I see nothingness.
“Keep your spirits up, young man, whatever your name is,” Zahra Bayda presses me. “Come on, move that six-foot frame of yours.”
“My name is Bos Mutas,” I remind her. I’ve already told her many times.
“Fine, Bos, or Mutas, whatever you’re called.”
We face the highest dune. The wind is so powerful it threatens to tear off my shirt. This must be the fiercest desert on the planet, the closest to God and the most plagued by demons, at least that’s how she tells it, assuring me that there are still hermits living around here, alone in caves. A gust of wind whisks off her turban, which cartwheels into the sky like a crazed and brightly colored bird.
“My turban! Catch it for me!” she orders.
“You catch it.”
“That damn wind,” she mutters.
“Let it blow.” I can’t help getting even.
Now Zahra Bayda battles her hair, which on breaking free has become a whirlwind. I’m in the clouds and I can’t find my way back to earth. I’m stunned by these immensities of all-devouring yellow sand. They must even devour their own edges, so that you’re always at the center no matter how far you go. My sense of direction is melting; I’ve already been warned that I’d see visions here, and I find myself disoriented by echoes.
Night is falling and at the same time doesn’t dare fall; flakes of darkness move slowly through the sky.
“Look,” I say to Zahra Bayda, gesturing toward a point of light that flickers and moves in the distance, a small reverberation in the land. “Look, something is rising toward us.”
“Let it rise.”
Farther down, in the expanse, an enormous stain spreads across the emptiness. It’s the refugee camp, with its hundreds of crowded brown tents.
Zahra Bayda offers me explanations, facts, numbers, dates. She tries to make me understand, to catch me up. She’s not wrong: It’s better for me to know. But my head spins; I haven’t recovered from the exhaustion of the long journey. I can only manage to focus on that climbing point of light.
“Wake up, whatever your name is!” Zahra Bayda snaps her fingers to get my attention.
That’s what she calls me: “whatever your name is.” I don’t blame her, I know my name isn’t easy. What about hers? Zahra Bayda. It sounds good, but according to her I’m pronouncing it wrong.
“I’m going to call you ‘whatever your name is’ too,” I say, and she replies that she doesn’t care.
Down below, in the camp, only a few tents emanate light, as if the residents of the other tents had accepted the impending darkness rather than done what it takes to light their oil lamps. They’re called “the invisible ones,” and they’re kept segregated. Zahra Bayda saysthey don’t trust the camps, that they prefer to place their destinies in God’s hands, because that’s better than crouching and cramming together while staring toward nowhere. From the camp, no smoke rises, nor any sound, not even a shout or the cry of a child. Nothing.
“It’s like a city of the dead,” I say.
“And yet over a hundred thousand people live there.”
Everything is motionless, except the stir of wind in her hair. People’s hair always startles me; it has a life of its own and rebels against its owner’s will. Zahra Bayda’s mane is moving wildly, whipping her face, getting in her mouth, covering her eyes.
I keep pointing out the little solitary light I see in the distance, determined to keep rising, like a floating reflection. Someone coming from the camp, with a flashlight? I wonder how they got past the wire fence. Maybe they took advantage of the hottest hour, when the guards doze in their booths.
