Goat Foot almost falls back when she hears the answer.
“Atru,” says the Great Perfumer.
“Atru, the Butcher?”
“Atru, the Butcher. He’s proclaimed himself the high authority.”
A laborer of humble origins, at first he had no title beyond his simple name and a reference to his profession: Atru, the Butcher. He’s known to have only one skill: that of slaughtering and carving up animals with his left hand. It’s said that he cut off his right hand with his machete while chopping up a rack of ribs. Even so, with the help of hooks and pincers, he has maintained the skills of his profession and is still good for killing and bleeding out in accordance with the law, as well as for deboning, filleting, grinding into meatballs, calculating weight by sight, and separating flesh from claw. He even developed a flashy personal style, turning each stab into a theatrical gesture and simultaneously emitting a kind of death growl, the guttural sound of a heavy metal vocalist. His facial features are harmonious, almost feminine, in contrast withhis chilling overall look. His healthy arm is hairy and muscular, the other one’s stump nestled in a coarse leather sheath. Small eyes like black cherries, a turned-up nose, an apron soaked in blood and fat, black kerchief around his neck, and, on his head, a commoner’s Phrygian cap. In any case, the guy is insignificant, notorious in a folksy way perhaps, but nothing more. A cow killer without glory or shame. He’s never brandished his blade against enemies on a battlefield, only against defenseless creatures in the slaughterhouse. He has a weapon, and he kills, but that doesn’t make him a hero of any kind.
When the sacrificial cult begins and spreads across the land, this Atru, the Butcher, joins the ceremonies in the humble role of slashing the victim with his knife. Under his strong hand, the young animal surrenders without needing to be forced, waiting for the precise cut that will swiftly bring a painless end. Once his act of butchery is done, Atru retreats without further ado; that’s how humdrum his imagination is, at first. The prayers, praise, requests, and swaying of censers are overseen by a new and powerful caste of consecrated priests, to whom Atru is an invisible, incidental presence, useful only for the dirty practical task he performs. But little by little, the man finds a way to be noticed. His flamboyant style, dramatic movements, and heavy metal singer’s growl catch devotees’ attention and turn into an important, showy part of the ritual, until they become the main spectacle.
The leaders of this bloody cult claim the role of legitimate intermediaries between gods and humanity, and, among them, whoever is armed is in command: Atru, the Butcher, owns an axe and the sharpest knives. Atru, the Butcher, who also has a calling as a tyrant, and soon enthrones himself as the self-declared mafia boss. He speaks on behalf of the red Scorpion, demands to be called Son of Scorpion, and proclaims himself a great visionary anointed by the Light. He understands the twisted purpose of ritual sacrifice and knows how to leverage it, exploiting its various forms, spreading itstentacles. He declares his status to be permanent and hereditary, and he assigns himself the right to keep the leanest meat and best parts of the sacrificial goat for himself and his priests, distributing what’s left to the masses: entrails, viscera, and bones. He exchanges his red twill cap for a tall purple headdress, and the greasy apron for a complicated outfit composed of a chasuble, liturgical belt, alb, and stole. In other words, the Butcher has transformed into a spiritual leader, as if inGangs of New YorkScorsese had mashed up a single character out of Bill the Butcher, head of the Natives, and his archrival Priest Vallon, leader of the Dead Rabbits.
From a distance, Goat Foot tries to study the ancient town she so loves, its brown awnings and stark bushes, but she can’t see it. It barely exists anymore; a nascent stone city has been supplanting it. Atru has built himself a palace with twelve pillars and high round walls, with an irrigation system and a huge orchard, as well as a limestone temple in which only powerful families can set foot. In other neighborhoods, crowds throng in sanctuaries as raucous and crammed as bazaars. Blood-filled drainpipes and mounds of bones fan faith in the sacrifices held there. Public servants take up residence in minor palaces, while shantytowns surround the city center in a frayed gray ring. The construction of a city wall begins, shutting the people in, and inscriptions spring up on it perennially, hailing the name of Atru with his many titles: Atru, Son of Antares; Atru, King of Light; Atru, Supreme Heart of the Scorpion.
When did I become someone who hides the stench of blood with perfumed smoke? Goat Foot wonders, seeing the way an empire is rising on a pyramid of pain and rage. The pain of a whipped tree, of the bled-out victim, of aching humanity. And divine rage, which the people try to appease through sacrifice.
Goat Foot refuses to set foot in the deceptive city. She will not enter, won’t cross its walls. If she didn’t surrender to Mamlakat Aldam, her mother’s arrogant fortress, she certainly won’t cede to the Butcher’s pretentious castle. She will not tolerate monumentserected on what used to be open earth. She won’t return to that place, once free, now oppressed, nor will she let fences or gates stop her migrations. Am I being exiled from a realm, for a second time? she wonders, immediately answering her own question: No, this second time they can’t banish me because my realm isn’t in there anymore, but outside. Nor can they take it from me, because my realm isn’t mine; it belongs to no one.
Goat Foot turns her back on the stone city and sets up camp outside it: a great caravansary with vigorous comings and goings through the seven deserts on paths that converge at their outer limits, like a Möbius strip. More than a place, Goat Foot has founded a star of destiny, knowing all too well that we never arrive, because each arrival is merely a new point of departure.
“Only that which is light and in motion survives,” the princess says, now serene. “Heavy things succumb, because they sink into the earth instead of gliding across the sand.”
The stone city won’t reach the height of its splendor, nor its fifteen minutes of fame; instead it’ll be sacked and plundered, and swallowed by dust storms, its walls toppled by invading armies and its dams destroyed by bombs dropped from planes. Despite so much supposedly enduring inscription, the coming centuries won’t know the name of Atru, the Butcher. Only that which is light survives.
But the pure, hard truth, leaving all futurology aside, is that from this moment on, the fight between Goat Foot and the old Butcher will be violent. A fight to the death between two powers: she, master of olibanum and caravans, and he, master of temples and the conscience. And a third power bringing discord, like a loose and spinning wheel: the Maiden.
The Three Floors of Your Guilt
As we drive through the desert, Zahra Bayda explains to me that a Catholic woman, a patient of hers, is dying and has asked for a confessor. Is she insinuating that I should offer her patient confession? No, she’s not insinuating, she’s proposing it without beating around the bush and is assuming it will happen. But it’s not possible.
“Please understand, ma’am, that I’m not a priest.” I’m insisting on calling her ma’am. “I’ve been banished, I’m a renegade who escaped the monastic life.”
I tell her this; I repeat it. But these details don’t seem to matter to her, and as I start to cede ground, I also start to understand that whatever Zahra Bayda wants, Zahra Bayda gets.
We finally arrive at the camp, and, despite exhaustion from the journey, we head directly to the camp’s hospital, where Yameelah Semela, the sick woman who’s asked for a confessor, is waiting for us. There are few Christians living in Yemen, but there are some. They’re very devoted and very persecuted. Yameelah Semela is one of them. Her final hour has come, but she’s putting it off to seek forgiveness before she dies.
My hands tremble, I move jerkily, I’m talking too fast. It’s been almost seventy-two hours since I last slept and my exhaustion is so intense that it’s turned into its opposite, the frenzied intensity of a cartoon character; I feel like I’ve got more battery power than the Energizer bunny. I’m dazed. What if the dying woman starts her confession saying, like Nerval: I am the wretched widow wandering through fog without solace? Despite my sad state, Zahra Bayda thinks it best for me to see the woman immediately, because tomorrow could be too late.
All right, now or never. Am I expected to absolve her? I, the worst of all, the false priest, the least qualified?
“It’s enough for you to keep her company and listen to her.” Zahra Bayda leads me by the arm to the cot where the sick woman lies.
I’m comforted by having heard Pope Francis, some time ago, say on the radio that in critical cases, in the absence of a priest, it’s enough for the dying to sincerely repent their sins. Fine, Francis, I’ll try to help her get to a place where she can forgive herself.
Yameelah Semela is expecting me; I’ve been told she’s keeping death at bay until I arrive. Her eyes shine in the chiaroscuro, feverishly bright; she looks like a small animal deep in a cave of agony. Her body is slight beneath the sheet, light enough to levitate. She’s still young, but she carries the weight of mountainous time, and she’s at the brink of succumbing to a cancer that had been neglected for years. She arrived at this MSF camp too late, when the disease had metastasized. Her feet poke out, as blue as her lips.
“They’ve walked so much,” she says. “They won’t have to walk anymore.”
“This is Bos Mutas and he’s come to help you,” Zahra Bayda says by way of introduction, adding that I’m not a priest, but I know about such things.
Yameelah Semela assents. She takes my hand in both of hers with a hope I don’t deserve. She covers herself to the neck with her sheet,smooths her hair, clears her throat to recover her voice, and looks at me with an imploring fervor that disarms me.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Yameelah, I’m not a priest,” I say.
“You seem like a priest,” she says. The lucidity of a dying woman? The clinical eye of someone who’s seen it all?
