When the oil wells of Persia burned I did not weep
until I heard about the birds, the long-legged ones especially
which I imagined to be scarlet, with crests like egrets
and tails like peacocks, covered in tar
weighting the feathers they dragged through black shallows
at the rim of the marsh. But once
There were some memories Zayir revisited while entombed more than others. Some of them, once pleasant, took on the haunted qualities of an old man’s ghosts. What was it, he had wondered for so long, that made them so persistent? How long could something be remembered until the colour faded from it like an overused, over-worn photograph? Even the colours of his memories, in his mind’s eye, have become an oppressive sepia. Devoid of life; belonging, truly, to another man.
Perhaps it is because he has slept for years that sleeping no longer comes easily to him. Zayir wanders out across the stark desert alone. The sun is setting on the distant horizon and he flies from that, too, toward the setting darkness. His flight carries him, haphazard, along the hot updrafts from the desert below. The fading light catches on the metallic tips of his wings. The air seems so thin, so precarious. Or perhaps those are only his unexercised wings.
The warrior is aghast to discover his muscles fatigue before he has even covered half the distance of his journey; he descends to the desert sands with trembling muscles. His breath comes more quickly than he would like and to regain composure he tucks his wings tightly to his sides and begins to trot.
By the time he reaches the oasis, Zayir is lathered in unexpected sweat. He feels not only fatigued, but strangely frail. He has lost weight during all those years. The time loop, no matter how indefinite, has strained his body to its limits.
He tries not to dwell on it more than necessary as he approaches the water. The sound of the waterfall greets him well before he sees it, and the lush greenery surrounding the oasis is a welcome sight. Autumn flowers are in bloom, albeit briefly, and nearby are several fig trees. He comes forward until he is resting knee-deep in the water. Zayir had forgotten just how distasteful he finds the sand, the way it sifts between every hair to grate against the skin. He closes his eyes momentarily.
The oasis is not as he remembers it. There is something softer about it, something more fragrant. And he realises that is because he is there in the flesh instead of agonising over small, over-remembered details. The water is warm and languid against him, running with small currents from the fall where it spouts from the sandstone.
Zayir shakes out his wings. This is where his nanny had often taken him as a child. This is where they had played many of their games of hide and seek. And also where the Arete had run training regiments, sending young men and women flailing through the deep pool to emerge on the other side, sparring and ready for combatants. He remembers laughing as the sand became wet and almost muddy; the way they had flailed limb-over-limb and then as the training progressed became more, and more, and more competitive, turning the oasis pinkish with blood. Everything he remembers seems to be tinged with that small bit of bitterness.
He is not surprised when he realises he isn’t alone. Zayir clears his throat and opens his eyes, glancing at the nearby foliage. There is something hard in his breast, like pride, or anger. He doesn’t know which.
“I didn’t expect company.” The way he says it is noncommittal, but anyone who knows him would realise there is a lilting quality of his tone, something that almost imperceptibly suggests playfulness. Meanwhile, the waterfall runs, and runs, and runs. The sound of it in the background is nearly mystic and, for someone so accustomed to silence, loud.
"Speaks" || @
I told this to a man who said I was inhuman, for giving animals my first lament. So now I guard my inhumanity like the jackal who appears behind the army base at dusk, come there for scraps with his head lowered in a posture that looks like appeasement, though it is not.
