There are left books and bridges / and painted canvas and machinery / Whose fate is to survive. /
But what has gone is also not nothing: / by the rule of the game something has gone. / Not people die but worlds die in them.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, People

There is no traffic to scare away the wolves, who snatch at goats if they wander too far off up the slopes. The dib are the bane of Eisa's life for they have eaten his entire flock. "I wanted to shoot them, but the government forbids this. You can't see them because they are scared of humans, but sometimes you can hear them howl." And this is when he crinkles his face, turns his head up to the peaks and lets out a soulful rendering — a howl in English, yuawi in Arabic and a haunting echo to the mountain.

Ali Masoud al Khatri is Eisa's cousin, and joins the family every night around a common fire. He spent two years in the Air Force band trying to learn the instrument they call the karba — but left because he couldn't quite get the hang of it. Instead, he spent nine years in Amq, the largest settlement in Wadi Sahtan, as a municipal cleaner. "The GSM network provider came here a few years ago," he says, "but went back because the road was too tough."

< Previous     Next >



Twitter | © 2001—2012 Pinaki