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Issue 11 - October 2008 - Prose
Postcards from a dying man by Doran Khamis
I
Dad spoke of dying. We lightened the mood with cider and talk of what the Arab world has gifted us: distillation.
We marvelled at how the pallor of city wall distils to soft green and sunset in three hours of rushed motion. England is a blur through a window, and a newspaper. These rivers are alive; this moss and stonewort is my green-fingered mattress.
The Old Testament was absorbed and questioned – is the serpent punished, or given a direction? – while we searched for the beginnings of our own journey. Once found, Jay converted.
II
We were faced with contours spun in the finest spider's silk. Within the steepest five minutes of my life we were drenched in sweat. "Ascent", I have learnt, is a vile word, and "ascension" can be not far from rank. If this is true, for me heaven holds no interest.
Jay believed Bridleway to be a destination, and who can question belief? I have joined him in his pilgrimage. I just hope the horses are more forgiving than God of Eve, Zeus of Prometheus, or the ground of a falling man. I have fallen enough times to know my destination lies neither up nor down. Purgatory is the flattest emotion. There are no hills in a dying man's heart.
We walked on fat and dreamt of sugar. Water is ambrosia, but I don't know what I wouldn't do for a coke.
III
The mist swept in and wet the ground. Our calves were lashed by flood-plain reeds and our boots drowned in mud. The river we followed weaved through steep moorland; glacis clambered upwards to stone-age fortresses, guarded now by only nettle warriors.
We could not follow its simple path. Our lactated muscles strained and pulled us to ridges, to boulder-crushed deer tracks, to ankle-spasming heather-holes and back to the river's woodland.
Plasters do not prevent blisters, and tea does not cure pessimism.
IV
It rained then stopped, rained then stopped. We were flaps of water-proofs, tortoise men; aquatic machinery whited by mist. Someone was changing our sheets. We were a bed, and crisp linen was billowing above our tortured bodies. We were sweat and exhalation.
Now I am an architect of crop-circles. We flatten grass to erect our homes and excavate a valley between them. We are Romans, the nimble Khamis Legion. This Centurion will be measuring leagues come morning.
Our aqueducts flounder.
V
Each morning I've woken with the dampness of fever, but this night pushed the sickness to my stomach, and the long grass now hides its contents.
With no breakfast in sight we strode on, my body an empty vessel. Legs like damp cardboard stamped on wet ground, gasping for glucose like a tantrum-child. Demoralised, I felt my last strength seep from my shoulders into the breathable straps of my rucksack.
The hamlet we'd thought to eat at left us begging; I was an animal broken, ready to be sheared or shot. Our next meal, Dad said, was fourteen miles away. The bullet was a baptism of fire.
Jay and I handed over the emergency rations and took the tents in return. The train journey home was a sombre one.
VI
Now Dad's news was better. With blisters healed, but plasters lingering like a grim, black infection, we recounted events that seemed too dense to squeeze to one week. A canopy of muscle ache, wheezing lungs and salted skin hung ominously, but we looked past that, on to the wide and deep blue above. A wealth of wisdom and beauty to rival any ocean, forest, or moor.
My death has given me many near-life experiences. We care not for the hard times and pained emotions. We forget that even our most prized possessions and closest friends throw shadows when the sun falls. There are murders darkly peeling paint from walls, the rising of monstrous forms from clothes thrown in a callous heap. We forget, and wear these clothes fondly, open death-cowl curtains to our own blue sky. We forget the dying, and remember only the living.