apprehension, she does not try to fill them. She does not express astonishment, or make meaningless, encouraging sounds. She does not ask questions, does not request clarification. She listens. She gives him her attention, the space to find his words, allows his story to breathe, offers him this measure of grace.
4
The cave his father had described came to mean more in Younis’s mind than it actually was. He searched for hours, trying to match his father’s instructions to the unfamiliar terrain before him, increasingly tired, weakened by the loss of blood, exhausted, and, finally, desperate. He longed for the cave, longed for all it represented. Its capacity for solace, its ability to shelter grew larger and more mythical with each step he took. He wandered across the empty hills.
Near the rock his father had shown him, balanced unnaturally in the shallow water close to the bank, the path ran away from the river and wove past a low, rocky outcrop before ascending steeply. Into the hills, it leveled out as often as the terrain allowed, but mostly it climbed steeply. The route was clear close to the river, a visible footpath that he easily followed up into the low pastures. But farther into the hills, it traversed stone and gravel, so that he had to search every twenty or thirty steps to be sure he was still walking in the right direction.
Periodically, the route appeared to end abruptly, run straight into a rock wall or stand of brush. He scrambled up the stone face or around the brush, searching above it until he found the barest trace on which to continue, until the trail disappeared again, this time into a deep gully, or a stretch of impenetrablethorns, and he repeated the process, each time hoping that the path on which he resumed his trek was the correct one.
His route trended steeply upward, switching back and forth as it encountered obstacles and sheer faces, sometimes leading right back toward the beginning, twisting around like a noodle dropped on a pile of rocks. And then the trail ended again, in the middle of a vast boulder field, and Younis couldn’t find it, no matter how hard he looked.
He slumped to the ground in despair, feeling exposed sitting among the rocks, open to both the sky and the valley far below. He hoped his dark clothes did not stand out against the lighter granite. The ringing in his ear was pronounced, new, and he tried to get rid of it by screwing up his eyes. When that didn’t work, he opened them and searched the slope below for any signs of movement, any hint that he might have been discovered. His arm throbbed with an immobilizing pain. Distant, booming thuds echoed from the rocks and seemed to suck away the air. He longed for the cave, to simply be there, to be anywhere that would get him out from under the open sky and off the slope. His head rang as though hit with a mallet. He needed the cave, which he imagined had been custom-built for him, for his shelter, perhaps by his father or his grandfather. His imagination made it a living thing, a rescuer, an active participant in his struggle.
Perhaps he passed out. He lost track of time. Eventually, because he had no choice, he stood. His arm did not seem to be bleeding as much, but he did not dare to look underneath the cloth he kept wrapped around it. He walked around a subtlebend in the hill that did not look like anything at all when viewed from below, but which stretched farther back into a seam in the hillside, its depth becoming apparent only as he entered it. He climbed up what turned out to be a shallow gorge in the rock, mostly hidden from view when seen from below. He surveyed the landscape again. Up the hill, on the other side of this crevice, he saw a flat, shelflike protrusion balanced on the steep slope, and some outcroppings of vegetation, scrub brush and dwarf pine, and farther down the rock were tiny groves of elm and birch, tucked into a hidden part of the mountain.
The sun was descending in the western sky when
4
The cave his father had described came to mean more in Younis’s mind than it actually was. He searched for hours, trying to match his father’s instructions to the unfamiliar terrain before him, increasingly tired, weakened by the loss of blood, exhausted, and, finally, desperate. He longed for the cave, longed for all it represented. Its capacity for solace, its ability to shelter grew larger and more mythical with each step he took. He wandered across the empty hills.
Near the rock his father had shown him, balanced unnaturally in the shallow water close to the bank, the path ran away from the river and wove past a low, rocky outcrop before ascending steeply. Into the hills, it leveled out as often as the terrain allowed, but mostly it climbed steeply. The route was clear close to the river, a visible footpath that he easily followed up into the low pastures. But farther into the hills, it traversed stone and gravel, so that he had to search every twenty or thirty steps to be sure he was still walking in the right direction.
Periodically, the route appeared to end abruptly, run straight into a rock wall or stand of brush. He scrambled up the stone face or around the brush, searching above it until he found the barest trace on which to continue, until the trail disappeared again, this time into a deep gully, or a stretch of impenetrablethorns, and he repeated the process, each time hoping that the path on which he resumed his trek was the correct one.
His route trended steeply upward, switching back and forth as it encountered obstacles and sheer faces, sometimes leading right back toward the beginning, twisting around like a noodle dropped on a pile of rocks. And then the trail ended again, in the middle of a vast boulder field, and Younis couldn’t find it, no matter how hard he looked.
He slumped to the ground in despair, feeling exposed sitting among the rocks, open to both the sky and the valley far below. He hoped his dark clothes did not stand out against the lighter granite. The ringing in his ear was pronounced, new, and he tried to get rid of it by screwing up his eyes. When that didn’t work, he opened them and searched the slope below for any signs of movement, any hint that he might have been discovered. His arm throbbed with an immobilizing pain. Distant, booming thuds echoed from the rocks and seemed to suck away the air. He longed for the cave, to simply be there, to be anywhere that would get him out from under the open sky and off the slope. His head rang as though hit with a mallet. He needed the cave, which he imagined had been custom-built for him, for his shelter, perhaps by his father or his grandfather. His imagination made it a living thing, a rescuer, an active participant in his struggle.
Perhaps he passed out. He lost track of time. Eventually, because he had no choice, he stood. His arm did not seem to be bleeding as much, but he did not dare to look underneath the cloth he kept wrapped around it. He walked around a subtlebend in the hill that did not look like anything at all when viewed from below, but which stretched farther back into a seam in the hillside, its depth becoming apparent only as he entered it. He climbed up what turned out to be a shallow gorge in the rock, mostly hidden from view when seen from below. He surveyed the landscape again. Up the hill, on the other side of this crevice, he saw a flat, shelflike protrusion balanced on the steep slope, and some outcroppings of vegetation, scrub brush and dwarf pine, and farther down the rock were tiny groves of elm and birch, tucked into a hidden part of the mountain.
The sun was descending in the western sky when
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