The Rising Sun

The sun was a giant that hauled himself over the horizon, the red rays bathed the plains in a singular moment of splendour. The buffalo, but shadows in the empty fields only moments ago, turned their heads and opened their opulent eyes now ablaze in new glory, soaking in the rays beneath their rich red fur. So did Yousuf from where he sat out in his porch. Watching out toward where the trees flanked the red dirt road, there birds lifted by the break of day, sang long notes in from the mouth of the opening world.

“Nights passage finds an end in glee, yet joyous in its passing are we,” Yousef said to himself closing his eyes and listening to the feathered ministerial as they sang the sun surely into the sky. Simple wonders he thought. The wind did not ask anything as it passed gently, lapped his face, the soil showered the open world in its red radiance far away from the wowing of city lights that surely had spent the past little hours flocking hordes of its own.

He looked at the little black book lain on the table. “You, more generous then he, who first gave and did nothing of your administration, a question or a law was tied there against me, nor was there asked of me but to speak with him, for what? That I ask of yet more aid to ends that are of my own? I beseech thee oh little book , how art thou the giver of life ? “

There hadn’t been a cloud in all the long and endless sky, yet somehow, he had curtained the sky with rains from his chariot of thunder as he came. The Birds fell silent to see the once empty heavens laden, the endless limits of the skies droop and unseal. With soaked feathers they looked about the forest in their dismay as the roar of the big engine cut through the song and in shawls did take fleeting in to the skies, from the roar of the beast that now ruled the world .

Out on the plains, the buffalo beat the red dirt into little clouds as they stomped into a herd. The thundering engine and predator block chrome came belting through the mouth of the trees and emerging from clouds of stampede dust, headlights tore through the red air.

“ Eyes of fire , I see you “ said Yousef. “ All the signs of heaven doth protest , yet still comes Pharaoh , through the sea. “ Sure enough, as he looked, sleeked back hair and flawless suit that mummified the god men of the city came unholy into sight

His tie of immortal perfection, his chariot untouched. As if it would rather have flown through the skies if it could, rather than the meager means that would deny that all the world was of his making.

Yousef was sure it would have gone first to that tower of babble that sat consecrated far upon the hill , in hopes that perhaps they may together launch spears and laugh into a godless sky . But the big house on the hill had been empty long enough for steps to forget they had been walked, chest to sink from the way that boys do learn to puff their chests as men. Wisdom had dissuaded them, advised them to leave long ago. Remained behind. It was he who lay the drapes over all the fine furnishings.

“Father whose dust does gather now on them ? ” said Yousef. “Or will your soul come here to watch beside the rising of a thousand splendid suns. Wisdom was still watching them , from on the hill far away. He looked back at the little black book,, yes today the question was asked again”

He dare not think of the things men had done for the means of that little book, the ink was squeezed from the reptilian fangs of men , with ink and numbers perfect. What a diseased word it became beside it, to speak of the book that appeals to something outside the heart or mind, that which possess no art and yet its pursuit is the only of its kind, rampant enough to keep the name madness out of people’s mouths.

“ People do love to be mad, when it suits. We are quite fashionable are we not? , perhaps we should think our selves lucky that our federation does fashion us,” he laughed.

“ To say then that none are crazed when all walk about sporting things utterly mad. So we celebrate it, shouting at the trodden from the chambers we lock ourselves away in. Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard the neat little numbers speak to me? They say you are the ones that are mad. How can you be sane, YOU don’t speak with them.”

He tore himself way from the table.

“ But the earth who dear compare, most generous was it”

Before him laid upon a crooked table was his father’s old army knife; its blade true and blunt with the years of stripping bare branches, its handle melted with the fires it had sat by. Wealth was a concept conceptualised from an origin. A thought animated by ideas, ideas illustrated in the mind’s eye, which had seen sculptures newly formed from the furnaces worked in the fires of men’s hearts. Alas, the origin did conceive the concept, in the depths of men’s souls. Indeed it was men that fashioned his God, be he cruel to them or kind. It was they that made him thus and so he was.

The urban beast came sly and low, prowling through the long grass, its sleek chrome paws kissed the barren brown earth . Rain rattled off the hallow metal. Mr chambers strutted out, fixed his tie, straightened up all without a single inkling of the pouring rain, that had now drenched his every inch.

“ We worked through the night, Sir, but we did it.““ I’m sorry , we cannot “

“ Why ?”

He gestured over at the raggedy old cot a hand me down relic. Folded to one side, beside a clump of walking sticks , lay a blanket ,

“ My father sat out here , and watched that sun, I have never looked at it with ought him and now here we are and what do I find myself doing ? “

“ Mr Yousef , your father was a great man , his ways had their time, the world is changed certain facts , trends wealth has new faces , mine and yours “

“ You are a man of science, know, numbers you believe in this ?”

“ It’s my job Mr Yousef. It’s my duty “

“Duty. This is a great word of your language, has great meaning. We have a word like this , but it has less meaning but also much much more “

“ How so Mr Yousef? “

“ My father used to curl up in that blanket. All the laws of your science will not teach to me that if I were to pick up that blanket it would not form the shape of his shoulders . That it wouldn’t reach over mine and take me under. That I wouldn’t feel a warm hand on my back. “

“ Mr Yousef , your father worked hard for you , for your family all his life. It is my job to make sure that effort never wastes away. That is why I’m here. That blanket won’t do what you’re asking but in a way we can keep something of your father that does last. “

“Ah yes ,that is the difference between our words “

“How so? I see none. what can be done, what should be our duty “

“Mr Chambers, my father was the last to lift that blanket. I haven’t folded it away. “

He turned and looked into the eagle eyes, “ Your word gives you strength, mine makes me weak and so it is less. “

“ If you lift that blanket , the only shape you will find is your own. “

“ But I do not and so our duty is also much, much more. “

“ If you have the strength to lift what your father left you Mr Yousef, see me before the end of this day. “

As he turned to leave, Yousef stood up.

“This day is like my father Mr Chambers, it was given without the lifting of my hand “

He walked over to it and picked up the Quran, the pages that opened had weathered and the rest of God’s words where closed away; the hardened paper was rigid to the old ways , it would not bend to him, the old passages where the ones open to the new comer. He looked over at the little black book on the table , loose , easy ,unweathered. Sleek its pages filled with promises , asking nothing, questioning no one.

He closed his eyes and felt the Quran in his hands , it was old but solid despite pages warped. But the writing was unblemished on the tattered parchment. It read and said what it always had , what it had before he came and it would see him to dusty death and speak to others the same after. The black book didn’t. Every pair of hands would be different, tell another story , wrong and right as if the black ink of the god men could seep beneath the pages and the numbers would gladly shift to sing another song anew.

“The olds ways are firm in the hearts, new pages do not know such stories, ” said Yousef.

“ Has it anyplace else where?” the old ink sat still in perfect calligraphy along the chain lines of the Turkish paper, yet here it sat in an African sun. Dead trees had walked the Earth.

No more could he change the stars that pierced his night sky , the layers of time were lain and the continents it had spanned ,themselves consecrated its place in this world. Such where the words of a God.

This little hut where his immigrant father had brought it , surely enough it was he that was but the foot note in the stories that the pages told. What had the little black book to relate? What had it seen but numbers impressive only with hollow zeros, but what where they ,but the perfect rounded making of men , nothing more than the golden ram that left the masses wondering in the desert. The new idol was plainer then the old , but indeed had it come in sheep’s skin.

He slid the black book to one side, tears shone as they passed down wrinkled rivers of his joy. His smile, more generous in waters of giving than those lines. He had already taken what was valuable. All that had worth was already given.

The buffalos ran fleeting in their herd into the swallowing Eastern sun. Yousef stared at its tail where a calf trailed. A bulbus male fell back to run alongside his child’s flank. The little black book disappeared from his thoughts as he watched the pair melting into the golden beams of a glorious sun.