The workshop was cold in the first hour of the day. Light did not come through the closed shutters, but through the cracks in the worn wood, tracing gray lines across the packed earth. The three jars of sesame oil sealed the evening before stood near the door, still beneath their caps of linen and fired clay.
stood before the great cedar chest where the wood scraps and failed clay pieces lay. His hands were shaking. The sound of his fingers stirring the dried lumps of earth was dry, uneven. He took a basket of woven reeds and threw into it, one after another, a dozen small household figurines. They were poor men's idols, crude, barely shaped with a reed awl, flat faces without eyes or mouths.
He did not look at . He threw the last statuette in with a rough motion. His knuckles were white with gray dust. He pointed at the workshop door with his calloused thumb.
"The canal," he said.
His voice was like a dry piece of wood snapping. He added nothing more. He turned toward his bench and set both hands flat against the flank of the great unfinished Ningal, back bent, still.
Nūnā stood near the stone trough. Her coarse wool sleeves fell over her arms. They hid her hands. She was about to raise her arms to take up the wooden pestle, but the motion stopped halfway. She let her arms drop back to her sides. The wool slid slightly. Her wrist showed. The skin there was pale, marked with a faint round trace where the copper had rested the day before. The bracelet was no longer there.
did not move. She held her black wooden shuttle clenched between her fingers, the red thread suspended above the loom. She looked at the basket of reeds her husband had just filled, then at 's back.
sat on a low stool in the corner of the room. He was eating a piece of bread. He had swallowed too fast. He stopped. A crumb stayed stuck to his lower lip. His hands rested flat on his thighs. He did not look at as he came near the chest.
took the basket by its handle. The dry reed rasped against his fingers. He slung it over his right shoulder without a word.
As he crossed the threshold, the raw wooden door swung shut behind him with a dull sound. No one had pushed it. It was only the dry wind of the plain blowing through the entrance.
The white dust of the Hurmuzjard market rose as high as the eyes. It clung to sweat-damp skin, settled on the dried fish laid out on reed racks, and whitened the baskets of onions. Near the canal docks, the smell of hot bitumen rose from the hulls of moored barges, heavy, sweet, mingled with the breath of the stagnant water.
set his reed mat down on the packed earth, a few paces from the edge of the dock. He laid the twelve clay figurines out before him. They stood in a row on the gray reed matting, fragile, ugly under the rising sun.
He sat down, legs crossed. He waited. His right hand rested on his knee. His fingers opened and closed slowly. They counted the rhythm of his own breathing.
A farmer passed, stopped. The man wore a soiled cloth tunic tied with a hemp cord. He bent down, picked up one of the gray clay figurines, turned it between his rough fingers. He looked at . He was waiting for a price.
looked him in the eye. His voice did not rise. It was soft, almost low, but it cut through the noise of the boatmen and the cries of the barley sellers.
"Who will buy what harms him and does him no good?"
The farmer froze. His hand stayed suspended, the figurine between thumb and finger. A nervous laugh rose behind him. Two men carrying sacks of beans stopped. They sniggered through their teeth. They believed it was the joke of some clumsy young merchant.
Beside the mat, the onion seller turned his head. His face was blackened by the sun. He looked at with hostile gravity, his brows drawing together above his bleary eyes. The bean carriers' laughter died away.
Silence spread out over a few paces. Passersby stopped. They formed a loose half-circle around the mat. No one came close enough to touch the clay statuettes. No one spoke. They looked at 's son, then at the gray figurines set on the mat, as if waiting for the ground to open beneath their feet.
did not repeat his question. He let his right hand come to rest on his chest, where the coarse wool of his tunic scratched his skin. He looked at the raw clay, unmoving.
drew a length of palm-fiber cord from his belt, brown and coarse. He knelt on the mat. His thumb pressed against his index finger, once, before his hands went still again. With slow hands, unhurried and without anger, he looped the cord around the neck of the first statuette. He tied a simple knot. Then he bound the second by the neck, then the third. The rough fiber of the cord scraped the inside of his wrists. It left red marks there.
He stood, took the end of the cord, and went down the gentle slope of the dock toward the stagnant water of the canal.
The clay idols slid over the fired brick of the dock. They dragged through the white dust. They left narrow furrows behind them. Then they struck the water with a dull sound. They sank into the black mud lining the canal. The crowd followed him with their eyes, gathered at the edge of the dock. A few forced laughs still rose among the boatmen, but they died at once in the onlookers' throats.
stopped at the edge of the mud. He pulled on the cord. The idols plunged into the gray canal water. The mud rose around their raw clay heads. The sound of the water closing over them was brief.
The crowd stepped back as one. The motion was silent, almost invisible, but the distance between the front row of onlookers and the edge of the dock suddenly widened by an arm's length. Faces went pale beneath the white dust.
bent toward the water. He held the cord taut. The idols' faces were sunk in the stagnant mud of the canal. His voice was gentle. It carried the patience of someone truly offering a drink:
"Drink, my lord. Drink and speak."
The silence that followed was so heavy that one could hear the water lapping against the bitumen hull of a barge in the distance. No one moved. Someone in the crowd made the sign against the evil eye with their hand. Two women veiled their faces and hurried away. Their sandals clacked against the brick.
stood against the mudbrick wall of a grain warehouse. His hands were pressed tight against his thighs. When the crowd stepped back, he took a step forward. His right foot moved into the dust, hesitated a moment, then planted itself firmly on the ground. He said nothing. He watched the palm cord sinking into the mud.
pulled on the cord. It came up, light. Most of the clay idols had dissolved in the stagnant water or come loose. Only fragments of soft earth remained, sliding into the canal. At the end of the cord, only a lump of gray mud remained, and it fell back into the mud.
wound the cord around his raw wrist. He did not look at the crowd parting before him.
Evening slid over Hurmuzjard. The sky took on a dark, dusty violet.
walked through the alley leading home. The rumor had outrun him by several hours. The alleys were nearly empty, but as he passed, heavy wooden doors closed one after another. The sound of wooden bolts sliding into their brick sockets rang steadily through the twilight silence. The onion seller, sitting on his threshold, turned his head to the wall the moment he saw 's shadow approaching.
waited on the threshold of the house, standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed over her chest. She watched approach. Her eyes went down to his hands. They noted the gray mud dried beneath his nails and the red mark the palm fiber had left on his skin. She looked away.
walked three paces behind . He carried nothing. His eyes never left the muddy cord hanging from his cousin's shoulder.
In the courtyard, Nūnā was kneading the evening's barley bread. Her arms went in and out of the stone trough with a steady motion. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows. Her wrists were bare. The silence of her movements was strange. The familiar clink of copper against stone no longer accompanied her work. She did not raise her eyes.
pushed open the workshop door and went in.
The workshop was dark. The shutters had stayed closed all day, and the sweet smell of sesame oil had thickened in the shadow.
was slumped against his bench. His shoulders were drawn tight, his back bent as though bracing for a blow. Both hands gripped the flank of the unfinished cedar Ningal, his fingers clenched on the dark wood. They no longer moved. He was trembling.
came in. He set the empty reed basket down on the packed earth. The sound of reed against ground was the only noise in the room.
, Nūnā, and stood near the entrance, still against the mudbrick walls. came closer to . He stopped an arm's length from him. It was the first time he had stood so close to his cousin in front of .
The silence went on. Only 's breathing could be heard. It was uneven. A short breath, then a gap, then another breath.
set his right hand flat against his chest, where the coarse wool of his tunic touched his skin. He looked at his father's bent back. His voice did not come from his throat. It was low, gentle, like a necessary breath passing through him and beyond him.
"Yā abatī, innī akhāfu an yamassaka ʿadhābun min al-Raḥmāni fa-takūna liš-šayṭāni waliyyā[^1]," he said.
did not move. He did not turn around. Turning his face toward his son would have been enough to bring down what he was still holding back. His fingers tightened a little more on the idol's unfinished wood. In a muffled voice, barely audible, he said:
"Be quiet."
Then he said it again. His hand trembled against Ningal's flank:
"Do not speak that."
Night wrapped Hurmuzjard, blotting out the shape of the ziggurat in the distance.
In the dark courtyard, Nūnā looked at her bare wrist. The mark of the copper had faded beneath the barley flour.
sat near the loom. Her right hand held the shuttle still. The red thread had not moved an inch.
The stone trough was dry and clean.
On the threshold of the house, the palm cord, caked with dried mud, lay in the dust.
The mud dried before nightfall.
Note: [^1] — "O my father, I fear that a punishment from the All-Merciful will touch you, so that you become an ally of the Devil." (Qur'an, Surah Maryam, 19:45)