I Know

Things in the field had long since ceased to amaze. The cobra pits without cobras, the hot air where no air seemed to be, the picked carcasses of rabbits, burros, and dogs where no jackals and no vultures existed; the dry grass that never broke, and wet snails that never drank. All this held only intrigue, which was sufficient to draw the pluckiest boy behind his mother's back and out to scavenge the nothingness of the field which stretched far away to the mountains at the northwest.

My mother chided, warned and threatened. My father silently forbid it. But who were they to watch my play and where I chose to wander? If that was my playground. They would never know; my secret was sound.

Though the days that I went there and wandered about were swift in their coming and going. When I returned, I longed to expound on the treasures I found lying about; but even a rabbit that stared me back, or a century plant white-washed in snails would go unshared for fear of reprimand.

And those were the thoughts that I told to myself as I sat on the pile of sod through which passes the wires of the fence. And in my loneliness and misery that came from the harbored secrets, I vowed that I should find a game more obedient to my parents wishes, that I could share every moment's excitement with them. That, I thought, would be worth all of the field to the west and the north.

But as I considered forsaking the interest here, I climbed down from the pile into the field and meandered slowly in a direction which ran parallel to the road. I wandered and thought; I thought and walked, until I stopped on a slate of stone to watch a burro switched along the road ahead of a sun-toasted, brown-robed master, whose monochromatic image was broken only by the bright white turban which circled his bare skull. They moved away and were soon a spot near the horizon, and turned to look back from where I had come. My heart surged with a sudden sense of frightened excitement. This was further from the cluster of white stucco houses than I had ever been. I looked about eagerly for some marked change in the terrain, but it was all precisely as the land nearer the fence.

I walked a distance away from the road, and then turned to start back in the direction of the houses. When it struck me that I might be a great deal closer to the mountains, I turned my squinting eyes in that direction. But the mountains seemed to have moved back the distance I had come, which brought me no closer to them. I felt suddenly very tired and hot. My face ached from its contortions in the bright sun and my hair lay in damp strings on my brow.

Wiping an arm across my perspiring face, I noticed a small gray swirl of flies above the grass near a century plant. Immediately curious, I bounded over to look on the rabbit or dog which lay beneath the hungry flies, hoping to perhaps find something more gruesome, like the skeletal remains of the burro which had dropped long ago near the fence.

Indeed, I found a gruesome sight, which if it did not astound me, I relished the magnitude of finding a human carcass enveloped in black and green humming flies. Regretfully, it effected me as only a little less frightening than the animated Arabs which teemed the market places and grinned their grizzly obsequious grins at all the fair-skinned tourists. And the stench seemed only little slightly less offensive. The face, I admitted, was far more ghastly than any in the medina, in that there was nothing to see but raw flesh and bone and flies.

The body was twisted awkwardly as if in of agony, which led me later to wonder why I never saw one of the cobras which had supposedly dug out the huge, cavernous pits which perforated the field, inhabited only by beetles and dry brush.

One hand lay askew on the ground and most of the skin was gone from it or was covered with flies. What skin remained was sallow and ashen brown, looking grotesque with the intricate blue tattooing.

Coarse wool cloth lay in patches and shreds about the carcass, matted and filthy. I shivered at the thought of covering any human body in clothing which seemed so crude and easily deteriorated.

I was not nauseated. There was nothing to nauseate a boy who relished innocently the deterioration of many a rabbit or dog. For what else did a boy come to a deserted, sun-blazed field? And there was certainly very little to be found human in this relic. The only thing which did unnerve me was the tattooing on the hand, and the course cloth, which together filled me with the naive apprehension that accompanied any encounter with Arabs, be they alive or not. And this was, or had been an Arab, which now lay with half of his former substance, ravenously devoured my thick black flies and quickly dehydrating alone beneath the hot Moroccan sun.

I turned away, brushed at the flies which were lighting about my nose and mouth and eyes, and walked back to the fence. There I climbed the sod pile over the and turned to look back at the flies. I could not see the cloud of them so far away, but I knew they were there. I knew the ravaged body still lay beneath them. I know the bones might still be bleaching there.

My mother washed the dust from my face and hands a clucked reprovingly about my playing so hard. I wanted to tell her. My father sternly suggested that I not wander so far away from the house. I wanted to tell him. We had a warm supper and they talked of their day. I wanted to tell them of mine. "I'm glad," my mother said and kissed me, "you're such a good and obedient child." I sat on my hands and looked at my father.

I'll never tell them.

-- Fayonne Fenton, 1965