A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me by Youssef Fadel

Author:Youssef Fadel [Fadel, Youssef]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789774167546
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2012-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

3

We spent months at our father’s in Chaouen, Khadija and me, before his wife kicked us out. Friday afternoon, we went to the barracks where he works. The barracks door was locked. We heard music inside and we said our father was training the brass band. Then we heard them outside the barracks and we realized the band was wandering the outskirts of the city, heading toward the mountain. Khadija and I were waiting for them. We looked at them from behind the trees. Then we heard them going up the mountain. We went up the mountain, running to get ahead of them. We know the road to the mountain like the band knows it, and like our father, who’s leading them with the white ram. Always white and fat. The band with our father walking behind the ram. They circled where the ram circled. On invisible trails between thick trees. They stopped when the ram stopped to relax. Under the gushing waterfall. Then they went up to the mountaintop to play their music. I don’t like the woman who lives with my father. Sometimes I don’t like my father because he left our mother. Sometimes I like him because he wears a white uniform and leads the brass band. Khadija knows the route the band takes. Every Friday afternoon, she’d say to me: “Why don’t we go to the waterfall that the band passes?” And she’d take my hand because she’s older than me. My father waved his brass rod and the fat white ram was in front with no one leading it.

When he was living with us and our mother, the light got turned on in the house. But I didn’t understand the connection between the light and him being home. When our father was home, we had light. When he was late, there wasn’t any. My sister said it was because of the suit he was wearing. White like the ones French officers wear. They let us leave the light on in our house but forbade us to wander around because our father led their brass band. Unlike the neighbors’ house. Unlike the other houses that didn’t have a father leading a brass band with a big white ram in front. Sometimes the darkness of the night would pass inside and outside the house. It covered our house and the neighbors’ house. It spread its wings on everything around it. My mother said: “If your father was home, we wouldn’t be in the dark.” Waiting for him to come, we sit in the dark. Then she said, “Here are the French passing by again,” and I heard the soldiers’ shoes as they hit the ground outside. Behind the door. I heard it even if they were not passing by. To myself, I said: Will my father come if I turn on the light? I didn’t turn it on. Even though the soldiers weren’t walking in the dark alley now. He crossed it three times since the sun set sun.

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