Homeless Rats by Ahmed Fagih

Author:Ahmed Fagih [Fagih, Ahmed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Quartet Books
Published: 2012-09-15T22:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

The male and female jerboas, as was only natural, looked on the destruction of their homes, the seizing of their storehouses and the terrifying of their young as an infamous and hostile crime. The humans had committed crimes against them and against all the other animals and insects living in the valley.

They were capable, even so, of setting these events in their historical context, in the light of previous relations between humans and jerboas. The present situation was, they believed, a temporary phase, one to be endured in patience and through devising a system to help them live with their plight, overcoming it through daily toil and resolution.

But the jerboas had never heard of, never envisaged such crimes as had been committed by this second group of people, who’d entered the valley in such a noisy, rowdy fashion. They hadn’t followed the ways of those who’d come before them, by digging out the burrows and seizing the barley. Rather, from the very moment they’d arrived, they’d hunted and slain every jerboa they could lay hands on. The destruction of the burrows, the eviction of the jerboas from their homes, wasn’t, it would seem, enough for humans. Now their inborn wickedness and bloodthirsty nature were spurring them on to slaughter the peace-loving jerboas, who’d always lived quietly here in this land.

The humans evidently had a fresh approach now, one based on bloodshed and crime, in defiance of all their previous rules on the treatment of jerboas. And these new developments had upset all the plans the jerboas had made to meet the situation. It wasn’t just a matter, any more, of their homes being destroyed or their stores plundered – they could build new homes and gain back some of the crop. This was altogether more serious. They were being subjected to massacres aimed at exterminating them once and for all. This slaughter, they declared, must cease.

A young jerboa spoke, in a tone that expressed hatred and gloating joy together.

‘Today,’ he said, ‘a snake bit one of the women in the camp. She’s lying between life and death.’

Killing wasn’t the sole prerogative of human beings! There were animals and insects and other creatures that could kill even more efficiently than humans could. Humans might have their traps and rifles, their scythes and axes and hatchets, but some creatures had weapons, like poison, that were deadlier still. True, the jerboas had been victims of snake venom themselves, but they went along with the famous saying: ‘On me and on my enemies, oh God!’

The jerboas were willing, accordingly, to leave their newly dug burrows to the snakes, as a base from which to attack and kill humans. It wasn’t, any more, just a conflict for a morsel of bread or some ears of barley. This was a struggle for survival or death, based on a new set of rules for relations between humans and jerboas, come into force with the arrival of this second group of bloodthirsty humans. Them or us – that was the rule now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.