photo Tina Bexson
David Skinner positioned his rifle between two jagged edges of lilac quartz rock and concentrated on calculating the lines of fire on a point below him. He had rec-ed this exact spot each day for the last two weeks, studying the lay of the land, the position of the morning sun, the direction of the wind. His preparations had been quite meticulous.
A stream of sweat began to sting his eyes and obscure his vision. Settling back on his haunches, he took an uncustomary rest. Although he had decided to save the soft water he had so lovingly collected from the spring during his climb up the slippery mountain range, he felt too weak, too parched to wait any longer. Guzzling from a flask, he gazed down at the view and noted how everything looked just as it had done when he had first arrived in the Ameln Valley with his wife five years ago.
Immediately below, the villages were scattered haphazardly on the lower mountain slopes between the spring line and the valley floor. Where they followed the contour lines and irrigation canals, the sporadic orchards of almond trees appeared as thick clouds of camouflaging pink blossom. The houses which also appeared pinkish were constructed with layers and layers of red rock and sand, and fewer larger, thicker lines of white quartz stones to provide strength and stability. Some of the houses had delicate and intricate touches of Moorish influence but these he noticed were usually the oldest houses which had all too often began to crumble away. The mosques though continued to remain the best maintained and most brightly painted buildings in every village.
Hovering in the minaret towering above the mosque of Timna, the village nearest to him, David spotted the outline of a figure. He fitted the telescopic sight and zoomed in to find the muezzin sipping mint tea before he began adhan, the call to prayer.
He had always found the sound of the call soothing. He remembered the time his wife had laughed affectionately when he told her that the reason why he had thought each of the dozen or so villages calls for prayer began a few seconds after those of their neighbouring village was because the muezzins’had not set their watches in unison. When he realised it was because they were listening out for their neighbour’s crier’s chants as a signal to start their own, David had felt a moment of joy that he decided not to share with his wife. From that point on he always thought of the first chant as acting like an oratory version of a flickering beam gradually lighting up the whole valley. It meant each isolated village was in a regular stream of communication in a way a set time or a phone call could never produce.
By now, he thought, she’d usually have Houssine trailing behind her on her walk to the orchard, the ends of his djellaba caressing his ankles. But David had studied the Islamic calendar and knew today was Mawlid, the beginning of the festival to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. Equivalent to Christmas for Christians, it was one of the most significant dates on the Islamic calendar. Everyone would attend prayer at their local mosque instead of relying on the usual trusted spot facing Mecca in their houses or places of work. Houssine would be one of a few men present since most emigrated to work in the grocery and hotel trade in Casablanca or Tangier while the women stayed at home to farm the land. David used his sight to scan the fields beyond the village for clusters of women. Like majestic insects rotating in a near perfect circle picking lavender grass and depositing it in the baskets enveloping their backs. But the fields were empty. They must already be making their way along the track back to the mosque.
He knew that once midday had passed and the sun began its gradual tilt downwards, adhan would commence for the second prayer of the day. By then, he hoped, his wife would be on the outskirts of the village, safely tucked away in the orchard, ambling towards the spring. As she usually did with Houssine after they’d chatted and occasionally dipped into his copy of the Quran, she would be about to start the task of gently weeding and watering the circle of small flowers the villagers had planted next to the pounding water.
He had a while yet, but he would have to be prepared. He had not managed to get hold of a silencer, and although the call for prayer would camouflage the sound of the gun, it only lasted a few minutes.
He stood up to carefully re-position the Lee Enfield Mark 5 rifle between the two jagged edges of rock.
He had managed to steal the old British army rifle from an elderly farmer who left it unhidden in a tiny cave at the bottom of the mountain. It would have been used to shoot ground squirrels and he knew he was taking the man’s livelihood along with his rifle. The beautiful reddish-grey creatures with their single broad white stripe down their left side were on sale hanging from arms of children gathered at the roadside. Having survived on a diet of argon nuts, they made a succulent sweet Tagine as long as they were killed by a bullet to the head rather than the belly.
He could not concentrate. Something had hindered him and the task at hand had eluded him again. He re-adjusted the telescopic sight and re-calculated the lines of fire. He pushed the cartridges in, pulled the bolt back then moved it forwards. The clicks were reassuring. This methodical process of loading weapons had been missing in the army. There they had primarily used Self Loading Rifles though these had proven invaluable on the streets of Belfast and on the windswept islands of Las Malvinas. Exactly where he’d last fired a weapon, David was uncertain. He had started to recall many incidents during his last few years of active service but none of these recollections felt satisfying or substantial to him anymore. Instead, he found himself looking further back. To the time he took his first shot.
‘My little warrior’, that’s what his father had said to wake him on that special day so many decades ago, his mouth still reeking of the night, his brown flying jacket freshly buttered with saddle soap. ‘How’s my fucking little warrior boy?’ Then, on a flat frosty shooting range in rural Essex, his father had leant over his shoulders and teased his thin arms and frozen hands over the Purdey double barrel. Once his reluctant trigger finger was re-positioned, the target – a solitary clay pigeon in the form of an inverted, fluorescent orange saucer – was thrown from an airborne styled ‘trap’. The ten-year old had experienced an unexpected excitement and unknown urgency. With the trigger pulled clear, David had reeled under the recoil, but kept focused, anticipating the pieces of pitch and pulverised limestone rock splintering and cascading across the milky dawn sky before tearing through the glistening white shrouds covering a cluster of elderberry trees. But there had been no cascade. The brightly painted ‘pigeon’ had continued arcing – uninterrupted. A member of his father’s entourage had hesitatingly called ‘Bird Away’ before scribbling, briefly, onto a hand-held score board.
Transfixed as he still was by his father’s suffocating sigh of despair from that day, he almost missed recognising the muezzin’s echoing bellows of ‘Allah’ as they began to emanate from the mosque of Timna. Within seconds though his telescopic sight panned in a perfect arch from the muezzin in the minaret to a point through which he swiftly picked up the orange glow of a head scarf gliding through the orchard blossom. He zoomed in on the spot between his wife’s beautiful blue-grey eyes. But his hands began to shake. And he could not understand why all of a sudden he felt so, so cold. Despite the over-bearing heat, it was as though his whole body had become encapsulated in a coffin of arctic sea ice.
Tina Bexson lives between Sinai, Cairo and London, and has done for many years. She is also Ars Notoria’s Middle East Editor. Tina is a freelance researcher and news and features writer for both national newspapers and magazines. Publications include: the Guardian, London’s Evening Standard, The Times, Ars Notoria, Environmental Health Journal, Environmental Health News, Public Health News, Your Life Magazine, Hotdog film Magazine, Mental Health Today Magazine, Jack, Maxim, Midweek, and Living Abroad Magazine. She writes about health, psychology, war, the military, crime, criminology, prison, psychiatry, social issues, environment, lifestyle, film and the arts and does Travel photojournalism,
Discover more from Ars Notoria
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.