A SCARLET STAMP OR LIKE LITTLE TREASURES BY: ATEF BSAISO

In the largest house of a town by the sea there is a small, cluttered kitchen bathed in the aged, well-worn scent of spice that floats thickly on the air. It is a room that looks over the valley of the hill the house is built on, above a beach bordered by a gnarled wooden window frame (adorned with hanging nets of garlic, and onions, bottles of olive oil and small vials of spices and flowerpots of basil and mint growing on the sill) that shroud a vista of sandy grey dunes against green water bathed in the late gloaming of twilight. Four people – a family – lie on the floor of this kitchen; they are dead.

A woman and two boys have been heaped into a corner. The fourth body is that of a man and has been left where it is, legs emerging halfway from under the kitchen table where two men in green uniforms and thick boots are sitting and eating. These men have been walking for hours with guns and heavy bags hanging off their shoulders and are tired enough that a fat hairy corpse does not unsettle their appetite.

In a large dish on the table they have found something the colour and texture of red mud, a thick paste from which they periodically fish out large chunks of cold meat. One of them thinks to himself that it looks disgusting and smells disgusting and is a food that does not compare to some of the fantastic things they have eaten in other places; but he has come to this place and he has killed these people and he understands that he is here for something and he will eat their food so that he knows it.

The door opens. Through it, moving slowly and falteringly, an old woman walks in. She is wearing a long white robe and her head is covered; her face is wrinkled, her eyes sunken and her small mouth cages teeth that have diminished and yellowed with age. She whispers and mutters softly to herself and bends her head low as if to acknowledge herself in conversation. When her bare, small feet step in warm blood she looks up with wide eyes and lips quivering in shock.

she stares at the two men who have stood up and have raised their guns in surprise; behind them she can make out bodies and she can see the scarlet streams with which her kitchen has been inundated. But with a quiet moan of sudden anger she steps over the legs that are sticking out from under the kitchen table and pushes past the huge guns. Grabbing the large dish of food from the table and clutching it protectively to her body, she turns around and stands resolutely before the two soldiers.

Her eyes have been hollowed, and blackened, in rage and in defiance. Six days before they had stood and watched on a morning when the sky was very pink as in their back garden an old servant had taken a long knife and cut the throat out of a large sheep. From outside the front gate they heard shouting and loud voices.

Their house was large but it stood comfortably within the busy neighborhood and for its size had no problem squeezing tightly to the street outside so that if one stood at the front gate and held an arm through the railings they could easily brush the people passing by.

The old woman had stood in the purple grass with her young grandson standing before her and leaning against her legs while she clasped her hands lovingly around his neck. The sheep’s blood flowed down along the cold stone ground and when its eyes had gone blue and it had kicked out for the last time the servant who had slaughtered it bent forward, and dipped his hand into the pool of blood by the animal’s dead body.

With his hand reddened to the wrist he stood up and walked towards the house and made sure that he found a stretch of wall that could be seen over the gate and fence from the street; stretching his arm he pressed his palm upon the white concrete so that when he drew it back to himself a scarlet stamp was left, and in its fresh wetness seemed to glow vividly for a few minutes afterward. The old woman nod in satisfaction once he had done this because now she knew that everyone who saw the print of the butcher’s hand on her house would know about the sacrifice they carried out and God would see it and protect her home.

She had bought the animal many months ago when her grandson had been born and she had raised it lovingly and painstakingly as bid for his health. Now she quietly whispered to him and removed him from her embrace, so that he could walk up to the corpse and, carefully and methodically, jump over it; seven times, with each landing drops of blood flying upwards and painting red speckles on his legs.

Once the sheep is skinned and gutted the cuts of meat will be wrapped in paper and loaded onto a cart pulled by a mule, which she will ride out into the town, to share the meat out among the poor who will kiss her hands and thank her and call her ‘mother’.

But soon after that she will be looking out her kitchen window while she heats water in a large pot in which she soaks the ground sumac that will give a red colour to the mud-like paste she will make and where she will bury these chunks of meat, like little treasures.

She will stare out through the glass and will see the ocean. But as she looks she will hear loud sounds coming from behind the house that she has heard before and recognises – the sound of tanks rolling along the road, and many marching feet coming closer.

But her window will only look out to the sea, and she thinks only of the approaching meal, which she must make with the worst cuts of meat, because the rest has been given away. Nevertheless she diligently sets about her work, hopeful, resolute and defiant; soon, for everyone, there will be no other things.

Bratislava, 25 February 2011