Excerpts from
Grill
By Ib Michael
We parked on a mesa with a view over the long valley. You brought out prayer mats and left me to enjoy a stupendous sight. The sun rose over the mountains like a quivering reflection off water. Down in the valley there were clusters of skyscrapers, adobe houses 10 to 12 floors high. It was like a model of Manhattan made from sun-dried clay. As the sun broke through they resembled ceramics beginning to glow in the oven. The minarets reflected the light from their golden blue tiles on the onion-shaped cupola; the muezzin’s voice carried far and deep between the mountains:
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!
Several more people arrived, and they tuned into each other, a choir with echoes reaching as far as the edge of the high plateau. You could hear peace descend over the valley . It was such a golden moment that my breath caught in my throat.
You came straight from prayers with that same transfigured sheen over your face, and I turned to you in gratitude for the world you had shown me and which you loved so deeply. We trundled down the side of the mountain in silence. A flock of women dressed in black were walking along the road with their extremely high, pointed witches’ hats bobbing up and down. They turned away to cover their faces as we crunched by. Tofick was driving with an inner devotion and the gravel under our tyres merely whispered.
We came to a halt in front of the town gates of Shibam. The crows sat side by side on the town wall. There was a market: lines of stalls and windbreaks, women sitting in the sand in front of their clay pitchers and children playing. A few lorries drove up, some transporting passengers, the others goods. Men and youngsters were unloading them. I saw a whole lorry full of beehives, the type of beehive that is moved around to gather honey in the short season when the desert thrives. The marketplace hummed with life. There were piles of dates, oranges and hot bread. We were thirsty, tired.
Translated by Barbara Haveland
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