had hidden in the hunters' cave. He was, she said, careful how he used them. He'd laughed that day, remembering what his father had once said: “A man in the desert must be sparing with two things: water and bullets.” In the desert, he'd gone on, water and bullets were like air, the very foundation of life. If you ran out of the first, you'd die of thirst, and if you ran out of the second, some enemy, man or beast or snake, would strike you down. Water and bullets were the life blood of a lone man. He could go without anything else, but not those. Asouf had no doubt his mother was right. His father had hidden those bullets in the cave against a day of misfortune, so he'd be able to affirm his strength and manhood. He'd shoot a bullet in the enemy's face before he died himself—he wouldn't let them gloat as they dragged him along, trussed up like a lamb! It's no shame to die with your hands around a rifle. The shame is when you die bound like a lamb. The shame is to fall alive into the enemy's hands, to be a prisoner. No one falls prisoner except the coward or the man without a weapon.
That was why his father had chosen to hide a few bullets in the hunters' cave and go off to hunt the waddan unarmed. And that was why he'd died in such a fearful way. If he hadn't been so resolved not to be taken alive, hoarding his bullets against the day of misfortune, he would have been spared that hideous death.
For some days Asouf followed his father's tracks, and, when he found the traces of that struggle with the waddan in the Wadi Aynesis, fear gripped him. He followed the signs of the encounter, along the wadi, until he found blood spots on some stones, then drops of blood, widely scattered, on the sand in the wadi's heart. Was the wounded creature the waddan or his father? He had no way of knowing. The traces would appear, then disappear, would veer left toward the rugged slope with its covering of sharp black stones, then back to the sandy bed where palm trees and wild grasses grew here and there. Under a high palm tree the battle had grown fiercer. Traces were thick and numerous, one on the other. Had the old man tried to tie the savage beast to the trunk of this tall palm, before the waddan at last prevailed and dragged him a few steps across the wadi? Or—oh God!—had he gripped the beast by the horns, done what he himself had so often warned his son never to do? Nothing, his father had said, drove the waddan to frenzy like gripping him by the horns. It didn't matter how strong you were, how stirred by the hope of victory. If you once tried that, then the battle was lost. The waddan's madness lay in his horns. All his hidden savagery would wake, would boil over, and he'd launch his ferocious attack. The waddan was trying to escape now—he'd veered off toward the mountain. The wadi was getting deeper, the mountains higher. The waddan was drawing him on, toward that ugly, mysterious summit!
Asouf's heart started to pound as he sent his gaze upward. There, he sensed, something had happened—beneath the peak, or on the very top, or somewhere on the slopes. There were no traces of struggle visible now. He ran, panting, across the narrow wadi, between the two mountains. Ominous shadows lay over the pass. He turned left, scrambled swiftly up the steep slope. Suddenly a fetid smell seemed to assail his nostrils. His heart leaped. Nausea swept through him, and pain beat inside his head. The nearer his mad ascent took him toward the summit, the higher and sharper and blacker the rocks became. He was clambering on all fours now. The fetid smell grew stronger. Then, just beneath the ill-omened summit, near a long rock stretching several spans across the slope, he found the old man, lying on his back, his face toward the sky and his eyes empty. The face was blue, and large blue flies hovered over him. There was no sign of bleeding, not a single spot of blood, except for some scratches on the arms stretched out alongside his body.
The possessed waddan had caused him to break his neck, just as he himself had once made that other waddan do the same.
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