{"id":8773,"date":"2022-06-15T08:53:57","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T06:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=8773"},"modified":"2023-06-14T09:40:12","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T07:40:12","slug":"karim-kattan-the-gravedigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/karim-kattan-the-gravedigger\/","title":{"rendered":"Karim Kattan: “The Gravedigger”"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Karim Kattan<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The beautiful young woman\u2019s face felt familiar. She had started coming a few weeks ago, and every time, he was left pondering. A familiar face. He didn\u2019t exactly recognize it, but he know he had been intimate with something that lurked beneath the grey eyes, the thick eyebrows, the olive complexion. She painted a striking picture, in her white dress, standing straight and stiff, in front of the white shrine that marked the entrance to the graveyard. Behind her, the endless yellow and blue expanses of the desert and the sky stretched to infinity.<\/p>\n

Even in the constant fog of his mind, he understood that this graveyard was something of a miracle. Here, in the middle of this blighted, sunburnt barrenness of a country; here in this blistering wasteland where colors were like the ashes of old pictures, here where men came to throw their dead like trash, flowers bloomed. It was magical, he conceded. Perhaps the sheer number of rotting bodies made the soil particularly fertile; perhaps it had been so preordained before existence itself by God; or maybe a trickster spirit had spread these flowers, this fake oasis, to ensnare the souls of men. He had many theories; he enjoyed spending the mornings when no one visited him pondering on the origin of flowers.<\/p>\n

Few of his theories were joyful; mostly, he believed these flowers were the result of a cataclysm. Every single one of them, like a hex holding him hostage. This theory made sense; he liked it. It explained why he had never mustered the courage to leave the graveyard. It would have been a simple matter, he imagined: he only needed to push open the small metallic door next to the shrine, take a few steps, and he\u2019d be out. That was the only way: on the other side, where he buried the bodies, the desert was \u2014 strictly speaking \u2014 infinite.<\/p>\n

As far as he could tell, no one had ever asked him to dig graves. He couldn\u2019t remember when it had all started. He could not recall anything that happened before. He knew he\u2019d had a life before this life. In the first years, he used to try to remember. Now, when he focuses on the time before, he quickly grows tired and his memory bumps into an invisible wall. Something was behind it; an answer, a recollection; he can see it in the distance, but he cannot access it. Recently, he had stopped trying. And, eventually, most of the attributes of his personhood had started fading. Sometimes, he wondered if he was a shadow of a person; but some things \u2014 his vision distorted by the heat at high noon, the rough edges in his thoughts, the way his lungs felt like they were shrinking and he would choke \u2014 reminded him that he was more than a shadow; he was a body that could feel pain. He knew, darkly, that he had been familiar with bodies that feel pain.<\/p>\n

He only dug at dusk and in the early evening, when everything turned orange, then purple, then black. Before that, he would sit in the shade of a palm tree, with the shrine looming behind him, and drink tea. He often had visitors. Over the years, he had started understanding things about them, according to the hours at which they arrived. Those who came in the early morning were the brisk kind; business-like and wound up, they sat straight on the chair and took small, perfunctory sips from their teacup. They knew why they were here and left quickly. They made sense of their emotions and disposed of them like tasks on a list. Whereas those of the afternoon were slower, and uncertain. They were the messy ones. They were weak, timid, and their emotions were oceanic, messy.<\/p>\n

As for the bodies he buried, he figured they came from the country he had belonged to. He knew that because the visitors spoke his language and because he recognized how they had died. Often, they were maimed and contorted. He knew the method. He had \u2014 it was a light shimmering in a corner of his brain \u2014 seen it done to bodies. Choking, spitting up, turning blue.<\/p>\n

Memory was a tricky thing, he\u2019d tell the visitors. God has a way of making you forget. You could spend your life thinking you remembered all the details of your past and wake up one day and there you are, a guy with a shovel, dead bodies that turn up every morning, and all of eternity to bury them. Yes, dimly, he remembered bodies tortured like that but could not, for the life of him, tell whether he had been a perpetrator or a victim. These memories emerged and disappeared as if under the tentative light of a bulb dangling from the ceiling and barely pushing the edges of shadows. He knew he had been up close and his body seemed to remember something, a movement he made mechanically, something he did or could have done to bodies that made them writhe in pain. These memories were wedged somewhere in the crevices of his mind. Groans, elbows, fingers and eyelids.<\/p>\n

No one had told him what the huge, rectangular white building at the entrance of the graveyard was. It just made sense that it would be a shrine. He never went in. Over the years, it had started becoming something of a friend; a giant who watched over him. Maybe that\u2019s why he had never felt lonely.<\/p>\n

\n

The very beautiful young woman came every morning, before the sun set the air ablaze. He recognized beauty, still. He didn\u2019t know why, he didn\u2019t know the use of it, but he recognized it like the distant taste of something with which he had once been familiar. And so, on her first visit, she sat, near the entrance of the graveyard, shaded by the looming white giant and the palm tree. She ran her finger on the surface of the small, white metal table to remove some dust. She shuffled on her small, white metal chair. There were only two chairs, one for her and one for him. He was never visited by groups.<\/p>\n

He enjoyed having a cup of tea with the visitors. Some came once, and paid him a yearly sum to upkeep the graves, change the flowers, water the plants. He was not very diligent about the flowers and plants. His was the domain of corpses, not flowers. Yet, they had to pay him every year. After all, he was the only one they could count on. He had no use for the money \u2014 everything he needed was right here \u2014 but it amused him to swindle them like that. It gave him pleasure to see them think they could own him with money. It made him realize how far from the realm of humans he now was.<\/p>\n

He knew what he looked like to them: an ancient gnome, as ancient as the land, with a face like a prune and eyes so black you thought he was blind. He knew it unsettled them when he looked at them and it seemed he was studying their souls with surgical precision. Sometimes they paid him just so he would stop looking. He remembered using that look, both vapid and deep, in his older life. He could use it to strike fear in people\u2019s hearts.<\/p>\n

He had buried her father recently, she informed him, and she had come to visit. He felt she was scared, or upset, by this little shell of a sunburnt man with whom she found herself alone on the edge of the earth. He could not remember all the corpses, he answered. \u201cI understand,\u201d she said but her demeanor indicated that she, in fact, did not understand, suspected him of lying and would press him to tell the truth. She smiled at him: \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d She asked this in the way a lady will ask her porter his name; to extend both her benevolence and her authority on him.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the corners of his brain, a light flickered occasionally, reminding him that his name had been Amin. \u201cAmin,\u201d he said. \u201cAn honor to meet you, O believer,\u201d she answered her eyes holding his gaze. \u201cAre you sure you do not remember where you buried my father? It must have been only a month ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not remember. \u201cLook,\u201d he said, \u201csee how big this graveyard is? How do you expect me to remember?\u201d The flowers rustled softly in the wind. \u201cI understand. Thank you, Amin,\u201d she said, taking his hand. \u201cIf you happen to recall, at any time, where my father is buried, please let me know. I will come back.\u201d She spoke like a lady; her accent was all supple vowels and subdued consonants; the singsong of cities of the north. There were syllables that were so harsh she did not even pronounce them, as if the words had come down from the moon and remained light as feathers.<\/p>\n

He resented that she made him feel like a worker, like her own personal bellboy. He was the gravedigger, who struck fear in the hearts of men and before that he had been \u2014 something. Something no less terrifying than a gravedigger. This flash of pride was new; a feeling he had been unfamiliar with for decades.<\/p>\n

The young woman came back every day. She brought lilies. It was very unimaginative, she coyly conceded, but she had no idea what sort of flowers to bring. She didn\u2019t feel brave enough to go looking for her father\u2019s grave yet, so she laid the flowers at the entrance before sitting for tea. Every morning, wearing her wide-brimmed hat, she drank a small cup of tea and gazed at the distance. Somewhere, over there, was her father\u2019s grave. Did he remember today, where he buried him, she asked every day. And every day he said he did not. She looked at him, like he was a kid. She had a way. They did not speak much.<\/p>\n

But ever since she had started coming, a searchlight had lit up in his mind. He came to understand that she truly felt <\/em>like someone he had known in his previous life. As if that person\u2019s soul had slipped into her. He wanted her to leave. He explained that the graveyard was huge. Out of scale, really. He couldn\u2019t remember when it had become so huge. He did remember that, at some point, years ago, it was only a modest square of flowers where a mere dozen of people were buried. But people kept dying, and the flowers spreading. Contorted bodies, bodies tortured and thrown here, day in and day out by an invisible hand, fodder for the flowers. Today, the graveyard was a labyrinth. His domain. His life\u2019s work. The young woman sat on the floor, near the entrance of the graveyard. She gazed into the distance. \u201cHow far,\u201d she asked aloud, \u201cto my father\u2019s tomb?\u201d<\/p>\n

This is my life\u2019s work, he felt like answering. And somewhere, in my life\u2019s work, is your father\u2019s grave. I do not know where. He is one body among millions. One wrenched, bulging, disfigured carrion among the flowers. Yet, the searchlight in his brain continued looking in every fold of his memory for that sense of someone she embodied. Ever since she had started coming in his garden, the outline of his half-forgotten memories was slowly becoming more specific; sounds and colors arose. They were much clearer than before, though he could not make sense of them. Faces disfigured by pain, and screams and eyes eyes eyes looking at him searing his brain. He could feel how the pain spasmed and throbbed. Was she one of those eyes from long ago?<\/p>\n

One day, he remembered something. It was merely a something<\/em> he could barely formulate. A general direction of where her father might be. His sense of time and distance had been warped over the years. He only knew the rising sun and the setting sun. The next morning, she arrived, carrying her usual bouquet of lilies. \u201cGood morning,\u201d she said. He pointed in the general direction and said, \u201csomewhere over there.\u201d She looked. \u201cHow far away from here?\u201d she asked. A day, or two perhaps, to the grave. Eyes eyes eyes etched clearly in his brain, opened up in surprise and pain, and the darkness surrounding them.<\/p>\n

\u201cA day, or two perhaps,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou better have tea first,\u201d he suggested. They sat at the table. It was a surprisingly fresh morning. He could tell she confused the morning\u2019s crispness with hope. Weather, he wanted to tell her, is not an emotion. She asked him if people often came to visit. They did, yes, but most often they stayed here with him, drinking tea and looking wistfully at the horizon. She asked what the shapes were, that she saw swinging in the distance.<\/p>\n

Well, he answered. More death. You see, those who set out to find their loved ones \u2014 they rarely ever came back. He never was curious enough to wonder what they had become. Many of them simply vanished. Some, he assumed, overwhelmed with grief, were swallowed by their loved one\u2019s grave. Or perhaps the anger, the resentment they felt and could never express anymore, made them explode. Others, he imagined, died of thirst somewhere along the road and became one with the flowers. He saw her clutch the bottle she brought with her. He also guessed \u2014 but how could he be sure? \u2014 that in this out of scale cemetery, some just lay down after walking for hours, tired, and turned into dirt, into the ground, into flowers. It wasn\u2019t his job to know, or care.<\/p>\n

There were trees, too, lining the little paths that connected one grave to the next. He\u2019d often stumble upon one of the visitors that had hanged themselves, above the grave of whoever they had been visiting. He never saw them hang themselves. It always happened far away, or behind his back. He would not have intervened anyway. Who was he, he mused, to decide who gets to die and how? Keeping someone from dying, he reflected, was as dangerous as murdering them. Both actions dispossessed them from their lives. But occasionally he would discover a new body hanging from a tree. The horizon, in fact, was dotted with them. \u201cWhat a horrible sight,\u201d the young woman had remarked. He did not think so. It filled his heart \u2014 whatever was left of it \u2014 with a sense of wonder. That people were able to thus take charge of their lives. He usually left them there. Whenever, in the random itinerary of his walks and burials, he came close to one, he would cut down the rope and add the body to his list of burials to come.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t know which bodies ended up here exactly. He suspected it was those whose lives were unimportant to those around them and those who remained ungrieved. There was a general aura of malice to this place, which he\u2019d been breathing in for decades. So many of these bodies turned up alone, washed up like trash on his shore. The visitors, often, reeked of guilt and regret, of things unsaid. He told her that. \u201cDon\u2019t we all feel guilt and regret?\u201d she asked. \u201cEven the most well-adjusted\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

He tried to muster the most mysterious gaze he could and interrupted: \u201cYou did not like your father very much, did you?\u201d She looked slightly aghast. It was a wild guess. If her father was buried here, her relationship to him was bound to be complicated. \u201cHe probably wasn\u2019t the best father there is,\u201d she said, and, with a flash of sudden guilt, she added \u201cbut he was my father and I loved him dearly.\u201d The gravedigger had learned, in this place, that saying that one loved someone dearly was a substitute phrase used to express the wish that they had never existed; it was code for, \u201cI have been saddled with the existence of this person, living or dead, they will weigh heavily on my chest forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gravedigger\u2019s brain seemed to have been split in two. His own memories, his sense of self, had long ago disintegrated. Only these eyes in the shadows, and the flames, and sometimes the shrieks, remained. But he was able to understand other people\u2019s minds with great ease. \u201cHow did he die?\u201d he asked, and the young woman did not answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you kill him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did no such thing!\u201d<\/p>\n

She was not lying. They remained silent for some time. \u201cYou wish you\u2019d had the opportunity, don\u2019t you?\u201d he asked. The young woman looked at the horizon and sighed. She did, yes, if she was being honest. She smiled at him: \u201cWell, I guess that\u2019s why I am here. I might have provoked his death by wishing it.\u201d He thought that was rather stupid but did not say so. \u201cI will see you tomorrow,\u201d she said. He watched her leave, her white dress billowing among the flowers, a blue parasol in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. In her trail, he saw the eyes emerge, in the shadows of the flames, asking for help or pleading with him to stop. He could hear cries of anguish coming from unseen mouths. Then, he stood up, finished his cup in one gulp, and grabbed the shovel which he had left upright on the wall of the shrine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Le Jardin d\u2019Afrique (photo Rachid Koraichi).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He had no idea where the woman went when she left the graveyard. He did not know what existed around this ever-expanding place. He really did not understand where exactly he was situated and did not really care. He saw the sand swirling in the distance, and the heat, which made him assume he was in some kind of desert. Sometimes, it also looked like the sky. He imagined her getting in a car, a convertible, and driving down a pristine highway, suspended up in the clouds, until she reached a small bed and breakfast where she stayed every night.<\/p>\n

She had started telling him about her father and herself. Her recent memory had been wiped clean as soon as she set foot in the graveyard. How she had gotten here, she did not know, nor why her father was buried here. She recollected everything in her life up to the point where she arrived in this place. She knew she could remember, if she\u2019d only tear down the wall in her mind that kept her from remembering. He recognized this. The first time she arrived, she had looked at the patch of dirt for what felt like hours. On the horizon, the winds of sand swirled, eddied and whirled in shapeshifts all around the desert garden. Then, she had taken a breath and pushed the small metallic door. And that\u2019s where the recent memories started.<\/p>\n

Her father had been in prison for as long as she remembered. A political prisoner; her father, the hero. They visited him with her mother, when they were allowed to. It was rare. Her father, the hero. Yet, she never could help it: she resented his absence. She hated him for it.<\/p>\n

A prison: the gravedigger knew what that was like. It echoed in his mind, something of his past life. Children and adults brought in the dead of night. The young woman was blabbering on, \u201cWhat\u2019s the use of being in prison, I wanted to ask him, if you can\u2019t be there for your daughter?\u201d but he wanted her to stop talking for a minute, he was trying to focus; there were dark corners and living, trembling bodies brought to him in the night. As a child, she had assumed her father wanted nothing to do with her. And so, she had built her adult life, on the assumption that her father\u2019s absence, therefore, her father\u2019s politics, had shaped her and \u2014 he couldn\u2019t follow the thread of her thoughts, and did not care. It struck him, now, that these bodies were not from his country. They were from the other one. He remembered now, boots in the face, in the groin. He had been in charge of \u2014 no, he hadn\u2019t been in charge of anything. He had been a handyman, an unthinking, complicit torturer. He remembered he took exceptional, vicious pleasure in \u2014 she hadn\u2019t stopped talking.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I was relieved when I learned of his passing,\u201d she was saying. And then, she said, she felt robbed; robbed of the neatness of comeuppance; the ribbon-tied ending she deserved with her father. His head pulsed, as he remembered. Yes, she came from that other land, the one from where the bodies came back in his previous life, and in this one; the land where he and his kin spread death like a million colorful flowers.<\/p>\n

Now, in this half-remembered world, she gave herself up to her rage. She felt her body grow more incandescent by the day. She had been taught to breathe in and out when rage took over, she told the gravedigger. It had never worked: she focused on the breath, travelling from her chest to her head and all the way down to her feet. The air seemed to carry her anger, to the innermost parts of her body, as if she were feeding on rage.<\/p>\n

What did she hope to do, the gravedigger wondered aloud as if she weren\u2019t here, when she found her father\u2019s grave? She did not know, she answered. She was moved by rage beyond her control. It was something that fed itself, that grew and took over as if her body were rioting against her mind.<\/p>\n

A riot in the body. The phrase flickered in his mind all day; he had heard it a long time ago, in his previous life. Political prisoner. This is a word he knew well too. The feeling that he knew something <\/em>of the woman persisted. For the first time in years (centuries? He did, sometimes, believe that he was in hell; it made sense that hell was an insipid eternity where the senses and the self were eroded and dulled beyond recognition) he was unsettled. His body felt off; and the world he lived in creaked. Eyes eyes eyes pleading and looking at him.<\/p>\n

Sometimes \u2014 very rarely, and those were the worst times \u2014 the graveyard would lose a bit of its geography; everything would shift, for a couple of minutes, ever so slightly and his head would reel, and the universe would start sliding and these were the moments when he was properly terrified because, he would start hearing yells and shrieks and pleadings and heavy breathing coming from the graves and from the flowers. This is when the graveyard felt maleficent. This is when he would curl up close to the shrine, eyes wide shut, hands behind his head and elbows covering his ears and wait for the graveyard to settle, for silence to creep back in.<\/p>\n

She came earlier still the next day. She brought no lilies. The wind was fresh, and the world was silent. Time spread before them both, like a promise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is hope,\u201d she declared and, once again, he wanted to remind her that it was not because the flowers were vivid today and the wind fresh like a kiss that there was hope. Hope was of another order entirely. \u201cThere is hope,\u201d she repeated, with determination and, opening her umbrella, she bid him farewell and walked in the direction of her father\u2019s grave. He remained in the chair, watching her walk, a delicate walk, a walk for theatre stages and movies, a walk for leisurely sunny afternoons in well-tended and demarcated gardens. It was a polite, ridiculous walk. He watched her become smaller and smaller for what felt like hours. Eventually, as the sun reached its zenith and seared the land, she disappeared over the horizon.<\/p>\n

\n

Days passed. The gravedigger went back to his usual life. His name faded back to the recesses of his brain. No one came. It was the first time that no one had come along for weeks and months, he felt. He reverted to the unthinking thing he was. He shovelled. He dug. He placed bodies in the earth. He watched the flowers, which held no beauty for him, grow. No one came. Bodies piled up and, as if they were the most precious of fertilizers, they gave birth to increasingly more colorful flowers. His graveyard, he reflected, was a continent. Every morning he saw flames and from the flames eyes that begged him to \u2014 stop, help them, save them, kill them?<\/p>\n

Some weeks or months later, as he was making his way to a further plot of land, the gravedigger happened upon her body. She lay, as if curled asleep, near a tree. He recognized her. He remembered his own name. He was amazed that he recognized her, amazed that he remembered his own name. The believer. She was the first visitor he had ever remembered. It struck a profound fear in his body, memories reverberating. He planted the shovel firmly in the ground next to her and, gripping the handle, knelt close to her face. He knew it should have been impossible, but he swore he could hear her breathe.<\/p>\n

There was only one thing to do. He patted the earth around her father\u2019s grave. He was soon on all fours, patting the earth, looking for an appropriate spot. And then he found it. It was only a meter away from her father\u2019s own. The earth was slightly wet. It would be easy to dig a grave right here. He got up, grabbed the shovel, and started digging.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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