Home » Libya » Ibrahim Al-Koni »نزيف الحجر (The Bleeding of the Stone))
Ibrahim Al-Koniنزيف الحجر (The Bleeding of the Stone))
Our hero is Asouf, a Bedouin goat herder in the Wadi Matkhandoush area. The area is famous for its caves which have drawings and engravings on them dating back many hundreds of years. The area had been famous for hunting various animals, some of which can be seen in the drawings and paintings on the cave walls though Asouf recognised only a few of them. The ones that he does recognise include the gazelle and thewaddan, a type of barbary sheep. These animals have now been virtually hunted out to extinction.
We learn a bit about his father. You’ve chosen to live alone,” he told him, “you have to hunt the waddan alone. It’s a thing like thirst, like hunger, like life in the wilderness;. However, despite this statement, he is very reluctant to hunt the waddan and refuses to tell his son why. Eventually his mother tells him the story. His father continues to teach him how to shoot, firing at rocks, and also how to shoot the gazelle but not the waddan. Asouf’s father does occasionally hunt them and had a battle royal with two individuals. He won the first battle. But when it came to the second battle, he did not take his rifle wanting to keep the rifle and bullets for when he has to defend himself and his family against the Italian invasion.The waddan won the second battle Asouf found the body of his father, not gored as he expected but with a broken neck either from a fall or because the waddan pushed him off the rock.
After his father died Asouf is was left alone with his mother and his goats but seems to be quite happy about this. She has told him why his father was reluctant to hunt waddaHe is now sthe man of the family, but is very reluctant to approach caravans and barter goats for grain, because he is shy and afraid of other peopleHowever, there is a war on, with Italians, and the Italians are also about to invade Abysssinia. They pressgang.young Libyan men and Asouf is one of the young men they capture but, like agazelle, he manages to escape.
One day he sees a waddan among his herd of goats and, in particular a male getting friendly with one of the female goats. Despite the fate of his father, he decides to try and get hold of the waddan and throws a rope over its head. Not surprisingly.the waddan resists and drags.Asouf over a long distance.Asouf is tired d out and injured and the waddan wins the battle. While he has been away, there has been a flood in thecave where he and his mother live.He finds that she has been killed, probably by wolves and, and, her bones have been scattered by the flood.
He now continues his solitary life and does not seem to bother about it.
Tourists do come but it is only when a representative of the the Archeological Department comes that things change. He is sgiven a small salary, which he tries to reject but cannot and is made the official in charge of the area with the responsibility forfseeing visitors. do not steal anything or damage damage the area.
Asouf knows all the caves in the area including those inhabited by jinns. He does not show all of them to the tourists.T he Archeological Department gives him some food as do the tourists in the form of canned food and the like. He has now learned to recognise the sound of the engines of the vehicles visitors, who are almost always Christians with the Muslims rarely visit visiting.
However, one day he does receives a visit from two Muslims. They are not interested in the cave paintings but in hunting, with one of them saying it is greatest joy is in eating meat. He wants to hunt the.waddan and gazelle but does not believeAsouf when he tells them that they have been hunted out. They are sure that he knows where to find them.
The two Muslims harass him, trying to persuade him to eat meat although he says that he does not eat meat. Is there anyone in the world
who doesn’t eat meat? Apart, that is, from those phantoms they say live on the tops
of the Himalayas?.
The most aggressive of the two men is interestingly namedCain Adam and we learn why he is so named, about his background and why he has this insatiable love for meat eating. Asouf as we have learned ledhas given up meat eating eating since his experience with thewaddan. Cain tries to force him to eat meat. They return later with a jeep and insist that Asouf accompany them an d show them where the gazelle’s and waddan are. Whenever they ask the question, he has only one response: Only through dust will the son of Adam be filled!. They become ever more brutal.
John Parker, is a captain at the Hweilis . He is keenly interested in Sufi thought and of course he is a carnivore. decided to use his isolation, here in the western mountain, to try to unravel the secret: to taste the flesh of this legendary animal, in the hope that God would open the door to him, that he’d know the bliss
of seeing Him as he truly was,
It all gets more complicated as Cain, the inveterate te gazelle hunter comes up with something that he had not expected – a. female gazelle talks to him. It. gets even more complicated when John learns that the lastwaddan was exterminated in 1627. Cain finally meets his waddan .
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As in his other books Al-Koni moves between the real world and mystical worlds world. Much of the novel does take splace in the real world, but we gradually learn that the link between the two worlds is ever present and, as some of the characters discover, the links should not be ignored.
h3>Publishing history
First published in 19922 by aDar Al-Tanweerr, Beirut
First published in English in 2002 by Interlink
Translated by Salma K. Jayyus