Moonglade I

[AXhemajli]

The Moonglade
by
The Pluviophile

1977
High mountains, a mysterious valley surrounded by seven other villages and in the middle of the two villages with the same name, a long, wide, green meadow field known as Rudake. Here, young people gathered every summer, especially at the time when there were no gadgets, no phones, and TVs had yet not come to the village. People enjoyed playing different games which strengthened them, thus training themselves to something yet to come but for which they were not aware. If there would be anything to discuss or decide, they understood it by the noise of a rifle shot in Rudake.

This place is even now on this day the biggest village in the whole country.

Our story begins with a group of peasants working in the fields. A light midday breeze makes them sing, chat, and work together happily. And as expected, a medium height woman is working with them, harvesting corn using a reaping hook to help her do the job. She is working among a lot of other men but they seem much weaker. The weather is hot, and the temperature is high, but she keeps on working. She has pain in her stomach. With the help of one of the other women- a Bosnian one-who happened to be married in the same family as her, she gets inside the house, not far away from the place they are working. Nearby, the shadow of tall trees from the forest makes the workers’ day easier.

The woman is pregnant, ready to give birth to a child. She had given birth to eight other children, and this will be her ninth. All the children were born at home. No doctors, no nurses around, just the old ways and the woman’s strength. She has a glass of water and asks the other woman, Khadija to close the door. When she does so and after closing the door and the windows, the weather changes, and the sky turns grey; they see clouds all over as if they were touching the ground. The raindrops start to hit the windows angrily. The wind blows harder and harder and the thunders continue to make a strange noise.

The bed was made of hay covered by a brown blanket, and the yellow pillows looked as if they were totally torn.

In the room, there was a fireplace Khadija sets it ablaze. Seeing she struggled to give birth to her new baby, the medium height woman asks Khadija to get out. She hesitates but knowing her well she gets out and hurriedly closes the door. After a while, there is a baby cry and to his mother’s surprise, he differs from all the other babies she had given birth up to now. Now only three of them were alive. She hopes that this one would be the fourth to survive. To his mothers’ surprise the infant baby boy moves and crawls towards the fireplace. Then she sees something beyond her imagination. This small baby can also fly. He didn’t fly high though, but he was not touching the ground either-it seemed that the gravity laws had already been broken. She wonders how this is possible and sees two signs on both sides of his arms. Are they dragon’s or angel’s wings? The mother had heard of stories from other people but never believed them and now she was experiencing a legend story herself.

She stands up and takes the boy in her hands, kisses him with tears in her eyes, and for the first time in her life she really feels scared. She isn’t afraid of herself. It is her new baby that makes her worry. No matter how hard she will try she thinks she cannot keep him alive. They said that no one like him ever survived.

What shall I do? Whom can I trust? God, give me strength and show me the right way.

The only person whom she could trust was her father-in-law. He was a knowledgeable man and was ready to give answers to the weirdest question you could ever ask. But again, she worried and did not understand how to let him know that the young baby-boy is not like other babies. Would he believe her? Or would he think that she had gone crazy?

Her husband was not a literate man. She recalled the time when they two married and how they saw each other for the first time only on their wedding day-theirs was a fixed marriage between two wealthy families as were most of other marriages as well. He was a shepherd, taking care of more than a thousand sheep which were not his own but the villager’s sheep. She did not like him keep doing his job and somehow hated her father, who was also a great warrior and a respected man. Why would a rich person choose to be the shepherd of the village?

The first reason why she hated her father was that he had decided to stop her going to school and get educated. And the funniest thing was that people were convinced that educating girls was against their religion-that was the propaganda which was being used against a nation which was divided into seven different countries- but in this small country lived less than two million inhabitants and because of the 500 years rule of The Ottoman Empire, most of the people had Muslim names but the country itself was not a religious one. Most people were emigrants living and working in Europe.

The longest time she could go to school was seven days- a full week, enough for her to learn to read and write her name. In the meantime, her father, Ahmed, had changed her name. She now had two names, one of her and the other was her sister’s name. She was eager to learn, so when her cousin came from school she secretly went there and learned to read from her. The second reason was her fixed marriage.

Ahmed grew as an orphan in the hands of his uncles because his real parents died when he was six and half.
Her husband was a young, tall, handsome man, and he looked very strong but because of his temperament, his father Sokol, had made a mistake with him too. Everyone thought of him like the man who could find solutions for any problem but they did not know that deep in the old man’s heart, he was carrying a secret, and the secret was about a world none of those living with him could understand or even imagine.
She takes her baby in her hands, covers him with some cloth and asks the other woman to get in.

-Goodness! -says Khadija with her weird Bosnian accent- What an awful weather we’re having. It changed unexpectedly. How are you?
-I am fine. And how are the others?
-Don’t worry. They are all fine and safe under the big tree. How is the baby?
-He is fine too.
Hearing no sound of the just newborn baby, she asks:
-Is he alive?
-Yes, he is, and he is strong enough. I need to change and you have to cook today.
-I will. Do you need anything else?
-No, just some clean clothes for myself and please take the blanket to wash it up.

The bolts of lightning and thunders from the sky continue to make the strange, loud noise.

The boy continues to grow up fast and every time the mother has to give him a bath, she closes all the doors and windows, puts the curtains on and takes her baby far away from other peoples’ eyes. And Khadija is always there to keep guard but even she is not allowed inside. She is afraid they might hurt him or if someone would see him as they had told her, he then would die. When she tells her father-in-law about the fact that the baby is different, it does not surprise him at all. He starts to love him more than all the other children and spends time with him as much as he can. Earlier he had had a son the same as his nephew and every time the weather changed during all seasons, if there would be rain, thunder, and storm, his son would fly and go to fight with strange creatures. The old man, Sokol, never asked his son questions, but when he got back home, he always helped him wipe his wounds until one day he stopped coming back.

*******************************************
Even though he still was too young, the little baby boy did things on his own way. Every time his father brought the sheep back from the pastureland he fed himself by milking the sheep with his own mouth. So, wanted or not, his mother had to give him a bath at least twice a day and sometimes even more often because his clothes smelled and his face was dirty. But the little boy enjoyed those moments a lot and was laughing and smiling all the time. He was happy in his own world as all small children are.

Now, each time the weather is similar to the day when the new baby was born, the old man-Sokol, waits, keeps waiting. He wants to see his son coming back home. They never found his body, giving hope to the old man that his son, one day, will come back again. The old man feels sorry for not having any picture of his most beloved son.

Although the country has four seasons, the elders of the village used to say that the country had only summer and winter. Winter always came early, at the end of September or early October and lasted until the end of March or the beginning of April. But the villagers from all the neighborhoods of the village were together all the time, working during the summer, getting ready for the long winters to come and they all knew well each other.

*************************************************************
Before she goes to sleep, the worried mother approaches the window and tries to enjoy the moonglade . It was beautiful. She goes back to bed. The child is sleeping, breathing heavily.
After midnight she hears her baby cry. Turns on the candles and sends him to the bathroom. While giving him a bath, the water turns red. Her eyes are wet. She wipes her child’s arms slowly and hopes that the mystical forces he carries in himself one day will help the world become a better place.
The next day, the village was shocked and the burial of the new infant baby boy took place late in the afternoon. She had lost another child.

to be continued....

[Cwaganagwa Dorothy]

Indeed, this story should be continued. I felt touched, while I was reading this story because it seemed so real especially towards the end.Though I must admit, the beginning didn't get through to me. Well, keep thinking about the coming events, as your story is a good read.