The Endless Golden Dunes

Chapter 2: Elijah and Adam of Jerusalem

The dunes were later than normal in entering the Holy City. The Sun was now at its highest and the call to the Jewish prayer was being called by the cantor, the church bells rang twelve times and the Arabic words from the mosque were being called. The Abrahamic Land, the land where Moses’s people fled from the pharaoh, the Kingdom of God.

Despite the great things said about the city and the many great people that are associated with the place, we will go to a humbler side of it, for it is always the modest tales that are the most fascinating, tales not written in history.

Elijah had been praying privately, when he had woken up and now at midday.

‘O Father! Bless your children in the Holy Land, bless Your children everywhere else, bless my mother, bless my father, bless me,’ he prayed with his hands on his forehead, his eyes closed and his elbows resting on the edge of his bed. ‘Indeed, Father, You Who has created us, have let your son, Christ, die for our sins that we did because of Satan, the one who disobeyed. We won’t enter Your kingdom unless it is because of Your divine Mercy, so forgive us and bless us.’

He kissed his hands and stood up. He was a man of not too much age, his brown hair curly and his face the same color. There was some short hair growing underneath his chin and either side of his face but looked to be shaved before they could grow too much. The remains were in patches.

Then there was a knock on the door of his room.
  
‘Coming, Mother!’ He called.

His footsteps echoed across his empty room as he reached for the handle of the door. In came a slightly stout woman dressed in a black veil that covered her body down to her feet but exposed her wrinkly face. She was short, only able to reach her son’s chest. She had a square jaw and hazel eyes deeply dug into her sockets with wrinkles that crowded around it.

She looked up and down at her son and smiled.

‘It seems as if you have grown overnight.’ She said to him. 

Elijah scoffed.

‘Mother . . .’ he began with a smile of his own.

‘Now, now, you know I am only jesting. But in all seriousness, you have grown quite old.’

‘I am only twenty-one, Mother.’

‘That still doesn’t make you more, you are still my ibn.’ Son.

Elijah cracked a chuckle and reached to hug his mother who patted his back as her son bent down to bury his face in his mother’s shoulders. They broke apart and Elijah’s mother still held her son’s shoulders. For a moment, she simply looked at him lovingly as Mary did to Jesus. From her eyes alone, one could have told that if death had come to her son, it would be like losing the meaning of life.

‘Mother, are you crying?’ 

She quickly wiped a tear from the right side of her face. 

‘No, no. Just – just the sand outside. Now come on, let’s go to the market; your father is waiting outside as well.’ 

Elijah decided not to ask what she had cried about and followed her outside to the sunlight.

***

The bazaar wasn’t any different than it was yesterday. The same merchants opening their shops and the same customers going around buying whatever they needed or wanted. Maybe they would have picked something different, but they had decided to buy the same thing as yesterday. The shops were never dry, they always had something to sell, even if it wasn’t their main product. A carpenter might start selling daggers or a goldsmith would start forging swords. Besides the wave of sands, nothing was new for today.