Short Fiction: Mohamed al-Ashry’s ‘The Charcoal Garden’

This story, by Mohamed al-Ashry, was one of four shortlisted by judges Nariman Youssef, Adam Talib, and Jana Elhassan for the 2019 ArabLit Story Prize. As Talib said, “Climate change is a theme that lurks in the background of this story but nothing about it is didactic. The translation is flowing and sweet and it occasionally borrows Arabic diction to express an idea in a novel way.” It appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of ArabLit Quarterly, THE EYE.

The Charcoal Garden

By Mohamed al-Ashry

Translated by Roger Allen

If you venture far into the desert, you see above you the heavens arrayed like a gigantic bell. The stars scattered across the sky turn into apertures through which you can observe the vast expanse of the universe; they hold out their hand to show you yet more bells embracing other people. Eventually you see a group of lofty domes connected to each other by pathways that allow you to move from one to the next. The process takes many, many years, and you can spend an entire lifetime wandering among those domes, in open spaces without number, and all in quest of your soul. You may eventually find it hanging over your own head, tied to a thin thread of light that draws it ever upwards, but you may still neither discover nor understand anything about your surroundings.

That was a paragraph in the book of the universe that I had been reading to my friend, Sharif Isma`il. We were on our way to the Western Desert in Egypt as part of a work project. It was a sunny winter day. In the distance, we could see the foothills extending away in the gentle light; in fact the sight of them floating so gently in the air lifted our spirits and cleared the cobwebs from our hearts. It almost seemed as though the sea itself had gushed on to the sands and injected its refreshing breezes into the empty spaces. Once we drew near the hills, we encountered an abrupt transformation. The terrain turned harsh and angular, cutting into skin and limbs wherever contact occurred.

The car in which we were traveling took us up hills and down gentle inclines. Our souls gave a shudder as it sped downhill, turning into a kind of see-saw blending and transforming directions in space or forcing them to parallel the rays of the sun to the point where they seemed likely to take off for the heavens and never come back.

All the while Sharif kept his eyes glued to the GPS screen, which was pointing us in the right direction through its uplink to a satellite network, using a horizontal and vertical grid to show the exact spot we were located. It could identify with pinpoint accuracy every single yard we were covering, following a thin black line on the screen ever since we had departed from company headquarters. We had made our way through the city streets and out towards the concession that our company owned, where they were digging for petroleum and gas. Even though it was such a tiny machine—no larger than three fingers held together, it was a totally reliable guide with its own level of intelligence.

We were on our way to take another look at an old well that had turned out to be dry; no petroleum had been found there. It had been abandoned, but only after the opening had been sealed with a concrete slab some half square meter in size. The opening itself was in the middle of a much larger concrete foundation of some four square meters, constructed in advance, so that the actual digging machine could be placed on top of it. To one side was a huge hole to take away the water which tamped down the earth brought out by the digging process. This all consisted of clay deposits and chipped stones of every conceivable kind. By now it had reached a depth of some four kilometers. Once the well had been abandoned, wind-blown dust and soil had covered over the hole so that it blended into the desert all around it. The top part was dry, while the inner part had turned into a fetid swamp that would require a long time to solidify.

So here we have a huge trap (as just described), with a modern jeep specifically designed to cross desert terrain heading toward it a great speed. His foot on the pedal, Sharif has no idea of what lies beneath the sands laid out in front of him. There’s nothing to show what lurks under the surface; that beneath the top layer there is a fault shaped like a gigantic mouth just waiting to swallow up whatever falls into it, with fetid water capable of engendering savage creatures and releasing them through various rock layers to devour everything they encounter.

The jeep went over the concrete structure with us inside it. Sharif tried as best he could to brake, but it carried on under its own momentum. The wheels were directly over the top of the huge abyss; after shuddering a bit, they began slowly to sink. The jeep fell into the hole like a stone falling into a vat full of gum, such that the pores get blocked. We both tried opening the doors, but failed. The jeep sank to the bottom. We were obviously in a state of complete panic, fully reflected in our expressions. We both yelled as loudly as we could, and the sound came reverberating back to keep us apart.

The water had obviously worked away at the rock in the chasm; it looked like limestone, so it had made cracks and patterns. It had also worn passageways and crevices, all of which resembled the tracks of some ancient Arabian city. We smashed the windows of our jeep and got out. I grabbed Sharif’s shoulder, leaned on him, and gave him my hand. It was a major shock when he started acting like a blind man as he dragged me slipping and sliding over a huge fault-line in the rock that divided the floor into two halves. We started tumbling down and down, our hands outstretched like parachutes. Our nails kept clawing at the air. So violent was our fall and so desperate our attempts to cling to each other that we felt as though we had ripped away a rock-crust that had left us dangling in the space between the two sides. We landed on some third area of rock, folded in on itself like a piece of skimmed fruit peel. We walked over these projecting rocks and went through an opening that led further downhill.

By this time, we were concentrating anxiously on finding some escape route; our initial fear was no longer quite so palpable. Stopping for a few moments’ thought seemed like a better idea than indulging in sheer panic. Looking up and down, we noticed that the distance to cover going down was considerably less than that going up, so we started descending, our hands feeling their way along walls we could not see. From time to time, we noticed gleams and flashes from a variety of metallic deposits still surviving in their enclosed spaces and as yet undiscovered. I told Sharif that, to whatever extent possible, he should try to remember a plan of this place; that made him laugh—and the sound kept on echoing over our heads for some time before gradually fading into the void and the undulating patterns and levels imprinted on the walls, one on top of the other.

Like all geologists, Sharif started rubbing the mineral deposits and using the tips of his fingers as taste-tests to check some of the rock formations that were patterned somewhat like salt. Occasionally we were scared by sounds that were sometimes close and at others far away, sounds that seemed to be coming from the very rock itself, acting as some kind of guard over these treasures hidden deep inside the earth. We made our way as quickly as we could past these enormous, glistening structures, scattered among the rock like so many people in streets and markets or branching off into other hard formations, some of which coated your hands and faces with strange hues.

We could smell gas emerging from an aperture in the rockface; it would have asphyxiated us for sure if we had not quickly moved as far away as we could. Even so the atmosphere became oppressive, and we found ourselves having trouble breathing. We took a huge leap and ended up sinking into a pool of petrol beneath our feet. As the petrol began to rise and drag us down, we could not believe the situation we were in, staggering around and almost losing consciousness or maybe actually doing so—we couldn’t tell the difference. We had lost all sense of balance, and the shock of it all kept us tongue-tied. Even though we seemed to be at the very bottom of the world, we still felt as though we were flying through space, liberated from the earth’s gravity, in some warm climate.

As we stumbled our way around the deepest layers of the earth’s crust, we felt that we were almost melting away, it was so hot. We simply abandoned ourselves and felt sure we had fallen into hell itself. We closed our eyes against the calamity that had befallen us and prepared ourselves to embark on the experiences of the Last Day, a glimmer of consciousness still present in our exhausted eyelids.

This viscous liquid that had been lying somnolent in the bowels of the earth realized how far we had fallen via layer upon layer of rocks, beneath which it had remained hidden for millions upon millions of years. Just for a moment it was shocked. Then it started spreading; almost immediately it had coalesced and started creating waves without number. It let out a laugh, traces of which battered our eardrums in a way that terrified us. We realized that it had made up its mind to drown us in its viscosity. We looked all around us, trying to find a way of escaping, but it was impossible. We surrendered to our fate; now that we found ourselves completely enveloped and the enemy training its guns on us, we succumbed to a general feeling of lassitude.

We presumed that, as soon as it set eyes on us, it realized that it already knew us. We were precisely the kind of people who would dig wells and send down sound-waves through the rock layers in order to look for it. Once they had detected the spot where it resided and remained hidden, they would start using a drill positioned firmly on the ground to dig a hole. The incredible pace of the pounding would make its relentless way down through one geological layer after another, all of them piled up on one another over a period of millions of years. No sooner had the drill bit touched the oil’s lifeblood after a few days’ drilling than they would lower explosives through the aperture and set about splitting the rocks that served as its protection. The blasts would create tracks that would be used to extract the oil under pressure to propel it to the surface; hoses with perforated ends would suck it out of its own underground environment. Once it had reached the earth’s surface, it would be collected in barrels, quickly analyzed and refined. That done, they would use its lifeblood in their cars, machines, and stoves. The residue—its black skin—would be spread on their roads, creating asphalt routes in every conceivable direction and making possible kinds of life that had never been known before. Deserts could be converted into gleaming cities that had never been thought of before. The very smell of it enabled them to shrug off life’s troubles since they could make huge amounts of money selling it to far off countries where it was cold. The people in those countries soon started burning it as fast as they could in order to get the necessary energy to keep themselves reasonably warm.

How many times had it been able to escape for a while to conserve its precious

reserves and the entire genus from the dangers of depletion and outright extinction as a consequence of the non-stop day-and-night drilling. Whenever oil senses that the drilling crews are about to send out shock waves, it can predict the danger above; with that it immediately assembles its family and community and quickly leaves the spot where they all are. They make their way through passage-ways, cracks, crevices and rock-seams scattered throughout the sand and limestone layers until they reach somewhere else. Valleys are descended, mountains climbed; the oil floats on top of water, sometimes running away, others times staying still, in the loftiest places, all the while relying on its thick texture. Water affords it an even better chance to make its escape and hide in crevices covered over with different types of rock, like limestone and clay. Those rocks keep it separated from everything around it, and it can keep itself safe from those cynical people on the surface who keep trying to locate it, tirelessly pursuing their question in the sea or the desert and unleashing their sound-waves to find its hiding-place and finally tap it.

Very often while it is making its escape it finds itself hemmed in by a rocky trap—places where there are no seams, narrow spots where it is impossible to pass. The water underneath lifts it up and hems it in; it comes to regret not moving more carefully when it fell into this trap. Up above, the diggers keep hovering around overhead, sending down waves till they identify its location precisely and come into contact with it. From that point on, the journey towards oblivion at the surface begins, far removed from the earth’s interior. But even then it does not give in. Even though it is refined, purified, and distributed in many different countries, it still has an internal agreement to assemble again in the sky. It flies through the air in the form of smoke emitted from machines, cars, and factories and collects in smoky clouds carried on the wings of strong breezes and inserted into factories in the sky. Once there, they are pumped into helix-shaped beams that spread through the atmosphere, plentiful enough to pollute countries and continents and destroy all their greenery. It is all an inevitable reaction to the layers of smoke that catch fire in recompense for those who choose to burn in the first place. Its tongue becomes a raised flag, gathering to itself segments of the homeless and those who have wandered far. Eventually the waving flag reaches the realms of space where it burns the ozone in an attempt to bore out of the globe and dissipate in the boundless expanse of the universe.

*

Then, all of a sudden, we were out. From sticky fluids we emerged into warm water. When we moved our arms, they waved; whooping with glee, we did the kind of butterfly-strokes that swimming champions use. After we had swilled off all the stuff that had stuck to us, we shouted to each other, as though to test the strength of our voices that we had completely overlooked. There was no way up, so we swam down till we emerged from the water pit. When we tested the surface directly beneath us with our hands, we discovered that the soil was wet in some spots but dry in others. In the dry part, we found some trees with enormous roots, carbonized and spread out in an almost infinite forest that formed veritable cities of coal.

No exit was visible, so we continued down, following the veins of coal. We entered a number of large halls with horizontal layers branching downward, not exactly sure whether it was our hands, legs, or heads we were using to make our way; all we were doing was following the breaths emerging from our mouths. Eventually we were exhausted; both of us fell asleep at the very moment when we could finally see each other.

Hours passed, or maybe a day or years. We started hearing a regular pounding noise coming from far away. We still could not believe our plight, as our eyes met and then turned in the direction from which the pounding noise was coming. Stopping only long enough to recoup our energy, we took off towards the sound as fast as we could. The closer we came, the louder it got, but our eagerness to get out of the situation in which we found ourselves propelled us forward. We kept on running like madmen until the pounding noise almost pierced our eardrums. We were only a short distance from the source of the sound when Sharif stopped and looked straight at me.

“Can you believe it?” he asked.

I raised my head, but, before I had a chance to say a single word, something came crashing down from above. We had landed up in the midst of a tumbling pile of those coal-branches next to which we had recently been standing.

No sooner did the coal-miners set eyes on us than they dropped their pickaxes and fled in sheer panic. Climbing aboard the wagon in which they were transporting coal to the surface, they took off along a narrow tunnel that led to daylight in the distance.

I looked at Sharif and saw that he was pitch-black. I laughed and so did he. After we had brushed the dust off our faces and bodies, we climbed into a second wagon—which they had left behind when they hurried away—and followed the twin tracks along the same route that they had used to escape. On the way, we noticed the lamps hanging on the rock walls, and the wooden beams on either side propping up the roof of the tunnel against the mountain’s downward pressure from above, and the whole universe above that.

Just a stone’s-throw away, daylight was waiting for us. The men who had run away from us were lined up outside the entrance to the coal mine, hands on knees and heads staring at us in amazement. They kept panting and trying in vain to control their breathing as they waited for the two of us to emerge on the wagon that was bringing us out of this garden of coal.

Mohamed Al-Ashry works as an expert in the field of petrophysics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in addition to being a columnist and a novelist. He has published five novels and won several prizes. Some of his stories and novel chapters have been translated into French, Spanish, and English.

Roger Allen retired in 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he served for forty-three years as Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature. He is the author and translator of numerous publications on Arabic literature, modern fiction and drama, and language pedagogy. His most recent translation was Reem Bassiouney’s The Halva-Maker.