He had remained absent for many days when his friends started searching for him, and they
found the bones of Kaloo. Hungry wolves had left nothing behind, except a few bones and pieces
of his clothes. Rafeel was surprised that not even a single tree had been cut in his long absence.
He felt a wave of fear in his spine. The cluster of those trees was in close resemblance to his
country!
he Darkness had settled beautifully. The air spoke of distant rains. Rafeel entered a labyrinth of
corn. Ahead of him, past the rows, he spotted the mimosa tree. It was a familiar tree, one that he
had sat beneath before. One that had saved him from scorching June days, when he would come
too far, gathering wild flowers or trying to halter the red mare that roamed free. Rafeel had
prayed beneath that tree, and cried into its soil. It was the home to many meadowlarks and
blackbirds which were now perched and sleeping upon the mellow limbs.
Rafeel moved closer, smelling the change in soil as the land turned from fertile to fruitless.
Nothing even grew beneath that tree. He drew closer, until he could smell the trunk and the
dampness of leaves. That tree reminded him of a beautiful face, Rozeena. He thought how
timeless life had once seemed.
"Rozeena?" He called. "Rozeena?"
The reply was dry winds shuffling the straw like cards, and the howling of a beagle dog on the
hunt. Rozeena was gone. She was the wind. She was the moon, speaking to Rafeel through
whispers and shadows. Rafeel remembered Rozeena, her dark curls, and her alabaster skin ... her
face always poised in childlike curiosity. He recalled Rozeena's pursed scarlet lips. He felt a tear
now.
"Where are you now?"
But the night swallowed his question. He had also once loved. Rozeena had been a roaming
wave of beauty in a pale land. But she had died many years ago.
"Will you come back for me?"
He knew Rozeena was gone but still he wanted to hear her reply. Red memories faded to yellow.
He turned and galloped away like the roan range horses, vanishing into rows of untended corn.
He let the wind lick away a sudden tear... the wind came, and it blew hard, making a sound like
music.
When he reached the graveyard of his village, he felt a wave of death in his body. His greatgrandmother lay underneath a monumental slab, surrounded by a low iron fence. The graves of
his grandfather, grandmother and father stood in a line, marked with simple square tablets set
into the turf. The rain had darkened the stone on all three, but his father's was still noticeably
lighter, its inscription sharp, the newness of its manufacture less dignified somehow, because his
son was far away.
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