For many long months the bare earth was baked in the
scorching heat of the sun. Yellow days lingered on without
end. Nights passed by, like tall restless shadows cast on a
wall. The air was dusty and dry. It's suffocating foulness
casting a discouraging veil of on those who had to tolerate
it.
The grass that grew behind the round clay huts has withered
and turned brown.
Most of the huts were abandoned. The men and women who lived
in them left when the water dried out.
Only a few misfortunate souls stayed behind. The last
remains of what was a successful and prosperous community.
They now clenched to what precious little shade the straw
roofs provided them with. And gazed aimlessly at the dry
well, which once was the center of their village, the center
of their lives.
Everything was perfectly still.
No one said a word or moved a muscle. There was nothing more
to be said or done. They just stood there, awaiting death in
silence.
The peaceful image has remained frozen for hours.
But finally it was broken.
A man came walking out from one of the huts and started out
slowly towards the empty well.
The man was tall and slender, he walked lightly and his
movement was not without grace.
He was a relatively young man, but the hardships he knew in
his short life made him look older than he really was, his
hair was short and thin on his head, and his face was
wrinkled. His features were sharp and hard, like the dark
windswept plains of the desert, his hands were strong and
his fingers long and agile.
But his eyes were soft and round, full of sadness.
He seemed to be oblivious of the presence of the others
around him.
The expression on his face was one of remote determination.
The expression of a man lost in a dream.
As he walked he could still hear her voice in his mind. It
was his wife, she was singing to the baby.
He asked her why is she doing this, why won't she let go.
Annoyed, she told him to leave them alone.
"Go and bring some water from the well", She said, not
looking up at him. "The child is thirsty."
The man saw the tiny hand dangling down from inside the
blankets, like the hand of a rug doll. He felt a terrible
stab of pain in his heart suddenly, and had to turn away.
"The well is dry", He murmured, avoiding her eyes. "And the
child is dead. He died two nights ago, we had no food to
give him and no water to relive his thirst with, and he
died. Our son is dead."
For a long moment she remained perfectly still.
Then she looked up at him, and said: "Leave us alone please,
you are upsetting the baby and he needs to sleep. Now go and
bring us some cold water from the well."
He lingered on for a while longer, trying to recognize in
the face before him something of the person who was his
wife. Then he left the room without saying a word, and
started out towards the dry well.
As he stepped outside he was temporarily blinded by the
blazing light, it was noon and the sun above him was a huge
white furnace, burning in the middle of the sky. He started
walking slowly in the direction of the well, wiping away the
sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He asked himself what is it exactly that he is hoping to
find when he gets there.
Water maybe?
That well is as dry as a skeleton, he knew that for a fact,
and yet he walked.
He walked because his delirious wife sent him to bring water
for their dead son, and there was nothing else he could do
about it.
The man was unaware that the others were watching him.
He was fixed completely on his little journey, and did not
notice their presence. But they were following him closely
with their blank eyes, their faces sealed.
Crazy, they must have thought he was. His wife too. They all
knew about the baby; after something like that happens, It
was well understood.
They watched him, not with pity, nor with empathy.
By now they had all known first hand the bitter taste of
grief, the gray void that fills your heart when you lose a
loved one.
They were all living this man's tragedy with him.
They watched him through his own eyes, in his own
desperation. For hope had evaporated from their souls, like
the water had evaporated from their wells.
The man had finally arrived at the well. He stopped just a
few paces before its edge, and could not go any further. He
stood there for a moment, hesitating. Then shook his head
and marched foreword.
He approached the well and placed his hands on its dusty
stone edges. The stones were hot. He waited a while longer.
Finally he took a deep breath, slowly let the air out, and
finally leaned foreword and looked inside.
The well was dry, of course.
Its bottom was covered with green weeds and sand. Among them
was a clay container. Once it was used to pull up water from
the deep bottoms of the hole.
Now it was laid broken, and half buried in dirt.
The man stumbled back and covered his mouth with his palms.
He wiped his nose with his arm and stared blankly foreword.
His condition enraged him. His anger was focused on the
lifeless relic in front of him.
Never before in his life did he feel such devouring hatred
for this world, such desire for its complete undoing. The
man had arrived in his mind to that borderline beyond which,
there is no return, and crossed it.
He closed his eyes, and threw his head back.
Then raised his hands to the air, and made them into fists.
The man opened his mouth wide, and released his voice in a
cry.
At first, no sound came out of his body. He just stood
there, a mute and somewhat frail thing, his body slowly
trembling back and forth.
Then a deep hollow moan, like the growl of a dog, was
produced from him. It slowly assumed more shape and
strength, and became finally something like a slow and
steady howl.
While screaming, the man slowly opened his eyes, and looked
up to the heavens.
He was letting out of himself all the pain and sorrow he
experienced during his short life of misfortune. And all the
anger and hate that he felt for his helpless condition.
His voice occasionally rose up slightly, only to slowly drop
again.
It resounded around the village like crashing waves of
anguish.
The people regarded the spectacle from afar.
None of them approached the man or called at his direction.
Like statues they remained posted to their porches and
listened as the voice finally started fading away.
The raging howl has gradually become again the mellow
shapeless moan that it has originally ascended from.
And finally, that moan too has vanished into silence.
The man was still holding his hands up in the air, and his
eyes were still fixed on the burning skies. He was waiting
for something to happen.
He wanted that somehow the empty skies would let him know
that he was heard.
He was not hoping for salvation, it was too late for that.
He knew that he is going to die soon, and that was fine.
There was nothing left for him to live for.
But he wanted to know that his pain and hatred got through
to whoever it was that was listening up there. The man
wanted them to look down at his village and see what has
happened to him.
To know that they would never be forgiven for letting this
happen, for making this happen, never in a thousand years.
Nothing happened.

The man let his arms drop. But he kept his eyes open a
moment longer. Then finally he dropped to his knees, and
started shaking without control.
In his mind he traveled back to other times, times that were
lost forever now.
He was working with his father in the fields.
The waters gushed in the channels, threatening to overflow
them, and the sky above was clear blue. Blue like the face
of the ocean.
His mother and his sister were waving happily at them from
home.
His poor sister. A few weeks ago, in her desperation, she
traveled out into the desert on her own, in search of food.
They found her three days later, lying in the sand. She went
insane with thirst and hunger.
Shortly after they got her back to the village, she died.
And he could not even look at her face.
So different was this mask of agony from the laughing face
of his sister. The face he cherished in his heart.
The memories were so vivid in his mind that he did not feel
the first drop that crashed on his forehead.
Immediately after it, came another one.
It raised a small cloud of dust as it descended to the
earth. Then another drop and another. By the time the man
raised his face from his palms, the rain was pouring all
around him.
Washing away the tears from his cheeks.

The rain did not cease for nine straight days.
Waters ran down the old channels again. And the well was
overflowed.
The village was saved.
During the following months, people started returning to
their homes slowly, and rebuild their lives. Families were
reunited. And life moved on.
The man was made village priest.
People believed he was blessed somehow, and that he had
secret powers.
He himself was not sure that this was true.
He could not explain why the long draught was broken so
dramatically, or why it happened when he was standing near
the well. He had strong doubts about his part in making the
rains come.
But the others were convinced that he made the rain, that he
was a miracle worker. So they gave him the largest hut in
the village, and he became their shaman.

The years passed.
His wife never recovered from her grief.
She would walk around the village at night and talk to
herself in a low voice, completely ignoring anybody who
tried to approach her.
One night she wandered off to the fields. The next morning
her lifeless body was brought to the village. She carried on
her bare ankle two tiny marks, made by the snake that had
taken her life.
The man buried his wife, and grieved for her for two months,
as costumed. Although in truth, he felt that he had lost her
long before she died.

And the years flew by, and the man got old.
He never remarried after the death of his wife.
He had no friends and spent most of his time inside his
oversized home.
Sometimes he thought that he too was dead.
That he died at the feet of the well on that summer
afternoon, so many years ago. Many times he wondered what
would have happened if the rains did not came when they
did.
The entire village would have been wiped away from memory,
buried forever in the drifting sands.
He never succeeded in making the rain come again. In truth,
he never really tried.
It was a hot summer night when he woke up startled from a
terrible nightmare.
His memories had come to haunt him, it seemed.
In his dream he saw his wife. She was holding the child and
singing to him. His sister was there too.
They were all standing in a middle of a ring of fire, and
the high flames were closing in on them.
The last thing he remembered, before waking up screaming,
was his voice calling out; "but I am dead also!" over and
over again.
After that, he could not go back to sleep. He left his hut
in the middle of the night. The sky was filled with stars,
but their pale light gave him no comfort.
He was half way there before he even realized where he was
going.
The man rested his hands on the dusty edges of the well, and
looked in.
The cool calm water seemed smooth and inviting, like it was
made out of black silk. The well was almost full.
Slowly, the old man climbed on the loose stones, and stood
on the edge. He looked around him on the sleeping village,
one last time.
Everything was peaceful and calm. Not a sound, except for
the soft whistle of the southern winds.
The man looked up at the moon and stars above him, and then
down at the deep dark water.
He spread his hands like they were wings as he rose to the
tips of his toes.

The next morning the people of the village found inside
their well something none of them had ever seen before.
It was ice.
The water inside the well had frozen during the night. It
became a solid thing, as hard as rock. It took almost a week
for the scorching desert sun to make it melt back
completely.