Excerpt: Prophet of Diamonds

The moon is full tonight.

Of course it would be. It seems only natural that like so many other parts of this desert scape, the moon would replicate the precise phase it was in, one hundred years and four months ago, as bloated and bloody orange today as to my five-year-old eyes then. I take no credit for it; I am far too old to believe that celestial bodies align themselves to my whims. But there is an odd, cold comfort in the symmetry of the low orange orb hanging fat and impossible just over the western ridges of the sand

It is the size of a dinner plate. Perhaps it’s the waves of shimmering heat cast off from the sands in the early evening that make it appear to pulsate slightly, or the lack of pollution and stillness of the air. But in this, it seems to be waiting. As am I.

It is not only the moon that is impossible. My presence here, in this cooling sea of sand, is an improbability of cosmic proportions. I should throw my head back, as I did when I was a child, and laugh with my mouth open, nostrils flaring and chest heaving, at the absurdity of it all. But I no longer have the strength to cast back my head, or move my limbs and body with the ferocious abandon of youth. I can no longer forget myself. I tread carefully, even on the packed sands that feel so solid and gentle. The women who tend me are watchful but still, I do not wish to impose on their vigilance. A single misstep or false move and I might tumble sideways, my bones snapping with a sound like the clicking of the scorpion’s claws at twilight. So I keep still, whether by design or age, and my mirth shows only in my eyes, should anyone look at me.

In some ways, it is inconceivable that I am here among these people, in this circle of tents, beneath a sandy orange moon. I should have long since been relegated to a palliative care home where the hallways smell of urine and antiseptic and the bland meals will not cause gastrointestinal distress. And yet – tonight I drank some of the camel’s blood, as a gesture of thanks to the family in whose tent my ancient body swelters and creaks. There will be pain later; but for now I am content, a one hundred and five year old woman with skin like papyrus and a network of blue veins underneath, like the crisscrossing rivulets of the Nile, or the Lena River in my beloved homeland.

I have always felt there to be an optimal way to die. Some prefer it to be sudden and swift; others wish for time with family, or absolution, or one last lunge into the frenzied buzzing of life before they are stilled. I have always wished for my death to be graceful, in the way that my actions and body have not been. If I could not be fluid in movement, I thought, I should be graceful in my speech and elegant in my thought. I should be graceful in the way in which I leave this world, one day. But it appears that even this will not be mine.

And yet the symmetry of the full moon, the cast of my eyes upward to the unreadable sky, the flutter in my stomach in anticipation of the arrival of the diamonds; is there not grace in recapturing what was lost, and what I both feared and craved, throughout most of this past century? Is it not more than luck but rather fate, kismet, the hand of Ogdy, that have brought my slowing heart and dimming eyes to witness what may be the second miracle and third disaster of my life?