Galimjan spent many days and nights traversing the forest, only wanting to be as far away from Parmiakert as he could. He had been dragged against his will by his brother to murder as many of the Permyaks as he could, to prove his manhood and earn his esteem among the boys of Shurikoi. Presently, his brother is dead and the mob had been dispersed, but Galimjan ran and ran. He was not afraid of what had caused the gruesome demise of Batu, but that his father's violent temper would be turned upon himself:
You tell me that brave Batukhan died gloriously, waging war; and you, coward, why do you come back alive? And Father, he will reach for the knife, the knife!
The boy understood that it struck him with terror all the more since it was his father, even though realistically it would not have mattered who held the knife to him, coward that he was. He became all the more haunted by what had happened at Parmiakert despite running further and further away from the village, as if it had ripped itself off its foundations and is now in hot pursuit of him. I'm a coward! he wept at this and other cowardly thoughts, and finally he lolled among the leaves on the forest floor, drifting into fretful sleep.
The dream that ensued, as would happen for some days with little variation, is set in the same forest where collapsed Galimjan in his long flight. This was one of the dreams that sometimes afflict a weary hunter who has gone some days without sleep, and start to have trouble telling if they were awake or had dozed off. A clearing in the aspen grove, as if it had always been there; likewise a lake, a cave, inserted most nonchalantly into the fabric of reality. A gentle prompt, said by no one but perceived crystal-clear in the mind of Galimjan:
Tuamma, she's your Tuamma, that is how you call her. Not a name, but as a title of kinship. This was a relative, a mother, like one he had never had.
Your Tuamma was the one who defended the poor Greek family against your brother Batukhan, and took his life.
Upon this introduction, Tuamma lifted her head and acknowledged Galimjan, smiling disarmingly. She could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old, but her look was sober and she had distant, immovable disposition of someone far more advanced in age. She dressed simply, with a white dress and blue sash, and a baby lay swaddled in her arms. She gave him a little jerk and he squealed joyously.
"My son," she piped light-heartedly, as if also to say: this is all quite self-explanatory.
"Look at him!"
Galimjan leaned forward to look. The baby had a healthy flush which gave it the appearance of radiating light. He perused Galimjan's face with interest, whereupon the latter felt acutely that all his thoughts, experiences, and insecurities lay open to the baby's scrutiny. His face blanched as he realized that this mother and son had prevailed over Batu, so gallant and virile, and then pounded him into the dust.
Batukhan of Shurikoi, when he had defeated and killed Mihalis Kazoglou, would have liked to ravished Kazoglou's wife before putting his house to fire, but Elena had bred a nest of vermin, and the sight of Permyak children turned his lust into rage. But Kazoglou had another woman in the house; a maidservant, surely, who threw herself at him and prevented him from going near Elena, her daughter and her son. Batu shoved and shoved, but the maidservant was strong enough to hold her ground. And with his dagger he stabbed her. One, two, both in the face.
"Into Gehenna be your souls and all your kind!" he screeched. As he drew back to stab the girl a third time in the gut, Galimjan, from behind, noticed a strange, nauseating movement in his brother; it was as if all the bones in Batu's body were being broken simultaneously. Finally his spine bent and folded backwards, so that his head was almost at his bottom, and he crumpled into a twisted, shapeless heap between the girl and Galimjan, without even the time to utter a cry of pain.
Galimjan had trouble reconciling this horrific carnage with the serenity of the mother and her child before him. He stole a glance at Tuamma's face one more time —
ya Allah, the two knife-scars are still there. Tuamma is going on as if nothing untoward had happened to her earlier. As he fretted, his finger strayed close to the baby's hand, and the little one reached out and held it.
"Look at him!" said Tuamma again.
Galimjan watched in fright as the baby's countenance began to change. In fact,
everything began to change. The cave and the clearing were gone, what was in its place was a wide field, in its center an altar of gold. The boy-child now became a lamb, gazing with an authority at two million people falling to their knees in adoration before him. The lamb was alive, yet has been slain, as its throat had been slit. Blood flowed from the wound and into a golden cup on the altar.
And four living creatures sprang from the four corners of the world, where the first saints had been sent to spread the Gospel: a lion, an eagle, and a man, each of them adorned with three pairs of wings, their bodies covered with eyes. They towered over the rest and came forward to the altar, each footprint glowing with the glowing letters of scripture, whereupon they prostrated before the lamb as if regarding themselves the same level as dirt.
The first, the man, announced his arrival from Qaraqosh of the East, and there he proclaimed:
ܩܕܝܫ ܩܕܝܫ ܩܕܝܫ ܡܪܝܐ ܐܠܗܐ ܐܚܝܕ ܟܠ ܗܘ ܕܐܝܬܘܗܝ ܗܘܐ ܘܐܝܬܘܗܝ ܘܐܬܐ
The second, the lion, announced his arrival from Iskandariyya of the South, and he proclaimed:
ϤⲞⲨⲀⲀⲂ ϤⲞⲨⲀⲀⲂ ϤⲞⲨⲀⲀⲂ ⲠϪⲞⲈⲒⲤ ⲠⲚⲞⲨⲦⲈ ⲠⲠⲀⲚⲦⲰⲔⲢⲀⲦⲰⲢ ⲠⲈⲦϢⲞⲞⲠ ⲀⲨⲰ ⲠⲈⲦⲈⲚⲈϤϢⲞⲞⲠ ⲠⲈⲦⲚⲎⲨ
The third, the calf, announced his arrival from Antiocheia of the West, and he proclaimed:
Αγιος ἅγιος ἅγιος κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ, ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος
The last, the eagle, announced his arrival from Ararat of the North, and likewise he proclaimed:
Սո՜ւրբ, Սո՜ւրբ, Սո՜ւրբ է Տէրը, Ամենակալ Աստուածը, որ էր, որ է եւ որ պիտի գայ
And the crowd heard this and responded likewise, affirming them. Galimjan, though he could not make out the words, saw them emanating from each person on the crowd, as like words on a scroll, each in their own language and being propelled upwards, until at a certain height they converged with those from the strange creatures from the ends of the earth, and became as if a single prayer from a single body. Galimjan had the impulse to join them, but as he tried to utter the words — he could not remember them — and then, when he could eventually recall, he tried to say them and found out that he forgot them again. Time and again he doubted that his own language even had the capability to describe what he had just seen. Then, weeping bitterly, he jerked his finger away from the babe's grip, then let his body fall and be racked with pathetic sobs until the morning, when the Haji found him half-conscious on the forest floor.
 |
| Own work (2017) |
Notes:
1. Written on/for the feast of Christ the King, although I'd have sworn this theme is just a coincidence.
2. The events in this passage immediately follows those in
Parmiakert and immediately precedes events in
Haji Thexeira.
3. As in the prequel, the scene of Batukhan's slaying takes inspiration from a Polish legend on Our Lady of Częstochowa.
4. The title
Tuamma stems from
Catholic folk tradition in Flores, Indonesia related to the apparition of Mary to a young boy in Larantuka.
5. The scene of the Lamb (in particular, the number of attendants) takes after the events of Vigil Night in World Youth Day 2016, Kraków
6. The words spoken by the winged creatures are Aramaic, Coptic (Sahidic), Greek, and Armenian renditions, respectively, of Revelation 4:8 ("Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.")
7. The lamb, who "was alive, yet has been slain": ex. Revelation 5:6
