Arid Land

Arid Land


The First Crack


The soil had ceased to be soil; it had become dust, fine, gray, that rose with the slightest breeze and covered everything. In the eyes, in the clothes, in the folds of the skin. Eleni stood in the middle of the estate, where the roots of the old olive tree looked like nerves exposed on the dry surface of the soil. The tree was no longer green. Its leaves, silver and dull, had curled with thirst, ready to fall before they even had time to turn yellow. She grabbed a branch, feeling the wood rub under her fingers, dry, without a trace of sob. The humidity was a memory that had faded along with the photographs of her mother in the old drawer.


Once, this estate had been her inheritance. Now, it felt like a slow doom. She looked out to the horizon, where the sea looked like molten metal under the relentless July sun. There was no cloud, not even a hint of change. Only the endless, blinding sun that burned everything, as if trying to cleanse the world of human presence.


– Helen, did you hear that?


The voice of George, the neighbor, was heard behind her. She didn't turn around. She knew exactly what he would say. Conversations over the past few months had been limited to a single topic, a recurring melody of despair that played in her head every day.


– I won't listen to it, George. I don't want to know.


– The contractor has left, he said, approaching. He made one last offer. It's three times the value of the land today. Today, Eleni. Because tomorrow, this field won't even be worth the water you need to drink.


Eleni turned slowly. Her face was a mask of etched lines, a map of the drought. Her eyes, dark and restless, fixed the man's gaze.


– Land is not paper, George. It is not sold by the ton.


– The earth is dying, he replied in a broken voice. Look around you. Our trees are skeletons. The animals are gone. The young have been gone for years, but now the last old people are leaving too. What are you waiting for? To be buried here with the roots?


– I'll wait for the rain, she whispered, more to herself than to him.


– The rain is not coming, Eleni. Forget it. The sky has forgotten us.


She was left alone as George walked away, his footsteps raising small clouds of dust. Loneliness was no stranger to her. It was a state she had cultivated over the years, a defense against the noise of the world that was pressuring her to give up, to compromise, to become part of the statistical table that recorded the decline of the countryside.


Her “here” was a space between yesterday and tomorrow, a thread that held her past together with a hope that seemed absurd. Every time she touched the trunk of the great olive tree, she felt the need for her ancestors to stay. They were not just trees. They were witnesses. They had seen births, deaths, festivals and mourning. If she left the earth, she would cancel their entire history. It would be like erasing their names from stone.