Sand Devil by Michael Bornstein Oren

"Kayf halak, ya Iblis!"
"Kayf al-hal, ya Mahbub."
So we greet one another, Iblis and I, in Arabic. Together we exchange salutes. A scout for the Great General years ago in the war against the Turks, Iblis still thinks of himself a soldier. Though bent, he can still snap to attention and whip up his hand-two fingers and a stump. He is missing many parts. An ear, a heel, and half his nose. And then, of course, the eye. A small price to pay, he says, for honor. I follow Iblis around the Firing Zone. Down rows of craters like cups in an egg carton, each one coated with coal. He drags one leg behind him, and behind that, his dog. Has No Name, a smelly old mutt that he found in the Zone, one morning after an all-night barrage. Has No Name-Ma Fish Ismo-also has no hind limb. Iblis found it and bandaged its wound, and now the dog follows him everywhere, yapping and hopping on three paws. Barking endlessly at me.
Iblis's rags flutter in the breeze. Tatters of uniforms, dresses, a flag of some long-vanished country. In shreds they dangle from his pole-like body, like a tent in the dead of winter. Down wind, they can make me choke. But I don't mind-not the smell, the barking or the ghostly eye. I have much to learn from Iblis.
"Ya Mahbub," or so he always calls me, "My Dear Boy, Ithakir" - "Remember, the greatest riches are not in banks or factories, but right here in the sand." He kneels down, slowly and with a groan, before an olive-green tube. Lifts it gently with his two and a half fingers and brings it to the glass of his eye. "Bangalore Torpedo," he announces, then squints inside, "with pin." He stuffs the tube into the sack which he wears tied to his hip, and softly mutters his thanks: "Al-hamdu lilah." Praise be the Lord. "It will bring us a shekel at least."
A good business, Iblis never tires of telling me, a blessing. Bombs and missiles fall from heaven, like manna. Mornings after a big maneuver he can collect as much as fifty shekels' worth of scrap. Enough to live like Maliku, the mythical king of Yemen. But some bombs are not quite scrap. There's life in some yet, Iblis warns, and powder in their veins. Disturb their sleep and they'll tear your hide. They'll eat your flesh and lick your blood. Hurts? Oh no, says Iblis, being eaten is like a dream. Like paradise. Go ask the lion.
I do not understand. "But there are no more lions."
"No?"
"The Bedouin shot them all."
"There are lions that even the Bedouin can't shoot."
"I've never found any tracks."
"Al-hamdu lilah, nor has it found yours." Iblis scoops up some 30 caliber jackets; a thousand can buy a chicken. "Listen at night, Mahbub, you can hear its roar in the cave."
"That's just the wind, even I know that."
"The wind, my ass. It's the jinn of the lion. The spirit." Iblis glares in anger. He fixes me with his glass eye, the one he stole from that Austrian duchess, a passenger on the Pasha's train, killed by a British bullet. Iblis makes his oath: "As the rain turns to floods and sand into devils, the lion has become that spirit."
In the old days, Iblis tells me, the days before time when giants roamed the valley, they hunted the lion. Hunted and prayed to it both; their food was also their god. A terrible god which could only be trapped in the back of caves, and killed with the best-thrown stones. Then, if they lived, the giants would cut off the animal's head. They'd place it in a sack, and dance wildly back to camp. And there it would stay, a prize for their women, and for themselves, an idol. But soon the ibex disappeared, and then the gazelle. Now it was the lion's turn to hunt. It caught the giants and ate them one by one until none was left alive. You could still see the bones-Iblis swore he had-in the caves high up the face of the cliff.
Through the Firing Zone, I trail behind Iblis. Smoke rises from the craters and curls around our legs. Has No Name nips at my calves. Today is a good day, plenty of 155's and cluster bombs. Jets and artillery are as good as gold, Iblis says, but infantry is slim pickings. Worst, though, are the engineers. They leave Bangalore Torpedoes scattered over the sand, and beneath it, buried, their mines. They're plastic mostly, those mines, and worthless, but stepped on, they'll bite off more than they can swallow. Iblis knows; he lost his hand to one, and other parts too, though he keeps those hidden by rags. If bombs come from Allah than mines are Satan's, he explains. They snatch men's heels and suck them under. They watch our every step.
"Yoni says you should stay away from the Firing Zone. He says one day you're going to get blown to bits."
Iblis spits yellow. "Kus Uchto," he says-His sister's private parts. "Your friend thinks he's so smart. I tell you, there are a lot more brains in this dog."
Has No Name whimpers and barks.
"He knows a lot of things," I protest. "About jeeps and engines. He teaches me."
"Is that so? And what does he teach you about spirits?"
"Yoni doesn't believe in spirits."
"And lions?"
"I told you, he says they've all been killed."
Iblis turns to me. His face is thinner than a skull, his skin like dusty canvas. "Ahbal"-he's a fool-"your friend. He wouldn't know a mine if he stepped on it."

Later, to celebrate his finds, Iblis brews some coffee. He makes a fire of gathered twigs and grinds the beans with stones, sings a funny song that has no words or even a melody, while Has No Name howls along. Then, with his two good fingers, he pinches the grounds into a jerry can, pouring sugar from a pouch on his belt. Equal measures of each; numbers are important for Iblis. Like my father-forty days and forty nights, forty years in the desert. The ram's blood must be sprinkled seven times and seven times must the coffee boil before Iblis will agree to drink it. "Beware of those who call you friend," Iblis says as he pours the coffee into ration cans. "They bring you strangers from cities up north, government people, achhh." He sips and spits it onto the sand, according to his tradition. "People who will eat you-not like lions with their jaws, but with their tongues. It's as different as heaven and hell."
The coffee is gritty and tastes of gas, but the feeling is warm in my hands. I take the can of peaches from my pocket and place it on the sand before him. Iblis looks at it suspiciously, as he always does. He says nothing, only snorts. Then he finds the rusty opener in his belt and jerks it around the rim. He drinks in loud gulps, the syrup running through the lines in his face. The two fingers scoop up half the fruit, out of the can and straight to his mouth, before offering the rest to me. They're sweet, the peaches, and soft enough for him to chew. Iblis smiles at me orange.
"Stay away from people like Yoni. From all people, as soon as you are old enough to be alone."
Just like Yoni, Iblis likes to teach. "But first you must lie with a woman." I stare into my coffee and blush.
Iblis laughs: "Let your friend tell you. Him with balls the size of goat pellets. I'd show you myself..." He points at his lap, at the knot of shredded rags. "But some things you must learn on your own, Mahbub, like the difference between a torpedo and a mine."
I look at the heel, his hand and his nose. In the glass of his eye I can see myself, trembling. Iblis laughs, really laughs. His mouth is as wide as a cave, and the breath inside it roars. It echoes in the craters and runs through the wadis. Clear across the valley, I imagine, to the camp where my father is rising.