Israfel

Israfel stood in a field of wheat with twenty other indigent workers, making his way up a row gathering the chaffs as they were cut by the man in front of him. The work was methodical and slow, and the tedium of the step shuffle, lift, cut, lift, bind, step was pushed to the side by the singing of the workers. A regional tune, a variant on all such tunes, a song that came from a place within the performers, a song not made of the lungs and the throat but from the whole of the will. A song that carried only as far as there were people to hear it but far enough to meet all who would listen.

Israfel wore a cassock in a light tan over similarly colored pants and shirt. He was barefoot and his average frame was bent under the weight of the wheat slung across his back. His skin was darkening from the weeks of work in the sun just outside of Persepolis after it had paled from months working the hunting season with an Inuit tribe in Yellow Horse. This was his homeland, near the great desert in central Iran, and he was happy to stretch in the sun as he lifted the more wheat and added it to his load.

The day was growing old and shadows began to spread through the mountains and the field. The timbre of the song was brighter at this time, the promise of rest, fellowship, and meals added a layered harmony to the voices of the chorus and the work hastened just a little to complete a row or an internal quota.

Israfel was not fond of night. He understood its necessity but his was not the rhythms and songs of the dark, his was the music of life and the yearning of spirits to be complete and whole. Somewhere Shamshiel was about to stop breathing the sun in this area. The notes of his breath were as visible to Israfel as the beams of sun were to anyone else. And it was in this way that Israfel saw the world, chord structures and melodies, a flowing staff with notes of purity and dischord  running along it.

The working day had ended and the harvest was layed in piles to be thrashed by other workers in the morning. Lights were coming on across the camp and the smell of food joined the refrain in Israfel’s mind like a section of an orchestra springing into the mileau of a movement.