The golden rooster

The Golden Rooster

A faint twitch kept troubling his left eyelid; now and then it jerked violently for a fraction of a second. Beneath his right nostril, a slight glimmer of moisture remained unnoticed. The buzzing in his ears was nothing new, though today it sounded louder than usual, pressing against his head with a slow irritation. As he tried adjusting to his new glasses, he wiped the lenses with the fog of his breath, which mingled with the spray of a cough that escaped without warning.

He was empty as an abandoned house. His eyes were windows sealed tight from within. His mouth was like an old door battered by the wind, his chattering voice a creak that grated on anyone who listened. Even the evening itself seemed exhausted: a moon sleepless beneath the dark sockets of night, reduced to a crescent. The night around it urinated shooting stars; it seemed everyone was drunk in secret. He absorbed comfort from all the rotten and decaying things around him — they gave him calm and stillness, and kept every foolish pang of conscience at bay.

His father died today, or maybe yesterday—Elias didn't know. The will had only just reached him. And In a drunken stupor, he kept dialing the old man's phone, waiting to hear the familiar curses, the complaints about his drinking, the sighs of a village mayor drowning in shame.

Then it hit him that his father was dead.

And a grief came over him, tinged with dullness and lethargy. That was because the dead man was asking him for one last thing; and it was so bizarre Elias thought his father, that man who had never smoked a single roll of tobacco in his entire miserable life, must have been drunk himself while writing this will.

He wanted Elias to take his unlicensed rifle, which he had hidden beneath his mother’s grave, and hunt a golden rooster that appeared out of nowhere to the farmers — terrorizing them and destroying their crops. And after the police raids, when his father helped them by naming everyone in the village who kept an unlicensed weapon — which was most of the villagers, naturally — his father and their family became outcasts after that, while the rooster kept terrorizing the village.

Anyway, there he was, asking Elias to take his unlicensed rifle and hunt a golden rooster said to burst from beneath the earth without warning. He insisted Elias carry a sack, because if he managed to shoot it, the creature would collapse into fine golden ash.

And this was how the will ended:

“How I despise having to ask anything of you. But if you do this, perhaps our family name will stand upright again, and the stain forced upon me by the authorities might finally be washed away. They say the beauty of this rooster unsettles a man, makes his hands tremble at the very moment he ought to fire. Elias, do not hesitate.

Remember, what rests on your shoulder is not merely a lump of illegal iron, but the key to your return to the village — not as the drunken exile they laugh at, but as the man who saved them.

Even if they never choose you as mayor after me — and I know you care little for such things — in the eyes of these poor villagers, you will be a greater mayor than I ever was. Braver too.”

Elias muttered to himself in annoyance:

“He made an outcast of me since childhood, and now, even dead, leaves me carrying the burden of his ravings. No matter. Today grief; tomorrow, a golden rooster and wine.”

Then he headed to the graveyard.

After the burial ended, he asked the villagers about the rooster. They told him it belonged to the jinn, and that it was drawn to filth. They said it haunted the fields, though more than once it had shown itself to young women bathing in the canal.

The rooster was shameless enough to turn the will into a burden upon his shoulders. By then, conscience had nothing to do with it. He was no longer hunting the rooster for himself, but for his father — who by now was already feeding the worms, yet his shadow remained behind him, watching, staring. If he hid among the reeds, watching the women finish their washing before easing themselves into the canal to bathe, all for the sake of hunting that golden rooster… would his father be pleased with the view as he is? Or would he spit at his feet?

He walked at night toward his grandfather’s house, cutting through the fields unhurriedly. That man had been the only one ever to get the better of this wretch, back in a time when carrying a weapon was a matter of pride. Now, even speaking of a blade—any blade, even a rusty one—was enough to raise suspicion. The rifle swayed on his shoulder, striking his lower back in a steady rhythm. At this hour, he did not consider the possibility of being seen with such an illegal weapon. In this village, shortly after sunset, the stillness of night turned into a collective, harmonious snoring.

Fireflies drifted lazily across the fields, flickering around his feet as though drawing him a path. As he headed toward his grandfather, he thought of the man: he was not merely wealthy. Everything the eye could see of the surrounding fields belonged to him, and what the eye could not see… was said to be his as well. He had returned from the war with money that could not be explained rationally, so the village supplied its own explanations: hashish, opium, shadow trade. They said this out of spite for his miserliness—for a door that never opened to those in need, for a hand that never reached out to the poor. But everyone knew the truth. The truth no one questioned: that he had killed the golden rooster and sold its ashes.

When he reached his grandfather’s house, he knocked on the crumbling door. It was secured at the bottom, but its upper half had lost its nails, as though it were holding itself together out of hesitation. One of the traits of old age—or its ailments—is that sleep grows lighter the older a man becomes. So he needed nothing more than the nail of his index finger. A light knock was enough. He knew the old man was awake.

The door opened. His grandfather was so tall that he had to bend his back to see the visitor’s face. But the moment he noticed the shadow of the rifle cast on the threshold, he stepped outside and motioned for his grandson to sit on the bench beside the door. The old man was alert, upright despite his years. A turban crowned his head, and his eyes were sharp—time had not dulled them. He shook his hand and offered condolences, though both of them deserved condolences. Then he handed him a roll of tobacco and lit it for him. Miserliness has many faces; the rarest is when a miser shows you his generosity, and only you.

He patted his shoulder, where the rifle had left its aching mark, and said, “When I was your age, I was returning from seven years of military service. My hands had grown used to its weight, and my skin still remembered its touch.”

The grandfather ran his hand over the metal as though recalling the memory of war—like an old friend finally met again after a long separation. He said, “It was modeled on a weapon invented by a man named Mikhail Kalashnikov… but what sets it apart is that it is no mere imitation. This one came out of the Maadi factory much like the original itself.” He lifted it and wiped it with the edge of his turban, in a gesture so absorbed it resembled a prayer.

He fell silent for a moment, then continued in a cold voice: “In the war, I killed many enemies with this rifle, and I felt no regret. But that rooster — though it was the source of my wealth — whenever I recall its dazzling beauty before I turned it into magical ash, I feel a deep sadness, a tightness in my chest.” Then he crushed his cigarette beneath his bare foot and added: “So if you miss your target, be sure to not blame this rifle.”

Elias said to himself, Don’t worry, I don’t have many bullets to waste anyway. Then he asked him: “I’ve been searching for it since morning… it’s as though it’s always one step ahead of me. How did you find it?”

He looked up at the North Star, the same star that had guided lost ships, wandering lovers, and Bedouins for thousands of years. Then he said, “There is only one way I know. You must lie with the sea jinniyah. She dwells in the canal. If you bring her to climax, she will grant you a single wish—and if it concerns the rooster, she will grant it gladly. By nature, she despises that rooster. Ever since it appeared, the villagers stopped coming to the canal, and the canal had always been her only way of luring men. Don’t worry—I lay with her once myself. She was large and beautiful. All you have to do is go to the canal late at night. Wait for her, and she will come without fail. A woman like her, starved for pleasure—if you become the key to her release, she will grant you whatever you wish. That, at least, is how I learned the whereabouts of the golden rooster.”

His stomach began to rumble; for the grandfather’s generosity ended at a cigarette and did not extend beyond it. With the sunrise, as soon as the chirping of birds reached him, his stomach growls rose as though completing a melody meant to provoke his hunger.

He responded with an automatic movement, fashioning his white turban into a trap: he propped it from within with a twig about a hand’s span long, then removed both shoelaces and tied them together until the cord became long enough to reach the nearby mulberry tree behind which he concealed himself. After scattering a few grains of wheat beneath the trap, nothing remained but to endure the wait while starving. Seeing the wind still, he lit a cigarette to pass the time, careful to blow the smoke in the opposite direction of the trap. He caught seven sparrows, then spread his turban over a rock he had washed with river water, and sat roasting them by the canal, waiting for the jinniyah to appear, while his stomach’s rumbling completed, in his mind, the melody begun by the birds.

From afar, he saw the shape of someone drawing near, but the figure that emerged was an enormously fat woman. She greeted him, complained of her hunger, praised the smell of the food, and offered plenty of bread to share. He gestured for her to sit.

She ate with obvious voracity, chewing rapidly and making muffled noises, trying to speak through a mouthful of food and choking on her words. At times she groaned after accidentally biting her cheek or tongue. Droplets of saliva and bits of food sprayed across his face and clothes. She apologized while continuing to spit now and then, then tried to wipe his garments clean, but he stopped her firmly.

The woman sat at an angle, one leg over the other, leaning on her bag under her elbow, picking at the scattered mulberries on the ground. He sensed in this posture something like an attempt at seduction, and let it pass without comment, pretending he had not noticed.

“How strange you are! Aren’t you afraid the jinniyah will come while you are sitting here?”

He said, indifferent to her attempt to ease his discomfort: “I am here for her… I want a wish.”

After chewing and swallowing, her features returned to calm: “And what is this wish?”

He replied, watching a half-submerged donkey floating on the canal’s surface, wondering where the other half had gone: “That she lead me to the golden rooster so I can kill it, in fulfillment of my father’s will.”

“And what guarantees she can grant such a wish?”

A hint of impatience entered his voice: “A jinni who cannot grant a wish deserves to be locked inside a dust-covered lamp. Or, in her case, in a swamp covered with algae and dead creatures.”

“But you know every wish has a price.”

He muttered: “I only hope she is beautiful.”

At that moment she flared up suddenly, her voice carrying a reproach that was almost pleading: “What are you saying, you drunk? Don’t you see me as beautiful?”

He frowned: “Excuse me?”

She sighed, then poured out her words as if speaking to an old acquaintance:

“For months I have been waiting for a man… this cursed rooster has distracted the village men from the canal, which was my only means of luring them. And when a man finally comes—” She paused, then added with sarcasm: “—he does not see me as beautiful.”

Only then did Elias understand: this was the jinniyah. She had been here in the canal all along. There was nothing that truly held the eye—like an unbalanced tide, a presence that awakens desire only to repel it immediately. He wished he were drunk. He swallowed his question about what she did to men, and instead said he did not care about beauty. All that mattered was the rooster’s location, and for that he was ready to pay any price.

The jinniyah said, rising slowly with her bag toward the canal: “Because you fed me, I will guide you to a well from which the rooster emerges at night to ravage the crops.

Then she added, in a tone heavy with something between desire and threat—so that in his confusion he could not distinguish between them:

“Do not be afraid, Elias. You will see me again, in another form, at another time… And know this, my son: I never force myself upon one who does not want me.”

Then she sank—or rather faded—slowly beneath the water, until nothing remained but a faint ripple, then bubbles that vanished.

After news spread through the village that Elias had come to deliver them from the golden rooster, he went to the well, the rifle hanging from his shoulder. He cut through the silent silhouettes of the farmers, and in their eyes he appeared like a messiah who had left paradise behind to save them from ruin.

He had only three bullets and one chance—if he wasted it, everything would be lost. He prepared his rifle and hid at a distance from the well where he could observe everything around him. The hours passed one after another without him moving or yielding to boredom. Sometimes a man has no choice but between two regrets: the regret of failure after trying, and the regret of failure without trying. He certainly preferred the first.

He almost dozed off, then woke in the same instant, but exhaustion multiplied until even wakefulness could no longer hold his eyelids open, and he surrendered to sleep. Yet what woke him this time was the rooster itself—it seemed the fool could not suppress its instinct to crow at the first threads of dawn.

He tightened his grip on the trigger, the golden feathers glinting before his eyes, and pulled, without hesitation, without regret.

The shot shattered the dawn. The birds scattered into the sky. In the moment the bullet pierced its heart, the rooster collapsed into golden ash that glittered with the rising sun. Elias stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, watching the ash scatter in the light.

He gathered it quickly, his hands trembling—not from fear, but from something closer to relief—before footsteps could be heard on the path. Then he left the well, panting, the sack pressed to his chest.

A few days passed, and Elias disappeared from the village as the rooster had disappeared. No one saw him leave, and no one knew where he went. But shortly afterward, the first charitable hospital was built in the village—white walls, proper beds, and a doctor who came from the city every week. It bore the name of the late mayor.

And the villagers, when they passed by it, sometimes spoke of Elias. They said he had been the best of them. They said he had carried the rifle so that no one else would have to.

And in the canal, when the water was still and the moon was thin, some of the young women bathing there swore they saw a shape beneath the surface—waiting, as though Elias were still watching over the village.