Read The Last of the Angels for Free Online Page A

lift its head and reply in an equally affectionate whisper, “I became a donkey because I didn’t go to school. Do you want to become a donkey too?”
    The boy dashed off as fast as his feet could carry him and did not stop running until he entered his home, breathless. He told the story to his mother, who laughed to calm him. She told him, “You say you’re a man, and then you’re frightened by something like this!” Then she added, “It definitely wasn’t a donkey. It must have been a playful jinni wanting to tease you.” She told him that some jinnis enjoy teasing, jesting, and playing practical jokes. Then she told him a story he had already heard her repeat more than once.
    Her father, who was a herdsman, had gone out early one day—at dawn—with his flocks to the pasture. He noticed a strange ram in the herd, so he approached it and began groping under its belly toward the rear, the way shepherds do, when the ram suddenly turned its head back toward him to ask, “Ha! Do you like your uncle’s balls?” Her father was frightened, but remained steadfast and recited the Throne Verse from the Qur’an. The playful jinni, who had certainly only meant to have a laugh and joke around—perhaps because it was bored or lonely—vanished.
    The next day Burhan Abdallah’s father took his hand and led him to al-Musalla Elementary School for Boys, which faced the cemetery, after buying him gray shorts, a shirt, and shoes from a shop that belonged to a relative in al-Qurya Souk. He told his son, “If that donkey wanted this, we won’t deny its request.” His mother sensed that her hopes of her son becoming a police officer were beginning to be realized. Although the boy, who was wearing shorts for the first time in his life—and this was the only pair of shorts he had to wear, even in the winter when he shivered from the stinging cold—was greeted with insults and sarcasm by most of the neighborhood children, who chased after him when he returned from school, he felt proud of himself. He carried in his hand the book that had been given to him, notebooks, and orange pencils, the fragrance of which enchanted him, and paid no attention to these children, not returning their abuse or quarreling with them. From then on, he had an obscure sense of power that never left him.
    He spent the whole afternoon in his house—renouncing the temptation to play in the neighborhood with the other children—after devouring a flat loaf of bread so hot that it burned his fingers, since his mother had just plucked it from the oven, which was flaming in a corner of the courtyard near a small plot where he had planted sunflowers with large blossoms. In his mind’s eye, he reviewed what had happened to him that morning in school. The principal had told his father, who had addressed the man as “effendi,” “You should have started your son in school before now.”
    His father had replied, “Effendi, the boy was with the mullah. I wanted him to finish memorizing the Qur’an. You know how important that is.”
    Then the boy had surprised the principal with a challenge: “Effendi, you can examine me. I know how to read.”
    The principal’s eyes had twinkled as he reached to pluck a book from the table. He had opened it to a certain page, saying, “Fine. Take this and read!”
    The boy had read several sentences with ease and fluency. Then the principal had called the school messenger and had instructed him, “Take this boy to First B and tell the teacher he’s a new pupil.” He had left without even a word to his father, who was thanking the principal.
    After the boy Burhan Abdallah came home from school, he read the book the teacher had given him through to the final page as he paced back and forth in the court between the door to the large room and the well, which was located on the other side by an