I left the village in search for a job. When I returned many years later to attend a consin’s wedding, I could not find Hussani anywhere. I was told he was living outside the village, suffering from tuberculosis, and that the disease had almost finished him. I knew no one would take him to a doctor because it would be humiliating to be seen with the donkey-man.

I found him lying alone in a dark, cold hut. I was barely able to stand the smell. For a few minutes he did not recognize me. When he did he began to weep. He tried to speak but each time the congestion in his lungs prevented him. It was difficult for him even to breathe. “Hussani,” I said, “don’t worry. Tomorrow I will take you to a doctor. You will soon be all right.”

At the door of the hut I looked back and saw the shadow of death on his face. He called me back and whispered, “Khan, life will go on whether I wish it to or not.”

He died that night and was buried the next morning. This was no ceremony, because no one knew what religion he was. I still wonder why the villagers allowed his body to be interred in a graveyard set aside for human beings. He had certainly never been treated as one in life.

He was still smiling when they laid him in his grave. He seemed incapable of abandoning that smile, even if he had severed his ties with this life. It was as if he was saying to us all that death isn’t as horrible as we think.

Now, after so many years have passed, this dying donkey has brought back to me these memories of Hussani. And I again asked myself, “Was he a man or a donkey?” But this time I have no hesitation answering the question. Would God that we all could be such a man.

The End

Marlene