If You Were a Horse by Ghassan Kanafani

IF YOU WERE A HORSE I WOULD PUT A BULLET through your brain."

Why a horse? Why not a dog, or a cat, or a rat, or anything else if it had to be an animal so that one could put a bullet through its brain?

Ever since he had begun to understand what words meant-he didn't remember when exactly-he had heard this sentence on his father's tongue. It was strange indeed that his father was the only person in the world whom he heard wish that his son were a horse, and nothing but a horse. What was even stranger was that his father never wished that anyone else were a horse, however much he disagreed with them or was infuriated by them.

To begin with, he supposed that his father hated horses, hated them more than anything else in the world, and that he only said to someone "If you were a horse I'd shoot you" when he had completely lost his temper with him. He supposed, again to begin with, that his father hated no one in the world as much as he did his son, and for that very reason his father did not say to anyone else: "If you were a horse I'd shoot you."

But with the passage of time he soon abandoned that silly idea completely. For he discovered that his father loved horses and had been a great expert on them in days gone by. He had only abandoned horses when he abandoned the countryside.

One day his father was uncharacteristically happy and cheerful, and so he seized the opportunity to ask him:

"Why do you wish I were a horse when you are overcome by the urge to be rid of me?"

His father suddenly frowned and answered in a grave tone:

"You don't understand these things. There are situations where killing a horse is a necessary, useful action."

"But I'm not a horse."

"I know. I know. That's why I sometimes wish that God had created you a horse."

Saying this, his father turned his broad shoulders and walked away. But the son took a few steps and stood in his path. His father stopped and gave him a penetrating stare, looking him up and down with his sharp eyes. He tried in vain to divine what was in his father's mind.

"Do you hate me so much?"

"I don't hate you."

"What, then?"

"I'm afraid of you."

There was a short silence, and then he stood aside to let his father pass. As his father turned at the bend in the wide staircase, he realized how much he loved him, this unfortunate old man who had lived most of his life in loneliness and solitude. His youth had been taken up with horses, but it was not long before he abandoned everything, all of a sudden. His wife had died after bearing him a son whom he took with him to the city. He sold all his horses and the meadows in which he let them roam freely, his horses Samra, Bayda, Barq, Saba. Why had his father taken that step? It did not occur to the young man to ask him, and if he had he would not have received an answer.

He knew his father through and through, and he knew that the past was, for him, a solid wooden box locked with a thousand keys that had been cast into the depths of the ocean.

Once he became obsessed with the story, he decided to discover its secrets at the first opportunity. His father had set off for the country to visit those of his friends and relatives who were still there, and the son went up to his room, which he hardly ever entered. For the first time he became aware of the existence of the great number of pictures decorating the walls, pictures of truly beautiful horses. He slipped a knife into the crack of the drawer to open it, and drew out a notebook with a black leather cover, ensconcing himself in the armchair to read it.

It was an enormous disappointment. There was nothing helpful in the book, only numbers, prices, and pedigrees. Prices of horses that had been bought and sold, and pedigrees stretching back hundreds of years. There were just some incomplete phrases written carelessly in the margins of the notebook, like the scribblings of a daydreamer.