Pages 4.qxp_The Road Chosen 10/02/2022 16:16 Page 15
Approaching Jericho
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THE TREE ‘How did he know my name?’ The old man lingered, smiling as an inner world opened behind his eyes, more vivid to him than the present. I have learned to wait for the stories to come slowly, tasted afresh as they are told. Many people begin with what for them is a mystery and their story is a slow unravelling of a thread. My patients, too, begin with what is for them the moment of change, the tipping place where their symptoms began to gather into something which cannot be borne. So I have learned to wait and watch the movement of hands and shoulders and read the script of lines around the mouth and eyes. This man sat on a bench by the wall, under the shade of a great tree. Beyond him I could see the rough grey-pink hills with their clumps of rock rose, oregano and lavender, and in the far distance a group of sighing pines. A lizard scuttled into a crack in the rock. The old man’s head moved at the faint flicker of sound and his hands touched the stick that leaned beside him. As his head turned I saw the milkiness of his eyes and recognised the cataracts of old age. ‘You will find him,’ they had said, ‘by the wall under the tree. We share food and water at midday and bring him back with us at dusk. Clement sits with him for much of the morning.’ And I had found him, comfortable in the afternoon sunlight, a short, round man with tufted white hair, a face crinkled with lines that could have been concentration and irritation, but which were instantly redeemed by the play of laughter and kindness in his words and expression. He sat there, listening to the quiet wind, the bird calls, the bleating and bells of far-off goats.
