Night, too, has its advantages, and no one can deny that the two men have arrived in the middle of the night on horseback, or barefoot, or clinging to each other on a Suzuki scooter, or riding atop a commandeered government jeep, therefore taking advantage of the element of surprise. And the able-bodied men are not yet back from wherever they have been. Sunset has, historically, been a good time for the two men, wherever they have arrived, for at sunset we are all still together: the women are only just back from the desert, or the farms, or the city offices, or the icy mountains, the children are playing in dust near the chickens or in the communal garden outside the towering apartment block, the boys are lying in the shade of cashew trees, seeking relief from the terrible heat-if they are not in a far colder country, tagging the underside of a railway bridge-and, most important, perhaps, the teen-age girls are out in front of their huts or houses, wearing their jeans or their saris or their veils or their Lycra miniskirts, cleaning or preparing food or grinding meat or texting on their phones.
And we understood what they meant by coming at this time. What we can say with surety is that when these two men arrived in the village we spotted them at once, at the horizon point where the long road that leads to the next village meets the setting sun. It has depended, and continues to depend. But when two men arrive in a village their only tools may be their own dark or light hands, depending, though most often they will have in these hands a blade of some kind, a spear, a long sword, a dagger, a flick-knife, a machete, or just a couple of rusty old razors.
If two men arrive in a town they will obviously arrive with more men, and far more in the way of supplies-that’s simple common sense.
Two men arrive in a village by foot, and always a village, never a town. But if we look at the largest possible picture, the longest view, we must admit that it is by foot that they have mostly come, and so in this sense, at least, our example is representative in fact, it has the perfection of parable. Sometimes on horseback, sometimes by foot, in a car or astride motorbikes, occasionally in a tank-having strayed far from the main phalanx-and every now and then from above, in helicopters.
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