by Antonio Napoli

In a remote African village, at dawn, a young man stood up and, gazing at the horizon, said to himself:
“I will walk for all those who cannot or do not wish to walk. For the crippled and the lazy, for the dead and the living. I will walk to acquire the feet of the wind and the eyes of the sun.”
And he set off towards the barren land.
Halfway through, he was stopped by a sorcerer, who, with a grave voice, told him:
“Walking in the desert is like digging within yourself until you meet madness. If you desire a forest, a garden, a home, abandon your quest.”
“I don’t know what I desire at the bottom of this urge to walk.”
Day after day, the walker lost his way, perhaps circling around the same point; the weight of loneliness and thirst began to crush his heart. One day, gazing at the uncertain horizon, he admitted:
“My heart can no longer bear the uncertain path, it cannot even bear itself. Let it die here, now.”
But a voice echoed in the air, like a whispering wind mixing with the desert dust:
“I have always been a step behind you. I have watched you because I envied something that belonged to you: courage. I live in fear: fear of an enemy, fear of not finding enough food, fear of being alone. Let’s continue walking together, this time side by side. I will explain the meaning of life. Wasn’t this what you were seeking?”
The voice belonged to a hyena.
“What do you know about life?” asked the walker, disoriented, unable to understand where the voice came from, but sensing a strange power in it.
“I know because I always deal with death,” replied the animal, with relentless calm. “Not far from here is an oasis. I will drag you there.” Then, with a defiant smile, she added: “Now that I’m your friend, I have neither thirst nor heat, neither fatigue nor fear of dying.”
When the walker finally refreshed himself at the spring, his hungry and thirsty body finally appeased, he looked into the hyena’s eyes and, with a question weighing on his heart, asked:
“Who are you really?”
The hyena watched him for a long time, then, in a tone that seemed to come from the very depths of her soul, replied:
“I will tell you what I am not. I am not loneliness, deceit, obscurity, the soul of the deceased. I am not the pitiable condition of the sick, nor all that which generally causes fear without real reason. None of this has anything to do with me.”
She paused, then concluded:
“I am your shadow that took the form of a hyena in the fever of your thirst. When all abandon you, I stay with you. And when you are in the dark, even then I will not have abandoned you: for I will have made the dark less foreign, less incomprehensible, less painful.”
The walker fell silent, as if those words slipped inside him, turning every doubt into dust that dissolved in the wind. Then he stood up and saw the hyena’s muzzle touch the horizon.
“Now,” said the hyena, “let’s continue walking.”