Just Deserts (16 page)

“I see the dining room and the stove, but I don't see the meal,” Connor said.

“I'm still hoping for pizza or a burger,” Andy commented.

“
A
burger?” Kajsa questioned. “As in
one
burger?”

“I was using the term generically. I would like to have many burgers and at least one pizza for myself.”

“More likely you're going to get a falafel or a kebab,” Kajsa replied. “I'm pretty sure these guys only eat traditional foods.”

“Would you consider goat traditional?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, goat is very …” She got a worried look.

I pointed over her shoulder. I'd been watching as two of the men waded in among the grazing goats. The goats had skittered away—all except one. The two men—one of them holding a large knife—grabbed the goat by the scruff of the neck and started to walk it away. It struggled and kicked and cried out—it sounded almost human, like a baby.

“I can't watch this,” Kajsa said. She leaned over and sank her face into Connor's shoulder.

“Circle of life,” Andy said. “Better to be at the top of the food chain.” He got to his feet.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I've never seen a goat slaughtered and butchered. Could be interesting.”

“It could be disgusting!” Kajsa snapped.

“It could be both. Anybody else coming?”

Connor shook his head.

“I think I'll pass as well,” I said.

“No problem.” He pulled his camera out of his pocket. “I'll take pictures, so if you change your mind … you know … something to put up on Facebook.”

THE SUN WAS ALMOST DOWN
and the air was starting to cool off nicely. It certainly hadn't been our plan to stay at the oasis the rest of the day and overnight, but Larson—who'd reappeared sometime after the goat butchering and before
dinner—explained that once we'd accepted their invitation to share a meal, we had no choice but to stay. Part of me was upset about losing time, which meant losing money, but mostly I was just happy. I figured I could have pushed myself to travel the distance we were supposed to do today, but I questioned what state I would have been in the next day or the day after. My feet needed a rest. All of me needed a rest.

It was amazing to me that after being isolated in the desert for only a few days, it felt so strange to be surrounded by living things. Goats and camels wandered about grazing and watering. And of course there were the nomads, gathered around the fire. Below the ashes and embers, the goat was cooking … well, I guess baking, really.

Andy and Connor and Kajsa were now clustered around the fire pit, probably drawn by the wonderful aromatic smell. As for me, I was enjoying being alone. Well, almost alone.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out L'Orange of Tunisia. He was looking a little worse for wear, a bit more shrivelled and pushed in and no longer round.

“Bad day, huh?” I asked L'Orange.

He didn't answer.

“That's okay, I don't like complainers anyway. It's not like anybody is going to want to hear you complain.”

I took L'Orange in my hands and tried to form him back into a sphere, with some success.

“There, that must feel better. Now if you could just do something about my feet. Would orange juice help blisters?”

I sensed a movement just to my side. A shudder ran through my whole body when I thought it might be another viper. I almost didn't want to look. Maybe if I didn't see it then it wouldn't be there.

“Sorry to disturb your conversation.” It was Larson.

I closed my hand over L'Orange and turned it over so that it wasn't so visible. “Sometimes the most intelligent conversation you can have is with yourself,” I joked.

“I don't know if it's the most intelligent, but it might be the most agreeable.”

“Lots of people talk to themselves,” I said. I'd rather he thought I was talking to myself and not an orange. One was eccentric, but the other was just a little this side of crazy.

“I spend so much time alone in the desert that I talk to myself just so I can hear a human voice,” Larson said. He sat down beside me. “It smells good.”

“Really good,” I admitted.

“It puts us behind schedule, but we couldn't turn down their invitation to share a meal,” he said. “Especially after what happened with the snake.”

I felt an involuntary shudder go through my whole body. “If that snake had bitten me, would I have died?”

“There's a possibility that you just would have been really sick. It depends on how much venom it injected and your body's reaction. Everybody is different.”

“Maybe it wouldn't even have bitten me,” I said.

“Maybe.”

“But maybe he saved my life. I guess I should be grateful.”

“Mohammad was asking me about you.”

“Mohammad?” I asked.

“The man who killed the snake,” he explained. “Have you heard the saying that if you save somebody's life, you're responsible for them?”

I shook my head. “Never heard of it, and now that I have, I'm not even sure what it means.”

“Because Mohammad saved your life, he feels that he has responsibility for it. So, for example, if he saved your life and then you killed somebody,
he
would be the cause of that death.”

“You can tell him that I promise not to kill anybody.”

“He wanted to know if you were a good person.”

I almost didn't want to ask the question, but I had to. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you were in the process of becoming an
even better
person.”

“And that means?”

“It means that the
you
of a few days ago would have been trying to figure out how to bribe somebody or steal a motorcycle so you could get to Tunis.”

I smiled. I'd thought of both, but the language barrier stopped me from doing the first, and the absence of a key to one of the motorcycles or a map to get to Tunis basically eliminated the second.

“I'm trying.”

“You're succeeding.” Larson got to his feet. “Time to eat.”

He offered me his hand, which I took. He pulled me up and we started walking. It worked in my favour, I was thinking, that Larson believed I'd do the right thing. It would make it that much easier to do what I needed to do when the time arrived. It wasn't just that I didn't want to walk to Tunis, it was that I was becoming more doubtful that I could.

I limped over to the fire.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I LEANED BACK AND LOOKED UP
, watching the ashes thrown off by the embers drifting up into the sky. It was as if they were flying up to join the stars that were millions of brilliant pinpricks punctuating the night sky. Sitting all around the fire were the five of us and our nomad friends. All were men except Kajsa. I think she was not only aware of it but a little uncomfortable, because she hadn't gone to the bathroom very often. She seemed to be reassured by having either Larson or one of the guys close at hand.

We'd all eaten goat and rice and cornmeal. Our hosts had made a feast for us, and I'd eaten a lot—although I'd kind of avoided the goat. It unnerved me to think I was eating something that had been alive just a few hours before. I'd moved the piece I'd been given around my plate, hiding it among the rice and cornmeal until now there wasn't any food to hide it behind. I knew I couldn't just put my plate down because that might offend them, and I figured it wasn't smart to offend people with swords and rifles.

Looking at the number of pieces that Andy had eaten, I had a pretty good idea of how to get rid of it.

I extended my plate to Andy. “You want another piece?”

“Don't mind if I do,” he said. He used a fork to transfer the goat onto his plate. “Thanks.”

“I think with this piece, you've eaten almost a whole goat by yourself,” Connor said.

“Well, I know it's fresh … really fresh,” he joked.

Larson said something in Arabic and all the men began laughing. He turned to Andy. “I told them that the way you eat, they should have slaughtered a camel instead of a goat.”

Andy finished chewing and swallowed down the mouthful. “What does camel taste like?”

“Probably like chicken,” Connor said. “Doesn't everything taste like chicken?”

“Not everything,” Larson said, “and believe me, I've eaten a whole lot of things that make camel seem like hamburger.”

Then Mohammad said something to Larson, who laughed.

“Our host says he'd like to tell you a story … well, he'll tell me a story and I'll translate it for you.”

Mohammad began to talk. I couldn't understand the words, but there was a lot of expression in his voice. His gestures were big, and he seemed to really be into what he was saying. The other nomads sat
cross-legged and listened intently. He stopped and motioned for Larson to translate.

“I won't be able to tell the story with the eloquence of Mohammad,” he began, “but I'll try. Mohammad asked if you've heard about genies in a bottle.”

We all nodded politely. I hated fantasy and fairy tales.

“He said that you need to know that they're not pretend, they're real. He said that as you walk across the desert, you might find one. In fact, he himself found one.”

Oh great, the guy with the sword, the guy who'd saved my life, was about to tell us some lame story and I'd have to pretend to be interested.

Larson nodded at Mohammad, who began to talk again. This time he didn't just talk, he got up and started to act out something. He wasn't much of an actor—or I guess a mime, since we didn't understand the words—but he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. All the men—including Larson—nodded along. They were enjoying his story, too. I figured that when you lived in the desert with no TV, radio, telephones, MP3 players or Internet, this was what qualified as quality entertainment.

Mohammad stopped talking and Larson began again.

“So, Mohammad was walking through the desert,
and he hates to admit it, as both a man and a Berber, but he was lost.”

“Nomads get lost?” Connor asked.

“Even nomads. So he was wandering around, lost, disoriented, almost out of water, when he tripped and fell flat on his face. As he turned around, he saw this shiny object that he'd tripped over, and out of it came smoke, and that smoke became a genie, a gigantic genie!”

Now some of the gestures Mohammad had been making made more sense.

“He's not ashamed to say he was afraid, but the genie spoke to him and assured him that not only should he not be afraid but that this was his lucky day, because the genie was going to grant him two wishes.”

“Two wishes?” I asked. “I thought it was
three
wishes.”

“No, definitely two,” Larson said, holding up two fingers. He looked at Mohammad, who also held up two fingers and nodded.

“I think the three wishes is from a Disney movie,” Larson said. “This is a
real
story.”

Mohammad started talking again. Once more his voice was expressive. He acted out the scene as the men watched him with rapt attention. I just sat there, helpless, waiting for him to end so that Larson could translate and we could get this story over with.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, all the men, including Larson, burst into laughter. Two of them jumped to their feet and slapped Mohammad on the back. I was now at least a little interested in what he'd said.

“Okay, so the genie told Mohammad he had two wishes,” Larson said. “And of course his first wish, as you can imagine, was that he be transported to a place where he had food and water and where he wasn't lost. So the genie blinked his eyes, and instantly they were at an oasis—in fact
this
oasis—and all around him were his friends and family, including his wife.”

What a coincidence that we were sitting in the exact same place.

“So,” Larson continued, “the genie asked him what his second wish was, and Mohammad told him that he'd always wanted to visit New York City, but that he didn't want to fly and he didn't like ships. He wished to travel to New York on his camel. So he asked the genie if he could build a bridge between Africa and America. Well, the genie explained that he was a very powerful genie, but that was just too difficult. He asked Mohammad to make another wish.

“Now, Mohammad was much younger then and had only recently married, and he was finding that he didn't understand what his wife wanted from him sometimes, and because of that, they fought, and Mohammad is a man of peace.”

I thought I could tell that by the rifle and the sword.

“So Mohammad asked the genie if he could give him the power to understand women. The genie looked at Mohammad and said, ‘Do you want that bridge to be two lanes or four?'”

We all broke out laughing—including me. It wasn't even that the joke was that funny, but it just felt so good to laugh. I tried to stop, but I kept giggling and laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes.

Mohammad stood up and took a bow and we all cheered. He then started to speak. Was he telling another joke?

“Mohammad has now said that he'd like to share one more thing with his guests. With your permission, he and some of his friends would like to play music for you.”

“That would be amazing!” Kajsa exclaimed, and Connor and Andy and I all enthusiastically nodded in agreement.

One of the men pulled out a small metal and wood instrument—it looked like a flute, but it wasn't.

“That is the Arabian
ney,
” Larson explained. “And having heard him play, I can tell you that he's a very skilled performer.”

He began to play. The music was high-pitched and sharp but incredibly melodic. Mohammad's fingers
raced up and down the little instrument and the notes jumped free. It wasn't anything I recognized, but it was good.