Parade of Shadows (7 page)

“But why are so
many
soldiers needed?” I persisted.

“We have always some well-meaning foreigners who
think they must sow seeds of discontent among the Arabs, telling them that this group or that will give them independence. We Turks understand these foreigners want our land for themselves, but the Arabs, being naïve, don't see behind such promises. Now, if you will excuse me, I will go in search of Miss Phillips.”

Graham and Mohammed had been squatting on their heels, talking rapidly to each other. When Abudullah called Mohammed to some task, Graham joined me. I asked, “Does Mohammed speak English, or were you speaking Arabic to him?”

“Mohammed comes from a family that deals in hemp. They sell all over the world, so they know a number of languages.”

“Why has he taken a job as a mukari?”

“There was some trouble—nothing serious, I'm sure. His family wanted him out of Damascus for a bit.”

I thought there was more to it than that, but this time Graham would not confide in me.

Hakki rounded up Edith and called out, “Gentlemen and ladies, we have much ground to cover, so I respectfully request that you prepare yourself for the next stage. And please let us all be close to one another.”

Leaving behind everything green, we headed toward
flat rocky country, riding along the dry course of what once had been a stream. “They are called wadis,” Graham told me. I saw with a leap of my heart that at last we were truly in the desert. It was not the stretch of sand I expected, but a wilderness of stone.

Graham pointed. “Over there,” he said. “You can just see them.” Silhouetted against the dark blue of the sky was a camel caravan moving slowly toward us. As it drew closer, we could hear the bells and make out a dozen camels with their riders, all in black robes and headdresses. The members of the caravan passed us with no more than a curious glance. No words were exchanged between them and the mukaris. “Not of their tribe,” Graham said. “In the desert, courtesy has very little to do with polite exchanges and everything to do with avoiding murder.”

“How do they find their way? It all looks the same to me: just rocky piles.”

“The Arabs have names for every inch of the desert. What is incomprehensible to us is plain to them. I wish I were here alone with Mohammed instead of tethered to this crew—your father watching me with a gimlet eye; Louvois up to Lord knows what mischief; Edith choosing one of the rockiest, most arid places on earth to pick her flowers. If it weren't for your company and those ever-present Turkish
soldiers who would be after me in a flash, I would be tempted to take off.”

I was pleased that Graham was happy to have me there, but I was not sure I liked being paired with the Turkish soldiers. We stopped for lunch among the remains of a village. “Mathna el-Maluli,” Hakki announced, like a train conductor.

“Lately fallen to ruin,” Abdullah added.

“Several hundred years ago,” Hakki explained.

“That is as yesterday,” Abdullah said.

“There will be lunch and we will all rest for a bit,” Hakki ordered. “There is no point in traveling in the hottest part of the day.” He acted as if he were firmly in control and giving orders to Abdullah, when the stop had been Abdullah's idea.

“The noon heat is bad for the horses,” Abdullah had said. His concern was for the horses, not the riders. Habib hobbled the camel and sent it to graze on a handkerchief-size patch of green. After a while I could hear it belching as it brought up its cud, followed by the grinding of its great yellow teeth.

Mohammed gathered thorn branches and built a fire. Mastur set bread to baking in the ashes, and after roasting the coffee beans, he ground them in a mortar. The mukaris did not hurry, yet everything necessary was done. When
lunch was ready, Graham, ignoring Father's displeased glance, sat next to me. “I must admit it gives me a certain perverse pleasure to irritate your father by paying attention to you.”

I smiled. “It's not very complimentary to be told you are spending time with me just to anger my father.”

“Believe me, if I didn't enjoy your company, even that pleasure, great as it is, would not tempt me.”

I had to be satisfied with that small compliment. It began to worry me that Graham was becoming so important to me, for I felt sure I was not that important to him.

It was still blistering hot when we started up again—not the sultry heat you sometimes have in England but the dry, hot heat of a furnace. The trail narrowed, but our horses were sure-footed along the rocky path. From time to time we would meet a small band on camel or horseback. Sometimes the riders would pass with barely a glance, but sometimes they would stop and stare openly, calling out a few distant words that might have been either quarrelsome or welcoming. As the afternoon wore on, our little tour group fell silent with heat and fatigue. We rode along, our parade of shadows giving the journey a timelessness. I thought it might be the present or it might be a thousand years earlier, when desert travel was rare and fraught with danger.

A
T LAST WE SAW THE
outline of trees ahead of us. The horses began to quicken their gait. The trees became more trees, and there were gardens as well. Bit by bit the village of Jerud unfolded before our eyes like the paper flowers you drop into a glass of water.

As we approached Jerud, we saw a small lake, but the horses, wiser than we were, did not slow. Abdullah explained it was a salt pond. Minutes later we came to a stop just outside the gates of the village. Under Abdullah's direction canvas was stretched upon the ground, stakes hammered, and poles fitted. Within minutes Edith and I were in the tent we were to share, where I could see nothing more than two camp beds covered with a few quilts. “It seems sparse,” I said.

“That is its virtue.” Edith examined the spartan surroundings with relish. “You'll soon get used to camping and
learn to like it. What people don't understand is that the greatest luxury is to do without. If there is anything I have learned from the Arabs, it is that most of the things with which we surround ourselves have more to do with the needs of other people than with our own.”

The more I thought about Edith's words, the more sense they made. In Durham Place I had been all but buried in a large home overflowing with possessions. My life had been all routine and dullness. Here I was in a tent with nothing to call my own but a cot, and my world was full of adventure.

As we were talking, we could hear raised voices. Edith pulled back the flap of the tent and then reported, “Turkish soldiers in a shouting match with Hakki and our dragoman, Abdullah.” Alarmed at the raised voices, I would have chosen to stay in the tent, but Edith went marching out, and I felt it would be cowardly not to follow her. Abdullah at his fiercest was shaking his fist at one of three soldiers, who was in turn gesturing with a rifle. Hakki, looking smaller and more ineffectual than ever, was hopping from foot to foot in frustration. After listening for a moment to the quarrel, Edith translated for me. “The soldiers are asking to see our papers, and Abdullah insists we are under his protection and should not be harassed. Hakki appears to be on the side of the soldiers and is trying to convince Abdullah
that we should do as they say.”

Father must have wanted to get the unpleasantness over with, for he approached one of the soldiers and handed over his papers. “I believe this is what you are asking to see.” He said it with such commanding dignity that both Abdullah and the soldiers fell silent. The soldier examined Father's papers and then accepted Monsieur Louvois's and those of the rest of the tour in turn. When they had completed their check, they saluted Hakki and, giving Abdullah a menacing look, rode off.

Abdullah, with no regard as to whether the soldiers could hear him, spat and cursed.
“Kilâb.”

“‘Dogs,'” Edith translated.

A pale Hakki walked over to Abdullah and quite bravely said, “You will have all of us in prison.” Abdullah looked as though he might kill him, but Hakki must have realized that his future would depend on whether he allowed himself to be intimidated. “There is still work to be done,” he told Abdullah. “A tent lacks a pole, and there are supplies to be unloaded.” This call to work seemed to have some effect, and Abdullah strode away.

Edith took up her specimen box. “I'm going off to see what I can find in the fields. Here in the desert a plant goes through its cycle from flower to seed in a week's time and
one has to move quickly.” Mastur was hammering the last stakes for our tent. When he saw Edith leave with her equipment, he walked over to Hakki and began to argue with him on some point, finally leading him off in a direction that shut Edith off from Hakki's view so that Hakki could not see Edith leave the group. I was sure Mastur was distracting Hakki on purpose, but I merely supposed that Edith didn't want Hakki calling after her to return.

Our tent had been pitched so that its opening allowed the breezes to enter, but late in the day the direction of the wind changed, and under the afternoon sun I found the tent so stifling, I started out on a walk. The sun beat on my back and crept under my wide-brimmed hat. A hot wind nipped at my skirts. The heat and the miles of nothingness made me giddy. At first I could not understand Edith's optimism, for I saw only rocks, until I looked more closely and discovered small flowers nestled among the stones: miniature blue hyacinths and purple crocus and periwinkle—common flowers in England, but in a desert setting exotic. I had never been much attracted to nature, preferring to sketch man-made things like ruins of civilization. Now, caught up in Edith's enthusiasm, I examined a white cyclamen with swept-back petals. Among the barren rocks of the desert, its delicacy was reassuring. If such tender flowers could survive
in such a setting, there was hope for me.

On impulse I took the cyclamen to the tent to sketch and found with relief that Habib had moved the tent to attract the afternoon breezes. Lost in my work, I scarcely noticed that an hour passed before a noise I hardly heard made me look up. I saw a small mouse and then another and another. They jumped rather than ran, as if they were propelled by springs. When one hopped onto my sketch pad, I ran for Mastur, who looked into the tent and laughed.
“Yerbu,”
he said, nodding his head, and he was about to leave as if all I wished were the name of the creatures.

“Chase them away,” I ordered. “I won't be able sleep with mice bouncing all over me.”

“They do no harm. The only bad thing is they bring the snake who wants them for his dinner.” He departed, impatient with this frivolous demand on his time.

Thinking of the snakes, I heaped sand and rocks around the circumference of the tent to pin its hem to the ground, but Mastur's indifference was reassuring, and I began to be fond of the bouncing mice, losing myself in my sketching until it was time for dinner.

As I joined the others around the fire, Hakki said to me, “Why does Miss Phillips not come?”

When I said, “She went out several hours ago to look for
specimens,” Hakki looked as though he might cry.

“I have begged all of you to stay together,” he protested. “How could this happen?”

Monsieur Louvois said, none too kindly, “I would not have expected Edith to be late for a meal.”

“Come and sit down, Hakki,” Father said. “There isn't a desert that exists in which Miss Phillips could lose herself.”

Still we kept our eyes on the horizon, waiting for Edith's substantial figure to appear, but there was nothing to be seen but the faint white houses of the village like empty squares cut into the purple sky.

Monsieur Louvois asked Hakki, “Why did that
petit fonctionnaire
insist on seeing our papers?”

Hakki said, “There have been rumors of people making trouble for the sultan in these parts. The soldiers must keep some sort of order to prevent a handful of troublemakers from sowing the seeds of revolution.” He looked at Graham suspiciously.

The desert air had chilled, and seeing me shiver, Graham had edged close to me, taking off his jacket, still warm from his body, and wrapping it around my shoulders. He was so close to me that I could feel him shifting uncomfortably under Hakki's stare, but he answered in a strong voice. “I wouldn't call it revolution,” he said. “I am
sure there are those who simply want what many nations have and what Turkey once had—a democratic government.”

“It's not that simple,” Father said. “Suppose your seekers after democracy are successful in overthrowing the sultan. Do you think for a moment that the Arab world, when it tastes its first freedom in centuries, will be satisfied to remain a part of the Turkish government? No matter what concessions Turkey gives them, they will want their own country. The same is true for the Greeks and Armenians and Jews.” Father's voice was intense and angry, as if he had been waiting for the moment when he could openly oppose Graham. “These people, and I suppose you are speaking of the Young Turks, will have opened a Pandora's box. It is not in oppression but in the first taste of freedom that revolutions arise. When the Arabs and the Greeks and the Armenians begin their fight for independence, your Young Turks will come down harder on them than the sultan ever thought of doing.

“Not only that. Once the Muslims come to power, they will impose their religion: Only Muslims will be allowed to hold office. Islam is the state and Islam is the religion. What will happen then to your Druzes, who have their own religion?”

I could not follow Father and Graham's arguments. It seemed to me that every solution would just cause another problem.

Like me, Hakki was not listening. He was looking out toward the desert for some sign of Edith, who seemed all but forgotten in the surly discussion. Now he said, “I must see to our dinner. Perhaps by then Miss Phillips will have returned.”

Worried over Edith's absence and edgy from the men's quarrels, I hardly tasted the dinner of rice and mutton. Even before we finished, Hakki ordered Abdullah and the three mukaris out to look for Edith. When Father, Monsieur Louvois, and Graham insisted on going as well, Hakki became upset, pleading, “I have begged over and over that we stay together. I cannot have you going off into the desert for whatever reason.” But they went.

Alone in my tent I was almost grateful for the company of the bouncing mice, who were now hopping about in my bags and shoes. Any moment I expected to see Edith march purposefully into the tent, complaining that too much fuss had been made over her. From time to time I stood at the entrance of the tent looking into the awful space of the desert for some sign of Edith, but the searchers returned without her. First Father, Monsieur Louvois, and Graham,
and then Mohammed, Habib, and Mastur, and finally Abdullah. The whole party fell silent with concern.

“The will of God,” Mohammed said, and Habib nodded. Only Mastur seemed unworried, and I recalled how he had distracted Hakki to keep him from noticing Edith's departure.

A frantic Hakki anounced, “In the morning we will round up the men in the village and pay them to search with us. I will wait up tonight.”

I was grateful to Father when he said, “We will all wait up,” for I was too worried about Edith to sleep.

The tents were hung with lanterns in the event that Edith tried to find her way back. No one left the fire, although from time to time one of the watchers dropped off for a few moments' sleep. I was wrapped in a blanket to keep out the chilly night wind that blew across the desert's cold stones. A terrible howling and whimpering cut through the darkness, and I shut my eyes, afraid of what I might see.

“Most likely a jackal,” Graham said, secretly finding my hand in the folds of the blanket to comfort me.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw a star shoot across the sky, and in spite of my fear I called out in pleasure.

Father heard me and, using that as an excuse to move closer to me and Graham, said, “The Muslims believe there
are satanic legions called ‘jinn' that try to discover the secrets of heaven. To discourage them the good angels pelt the jinn with stars.”

It was nearly midnight when two men on camels moved like specters into the light of the campfire. Without waiting for their camels to kneel, the men, each carrying a rifle, sprang down to the ground and saluted the party. They looked as if they were playing some part that was agreeable to them and that they had rehearsed. One of them kept in the background, but the spokesman's face was clearly visible by the light of the fire. It was a round, fleshy face, almost boyish in its smoothness, and beardless except for a wispy tuft of chin hair. The man's large round eyes had a surprised look. When he turned his head slightly, I noticed with a start a jagged scar like a slash that stretched across his throat. Abdullah greeted the men.
“Es-salaam aleikum,”
he said.

“Aleikum es-salaam,”
returned the spokesman, who said his name was Asad and that he was from the Metawileh tribe.

A cold shiver went through me as I remembered Edith telling us it was the Metawileh tribe that had killed her enemy, Professor Ladamacher.

Asad asked, “Your party is a small one. Is this all?” He spoke in heavily accented English. When he lapsed into Arabic, Graham translated for me.

Abdullah had been lounging by the fire, but now he sat up stiffly. “There is one other, a
hurmeh
.”

“A woman,” Graham translated.

“The
hurmeh
is not here?” the spokesman asked.

“As you see,” Abdullah replied.

“Perhaps it is quieter thus,” Asad said. “Not all
harîm
have the gift of silence.”

“Unhappily, that is so,” Abdullah said.

“It may be that we have found the
hurmeh
. It is possible we could bring her to you, but her discovery has been an inconvenience for us, tiring our camels and exhausting our water. For that you would doubtless wish to give us a little reward, although we could not accept it since you are friends.”

Monsieur Louvois spoke up. “We will give you no money for the mademoiselle, but if you bring her to us
tout de suite
, I will give you something for the trinket you are wearing around your neck in exchange for the
hurmeh
's return.”

Asad replied, “Five of the gold coins of your country for our trouble. I could not sell the amulet, but it will be a gift for you in exchange for your generosity.”

Monsieur Louvois handed the man the sovereigns and received from him a small ivory amulet that the man had
worn on a cord. “If you have any other trinkets such as this one, you will find us in Karyatein in a day or two.”

“We will find what will make you happy. Now we will return to you the missing member of your party.”

After an hour of anxious waiting we heard Edith's angry voice complaining to Asad, who accompanied her, that she could have made her way back on her own. I was relieved to hear her voice, for I had had frightening images of Edith bound and gagged and slung upon a camel. Instead, when Edith appeared, she was riding the camel of the second man, who was not to be seen.