The Exile Kiss (13 page)

Qur'Sn, 'we shall provide for them and for you. Lo! the slaying of them is great sin.'" Nasheeb listened to him with his head bowed. He seemed to be only vaguely aware of what was
happening. His wife had collapsed on the ground, weeping and call-ing on Allah, and some of the other
women in the tribe were tending to her. Bin Musaid had turned away, and his shoulders shook. Bin
Sharif just stared at Nasheeb in bewilderment.
"Do you deny this accusation?" asked Hassanein. "If you wish, you may swear your innocence on the great shrine of Shaykh Ismail bin Nasr. Remember that it was only a year and a year ago that All bin Sahib swore falsely on that holy shrine, and within a week he was dead of a snakebite." This was the same Shaykh Hassanein who'd assured me earlier that the Bani Salim weren't supersti-tious. I wondered how much he believed in the swearing-on-shrines stuff, and how much was purely for Nasheeb's benefit. The murderer, Noora's own father, spoke in a voice so low that only Hassanein and I could hear. "I will swear no oath," he said. That was his admission of guilt. Hassanein nodded. "Then let us prepare Noora for her rest unto the Day of Judgment," he said. "Tomorrow at sunrise, Nasheeb, you'll be allowed to pray for your soul. And then I will do what I must do,
inshallah."
Nasheeb only closed his eyes. I've never seen such pitiful anguish on a man's face before. I thought he might faint on the spot.
We brought Noora back to the grave site. Two of the women fetched a white sheet to use as a shroud, and they wrapped the girl in it and wept and prayed over her. Has-sanein and Abu Ibrahim, Noora's uncles, lowered her into the grave, and the shaykh prayed for her. Then there was nothing to do but cover her over and mark the place with a few stones.
Hassanein and I watched Hilal and bin Turki finish that work, and neither of us spoke. I don't know what the shaykh was thinking, but I was asking myself why it is that so many people seem to think that murder can be a solu-tion to their problems. In the crowded city or here in the empty desert, can life really become so unbearable that someone else's death will make it better? Or is it that deep down inside, we never truly believe that anyone else's life is worth quite as much as our own?
As the two young men completed their sad task, Friedlander Bey joined us. "May the blessings of Allah be on her and peace," he said. "Shaykh Hassanein, your brother has fled." Hassanein shrugged, as if he knew it would happen. "He seeks his own death in the desert, rather than from my sword." He stretched and sighed. 'Tet we must track him and fetch him back, if God wills. This tragedy is not vet over."

8

Well, as much as I hated the idea, my time among the Bani Salim had changed my life. I was almost sure of it. As I drowsed aboard Fatma, I daydreamed about what things might be like when I got back to the city. I especially liked the fantasy of bursting in on Reda Abu Adil and giving him the big kiss, the one that Sicilian crime lords knew as the mark of death. Then I reminded myself that Abu Adil was off-limits, and I turned my attention elsewhere. Whose neck would I most like to wring? Hajjar's? That went without saying, but dusting Hajjar wouldn't jive me the true satisfaction I was looking for. I'm sure Friedlander Bey would expect me to aim higher.

A fly landed on my face, and I gave it an annoyed swipe. I opened my eyes to see if anything had changed, but it hadn't. We were still slowly rocking and rolling across the sand mountains called the Uruq ash-Shaiba.
These were indeed mountains, not just hiDs. I'd had no idea that dunes could rise so high. The sand peaks of the Uruq ash-Shaiba towered six hundred feet, and they stretched on and on toward the eastern horizon like waves of frozen sunlight.
It was sometimes very difficult for us to get the camels up the backs of those dunes. We often had to dismount and lead the animals by their head ropes. The camels complained constantly, and sometimes we even had to lighten their loads and carry the stuff ourselves. The sand on the slopes was soft, compared with the firm, packed sand on the desert floor, and even the surefooted camels had trouble struggling up to the crest of the high dunes. Then, on the leeward side, which of course was much steeper, the beasts were in danger of tumbling and seri-ously injuring themselves. If that happened, it might cost us our lives.
There were six of us in the chase party. I rode beside Hassanein, who was our unspoken leader. His brother, Abu Ibrahim, rode with bin Musaid, and Suleiman bin Sharif rode with Hilal. When we stopped next to rest, the shaykh squatted and drew a rough map in the sand.
"Here is the track from Bir Balagh to Khaba well to Mughshin," he said, drawing a crooked line from north to south. He drew another line parallel to it, about a foot to the right. "Here is Oman. Perhaps Nasheeb thinks he can beg the safety of the king there, but if so, he's badly mistaken. The king of Oman is weak, under the thumb of the amir of Muscat, who is a fierce defender of Islamic justice. Nasheeb would live no longer there than if he returned to the Bani Salim."
I indicated the space between the desert track and the Omani border. "What is this?" I asked.
"We've just entered this area," said Hassanein. He patted the honey-colored sand. "This is the Uruq ash Shaiba, these high dune peaks. Beyond it, though, is something worse." Now he ran his thumbnail in the sand along the border with Oman. "The Umm as-Samim."
That meant "Mother of poison." "What kind of a place is it?" I asked.
Hassanein looked up at me and blinked. "Umm as-Samim," he said, as if just repeating the name explained everything. "Nasheeb is my brother, and I think I know his plans. I believe he's heading there, because he'd rather choose his own way to die."
I nodded. "So you're not really anxious to catch up to him?"
"If he intends to die in the wilderness, I'll allow it. But just the same, we should be prepared to head him off if he tries to escape, instead." He turned to his brother. "Musaid, take your son and ride to the northern limits of the Umm as-Samim. Bin Sharif, you and Hilal ride to the south. This noble city man and I will follow Nasheeb to the edge of the quicksands."
So we split up, making plans to meet again with the rest of the Bani Salim at Mughshin. We didn't have a lot: extra time, because there were no wells in the Uruqh-Shaiba. We had only the water in our goatskin bags to us until we caught up with Nasheeb. As the day wore on, I was left alone again with my thoughts. Hassanein was not a talkative man, and there as very little that needed discussion. I'd learned quite at from him. It seemed to me that in the city, I sometimes paralyzed myself, worrying over right and wrongind all the gray shades in-between. That was a kind of weakness.here in the Sands, decisions were clearer. It could be ital to delay too long, debating all the sides of a course of tion. I promised myself that when I got back to the city, and try to maintain the Bedu way of thinking. I'd reward good and punish evil. Life was too short for extenuating circumstances.
Just then, Fatma stumbled and recovered her footing. The interruption in the rhythmically swaying ride jolted me from my introspection and reminded me that I had more immediate matters to think about. Still, I couldn't help feeling that it was the will of Allah that I should have this lesson. It was as if Noora's murder had been arranged to teach me something important.
Why Noora had to die for it, I couldn't begin to un-derstand. If I'd asked the deeply religious Friedlander Bey about it, he'd only have shrugged and said, "It's what pleases God." That was an unsatisfactory answer, but it was the only one I'd get from anyone. The discussion of such matters always devolved into late-adolescent specu-lation about why Allah permitted evil in the world.
Praise Allah the Unknowable!
We rode until sundown, then Shaykh Hassanein and I stopped and made camp in a small flat area between two immense dunes. I'd always heard it was wiser to travel by night and sleep during the hot afternoon, but the Bani Salim felt it was safer to reverse the conventional wisdom. After all, Fatma had enough trouble with her balance in the daytime, where she could see where she was going. In the dark, we'd be courting disaster.
I unloaded Fatma and staked her down with a long chain that let her find her own spare dinner. We needed to travel light, so our own meal wasn't much better. We each chewed two or three strips of dried goat meat while Hassanein prepared hot mint tea over a small fire.
"How much further?" I asked, staring into the flicker-ing fire.
He shook his head. "That's hard to say, without know-ing Nasheeb's plans. If, indeed, he's attempting a crossing of the Umm as-Samim, then our task will be completed by noon tomorrow. If he tries to elude us—which he can-not do, since his life depends on finding water soon—we'll have to close in on him from three sides, and there may be a violent confrontation. I trust that my brother will do the honorable thing, after all."
There was something I didn't understand. "O Shaykh," I said, "you called the Umm as-Samim 'quick-sands.' I thought they existed only in holoshows, and then usually along some unlikely jungle trail."
Hassanein gave one short, barking laugh. "I've never seen a holoshow," he said.
"Well, the quicksand usually looks like thick mud. Seems to me that if you can tread water, you ought to be able to stay above the surface in an even denser medium. You aren't sucked down immediately."
"Sucked down?" asked the shaykh. He frowned. "Many men have died in the Umm as-Samim, but none of them were sucked down. 'Fall through' is a better choice of words. The quicksands consist of a swampy lake of undrinkable water, over which is a crust of alkaline crystals washed by streams from the hills along the Omani order. In some places, the crust can bear the weight of a man. The crust is hidden from observation, however, by the desert sands that have drifted over it. From a distance, the Umm as-Samim looks like a quiet, safe floor at the edge of the desert."
"But if Nasheeb tries to travel across it—" Hassanein shook his head. "May Allah have mercy on his soul," he said.
That reminded us that we'd delayed our sunset prayers, although only for a few minutes. We each cleared
a small area of desert bottom, and performed the ritual ablutions with clean sand. We prayed, and I added a prayer asking for a blessing on Noora's soul, and guidance for all the rest of us. Then it was time to sleep. I was exhausted.
I had strange dreams all through the restless night. I can still recall one—something to do with a strong father figure giving me stern lectures about going to the mosque on Friday. In fact, the father figure wouldn't permit me to choose any old mosque; it had to be the one he attended, and he wouldn't tell me which one that was. It wasn't until I awoke that I realized he wasn't even my father, he was Jirji Shaknahyi, who had been my partner during the brief time I worked for the city's police department.
I was deeply troubled by that dream for two reasons: now and then, I still blamed myself for Shaknahyi's death, and I wondered how he came to represent strict and harsh behavior in my dreams. He hadn't been h'ke that at all. Why was he troubling my rest now, instead of, say, a dream Friedlander Bey?
We had another meal of dried goat meat and tea be-fore we loaded the camels and went off in pursuit of Nasheeb. Normally, breakfast was only rice porridge and dates. "Eat what you will," said Hassanein. "This will be a day filled with happenings that will not be pleasant. Eat and drink your fill, because we will not stop again until my brother is dead."
Yipe, I thought. How can he speak so calmly about such a thing? I'd thought that I was hard, yet this desert chieftain was showing me what real strength and tough-ness were.
I threw the elaborate saddle over Fatma's back, and she made her obligatory, halfhearted objections. I hung half of our supplies from the saddle, and then I got the camel to her feet. This was no simple task, believe me. More than once I'd wished that the Bani Salim had turned out to be one of those desert clans who speed across the landscape on beautiful horses. Instead, I got this balky, foul-smelling beast instead. Oh well, it was as Allah pleased.
We urged our camels on toward the east, toward the Umm as-Samim. Hassanein was right: this was going to be an unpleasant day. Yet at the end of it, there'd be a reso-lution that would prove cathartic for the shaykh, inshal-lah.
(Neither of us spoke. We were each wrapped in dark thoughts as we sat on our camels, rocking slowly toward our appointment with Nasheeb. A few hours passed this way, until I heard an exclamation from the shaykh. "Al-lahu Akbar!" he said fiercely. "There he is!"
I looked up at once. I guess I'd been dozing, because I hadn't before noticed the broad, sparkling plain ahead of us. Standing at the western edge was a man, unloading his camel as if he planned to camp there.
"Well," I said, "at least he isn't going to take the poor animal with him."
Hassanein turned to glare at me. All his usual good humor had been burned away. His expression was hard and perhaps a little vindictive.
We urged our camels to their highest speed, and rode down out of the high dunes like a Bedu raiding party. - When we were only fifty yards from Nasheeb, he turned I to look at us. His face held no fear or anger, but only a kind of immense sadness. He raised an arm and gestured toward us. I didn't know what it meant. Then he turned and ran toward the bright crust of Umm as-Samim.
"Nasheeb!" cried Hassanein in despair. "Wait! Return with us to the Bani Salim, where at least you may be forgiven before I must execute you! Isn't it better to die in the bosom of your tribe, than out here in this desolate place, all alone?"
Nasheeb didn't acknowledge his brother's words.
We'd almost caught up with him as he took his first hesi-tant step onto the sand-covered crust.
"Nasheeb!" shouted Hassanein. This time the mur-derer did turn around. He touched his chest above the heartbeat, brought his fingers to his lips and kissed them, then touched his forehead.
Finally, after what seemed like the longest moment in the history of the world, he turned again and took a few more steps across the crusted alkaline surface.
"Maybe he'll—" My words were silenced by Nasheeb's cry of utter hopelessness, as his next step broke through the crust, and he fell helplessly into the marshy lake below. His head reappeared briefly, but he was thrashing about helplessly. Knowing how to swim is not high in the list of the Bani Salim's necessary survival skills.
"In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful," wailed Hassanein. "May the blessings of Allah be on him and peace."
"I testify that there is no god but God," I said, almost as shaken as my companion. I closed my eyes, even though there was nothing to see now but the small hole Nasheeb had broken in the salt crust. There was never any other sign of him. He'd died very quickly.
There was nothing else to do here, and the harshness of the environment dictated that we had to find the rest of the tribe at Mughshin as quickly as possible. Hassanein understood that truth better than I did, and so without speaking another word he dismounted and took the head rope of Nasheeb's camel, leading it across the whistling sand to his own mount. If there was grieving to be done, the shaykh would do it quietly, as we lurched our way to the southwest.
I don't recall sharing a single word with Hassanein during the remainder of that day. He pushed our little party to the utmost, and we rode for an hour or two after night fell, stopping only to pray at sunset. The shaykh explained the situation tersely. "The southern part of the Sands is hungry now," he said. "There is little water and little grazing for the camels. This part of the desert is going through a drought."
Well, hell, I was about to ask him how a place as dry as the Empty Quarter could have a drought. I mean, how could you tell? You could probably hold the entire annual rainfall for the region in a ten-ounce tumbler. I could see that Hassanein was not yet in a mood for talking, so I kept my peace.
About two hours after we'd made camp, eaten our meager dinner, and spread our blankets near the fire, we were joined by Hilal and bin Sharif. I was cheered to see them, although the recent events hung over this small reunion like the fear of God.
The two newcomers prepared their places near the fire. "We could see you and Nasheeb from a long way," said Hilal. "As soon as we saw you leave the edge of Umm as-Samim, we realized that Nasheeb must have killed himself. Then we angled across the Sands to intercept you. We would've met you sooner, but you must have kept up an exhausting pace."
"I don't wish to spend any more time here than neces- -sary," said Hassanein in a grim voice. "Our food and wa-ter—"
"Is sufficient, I think," said bin Sharif. "You just want to leave what happened behind."
The shaykh stared at him for a long moment. "Are you judging me, Suleiman bin Sharif?" he asked in the fiercest of voices.
"Yaa salaam, I wouldn't dare," said the young man.
"Then spread your blanket and get some sleep. We have a long way to travel in the morning."
"As you say, O Shaykh," said Hilal. In a few minutes, we were all dreaming beneath the cold, black sky of the Rub al-Khali.
The next moreing, we broke camp and started off across the desert, with no track to guide us but Has-sanein's memory. We traveled for days like that, no one but Hassanein speaking, and he wouldn't utter a word unless it was necessary: "Time to pray!" or "Stop here!" or "Enough for today!" Otherwise, I had plenty of time for introspection, and believe me, I used it all. I'd come to the conclusion that not only had my time among the Bani Salim changed me, but when I got back—not if I got back —to the city, some drastic changes in my behavior were in order. I'd always been fiercely independent, yet somehow I'd come to desire the approval of this rough clan and its taciturn leader. Finally, we'd traveled so far, over so many days, that thoughts of the city faded from my mind. I thought only of getting safely to another town, another Be.du village on the southern edge of the Sands. And therefore I was im-mensely happy when Hassanein stopped us and pointed to the horizon, slightly south of southwest. "The moun-tains," he announced.