The Sleeping Sands (20 page)

Reluctant to set foot once again in the Matamet’s palace, even if it would expedite his departure, Layard would spend what was left of each day in the company of Boré and a Persian of his acquaintance who had proved a most enlightening host. This Persian was a self-declared free-thinking Sufi who made a point of entertaining Layard and his other guests in the women’s apartments of his large and comfortable house. There, the company would indulge liberally in wine and far-reaching conversation, while watching the Persian’s beautiful dancing girls perform. The Persian’s reputation for liberal thought and hospitality was such that, each evening, Layard would be guaranteed of meeting a mixture of travellers, eccentrics and other seekers of experience among whom he could at least offset the tedium of his long delay in Isfahan.

One evening, Layard was stretched out in the Persian’s house, sipping a cup of iced arak, spellbound by the undulations of two dancers. The girls wore nothing on their shoulders other than short silk jackets, unfastened, so that every writhing move of their supple bodies was revealed to the watcher. Their long, athletic legs were sheathed in loose trousers of sheer, translucent silk. They seemed to Layard to be of a completely different species to the pale, soft and frilled creatures that passed for women in London society. He wondered what his Aunt Sara might say if she could see her nephew, intoxicated and supine among the silks and cushions, entertained by two visions from the pages of the Arabian Nights. Would she approve? Or would she rather he was sitting on some hard chair in a cold drawing room, listening to some twittering debutante singing at the pianoforte?

Just at that moment, Layard was disturbed by the entry into the chambers of a group of three of the most outlandish people that he had ever seen.

Save for the coconut shell each wore around his neck, each of the three men was different from his fellows in all regards, whether dress, physiology or appearance. Yet there was about them such a strong sense of commonality and relatedness that it would be possible to imagine them as brothers, despite their physical differences. One man was a giant, with a shock of tightly curled black hair. His black skin and gold jewellery suggested African origins, but his costume was that of a high-class Persian. He smiled at Layard when he entered, revealing a row of gold-capped teeth. As he moved closer, Layard noticed that he wore a belt of monkey skulls around his waist. The next man was tiny, stooped and wrinkled. His skin was as brown as a walnut and he was clad only in a great array of long thin strips of torn cloth – each a different colour. He had a tall goatskin cap on his head and carried a long staff, capped with a heavy brass ball. It seemed a wonder to Layard that the weight of it didn’t snap the man’s frail, wizened arm. The third man was round and fat, with a small felt skull cap perched atop his pale, bald head. He seemed to have no colour at all to his skin and his small, squinting eyes had a pinkish tinge in the lamplight. He wore a long, shapeless gown that Layard at first thought was dark grey, until the man came nearer and he saw that it was in fact a white robe upon which had been minutely stitched thousands of geometric representations of Arabic calligraphy. In his pudgy hands, the man carried a truncheon upon which was a razor-sharp blade in the form of the Hand of Fatima.

‘Ah, my friends,’ cried out the Persian, clapping his hands together in delight, ‘you are returned from your wanderings. You must share your adventures and wisdom with us.’

‘Drink first,’ said the oldest of the three, simply and scuttled over to sit by Layard. The other two came to join him. The oldest traveller peered at Layard with rheumy eyes.

‘Foreigner,’ he concluded. ‘Good. Has he any money?’

‘I am just a poor traveller, like yourselves,’ protested Layard.

‘Like ourselves are you?’ laughed the giant in a deep, good-humoured voice. ‘That is a fairly lofty claim for anyone to make – let alone someone who has only just met us.’

‘Why,’ trilled the fat man, musically, ‘I have known us for years and I still have no idea what we are like and far less idea of whether I am anything like that.’

The African almost collapsed when he saw the look of confusion on Layard’s face. Doubled over, he pounded the couch with a huge fist, spluttering through tears of laughter.

‘I hadn’t noticed how like us he was,’ he guffawed. ‘Why, when I look at him, it is as if I were looking in a mirror.’

‘I should have known as soon as I set eyes upon him,’ giggled the fat man. ‘In fact I noticed that he was reciting the 9,999 secret names of Allah that are stitched upon my coat.’

‘You are too coy, my friend,’ called out the giant to his Persian host. ‘You did not confess to entertaining another dervish among your guests!’

The two younger dervishes, for that is what they were, fell back in a laughing tangle. The oldest sat smiling and staring thoughtfully at the bemused Englishman.

‘You are not entirely wrong, my brothers,’ he said at length. ‘This foreigner has something of the shadows about him. He may not be a dervish, but he holds his own secrets.’

He reached over and picked up Layard’s cup, sniffing at it.

‘There’s the first holy mystery,’ he declared triumphantly. ‘Let us all partake of this divine nectar. Bring us more arak!’

The three dervishes attacked the Persian’s supply of arak and Shiraz, calling out encouragement to the dancers and offering to cast various enchantments to bring them wealth, happiness and handsome lovers. When the dance was at last finished, the girls ran giggling from the room, followed by expansive promises of supernatural fortune from the dervishes, who were now quite drunk. When the girls had left, the three stretched out on the cushions and lit up pipes, offering the sweetly scented tobacco to Layard.

‘Now,’ said the giant, ‘stories!’

‘Yes,’ said the moon-faced dervish, ‘tell us of your adventures, brother Foreigner.’

‘Everyone wants to hear my story,’ laughed Layard, slurring his words slightly, ‘but what of you? What tales do I get in return?’

‘What did I tell you?’ exclaimed the oldest. ‘He knows things, this one! He has demanded from us our greatest treasure and we are bound to honour his request.

‘Very well, brother Foreigner; we will each tell you a story. When you have heard our tales, then you must tell us of your adventures. Is our pact clear?’

‘I believe we have a deal,’ smiled Layard, settling back to listen to the dervishes’ tales.

C
HAPTER 11

The Yellow Dog

‘
M
ANY YEARS AGO,’ BEGAN THE TALL BLACK DERVISH
, fixing his gaze on Layard, ‘a traveller came into the desert. No-one knew where he had come from or where he was going. He was a white man, a European like you. The name he gave himself was George Lackland, but that did not sound to any of the people of the desert like any real sort of name. So, they just called him the Frank and, when they had ascertained that he had neither money nor anything else of value of which they could relieve him, they left him to travel in peace.

‘He wandered from camp to camp in the great wilderness of the desert, enjoying the meagre hospitality that the desert tribes can offer. Thinking this ragged stranger might be in search of something valuable, sometimes the sheikh of one camp or another would ask the Frank what he was searching for, but each time he would only smile sadly and say that he would know what it was when he found it. The chief would shake his head sadly at this answer, concluding that the Frank’s wits had been turned by the desert sun.

‘So it was that the Frank wandered deeper and deeper into the great desert. The dunes towered above him like mountains. The gullies and wadis wound in impassable mazes. The black tents of the desert tribes became fewer and more scattered as he moved further and further from any habitable part of the desert and into realms unknown to men.

‘The sun beat down on his ragged back without mercy. The last of his water was long gone and he could feel the blood in his veins thickening and slowing in the heat. He imagined that soon he would die of thirst and exhaustion and all that would be left of him would be white bones on the yellow sand. His throat was parched and burning and his skin was blistering upon him. Suddenly, he saw ahead of him, a miraculous sight. It was an oasis, nestled among the dunes. Fearing that is was a mirage, he rubbed at his eyes in disbelief, yet the oasis remained. A beautiful crystal fountain sprang from a rock above a clear blue pool. Around the pool were gently bowing palms, heavy with succulent dates. The Frank ran forward and dived into the pool, feeling its cool sweet water bring strength and hope back to his dying body. He drank long, thankful gulps of water and, when he could drink no more, he gathered up a great bundle of dates and sat himself down in the shade of a tree to enjoy his feast. He plucked the plumpest, juiciest date from one of the stalks he had gathered and bit into it. It tasted sweeter and more delicious than anything he had ever eaten. He greedily munched at its succulent flesh and sucked every last bit of fruit from its stone. Then, disaster!

‘Perhaps because he was so hungry for another wondrous date or perhaps because he was a Frank who didn’t know any better, he threw the date stone over his shoulder without giving the proper thanks to Allah. Any child could have told him that this was a very bad thing to do and, right enough, it was. The Frank was shocked to hear an angry voice cry out in pain. He turned round to see that his date stone had hit an old man on the head. The old man had been sleeping in the shadow of the fountain and was not at all pleased to find a stranger in his oasis, eating his dates without a by-your-leave or thank-you. He was particularly vexed by the fact that that same stranger had thrown the stone of one of those same dates at his head and woken him painfully from a particularly pleasant dream. This was not good for the Frank. What was even worse was that the old man was a powerful wizard, who determined to teach the ill-mannered Frank a lesson. He grabbed the Frank in a bony hand and whisked him off in a shower of sand and sparks.

‘The Frank fell down in a faint. When he came to he found that he had been magically shut up in a dark cave. A tiny crack in the rock let in just enough light for the Frank to see his hand, if he held it in front of his nose, but was far too small for the Frank to escape through. What was worse was that the Frank could hear the sound of a great beast breathing in the cave with him. Paralysed with fear, he waited for it to fall upon him, but nothing happened. The breathing continued, huge and steady, as if the beast was asleep and the poor Frank sat as still and quiet as a mouse, terrified lest he should wake it.

‘The Frank spent a long, sleepless night in the cave. The next morning, he heard the sound of footsteps outside and he saw a hand pushing a flat loaf of bread and a small skin of water through the crack. Crawling over as carefully as possible and whispering as loudly as he dared for fear of waking the sleeping beast, he called out to the owner of the hand for help.

‘Well, as it happened, the hand belonged to me and I had for ten years been given the task of taking food and water up to the crack in the rock. You see, the cave was an ancient tomb of a very great and mighty king from long ago. As was the custom with great and mighty kings from long ago, a terrible beast had been put in the tomb to protect it from robbers and my job was to make sure that the beast remained peaceful. There was a tradition, handed down from dervish to dervish that, as long as fresh food and drink was taken each day to the cave, the beast would rest but, if it was not kept placated so, it would escape from the tomb and bring destruction upon the countryside.

‘Imagine my surprise when I discovered a foreigner in the tomb. The Frank told me what had happened and pleaded with me to release him but I could no more undo the wizard’s magic than fly to the moon – nor would I want to upset a powerful wizard. I explained that there was nothing I could do but promised the Frank to bring the food and water each day so that he could at least stay alive. This I continued to do, ensuring the Frank’s survival, but so terrified was he of waking he beast that, as the years passed, we exchanged hardly a word.

‘Day after day, night after night, the Frank lay in terror in the tomb, listening to the breathing of the great beast. Sometimes the moon would be in just the right place for a tiny sliver of a moonbeam to enter the cave and the Frank would imagine that he saw the tiniest glimpse of the creature. Sometimes, he would see the glint of great scales. Other times, he would see a tawny, thick-furred and giant paw. At other times he thought he could glimpse a huge, hooked talon and once, for a split second he could have sworn he saw the flick of a long forked tongue. Every moment of his life in the cave was spent living in fear of that creature. If the Frank had not already been a little mad he would surely have been driven crazy. Somehow, though, he managed to keep some of his wits, in part because he had found a companion.

‘One day, after I delivered the food and water, the Frank had noticed scrabbling footsteps outside the cave and a quiet whining noise. Pressing his eye to the crack in the stone, he saw a skinny, mangy old yellow dog. Taking pity on the stray dog, whose ribs were poking through its skin, the Frank tore a little of his bread and soaked it in water, then passed it through the crack for the dog. The dog ate hungrily and returned the next day and then the next, each time to receive a little of the Frank’s food. The Frank began to take comfort from the visits of the old dog and to take comfort too from the fact that, although he was a helpless prisoner, there was one creature in the world that depended upon him. It gave him a strength of spirit that he could draw upon during his nights of terror with the sleeping beast. He was saddened then when the dog stopped visiting for a period of three days. Fearing for his friend, he listened at the crack until, on the third day he was overjoyed to hear the familiar sound of the dog’s paws padding up to the cave.