Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [22]
“Follow me.” Selim went to the door of the house and called out, raising his voice to be heard over the bedlam within. “We are going out. We will come back soon.”
“So you have to report to the ladies, do you?” Ramses asked as they followed Daoud along the street, if it could be called that. The village had grown like Topsy, without any coherent plan, and the paths wound around and sometimes through modern houses and ancient tombs. “And I hear from Daoud that you are contemplating taking a third wife. Remember the advice I passed on to you last year. Three women are six times as much trouble as two.”
Selim smiled and stroked his beard. “I tell them what I choose and I do as I like.”
“Of course. And the third wife?”
“They cannot agree whether I should do it.”
He glanced at Ramses’s carefully controlled face and burst into a hearty laugh. “So. Am I—what is the word?—henpecked?”
“Only wise,” Ramses said, joining in his laughter. “Your English gets better all the time, Selim. I say, is Daoud offended by our levity? Even his back looks hurt. What’s this all about?”
“Perhaps it is better that you see,” Selim admitted.
Their destination was the modern cemetery near the village. Like the ancient burial grounds, it was located in the desert, not in the green strip of irrigation bordering the river. It was the hottest time of the day; the barren ground baked in the sun’s rays. For the most part the graves were small and humble, marked only by simple pillars or low benchlike tombstones. The most impressive monument was the tomb they had had built for Abdullah. Designed by David, it was of conventional form—a domed, four-sided structure—but unusually graceful and attractive. Even from a distance Ramses saw that it looked different. His amazement mounted as they drew nearer. A rope slung across the lovely arched entrance held a bizarre variety of what must be offerings—strings of beads and glass, handkerchiefs, a bunch of hair. Under the cupola, next to the low monument over the tomb itself, sat a motionless form, turbaned head bent, hands folded.
“Good Lord,” Ramses exclaimed. “It’s Hassan. What the devil is he doing?”
“He is the servant of the sheikh,” Daoud said.
“What sheikh? Not Abdullah!”
Hassan got up and came to meet them, ducking his head under the rope with its motley attachments. Ramses observed that the white marble floor was strewn with flowers and palm branches, some fresh and colorful, some withered. Hassan did not appear to be practicing asceticism. He had been smoking a narghile and there were plates of bread and other food around him.
“What is this, Hassan?” Ramses demanded. “No one loved and admired Abdullah more than I, but he was no holy man.”
“It is good that you have come, Brother of Demons,” said Hassan, employing Ramses’s Egyptian nickname. His smile was beatific. Ramses wondered if there had been something in the pipe besides tobacco.
“He is a sheikh, without doubt,” Hassan went on. “Did he not save the life of the Sitt Hakim at the sacrifice of his own? Did he not come to her in a dream, as holy men do, and tell her to build him a proper tomb?”
Ramses looked at Daoud, who met his critical gaze with an unembarrassed smile. How their large friend had heard of his mother’s dreams of Abdullah he could not imagine; she had not confided even in the immediate family until recently. Her belief in the validity of those dreams was one of her few streaks of superstition; but believe she did. The skepticism of the rest of them did not affect her in the slightest, and Ramses had to admit, if only to himself, that the consistency and vividness of the visions were oddly impressive. One of the household staff must have overheard her talking about them, and passed the word on. Once it reached Daoud, the whole West Bank would know.
“But a holy man must perform miracles,” he argued.
“He has done that,” Hassan said. “When that wretched boy, who had sinned against the laws of