O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [20]
The sky was beginning to lighten. Mahmoud locked the villa’s door and we slipped among the shadowy shapes of fragrant trees towards the front wall (this one high, well maintained, and topped by broken glass) that protected the grounds from the road. Again Mahmoud took out his picklocks and applied them to the gate, unlocking it and relocking it after us. A groggy bark came from the back of the house, but we were away, down the hill, across two switchbacks in the road and the terraces of olive trees they wove through. We retrieved the possessions that we had left there, harmless bundles of provisions and armloads of firewood bound with twine, and finally rejoined the road some distance from the house. When dawn came we were just another quartet of stolid Arab peasants about our business. Half an hour later a lorry of British soldiers passed us without slowing, its dust cloud applying another layer of grime to our clothes and skin.
When we neared our camp site we could see two figures, squatting like gargoyles just outside the front edge of the black goat’s-hair tent belonging to Mahmoud and Ali. One was a young man, swathed in many layers of dust-coloured fabric; as we approached he stood up to thrust his wide, callused feet into a pair of once-black shoes that lacked laces and were far too big for him, but were the necessary recognition of an Occasion. The woman at his side remained hunched on the ground, a small heap of faded black with the married woman’s red strip of embroidery travelling up the front of her dress. Her head and upper body were wrapped in the loose shawl called a burkah, which she had raised across her face immediately she saw us coming, to supplement the red-and-blue veil decorated with gold coins that she already wore. I wondered, not for the first time, why the women in this country did not suffocate come the heat of summer. Her coal black eyes, the only part of her visible other than an inch of indigo-tattooed forehead and the work-rough fingers of her right hand, were trained on the ground, although when she thought no one was looking, she shot hungry, curious glances at us.
The man greeted Mahmoud as a long-lost brother, hanging on to his hand and talking effusively. We had been through this before, however, and I had read the sign of the borrowed shoes correctly, for rather than removing his guest to the more leisurely depths of the rug-strewn tent, Mahmoud merely dropped to his heels on the ground outside, away from the camel-dung fire that Ali was beginning to rekindle. This was business, then, not friendship.
The rest of us continued as before, ignored completely by the two engaged in their transaction and ignoring the quick glances of the woman (whom of course the man had not bothered to introduce, and who therefore did not quite exist). I took great care not to stare at her, despite my natural curiosity, since I was, after all, to all appearances a male. I had to be content with the occasional furtive glance as I dropped my bundle of twigs and sticks next to the fire and waited for Ali to empty the last of the water from the skin so I could take it half a mile to the well and fill it. Twice my looks caught hers, and on the second occasion she came as close to blushing as a dark-skinned woman can. It was a peculiar feeling, to be thought flirting with a woman, but I decided that if the poor thing took some scrap of pleasure in the idea that a travelling stranger, one who not only had exotic light eyes but flaunted a pair of mysterious and undoubtedly expensive spectacles over them as well, found her a source of secret desire, it could only do her good.
I slung the flaccid water-skin over my shoulder and walked off. It was the third time I had