O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [27]
It is a superstition among the Bedouin, Holmes had mentioned to me during one of his little lectures, not to begin a day’s journey until the dew is off the ground, lest the spirits take the traveller. The custom reflects good common sense, as hair tents packed wet will not survive for long. That morning, however, had we waited for dry tents we should have still been sitting there at sunset, so we beat the snow and ice out of the black tent as best we could, redistributed the remaining load between two of the mules, and heaved the unwieldy thing onto the back of the third grumbling animal.
The desert sparkled in the fresh morning, washed clean and without a cloud in the vast sky. Patches of snow lay on the highest hills, melting quickly when the sun hit them. Water pooled and ran down the wadi below us, and a bright haze of green lay over the rocky waste, with here or there a wildflower, to all appearances brought up miraculously overnight. The mules lipped up tender blades of young green grass as we went, their packs steaming gently as the sun gained warmth, and the world was a very contented place.
Except for our guides. Ali was silent as he walked, and Mahmoud seemed even more glum than usual. When I asked Holmes if he had any idea why they might be downhearted, he shook his head, and I shrugged my shoulders.
Meantime, the Promised Land was unfolding in beauty around us, my stomach was full, and my feet did not hurt for the first morning in what seemed like many. It is an amazing thing, the difference to one’s powers of concentration a pair of comfortable shoes can make. I seemed to be seeing my surroundings anew, including my companion.
“Your beard is coming along nicely, Holmes,” I commented after a while. “Does it itch?”
“It begins to be tolerable. The first ten days are always the worst.”
“And are you wearing kohl around your eyes?” We had all taken extra care with our toilette that morning, both as a necessity, having spent the night in close proximity to a filthy, goaty, smoke-impregnated tent, and because we were going into a small city filled with curious eyes. Ali had curled his moustaches with care; Mahmoud had beaten the dust from his abayya; my boots were brushed off against a corner of the tent, and my hair was securely knotted into its shapeless turban.
“Every well-dressed Bedouin wears kohl.”
“It’s quite dashing. Actually, you’re beginning to look remarkably ferocious.”
“Thank you. Now repeat the conversation we have just had, in Arabic.”
We struggled through another lesson in my new tongue. I had now reached a state of fluency roughly equal to that of a braindamaged three-year-old, and had yet to say a word in the language to anyone but my companions, but I had begun to catch whole phrases in conversations without having consciously to pick over the words looking for meaning, rather like Ali picking over the lentils for stones. In another week, perhaps, I might find myself actually thinking in scraps of the tongue. Until that time it would be exhausting work, this language with five different gutturals, six dentals, eight pronouns, and thirty-six means of forming the plural.
In halting Arabic I informed Holmes that the rocks were red and the small flower was white, that flies were a plague from Allah and that the mules stank. He in turn described the holy city of Mecca (forbidden to infidels such as he) and told me about the true Bedu, complete nomads who survived on camel’s milk and goat’s meat in the deep desert, who lived for horses and for raiding and who looked with scorn on any who tilled the earth. I took the thin opening and slipped with relief into English for a while.
“Your accent is Bedouin, is it not? It seems smoother than Ali’s,” I noted.
“I learnt the language