O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [74]
I did not wish to sleep; I was, in fact, leery of sleeping. My bruised brain could not yet piece together what had happened on the drive down from Haifa, but there was a car, and an accident, and a death, and every time I closed my eyes the images that seared across them were those of the automobile accident that had taken my family four years before: vivid, terrifying memories, of my brother’s face and my mother’s scream and nothing at all of my beloved father who was driving, over a cliff and gone in flames, the guilt-saturated stuff of the nightmares that haunted me still. I had never spoken of the accident to Holmes, had told no-one of the death of my family aside from one long-ago psychotherapist. I could not think why I had allowed it to slip out in front of Rahel, but no, I did not wish to risk sleep.
So I sat propped against the rough plaster wall, watching the flames die down in the hearth and alternating between drowsy half-sleep and abrupt, heart-pounding terror when it was all I could do to keep from tearing open the outer door and shrieking the name of my lost companion and mentor into the night.
This cycle went on for a couple of tiresome hours, and I had just twitched my way back down into a state of torpor when a stealthy movement somewhere in the building brought all my nerves jangling to life.
Gritting my teeth, I lifted my head to look into the room.
Mahmoud stood there; behind him Rahel, with a rifle in her arms and looking very comfortable with it there. The intensity of the joy I felt at seeing him, this phlegmatic, uncommunicative, and utterly trustworthy Arab, took me by surprise. I gulped back the tears of weakness, and murmured, “Salaam aleikum, Mahmoud.”
“Aleikum es-salaam, Amir,” he replied. “Your injuries were not serious, I am pleased to see.”
“Have you found Holmes?”
“We know where he is.”
“Thank God,” I said explosively in English. I let the rug drop from my shoulders and tried to stand up. Mahmoud instead pulled a stool over in front of me and sat down on it. His dark eyes probed my face.
“You are in pain,” he noted.
“It will get slightly worse, then better,” I said. Little point in denying its existence, not with those eyes on me. He thought for a minute, then seemed to make up his mind.
“You are Inglezi, firengi,” he said: English, a foreigner. “But you are also not firengi. If you were only firengi, if you were nothing but an Englishwoman, I would not have returned here tonight, because the Inglezi have no—they have a different sense of what is honourable. What was done today is a blood insult, you understand? You and your Holmes have eaten our salt, shared our bread. Blood ties exist, you understand?” He was speaking English, but a much simpler English than I had heard him use before. It occurred to me that he was thinking in Arabic and translating as he went. I assured him that I understood what he was talking about, and that I agreed. He continued. “If those ties did not exist, the exercise of retrieving him would be only a task, a service to the English government. Ali and I would do that as we have done other jobs. But this is a matter of honour, and I believe you have the right to be there with us, if you choose.”
Were I in his shoes, I reflected, I should be asking how badly I in my feeble state might handicap them, but he asked no such question. I met his eyes evenly.
“I will come, if you will have me.”
He nodded, and stood up. “There are arrangements to be made; I will return for you,” he told me. After a brief consultation with Rahel he went out. She followed, to return in a couple of minutes with another glass, this one containing two inches of a clear, brownish liquid.
“This will help you to ignore the pain. It will not remove the pain, but neither will it cloud your mind or slow you down.”
I drank it, and sat until Mahmoud came and led me away.
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FOURTEEN
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Since desert life is clearly the source of bravery, the