Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [207]
He would say these things to Frank as they sat around in his rover, in its tiny courtyard. These family rovers were transformed into private preserves, spaces that Frank was seldom invited into, and then only by Zeyk. Each time he visited he was surprised anew: the rover was nondescript from the exterior, big, with darkened windows, one of several parked in a bunch with walktubes between them. But then one ducked through a doorway and inside, and stepped into space filled with sunlight pouring down through skylights, illuminating couches and elaborate rugs, tiled floors, green-leafed plants, bowls of fruit, a window with the Martian view tinted and framed like a photo, low couches, silver coffee urns, computer consoles of inlaid teak and mahogany, running water in pools and fountains. A cool wet world, green and white, intimate and small. Looking around Frank had the powerful sensation that rooms like this had existed for centuries, that the chamber would be instantly recognized for what it was by people living in the Empty Quarter in the tenth century, or across Asia in the twelfth.
Often Zeyk’s invitations would come in the afternoon, when a group of men would convene in his rover for coffee and talk. Frank would sit in his spot near Zeyk, and sip his muddy coffee and listen to the Arabic with all the attention he could muster. It was a beautiful language, musical and intensely metaphoric, so that all their modern technical terminology resonated with desert imagery because of the root meanings of all the new words, which like most of their abstract terms had concrete physical origins. Arabic, like Greek, had been a scientific language early on, and this showed in many unexpected cognates with English, and in the organic and compact nature of the vocabulary.
The conversations ran all over, but they were guided by Zeyk and the other elders, who were deferred to by the younger men in a way Frank found incredible. Many times the conversation became an overt lesson for Frank on Bedouin ways, which allowed him to nod and ask questions, and occasionally to offer comments or criticism. “When you have a strong conservative streak in your society,” Zeyk would say, “which detaches itself from the progressive streak, that’s when you get the worst kinds of civil wars. As in the conflict in Colombia that they called La Violencia, for instance. A civil war that became a complete breakdown of the state, a chaos that no one could understand, much less control.”
“Or like Beirut,” said Frank innocently.
“No, no.” Zeyk smiled. “Beirut was much more complex than that. It was not only civil war, but also a number of exterior wars impinging on it. It was not a matter of social or religious conservatives detaching from the normal progress of culture, as in Colombia or the Spanish Civil War.”
“Spoken like a true progressive.”
“All Qahiran Mahjaris are progressive by definition, or we would not be here. But Islam has avoided civil war by remaining a whole; we have a coherent culture, so that the Arabs here are still devout. This is understood even by the most conservative elements back home. We will never have civil war, because we are united by our faith.”
Frank let his expression alone speak the fact of the Shiite heresy, among many other Islamic “civil wars.” Zeyk understood the expression, but ignored it and forged on: “We all move together through history, one loose caravan. You could say that we here on Al-Qahira are like one of our prospecting rovers. And you know what a pleasure it is to be in one of those.”
“So . . .” Frank thought hard about how to word his question; his inexperience with Arabic