The Haj - Leon Uris [12]
He became a friend of the Wahhabi tribe and its sheik, Walid Azziz, and he roamed for weeks with their legendary tracker, Nabil.
One day, toward evening, Nabil and Gideon came upon a small clump of scrub oak in an otherwise bleak desert terrain. A lone Bedouin sat by the scrub, making a covering tent over his head with his robes. Alongside the Bedouin was a clay pitcher of water and some stale bread.
Nabil called to him, then approached the Bedouin, who was in a semitrance from the glaring heat. They spoke, and he returned to Gideon.
‘Who is he, Nabil?’ Gideon asked.
‘His name is Mustafa. He is of the Sulikan tribe.’
‘Why does he just sit there?’
‘He says he is waiting for a friend. He said his friend told him he would be coming through this way.’
‘How long has he been sitting?’
‘Several times around the sun.’
‘Doesn’t he know when his friend will come?’
‘He said sooner or later.’
‘Do you mean he just sits, day after day, not knowing?’
‘He knows his friend will come. When his friend comes is not important. He has nothing else to do.’
Just before eventide, Nabil sniffed out a camel caravan. He rode his mount in circles with seeming aimlessness until he picked up tracks. Nabil dismounted and placed his nose and his lips on the ground in the tracks.
They passed here not too long a time ago,’ Nabil said.
‘How long?’
‘Not long.’
‘A few hours?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Many hours?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Three, four, five hours?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Enough time for the sun to come up and down?’
‘No, not that long a time.’
‘How many camels do you make out?’
‘Several.’
‘Five?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Fifty?’
‘Perhaps. The tracks are deep. They are heavily loaded.’
‘Where will they be going?’
Nabil squinted around the horizon. ‘There,’ he pointed. ‘A water hole belonging to the Sulikans. They must be Sulikans or allies of the Sulikans.’
Gideon studied his map for a nearby water hole. It showed none.
‘How far away is the water?’
‘Not far.’
‘One day? Two days?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘How many miles?’
‘Miles? Oh miles.’ Nabil tugged at his ear. ‘Four hundred miles.’
‘No, dammit. It can’t be. How many times for the sun to come up and down before we reach it?’
‘When the sun rises here until it crosses to there,’ Nabil said, sweeping his hand in a heavenward arc.
As the fire died, Nabil recited poetry while Gideon lay concentrating on the sky and the darting specks of comets. It was this kind of moment that made the desert real. Gideon was all of them from the beginning of time. He was Moses and Abraham looking up to the same sky, pondering man’s earliest mysteries and begging for answers to the puzzlement of the universe.
‘I was the jackal who could prey at the edge of the camp.
I was a great horse who raced Mohammed’s mighty mount.
I was a camel, the first in a line of many.
1 was all who looked at the stupid two-legged beast called man and saw him as stupid.
I lived like a king in my own wild ways, and they struggled.’
Nabil stopped short and cocked his head. ‘Listen,’ he said.
‘I hear nothing.’
It took several moments for the breeze to carry the sounds to him. ‘How far are they,’ Gideon asked, ‘and how many?’
‘Why must you always ask things for which there are no answers, Gideon?’
‘Well, suppose they were an enemy. If I knew how many of them there were and how far away they were, I would know how to get ready.’
‘What difference how far?’ the Bedouin said. ‘In the desert you must always be ready and how many will be, will be. You can’t change their numbers.’ He listened and reckoned there were many camels and that they had reached the water hole.
‘When the sun comes up we will reach the water hole,’ Nabil said. ‘Do not go and drink from it. We move toward it slowly. Then we sit on the edge and hold the horses so they do not drink. They will be watching us from afar, and if we drink without permission they will shoot. After a time they will appear. They will tolerate me as a Wahhabi, but they will like you very