The Last Camel Died at Noon - Elizabeth Peters [26]
A rug or matting, woven in patterns of blue and red-orange, green and umber, had been spread across the floor. On it sat my son, cross-legged, with his cupped hands held out in a peculiarly rigid position. He did not turn his head. Facing him was the strangest figure I had ever seen—and I have seen a great many strange individuals. At first glance it appeared to be a folded or crumpled mass of dark fabric, with some underlying structure of bone or wood jutting out at odd angles. My reasoning brain identified it as a squatting human figure; my mother’s heart felt a thrill of fear bordering on horror when my eyes failed to find a human countenance atop the angular mass. Then the upper portion of the object moved; a face appeared, covered with a heavy veil; and a deep murmurous voice intoned, “Silence. Silence. The spell is cast. Do not wake the sleeper.”
The elder wife came to my side. She put a timid hand on my arm and murmured, “He is a magician of great power, Sitt Hakim—like yourself. An old man, a holy man—he does the boy honor. You will not tell my lord? There is no harm in it, but—”
The old sheikh must be an indulgent master or the women would not have dared introduce a man, however old or holy, into their quarters, but he would be forced to take notice of such a flagrant violation of decency if someone like myself brought it to his attention. I whispered a reassuring, “Taiyib, mâtakhâfsh (It is good; do not fear)”—though, as far as I was concerned, it was not at all good.
I had seen such performances in the sûks of Cairo. Crystalgazing, or scrying, is one of the commonest forms of divination. It is all nonsense, of course; what the viewer sees in the crystal ball or pool of water or (as in this case) liquid held in the palm of the hand is nothing more than a visual hallucination, but the deluded audience is firmly convinced that the diviner is able to foretell the future and discover hidden treasure. Often a child is employed by the fortune-teller in the (naive) belief that the innocence of youth is more receptive to spiritual influences.
I knew that to interrupt the ceremony would be not only rude but dangerous. Ramses was deep in some sort of unholy trance, from which he could be roused only by the voice of the magician, who now leaned forward over the boy’s cupped hands, mumbling in a voice so low I could not make out the words.
I did not blame the poor bored women for allowing the ceremony, or even the seer, who undoubtedly believed sincerely in his own hocus-pocus. However, I was not about to stand idly by and wait upon the latter’s convenience. Very softly I remarked, “As is well known, I, the Sitt Hakim, am also a magician of great power. I call upon this holy man to bring back the soul of the boy to his body, lest the efreets [demons] I have set to protect my son mistake the holy man’s purpose and eat up his heart.”
The women gasped in delighted horror. There was no immediate reaction from the “holy man,” but after a moment he straightened and moved his hands in a sweeping gesture. The words he addressed to Ramses were unfamiliar to me; either he spoke some unknown dialect, or they were meaningless magical gibberish. The result was dramatic. A shudder ran through the stiff frame of Ramses. His hands relaxed, and a dribble of dark liquid poured into the cup the magician held below them. The cup vanished into some hidden pocket in the crumpled robe, and Ramses turned his head.
“Good afternoon, Mama. I hope I have not kept you waiting?”
I managed to repress my comments through the long and tedious process of leave-taking, first of the ladies and then of the sheikh, who insisted upon escorting us to the very door of the house—the highest honor he could pay us. Not until we were standing in the dusty street and the door had closed behind us did I let the words burst forth. I was considerably agitated, and Emerson had to ask me to stop and elaborate on the story several times before the full meaning of it dawned on him.
“Of all