The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [110]
“Yah, Belqassim!” cried a voice impatiently. She opened her eyes: the other man was standing above them, looking down at them. The moon shone full into his eagle-like face. An unhappy intuition whispered to her what would occur. Desperately she clung to Belqassim, covering his face with kisses. But a moment later she had with her a different animal, bristling and alien, and her weeping passed unnoticed. She kept her eyes open, staring at Belqassim who leaned idly against a nearby tree, his sharp cheekbones carved brightly by the moonlight. Again and again she followed the line of his face from his forehead down to his fine neck, exploring the deep shadows in search of his eyes, hidden in the darkness. At one point she cried aloud, and then she sobbed a little because he was so near and she could not touch him.
The man’s caresses were brusque, his motions uncouth, unacceptable. At last he rose. “Yah latff! Yah latff!” he muttered, slowly walking away. Belqassim chuckled, stepped over and threw himself down at her side. She tried to look reproachful, but she knew beforehand that it was hopeless, that even had they had a language in common, he never could understand her. She held his head between her hands. “Why did you let him?” she could not help saying.
“Habibi,” he murmured, stroking her cheek tenderly.
Again she was happy for a while, floating on the surface of time, conscious of making the gestures of love only after she had discovered herself in the act of making them. Since the beginning of all things each motion had been waiting to be born, and at last was coming into existence. Later, as the round moon, mounting, grew smaller in the sky, she heard the sound of flutes by the fire. Presently the older merchant appeared again and called peevishly to Belqassim, who answered him with the same ill humor.
“Baraka!” said the other, going away again. A few moments later Belgassim sighed regretfully and sat up. She made no effort to hold him. Presently she also rose and walked toward the fire, which had died down and was being used to roast some skewers of meat. They ate quietly without conversation, and shortly afterward the packs were closed and piled onto the camels. It was nearly the middle of the night when they set out, doubling back on their tracks to the high dunes, where they continued in the direction they had been traveling the previous day. This time she wore a burnous that Belqassim had tossed to her as they were about to start. The night was cold and miraculously clear.
They continued until mid-morning, stopping at a place in the high dunes that had not a sign of vegetation, Again they slept through the afternoon, and again the double ritual of love was observed at a distance from the camping site when dark had fallen.
And so the days went by, each one imperceptibly hotter than the one before it, as they moved southward across the desert. Mornings-the painful journey under the unbearable sun; afternoons-the soft hours beside Belqassim (the short interlude with the other no longer bothered her, since Belqassim always stood by); and nights-the setting forth under the now waning moon, toward other dunes and other plains, each more distant than the last and yet indistinguishable from it.
But if the surroundings seemed always the same, there were certain changes appearing in the situation that existed among the three of them: the ease and lack of tension in their uncomplicated relationship began to be troubled by a noticeable want of good feeling on the