Signs are fate — or so the desert told him.
Like any creature exhausted from long running, Ukhayyad began to relax as soon as his problems had disappeared behind a sand dune. His actions grew careless. Troubles return quickly to those who slacken their guard against them. If they cannot beat you in fighting face to face, they melt away — and when you turn your back on them, they return to attack you from behind.
These are lessons the desert teaches herders every day, free of charge. But this fickle advisor abandons men as soon as they begin to take up residence in oases, and arrogantly take up tilling the land.
This is what happened to Ukhayyad. Life in the oasis had dressed his slackness in something peasants call ‘ease.’ Ease is what conceals laxity. And in laxity hides rust.
The row woke him up at dawn. In the sweet intoxication of sleep, Ukhayyad thought he heard the bellowing of an enraged camel. He emerged from the hut to see the shadows of two camels struggling in the twilight, one attacking the other with its teeth. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The shadowy figure had the same frame and stature as his piebald. It was the piebald. He had overpowered his opponent, and was clinging onto him. His neck and left upper lip were spattered with blood. In the morning light, Ukhayyad discovered other bite wounds across the other camel’s body, and a serious gash under its chest.
Two days later, one of the camel herders arrived and said Dudu had sent him after the escaped Mahri. The man’s mouth was empty, toothless. Despite that, he never stopped laughing or chewing tobacco. He sat under a low, shady palm in the field. “Praise God,” he said, taking a pouch from his pocket. “He’s let me live long enough to see tobacco become cheap as dirt. Would you believe that a peasant at the grove gave me two handfuls for free?”
The man fell over backwards laughing, exposing his empty gums. Then he went on, “The war may have brought famine, but it also killed the price of tobacco — it’s one of the war’s genuine benefits. On the coasts, they only smoke cigarettes now. Have you ever tried a cigarette?”
“I don’t use tobacco.”
“Forgive me. I’m an addict. For me, tobacco comes before everything else. In the desert, I know how to live off herbs for months and years. But I can’t go one day without tobacco. You know, people like me commit heinous crimes if they can’t get it. Did you ever hear the story of that migrant who was an addict? Some peasants refused to give him tobacco, and he killed them all. He killed three men on account of tobacco leaf. Of course, that’s insanity — but it’s the sort I can understand!”
Then he laughed again.
That evening, the man told Ukhayyad stories about famine in the desert. He said that in recent years entire families had perished and were then buried in mass graves. In the southern deserts, only sparse rains had fallen — and drought had settled in early with the brutal summer. Everybody had fled the smell of gunpowder, abandoning the verdant pastures of the north. The northern reaches of the Hamada desert were completely empty this year.
“Is there any sign the war might end?” Ukhayyad asked him. “Just the opposite. Weeks ago, emissaries from the resistance traveled around the desert looking to conscript men. They want to bolster their ranks in Kufra oasis and Cyrenaica.”
He grew silent for a while. “It doesn’t seem that the war will end anytime soon,” he finally said, with a tone of dismay. The two men became lost in their thoughts, wandering far, far away. The herder chuckled, “But the upside of the war is that it has destroyed the price of tobacco. Famine doesn’t bother me, and now that tobacco is plentiful, I won’t have to kill anyone like that migrant did.”
“Let’s not talk about that for now,” Ukhayyad interrupted, “Tell me about the piebald. What’s his life like there?”
“Ah. He’s no camel, you know. He’s a human being in a camel’s skin. I’ve spent my entire life around camels, but I’d never seen one like him before. When Dudu first fetched him, he refused to graze. I saw the sadness in his eyes. I knew he was pining for you. The ability to feel longing is what sets the rare breeds apart from others. Did you know — he even refused to kneel! He’s been standing on his feet throughout these past weeks. I tethered him in a nearby pasture, but he broke the cords and raced off toward you. We caught up with him after a fierce chase, and brought him back to the pastures. That time around, we tied him with palm rope instead of camel-hair cord. I’m sorry I had to be so rough with him, but there was no other solution. Do you know what he did? When he couldn’t break the rope with his legs, he chewed through it. Then he bolted. We never caught him. He is no camel — he’s a human being.”
In the darkness Ukhayyad said, “I told him that patience is the only talisman that can protect us from disaster. He must have lost it.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ukhayyad mumbled some incomprehensible words. To which the herder replied, in a knowing tone, “I don’t understand how you allowed yourself to pawn him. A Mahri like him should have never been put up for anything.”
In his mind, Ukhayyad answered, “I did it because of my family. My wife. What do you know about children or wives?”
Ukhayyad envied this unfettered man who had no cares beyond his handful of tobacco. He had once been as free as the herder and even freer — needing nothing at all, not even tobacco. With the piebald, he had wandered God’s wide desert. But then woman appeared and separated him from tribe and companion. Didn’t Sheikh Musa say that it was woman who drove Adam from the garden of paradise?
19
Less than a month later, the piebald returned again and the same herder came looking for him.
The third time he came back, Ukhayyad asked the faqih to write an amulet that would protect the camel from harm. After hearing the man’s story, the faqih said, “This camel will not forget, and I do not know how to erase memories. You need someone else.”
The black slaves told him to go see one of the African magicians. But the soothsayer from Tiba, the one who had left shortly before the famine, had been the last witch in the oasis. And now that on account of the war the desert caravans had stopped moving, he had little hope in finding the sorcerers that used to accompany them.
He took two handfuls of barley while Ayur was not looking and decided to go himself to Danbaba. While they were alone on the road, Ukhayyad began to scold the animaclass="underline" “Don’t you realize you’re wearing me out? Didn’t we agree that our separation would be just temporary? You have forgotten how to be patient — and you’ve made us the laughing stock of everybody.”
The animal’s eyes glistened with tears, but Ukhayyad showed no mercy: “You run after me like a puppy. That’s something that dogs do, not camels!”
Then, softening his tone: “The war will end soon and our life will return to how it was before. Nothing lasts forever, so be patient. Until you do, nothing will straighten out. That was the deal we made!”