Instead we struck out overland, first through territory belonging to the Banu Zalit, then through the lands of the Isharid. As the days went by, farmland gave way to drier and drier terrain until, by imperceptible degrees, we arrived in what was unquestionably the desert.
It did not consist entirely of sand dunes. Indeed, though this is the common image of deserts, there are relatively few places in the world where it is true. Much of the landscape is stony and hard, supporting thorny plant life here and there, and lusher vegetation—if anything can be called lush away from the main rivers—in wadis and oases, in nooks and crannies of the barren ground. The trick of surviving in the desert is to know where these nooks and crannies might be, and to conserve water in between.
What amazed me the most was the realization that we were seeing the desert at its most verdant. The winter rains were drawing to a close, and everything was in full flower. But this greenery was still intermittent, with long stretches of hard soil in between where nothing at all would grow; and then we would come over a rise and find a carpet of wild lavender or red anemones had sprung up in the lower ground between two ridges. In a few months these would be gone as if they had never been, devoured by camels or burnt to crisp straw by the sun. For this brief span of time, however, the desert alternated between sterility and wonder.
The nights were bone-chilling, and all the more so because the days were still acceptably warm. The sun was also strong; I wore both hat and scarf so as to shield my face and neck, and we non-Akhians daubed our exposed skin with a paste intended to prevent burns. It did not work as well as Tom in particular might have hoped, but we fared better with it than without.
In retrospect, I feel as if I ought to have seen the smooth course of our journey out into the desert as a sign. It is not true that all great deeds must be attended by hardship and privation, and that any expedition which begins without trouble must inevitably go awry… but such has been my experience more often than not. Superstition therefore says that I should have known I would either accomplish little, or find myself in difficulty very soon upon arrival.
EIGHT
The tents of the Aritat spread out along the edge of a wadi, dark shapes above the green, with camels moving all around. I was astonished at their number, tents and camels both: I had envisioned the nomads as existing in small bands, perhaps as few as two dozen individuals. This is not at all the case, and the Aritat at that time claimed more than three thousand tents (the customary method of counting the population), with tens of thousands of camels to their name. What we came upon was not the entirety of the tribe—they almost never gather in a single location—but this particular group alone boasted in excess of fifty tents, each one home to several people.
We dismounted when we drew near, and the Akhians with us threw handfuls of sand up to form clouds in the air, which is how one signals peaceful approach. In response, two men mounted their camels and loped out to meet us.
As usual, my limited aptitude for linguistic matters hobbled me in this initial encounter. My command of Akhian had been improving, but people in rural corners always speak differently from their urban counterparts, and it was decidedly urban Akhian (not to say scholarly) that I had been mastering. Yusuf spoke that dialect better than his companions, which was why we communicated with him the most—but among the nomads, he lapsed into what almost seemed like another tongue entirely.
The men seemed to be directing us to a tent some distance away. We dismounted and led our camels there, while all around us men, women, and children emerged from their tents to watch us go by. We were not the first Scirlings they had seen—a detachment of soldiers had come out here at the beginning of this enterprise, to scout out the situation—but I was the first Scirling woman to visit them, and very exotic in my khaki dress.
Our destination stood out from all the others by virtue of its size: whereas many of the tents had only a single central pole to support them, creating one “room” within, and few had as many as three, this tent had five. The man who waited outside it was more finely dressed than the others, in white robes as snowy as the environment would allow. This was the sheikh of the local clan, Hajj Nawl ibn Dawwas—a man who, in different times, might not have been beholden to any superior authority. Since the imposition of unified governance between the towns and the desert, however, he answered in some matters to Husam ibn Ramiz. Between that and our status as guests, he showed great deference in greeting us.
We were soon seated upon fine cushions and plied with coffee and dates, while a man sat cross-legged in the corner playing upon the stringed instrument called a rebab. Outside, men slaughtered a camel for our supper—and not one of the camels used to bear burdens on the march, either. The meat was therefore very tender, and a sign of great esteem. (This accrued to us not on our own merits, of course, but those of Husam ibn Ramiz. To feed us a tough old camel—or worse, to feed us no camel at all—would have been an unforgivable insult to him.) Certain notables of the clan joined us, while others listened at the flap, hanging on every word of our conversation.
For once we did not meet with the polite (or not so polite) disbelief that so frequently greets our work. People often have difficulty understanding why Tom and I would risk ourselves in pursuit of mere understanding… but tell them your purpose is war, and no one questions your sanity at all. Nawl ibn Dawwas was not a particularly warlike man, the Aritat having lived more peaceable lives since the ascendance of the current caliphate; but it was still a thing he had been brought up to value above almost anything else. He knew this business with dragons had a military purpose, and he approved.
Encounters with powerful people have always made me uneasy, and so I was grateful that I took my own supper with the sheikh’s wives and other female relations rather than the men. I was even more grateful when at last we escaped the sheikh’s tent. By then it was full dark, with scarcely a sliver of moon to light our way, and I could only follow blindly in Yusuf’s wake as we crossed the encampment to another tent. This one was not exceptional in any way, being woven of dark goat hair, with one side open to catch the wind, and light spilling out across the ground.
A guard dog began barking as we approached, but fell silent when someone came out and touched the top of its head. Even in the dark, with nothing but a silhouette to go by, I recognized Suhail.
It was my turn to halt in my tracks, as he had halted when he found us in the courtyard of his brother’s house. I knew, of course, that he was out with the Aritat—but that tribe consisted of many clans, scattered across many camps. No one had told me he was with this one.
Likely because no one here had reason to think I would care. It seemed the rumours concerning my conduct had not reached this far.
Tom greeted him with surprise, and received an apology in return. “I only just returned to camp,” Suhail said, “or I would have come to find you in the sheikh’s tent. We did not expect you to arrive so soon. Please, come in.”
This was directed at all four of us: Tom, myself, Andrew, and Yusuf. I took a moment to straighten my dress and the scarf over my hair, then followed the men into the tent.