“How can you know that?” shouted Ali. “You were not there watching! Or were you?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion.
“Don’t be a fool,” Holmes replied in an even voice. “I read it on the stones. Ali, I know that Mikhail was your friend. I am sorry, but this is how he died, with thirty seconds of fear and a clean bullet.”
“And the knowledge of failure,” said Mahmoud bitterly.
“Perhaps we can change that failure.”
“But how do you know this thing?” Ali insisted. “You found the bullet and the threads, but how do you know of the second man?”
“It could not have been the man with the rifle who went through the Druse’s pack because the marksman was on the other side of the wadi, and by the time he reached this place the blood would have been dried. It was another man, already on this side, who reached Mikhail’s body and stepped in a patch of wet blood. He tracked it over to where the bag had fallen, paused there, shifting his position three or four times, and then went down to the floor of the wadi, where marks of his passing have been erased by the rising water. He wore boots,” Holmes added. “Stout ones. If you wish, I will show you the marks left by the bullets and Mikhail’s passing.”
“That will not be necessary,” Mahmoud said. “We have spent too much time here already. For all of us to examine the hillside risks attracting attention. Let us pack up and go.”
Ali was too troubled to argue. He merely rinsed out the coffee cups in one of the rain pools and stowed them away on one mule, tied the broad iron saj on another, and set off with Mahmoud up the wadi.
We followed them with the mules rattling along behind. After a while I asked Holmes, in cautious Arabic, if he knew where we were going.
“Mahmoud certainly knows,” he replied helpfully, and then ordered me to recount the history of my wide-spread family members. In Arabic, of course.
I stumbled over kinship terms and the stony ground for a long time as we continued our way up the wadi, rising always towards the tops of the cliffs. In the late afternoon the wadi’s youthful beginnings, bereft now of easy sand, forced the four of us to scramble and crawl, tugging and pushing at the outraged mules, until finally we emerged onto a high plain, a vast and empty highland lit by the low sun of evening. ?
There was not a soul in sight.
To my astonishment, Ali’s reaction to the emptiness was to tuck his skirts up a bit, settle his knife more firmly into his belt, and without a word of explanation set off towards the north in an easy jog-trot. He was soon out of sight. We followed at the speed of the walking mules, pausing to eat cold bread and let the mules rest when the last rays of the sun had completely disappeared, then resumed our march when the faint light from the new moon gave outline to the objects around us. As the moon drooped towards the horizon, bobbing lights appeared on a distant hill, and shortly after that Ali’s shout came through the night along with at least half a dozen other voices.
The men greeted Mahmoud as a long-lost brother, kissing his hand and bestowing compliments with such exuberance that I wondered if perhaps, despite their appearance and manner of speech, they were Christians—or else Moslems who had overlooked their religion’s injunction against alcohol. It appeared, however, that this group comprised a large percentage of the population of an isolated village, and visitors, particularly those not only known and useful but trustworthy as well, were cause enough for an intoxication of spirits.
Moreover, I thought that, unlike similar demonstrations of enthusiastic greeting we had seen in the previous days, this one was actually based on true friendship and long acquaintance. The vigorous middle-aged man walking at Ali’s side met Mahmoud with a hard, back-slapping embrace and loud, easy laughter. What is more, Mahmoud responded, giving the man a grin of unfeigned pleasure and slapping his shoulders in return. The expression looked quite unnatural on his face, but it lasted while the other men crowded around and took his hands in greeting.
After we were introduced all around and the initial drawn-out welcome was giving way to a redistribution of burdens to the newcomers’ backs, I witnessed an odd little episode. The headman, whose name had been given as Farash, held up the lantern he was carrying and peered at Mahmoud’s face. He even reached out and touched the ugly scar with one finger.
“It is well?” he asked quietly.
“Praise be to God.”
“And now Ali.” Farash shook his head. “You and your brother, you always come to us hurt.”
Mahmoud laughed—actually laughed. “When Ali has a sore, he fears an amputation. His head is fine.” Then, so quietly that I could barely hear, he said to the man, “Mikhail the Druse is dead.”
“Ah!” It was a sound of pain Farash made, and then he asked, “Killed?”
“Shot.”
Farash shook his head again, mournfully this time. “Another good man is lost,” he murmured. After a moment he stirred, and with a deliberate effort pulled himself back into good humour. “But you and Ali are with us again, and we shall feast.”
The festive air of the villagers carried us across the uneven ground and through a couple of minor wadis until without warning we were parading into a tiny village, through a sparse collection of mud huts with lean-tos holding them upright, past a well and some bare trees and up to the grandest villa in town, a windowless box twelve feet square and so low that even Mahmoud, the shortest among the four of us, had to stoop. There were clear signs that chickens and at least one goat had recently vacated the premises, and the fleas were appalling, but the honour was great.
Every man in the village was soon in the hut with us, with the women crowded outside of the door. Cigarettes were taken and glasses of cool water given while coffee was made and distributed by the ancient village mukhtar, whose house this obviously was. After the coffee had been drunk, four men staggered in carrying a vast platter heaped high with rice that glistened with grease in the lamp-light, topped with a mound of hastily cooked and venerable mutton. The combination of hasty cooking and the age of the animal did not make for an easy meal, at least for those of us who tried actually to chew the meat, but we filled our bellies on rice and bread and the less gristly bits, drank more coffee, and then sat listening to the fireside tales of wartime valour and pre-war derring-do until the wee hours, when the mukhtar abruptly stood up, shook our greasy hands with his, and departed, taking his village with him, all but a few shy and giggling children who lurked around our door until the morning.
The next day a bank holiday was declared, and all day long people from neighbouring tents and houses drifted in for the fun. Mahmoud was kept busy writing letters and contracts, Ali sat beneath a tree with needle and thread, repairing the mule packs and pads while talking easily to acquaintances, and Holmes squatted in the shade of our fine villa and absorbed the local colour and gossip. I, however, beat the dust and the wildlife from one of our rugs and took it out to a distant grove of bare fruit trees beside an irrigation ditch, trading fleas for flies and dozing to the rhythmic creaking of the mule that worked the dulab, drawing water from a deep well. I slept the sleep of the just and the profoundly weary, unconcerned about potential threats and undisturbed by the occasional passer-by checking on my well-being, until the noise of thundering hoofs made me bolt to my feet, certain that I was in the path of a cavalry charge or at the least a stampede. It was only a horse race, and it was won by a remarkably unfit-looking beast with a gloating, exuberant Ali on its back. Mahmoud, I gathered, won a great deal on his wager.