Sunset Oasis

Ah! That will not do for us Westerners, Sheikh Sabir, even if no one has said a word. At this point, however, the zaggal sitting at the far end of the room raised his voice and said sharply, 'God damn this commissioner and the day he came to our land. Let us be done with him, and with his wife!'

Sheikh Idrees, however, one of the sheikhs of my Western clan, raised his voice angrily and said, 'Shame on you, Mabrouk, boy! We invited you to our council so that we might hear what you have to say, not for you to offer advice to your sheikhs, so don't forget your place.'

Mabrouk shrank back into his corner, and Sheikh Sabir asked him calmly, 'And why should we be done with him and his wife?'

Mabrouk answered in a rush, 'The woman has gone into our houses and violated the decency of our womenfolk. Last Friday, she climbed to the Aghurmi ruins and treated the houses of our families there with disrespect. Since when, Sheikh Sabir, have we allowed unbelievers to desecrate our homes?'

I left them to argue and started thinking. What was new in all this that would make Sheikh Sabir move the council of the agwad from the lean-to to his house? No stranger would dare to pry into our council at the entrance to the town. Not to mention that if the district commissioner himself came and joined us there, he would understand nothing because he doesn't know our language. And there was nothing new in what he said about the tax. Everyone had learnt the lesson to which the other sheikh had referred: in the end, we would pay the tax whether we liked it or not. The Westerners will not, of course, accept that you, Sabir, should be in charge of collecting their share, and that is something you know as well as I do, so why did you mention it? Soon we'll find out what you're after.

I came to myself to hear him saying, 'But I heard, Sheikh Idrees, that the woman wasn't making for our houses. She wanted to see the Ruins of the Kings that are there, and on her way she passed by the houses. Did any of our women complain that she pried into the secrets of their houses and violated their decency, as you claim?'

Sheikh Idrees replied, 'If she didn't do so this time she will do so next, Sheikh Sabir. Next time she won't "cease and desist". I have learnt that today she will go with her husband to the ruins of Umm Ebeida.'

Sabir answered, 'Thank God there aren't any houses at Umm Ebeida whose privacy can be violated—' but the zaggal Mabrouk once again raised his voice: 'Sheikh Sabir, this woman came bringing with her the books of the foreign unbelievers that teach the magic needed to discover our treasure that is hidden in the depths of the earth. She may do as did some of those who came before her and bring up the corpses of the Abominable Ones to use in the magic.'

I smiled to myself. That treasure again? You and your grandfathers and your grandfathers' grandfathers have searched for it and you've dug in all the ruins that the kings left behind and you've rooted up the depths of the earth and dug out the mountain and still you haven't despaired?

Suppose you found it right now, what do you think you'd do with it?

Sabir surprised me, however, when he said in level tones to Mabrouk, 'Know, Mabrouk, that it is not we that guard the treasure, but it that guards us. Our treasure has a talisman that has watched over it from ancient times, since our king, Khurabeish, God rest his soul, buried it and lodged with it that infallible charm. If the woman goes anywhere near it, it will destroy her as it did those who went before her. The treasure will return — according to the prophecies — at a time that only God knows, but that can only be after we repent of our sins. Don't worry about the treasure, but do tell me, Mabrouk, what befell us when we killed the commissioner before him?'

Mabrouk responded obstinately, 'This accursed commissioner came, and with him his wife, who desecrates our houses and searches for our treasure.'

'So you see the catastrophe?' said Sheikh Sabir. 'It did us no good, then, to kill the commissioner who was before him. And what about those who died at the hands of the army that Mahir Bey brought? What about those whom they took with them to Egypt to hang, not to mention our sons who are still in prison there?'

Everyone fell silent, but the voice of Sheikh Idrees rose again and he said in frustration, 'Do you mean to tell me, Sheikh Sabir, that we should do nothing about the commissioner and his wife and tolerate dishonour!'

The clamour of the Western sheikhs in support of Idrees started up anew, but Sabir addressed to him a question I'd been waiting to hear for a while: 'Have you, Sheikh Idrees, observed anything in the new district commissioner that would require us to get rid of him? I have not heard that since he came to the oasis he has taken anything that isn't his, or flogged anyone, as was the custom of those who came before him. On the contrary, he pays for everything, even the donkeys he hires for himself and his wife to ride, and he goes about on the roads on his own, not surrounded by the guard that his predecessors used to terrorize us. His soldiers guard the town from the Bedouin robbers and he goes out himself on his horse at night at the head of the troopers to chase them into the desert.'

Despite myself, I exclaimed in bewilderment, 'And that's precisely what scares me about him, Sheikh Sabir! Why does he do all that? He does not love us.'

Sabir gave his coarse laugh and said, 'And which of the commissioners before him did love us, Sheikh Yahya? The things they did drove us to fight them. But this one, what wrong has he done that would make it lawful to spill his blood and bring ruin down upon ourselves once more?'

I said to myself, 'I'm with you in that, Sheikh Sabir, but even so this man scares me more than the rest. I don't care about the ones who flog and revile and terrorize the people with their troops in their cavalcades. Those are just like Mabrouk. I've seen them and I've had experience of them in all the wars. They strike the flint and are the first to run when the fire flares up. But I do fear this taciturn commissioner who walks our roads alone. I know that he who has no fear for his own life has no fear for others'. The hatred in his silence scorches me like fire and sears me more than the rudeness of the others. What awaits our town at his hands? And what do you find written about him in your prophecies, Sheikh Sabir?'

Did I actually utter the question, or was Sabir responding to somebody else? I heard him saying, 'I haven't found anything about him or about his wife in the prophecies. I have read them through twice since he and his wife came to us and I have found no sign that points to them, or perhaps the sign is there but I have failed to understand it. Maybe they are the harbinger of all the catastrophes in the prophecies. Have mercy upon us, O Lord!'

Sheikh Idrees said in a puzzled voice, 'So are we then to do nothing about the man and his wife, Sheikh Sabir? If we can't live in our own oasis without strangers and unbelievers humiliating us and desecrating our houses, we would do better to leave our home and wander in the desert like the Bedouin.'

With a note of sorrow in his voice, Sabir replied, 'I beseech you, don't be in a hurry to go out into the desert, Sheikh Idrees. If the British, who rule Egypt now, come to us and find our land to their liking, they may take it for themselves and indeed throw us into the desert. They have done so elsewhere.'

I nodded my head in agreement. 'You're right, Sheikh Sabir,' I said. 'They did that in the land of the Americans, and other parts of God's world.'

I was confident that the rest of the agwad had never heard of either the Americans or the British and had no idea what Sabir was talking about. And indeed, one of them interrupted me by saying, 'But the troops who come to our land are Egyptians, not British.'