Sunset Oasis

'Now you know, and what difference does it make?' said Sheikh Yahya. 'What did you expect me to do when I saw your wife and she reminded me of everything that happened to Maleeka because of her and you? You killed her.'

To defend myself, I said, 'It was she who went out as a ghoul-woman and stirred up terror in the oasis.'

'It wasn't the first time she'd been out. Ever since she was small, she'd been used to disguising herself in boys' clothing and going out and no one would recognize her, but you tore off her the robe with which she'd disguised herself and threw it into the public highway, causing a scandal. Then what happened in the oasis happened. And that wasn't enough for you, Mr Commissioner. You went and asked that revenge be taken on her. Revenge for what? Did she kill your wife?'

With real sorrow, I said, 'When I went into the house I saw my wife defending herself and I saw that her dress was torn. I truly believed that she wanted to kill her.'

'Stupidity! Why should she want to kill her? The last thing she said, as I heard, was that she was looking for friendship with someone who wasn't one of the people of the oasis, who hated her and whom she hated. She went to your house looking for affection and you met her with hatred and then killed her.'

'Did she not kill herself, Sheikh Yahya?'

He straightened his back a little and said in a voice that trembled with anger, 'Maleeka did not kill herself! Why should she kill herself when she loved the world so much? She… she found beauty in everything, in plants and in the mounds of the temples, and thanks to her I came to love those antiquities that people fear. Maleeka…'

I asked him insistently, to bring him back to the subject, 'So they killed her?'

'Who will say? Who will confess that he buried the knife in her heart? All of them, all of you, took part. Even the ancestors who invented the story of the ghoul-woman…'

The sheikh fell silent suddenly, relaxing his posture once more and looking as though he was making an effort to control his anger. He bowed his head and a cloud of sorrow seemed to pass over his face. Then he said, after a long time, in a low voice, 'Sometimes, in the middle of the garden, I find a beautiful flower or plant whose seed I haven't sown and the like of which I've never seen before. I tend it and keep away the harmful weeds and other plants. I water it more carefully than the other plants but after a while it shrivels up. I fail to either keep it alive or nurture new shoots from it. I wanted Maleeka to live but she was lost.'

I put into words something that had been going through my mind all this while: 'But Sheikh Yahya, that would be an even stronger reason for you to have let them kill me yesterday!'

He raised his head and said in an exhausted voice, 'Had I not learnt long ago to hate blood and killing. But I am a human being, Mr Commissioner. Never, from my earliest years, have I learnt to master my temper, though I do try to keep it in check. I have learnt, if I become angry, to regret and repent. I now ask you and your wife to forgive me. Maleeka loved you and for her sake…'

He fell silent, a catch in his voice. Then I said, 'Should it be we who forgive or you, Sheikh Yahya? If you knew how much regret I too feel at what happened to your niece!'

'But regret on its own is not enough. "What matters is repentance.'

'How can there be repentance now, when what has happened has happened? She's dead, and that's the end of it.'

He looked into my face for a while and said, 'If a person doesn't forgive himself, how can he ask others to forgive him?'

Then he gestured with his hand and said, 'But that's not what I invited you for, Mr Commissioner; rather I wanted to talk to you about your wife's sister.'

My heart leapt and I hoped that nothing would appear in my face to expose me before this sheikh whose dim eyes could read what was in my soul.

'She is a good and courageous woman,' he said. 'But I saw her face at close hand two days ago and I heard her cough.'

Then he became distracted again, as though he were thinking of something else, and he said with some astonishment, 'I've known during my life the like of her in every religion, sect and race. Few are born with the God-given gift of tolerance and purity of soul. It is a gift from the Giver for which they can take no credit. They are few because He, glory be to Him, has not wished that we be angels. He has known that we are mutinous and sinful and must repent and struggle every day so as to reach purity of soul through our own actions and efforts.'

He fell silent once more, so I said, to encourage him, 'You were speaking, Sheikh Yahya, of her cough. What did you want to say?'

Without looking at my face, he said, 'I would wish to say nothing, but I am afraid, my son — and I pray God that I am mistaken — that hers is that sickness for which no one knows a cure.'

In panic, I exclaimed, 'No! The doctors in her count didn't tell her that! They said she needed a dry climate.'

'I hope that may be so. I said, I hope I am mistaken, but wanted to alert you so that you and her sister may consider well what has to be done. It may be that her condition is indeed due to a build-up of extreme humidity in the chest, and a delay in treatment.'

I muttered in confusion, 'And those medicines that you sent her yesterday. Won't they dry out the water in her chest and cure this humidity?'

'God alone heals, Mr Commissioner.'

'Of course, but… will these medicines cure her?'

He gave a weak smile that multiplied the wrinkles on his face as he addressed me, saying, 'Did you listen well to what I told you, Mr Commissioner?'

I didn't grasp what he meant immediately, and he continued, looking into my face, 'Anyway, what I sent you is what I had ready. God may guide me to other things. If her condition is humidity in the chest, though, the best thing would be for her to bury herself in hot sand. But it's winter now.'

He paused for a moment, then continued, 'I used to know how to administer that treatment but I don't leave this place, and no man can treat a woman by this method. Today I sent her a woman who knows the treatment.'

'Zubeida?'

He nodded and said with some sadness, 'However, as I said, it only works when the sand is as hot as fire and we're now in the cold of winter…'

I clutched at this hope. 'Warm days come — in fact, sometimes there are even hot days — in winter.'

'True, but the heat has to remain for days and weeks on end, so that the warmth can penetrate deep into the sand.'

'Let us pray that the hot weather comes.'

Smiling again, he said, 'Would that our prayers to the Omnipotent were a little more ambitious.'

I bowed my head in thought. So, in the space of a day and a night, this sheikh had sent medicines for Fiona, sent a message warning me about the killers, sent this woman Zubeida, forgiven me and Catherine, and asked us to forgive him! What is this? Is he too a saint… I mean, is he a 'Friend of God', even though he denied that! If that were true, then the friend of God is bound to succeed in curing the saint. But he spoke of 'that sickness for which no one knows a cure'. At one sitting, he gives me life through hope and then kills me with despair!

I became aware that the sheikh was addressing me and saying, 'I pray that God may decree a cure for her, and I shall pray often for you, that you make peace with yourself.'

'What do you mean, make peace with myself?'

As though he hadn't heard me, he went on, 'And that you make peace with the people, Mr Commissioner. I know that won't happen from one day to the net. I know that it may take a whole lifetime,'

Then, as though remembering something, he said, 'It would be better if you don't tell what you have just heard to your wife and her sister, unless you've decided to send her away from here to look for a cure elsewhere'