One evening he witnessed a wedding. It was strikingly similar to the funeral he’d attended: keening hags, howling dogs, a solemn procession. The bride was a walking shroud, veiled from head to foot, even her eyes invisible. He wondered how she was able to see where she was going. The keening women followed her, their stride measured by the beat of a tabala. The groom wore slippers with upturned toes. He was accompanied by a retinue of Mussulmen in embroidered burnooses and a cordon of slaves leading goats and bullocks, and carrying a tent. At an appointed spot the tent was struck, the goats and bullocks slaughtered, a fire ignited in a depression in the earth. There was a feast. Beef and mutton, songbirds, roasted larvae and other delicacies. There was dancing, songs were sung and tales told. And then there was the pièce de résistance: a whole baked camel.
BAKED CAMEL (STUFFED)
Serves 400
500 dates
200 plover eggs
20 two-pound carp
4 bustards, cleaned and plucked
2 sheep
1 large camel
seasonings
Dig trench. Reduce inferno to hot coals, three feet in depth. Separately hard-cook eggs. Scale carp and stuff with shelled eggs and dates. Season bustards and stuff with stuffed carp. Stuff stuffed bustards into sheep and stuffed sheep into camel. Singe camel. Then wrap in leaves of doum palm and bury in pit. Bake two days. Serve with rice.
A regular feature of this expansive period were the explorer’s daily meetings with the Queen. Each afternoon — immediately following the dhuhur or midday prayers — he was summoned to Fatima’s tent for a question-and-answer period. She questioned, he answered. Insatiable, she never tired of quizzing him. She was an anthropologist, a sociologist, a comparative anatomist. She wanted to dissect and absorb his habits, thoughts and beliefs; she wanted to taste his food, wear his clothes, sit at his box in the theater. England, Europe, the vast and uncertain oceans — she wanted them built of words, words supple and evocative, words that would calcify in her imagination. She wanted visions. She wanted the memories behind his eyes. She wanted to digest him. Why had he come to Ludamar? How did his father manage the herds without him? Why did he wear so asinine (jalab) a covering on his head? Did all Christians have cat’s eyes? What was the sea like? Had he ever been crucified? The explorer, grinning like a monkey and trying his clumsy best to radiate wit and charm, answered her questions as fully and patiently as he was able.
One afternoon she asked if the Nazarini practiced circumcision. “Certainly,” Mungo replied. She wanted to see for herself. The explorer looked at Johnson. “What do I do now?” he whispered.
“Tell her you’ll be more than happy to demonstrate — but it’ll have to be in private. Then toss your eyebrows a couple of times.”
Mungo told her. He tossed his eyebrows. For a moment the tent was as silent as the dark side of the moon. The Queen’s black eyes burned over the fringe of her yashmak. Then she slapped her thigh and tittered.
That night the explorer ate leg of lamb.
♦ ♦ ♦
On this particular morning, three and a half weeks since his first meeting with Fatima, the explorer is sitting in the shade of an acacia, writing. The Moorish women, he writes, wear their hair in nine plaits, which they divide as follows: two on either side of the face, six thinner braids over the crown, and one stout coil at the base of the neck. The hair is washed and oiled once a month, dressed and replaited weekly. For sanitary reasons, and because it tends to bleach the hair somewhat, the women prefer a rinse of camels urine, which is collected for this purpose. (One can always see a slave or two, cup in hand, pursuing a micturating camel about the camp.) The urine is a powerful astringent, and serves to destroy vermin and other parasites. Indeed, I have had the opportunity to assess its efficacy personally, as my pubes, axillae, side-whiskers and locks were infested with lice and desert mites. I found it refreshing, if somewhat mephitic. .
There is a bloom on the explorer’s cheek. A clarity in his eye. Worms, grippe, scabies, the fever and racheting cough — they’re things of the past. Nasty memories. He’s a meat eater now, a man of broth and blood, as befits a Scotsman, and gaining strength day by day. The heat enervates him, of course, and he still suffers attacks of confusion — but all in all the change in diet and the fresh air have gone a long way toward resurrecting him. And the peace and quiet have had something to do with it too. Just a month ago it would have been impossible for him to sit here: the very sight of him drove the average Mussulman into a frenzy. Within seconds he would have been beleaguered by a stinking, spittle-spewing mob of Moslem zealots. Now it’s different. They know he’s under Fatima’s protection, and aside from isolated incidents (some unseen adversary walloped him in the side of the head with a pig’s pizzle not more than twenty minutes ago), he is left to himself.
The Moorish men, on the other hand, never bathe. They do, however, have a biannual ceremony known as asíla má, during which they bury themselves in hot sand for some forty-five minutes to an hour just prior to sunset. They are then disinterred, rubbed down with the sweat of an estruating mare and thrashed with the underbranches of the serif bush. I am told that the operation is congenial to long life and sexual vigor.
As the explorer looks up to wet his quill, he is startled to discover that he is not alone. Standing there before him, her chocolate eyes following the dip and rush of the pen, is the plumper of the pantaloon girls. “What is it?” he says.
“Fatima says you must come to her.”
Come to her? At ten a.m.? What could she possibly want with him at this hour? “All right,” he says, getting to his feet. “I’ll fetch Johnson.”
“No,” says the girl. “Fatima says he will not be needed.”
The explorer shrugs. “Lead the way,” he says.
♦ ♦ ♦
As he pushes through the flaps and into the tent he is instantly engulfed in darkness. Blue spheres pulsate before his eyes, yellow cartwheels drift off into space. He can see nothing. There are the familiar odors of frankincense and camel urine, and from the corner, the rasp of the saker falcons chewing at their wings. But why hasn’t she lighted a lamp? And where’s that damned girl gone off to? Ah, well. No matter. May as well ride with the current. ‘‘Salaam aleichem,’’ he says, addressing the shadows.
‘‘Aleichem as salaam,’’ comes the reply, soft as the beat of a moth’s wing.
He jumps. She’s sitting right beside him — he could have stumbled over her. . Christ it’s dark. Can’t very well move for fear of upsetting something. “Braaaaak!” says one of the falcons. Maybe he should ask her to light a taper — but then how in the name of God do you say “taper”? He settles for “Kaif halkum?”—how are you?
‘‘Bishára,” she answers, which he takes to mean she has no complaints.
Silence.
He shuffles his feet, picks his ear and jerks at his knuckles, wondering if he should risk taking a seat. It’s an awkward moment. After ten or twenty seconds of ear picking, he makes a stab at conversation, hoping to express how pleasant it is to see her again — though he can barely make her out.