Gold Dust

21

The piebald caught up with Ukhayyad less than a week after he returned to the oasis. This time the camel arrived in a much worse state. Ukhayyad had never seen him in this condition before. He had become so emaciated his ribs stuck out. His eyes were sunken in hollow sockets. His forelegs were covered with deep gashes, the wounds of palm rope, the coarsest kind of rope there is. They had rebranded the camel on his left shank as well, changing the ‘+’ brand of his tribe to ‘11+,’ the mark used by the tribes of Aïr.

This was a sign from Dudu, the clever fox. It was a provocation. Dudu wanted to say that the Mahri did not belong to Ukhayyad anymore. Allowing the camel to come after him was itself a sign from one who wanted to put a flame to Uhkayyad’s heart.

When your beloved is far away, separation is bearable. Out of sight, out of mind. But to see the beloved is for passion to rekindle. This was the trick Dudu was playing. The herder had been right, the heart of the stranger is the refuge of unknowable schemes. When they parted, the herder told him, “You should not have pawned a Mahri like this to a foreigner. The likes of him should be kept hidden from the eyes of strangers. But what’s done is done.” The man spat out some of his chewing tobacco as he left to rejoin his herd.

Ukhayyad thought he would never see this herder again. He assumed that, after his master’s crazy proposition, the herder’s sense of dignity would suffice to make him leave Danbaba for good. It was a shameful demand. The first time Dudu had come to the oasis and stayed as a guest, Ukhayyad had not noticed anything wrong in either his appearance or behavior. All that he had noticed was that, in addition to the veil made of ashen cloth, the man wore a second, more impenetrable veil. Ukhayyad did not claim to know much about the hearts of men, but Dudu’s gloomy silence and unease had betrayed this second veil, the one that cloaked his heart.

The eyes are the mirror of the heart, as everyone knows, and while you can disguise your face behind a veil, you cannot hide the heart — for it speaks through the eyes. When Dudu had greeted Ayur, he was formal, even ceremonial — and nothing in his behavior aroused any suspicion except his fingertips. Etching his index finger into the ground, Dudu traced the sacred triangle for a while, then nervously went back over it, erasing the figure of Tanit he had just drawn. In that instant, a tremble shot through his fingers. At the time, Ukhayyad had not recognized the sign. But now, after thinking about it so intently, and after this latest secret had been divulged, he could see Dudu’s behavior for what it was. How fantastic the secrets of strangers are! And how strong these men are because of it! He who knows how to conceal his secrets is always the strongest.

That day Ukhayyad attempted to test his strength. He decided to abandon the Mahri for good. If he did not do it now, the shame of Dudu’s insult would stick to him forever. The desert was a merciless place. When the curse of shame sticks to a person there, he is stricken from memory. Worse, the scorn becomes inscribed, not only upon him, but upon his progeny as well. In the code of the desert, it is more merciful to be blotted out from the minds of men than it is to suffer this kind of scorn. A man scorned suffers not the finality of a single death, but rather death hundreds and thousands of times over — every day, every hour, every moment of his life. A real man, a man with dignity, chooses to die once rather than a thousand times. The thousandfold death is fit for slaves, and maybe vassals — but not self-respecting nobles.

In the morning, Ukhayyad placed the saddle and baggage on the plow camel and stole off, before the eye could distinguish the white thread from the black one in the twilight gloom. He descended into an arid valley and thrust his foot into the neck of the camel, spurring him into a trot. At that moment, he heard a distant howl of pain, “Aw-a-a-a-a-a-a.”

The wail came from far away, but the complaint and torment it communicated shot across the open desert to Ukhayyad. Only pain can turn the bellowing of camels into the howls of wolves. The piebald always howled when he complained, but he never complained unless the pain touched his heart. There is no creature in this world who can bear corporeal pain like a camel. At the same time, there is no creature as weak as a camel when it comes to heartache. Ukhayyad knew this from his experience with the piebald.

As he listened to the wail and his heart split in two, he tried to snuff out the pain that sparked in his core. It quickly ignited a fire whose flames consumed his breast. He whipped the plow camel’s shanks, spurring him to gallop on. He wanted to flee far, far away. He wanted to disappear, he wanted the sound of the camel to fade away and the fire inside him to die out. But the more pain flooded in, the more memories began to pour out. As if in a dream, he saw their friendship as it had been at the very beginning, before they were born, before they were clots in their mothers’ wombs. He saw them together, before they were even a thought, or a feeling, in their fathers’ hearts. He saw them before they were a desire that took hold of bodies, before they were even dust drifting in the endless void. He could glimpse them back when they had been merely a sound in the wind, the echo of a song, the lamentation of strings played between the fingers of a beautiful woman, and the trilling of a houri in paradise. Yes, that was it — the sublime sound of a merciful houri singing in the shadows of the well. And now he saw it clearly: before they ever existed as anything, they had been as one being.

How could he go off now — cloaked in the darkness of dawn, fleeing like a thief — abandoning the Mahri? How could Ukhayyad throw him off, as he might toss away a ring from his finger? How could he cast him to the barbarians in the Danbaba desert? Could a woman, a boy, and a stupid thing that people in the brutal desert called ‘shame’ make him abandon his divine half and trade it for the illusion of the world? And what was a woman? She was the noose Satan created so that he could lead men around by their necks! What was a son? The toy fathers play with, thinking they will find immortality and salvation — while in actuality they find instead the ruination of their wealth and life! And what was shame? Another illusion created by the people of the desert so as to shackle themselves with chains and rope.

If this is what shame really was, then dignity was freedom. Dignity meant saving the companion he had known in death. The companion who had carried him across the desert realms throughout these years. Dignity meant giving up the noose, the toy, and the illusion. It meant choosing the piebald. It meant that the two of them had to resume their journey across the desert realms.

Abruptly, he choked back the reins and turned on his heels. Dudu received him with the rising sun, wearing a linen veil over his face and a second over his heart. But, Ukhayyad now saw the ridicule in the man’s eyes, the confident disdain of one who knew that he had won. For a second, Dudu’s eyes gleamed a knowing smile, and then that smile vanished. Only at that moment did Ukhayyad begin to hate the man. This feeling of hate jolted through him as quick as lightning, as quick as Dudu’s concealed smile. Ukhayyad was astonished that until now he had never felt any hatred toward him. He had grown angry when the herder told him Dudu’s proposal, but he had not felt hate or resentment at the time. Perhaps because the guileless herdsman had succeeded so well in convincing him that the crisis had come about from his own mistake, the mistake of pawning the piebald. The herder had talked with him for a long while about the magical significance that the word ‘pawn’ had among merchants. The herder told him that Dudu himself had fallen into many traps set for him by the merchants of Timbuktu, Aghadès, and Ghadamès before catching on and learning what this word meant.

Now Ukhayyad also understood the meaning of this curse. Before, he had borne the brunt of the blame for what had happened, but now he understood, and his resentment found its mark: Dudu was to blame for what had happened. The famine was to blame for what had happened. Ayur, the child, the Italians, the desert — they were all to blame. My God — when fate sets things up, it spreads blame all around. It can turn everything against you — people, things, the desert — and arrange it so that no one is to blame for any one thing at all. When everyone shares complicity, there are no culprits. How clever fate can be when it wants to hide its tracks!

Dudu had come pursuing a cousin he had loved since his youth, a cousin who had been separated from him by the machinations of fate. Did Ukhayyad have the right to condemn him? If he were in the man’s place, would he treat him as his enemy?

Dudu said, “You came back to check on the giraffe?”

Confused, Ukhayyad asked, “Giraffe?”

“Yes — that is what I call him. The giraffe is the most beautiful animal we have in Aïr.”

Ukhayyad asked if he could see the animal. Dudu shook his head. “That won’t do anyone any good. Soon, you’ll want to come back to him again and again.”

Ukhayyad didn’t get angry, and said nothing. “He’s in the pasture in the western valley,” the strange foreigner finally muttered.

Now Ukhayyad understood. The morning breeze had come up from the east. It had been easy for the piebald to catch Ukhayyad’s scent when he tried to flee at dawn.