The Journeyer

THE GREAT SALT

1

KASHAN was the last city we came to in the habitable green part of Persia; eastward beyond it lay the empty wasteland called the Dasht-e-Kavir, or Great Salt Desert. On the day before we arrived in that city, the slave Nostril said:

“Observe, my masters, the pack camel has begun to limp. I believe he has suffered a stone bruise. Unless it is relieved, that could cause us bad trouble when we get into the desert.”

“You are the camel-puller,” said my uncle. “What is your professional advice?”

“The cure is simple enough, Master Mafio. A few days of rest for the animal. Three days should do it.”

“Very well,” said my father. “We will put up in Kashan, and we can make use of the delay. Replenish our traveling rations. Get our clothes cleaned, and so on.”

During the journey from Baghdad to this point, Nostril had behaved so efficiently and submissively that we had quite forgotten his penchant for devilry. But soon I, at least, had reason to suspect that the slave had deliberately inflicted the camel’s minor injury just to provide himself with a holiday.

Kashan’s foremost industry (and the source of the city’s name) has for centuries been the manufacture of kashi, or what we would call mosaic, those artfully glazed tiles which are used throughout Islam for the decoration of masjid temples, palaces and other fine buildings. The kashi manufacture is done inside enclosed workshops, but Kashan’s second most valuable article of commerce was more immediately visible to us as we rode into the city: its beautiful boys and young men.

While the girls and women to be seen on the streets—as well as could be seen through their chador veils—were of the usual mix, ranging from plain to pretty, with here and there one really worth noticing, all the young males were of strikingly handsome face and physique and bearing. I do not know why that should have been so. Kashan’s climate and foods and water did not differ from those we had encountered elsewhere in Persia, and I could see nothing extraordinary in those local folk who were of an age to be mothers and fathers. So I have no least idea why their male offspring should have been so superior to the boys and young men of other localities—but they undeniably were.

Of course, being a young male myself, I should have preferred to be riding into Kashan’s counterpart city, Shiraz, reportedly just as full of beautiful females. Nevertheless, even my uncaring eye had to admire what it saw in Kashan. The boys and youths were not dirty or pimply or spotty; they were immaculately clean, with glossy hair, brilliant eyes, clear and almost translucent complexions. They were not sullen of demeanor or slouching of posture; they stood straight and proud, and their gaze was forthright. They were not mumbly and slovenly of speech; they spoke articulately and intelligently. One and all, and of whatever class, they were as comely and attractive as girls—and girls of high birth, well cared for, well brought up and well mannered. The smaller boys were like the exquisite little Cupids drawn by Alexandrian artists. The larger lads were like the angels pictured in the panels of the San Marco Basilica. Though I was honestly impressed, and even a little envious of them, I made no vocal acknowledgment of that. After all, I flattered myself that I was no inferior specimen of my sex and age. But my three companions did exclaim.

“Non persiani, ma prezioni,” my uncle said admiringly.

“A precious sight, yes,” said my father.

“Veritable jewels,” said Nostril, casting a leer about.

“Are they all young eunuchs?” asked my uncle. “Or fated to be?”

“Oh, no, Master Mafo,” said Nostril. “They can give as good as they get, if you take my meaning. Far from being impaired in their virile parts, they are improved in their other nether region. Made more accessible and hospitable, if you take my meaning. Do you comprehend the words fa‘il and mafa’ul? Well, al-fa‘il means ‘the doer’ and al-mafa’ul means ‘the done-to.’ These Kashan boys are bred to be beautiful and trained to be obedient and they are physically, er, modified—so that they perform equally delightfully as fa‘il or mafa’ul.”

“You make them sound far less angelic than they look,” said my father, with distaste. “But the Shah Zaman said it was from Kashan that he procures virgin boys to distribute as gifts to other monarchs.”

“Ah, the virgins, now, they are something else. You will not see the virgin boys on the streets, Master Nicolò. They are kept confined in pardah as strict as that of virgin Princesses. For they are reserved to become the concubines of those Princes and other rich men who maintain not just one anderun but two: one of women and one of boys. Until the virgin lads are ripe for presentation, their parents keep them in perpetual indolence. The boys do nothing but loll about on daiwan cushions, while they are force-fed on boiled chestnuts.”

“Boiled chestnuts! Whatever for?”

“That diet makes their flesh get immensely plump and pale and so soft you can dent it with a fingertip. Boys of that maggot appearance are especially esteemed by the anderun procurers. There is no accounting for taste. I myself prefer a boy who is sinewy and sinuous and athletic in the act, not a sulky lump of suet that—”

“There is evidently lewdness enough here,” my father said. “Spare us yours.”

“As you command, master. I will only remark further that the virgin boys are vastly expensive to buy, and cannot be hired. On the other hand, observe! Even the street urchins here are beautiful. They can be cheaply bought for keeping, or even more cheaply hired for a quick—”

“I said be silent!” snapped my father. “Now, where shall we seek lodging?”

“Is there such a thing as a Jewish karwansarai?” said my uncle. “I should like to eat properly for a change.”

I must explain that remark. During the past weeks, we had found most of the wayside inns run by Muslims, of course, but several of them had been the property of Nestorian Christians. And the degenerate Eastern Church foolishly observes so many fast days and feast days that every day is one or the other. So in those places we were either piously starved or piously glutted. Also, we were now in the month the Persian Muslims call Ramazan. That word means “the hot month,” but, because the Islamic calendar follows the moon, its Hot Month occurs variously in each year, and can fall in August or January or any other time, and this year it came in late autumn. Whenever it comes, it is the month ordained for Muslims to fast. On each of the thirty days of Ramazan, from that morning hour when there is light enough to distinguish a white thread from a black one, a Muslim cannot partake of food or drink—or sex between man and woman—until the fall of night. Neither can he serve any comestible to his guests, whatever their religion. So in the daytimes we journeyers had not been able to beg even a dipper of well water from any Muslim establishment, while in every one of them, every day after sundown, we were absolutely gorged to stupefaction. For some time, then, we had all been suffering miseries of indigestion, and Uncle Mafo’s suggestion was no expression of idle whim.

I need hardly remark that Jews in the East seldom engage in such an occupation as renting bed and board to passing strangers—any more than they do in the West—no doubt because it is less profitable and more laborious than moneylending and other such forms of usury. However, our slave Nostril was a most resourceful person. After only a little inquiry of passersby, he learned of an elderly Jewish widow whose house adjoined a stable which she no longer used. Nostril led us there, and got himself admitted to audience with the widow, and proved himself to be also a most persuasive envoy. He came out of her house to report that she would let us house our camels in her stable and ourselves in the hayloft above it.

“Furthermore,” he said, as we towed the beasts in there and began to unload them, “since all the household servants are Kashan Persians and therefore bound by the strictures of Ramazan, the Almauna Esther has agreed to prepare and serve you gentlemen your meals with her own hands. So again you will be eating at your accustomed hours, and she assures me she is a good cook. The payment she asks for our stay is also most reasonable.”

My uncle frankly gaped at the slave, and said in awe, “You are a Muslim, the thing most despised by a Jew, and we are Christians, the next-most despised things. If that were not enough to make this Widow Esther spurn us from her door, you must be the most repulsive creature she has ever set eyes on. How in God’s name did you accomplish all this?”

“I am only a Sindi and a slave, master, but I am not ignorant or lacking in initiative. Also I can read and I can observe.”

“I congratulate you. But that does not answer my question or lessen your ugliness.”

Nostril scratched thoughtfully in his meager beard. “Master Mafio, in the holy books of your religion and of mine and of the Almauna Esther’s religion, you will find the word beauty often mentioned, but never the word ugliness, not in any of those scriptures. Perhaps our several gods are not offended by the physical ugliness of mere mortals, and perhaps the Almauna Esther is a godly woman. Anyway, before those holy books were written, we were of one religion—my ancestors, the almauna’s, perhaps yours as well—all were of the old Babylonian religion that is now abhorred as pagan and demonic.”

“Impertinent upstart! How dare you suggest such a thing?” my father demanded.

“The almauna’s name is Esther,” said Nostril, “and there are Christian ladies also of that name, and it derives from the demon goddess Ishtar. The almauna’s late husband, she tells me, was named Mordecai, which name comes from the demon god Marduk. But long before those gods existed in Babylon, there existed Noah and his son Shem, and the almauna and I are Shem’s descendants. Only the later difference of our religions divides us Semites, and that should not have been too severely divisive. Muslims and Jews, we both eschew certain foods, we both seal our sons in the Faith with circumcision, we both believe in heavenly angels and loathe the same adversary, whether he is called Satan or Shaitan. We both revere the holy city of Jerusalem. Perhaps you did not know that the Prophet (may peace and blessing be upon him) originally bade us Muslims bow to Jerusalem, not to Mecca, when we make our devotions. The language originally spoken by the Jews and that spoken by the Prophet (all blessing and peace be his) were not greatly dissimilar, and—”

“And Muslims and Jews alike,” my father said drily, “have tongues hinged in the middle, to wag at both ends. Come, Mafio, Marco. Let us go and pay our own respects to our hostess. Nostril, you finish unloading the animals and then procure feed for them.”

The Widow Esther was a white-haired and sweet-faced little woman, and she greeted us as graciously as if we had not been Christians. She insisted that we sit down and drink what she called her “restorative for travelers,” which turned out to be hot milk flavored with cardamom. The lady prepared it herself, since it was not yet sundown and none of her Muslim servants could do so much as heat the milk or pulverize the seeds.

It seemed that the Jew lady did have, as my father had supposed, a tongue hinged in the middle, for she kept us in conversation for some while. Rather, my father and uncle conversed with her; I looked about me. The house clearly had been a fine one, and richly appointed, but—after the death of its Master Mordecai, I guessed—had got somewhat dilapidated and its furnishings threadbare. There was still a full staff of servants, but I got the impression that they remained not for wages but out of loyalty to their Mistress Esther and, unbeknownst to her, took in washing at the back door, or through some such genteel subterfuge supported themselves and her as well.

Two or three of the servants were as old and unremarkable as the mistress, but three or four others were the supernally handsome Kashan boys and young men. And one servant, I was pleased to note, was a female as pretty as any of the males, a young woman with dark-red hair and a voluptuous body. To pass the time while the Widow Esther prattled on, I made the cascamorto at that maidservant, giving her languishing looks and suggestive winks. And she, when her mistress was not observing, smiled encouragingly back at me.

The next day, while the lame camel rested, and so did the other four, we travelers all went separately out into the city. My father went seeking a kashi workshop, expressing a wish to learn something about the manufacture of those tiles, for he deemed it a useful industry that he might introduce to the artisans of Kithai. Our camel-puller Nostril went out to buy some kind of salve for the camel’s bruised foot, and Uncle Mafio went to get a new supply of the mumum depilatory. As it turned out, none of them found what he sought, because no one in Kashan was working during Ramazan. Having no errands of my own, I simply strolled and observed.

As I was to see in every city from there eastward, the sky over Kashan was constantly awhirl with the big, dark, fork-tailed scavenger kites circling and swooping. As also in every city from there eastward, the other most prevalent bird seemed to spend all its time scavenging on the ground. That was the mynah, which strutted aggressively about with its lower beak puffed out like the pugnacious underjaw of a little man looking for a quarrel. And of course the next most visible denizens of Kashan were the pretty boys at play in the streets. They chanted their ball-bouncing songs and their hide-and-seek songs and their whirling-dance songs, just as Venetian children do, except that these songs were of the cat-screech variety. So was the music played by the street entertainers soliciting bakhshish. They seemed to own no instruments except the changal, which is nothing but a guimbarde or Jew’s harp, and the chimta, which is nothing but iron kitchen tongs, so their music was nothing but a horrid cacophony of twang and clatter. I think the passerby who tossed them a coin or two did so not out of thanks for the entertainment but to interrupt it, however briefly.

I did not wander far that morning, for my stroll brought me around through the streets in a circle, and I soon found myself again approaching the widow’s house. From a window the pretty maidservant beckoned, as if she had been waiting there just to see me pass. She let me into the house, into a room furnished with slightly shabby qali and daiwan pillows, and confided to me that her mistress was occupied elsewhere, and told me that her name was Sitare, which means Star.

We sat down together on a pile of pillows. Being no longer a callow and inexperienced stripling, I did not set upon her with clumsy juvenile avidity. I began with soft words and sweet compliments, and only gradually moved closer until my whispers tickled her dainty ear and made her wriggle and giggle, and only then raised her chador veil and moved my lips to hers and tenderly kissed her.

“That is nice, Mirza Marco,” she said. “But you need not waste time.”

“I count it no waste,” I said. “I enjoy the preliminaries as much as the fulfillment. We can take the whole day if—”

“I mean you need not do anything with me.”

“You are a considerate girl, Sitarè, and kind. But I must tell you that I am not a Muslim. I do not abstain during Ramazan.”

“Oh, your being an infidel does not matter.”

“I rejoice to hear it. Then let us proceed.”

“Very well. Loose your embrace of me and I will fetch him.”

“What?”

“I told you. There is no need to continue in pretense with me. He is already waiting to come in.”

“Who is waiting?”

“My brother Aziz.”

“Why the devil would we want your brother in here with us?”

“Not we. You. I will go away.”

I loosed my hold on her, and sat up and looked at her. “Excuse me, Sitarè,” I said warily, not knowing any better way to ask it than to ask it: “Are you perhaps, er, divanè?” Divanè means crazy.

She looked genuinely puzzled. “I assumed you took notice of our resemblance when you were here last evening. Aziz is the boy who looks like me, and has red hair like mine, but is much prettier. His name means Beloved. Surely that was why you winked and leered at me?”

Now I was the one puzzled. “Even if he were as pretty as a peri, why would I wink at you—except that you were the one I—?”

“I tell you no pretext is necessary. Aziz saw you also, and was also instantly enthralled, and he already is waiting and eager.”

“I do not care if Aziz is eternally adrift in Purgatory!” I cried in exasperation. “Let me put this as plainly as I know how. I am at this moment trying to seduce you into letting me have my way with you.”

“Me? You wish to make zina with me? Not with my brother Aziz?”

I briefly pounded my fists on an unoffending pillow, and then said, “Tell me something, Sitarè. Does every girl in all of Persia misspend her energies in acting as procurer for someone else?”

She thought about that. “All of Persia? I do not know. But here in Kashan, yes, that is often the case. It is the result of established custom. A man sees another man, or a boy, and is smitten with him. But he cannot pay court to him outright, for that is against the law laid down by the Prophet.”

“Peace and blessing be upon him,” I muttered.

“Yes. So the man pays court to the other man’s nearest woman relative. He will even marry her, if necessary. So that then he has excuse to be near his true heart’s desire—the woman’s brother perhaps, or maybe her son if she is a widow, or even her father—and has every opportunity to make zina with him. That way, you see, the proprieties are not openly flouted.”

“Gèsu.”

“That is why I supposed you were paying court to me. But of course, if you do not want my brother, you cannot have me.”

“Whyever not? You seemed pleased to learn that I wanted you and not him.”

“Yes, I am. Both surprised and pleased. That is an unusual preference; a Christian eccentricity, I daresay. But I am a virgin, and I must remain so, for my brother’s sake. You have by now crossed many Muslim lands; surely you have comprehended. That is why a family keeps its maiden daughters and sisters in strict pardah, and jealously guards their virtue. Only if a maiden remains intact or a widow chaste can she hope to make a good marriage. At least, so it is here in Kashan.”

“Well, it is the same where I come from … ,” I had to admit.

“Yes, I shall seek to make a good marriage to a good man who will be a good provider and a good lover to us both, for my brother Aziz is all the family I have.”

“Wait a moment,” I said, scandalized. “A Venetian female’s chastity is often an item of barter, yes, and often traded for a good marriage, yes. But only for the commercial or social advancement of her whole family. Do you mean the women here willingly endorse and connive in the lust of one man for another? You would deliberately become the wife of a man just so you could share him with your brother?”

“Oh, not just any man who comes along,” she said airily. “You should feel flattered that both Aziz and I found you to our liking.”

“Gèsu.”

“To couple with Aziz commits you to nothing, you see, since a male has no sangar membrane. But if you wish to be the breaker of mine, you must wed me and take us both.”

“Gèsu.” I got up from the daiwan.

“You are going? Then you do not want me? But what of Aziz? You will not have him even once?”

“I think not, thank you, Sitarè.” I slouched toward the door. “I simply was ignorant of local custom.”

“He will be desolated. Especially if I have to tell him it was me you desired.”

“Then do not,” I mumbled. “Just tell him I was ignorant of local custom.” And I went on out the door.

2

BETWEEN the house and the stable was a little garden plot planted with kitchen herbs, and the Widow Esther was out there. She was wearing only one slipper, her other foot was bare, and she had the removed slipper in her hand, beating with it at the ground. Curious, I approached her, and saw that she was pounding at a large black scorpion. When it was pulped, she moved on and turned over a rock; another scorpion sluggishly crawled into view and she squashed that one, too.

“Only way to get the nasty things,” she said to me. “They do their prowling at night, when they are impossible to see. You have to turn them up in daylight. This city is infested with them. I do not know why. My late dear husband Mordecai (alav ha-sholom) used to grumble that the Lord erred miserably in sending mere locusts upon Egypt, when He could have sent these venomous Kashan scorpions.”

“Your husband must have been a brave man, Mirza Esther, to criticize the Lord God Himself.”

She laughed. “Read your scriptures, young man. The Jews have been giving censure and advice to God ever since Abraham. You can read in the Book of Genesis how Abraham first argued with the Lord and then proceeded to haggle Him into a bargain. My Mordecai was no less hesitant to cavil at God’s doings.”

I said, “I once had a friend—a Jew named Mordecai.”

“A Jew was your friend?” She sounded skeptical, but I could not tell whether she doubted that a Christian would befriend a Jew, or a Jew a Christian.

“Well,” I said, “he was a Jew when I first met him, when he called himself Mordecai. But I seem to keep on meeting him under other names or in other guises. I even saw him once in one of my dreams.”

And I told her of those various encounters and manifestations, each of them evidently intended to impress upon me “the bloodthirstiness of beauty.” The widow stared at me as I talked, and her eyes widened, and when I was done she said:

“Bar mazel, and you a gentile! Whatever he is trying to tell you, I suggest that you take it to heart. Do you know who that is you keep meeting? That must be one of the Lamed-vav. The thirty-six.”

“The thirty-six what?”

“Tzaddikim. Let me see—saints, I suppose a Christian would call them. It is an old Jewish belief. That there are always in the world just thirty-six men of perfect righteousness. No one ever knows who they are, and they themselves do not realize they are tzaddikim—or else, you see, that self-consciousness would impair their perfection. But they go constantly about the world, doing good deeds, for no reward or recognition. Some say the tzaddikim never die. Others say that whenever one tzaddik dies, another good man is appointed by God to that office, without his knowing he has been so honored. Still others say that there is really only one tzaddik, who can be in thirty-six places simultaneously, if he chooses. But all who believe in the legend agree that God will end this world if ever the Lamed-vav should cease doing their good works. I must say, though, that I never heard of one of them extending his good offices to a gentile.”

I said, “The one I met in Baghdad may not even have been a Jew. He was a fardarbab tomorrow-teller. He could have been an Arab.”

She shrugged. “The Arabs have an identical legend. They call the righteous man an abdal. The true identity of each of them is known only to Allah, and it is only on their account that Allah lets the world go on existing. I do not know if the Arabs borrowed the legend of our Lamed-vav, or if it is a belief which they and we have shared ever since the long-ago time when we were mutually the children of Shem. But whichever yours is, young man—an abdal bestowing his favor on an infidel or a tzaddik on a gentile—you are highly favored and you should pay heed.”

I said, “They seem never to speak to me of anything but beauty and bloodthirstiness. I already seek the one and shun the other, insofar as I can. I hardly need further counsel in either of those respects.”

“Those sound to me like the two sides of a single coin,” said the widow, as she slapped with her slipper at another scorpion. “If there is danger in beauty, is there not also beauty in danger? Or why else does a man so gladly go a-journeying?”

“Me? Oh, I journey just out of curiosity, Mirza Esther.”

“Just curiosity! Listen to him! Young man, do not ever deprecate the passion called curiosity. Where would danger be without it, or beauty either?”

I failed to see much connection among the three things, and again began to wonder if I was talking to someone slightly divanè. I knew that old people could sometimes get wonderfully disjointed in their conversations, and so this one seemed when she said next:

“Shall I tell you the saddest words I ever heard?”

In the manner of all old people, she did not wait for me to say yes or no, but went right on:

“They were the last words spoken by my husband Mordecai (alav ha-sholom). It was when he lay dying. The darshan was in attendance, and other members of our little congregation, and of course I was there, weeping and trying to weep with quiet dignity. Mordecai had made all his farewells, and he had said the Shema Yisrael, and he was composed for death. His eyes were closed, his hands folded, and we all thought he was peacefully slipping away. But then, without opening his eyes or addressing anybody in particular, he spoke again, quite clearly and distinctly. And what he said was this …”

The widow pantomimed the deathbed occasion. She closed her eyes and crossed her hands on her bosom, one of them still holding her dirty slipper, and she leaned her head back a little, and she said in a sepulchral voice, “I always wanted to go there … and do that … but I never did.”

Then she stayed in that pose; evidently I was expected to say something. I repeated the dying man’s words, “I always wanted to go there … and do that …” and I asked, “What did he mean? Go where? Do what?”

The widow opened her eyes and shook her slipper at me. “That was what the darshan said, after we had waited for some moments to hear more. He leaned over the bed and said, ‘Go to what place, Mordecai? To do what thing?’ But Mordecai said no more. He was dead.”

I made the only comment I could think to make. “I am sorry, Mirza Esther.”

“So am I. But so was he. Here was a man in the very last flicker of his life, lamenting something that had once piqued his curiosity, but he had neglected to go and see it or do it or have it—and now he never could.”

“Was Mordecai a journeyer?”

“No. He was a cloth merchant, and a very successful one. He never traveled farther from here than to Baghdad and Basra. But who knows what he would have liked to be and do?”

“You think he died unhappy, then?”

“Unfulfilled, at least. I do not know what it was he spoke of, but oh! how I wish he had gone there while he was alive, wherever it was, and done whatever it was.”

I tried tactfully to suggest that it could not matter to him now.

She said firmly, “It mattered to him when it mattered most. When he knew the chance was gone forever.”

Hoping to make her feel better, I said, “But if he had seized the chance, you might be sorrier now. It may have been something—something less than approvable. I have noticed that sinful temptations abound in these lands. In all lands, I suppose. I myself once had to confess to a priest for having too freely followed where my curiosity led me, and—”

“Confess it, if you must, but do not ever abjure it or ignore it. That is what I am trying to tell you. If a man is to have a fault, it should be a passionate one, like insatiable curiosity. It would be a pity to be damned for something paltry.”

“I hope not to be damned, Mirza Esther,” I said piously, “as I trust the Mirza Mordecai was not. It may well have been out of virtue that he let that chance go by, whatever it was. Since you cannot know, you need not weep for—”

“I am not weeping. I did not broach the matter to sniffle over it.”

I wondered why, then, she had bothered to broach it. And, as if in reply to my silent question, she went on:

“I wanted you to know this. When you come at last to die, you may be devoid of all other urges and senses and faculties, but you will still possess your passion of curiosity. It is something that even cloth merchants have, perhaps even clerks and other such drudges. Certainly a journeyer has it. And in those last moments it will make you grieve—as Mordecai did—not for anything you have done in your lifetime, but for the things you never got to do.”

“Mirza Esther,” I protested. “A man cannot live always in dread of missing something. I fully expect never to be Pope, for instance, or Shah of Persia, but I hope that lack will not blight my life. Or my deathbed either.”

“I do not mean things unattainable. Mordecai died lamenting something that had been within his reach, within his capability, within his having, and he let it go by. Imagine yourself pining for the sights and delights and experiences you could have had, but missed—or even just one single small such experience—and pining too late, when it is forever unattainable.”

Obediently, I did try to imagine that. And young though I was, remote though I assumed that prospect to be, I felt a faint chill.

“Imagine going into death,” she went on implacably, “without having tasted everything in this world. The good, the bad, the indifferent even. And to know, at that final moment, that it was no one but you who deprived yourself, through your own careful caution or careless choice or failure to follow where your curiosity led. Tell me, young man, could there be any more hurtful pang on the other side of death? Even damnation itself?”

After the moment it took me to shake off the chill, I said, as cheerfully as I could, “Well, with the help of those thirty-six you spoke of, maybe I can avoid both deprivation in my lifetime and damnation after it.”

“Aleichem sholem,” she said. But, as she was swatting with her slipper at another scorpion at that moment, I was not sure if she was wishing peace to me or to it.

She moved on down the garden, turning over rocks, and I idly ambled into the stable to see if any of our party had returned from wandering about town. One of them had, but not alone, and the sight brought me up short, with a gasp.

Our slave Nostril was there, with a stranger, one of the gorgeous young Kashan men. Perhaps my conversation with the maidservant Sitarè had made me temporarily impervious to disgust, for I did not make violent outcry or retreat from the scene. I looked on as indifferently as did the camels, which only shuffled and mumbled and munched. Both of the men were naked, and the stranger was on his hands and knees in the straw, and our slave was hunched over his backside, bucking like a camel in rut. The lewdly coupling Sodomites turned their heads when I entered, but only grinned at me and kept on with their indecency.

The young man had a body that was as handsome to look upon as his face was. But Nostril, even when fully clothed, was of a repellent appearance, as I have already described. I can only say further that his paunchy torso and pimply buttocks and spindly limbs, when totally exposed, were a sight to make most onlookers retch up their most recent meal. I was amazed that such a revolting creature could have persuaded anyone the least bit less revolting to play al-mafa‘ul to his al-fa’il.

Nostril’s fa’il implement was invisible to me, being inserted where it was, but the young man’s organ was visible below his belly, and stiffened into its candelòto aspect. I thought that somewhat odd, since neither he nor Nostril was manipulating it in any way. And it seemed even more odd, when he and Nostril finally groaned and writhed together, to see his candelòto—still without benefit of touch or fondling—squirt spruzzo into the straw on the floor.

After they had briefly rested and panted, Nostril heaved his sweat-shiny bulk off the young man’s back. Without dipping a wash of water from the camel trough, without even wadding some straw to wipe his extremely wee little organ, he began putting his clothes back on, and humming a merry tune as he did so. The young stranger more indolently and slowly began to get dressed, as if he frankly enjoyed displaying his nude body even under such disgraceful circumstances.

Leaning against a stall partition, I said to our slave, as if we had all the while been chatting companionably, “You know something, Nostril? There are many rascals and scamps portrayed in song and story—characters like Encolpios and Renart the Fox. They live a gay vagabond life, and they live by their foxy wits, but somehow they are never guilty of crime or sin. They commit only pranks and jests. They steal from none but thieves, their amatory exploits are never sordid, they drink and carouse without ever getting drunk or foolish, their swordplay never causes more than a flesh wound. They have winning ways and twinkling eyes and a ready laugh, even on the scaffold, for they never hang. Whatever the adventure, those adventurous scoundrels are always charming and dashing, clever and amusing. Such stories make one want to meet such a brave, bold, lovable rascal.”

“And now you have,” said Nostril. He twinkled his piggy eyes and smiled to show his stubble teeth and struck a pose that he probably thought was dashing.

“Now I have,” I said. “And there is nothing lovable or admirable about you. If you are the typical rascal, then all the stories are lies, and a rascal is a swine. You are filthy of person and of habit, loathsome in appearance and character, cloacal in your proclivities. You are altogether deserving of that seething oil vat from which I too indulgently argued for your rescue.”

The handsome stranger laughed coarsely at that. Nostril sniffled and muttered, “Master Marco, as a devout Muslim I must object to being likened to a swine.”

“I hope you would also balk at coupling with a sow,” I said. “But I doubt it.”

“Please, young master. I am devoutly keeping Ramazan, which prohibits intercourse between Muslim men and women. I must also admit that, even in the permissible months, women are sometimes hard for me to come by, ever since my pretty face was disfigured by my nose’s misfortune.”

“Oh, do not exaggerate,” I said. “There is always somewhere a woman desperate enough for anything. In my lifetime, I have seen a Slavic woman couple with a black man and an Arab woman couple with an actual ape.”

Nostril said loftily, “I hope you do not suppose that I would condescend to a woman as ugly as I am. Ah, but Jafar here—Jafar is as comely as the comeliest woman.”

I growled, “Tell your comely wretch to hurry with his dressing and get out of here, or I will feed him to the camels.”

The comely wretch glared at me, then gave a melting look of entreaty to Nostril, who immediately insulted me with an impertinent question: “You would not like to try him yourself, Master Marco? The experience might broaden your mind.”

“I will broaden your one nose-hole!” I snarled, taking the dagger from my belt. “I will open it all the way around your ugly head! How dare you speak so to a master? What do you take me for?”

“For a young man with much yet to learn,” he said. “You are a journeyer now, Master Marco, and before you get home again you will have traveled much farther yet, and seen and experienced much more. When you do arrive home at last, you will be rightfully scornful of men there who call mountains high and swamps deep, without their ever having scaled a mountain or plumbed a swamp—men who have never ventured beyond their narrow streets and their commonplace routines and their cautious pastimes and their pinched little lives.”

“Perhaps so. But what has that to do with your galineta whore?”

“There are other journeys that can take a man beyond the ordinary, Master Marco, not in distance of travel but in breadth of understanding. Consider. You have reviled this young man as a whore, when he is only what he was bred and developed and trained and expected to be.”

“A Sodomite, then, if you prefer. To a Christian, that is a sinful thing to be—a sinner and a sin to be abhorred.”

“I ask you, Master Marco, to make only a short journey into the world of this young man.” Before I could object, he said, “Jafar, tell the foreigner of your upbringing.”

Still clutching his lower garment in his hand, and glancing uneasily at me, Jafar began. “Oh, young Mirza, reflection of the light of Allah—”

“Never mind that,” said Nostril. “Just tell of your body’s preparation for sexual commerce.”

“Oh, blessing of the world,” Jafar began again. “From the earliest years I can remember, always while I slept I wore inserted into my nether aperture a golulè, which is an implement made of kashi ceramic, a sort of small tapered cone. Every time my bedtime toilet was completed, the golulè was put into me, well greased with some drug to stimulate the development of my badàm. My mother or nurse would at intervals ease it farther inside me, and when I could accommodate it all, a larger golulè was substituted. Thus my opening gradually grew more ample, but without impairing the muscle of closure which surrounds it.”

“Thank you for the story,” I said to him, but coldly, and to Nostril I said, “Born so or made so, a Sodomite is still an abomination.”

“I think his story is not finished,” said Nostril. “Bear with the journey only a little farther.”

“When I was perhaps five or six years old,” Jafar went on, “I was relieved of having to wear the golulè, and instead my next older brother was encouraged to use me whenever he had an urge and an erected organ.”

“Adrìo de vu!” I gasped, compassion getting the better of my revulsion. “What a horrible childhood!”

“It could have been worse,” said Nostril. “When a bandit or slave-taker captures a boy, and that boy has not been thus carefully prepared, the captor brutally impales him there with a tent peg, to make the opening fit for subsequent use. But that tears the encircling muscle, and the boy can never thereafter contain himself, but excretes incontinently. Also, he cannot thereafter utilize that muscle to give pleasurable contractions during the act. Go on, Jafar.”

“When I had got accustomed to that brother’s usage, my next older and better-equipped brother helped my further development. And when my badàm was mature enough to let me begin to enjoy the act, then my father …”

“Adrìo de vu!” I exclaimed again. But now curiosity had got the better of both my revulsion and my compassion. “What do you mean about the badàm?” I could not comprehend that detail, for the word badàm means an almond.

“You did not know of it?” said Nostril with surprise. “Why, you have one yourself. Every male does. We call it the almond because of its shape and size, but physicians sometimes refer to it as the third testicle. It is situated behind the other two, not in the bag, but hidden up inside your groin. A finger or, ahem, any other object inserted far enough into your anus rubs against that almond and stimulates it to a pleasurable excitement.”

“Ah,” I said, enlightened. “So that is why, just now, Jafar made spruzzo seemingly without any caress or provocation.”

“We call that spurt the almond milk,” Nostril said primly. He added, “Some women of talent and experience know of that invisible male gland. In one way or another, they tickle it while they are coupling with a man, so that when he ejaculates the almond milk his enjoyment is blissfully heightened.”

I wagged my head wonderingly, and said, “You are right, Nostril. A man can learn new things from journeying.” I slid my dagger back into its sheath. “This time at least, I forgive the brash way you spoke to me.”

He replied smugly, “A good slave puts utility before humility. And now, Master Marco, perhaps you would like to slip your other weapon into another sheath? Observe Jafar’s splendid scabbard—”

“Scagaròn!” I snapped. “I may tolerate such customs of others while I am in these regions, but I will not partake of them. Even if Sodomy were not a vile sin, I should still prefer the love of women.”

“Love, master?” echoed Nostril, and Jafar laughed in his coarse way, and one of the camels belched. “No one spoke of love. The love between a man and a man is another thing entirely, and I believe that only we warmhearted warrior Muslims can know that most sublime of all emotions. I doubt that any cold-blooded and peace-preaching Christian could be capable of that love. No, master, I was suggesting merely a matter of convenient release and relief and satisfaction. For that, what difference what sex?”

I snorted like a supercilious camel. “Easy for you to say, slave, since to you it makes no difference what animal. As for me, I am happy to say that as long as there are women in the world I shall have no yearning for men to couple with. I am a man myself, and I am too familiar with my own body to have the least interest in that of any other male. But women—ah, women! They are so magnificently different from me, and each so exquisitely different from another—I can never value them enough!”

“Value them, master?” He sounded amused.

“Yes.” I paused, then said with due solemnity, “I once killed a man, Nostril, but I could never bring myself to kill a woman.”

“You are young yet.”

“Now, Jafar,” I said to the young man, “put on the rest of your clothes and go, before my father and uncle get back here.”

“I saw them arrive just now, Master Marco,” said Nostril. “They went with the Almauna Esther into her house.”

So I went over there, too, and was again waylaid by the maidservant Sitarè, as she let me in the door. I would have gone on by her unheeding, but she took me by the arm and whispered, “Do not speak loudly.”

I said, not whispering, “I have nothing to speak to you about.”

“Hush. The mistress is inside, and your father and uncle are with her. So do not let them hear, but answer me. My brother Aziz and I have discussed the matter of you and—”

“I am not a matter!” I said testily. “I do not much like my being discussed.”

“Oh, do please hush. Are you aware that the day after tomorrow is the Eid-al-Fitr?”

“No. I do not even know what that is.”

“Tomorrow at sundown Ramazan ends. At that moment begins the month of Shawal, and its first day is the Feast of Fast-Broken, when we Muslims are released from abstinence and restriction. Any time after sundown tomorrow, you and I can licitly make zina.”

“Except that you are a virgin,” I reminded her. “And must stay that way, for your brother’s sake.”

“That is what Aziz and I discussed. We have a small favor to ask of you, Mirza Marco. If you will consent to it, I will consent—and I have my brother’s consent—to make zina with you. Of course, you can have him too, if you like.”

I said suspiciously, “Your offer sounds like a considerable return for a small favor. And your beloved brother sounds brotherly indeed. I can hardly wait to meet this pimping and simpering lout.”

“You have met him. He is the kitchen scullion, with hair dark red like mine, and—”

“I do not remember.” But I could imagine him: the twin to Nostril’s stable mate Jafar, a muscular and handsome hulk of a man, with the orifice of a woman, the wits of a camel and the morals of a jack weasel.

“When I say a small favor,” Sitarè went on, “I mean a small one for me and Aziz. For yourself it will be a greater favor, since you will profit by it. Actually earn money from it.”

Here was a beautiful chestnut-haired maiden, offering me herself and her maidenhead and a monetary return as well—plus, if I wanted him, her reputedly even more beautiful brother into the bargain. Naturally this brought to my recollection the phrase I had several times heard, “the bloodthirstiness of beauty.” And naturally that made me cautious, but not so cautious that I would flatly refuse the offer without hearing more.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“Not now. Here comes your uncle. Hush.”

“Well, well!” boomed Uncle Mafìo, approaching us from the darker interior of the house. “Collecting fiame, are we?” And his black beard split in a bright white grin, as he shouldered past us and went out the door toward the stable.

The remark was a play on the word fiame, since in Venice “flames” can mean—in addition to fire—either red-headed persons or secret lovers. So I assumed that my uncle was jocosely twitting what he took to be a boy-and-girl flirtation.

As soon as he was out of hearing, Sitarè said to me, “Tomorrow. At the kitchen door, where I let you in before. At this same hour.” And then she too was gone, somewhere into the back parts of the house.

I strolled on along the front passage, into the room from which I heard the voices of my father and the Widow Esther. As I entered, he was saying, in a muted and serious tone, “I know it was your good heart that proposed it. I only wish you had asked me first, and me alone.”

“I never would have suspected,” she said, also in a hushed tone. “And if, as you say, he has nobly exerted himself to reform, I would not wish to be the provocation of a relapse.”

“No, no,” said my father. “No blame can be laid to you, even if the good deed should turn out ill. We will talk it over, and I will ask flatly whether this would be an irresistible temptation, and on that basis we will decide.”

Then they noticed my presence, and abruptly dropped whatever it was they were privily discussing, and my father said, “Yes, it was as well that we stopped these few days. There are several items we need which are unobtainable in the bazàr during this holy month. When the month ends tomorrow, they will be purchasable, and by then the lame camel will be healed, and we will aim at departure the day after. We cannot thank you enough for the hospitality you have shown us during our stay.”

“Which reminds me,” she said. “I have your evening meal almost done. I will bring it out to your quarters as soon as it is.”

My father and I went together to the hayloft, where we found Uncle Mafio perusing the pages of our Kitab. He looked up from it and said, “Our next destination, Mashhad, is no easy one to get to. Desert all the way, and the very widest extent of that desert. We will be dried and shriveled like a bacalà.” He broke off to scratch vigorously at the inside of his left elbow. “Some damned bug has bitten me, and I itch.”

I said, “The widow told me that this city is infested with scorpions.”

My uncle gave me a scornful look. “If you ever get stung by one, asenazzo, you will learn that scorpions do not bite. No, this was a tiny fly, perfectly triangular in shape. It was so tiny that I cannot believe this tormenting itch it left.”

The Widow Esther made several crossings of the yard, bringing out the dishes of our meal, and we three ate while bent together over the Kitab. Nostril ate apart, in the stable below, among the camels, but he ate almost as audibly as a camel eats. I tried to disregard his noises and concentrate on the maps.

“You are right, Mafio,” said my father. “The broadest part of the desert to cross. God send us good.”

“Still, an easy route to keep to. Mashhad is just a little north of east from here. At this season, we will only have to take aim at the sunrise each morning.”

“And I,” I put in, “will frequently verify our course with our kamàl.”

“I notice,” said my father, “that al-Idrisi shows not a single well or oasis or karwansarai in that desert.”

“But some such things must exist. It is a trade route, after all. Mashhad, like Baghdad, is a major stop on the Silk Road.”

“And as big a city as Kashan, the widow told me. Also, thank God, it is in the cool mountains.”

“But beyond it, we will come to genuinely cold ones. We shall probably have to lay up for the winter somewhere.”

“Well, we cannot expect to go through the world with the wind always astern.”

“And we will not be on territory familiar to you and me, Nico, until we get all the way to Kashgar, in Kithai itself.”

“Distant from the eye, Mafio, is distant from the heart. Sufficient the evils of the day, and all that. For the time being, let us not plan or worry beyond Mashhad.”

3

THE next day, the last day of Ramazan, we spent mostly in just lazing about the widow’s property. I think I have neglected to mention that, in Muslim countries, a day’s beginning is not counted from dawn, as one might expect, or from the midnight hour, as it is in civilized countries, but from the moment of the sun’s setting. Anyway, there was no point in our haunting the Kashan bazàr, as my father had remarked, until it should be again fully stocked with goods for purchase. We had no other tasks except to feed and water the camels and shovel their manure out of the stable. Of course, Nostril attended to that—and at the widow’s request he spread the manure on her herb garden. Now and again, I or my father or uncle would go out for a stroll in the streets. And so did Nostril, in the intervals between his chores, and in the process, I have no doubt, managed to consummate some more of his nasty liaisons.

When I went walking out into the city in the late afternoon, I found a crowd of people standing at a corner where two streets intersected. Most of them were young—good-looking males and nondescript females. I would have assumed that they were merely engaged in the favorite occupation of the East, which is standing and staring—or, in the case of Eastern men, standing and staring and scratching their crotches—except that I heard a droning voice proceeding from the center of the group. So I stopped and joined the audience, and gradually worked my way through them until I could see the object of their attention.

It was an old man seated cross-legged on the ground: a sha‘ir, or poet, and he was entertaining the people by telling a story. From time to time, evidently whenever he spoke an especially poetic and felicitous phrase, one of the bystanders would drop a coin into the begging bowl on the ground beside the old man. My grasp of Farsi was not good enough to enable me to appreciate anything of that sort, but it was good enough at least to follow the thread of the tale, and it was an interesting tale, so I stood and listened. The sha’ir was telling how dreams came to be.

In the Beginning, he said, among all the kinds of spirits which exist—the jinn and the afarit and the peri and so on—there was a spirit named Sleep. He had charge then, as he has now, of that dormant condition in all living creatures. Now, Sleep had a whole swarm of children, who were called Dreams, but in that far-off time neither Sleep nor his children had ever thought of the Dreams getting inside people’s heads. But one day, it being a nice day, and Sleep not having much to do during the daytime, that good spirit decided to take all his boys and girls for a holiday at the seashore. And there he let them get into a little boat they found, and fondly watched as they paddled out upon the water a short way.

Unfortunately, said the old poet, the spirit Sleep had earlier done something to offend the mighty spirit called Storm, and Storm had been waiting an opportunity for revenge. So when Sleep’s little Dreams ventured upon the sea, the malevolent Storm whipped the sea into a frothing fury, and blew a driving wind, and washed the frail boat far out into the ocean and wrecked it on the rocky reefs of a desert island called Boredom.

Ever since that time, said the sha‘ir, all the Dream boys and girls have been marooned on that bleak island. (And you know, he said, how restless children become when subjected to idleness in Boredom.) During the days, the poor Dreams must endure that monotonous exile from the living world. But every night—al-hamdo-lillah!—the spirit Storm must wane in power, because the kindlier spirit Moon has charge of the night. So that is when the Dream children can most easily escape for a while from their Boredom. And they do. That is when they leave the island and go about the world and occupy themselves by entering the heads of sleeping men and women. That is why, said the sha’ir, on any night, any sleeper may be entertained or instructed or warned or frightened by a Dream, depending on whether that particular Dream on that particular night is a beneficent little-girl Dream or a mischievous little-boy Dream, and depending on his or her mood that night.

The listeners all made gratified noises at the tale’s conclusion, and fairly showered coins into the old man’s bowl. I tossed in a copper shahi myself, having found the story amusing—and not incredible, like so many of the more foolish Eastern myths. I found quite logical the poet’s notion of innumerable Dream children of both sexes and mercurial temperaments and meddlesome ways. That notion could even suggest an acceptable explanation of certain phenomena frequently occurring in the West, and well attested but never before explicable. I mean the dreaded nighttime visitations of the ìncubo which seduces otherwise chaste women and the sùccubo which seduces otherwise chaste priests.

When sundown marked the close of Ramazan, I was at the back door of the Widow Esther’s house, and Sitarè let me into the kitchen. She and I were its only occupants, and she seemed in a state of barely suppressed excitement: her eyes sparkled and her hands fluttered. She was dressed in what must have been her very best garments, and she had put al-kohl around her eyelids and berry juice on her lips, but the pink flush on her cheeks had not come out of a cosmetic jar.

“You are attired for the feast day,” I said.

“Yes, but to please you, too. I will not dissemble, Mirza Marco. I said I was glad to be the object of your ardor, and I truly am. Look, I have spread a pallet for us yonder in the corner. And I have made sure that the mistress and the other servants are all occupied elsewhere, so we will not be interrupted. I am frankly eager for our—”

“Now wait,” I said, but feebly. “I have acceded to no bargain. You are a beauty to make a man’s mouth water, and mine does, but I must know first. What is this favor for which you wish to trade yourself?”

“Indulge me only for a moment, then I will tell you. I should like to set you a riddle beforehand.”

“Is this another local custom?”

“Just sit on this bench here. Keep your hands at your sides—hold onto the bench—so you are not tempted to touch me. Now close your eyes. Tight. And keep them closed until I tell you.”

I shrugged, and did as I was bidden, and heard her briefly moving about. Then she kissed me on my lips, in a shy and inexpert and maidenly way, but most deliciously, and for a long time. It so stimulated me that I was made quite dizzy. If I had not been holding onto the bench, I might actually have rocked from side to side. I waited for her to speak. Instead, she kissed me again, and as if practice was making her enjoy it more, and for even a longer time. There was another pause, and I waited for another kiss, but now she said, “Open your eyes.”

I did, and smiled at her. She was standing directly before me, and the flush of her cheeks had suffused her whole face, and her eyes were bright, and her rosebud lips were merry, and she asked, “Could you tell the kisses apart?”

“Apart? Why, no,” I said gallantly. I added, in what I imagined might be the style of a Persian poet, “How can a man say, of equally sweet perfumes or equally intoxicating flavors, that one is better than another? He simply wants more. And I do, I do!”

“And more you shall have. But of me? It was I who kissed you first. Or of Aziz, who kissed you next?”

At that, I did rock upon my bench. Then she reached a hand around behind her and drew him into my view, and I wobbled even more unsteadily.

“He is only a child!”

“He is my little brother Aziz.”

No wonder I had failed to notice him among the household servants. He could have been no older than eight or nine, and was small even for his age. But, once noticed, Aziz would have been hard to overlook again. Like all the local boy-children I had seen, he was an Alexandrian Cupid, but even more beautiful than the Kashan standard, just as his sister was superior to all the other Kashan girls I had seen. Ìncubo and sùccubo, I thought wildly.

I being still seated on the low bench, my eyes and his were at the same level. And his blue eyes were clear and solemn, seeming, in his small face, even bigger and more luminous than his sister’s. His mouth was a rosebud identical to hers. His body was perfectly formed, right down to his tapering tiny fingers. His hair was the same deep chestnut-red as his sister’s, and his skin the same ivory. The boy’s beauty was further adorned by an application of al-kohl around the eyelids and berry juice on his lips. I thought them unnecessary additions, but, before I could say so, Sitarè spoke.

“Whenever, in my hours off from attendance on the mistress, I am allowed to wear cosmetics”—she talked rapidly, as if to ward off my saying anything—“I like to do the same decoration of Aziz.” Again forestalling my comment, she said, “Here, let me show you something, Mirza Marco.” With hurried and fumbling fingers, she undid and took off the blouse her brother wore. “Being a boy, of course he has no breasts, but regard his delicately shaped and prominent nipples.” I stared at them, for they were tinted bright red with hinna. Sitarè said, “Are they not very similar to my own?” My eyes widened further, for she had whipped off her own upper garment, and was presenting her hinna-nippled bosom for my comparison. “See? His get aroused and erect, just like my own.”

Still she chattered on, though I was already incapable of interrupting. “Also, being a boy, Aziz of course has something I do not have.” She undid the string of his pai-jamah, and let the garment fall to the floor, and knelt beside him. “Is it not a perfect zab in miniature? And watch, when I stroke. Just like a little man’s. Now look at this.” She turned the boy around, and with her hands spread his dimpled pink buttocks apart. “Our mother always was punctilious about using the golulè, and after she died so was I, and you see the superb result.” In another quick movement, and without any maidenly coyness, she let drop her own pai-jamah. She turned and bent far over, so that I could observe the under part of her that was not veiled by dark-red fluff. “Mine is two or three fingers’ breadth farther forward, but could you truly distinguish between my mihrab and his—?”

“Stop this!” I managed at last to say. “You are trying to importune me into sin with this boy-child!”

She did not deny it, but the boy-child did. Aziz turned to face me again and spoke for the first time. His voice was the musical small voice of a songbird, but firm. “No, Mirza Marco. My sister does not importune, nor do I. Do you really think I would ever have to?”

Taken aback by the direct question, I had to say, “No.” But then I rallied my Christian principles and said accusingly, “Flaunting is as reprehensible as importuning. When I was your age, child, I barely knew the normal purposes that my parts were for. God forbid I should have exposed them so consciously and wickedly and—and vulnerably. Just standing there like that, you are a sin!”

Aziz looked as hurt as if I had slapped him, and knit his feathery brows in seeming perplexity. “I am still very young, Mirza Marco, and perhaps ignorant, for no one has yet taught me how to be a sin. Only how to be al-fa‘il or al-mafa’ul, as the occasion requires.”

I sighed, “Alas, I was again forgetting the local customs.” So I momentarily dismissed my principles in favor of honesty, and said, “As the doer or the done-to, you probably could make a man forget it is a sin. And if to you it is not, then I apologize for castigating you unjustly.”

He gave me such a radiant smile that his whole naked little body seemed to glow in the darkening room.

I added, “I apologize also for having thought other unjust things about you, Aziz, without knowing you. Beyond a doubt, you are the most bewitchingly beautiful child I have ever seen, of either sex, and more tantalizing than many grown women I have seen. You are like one of the Dream children of whom I have recently heard. You would be a temptation even to a Christian, in the absence of your sister here. Alongside her desirability, you understand, you must take only second place.”

“I understand,” the boy said, still smiling. “And I agree.”

Sitarè, also a figure of glowing alabaster in the twilight, regarded me with some amazement. She breathed almost unbelievingly, “You still want me?”

“Very much. So much, indeed, that I am now praying that the favor you desire is something within my power to grant.”

“Oh, it is.” She picked up her discarded clothes and held them bunched in front of her, that I should not be distracted by her nudity. “We ask only that you take Aziz along in your karwan, and only as far as Mashhad.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“You said yourself that you have never seen a more beautiful or more winning child. And Mashhad is a convergence of many trade routes, a place of many opportunities.”

“I myself do not much want to go,” said Aziz. His nudity was also a distraction, so I picked up his clothes and gave them to him to hold. “I do not wish to leave my sister, who is all the family I have. But she has convinced me that it is for the best.”

“Here in Kashan,” Sitarè went on, “Aziz is but one of countless pretty boys, all competing for the notice of any anderun purveyor who passes through. At best, Aziz can hope to be chosen by one of those, to become the concubine of some nobleman, who may turn out to be an evil and vicious person. But in Mashhad he could be presented to and appreciated by and acquired by some rich traveling merchant. He may start his life as that man’s concubine, but he will have the opportunity to travel, and in time he can hope to learn his master’s profession, and he can go on to make something much better of himself than a mere anderun plaything.”

Playing was much on my own mind at that moment. I would have been happy to conclude the talking and start doing other things. Nevertheless, I was also at that moment realizing a truth that I think not many journeyers ever do.

We who wander about the world, we pause briefly in this community or that, and to us each is but one flash of vague impression in a long series of such forgettable flashes. The people there are only dim figures looming momentarily out of the dust clouds of the trail. We travelers usually have a destination and a purpose in aiming for it, and every stop along the way is merely one more milestone in our progress. But in actuality the people living there had an existence before we came, and will have after we leave, and they have their own concerns—hopes and worries and ambitions and plans—which, being of great moment to them, might sometimes be worth remarking also by us passersby. We might learn something worth knowing, or enjoy a laugh of amusement, or garner a sweet memory worth treasuring, or sometimes even improve our own selves, by taking notice of such things. So I paid sympathetic attention to the wistful words and glowing faces of Sitarè and Aziz, as they spoke of their plans and their ambitions and their hopes. And ever since that time, in all my journeyings, I have tried always to see in its entirety every least place I have passed through, and to see its humblest inhabitants with an unhurried eye.

“So we ask only,” said the girl, “that you take Aziz with you to Mashhad, and that in Mashhad you seek out a karwan merchant of wealth and kindly nature and other good qualities … .”

“Someone like yourself, Mirza Marco,” suggested the boy.

“ … And sell Aziz to him.”

“Sell your brother?” I exclaimed.

“You cannot just take him there and abandon him, a little boy in a strange city. We would wish you to place him in the keeping of the best possible master. And, as I said, you will realize a profit on the transaction. For your trouble of transporting him, and your taking pains to find the right sort of buyer for him, you may keep the entire amount you get for him. It ought to be a handsome price for such a fine boy. Is that not fair enough?”

“More than fair,” I said. “It may sway my father and uncle, but I cannot promise. After all, I am just one of three in our party. I must put the proposition to them.”

“That should suffice,” said Sitarè. “Our mistress has already spoken to them. The Mirza Esther also wishes to see young Aziz set upon a better road in life. I understand that your father and uncle are considering the matter. So, if you are agreeable to taking Aziz, yours should be the persuading voice.”

I said truthfully, “The widow’s word probably carries more weight than mine does. That being so, Sitarè, why were you prepared to”—I gestured, indicating her state of undress—“to go to such lengths to cajole me?”

“Well … ,” she said, smiling. She moved aside the clothes she held to give me another unimpeded look at her body. “I hoped you would be very agreeable …”

Still being truthful, I said, “I would be, anyway. But there are some other aspects you ought to consider. For one thing, we must cross a perilous and uncomfortable desert. It is no fit place for any human being, not to mention a small boy. As is well known, the Devil Satan is most evident and most powerful in the desert wastes. It is into deserts that saintly Christians go, simply to test their strength of faith—and I mean the most sublimely devout Christians, like San Antonio. Unsaintly mortals go there only at great hazard.”

“Perhaps so, but they do go,” said young Aziz, sounding unperturbed by the prospect. “And since I am not a Christian, I may be in less danger. I may even be some protection for the rest of you.”

“We have another non-Christian in the party,” I said sourly. “And that is a thing I would have you also consider. Our camel-puller is a beast, who habitually consorts and couples with the vilest of other beasts. To tempt his bestial nature with a desirable and accessible little boy …”

“Ah,” said Sitarè. “That must be the objection your father raised. I knew the mistress was concerned about something. Then Aziz must promise to avoid the beast, and you must promise to watch over Aziz.”

“I will stay always by your side, Mirza Marco,” declared the boy. “By day and by night.”

“Aziz may not be chaste, by your standards,” his sister went on. “But neither is he promiscuous. As long as he is with you, he will be yours only, not lifting his zab or his buttocks or even his eyes to any other man.”

“I will be yours only, Mirza Marco,” he affirmed, with what might have been charming innocence, except that he held aside the garments in his hands, as Sitarè had done, to let me look my fill.

“No, no, no,” I said, in some agitation. “Aziz, you are to promise not to tempt any of us. Our slave is only a beast, but we other three are Christians! You are to be totally chaste, from here to Mashhad.”

“If that is what you wish,” he said, though he appeared crestfallen. “Then I swear it. On the beard of the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him).”

Skeptical, I asked Sitarè, “Is that oath binding on a beardless child?”

“Indeed it is,” she said, regarding me askance. “Your dreary desert journey will not be at all enlivened. You Christians must take some morbid pleasure in the denial of pleasure. But so be it. Aziz, you may put on your clothes again.”

“You too, Sitarè,” I said, and if Aziz had looked crestfallen, she looked thunderstruck. “I assure you, dear girl, I say that unwillingly, but with the best of will.”

“I do not understand. When you take responsibility for my brother, my virginity is worth nothing toward his advancement. So I give it to you, and thankfully.”

“And with all thanks I decline it. For a reason I am sure you are aware of, Sitarè. Because, when your brother departs, what becomes of you?”

“What matter? I am only a female person.”

“In a person most beautifully female. Therefore, once Aziz is provided for, you can offer yourself for your own advancement. A good marriage, or concubinage, or whatever you can attain to. But I know that a woman cannot attain to much unless she is virginally intact. So I will leave you that way.”

She and Aziz both stared at me, and the boy murmured, “Verily, Christians are divanè.”

“Some, no doubt. Some try to behave as Christians should.”

Sitarè’s stare turned to a softer look, and she said in a soft voice, “Perhaps some few succeed.” But again, provocatively, she moved the screening clothes aside from her fair body. “You are sure you decline? You are steadfast in your kindly resolve?”

I laughed shakily. “Not at all steadfast. For that reason, let me go quickly from here. I will consult with my father and uncle about taking Aziz with us.”

The consultation did not take long, for they were in the stable talking it over at that very time.

“So there,” said Uncle Mafìo to my father. “Marco is also in favor of letting the boy come along. That makes two of us voting yes, against one vote wavering.”

My father frowned and tangled his fingers into his beard.

“We will be doing a good deed,” I said.

“How can we refuse to do a good deed?” demanded my uncle.

My father growled an old saying, “Saint Charity is dead and her daughter Clemency is ailing.”

My uncle retorted with another, “Cease believing in the saints and they will cease doing miracles.”

They then looked at each other in a silence of impasse, until I ventured to break it.

“I have already warned the lad about the likelihood of his being molested.” They both swiveled their gaze to me, looking astonished. “You know,” I mumbled uncomfortably, “Nostril’s propensities for, er, making mischief.”

“Oh, that,” said my father. “Yes, there is that.”

I was glad that he seemed not unduly concerned about it, for I did not wish to be the one to tell of Nostril’s most recent indecency, and probably earn the slave a belated beating.

“I made Aziz promise,” I said, “to be wary of any suspicious advances. And I have promised to watch over him. As for his transportation, the pack camel is not at all heavily laden, and the boy weighs very little. His sister offered to let us pocket whatever money we can sell him for, which should be a substantial amount. But I rather think we ought merely to subtract from it the cost of his keep, and let the boy have the rest. As a sort of legacy, to start his new life with.”

“So there!” said Uncle Mafìo again, scratching at his elbow. “The lad has a mount to ride and a guardian to protect him. He is paying his own way to Mashhad, and earning himself a dowry as well. There can be no further possible objection.”

My father said solemnly, “If we take him, Marco, he will be your responsibility. You guarantee to keep the child from harm?”

“Yes, Father,” I said, and put my hand significantly on my belt knife. “Any harm must take me before it takes him.”

“You hear, Mafìo.”

I perceived that I must be making a weighty vow indeed, since my father was commanding my uncle to bear witness.

“I hear, Nico.”

My father sighed, looked from one to the other of us, clawed in his beard some more, and finally said, “Then he comes with us. Go, Marco, and tell him so. Tell his sister and the Widow Esther to pack whatever belongings Aziz is to take.”

So Sitarè and I took the opportunity for a flurry of kisses and caresses, and the last thing she said to me was, “I will not forget, Mirza Marco. I will not forget you, or your kindness to us both, or your consideration of my fortunes hereafter. I should very much like to reward you—and with that which you have so gallantly forgone. If ever you should journey this way again …”

4

WE had been told that we were crossing the Dasht-e-Kavir at the best time of the year. I should hate to have to cross it at the worst. We did it in the late autumn, when the sun was not infernally hot, but, even without incident, that would by no means have been a pleasant trip. I had hitherto supposed that a long sea voyage was the most unvarying and boring and interminable and monotonous sort of travel possible, at least when not made terrible by storm. But a desert crossing is all of that, and besides is thirsty, itchy, scratchy, rasping, scraping, parching—the list of hateful adjectives could go on and on. And the list does go on, like a chant of curses, through the morose mind of the desert journeyer, as he endlessly trudges from one featureless horizon across a featureless flat surface toward the featureless skyline ever receding ahead of him.

When we left Kashan, we were again dressed for hard traveling. No longer did we wear the neat Persian tulbands on our heads and the gorgeously embroidered body garments. We were again loosely enwrapped in the Arabs’ hanging kaffiyah headcloths and ample aba cloaks, that less handsome but more practical attire which does not cling about a person but billows free, so it allows the dissipation of body heat and sweat, and affords no folds in which the drifting sand can accumulate. Our camels were hung all about with leather bags of good Kashan water and sacks of dried mutton and fruits and the brittle local bread. (It was to procure these foodstuffs that we had had to wait for the bazàr to restock after Ramazan.) We had also acquired in Kashan some new items to carry with us: smooth round sticks and lengths of light fabric with their hems sewn to form sheaths. By inserting the sticks into those sheaths, we could quickly shape the cloths into tents, each just of a size to shelter one man comfortably, or, if necessary, to accommodate two persons in rather less comfortable intimacy.

Before we even got out of Kashan, I warned Aziz never to let our slave Nostril tempt him inside a tent or anywhere else out of sight of the rest of us, and to report to me any other sorts of advances the camel-puller might make to him. For Nostril, on first seeing the boy among us, had widened his piggy eyes almost to human size and dilated his single nostril as if he scented prey. That first day, also, Aziz had been briefly naked in our company—and Nostril had hung about, ogling—while I helped the boy doff the Persian garb his sister had dressed him in, and showed him how to put on the Arab kaffiyah and aba. So I gave Nostril some stern warnings, too, and toyed significantly with my belt knife while I was haranguing him, and he made insincere promises of obedience and good behavior.

I would hardly have trusted Nostril’s promises, but, as things turned out, he never did molest the little boy, or even try to. We were not many days into the desert when Nostril began noticeably to suffer from some painful ailment in his under parts. If, as I suspected, the slave had deliberately made one of the camels lame to make us stop in Kashan, then another of the beasts was now exacting revenge. Every time Nostril’s camel made a misstep and jounced him, he would cry out sharply. Soon he had his saddle pillowed with everything soft he could find among our packs. But then, every time he went away from our camp fire to make water, we could hear him groaning and thrashing about and cursing vehemently.

“One of the Kashan boys must have clapped him with the scola-mento,” said Uncle Mafio derisively. “Serves him right, for being unvirtuous—and indiscriminate.”

I had not then and indeed never have been similarly afflicted myself, for which I give more thanks to my good fortune than to my virtue or my discrimination. Nevertheless, I might have shown more comradely sympathy to Nostril, and laughed less at his predicament, if I had not been thankful that his zab was giving him other concerns than trying to put it into my young ward. The slave’s ailment gradually abated and finally went away, leaving him apparently no worse for the experience, but by that time other events had occurred to put Aziz beyond threat of his lechery.

A tent, or some shelter like a tent, is an absolute necessity in the Dasht-e-Kavir, for a man cannot just lie down in his blankets to sleep, or he would be covered by sand before he woke. Most of that desert can be likened to the giant tray of a giant fardarbab tomorrow-teller. It is a flat expanse of smooth, dun-colored sand, a sand so fine that it flows through one’s fingers like water. In the intervals between winds, that sand lies as virginally unmarked as the sand in the tomorrow-teller’s tray. So fine and so smooth is it that the least passing insect—a centipede, a grasshopper, a scorpion—leaves a trail visible from afar. A man could, if he got bored enough by the tedium of desert traveling, find distraction by following the meandering track of a single ant.

However, in the daytime, it was seldom that a wind was not blowing, stirring that sand and picking it up and carrying it and throwing it. Since the winds of the Dasht-e-Kavir blow always from the same direction, from the southwest, it is easy to tell in which direction a stranger is traveling—even if you meet him camped and immobile—simply by seeing which flank of his mount is the most heavily coated with blown sand. In the nighttime, the desert wind drops, and lets drop from the air the heavier particles of sand. But the finer particles hang in the air like dust, and hang there so densely as to constitute a dry fog. It blots out whatever stars there may be in the sky, sometimes obscures even a full moon. In the combined darkness and fogginess, one’s vision may be limited to just a few arm-lengths. Nostril told us that there were creatures called Karauna which took advantage of that dark fog—according to Persian folk legend the Karauna create it, said Nostril, by some dark magic—in which to do dark deeds. More usually, the chief danger of that fog is that the suspended dust sifts imperceptibly down from the air during the stillness of night, and a traveler not sheltered under a tent could be quietly, stealthily buried and smothered to death in his sleep.

We had still the greater part of Persia to cross, but it was the empty part—perhaps the emptiest part of the entire world—and we did not meet a single Persian along our way, or much of anything else, or see in the sand the tracks of anything larger than insects. In other regions of Persia, similarly unoccupied and uncultivated by man, we journeyers might have had to be on our guard against predatory prides of lions, or scavenging packs of shaqàl dogs, or even flocks of the big flightless shuturmurq camel-birds, which, we had been told, can disembowel a man with a kick. But none of those hazards had to be feared in the desert, for no wild thing lives in it. We saw an occasional vulture or kite, but they stayed high in the windy sky above and did not tarry in their passing. Even vegetable plants seem to shun that desert. The only green thing I saw growing there was a low shrub with thick and fleshy-looking leaves.

“Euphorbia,” Nostril said it was. “And it grows here only because Allah put it here to be a help to the journeyer. In the hot season, the euphorbia’s seed pods grow ripe and burst and fling out their seeds. They begin to pop when the desert air gets exactly as hot as a human’s blood. Then the pods burst with increasing frequency as the air gets even hotter. So a desert wanderer can tell, by listening to the loudness of the popping of the euphorbia, when the air is getting so perilously hot that he must stop and put up a shelter for shade, or he will die.”

That slave, for all his squalid person and sexual erethism and detestable character, was an experienced traveler, and told us or showed us many things of use or interest. For example, on our very first night in that wasteland, when we stopped to camp, he got down from his camel and stuck his prodding pole into the sand, pointed in the direction we were going.

“It may be needful in the morning,” he explained. “We have determined to go always toward the spot where the sun rises. But if the sand is blowing at that hour, we may not be able otherwise to fix on the spot.”

The treacherous sands of the Dasht-e-Kavir are not its only menace to man. That name, as I have said, means the Great Salt Desert, and for a reason. Vast extents of it are not of sand at all; they are immense reaches of a salty paste, not quite wet enough to be called mud or marsh, and the wind and sun have dried the paste to a surface of caked solid salt. Often a traveler must cross one of those glittering, crunching, quivering, blindingly white salt crusts, and he must do it gingerly. The salt crystals are more abrasive than sand; even a camel’s callused pads can quickly be worn to bleeding rawness, and, if the rider has to dismount, his boots can be likewise shredded, and then his feet. Also, the salt surfaces are of uneven thickness, making of those areas what Nostril called “the trembling lands.” Sometimes the weight of a camel or a man will break through the crust. If that happens, the animal or the man falls into the pasty muck beneath. From that salt quicksand it is impossible to climb out unaided, or even to stay put and wait for help to come. It slowly but ineluctably draws down whatever falls into it, and sucks the fallen creature under the surface, and closes over it. Unless a rescuer is nearby, and on firmer ground, the unfortunate fallen one is doomed. According to Nostril, entire karwan trains of men and animals have thus disappeared and left no trace.

So, when we came to the first of those salt flats, though it looked as innocuous as a layer of hoarfrost unseasonably on the ground, we halted and studied it with respect. The white crust gleamed out before us, clear to the skyline, and away as far as we could see to either side.

“We could try going around,” said my father.

“The maps of the Kitab show no such details as this,” said my uncle, scratching meditatively at his elbow. “We have no way of knowing its extent, or of guessing whether a north or a south detour would be shorter.”

“And if we are going to skirt every one of these,” said Nostril, “we will be in this desert forever.”

I said nothing, being totally ignorant of desert travel, and not ashamed to leave the decisions to the more expert. So we four sat our camels and looked out over the sparkling waste. But the boy Aziz, behind us, prodded his pack camel and made it kneel, and he dismounted. We did not notice what he was doing until he walked out from among us and walked onto the salt crust. He turned and looked up at us, and smiled prettily, and said in his little bird voice:

“Now I can repay your kindness in bringing me along. I shall walk ahead, and I can tell from the trembling underfoot how strong is the surface. I will keep to the firmest ground, and you have only to follow.”

“You will cut your feet!” I protested.

“No, Mirza Marco, for I am of light weight. Also, I took the liberty of extracting these plates from the packs.” He held up two of the golden dishes the Shah Zaman had sent. “I shall strap them under my boots as an extra protection.”

“It is dangerous nonetheless,” said my uncle. “You are brave to volunteer, lad, but we have sworn that no harm must come to you. Better one of us—”

“No, Mirza Mafìo,” said Aziz, still staunchly. “If by chance I should fall through, it would be easier for you to pluck me out than any larger person.”

“He is right, masters,” said Nostril. “The child has good sense. And, as you remark, a good heart for courage and initiative.”

So we let Aziz precede us, and we followed at a discreet distance. It was slow going, keeping to his shuffle pace, but that made the walking less painful for the camels. And we did cross that trembling land in safety, and before nightfall had come to an area of more trustworthy sand on which to camp.

Only once that day did Aziz misjudge the crust. With a sharp crackle, it broke like a sheet of glass, and he plummeted waist-deep into the muck under it. He did not exclaim in fright when it happened, nor did he make so much as a whimper during the time it took for Uncle Mafio to get down from his camel and make a loop in his saddle rope and cast it over the boy and draw him gently back above ground and onto a firmer place. But Aziz had known very well that he was, for that while, precariously suspended over a bottomless abyss, for his face was very pale and his blue eyes very big when we all clustered solicitously around him. Uncle Mafio embraced the boy and held him, murmuring inspiriting words, while my father and I brushed the fast-drying salt mud from his garments. By the time that was done, the boy’s courage had returned, and he insisted on going ahead again, to the admiration of us all.

In the days thereafter, each time we again came upon a salt flat, we could do no more than make guesses or take a vote to determine whether we should venture upon it at once, or camp there at its near edge and wait to start upon it early the next morning. We were always apprehensive that we might find ourselves still in the middle of a trembling land at nightfall, and therefore have to take one of two equally unappealing alternatives: try to press on, braving the night’s dark and its dry fog, which could be much more nerve-racking than making such a crossing by day; or camp upon the salt flat and have to do without a fire, for we feared that laying a fire upon such a surface might melt it, and drop ourselves, our animals and all our packs into the quicksand. Surely it was only through good fortune—or Allah’s blessing, as our two Muslims would have put it—certainly not through any wisdom informing our guesses, but each time we guessed right, and each time got across the salt to safe sand by nightfall.

So we never had to make a cold camp on the dreaded trembling lands, but making camp anywhere in that desert, even on the sand which we could trust not to dissolve from under us, was no holiday treat. Sand, if you look closely enough at it, is nothing but an infinite multitude of little tiny rocks. Rocks do not hold heat, and no more does sand. The desert days were comfortable enough, even warm, but when the sun went down the nights were cold, and the sand under us even colder. We always needed a fire just to keep us warm until we crawled into our blankets inside our tents. But many nights were so very cold that we would rake the fire into five separate fires, well apart, and let them burn a while to warm those separate plots of sand, and only then spread our blankets and raise our tents on top of the warmed places. Even so, the sand did not for long hold that heat either, and by morning we would be chilled and stiff, in which unjoyous condition we would have to rise and face another day of the joyless desert.

The nightly camp fires served for warmth, and for some illusion of homelikeness in the middle of that empty, lonely, silent, dark wasteland, but they were not much use for cookery. Wood being nonexistent in the Dasht-e-Kavir, we used dried animal dung for fuel. The animals of countless generations of earlier desert crossers had dropped easily found supplies of it, and our own camels contributed their deposits for the benefit of future wayfarers. Our only comestibles, however, were several varieties of dried meats and fruits. A hunk of cold dry mutton might be rendered more palatable by soaking it and then broiling it over a fire, but not over a fire built of camel dung. Though we ourselves already reeked of the smoke of those fires, we could not bring ourselves to eat something similarly impregnated. When we felt we could spare the water, we sometimes heated it and steeped our meat in it, but that did not make a very tasty dish either. When water has been carried for a long time in a hide bag, it begins to look and smell and taste rather like the water a man carries in his bladder. We had to drink it to survive, but we less and less desired to cook our foods in it, preferring to gnaw them dry and cold.

Each night we also fed the camels—a double handful of dried peas apiece, and then a fair drink of water to make the peas swell inside their bellies and simulate a hearty meal. I will not say the beasts enjoyed those scant rations, but then camels have never been known to enjoy anything. They would not have muttered and grumbled less if we had been feeding them banquets of delicacies, and they would not, out of gratitude, have performed any better at their labors the next day.

If I sound unloving of camels, it is because I am. I think I have straddled or perched upon every sort of transport animal there is in the world, and I would prefer any other to a camel. I grant that the two-humped camel of the colder lands of the East is somewhat more intelligent and tractable than the single-humped camel of the warm lands. And that lends some credibility to the belief of some people that the camel’s brains are in its hump, if it has any anywhere. A camel whose hump has diminished from thirst and starvation is even more sullen, irritable and unmanageable than a well-fed camel, but not much more.

The camels had to be unloaded each night, as would any other karwan animals, but no other animals would have been so maddeningly difficult to reload in the morning. The camels would bawl and back away and roar and prance about and, when those tricks only exasperated but did not dissuade us, they would spit on us. Also, once on the trail, no other animals are so devoid of a sense of direction, or self-preservation. Our camels would have walked indifferently, and one after another, into every quicksand hole in those salt flats if we riders or our puller had not taken pains to steer them around. Camels are also, more than any other animals, devoid of a sense of balance. A camel, like a man, can lift and carry about one-third of its own weight for a whole day and a goodly distance. But a man, with only two legs, is not so teetery as a camel with four. One or another of ours would frequently slip in the sand, even more often on the salt, and grotesquely collapse sideways, and be impossible to raise again until it was entirely unloaded and loudly encouraged and powerfully assisted by our combined strength. At which it would give thanks by spitting on us.

I have used the word “spit” because, even back home in Venice, I had heard far-travelers speak of camels doing that, but in fact they do not. I wish they did. What they actually do is to hawk up from their nethermost cud an awfulness of regurgitated matter to spew. In the case of our camels, that was a substance compounded of peas first dried, then eaten, then soaked and swollen and made gaseous, then half-digested and half-fermented, then—at that substance’s peak of noxiousness—churned together with stomach juices, vomited up, collected in the camel’s mouth, aimed through pouted lips and ejected with all possible force at some one of us, and preferably into his eye.

There is of course no such thing as a karwansarai anywhere in the Dasht-e-Kavir, but on two occasions in the month or more that it took us to cross it, we had the blessedly good fortune to come upon an oasis. This is a spring which wells up from underground, only God or Allah knows why. Its waters are fresh, not salt, and around it has sprung up an area of vegetation, several zonte in extent. I never could discover anything edible growing there, but the very greenness of the scrub trees and stunted bushes and sparse grass was a refreshment as welcome as fresh fruit or vegetables. On both those occasions, we were pleased to halt our journey for a while before moving on. During that time, we dipped up water from the spring to bathe our dust-coated and salt-encrusted and dung-smoke-smelling bodies, and water to fill the camels’ bowel tanks, and water to be boiled—and sieved through the charcoal my father always carried—to flush out and refill our water bags. Those labors done, we just lay about to enjoy the novel sensation of resting in a green shade.

I noticed, at the first oasis halt, how we all soon separated and drew apart and found separate shade trees under which to loll, and later put up our individual tents at a considerable distance from each other. None of us had recently quarreled, and we had no definable reason for shunning each other’s company—except that for so long we had been in each other’s company, and now it was pleasant to have some privacy for a change. I might have kept Aziz protectively close to me, but the slave Nostril was at that time all too plainly preoccupied with his shameful private affliction, and I deemed him incapable of molesting the little boy. So I let Aziz also go off to be by himself.

Or so I thought. But, after we had been luxuriating in the oasis for a day and a night, I took a notion on the succeeding night to go for a stroll through the surrounding grove. I pretended that I was in a less constricted garden, perhaps the environs of the Baghdad palace, where I had walked so often with the Princess Moth. It was easy enough to pretend, for that night had brought the dry fog, making it impossible for me to see anything but the trees closest about me. Even sounds were muffled by that fog, so I must have been almost stepping on Aziz when I heard him laugh his musical laugh and say:

“Harm? But that is no harm to me. Or to anybody. Let us do it.”

A deeper voice responded, but in a murmur, so its words were indistinguishable. I was about to shout in outrage, and seize Nostril and drag him off the boy, but Aziz spoke again, and in a voice of marveling:

“I never saw one like that before. With a sheath of skin that encloses it …”

I stood where I was, unmoving, stupefied.

“ … Or can be pulled back at will.” Aziz still sounded awed. “Why, it is like having your own private mihrab always tenderly enveloping your zab.”

Nostril possessed no such apparatus. He was a Muslim, and circumcised, like the boy. I began to back away from that place, being careful to make no noise.

“It must make for a blissful sensation, even without a partner,” the little bird voice went on, “when you move the sheath back and forth like that. May I do it for you …?”

The fog closed around his voice, as I got farther away. But I was waiting, awake and watchful outside his tent, when he eventually returned to it. He came like a stray moonbeam out of the darkness, radiant, for he was entirely naked and carrying his clothes.

“Look at you!” I said sternly, but keeping my voice low. “I swore a binding oath that no harm would come to you—”

“None has, Mirza Marco,” he said, blinking, all innocence.

“And you swore on the Prophet’s beard not to tempt any of us—”

“I have not, Mirza Marco,” he said, looking hurt. “I was fully dressed when he and I chanced to meet in the grove yonder.”

“And to be totally chaste!”

“And I have been, Mirza Marco, all the way from Kashan. No one has penetrated me, and I no one. All we did was kiss.” He came close and sweetly kissed me. “And this …” He demonstrated, and after a moment insinuated his little self into my hand, and breathed, “To each other we did it …”

“Enough!” I said hoarsely. I let go of him and put his hand away from me. “Go to sleep now, Aziz. We ride again at sunrise.”

I myself did not get to sleep that night until I acknowledged the excitement Aziz had raised in me, and manually relieved myself of it. But my sleeplessness was also partly on account of my new view of my uncle, and the disillusionment it caused me, and the tinge of disdain that now colored my feelings toward him. It was no trivial disappointment, to have learned that Uncle Mafìo’s bold, bluff, black-bearded and hearty aspect was a mask he wore, and that behind it he was only a simpering and sly and despicable Sodomite.

I knew I was no saint, and I tried hard not to be a hypocrite. I could frankly admit that I, too, was susceptible to the charms of the boy Aziz. But that was because he was here, near at hand, and no woman was, and he was as comely and seductive as a woman, and he was freely amenable to being used as a substitute for a woman. But Uncle Mafio, I now realized, must see him differently; he must see Aziz as an available and beautiful and beddable boy.

I recalled previous events involving other males: hammam rubbers, for instance—and previous words spoken: that furtive exchange between my father and the Widow Esther, for instance. The inference was unavoidable: Uncle Mafio was a lover of persons of his own sex. A man of that bent was no curiosity here in the Muslim lands, where almost every male seemed similarly warped. But I knew very well that, in our more civilized West, his kind was laughed at and sneered at and cursed at. I suspected that the same situation must obtain in the totally uncivilized nations farther east. At any rate, it appeared that somewhere my uncle’s depravity had caused problems in the past. I gathered that my father had already had reason to try breaking his brother of his perversion, and Mafio himself had apparently made some attempt to suppress the urges. If that was so, I reflected, then he was not entirely detestable, and perhaps there was hope for him.

Very well. I would lend my own best efforts to help his reformation and redemption. When we rode on, I would not ride reproachfully far apart from him, or avoid his eye, or refuse to speak to him. I would say nothing of what had occurred. I would give no hint that I was privy to his shameful secret. What I would do was resume keeping a close watch on Aziz, and not again let the child run at liberty under cover of night. Especially would I be paternally careful and strict if we should come upon another green oasis. In such a place, there was a tendency to let discipline lapse, and self-restraints, just as we let our weary muscles relax. If we again found ourselves in that ambience of comparative ease and abandon, my uncle might find the temptation irresistible: to enjoy more of Aziz than he had already sampled.

The next day, as we proceeded once more northeastward into the ungreen wasteland, I was as affable as usual to all in the party, Uncle Mafio included, and I think no one could have discerned my inner feelings. Nevertheless, I was glad that the burden of conversation that day was taken by the slave Nostril. Possibly to get his own mind off his own problems, he began expatiating on one subject, then veered onto others, and I, at least, was content to ride silent and listen and let him ramble.

What started him off was that, during our loading of the camels, he had found a small snake coiled asleep in one of our pack hampers. He had let out a screech at first, but then he said, “We must have brought the poor thing all the way from Kashan,” and, instead of killing the thing, he had tipped it out onto the sand and let it slither away. As we rode, he told us why.

“We Muslims do not abhor and loathe serpents as you Christians do. Oh, we are not particularly fond of them, but neither do we fear and hate them as you do. According to your Holy Bible, the snake is the incarnation of the Devil Satan. And in your legends, you have inflated the snake to the monster called a dragon. All our Muslim monsters take the form of human beings—the jinn and afarit—or a bird, in the case of the giant rukh, or combinations like the mardkhora. That is a monster comprising the head of a man, the body of a lion, the quills of a porcupine and the tail of a scorpion. Notice, there is no snake included.”

My father said mildly, “The serpent has been accursed ever since that unfortunate affair in the Garden of Eden. It is understandable that Christians should fear it, and right that they should hate it and kill it at every opportunity.”

“We Muslims,” said Nostril, “give credit where credit is due. It was the serpent of Eden who bequeathed to Arabs the Arabic language, for he contrived that language in which to speak to Eve and seduce her, because Arabic, as every man knows, is the most subtle and suasive of languages. Of course, Adam and Eve spoke Farsi when they were alone together, for the Persian Farsi is the loveliest of all languages. And the avenging angel Gabriel always speaks Turki, for that is the most menacing of all languages. However, that is by the way. I was speaking of serpents, and it must be obvious that it was the snake’s sinuosity and convolutions which inspired the writing of characters, the Arabic alphabet which is also employed for the transcription of Farsi, Turki, Sindi and all other civilized languages.”

My father spoke again. “We Westerners have always called it the fish-worm writing, and never knew how nearly right we were.”

“And the serpent gave us more than that, Master Nicolò. His mode of progression along the ground, by bending and straightening himself—that inspired some ingenious one of our ancestors to invent the bow and arrow. The bow is thin and sinuous, like a snake. The arrow is thin and straight, like a snake, and it has a killing head. We have good reason to honor the serpent, and we do. For example, we call the rainbow the celestial snake, and that is a compliment to them both.”

“Interesting,” my father murmured, with a tolerant smile.

“By contrast,” Nostril went on, “you Christians liken the snake to your own zab, and assert that the serpent of Eden introduced sexual pleasure into the world, and that therefore sexual pleasure is wrong and ugly and abominable. We Muslims put the blame where it belongs. Not on the inoffensive snake, but on Eve and all her female descendants. As the Quran says in the fourth sura, ‘Woman is the source of all evil on the earth, and Allah only made this monster that the man should be repelled, and turn away from earthly—”

“Ciacche-ciacche!” said my uncle.

“Pardon, master?”

“I said nonsense! Sciocchezze! Sottise! Bifam ishtibah!”

Looking shocked, Nostril exclaimed, “Master Mafio, you call the Holy Book a bifam ishtibah?”

“Your Quran was written by a man, you cannot deny it. So were the Talmud and the Bible written by men.”

“Come now, Mafìo,” my pious father put in. “They only transcribed the words of God. And the Savior.”

“But they were men, indisputably men, with the minds of men. All the prophets and apostles and sages have been men. And what sort of men did the writing of the holy books? Circumcised men!”

“I beg to suggest, master,” said Nostril, “that they did not write with their—”

“In a sense, they did exactly that. All those men were religiously mutilated in their infant organs. When they grew to manhood, they found themselves diminished in their sexual pleasure, to the degree they had been diminished in their parts. That is why they made their holy books decree that sex should be not for delight, but solely for procreation, and in all other respects a matter for shame and guilt.”

“Good master,” Nostril persisted. “We are only divested of foreskin, we are not pruned to eunuchs.”

“Any mutilation is a deprivation,” Uncle Mafio retorted. He dropped his camel’s rein to scratch his elbow. “The sages of ancient days, realizing that the trimming of their members had blunted their sensations and their enjoyment, were envious and fearful that others might find more pleasure in sex. Misery loves company, so they wrote their scriptures in a way to ensure that they had company. First the Jews, then the Christians—for the Evangelists and the other early Christians were only converted Jews—and then Muhammad and the subsequent Muslim sages. All of those having been circumcised men, their disquisitions on the subject of sex are akin to the singing of the deaf.”

My father looked as shocked as Nostril did. “Mafìo,” he cautioned, “on this open desert we are terribly exposed to thunderbolts. Your criticism is a novel one in my experience, perhaps even original, but I suggest you temper it with discretion.”

Unheeding, my uncle went on, “Their putting fetters on human sexuality was like cripples writing the rules for an athletic contest.”

“Cripples, master?” Nostril inquired. “But how could they have known they were cripples? You contend that my sensations have been blunted. Since I myself have no exterior standard alongside which to measure my own enjoyments, I wonder how anyone else could possibly do so. I can think of only one sort who might qualify to judge even himself. That would be a man who has had experience, so to speak, before and after. Excuse my impertinence, Master Mafio, but were you perhaps not circumcised until midway in your adult life?”

“Insolent infidel! I never have been!”

“Ah. Then, excepting such a man, it seems to me that no one could adjudicate the matter but a woman. A woman who has given joy to both sorts of men, the circumcised and the uncircumcised, and paid close heed to their comparative heights of enjoyment.”

I winced at that. Whether Nostril spoke in snide malice or sheer ingenuousness, his words hit very close to Uncle Mafìo’s true nature and probable experience. I glanced at my uncle, fearing he would blush or bluster or maybe knock Nostril’s head off, and thereby confess what he had so far kept concealed. But he bore the seeming insinuation as if he had not noticed it, and only continued to muse aloud:

“If the choice were mine, I should seek out a religion whose scriptures were not written by men already ritually maimed in their manhood.”

“Where we are going,” my father remarked, “there are several such religions.”

“As I well know,” said my uncle. “That is what makes me wonder how we Christians and Jews and Muslims dare to speak of the more Eastern peoples as barbarians.”

My father said, “The traveled man can look with a pitying smile at the crude pebbles still treasured by his home folk, yes, for he has seen real rubies and pearls in far places. Whether that also holds true for the home-kept religions, I cannot say, not being a theologian.” He added, rather sharply for him, “But this I do know: we are at present still under the Heaven of those religions you so openly disprize, and vulnerable to heavenly rebuke. If your blasphemies provoke a whirlwind, we may not get any farther. I strongly recommend a change of subject.”

Nostril obliged. He reverted to his earlier topic and told us, at stupefying length, how each letter of the Arabic fish-worm writing is permeated by a certain specific emanation from Allah, and therefore, as the letters squirm into the shape of words and the words into reptilian sentences, any piece of Arabic writing—even something as mundane as a signpost or a landlord’s bill—contains a beneficent power which is greater than the sum of the individual characters, and therefore is efficacious as a talisman against evil and jinn and afarit and the Devil Shaitan … and so on and on. To which the only rejoinder was made by one of our bull camels. He unfurled his underworks as he strode along, and copiously made water.

5

WELL, we did not get annihilated by any thunderbolt or whirlwind, and I cannot recall that anything else of significance happened on that journey until, as I have remarked, we did come to a second green oasis in that dun dreariness, and again made camp, intending to luxuriate there for two or even three days. In keeping with my resolve, I did not this time let Aziz out of my arm’s reach while we drank our fill of the good water and watered the camels and topped up our water bags and—especially—while we bathed our bodies and laundered our clothes, during which time he and all the rest of us were necessarily naked. And when again we were disposed to pitch our tents privily apart from each other, I made sure that his and mine were side by side.

We did, however, all cluster together around the camp fire for our evening meal. And I recollect, as if it were yesterday, every trivial incident of that night. Aziz took his seat across the fire from me and Nostril, and first my uncle sat companionably close beside him, and then my father plumped down on his other side. While we gnawed gristly mutton and munched moldy cheese and dipped shriveled jujubes into our water cups to soften them, my uncle gave arch sidewise looks at the boy, and I and my father cast wary looks at both of them. Apparently unaware of any tension in the group, Nostril casually remarked to me:

“You are beginning to look like a real journeyer, Master Marco.”

He was referring to my new-grown beard. In the desert, no man would be fool enough to waste water on shaving, or vain enough to endure a lather that must get mixed with abrasive sand and salt. My own beard was by then of a manly density, and I had ceased even to use the easy depilatory of the mumum salve, letting the beard grow as a protection for the skin of my face. I took only the trouble to keep it clipped to a tidy and comfortable shortness, and I have worn it so ever since.

“Now you may realize,” Nostril chatted on, “how merciful it was of Allah to give whiskers to men, but not to women.”

I thought about that. “It is clearly good that men have beards, for they may have to go into the scouring desert sands. But why is it a mercy that women have them not?”

The camel-puller raised up his hands and his eyes, as if in consternation at my ignorance. But before he could reply, little Aziz laughed and said:

“Oh, let me tell him! Think, Mirza Marco! Was it not considerate of the Creator? He did not put a beard upon that creature who could never keep it shaven clean or even trimmed to neatness, because her jaw waggles so!”

I laughed, too, and so did my father and uncle, and I remarked, “If that is the reason, then I am glad for it. I would recoil from a whiskered woman. But would it not have been wiser of the Creator to create females less inclined to wag the jaw?”

“Ah,” said my father, the proverbialist. “Wherever there are pots, they will rattle.”

“Mirza Marco, here is another riddle for you, Mirza Marco!” chirruped Aziz, merrily bouncing where he sat. The boy was admittedly a soiled angel, and in many respects more worldly-wise than any adult Christian, but he was, after all, still a child. His words almost tumbled over each other, he was so eager to get them out. “There are few animals in this desert. But there is one to be found here which unites in itself the natures of seven different beasts. What is it, then, Marco?”

I knit my brow and pretended to think ponderously, and then said, “I give it up.”

Aziz crowed with triumphant laughter, and opened his mouth to speak. But then his mouth opened wider, and his big eyes got bigger. So did the eyes and mouths of my father and uncle. Nostril and I had to spin about to see what they were staring at.

Three shaggy brown men had materialized out of the night’s dry fog, and were regarding us with slit eyes in expressionless faces. They wore skins and leathers, not Arab garments, and they must have ridden far and fast, for they were coated with dust caked by perspiration, and they stank even from the distance where they stood.

“Sain bina,” said my uncle, the first to recover from his surprise, and he slowly got to his feet.

“Mendu, sain bina,” said one of the strangers, looking faintly surprised himself.

My father also stood up, and he and Uncle Mafio made gestures of welcome, and they went on speaking to the intruders in a language I did not comprehend. The shaggy men drew three horses by their reins out of the fog behind them, and led the animals to the spring. Not until the horses had been watered did the men take a drink.

Nostril, Aziz and I got up from the fire, and let the strangers take our places. My father and uncle sat down with them, and got out food from our packs and offered it, and continued sitting and talking while the visitors ate voraciously. I scrutinized the newcome three as well as I could while standing discreetly apart from the confabulation. They were of short but sturdy stature. Their faces were the color and texture of tanned kid leather, and two of them had long but wispy mustaches; none wore a beard. Their coarse black hair was womanly long, and plaited into numerous braids. Their eyes, I repeat, were mere slits, so very narrowly slitted that I wondered how they could see out of them. Each man carried a short and sharply curved-and-recurved bow slung on his back, with its bowstring across his chest, and a quiver of short arrows for it, and at his waist what was either a short sword or a long knife.

I recognized, now, that the men were Mongols, for I had seen the occasional Mongol by this time, and this land was, although nominally Persia, a province of the Mongol Khanate. But why were three Mongols prowling out here in the wilderness? They did not seem to be bandits or to mean us any harm—or at least my father and uncle had quickly talked them out of any such notion. And why were they in such an apparent hurry? In the everlasting desert, no man hurries.

But these men stayed in the oasis only long enough to eat to repletion. And they might not have halted for even that long, except that our foodstuffs, unappealing though they were, must have seemed real viands and delicacies to the Mongols, for these men carried no traveling rations at all except strips of jerked horsemeat like rawhide bootlaces. My father and uncle, to judge from their gesturings, were cordially and almost insistently inviting the newcomers to rest for a while, but the Mongols only shook their shaggy heads and grunted as they devoured mutton and cheese and fruits. Then they rose, belched appreciatively, gathered up the reins of their horses and remounted.

The horses rather resembled the men, being exceptionally shaggy and wild-looking and almost as small as the hinna’ed horses of Baghdad, but much more stocky and muscular. They were crusted with dried foam and dust, from having been hard ridden, but they acted as eager as their riders to be off and going again. One of the Mongols, from his saddle, jabbered to my father a lengthy speech that sounded monitory. Then they all tugged their mounts’ heads around, and cantered off southwestward, and almost instantly they were gone from our sight into the foggy dark, and the creak and jingle of their arms and harness was as instantly gone from our hearing.

“That was a military patrol,” my father made haste to tell us, perceiving that Nostril and Aziz looked quite frightened. “It seems that some bandits have lately been, er, active in this desert, and the Ilkhan Abagha desires to have them brought quickly to justice. Mafìo and I, being naturally concerned for the safety of us all, tried to persuade them to stay and guard us, or even to travel for a time in our company. But they prefer to keep on the trail of the bandits, and press them hard, hoping to wear them down by thirst and hunger.”

Nostril cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me, Master Nicolò. I would of course never eavesdrop on a master, but I heard some of the conversation. Turki is one of the languages known to me, and the Mongols speak a variant of the Turki tongue. May I ask—when those Mongols mentioned bandits, did they actually say bandits?”

“No, they used a name. A tribal name, I assume. Karauna. But I take them to be—”

“Ayee, that is what I thought I heard!” Nostril keened. “And that is what I feared I heard! May Allah preserve us! The Karauna!”

Let me say here that almost all the languages I heard spoken from the Levant eastward, no matter how disparate they were in other respects, contained a word or word-element that was the same in all, and that was kara. It was variously pronounced: kara, khara, qara or k’ra, and in some languages kala, and it could have various meanings. Kara could mean black or it could mean cold or it could mean iron or it could mean evil or it could mean death—or kara could mean all those things at the same time. It might be spoken in admiration or deprecation or revilement, as for instance the Mongols were pleased to call their onetime capital city Karakoren, meaning Black Palisade, while they called a certain large and venomous spider the karakurt, meaning evil or deadly insect.

“Karauna!” Nostril repeated, almost gagging on the word. “The Black Ones, the Cold Hearts, the Iron Men, the Evil Fiends, the Death Bringers! The name is of no tribe, Master Nicolò. It was bestowed on them as a curse. The Karauna are the outcasts of other tribes—of the Turki and Kipchak of the north, the Baluchi of the south. And those peoples are bandits born, so imagine how terrible a man has to be, that he is expelled from such a tribe. Some of the Karauna are even former Mongols, and you know they must be loathly indeed, to be outcast by the Mongols. The Karauna are the soulless men, the most cruel and bloodthirsty and feared of all predators in these lands. Oh, my lords and masters, we are in awful danger!”

“Then let us extinguish the fire,” said Uncle Mafio. “In truth, Nico, we have been sauntering rather blithely through this desert. I will break out swords from the packs, and I suggest we begin tonight to take turns at guard.”

I volunteered to take the first watch awake, and asked Nostril how I should recognize the Karauna if they came.

Somewhat sarcastically he said, “You may have noticed that the Mongols fastened their coats on their right side. The Turki and Baluchi and such, they lap their coats to the left.” Then his sarcasm dissolved in his dread, and he cried, “Oh, Master Marco, if you even have a chance to see them before they strike, you will have no doubt whatever. Ayee, bismillah, kheli zahmat dadam …” and, praying at the top of his lungs, he made an astonishing number of deep salaam prostrations before crawling into his tent.

When all my companions were abed, I walked, with my shimshir sword in hand, twice or thrice around the entire perimeter of the oasis, peering out as far as I could into the surrounding thick, black, foggy night. Since that darkness was so impenetrable, and since I could not possibly stand athwart all the approaches to our camp, I decided to post myself at my own tent, beside that of Aziz. The night being one of the more chilly nights of the journey, I lay prone inside my tent, under the blankets, and let just my head protrude beyond the flaps. Either Aziz was lying sleepless or I waked him with the noise of my getting settled, for he also stuck his head out, and whispered, “I am frightened, Marco, and I am cold. May I sleep next to you?”

“Yes, it is cold,” I agreed. “I am shivering even with all my clothes on. I would go and fetch more blankets, but I dislike to rouse the camels. Here, you bring your covers, Aziz, and I will take down your tent as well, to use for an extra cover. If you lie close to me, and we pile all the fabrics on us, we ought to be snug enough.”

That is what we did. Aziz wriggled out of his tent, like a little naked newt, and into mine. Working quickly in the cold, I shook the supporting rods out of his tent’s hems, and bundled the cloth in on top of him. I burrowed in beside him, leaving only my head still out, and my hands and the shimshir. Very soon I had stopped shivering, but inwardly I felt quivery in a different way, not from the chill, but from the warmth and nearness and softness of the little boy’s body. He was pressed against me in a most intimate embrace, and I suspected he had done that deliberately. In a moment I was sure of it, for he loosed the cord of my pai-jamah, and nestled his bare body against my bare bottom, and then he did something even more intimate. It made me gasp, and I heard him whisper, “Does this not warm you even more?”

Warm was not the word for it. His sister Sitarè had boasted that Aziz was expert at his art, and he clearly knew how to excite the thing that Nostril had called “the almond inside,” for my member came erect as quickly and as stiffly as a tent cloth does when the rod is slid inside its hem sheath. What would have occurred next, I do not know. It might be asserted that I was grievously neglecting my guard watch, but I think the Karauna would have approached and struck unseen, even if I had been more attentive. Something struck the back of my head, so hard that the black night around me went even blacker, and when I was next conscious of anything, it was of being painfully dragged by my hair across the grass and sand.

I was dragged to where the camp fire was being rekindled, but not by any of us. The intruders were men to make the earlier visiting Mongols look like elegant and polished court gentlemen by comparison. There were seven of these, and they were filthy and ragged and ugly and somehow, though they never smiled, they kept their snaggle teeth always bared. They each had a horse, a small one like a Mongol horse, but bony and ribby and pustular with sores. One other thing I noticed about those horses, even in my dazed condition: they had no ears.

One of the marauders was making up the fire, the others were dragging my companions to it, and all of them were babbling in a high voice another language new to me. Nostril alone seemed to understand it, and he, though also having been knocked about and yanked from his bed and consumed with terror, took the pains to translate and shout to us all:

“These are the Karauna! They are mortally hungry! They say they will not kill us if we feed them! Please, my masters, in the name of Allah, get busy and show them food!”

The Karauna dumped us all beside the fire and then began frantically scooping up water from the spring with their hands and dashing it down their throats. My father and uncle obediently hurried to get out the food stores. I still lay on the ground, shaking my head, striving to get the pain and darkness and buzzing out of it. Nostril, trying to look properly and obsequiously busy, and doubtless half scared to death, nevertheless kept shouting:

“They say they will not rob or kill the four of us! Of course they are lying, and they will, but not until after the four of us have fed them. So, please Allah, let us keep on feeding them as long as there is food to feed! All four of us!”

Mainly concerned with the havoc inside my head, I dimly supposed that he was urging me, too, to show some life and activity. So I struggled upright and bestirred myself to pour some dried apricots into a pot of water to soften. I heard Uncle Mafio also shouting:

“We must comply, the four of us! But then, while they are gorging themselves, the four of us may see a chance to retrieve our swords and to fight.”

I finally caught the message he and Nostril were trying to impart. Aziz was not among us. When the Karauna swooped down, they had seen four tents, had dragged four men out of them, and now had four captives dutifully scurrying at their command. It was because I had taken down Aziz’s tent. When they plucked me from mine, Aziz might have come along, attached, but he had not. And he must have realized what was happening, so he would stay hidden, unless … . The boy was brave. He might try some desperate expedient … .

One of the Karauna roared at us. His thirst quenched, he seemed delighted to see us slaving for him. Like a victorious conqueror, he thumped his chest with his fists, and bellowed quite a long narrative, which Nostril translated in a quaver:

“They have been so hotly pursued that they were near dead of thirst and starvation. They several times opened the veins of their horses to drink their blood for sustenance. But the horses got so weak that they desisted from that, but at last cut off and ate the horses’ ears. Ayee, mashallah, che arz konam? …” and he tailed off into another spate of praying.

The confusion also diminished, as the seven Karauna ceased to mill about the spring, and let their mistreated horses get to it, and came to where we had laid all our food around the fire. With bared teeth and guttural growls, they indicated that we should all stand aside, well out of range to interfere. The four of us backed away, and the Karauna fell slavering upon the provender, and in the next moment there was confusion confounded. Three more horses came plunging suddenly out of the darkness, bearing three howling riders swinging swords.

The Mongol patrol had returned! I might better say, the Mongols had all the while been lurking somewhere nearby, and not even I, the camp guard, had suspected it. They had known that we would be an irresistible bait to the Karauna, and simply had waited for the bandits to walk into the trap.

But the Karauna, although taken unawares and unmounted and with their attention fixed upon the food before them, neither surrendered on the instant nor fell before the flashing swords. Two or three of the dirty brown men magically turned bright red before our eyes, as blood spurted from the cuts given them by the Mongols. But they, like the not immediately wounded others, whipped out swords of their own.

The Mongols, having leapt in on horseback, could make only that one flailing slash before their mounts carried them a little way past the fray. Not turning their horses, they slid from their saddles to continue the fight on foot. But the Karauna, in their avidness to feed, had not tethered or hobbled or unsaddled their own mounts. They must have been mightily tempted to stand and fight, with the food all laid out for them, and they being seven against three. Probably only because they were weak with hunger—and knowing that three well-fed Mongols were their fighting equal—they bounded astride their pitiful horses and, beating their blades down on the swords of the Mongols now afoot, put spurs to their horses and surged out of the firelight in the direction from which they had dragged me.

The Mongols considerately hesitated long enough to glance around at us, and ascertain that we were not visibly injured, before they caught their own horses, vaulted to their saddles, and were off in hot pursuit. Everything had happened in such a furious tumult—from the moment I had been clouted to this sudden quiet fallen on the oasis—that it might have been a simùm desert storm that had swept down and embroiled us and swept on past.

“Gèsu … ,” my father breathed.

“Al-hamdo-lillah … ,” prayed Nostril.

“Where is the boy Aziz?” Uncle Mafio asked me.

“He is safe,” I said loudly, to be heard above the ringing still going on in my head. “He is in my tent.” And I gestured toward where the dust of the horses’ departure was hanging in the air.

As soon as he could get some clothes on, my uncle went running off in that direction. My father saw me rubbing my head, and came and felt of it. He remarked that I had a palpable knot there, and told Nostril to put a cup of water to heat.

Then my uncle came running back, out of the darkness, shouting, “Aziz is not there! His clothes are, but he is not!”

Leaving Nostril to bathe my head and bind a poultice of salve about it, my father and uncle went to beat the bushes for the boy. They did not find him. Nor did any of us, when Nostril and I joined them, and we did a methodical back-and-forth pacing of the entire oasis. Consulting together, we tried to reconstruct what must have happened.

“He would have left the tent. Even undressed and in this cold.”

“Yes, he would have known they would loot it soon or later.”

“So he sought a safer place to hide.”

“More likely he was creeping close, to see if he could aid us.”

“Anyway, he was in the open when the Karauna suddenly fled.”

“And they saw him and snatched him up and took him with them.”

“At the first opportunity, they will kill him.” It was Uncle Mafio who said that, and he said it in the voice of one bereaved. “They will kill him in some bestial manner, for they must be furious, thinking we arranged that ambuscade.”

“They may have no opportunity. The Mongols are close behind.”

“The Karauna will not kill the boy, but hold him hostage. A shield to ward off the Mongols.”

“And if the Mongols hold off, which they may not,” said my uncle, “think what the Karauna will be doing to that little boy.”

“Let us not weep until someone is hurt,” said my father. “But whatever the outcome, we must be there. Nostril, you stay. Mafio, Marco, mount up!”

We laid the sticks to our camels. Since we had never pressed them before, the beasts were so startled that they did not think to complain or balk, but went at a stretch-out gallop, and maintained it. The movement made my head seem to pound upon the neck-top of my spine with an excruciating beat, but I said nothing.

On sand, camels run faster than horses can, so we caught up to the Mongols well before dawn. We would eventually have met them in any case, as they were leisurely returning toward the oasis. The dry fog having settled to the ground by then, we saw them at some distance in the starlight. Two of them were walking and leading the horses, and supporting the third in his saddle, where he sagged and wobbled, being evidently badly hurt. The two called something to us as we approached, and waved their hands to indicate where they had come from.

“A miracle! The boy lives!” said my father, and lashed his camel harder.

We did not pause to speak to the Mongols, but kept on going, until we saw far off a scattering of dark, motionless shapes on the sand. They were the seven Karauna and their horses, all dead and much hacked and arrow-punctured, and some of the men lay separate from their severed sword hands. But we paid them no mind. Aziz was sitting on the sand, in a large puddle of blood from one of the fallen horses, his back propped against its saddle. He had covered his bare body with a blanket he must have pulled from the saddle pannier, and it was drenched with gore. We jumped off our camels before they had entirely knelt, and ran to him. Uncle Mafio, with tears pouring down his face, fondly rumpled the child’s hair, and my father patted him on the shoulder, and we all exclaimed in wonder and relief:

“You are all right!”

“Praise the good San Zudo of the Impossible!”

“What happened, dear Aziz?”

He said, his little bird voice even quieter than usual, “They passed me from one to another as we rode, so each could take a turn, and so they did not have to slow their pace.”

“And you are unhurt?” my uncle asked.

“I am cold,” Aziz said listlessly. Indeed, he was shivering violently under the threadbare old blanket.

Uncle Mafio persisted anxiously, “They did not—abuse you? Here?” He laid a hand on the blanket between the boy’s thighs.

“No, they did nothing like that. There was no time. And I think they were too hungry. And then the Mongols caught us up.” He puckered his pale face as if to cry. “I am so cold …”

“Yes, yes, lad,” said my father. “We will set you soon to rights. Marco, you stay by him and comfort him. Mafio, help me look about for dung to make a fire.”

I took off my aba and spread it over the boy for an extra cover, uncaring about the blood that soaked into it. But he did not hug the covers about him. He only sat where he was, against the sideways saddle, his little legs stuck out in front of him and his hands lying limp alongside. Hoping to cheer and enliven him, I said:

“All this time, Aziz, I have been wondering about the curious animal you challenged me to guess.”

A faint smile came briefly to his lips. “I did riddle you to puzzlement, Marco, did I not?”

“Yes, you did. How does it go again?”

“A desert creature … that unites in itself … the natures of seven different beasts.” His voice was fading again to listlessness. “Can you still not divine it?”

“No,” I said, frowning as before, and pretending to delve deep in my mind. “No, I confess I cannot.”

“It has the head of a horse …” he said slowly, as if he were having trouble remembering, or having trouble speaking. “And the neck of a bull … the wings of a rukh … belly of a scorpion … feet of a camel … horns of a qazèl … and the … and the hindquarters … of a serpent …”

I was worried by his uncharacteristic lack of vivacity, but I could discern no cause for it. As his voice dwindled, his eyelids drooped. I squeezed his shoulder encouragingly, and said:

“That must be a most marvelous beast. But what is it? Aziz, unriddle the riddle. What is it?”

He opened his beautiful eyes and gazed at me, and he smiled and he said, “It is only a common grasshopper.” Then he fell abruptly forward, his face hitting the sand between his knees, as if he had been loosely hinged at the waist. There was a sudden, noticeable increase in the prevailing stench of blood and body odors and horse manure and human excrement. Aghast, I leaped up and called for my father and uncle. They came running, and stared down at the boy, unbelieving.

“No living human being ever bent over flat like that!” my uncle exclaimed in horror.

My father knelt and took one of the boy’s wrists and held it for a moment, then looked up at us and somberly shook his head.

“The child has died! But of what? Did he not say he was unhurt? That they only handed him back and forth as they rode?”

I helplessly raised my hands. “We spoke for a little. Then he fell over like that. Like a sawdust doll from which all the sawdust is gone.”

My uncle turned away, sobbing and coughing. My father gently took the boy’s shoulders and lifted him, and laid the lolling head back against the saddle, and with one hand held him sitting up while with the other he pulled down the gory covers. Then my father made a retching noise and, repeating what the boy had told us, he muttered, “The Karauna were hungry,” and he backed away in sick revulsion, letting the body topple forward flat again, but not before I also saw. What had happened to Aziz—I could liken it to nothing except an ancient Greek tale I had once been told in school, about a stalwart boy of Sparta and a voracious fox cub he hid beneath his tunic.

6

WE left the dead Karauna where they lay, carrion for the beaks of any scavenger vultures that might find them. But we took with us the already bitten and gouged and partially devoured little corpse of Aziz, as we headed back for the oasis. We would not leave him on the surface of the sand, or even bury him under it, for nothing can be so deeply buried in the sand but the wind will continually cover and uncover it again, as indifferently as it does the karwan leavings of camel dung.

On our way forth from the oasis, we had passed the white fringe of a minor salt flat, so we stopped there on our return. We carried Aziz out upon the trembling land, wrapped in my aba for a shroud, and we found a place where we could break through the glittering crust, and we laid Aziz on the quaggy quicksand under it. We said our farewells and some prayers during the time it took the small bundle to sink from our sight.

“The salt slab will soon re-form over him,” mused my father. “He will rest under it undisturbed, even by corruption, for the salts will permeate his body and preserve him.”

My uncle, scratching absentmindedly at his elbow, said with resignation, “It may even be that this land, like others I have seen, will in time heave and break and rearrange its topography. Some future journeyer may find him, centuries hence, and gaze upon his sweet face, and wonder how it came to pass that an angel fell from Heaven to be interred here.”

That was as fine a valedictory as could be pronounced over any departed one, so we left Aziz then and remounted and rode on. When we arrived again at the oasis, Nostril came running, all worry and concern, and then all lamentation when he saw there were still only the three of us. We told him, in as few words as possible, how we had been deprived of the smallest member of our party. Looking properly grieved and woebegone, he muttered some Muslim prayers, and then he spoke to us a typically fatalistic Muslim condolence:

“May your own spans be lengthened, good masters, by the days which the boy has lost. Inshallah.”

The day was at its noon by then, and anyway we were weary and my head was near to splitting with pain and we had no heart for hastening to resume our journey, so we prepared to spend another night in the oasis, even though it was no longer any happy place for us. The three Mongols had preceded us there, and Nostril went on with what he had been doing when we came: helping those men clean and anoint and bind up their wounds.

Those wounds were many, but none very serious. The man we had thought worst hurt had only had his brains temporarily scrambled when he was kicked in the head by a horse during the final affray with the Karauna; he had considerably recovered. Even so, all three of the men bore numerous sword cuts and had lost much blood and must have been much weakened, and we would have expected them to remain in the oasis for some days while they recuperated. But no, they said, they were Mongols, indestructible, unstoppable, and they would ride on.

My father asked where they would go. They said they had no assigned destination, only a mandate to go and seek and chase and destroy the Karauna of the Dasht-e-Kavir, and they wanted to get on with that job. So my father showed them our passepartout signed by the Khakhan Kubilai. For certain, none of those men could read, but they easily recognized the distinctive seal of the Khan of All Khans. They were agog at our possession of it, as they had earlier been impressed to hear my father and uncle speaking their tongue, and they inquired if we wished to give them any orders in the name of the Khakhan. My father suggested that, since we were carrying rich gifts for their great lord, the men might help ensure the delivery of them by riding as our escort as far as Mashhad, and they readily agreed to do so.

The next day, we were seven when we moved on northeastward. Since the Mongols disdained conversing with a lowly camel-puller, and since Uncle Mafio seemed indisposed to speak to anybody, and since my head still hurt whenever I jarred it by talking, only my father and our three new companions talked as we rode, and I was satisfied to ride close to them and listen, and thereby begin learning yet another new language.

The first thing I learned was that the name Mongol does not connote a race or a nation of people—the name derives from the word mong, meaning brave—and similar though our three escorting Mongols appeared to my unaccustomed eye, they were in fact as disparate as if they had been Venetian, Genoan and Pisan. One was of the Khalkas tribe, one was of the Merkit and one was of the Buriat—which tribes, I gathered, originally hailed from widely separated parts of those lands that the mighty Chinghiz (himself a Khalkas) long ago first united and so began building the Mongol Khanate. Also, one of the men was of the Buddhist faith, another of the Taoist—religions of which I then knew nothing—and the third was, of all things, a Nestorian Christian. But I learned at the same time that, whatever a Mongol’s tribal origin or his religious affiliation or his soldierly occupation, he is never to be referred to as a Khalkas or a Christian or even as a bowman or an armorer or any other such applicable appellation. He calls himself only a Mongol—and proudly, thus: “Mongol!”—and he must be spoken of only as a Mongol, for his being a Mongol supersedes anything else he may be, and that name of Mongol takes precedence over all other names.

However, long before I could make the least conversation with our three escorts, I had discerned from their behavior some of the Mongols’ curious ways and customs—or, I might better say, their barbaric superstitions. While we were still in the oasis, Nostril had suggested to them that they might like to wash the blood and sweat and long-accumulated dirt out of their clothes, and so have them fresh and clean for the next stage of traveling. The men declined, giving as a reason that it was unwise to launder any article of apparel when abroad from one’s home camp, because that would raise a thunderstorm. How it would do that, they could not say, and would not demonstrate. Now, any man of ordinary good sense, in the middle of a parched and bleached desert, would scarcely object to any kind of wet storm, however mysteriously produced. But the Mongols, who fear nothing else under Heaven, are as terrified of thunder and lightning as is the most timid child or woman.

Also, while still in that abundantly watered oasis, the three Mongols never once treated themselves to a thorough and refreshing bath, though God knows they needed one. They were so crusty they almost creaked, and their aroma would have gagged a shaqàl. But they washed no more of themselves than their heads and hands, and did that little washing most miserly. One of them would dip a gourd in the spring, but use not even the dipper’s amount of water. He would slurp from the gourd only a single mouthful, and hold it in his mouth, then spit the water into his cupped hands, a little at a time, and with one spurt wet his hair, with the next his ears, and so on. Granted, that may not have been a matter of superstition, but of conservation, a custom decreed by a people who spend so much of their time in arid lands. But I did think they would have been a more socially acceptable people if they had relaxed that stringency when it was not needful.

Another thing. Those three men had been traveling from out of the northeast when they first came upon us. Now that we were proceeding in that direction, and perforce so were they, the men insisted that we ride a farsakh or so to one side of their prior trail, because, they assured us, it was unlucky to return over the exact same route by which one has gone out.

It was also extremely unlucky, they remarked, during the first night we all camped together on the trail, for any member of a party to sit with his head hanging as in sorrow, or to lean his cheek or chin on his hand as an aid to cogitation. That, they said, could bring sadness on the entire company. And they said it while glancing uneasily at Uncle Mafio, who was sitting just that way, and looking mournful indeed. My father or I might jolly him into sociability for a while, but he soon would lapse into gloom again.

For a very long time after the death of Aziz, my uncle spoke seldom and sighed often and looked miserably bereft. Where earlier I had tried to take a tolerant attitude toward his unmanly nature, I was now more inclined to an amused and exasperated contempt. No doubt a man who can find sensual pleasure only with one of his own sex can also find a deep and lasting love for one of them, and such a true ardor—like the more conventional instances of true love—can be esteemed and admired and commended. However, Uncle Mafio had had only a single and insignificant sexual encounter with Aziz, and otherwise he had been no closer to the boy than any of the rest of us. We all grieved for Aziz, and felt sorrow at his loss. But for Uncle Mafio to carry on, in the way that another man might grieve for a wife lost after many years of happy marriage—that was lugubrious and farcical and unworthy. He was still my uncle, and I would continue to treat him with all due respect, but I had come privately to conclude that his big and burly and strong outer semblance had not much inside it.

No one could have been sorrier for the death of Aziz than I was, but I realized that my reasons were mainly selfish, and gave me no right to make loud lamentation. One reason was that I had promised both Sitarè and my father that I would keep the boy from harm, and I had not. So I could not be sure whether I was feeling more sorry for his death or for my failure as a guardian. Another of my selfish reasons was that I was grieving because someone worth keeping had been snatched out of my world. Oh, I know that all people grieve so, on the occasion of a death, but that makes it no less a selfish reason. We survivors are deprived of that one person newly dead. But he or she is deprived of everything—of all other persons, of all things worth keeping, of the entire world and every least thing in it, all in an instant—and such a loss deserves a lamentation so loud and vast and lasting that we who stay are incapable of expressing it.

I had yet another selfish reason for lamenting the death of Aziz. I could not help recalling the Widow Esther’s admonition: that a man should avail himself of everything life offers, lest he die repining for those opportunities he neglected to seize. It was perhaps virtuous of me, and laudable, that I had declined what Aziz offered me, and so left his chastity unsmirched. It would perhaps have been sinful of me, and reprehensible, if I had accepted, and so despoiled his chastity. But, I asked myself now, since Aziz would have gone so soon to his grave in either case, what difference could it have made? If we had embraced, it might have meant one last pleasure for him, and a unique one for me: what Nostril had called “a journey beyond the ordinary”—and whether it had been innocuous or iniquitous, it would have left no trace on the all-covering quicksand. But I had refused, and in all the rest of my life, if any such chance ever came again, it could not come from the beautiful Aziz. He was gone, and that opportunity was lost, and now—not on some putative future deathbed—now I was sorry.

But I was alive. And I and my uncle and my father and our companions journeyed on, for that is all that the living can do to forget death, or defy it.

We were not accosted by any more Karauna, or any other sorts of lurkers, and we did not even meet any other fellow travelers during the rest of our desert crossing. Either our Mongol escort had been unnecessary or its presence had discouraged any further molestation. We came finally out of the lowland sands at the Binalud Mountains, and up through that range to Mashhad. It was a fair and pleasant city, somewhat larger than Kashan, and its streets were lined with chinar and mulberry trees.

Mashhad is one of the very holy cities of Persian Islam, because a highly revered martyr of olden time, the Imam Riza, is entombed in an ornate masjid there. A Muslim’s worshipful visit to Mashhad earns him the prefix of Meshadi to his name, as a pilgrimage to Mecca earns him the right to be addressed as Hajji. So the greater part of the city’s population consisted of transient pilgrims and, because of that, Mashhad had very good and clean and comfortable karwansarai inns. Our three Mongols led us to one of the best, and themselves spent a night there before turning back to resume their patrol of the Dasht-e-Kavir.

There at the karwansarai, the Mongols demonstrated yet another of their customs. While my father, my uncle and I gratefully took lodging inside the inn, and our camel-puller Nostril gratefully took lodging in the stable with his animals, the Mongols insisted on laying their bedrolls outside in the center of the courtyard, and staked their horses to the ground about them. The Mashhad landlord indulged them in that eccentricity, but some landlords will not. As I later discovered, when a Mongol party is commanded by the innkeeper to lodge indoors like civilized folk, the Mongols will grudgingly comply, but they still will not depend on the karwansarai kitchen. They will lay a fire in the middle of their chamber floor, put a tripod over it and do their own cooking. Come night, they will not repose on the beds provided, but will unroll their own carpets and blankets and sleep on the floor.

Well, I could now sympathize in some measure with the Mongols’ reluctance to reside under a fixed roof. Myself, my father and my uncle, after our long crossing of the Great Salt, had also developed a taste for unconfined spaces and unrestricted elbow room, and the limitless silence and clean air of the outdoors. Though at first we exulted in the refreshment of a hammam bath and rubbing, and were pleased to have our meals cooked and presented to us by servants, we soon found ourselves vexed by the noise and agitation and turmoil of indoor living. The air seemed close and the walls even closer and the other karwansarai guests a terribly talkative crowd. The all-pervading smoke especially tormented Uncle Mafìo, who was troubled by intermittent coughing spells. So, for all that the inn was well appointed and Mashhad an estimable city, we stayed only long enough to exchange our camels again for horses, and to replenish our traveling gear and rations, and we moved on.