A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  One morning while the old woman was arguing with a seller of vegetables, Bughesha noticed among the crowd at the market a man named Shamseddin, the nakuda of a sailing ship which made long stops at Massawa. He was a man of mature age, but his lean and agile body – which still had robust appetites – and his ready wit made him seem much younger than he was.

  ‘What are you doing in this stinking hole, O father of lies?’ asked the pilot, smiling broadly and showing his excellent teeth.

  Bughesha informed him that he was Secretary to the Sharaytic Tribunal, and Shamseddin roared with laughter.

  ‘Listen, you young liar: in this womanless country I am beginning to develop a liking even for the coppers, if they have curly hair. Who are you pimping for? The fishes?’

  The merchant of shadows became offended. No women, indeed! Not, perhaps, for creatures like Shamseddin – but women there were, and beautiful as the full moon.

  The man looked at the boy doubtfully, decided that in any case he could lose nothing by trying, and told him to come and see him on the dhow in the afternoon.

  As soon as Si Abdalla had finished his daily discourse on the virtuous life and left the house to return to his office, Bughesha also slipped out, ran to the port and boarded Shamseddin’s craft.

  The four men of the crew were also old acquaintances of Bughesha’s. For some time they had been cruising along the coast of the Yemen and in the ports of that austere country they had not set eyes on any woman under sixty years of age.

  The boy seated himself on the iron plate used for the baking of unleavened bread, and the excited, sex-starved men stood round, staring at him, uncertain whether to believe him.

  Bughesha told them that, being employed at the Tribunal, he saw a great many people because there were many applications to the judges – on questions of canonical law much too complicated for ignorant sailors to understand.

  The fascination of the seller of shadows began to work and his audience, even although they knew with whom they were dealing, found themselves hanging on his words.

  Bughesha stated that he had the confidence of two widows of two brothers; they lived together, and found their enforced abstinence difficult. Naturally, they had to be careful of their reputations, but he was sure that there would not be too many difficulties in the case of persons presented by someone in their confidence – on condition, of course, that such persons were accompanied by something solid in the way of argument, and that they were open-handed. These were women of noble birth – very different from the scum to which sambūq and dhow navigators were accustomed; the sailors must, therefore, understand that it was not a case of going into one of those houses where they left a few shillings on the chest of drawers. After the meeting – if it took place – they would have to hand a certain sum to him, Bughesha ben Yacub, and he would in turn buy a suitable present, a souvenir, for these widowed gentlewomen.

  ‘Remember, son of Satan, you won’t get a cent in advance.’

  The father of lies lifted his eyes to heaven, snorted with offence and turned to leave them, but they assured him that they had only been joking and that they had every confidence in him. Finally, he allowed himself to be persuaded and promised that he would go into the matter: he would sound the two widows on the subject and bring them a reply.

  They thought they would see no more of him, but instead he returned the next day and informed them that he had arranged everything and that they could rely on him. He explained that they must present themselves one at a time and that for that evening it would be the nakuda. The appointment was fixed for two hours after the evening prayer, under the slaughterhouse arcade.

  At the appointed time Bughesha, who was waiting in the shadow of the arcade, took Shamseddin by the hand and led him through a labyrinth of alleys and byways until they came to a broken hedge. Following his guide through the gap, Shamseddin crawled on all fours into a deserted open space; he then climbed a wall and found himself in a shaft between two houses, where rats as big as rabbits ran over his bare feet. Bughesha wriggled through a grating and beckoned to the pilot to follow him. They were in the house, and the boy dragged him along a corridor and up two flights of stairs. At the top, a light filtered from under a closed door.

  The boy opened the door very carefully and Shamseddin found himself in a room in which the only furniture was a carpet. Here Bughesha left the pilot for a few minutes then reappeared and led him into another room, which was in semi-darkness. On a mass of cushions lay an almost white woman, with magnificent eyes and a body as fat as any good Moslem could wish. In fact, when he later described her to me, Shamseddin used the term which, in Arabic, is the highest compliment which a man of his sort can pay to a woman: she was, he said, ‘a duck’.

  Duck she may have been, but the prowess she displayed was that of a decidedly more vigorous species; Shamseddin assured me he had never encountered her like, either before or since.

  ‘And as you know, I am from Obók,’ he said.

  The men from Obók in the Gulf of Jibuti are famous for their amatory feats of endurance and they boast of their powers with uninhibited frankness. But on this night Shamseddin met his match; he finally crawled from the house so exhausted that Bughesha was forced to drag him back through the streets like a dead dog, and once arrived at the port he threw himself into the bottom of the boat and lay there insensible, stone deaf to the enquiries of his fellows.

  On the following evening it was the turn of the pilot’s mate. He was received by a coal-black beauty lying naked on a pile of cushions. She was not a woman, he said, but a spirit, a serpent, a witch, a daughter of the devil, who crushed him between her arms and smothered him with such furious bites and kisses that he was covered with bruises for a week.

  No one doubted any longer that the two women were in fact widows – for no mortal husband could have survived such consuming fires.

  Bughesha for once, they said, had told the truth: the house was in a fashionable quarter of the town; the widows were obviously well-born; they never asked for any money and the black one in fact had even presented her lover with a silver ring. In order, therefore, not to be considered beggars, the men thought it proper to present Bughesha with a sufficient sum to buy the two ladies a handsome necklace each.

  It is improbable that the prince of shadows was able to provide for all the pseudo-widows of the city, but it is possible that the two young wives, incapable of keeping a secret, had foolishly talked to others who complained of absent or impotent husbands, and that, either out of compassion or for fear of being betrayed, they had asked Bughesha to employ his good offices on behalf of their forlorn friends. Whether the whole city was turned into a vast brothel by this resourceful boy is, however, one of those things we shall never know. Nevertheless, his activities in that particular town came to an abrupt end.

  One evening when Shamseddin had returned to his ‘widow’, apparently intent on making another attempt to establish his superiority as a man from Obók, Bughesha rushed into the room and, paying no attention whatever to the fact that the pilot was very much occupied, seized him by the arm and hissed: ‘Quick, quick … the father … run!’

  Shamseddin rushed out of the room and ran full tilt into Abdalla el Yèmeni who, covered from head to foot in a white nightshirt, was proceeding slowly along the corridor, a candle in one hand and a Moslem rosary in the other. The impact of the pilot’s head in the old man’s stomach knocked him reeling against the wall and sent the candle flying. In the darkness the pilot escaped, while the old man, groping for the window, began to call for help.

  ‘Moslems! Moslems!’ he cried. ‘Come to the aid of a faithful brother!’

  As the naked pilot raced for the port, he heard the hue and cry of the neighbours hot on his heels. He quickened his pace, and as he came in sight of the quay he saw his boat lying ready, the sails all set. Bughesha, by some miracle, had arrived before him and roused the crew. Shamseddin took a flying leap, and as he landed on the deck the oarsmen, rowing f
uriously, pulled away from the quay. As the small craft emerged through the harbour mouth the monsoon caught it and swept it out to sea. At the helm stood the pilot, naked in the rain, shouting with laughter at the wildly gesticulating inhabitants who now crowded the quayside. In the forefront stood Abdalla el Yèmeni, still in his nightshirt, shaking his fists in impotent rage. And in the bottom of the dhow lay Bughesha fast asleep, serene and safe, his boats well burned.

  * * *

  About a year after these events I left Massawa for Italy. At Aden, Dr Spiro Photiadès, who for ten years had been practising as a physician in that furnace, boarded the same ship. We had known each other many years before, at Florence University, and we passed most of the voyage together, talking of the old days.

  One day, Spiro brought out a packet of photographs in order to show me pictures of his house in Aden and of the dispensary, infirmary and operating theatre he had there. In many of these photographs I noticed a young native tied up in an enormous overall. At first I paid no particular attention to him but on looking more closely I became quite certain that this was none other than Bughesha.

  I asked who he was, and Spiro told me that his name was Mohamed – or rather, Hajj Mohamed, because he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, where plague had killed his parents. He was born in the Yemen and had been in his service for nearly a year; he spoke fluent English, kept the dispensary records and the inventory of drugs in order, and was very useful in both the day-clinic and the operating theatre – a veritable Godsend, in fact. The doctor had left him behind in Aden where, in accordance with instructions, he was to continue treating the regular patients until he, Spiro, returned.

  My stay in Italy was short and I was soon in Eritrea again. At the end of the year a letter reached me from Photiadès. He informed me that on his return to Aden he had found no trace of Hajj Mohamed, and that with him had disappeared the pharmaceutical chest, the poison chest and all the surgical equipment.

  My indignant colleague gave me particulars of the young man so that I could inform the police in case he should take refuge in Eritrea. Among the identification marks mentioned was a star-shaped scar on the neck – and the shadow merchant had an exactly similar scar as the result of an incision I had made in a boil he had when he was the Benjamin of Fatma, the Somali woman.

  I reported the matter as my colleague wished, although I was certain that after the Aden exploit Bughesha was not likely to show himself in a country where he was so well known. I thought no more about him, convinced that that was the end of him as far as I was concerned.

  However, only a few months later I again heard talk of el keddāb. A Greek exporter of mother-of-pearl spoke of him first, but I did not imagine that his story referred to Bughesha. But Bazarà, the pearl merchant, also had strange stories to tell and in this case there was no doubt at all that the person concerned was our friend. The stories were confirmed by others and finally the pilot of a dhow from the Dalak Islands insisted that he had seen el keddāb with his own eyes.

  On the coast of Arabia, washed by the Indian Ocean, stands the little town of Bet-et-Tassàur. Seen from the sea it appears to be little more than a group of fishermen’s huts, but what a stranger would not know is that in this town no one fishes and everybody is rolling in money.

  In those days a great many dhows and sambūqs crowded into this little bay which the ordinary atlas does not record and which the seaport register gives only as an indentation in a rocky coast.

  Craft arrived from everywhere and left again heading north, south, east or west, loaded with contraband which had reached the sea by very circuitous routes ‘because man’s foot is chained to the path, but the prow opens its way where it will’.

  It was the pilot and crew of the Dalak Island dhow, newly arrived in Massawa, who told me they had seen Bughesha at Bet-et-Tassàur. Bughesha was no longer ‘Bughesha’ of course and when they had addressed him by that name he had looked at them, surprised, and asked who Bughesha might be. The seafarers knew him well, however, and although some years had passed since they had last seen him, they were quite sure they were not mistaken.

  The story was as follows – and the men in telling it seemed unable quite to believe it.

  They had disembarked their merchandise at Bet-et-Tassàur, and were already loading rolls of Indian silk, intending to set sail in two days’ time, when the pilot sat down on a knife and made a six-inch gash in his thigh. The people who ran to his aid lifted their hands and thanked God that he had wounded himself in a country where there was a true physician, one who, under Allah’s guidance, worked miracles: to patch up a wound in the leg was child’s play to this wonder worker.

  On hearing this, the men wasted no time: they laid the nakuda on a sail and took him, bleeding profusely, to the physician’s house. It was a handsome house and the portico was crowded with patients. Most of them were men and women from the township but there were also seamen who happened to be in the port, and patients who had been brought from coastal centres and from the interior. Two enormous negroes kept order, and when one of the boys from the dhow began to protest at the length of time the injured man was kept waiting, they threatened to throw him down the hillside.

  They had to wait three hours, during which time they not only lost their patience, but also exhausted their very extensive vocabulary. Towards evening, however, the physician received them – and he was, most certainly, Bughesha.

  He had grown up. He had a moustache and his cheeks were dark where his beard had been cut with the point of the scissors. This disguise, however, was not sufficient, and his way of looking sideways with a diffident air betrayed him at once to anyone who had known him.

  After a brief discussion regarding his identity, and after he had coldly informed them that they were mistaken, that he had never been in Massawa, that he came from an old family of Bassora which he had left for political reasons, he carefully examined the thigh of the nakuda, disinfected it, sewed it up and bandaged it with astonishing deftness.

  They saw him again several times in the fifteen days during which they were obliged to remain in the port, and they were able to confirm beyond any doubt that ‘Jâfar el Hakim’ and ‘Bughesha el Keddāb’ were one and the same person.

  During the treatment, the eminent doctor asked what merchandise they were carrying and when he was told that it was silk he smiled into his moustache. Such a lot of trouble for so little money? He spoke in a low voice, bent over the nakuda’s wound. Such a lot of trouble, and yet with no further effort sixty times as much could be earned. He rebandaged the leg without pursuing the argument.

  That same evening, two unknown men presented themselves on the dhow and offered to buy the silk they had on board and to replace it with a consignment of hashish. They mentioned associates in the ports, unwatched points along the coast where there was no danger and where the ‘money of the horse’ – golden sovereigns with St George and the Dragon on them – would be paid for the consignment.

  The mariners gradually learned that Bughesha was not only a physician, but also the organiser of all the contraband operations at Bet-et-Tassàur.

  Opium and hashish arrived from India; from Europe, by a roundabout route across Turkey, cocaine was carried to the Persian Gulf, thence to the hideouts on the Arabian coast where it waited for transfer to Egypt at an opportune moment. It was only necessary to pass a few kilos in contraband and you could look forward to a comfortable old age. Also, from India in the famine periods, and from Ethiopia and Somaliland all the year round – singly or in small groups or in hordes – slaves were disembarked. Castrated children were worth their weight in gold throughout Arabia and Iran; strong men were sold for work in the fields, and young and good-looking women went into the houses of the rich, who did not quibble over the price when it was a Galla girl with a golden skin, or a perfectly made young woman from Somaliland.

  Was Bughesha worth a lot of money? The seafaring men blew out their cheeks and made gestures indicating stacks and piles of mon
ey. He made money on everything. They had concrete proof of this when, they having asked how much they owed him, and he having replied that he did not take money from poor seafaring folk, he ended by allowing himself to be presented with a piece of silk worth forty rupees.

  To relieve my conscience, I wrote to Spiro Photiadès to tell him that his Yemenite pearl was practising medicine at Bet-et-Tassàur. Spiro, who was at that time director of the Greek hospital in Cairo, replied that he now had other fish to fry and if there were people so foolish as to allow themselves to be murdered by Hajj Mohamed, he saw no reason why he should deprive them of that privilege.

  All that was a long time ago; years passed, the war came and went, and during that period of tragic and grotesque events it is not surprising that the king of invention passed entirely out of my mind.

  A few months ago, however, as I opened an illustrated paper, the memory of him leaped from the subconscious as fresh as though it had never been absent.

  The paper contained an account of an international dispute and there was a photograph showing a Commission which had just been set up in an attempt to settle the matter. In the front row sat the Secretary to the Commission. And he was none other than Bughesha el Keddāb. He was not so named in the caption, of course, but so far as I was concerned there was not a shadow of doubt about it. The picture showed him smiling urbanely at another member of the Commission. What kind of story was he selling him, I wonder?

  With the picture in my hand I thought of the first time I had met Bughesha, when he was chasing moth shadows on the lamp-lit wall. Perhaps that was the secret of his success: he had always left his imagination free and sold its shadow to whoever liked to buy. He did not become a vizier, and certainly he had no horses shod with silver – but it was obvious that he had successfully sold a great many shadows to innumerable sultans.