Often there were new games: Babatunde delighted in waiting until Aidan was completely exhausted, and then forcing him to recall some complex piece of information. After one particularly punishing session, just as the Irishman was ready to collapse into the grass, Babatunde appeared and asked Aidan to trace the lines of the Naqsh Kabir. Although his legs trembled with exhaustion, Aidan clinched his teeth, visualized the circle and triangle, and moved from point to point and along the internal lines perfectly, with strong balance and surprising grace. Then he collapsed, lay on his side, and panted up at Babatunde. “Is that … all right?”
“You have an incredibly fine mind,” the Yoruba replied. “I doubt you have ever really acknowledged it, tried to better yourself.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that I am so damned unusual, not like the rest of my people….”
Babatunde’s face was unreadable. “Aidan. Is that what you feel?”
“That’s what Kai says. That’s what I see in the eyes that watch me.”
“Even mine?”
“I don’t know. We’ve never spoken of it.”
“What does your heart say?”
“In my heart, I don’t know how a man, a good man like you, can believe in an Allah who would place one group of men so far above another.”
“Allah is merciful,” said Babatunde, “and deserving of love.”
“And if he did create such separations between men?”
“Muhammad said: ‘There is no superiority of a white over a black or of a black over a white. All of you are the children of Adam, and Adam was made from dust.’”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s all well in theory,” Aidan said. “But it does not reflect the world as we know it. I ask again: what if he did create such separations between men?”
Babatunde paused, and then said quietly, “I would not love him. Aidan, one day the world will change. It is changing even now. Indeed, you may be one of the reasons it does.” He paused, then leaned forward, his eyes piercing. “Aidan—you cannot do what has been asked of you.”
That startled the Irishman from his musings. “What?”
“You cannot do it … for yourself.”
Aidan wagged his head as if it was beginning to hurt. “Then how can I?”
“You must do it for your children, and your children’s children. You must place yourself on the righteous path in the mind of God.”
Aidan sat, reflecting for almost a full minute. “I feel … different. As if my actions have a different meaning.”
“Yes,” said Babatunde.
“But I’m the same man.”
“Yes, but you are not the man you thought you were, and your prior actions were based on illusion,” Babatunde said. “None of us are what our minds think. To accomplish what you set out to do, you must live in the mystery.”
“What is this path?”
“It is the way of the holy warrior, one who lives for the light of God.” Although the little Yoruba said the words softly, they seemed to echo in Aidan’s mind.
“But I am not Muslim,” the Irishman said.
“So you think. Aidan, what is a Muslim?”
Aidan shrugged. “You know—someone who follows Muhammad, bows to Mecca every other minute. Thinks he’s the lord of creation … you know the type.”
Babatunde chuckled. “Admission of ignorance is the first step toward wisdom. It is long since time you take your first step.”
“All right then. Let’s say I don’t know.”
“It means, ‘one who has submitted to the will of God.’”
“Even a Christian?”
“Christ, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad were all prophets. The people you call Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last and greatest of these. But Aidan, your path does not need to be as mine. Or as Kai’s. In fact, it cannot be. But still, it can be a true path.”
“I don’t believe in God,” he said numbly.
Babatunde smiled. “Once, you did. Today you do not. Tomorrow you may again. Our minds are like water, the surface ever changing. You must slide beneath that surface, to something that does not change. That part has the answer to your questions.”
Aidan gazed at his friend’s tutor as if searching for a crack in a china plate. “You seem so certain.”
“When you are ready, the answer will present itself. As for now … heh. It is once again time for pain.”
And as always, it seemed, Babatunde was correct.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
After endless hours of hard work and agony, the time came again for dreams.
Aidan tossed on his sweat-soaked mattress, his mind swooping over distant, long-lost O’Dere Crannog. The man-made island appeared exactly as it had the day of his forced departure.
Gliding out of the fog, oars sculling their dreadful rhythm, dragon ships drew up to the dock.
The gangplank clattered down. Aidan stepped out, onto the weathered boards he had trod in childhood.
Children lay asleep upon the dock. He looked down at them. One of them was a younger Aidan. The other, his sister, Nessa. Without attempting to waken them, he entered the town.
The people drifted by without speaking to him.
“Hey!” Aidan called. “Dreigner! Don’t you know me?”
The villager walked past Aidan without any sign of recognition, carrying a load of hay upon his back. A woman passed, her plaid shawl fluttering in a nonexistent wind. Distantly, Aidan heard a fiddle’s fierce but oddly distorted wail.
“Hey!” he cried to another villager. “Sorcha! Don’t you know me? I swore I’d come back!”
Sorcha glanced at Aidan without curiosity and continued on her way. Aidan continued through the village. The mist seemed to have followed him from the dragon ship, lapping about his feet like milk tea. He turned and saw, through the mists about the dock, more dragon ships gliding in. Belatedly, his nerves burned with alarm.
“Wait—wake up!” be screamed. “Wake up!”
He ran now, seeking his own house. He broke in through the door—and saw his mother’s face. She was abed, one of two bundled figures moving steadily beneath a woolen blanket. Confused, he turned away, then turned back, and walked closer—
And saw that it was a Northman abed with her. Aidan looked behind himself and saw his father, standing with a slit throat, watching. Aidan’s mother grinned up at him over the Northman’s shoulder. She was inhumanly beautiful, with her strawberry hair and red, laughing mouth. And then in the next moment the hair whitened and fell from her head, her lips withered, and she became a haggard crone. And in the next the flesh melted away, leaving naught but bones.
Screaming, Aidan ran from the house into deserted streets.
He ran to the dock. The mist had risen. Behind him, the village churned with flame. Dead all, the inhabitants were trudged up the dragon ships gangplank in a funereal lockstep. With ravaged arms they beckoned to him. He ran toward it as the children who had been at the dock arose and walked toward the ship. The children bore no wounds. They were alive, but all else were dead.
He saw himself treading up the gangplank. He screamed out, “Aidan! Nessa! No!”
They looked toward him with sad, wise eyes. He tried to run, but suddenly the fire closed in around him …the ground beneath him burned, and he could find no traction. His outstretched hands caught fire. His burning flesh sloughed away until he could see the bones.
Young Aidan, stepping into the ship, turned to him and waved….
Aidan lurched upright, sweating, gasping for breath. He looked around himself, at the empty gymnasium dome, at the armor and weapons filling the room, and panted, running a hand over his sweat-slicked face, and then lay back down again….
One of Kai’s slaves came into the room, rubbing his eyes. Conair, Aidan recalled. His name is Conair. I remember watching his father stabbed at the Mosque.
“Are you all right?”
“What?” Aidan’s head was st
ill full of sleep.
Conair was too thin, straw-haired and freckled, with eyes wide as saucers and jug ears. He was evidently on some manner of early-morning duty: preparing the day’s bread, perhaps. “I heard you scream.”
“I thought … that I could work hard enough to stop the nightmares.”
“Of what do you dream?” asked the child.
“My mother,” said Aidan. “My father.”
“They are with Allah?” asked Conair.
Aidan paused, trying to put his thoughts into words. “Yes,” he said finally. “With Allah.”
The student nodded. “Then they are at peace. So you should be, too. Sleep. Tomorrow will come.” He paused. “My own mother and father are in Paradise. At night, I speak to them. Perhaps they could give your mother a message. Would you like that?”
Aidan sighed. “No. But give your parents one.”
“What is that?”
“Tell them Conair is a good boy.”
Conair rubbed his eyes sleepily, grinned, and nodded, padding out of the room.
And somehow, Aidan’s sleep for the rest of the night came more easily than it had in weeks.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Djibouti Harbor lay six hours by carriage or four hours by brisk horseback ride south of Dar Kush. Unless in the mood for a serious day’s exercise, a round trip usually entailed an overnight stay. When Kai grew satisfied that Aidan’s training was progressing in a satisfactory fashion, he bade Fodjour to clear his schedule. The two friends left Lake A’zam shortly after dawn, alternately trotted, raced, and walked, and saw the blue crescent of the Bay of Azteca before noon.
Maputo Kokossa’s workshop occupied a medium-sized warehouse in the dock district. This might have proved hazardous to most men, but Kokossa’s reputation had been such that the dockworkers and even many of the petty thieves who made the harbor their home considered it a matter of pride that Kokossa chose to live among them. According to widely circulated legend, once upon a time a thief had broken into the workshop, stealing a thousand feet of gold wire used in electrical experiments. That was fine, as such things went, but the thief’s first mistake was to fracture the famed inventor’s jaw in the process. His second error was to fence the gold in Djibouti Harbor. The wire had been recovered, as was the thief’s body, found floating facedown next to a dhow in the morning tide.
Kai had spent long hours there with Babatunde and now Fodjour. The workshop was a marvel, crammed wall to wall to ceiling with scale models of ships and dirigibles, jars and tubs of chemical compounds, spools of gold, silver, and copper wire, distillation equipment from India and China as well as Egyptian and Abyssinian design, electrical experiments that often crackled, hummed or glowed with a secret life of their own.
He had thoroughly enjoyed his morning there, examining new contraptions, and speaking of new ideas. He spoke to Sallah Mubutu, the little toolmaker who had once knelt before him at court, and now gladly worked twelve-hour days crafting marvels in copper, steel, and wood. Seldom had Kai seen a man who seemed more deeply satisfied with his lot in life. Mubutu’s hands seemed to have their own intelligence, such that he could speak and laugh with employer, face turned away from lathe or drill-press, and yet never err by a fraction of a digit.
Today after holding forth on the subject of iron ships, mines, and submersibles, Kokossa had wandered off to conduct an electrical experiment, leaving them with Chifi, who had immediately turned the conversation to her favorite subject, the evolution of science in Africa.
Central in their discussions was the story of Kyanfuma, a celebrated African scientist who had dressed as a man to gain respect. She was Chifi Kokossa’s hero, and Chifi often seemed startled when men knew her story.
“Kyanfuma?” said Kai. “Dogon woman, wasn’t she? Invented the telescope and microscope.”
“More than that,” said Chifi. “She made massive discoveries in the fields, of medicine and astronomy, as well as optics.”
“I’m sure I had heard that,” said Kai. They had actually had this very discussion four years earlier, but he pretended not to remember.
“Oh, yes,” Chifi said, a sarcastic twist to her voice. “A standard part of Bilalian education is the scientific contributions of women.”
“My tutor is in no way ‘standard.’” Kai said, a bit defensively. “It is my understanding that Kyanfuma was a genius at discovering principles in one arena and then applying them to another.”
Chifi was not mollified. “A genius that eventually led to her stoning as a witch.”
“An unquestioned tragedy,” Fodjour said.
“We’ll never know how much we lost,” Chifi said, such pain in her voice one would think she had witnessed the execution personally.
Kyanfuma had been born too soon … or too late.
Fatimite Islam, the faith preached by the Prophet’s daughter, had deeply influenced Abyssinia and sub-Saharan Africa. Matriarchal cultures embraced it more swiftly than the male-dominated regimes who often preferred to ally themselves with Alexandria.
The Prophet’s teachings on matters of gender had been extraordinarily progressive for the time and culture in which they first took root. Women were ensured the right of property, of divorce and choice of husband, of increased status under the law. During the Prophet’s lifetime, it was possible that women in Islam were the freest in the civilized world. But with Muhammad’s death, Arab patriarchal attitudes overwhelmed social innovation, and there matters had remained mired for much of the proceeding thousand years.
“Too many of those who follow Islam seem to think it a license to repress women,” Chifi said passionately.
“I wasn’t aware you wore chains,” Kai said.
“Luxury is its own chain.” She sniffed. “It fetters the mind.”
Fodjour raised a placating hand. “Why discuss gender politics when we can discuss the luncheon menu at Abdul’s? I understand they have a peanut sauce kabob worthy of an armistice.”
Chifi’s eyes glittered, as if wondering if he was attempting to distract her from a favorite subject; then she realized that it didn’t matter at all. She was hungry. “Well, all right,” she said. “But only for the kabob.”
“For the kabob,” Kai agreed.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The day had begun like any other, but as Aidan was preparing his evening meal, Conair and Tata appeared at his front step.
“Yes?” Aidan had expected one of Kai’s orphans perhaps, so roughneck Conair and the lovely but dour Tata caught him by surprise. The two made an odd pair: Conair all elbows and knobby knees and fierce energy, and Tata with her shy, coltish grace. Conair seemed to have adopted her, or she him, and it was common to see them together.
“The Wakil asked us to bring you to the prayer grove,” Tata said. And now Aidan understood. In all of Dar Kush, only Ghost Town and the prayer grove were more commonly habituated by whites than blacks. Kai had all but warned his overseers and orphans away from the grove, in respect for the worship services conducted there weekly.
Aidan walked between the two children, Conair uncommonly quiet, as if sensing the night’s import. Kai met Aidan where the path widened into a clearing, and clasped his hands. “I respect your people’s need for privacy,” he said, “but your elders have given their blessing for us to borrow your place of worship for the next few hours. Yours is a holy quest, Aidan.”
Crickets began to chirp in the bushes, and the air’s temperature seemed to plummet. “What’s going to happen?” Aidan asked.
“There are no words,” Kai said, then thanked the children and led Aidan to Babatunde, who handed him a bowl filled with sweet, chewy mush. “Eat.”
“What is this?”
“You will dream, awake,” said Babatunde.
“This will teach me what Kai knows?”
“No drug can do that,” Babatunde said. “What you see in Kai is a combination of rare potential, years of grueling work, and grace.”
“Grace?”
The light of Allah, shining on our mortal efforts.”
“Allah again,” Aidan groused. “What will this do, then?”
“You must make Rabitah with Kai, in order to absorb what he wishes to teach you. Rabitah is a deep connection of the heart. Students do this with their teachers, aspirants make Rabitah with their shaykh. Kai makes with me when he comes to a spiritual wall, and wishes my help to circumvent it.”
Aidan started to speak, then paused and thought. “I don’t understand.”
“This will help Aidan go away for a while. What remains will be the one we can teach.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” Aidan said.
“Yes,” Babatunde agreed. “Now, eat.”
And he did.
Within minutes, Aidan felt himself growing woozy.
A stubby black student appeared. “This is what you must learn.” The student performed a series of motions, tight punches, an elbow strike … all performed from a stable, unmoving lower body in low posture.
He performed one of the corkscrew selo movements, and came up facing the other direction. Then he repeated the movements in mirror-image on the left side. “Now you,” the boy said.
After three hours of working and then collapsing in pain and fatigue, his legs consumed by flaming cramps, Kai reappeared. Had he been gone? Aidan wasn’t certain.
Aidan lay on his side, panting. “What are you doing to me?” he gasped.
“It is called ‘marrying the djuru.’”
“Djuru? What is this?”
“It is a word from Djava and other islands to the east of India. There are fearsome fighting arts there, brought back by Abyssinian sailors who melded them with our own techniques. We must go beyond your conscious mind. If we have only your mind, when fear comes, as it must, all your skill will flee.”
His words were a blur to Aidan. The woods, the stars, the grass itself seemed surrounded with flickering flares of light, glowing, dancing, wavering.
“Come,” said Kai. The air around him flamed. “Dance with me.”
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