A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  Meek, placid, harmless, he stood in a dealer’s circle while men who stank of commerce ran hard hands over his body, thrust fingers in his mouth, peered at his feet.

  “He is young,” the Hajji said, “and he has been ill trained. His master made a pet of him; he has never known bit or saddle.”

  “That’s easy enough to remedy,” said the rankest of the men. “And his breeding?”

  “Princely,” replied the Hajji. “But not, alas, pure. His dam is of Circassian stock.”

  “Unfortunate,” the horsedealer said.

  “And yet he has beauty, and he can perhaps be sold to one who has more care for the beast himself than for his breeding.”

  “There are such,” the horsedealer conceded. “Franks, maybe. They like our beauties for their ladies; they seldom know enough to mark a cull.”

  “He is hardly that,” said the Hajji.

  They chaffered long over him. The Hajji was more than magus and saint; he was a merchant of no little cunning. He drove a hard bargain. And yet at last he struck it. The dealer feigned mighty howls of rage and loss, but his scent was most content. “He must, of course, be gelded,” he said as he parted from the Hajji. “Since he is not kehailan, of the pure blood, and since a stallion is no fit mount for a lady…you understand.”

  “I understand,” said the Hajji, without a glance at the one he had thus betrayed.

  oOo

  They tethered Hasan in a place of little enough honor, well apart from the mares, hobbling him front and rear and binding his head. He was given fodder, which he would not touch, and water, which he barely tasted. He could neither struggle or escape, but he could will himself to death. Surely Allah would understand.

  The hours stretched. No gelder came. The sun beat down upon him. He let it. Flies beset him. He did not heed them. He was a thing, a possession. He had will for nothing, except to die.

  With infinite slowness a new truth dawned. The spell was fading. His senses were coming clear again.

  All the worse for him when the knife began to cut: that he would feel the pain.

  Night fell, passed. He slept. In dreams he was a man again, doing what a man could do. Small things. Counting on his fingers. Putting on his drawers after he had bathed. Bowing in prayer.

  He woke, and waking was the dream. His bonds and his bondage. His rough beast-shape.

  The muezzin’s cry called all good Muslims to the prayer of the dawn. He could not purify himself. He could not bow toward Mecca. He could scarcely move at all. And yet his heart, child of habit that it was, intoned the prayers.

  His body scented mares, dawn, urgency. A man strode toward him. No knife was in his hand, and yet Hasan recoiled from him in blind revulsion. He loosed the hobbles, caught the lead, wrenching brutally at Hasan’s head. Astonished, taken aback, Hasan was conquered before he knew it, trotting at the man’s side.

  The horse-fair was in an uproar. A caravan gathered in the square. Hasan found himself part of it, tethered to the saddle of a haughty and flatulent camel. There were other stallions, ridden and led; more geldings than he cared to contemplate; a herd of mares guarded like queens.

  Words came in snatches through the tumult. They were meant for Damascus, most of these horses, all of these laden mules and camels. Time was pressing. This caravan like many others skirted the edge of the law, taking the shorter way through Frankish lands; but bribes and threats and promises lived little longer than water in the desert. To pass in safety, they must pass swiftly or not at all.

  To him, for this little while, this alone mattered: no knife would touch him while his master had need of speed.

  No. He had no master. He had only captors.

  The caravan began to move. Perforce he moved with it. He found that he could pace just short of the lead’s farthest extent, and breathe air that was almost clean, and raise his head a little above the dust of the caravan’s passing.

  He found himself dancing, because it was easier than walking. His belly was hollow. He regretted now that he had not drunk more deeply of the water which had been so plentiful for his taking.

  Foolishness. He wanted to die.

  His body had a mind of its own. It wanted to live. It wanted to live and be whole.

  With every ounce of will he had, he made himself plod like the gentlest nag in the caravan. No one took overmuch notice of him. He was tethered and he was docile. The mares had all the guards to themselves: some, barely more than foals, were given to straying.

  The whole long line of them wound out of the horse-market up the broad expanse of the Palace Way to the Gate of the North that looked upon Arabia. They passed beneath its echoing arch, out under the blue vault of the sky. Away westward glittered the Nile, broad as a sea, and beyond it the white splendor of those works of Jinn and giants, the Pyramids of ancient Giza.

  Desert besieged all that country, but here the river was lord. The earth was black and rich beneath Hasan’s feet, Nile earth, bursting with fruitfulness. A myriad of green scents entranced his nostrils. Grass grew near the road, tantalizing for that he could not reach it. Fellahin toiled in the fields that ran down to the river; water birds cried in the rushes there, and somewhere far away roared a bull of the Nile.

  The gate was well behind them, the dry land shimmering ahead. Hasan had skittered round to the Nileward side of his camel, pretending to shy at a shadow.

  He sensed no eye upon him. He had found, in skittering, the limit of his tether. He reared suddenly, plunging, twisting.

  For an eternal moment he knew that he had failed. The tether snapped. He stumbled, tangling his feet, half falling.

  He stopped, amazed. He was free.

  Someone shouted. His body mastered his sluggish mind. It wheeled, gathered itself, sprang into flight.

  The man, rousing, mastered the beast, guided it toward the river and the green thickets. The beast was pure joy, pure speed. The earth had no power to bind it. The wind was singing in its ears. He laughed: a shrill neigh of delight.

  Horses had left the caravan. He heard them behind him. They were swift, those tamed creatures, but they were burdened with the weight of men and weapons; and they did not run of their own free will. He was free, winged, scorning their bondage.

  They divided, circling. Meaning to cut him off. He swerved, darted, skidded. The hunt was closer. So too, by a degree, the river. His mind was emptying of aught but flight. To reach the water. The water, the green, the birds calling.

  Hooves. Ahead. Many. Too many. Despair smote deep. Defiance slew it. He screamed his challenge. He plunged through green into a full company of horsemen, rearing, striking, slashing. They scattered. He laughed. Men cried out. One snatched at the trailing remnant of his tether. Hasan swept him from the saddle, storming over him, rolling him screaming underfoot.

  This was war. It was sweet. Sweeter even than freedom.

  But sweeter still was the mare who stood alone. Poor lonely beauty, she cried in her abandonment. She yearned for ease of the pain that was on her: the blessed torment of her season. He left the battle and the hunt to give her solace.

  Nets fell about him, bound him. Struggle only bound him the tighter. The strength of many hands cast him down.

  He lay and gasped and knew that now, if he must, he could die.

  Men stood over him. They spoke of him. They would not forget him easily, nor forgive. One of them was dead.

  How true a prophet his father had been. Rape, and now murder. Only apostasy had not yet stained him; but there was time yet. Iblis would have him. He was all lost, utterly damned.

  A stallion could not weep. A man could, in his heart, in deep and honest sorrow. For what he had lost. For what he had never known he had.

  “What will you do with him?”

  A young voice, that, and imperious. His own had been like it once.

  He could see the man who shrugged. The horsedealer himself, with dust and sweat on him and anger snarling in him. “Shoot him, if I had any sense, young lord. But I paid hig
h for him. I’ll geld him and take him with me. If he dies, so be it: Allah has willed it.”

  “That is summary justice,” said the princely boy.

  “Well now, young sultan,” the horsedealer said, “there’s justice and there’s justice. I’m a man of business; I’ve no place in my caravan for a rogue, and no time to waste in coddling him.”

  “What if I offer for him? Will you sell him?”

  The horsedealer was honestly amazed. The men round about were dismayed. One even ventured to remonstrate: a eunuch’s voice, sweet and sexless. “Sell him? Have you forsaken all good sense?”

  The boy ignored him. “I will take the beast off your hands. He is, as you say, no good to you, and he owes me a debt of blood.”

  “He’s not kehailan,” the dealer said.

  The boy laughed like water running. “Why, sir, you are an honest man! For that I’ll pay an honest price. Less,” he added, “the value of an apprentice fowler who knew no better than to seize the rein of a charging stallion.”

  “Master,” the eunuch said. “Master, you will not.”

  “Old nurse,” the boy said. “Old nurse, I will.”

  As indeed he did. Hasan could admire his spirit, if not his sense. The horsedealer was left with gold in his purse and peace in his heart. Hasan’s new lord remained with a slain servant and the beast who had slain him. Hasan would not have taken amiss a spear in the heart.

  At the boy’s command, the men with the nets let them go. Hasan did not move. Gingerly, sparking acrid with fear, they unbound him. They gave him no occasion to burst free. They flung ropes over him, tightened them.

  “No!” the boy cried.

  They stopped, staring.

  “Let him up,” their master said.

  With dragging reluctance they obeyed. Hasan drew his feet beneath him. Men tensed. Steel glittered in a hand or three. Hasan snorted his contempt, heaving his body erect, shaking himself from nose to tail.

  For the first time he saw the one who had bought him. Not a prepossessing figure. Thin and dark, not overly blessed with height, but pleasant enough to the nose, for a man. No fear in this one, though Hasan laid back his ears and stamped. The boy laughed his sweet laugh, bowing low. “Peace be with you, O my sultan.” Hasan curled his lip. The boy clapped his hands. “See! A wit as well as a warrior. Come, sirs; I think he’ll follow us. We’ve mares enough among us.”

  That was not why he followed. He hardly knew the truth of it. Weariness, yes, and thirst unto desperation, and blood guilt. And curiosity. To see what this mad boy would do next; to watch the servants watch their master, and to taste their respect for him. No one had ever respected Hasan when he walked as a man. Loved him, obeyed him, even feared him when his mood was dark. But respected him, never.

  Once more Hasan trod the streets of his own city. The way back from the river had sapped the last of his strength. What little he had left, he hoarded, walking as slowly as his captors would let him. They were vigilant; when once he tugged at the rein, yearning toward a fruitseller’s stall, a hard hand drew him back.

  Hungry, thirsty, nigh fordone, he did not know the house to which he was led, until the gate had clanged shut behind him. He stood upon the raked sand of the stableyard, guarded by a wary groom, and tried to deny it. Allah would not allow it. That he should have come here. That he, a Muslim, a descendent of the Prophet, should be owned at all; and by the one whose name this house proclaimed. One lordly house was very like another. There were many lordly houses in this quarter. Surely it was not the one it seemed to be.

  There above the stable door was set a carved stone like no other in his memory. It had come out of old Egypt; it had found a resting place upon that lintel. A man in a chariot, bow drawn, his horses stretching to their full and glorious speed, skimming through rushes, startling a flight of birds. He had told himself tales when he was young, of that pagan charioteer and his horses and his hunt. He had mounted his first gentle nag in this yard, dwelt in this house, known every curve and corner of it.

  Until the Turks came out of Syria. Aid, they called it: defense of Egypt against the warring Franks. Invasion was the truth of it. They drove out the infidels. They slew the caliph’s vizier; they cast down Cairo’s princes; they hounded the caliph to his death. There would be no other: not of the true line, the holy line, the line of Fatima that had stood so long against the lying sons of Abbas in their lair in Baghdad. The Turks had seen to that. Fatima’s white banners were all fallen; Abbas’ black battle standards darkened the towers of the city.

  The caliph’s kin lived yet, to be sure, but they lived in prison. No man of them might ever see a woman; no woman might ever see a man. There would be no children born to any child of the royal house.

  Ali Mousa had escaped that cruel mercy. His blood was holy but not royal; he was suffered to keep his women and his son and his freedom. But he had been a loyal servant of the caliph, and for that, he had paid. The house of his fathers was taken from him to be a lair of Turkish dogs.

  Of one dog above all. One hound of a Turk: Yakhuz al-Zaman. They had fought together against the Franks, he and Ali Mousa. In one bitter battle, a son of al-Zaman had fallen to his own stupidity. He charged a Frankish knight head-on, he in his light mail on his light swift desert pony, the knight a tower of steel with a lance twice as long as a man, mounted on a giant among horses. Ali Mousa had striven to beat the boy aside; had only fired the young fool’s temper. The knight had spitted him for his pains.

  His brother saw him die. No marvel of intellect himself, wild with grief, he cried down curses upon Ali Mousa’s head; and there in the battle, with Franks in their hundreds to sate his lust for blood, he sprang howling upon the sharif. Ali Mousa raised his sword in swift defense. But the young fool’s mare swerved, shying from a Frankish mace; the sweep of Ali Mousa’s blade, checked too late, cut him down.

  Al-Zaman took his revenge. Not Ali Mousa’s life. That, he could not have: his lord had forbidden it. But Ali Mousa’s house, lands, wealth—those he could take. And did. And kept them in undying enmity.

  Enmity that waxed for that Ali Mousa had prospered in his despite. The young Kurdish emir Yusuf, to whom almost by chance the rule of Egypt had fallen, had taken a fancy to the sharif. He would not return what al-Zaman had taken, but he could and would recompense Ali Mousa in full for all that he had lost.

  Hasan had learned to curse two names only of all that were. The name of Iblis, and the name of Yakhuz al-Zaman.

  Now he stood in the house that should have been his own, in the hands of al-Zaman’s servants. Owned, it would seem, by al-Zaman’s own son.

  But al-Zaman had none. They were all dead in that one battle. His wives had borne him none thereafter; no slave had done as Ali Mousa’s Circassian had been blessed to do, and given him the manchild who set her free and won her the name and honor of a wife.

  The young hunter dismounted, eyes upon Hasan, approaching him. He tried to seem meek, but his body had its own will in the matter. His ears flattened. He sidled. His heels itched to shed Zamani blood. For surely it was that: nephew, cousin, adopted son. A Turk to his thin brown fingertips, however well he aped good Arab manners.

  The black eunuch loomed over his charge. “No,” he said, laying hands on the narrow shoulders. “No, mistress. See how he looks at you. He is a demon, that beast, a red Shaitan. He hungers for your blood.”

  A most percipient eunuch. Hasan lunged. The groom went down. Hasan hurtled upon the Zamani whelp.

  Checked, bucked, veered.

  Mistress.

  It was. His nose had been telling him so, incessantly. This hunter in turban and boots, riding like a man, this thin young person with the face and bearing of a boy, was quite as female as the mare with which she had trapped him. He stood and stared at her and knew the face of his geas.

  Men swarmed upon him. She snapped a word; they fell back. She came, stepping slowly.

  No. His whole body refused. To serve a woman; and this of all women. Al-Zaman’
s get. The devil’s own.

  He backed away, ears flat, skin twitching. One blow and he would have her, and revenge, and freedom; even if that freedom was death. But he had never knowingly struck a woman. He could not make himself begin.

  She stopped. He stopped, hating her, powerless to strike her down. She smiled slightly. Her hand stretched. He snapped at it. She slapped him. Not hard, but his nose was tender; it stung. His head snaked out, teeth bared.

  It caught. Someone had crept up, snared his lead. He turned on the skulker. The man clung like a leech; an army sprang to his aid. Hasan waged red war against them all.

  oOo

  It was thirst that conquered him. Even hate needed water to live; and the sun was merciless. He let himself be herded at last into cool dimness, the scent of water, the bliss of its caress upon his burning throat.

  Bolts slid. His head flew up. He was trapped. Imprisoned. Walled in.

  The walls did not yield for his climbing of them. The manger, the water basin, chipped and shattered under the battering of his hooves. He flung himself from end to end of his prison. He wielded his weight against its door. He screamed with all the power of his lungs.

  The door vanished. He fell into light. Blessed open air. A passage. Beyond, freedom. He bolted for it.

  Again, bolts slid. He wheeled. Sand scattered underfoot. The passage was gone.

  These walls were wider, paddock-wide, and sky stretched over them. His wits were coming back. He paced the limits of the space. It was more courtyard than paddock, bounded in walls. One end was a portico, roofed and pillared. He found a deep bed of sand in the shade there, and basin and manger, and no door to trap him.

  He shed his halter. It was difficult without hands. The wall helped him, and his own rubbing and twisting, and a hind foot wielded with care after he half stunned himself with an ill-aimed stroke. The damnable binding loosened, slipped. A toss of his head sent it flying wide. He pursued it, trampled it, danced a war-dance on it. Buy him, would they? Bind him, would they? Now let them see what they had bargained for. He raised his head and trumpeted defiance.