The Sleeping Sands

by Nat Edwards

  ‘Um, I found this,’ he said, pulling an object from the folds of the belt and offering it to Layard. ‘It must have dropped on the trail. I think you should have it.’

  Layard accepted the object from the man, who coughed nervously and walked back to the rafts. Layard examined the gift. It was his pocket watch.

  Once the whole caravan had crossed the stream, the path rose steeply once more, zig-zagging up the far side of the valley. At length, they reached a high barren plain where the fierce winds bit at Layard’s soaked and exhausted body. Still the party drove on. The plain rose gradually at first and then more steeply to another snowy pass. As they entered the narrow pass, Layard was called forward to the head of the caravan by Shefi’a Khan. He joined the khan just as they emerged from the pass.

  ‘Look there, Frank,’ said the khan, gesturing before them. ‘There is Kala Tul.’

  Below them, the fading late afternoon light showed their path winding down a hillside even steeper than the last valley, finishing in the bed of what seemed to Layard to be a mercifully dry river bed. Beyond that, far below them, a rocky plain stretched out. The plain was dominated by a high mound, upon which a great black-walled castle squatted.

  ‘Home,’ said the vizier simply.

  CHAPTER 13

  MR JOHN MURRAY

  50 Albemarle Street

  Mayfair

  London

  England

  Kala Tul. October 14th 1840

  My Dear Sir,

  I learned with pleasure from M. Boré of the interest that you have taken in my proceedings in this country and have furthermore discovered that I am indebted to you for the kindness you have shown in helping me to pursue my labours here. I am hopeful that I will be able to soon provide you with some update of my travails for inclusion in the Quarterly and only regret that I cannot furnish you at this point with fuller information than private letters will afford.

  I have to beg your indulgence for the brevity of this letter. Paper is scarce in the Bakhtiari country and I am grateful for the gift of some from the Persian official who is travelling with me and who has kindly offered to take this letter to Isfahan for posting on his return. It is in recognition of his generosity that I seek to spare certain unnecessary details of my explorations which I shall be in a position to expand on more fully at a later date. Suffice it to say that my investigations continue and I am hopeful that I will soon be able to provide information about the local antiquities that you and other men of learning among your circle may find of great interest. Having completed my investigations in the Syrian desert and moved through Babylonia into Persia, I am now more convinced than ever that an excavation within this region may prove illuminating. But more of that in due course.

  As to other matters, I would be grateful if you could pass on my regards to Mrs Austen. I sent her a letter from Julfa, but I fear that the post may prove erratic during these troubled times, particularly if it is required to pass through that “Ultima Thule” of the Pashalic that is Baghdad. With the plague spreading across the country, it feels as if God’s own earth is crying out against misgovernment. You may reassure Mrs Austen that I am in far safer and noble-minded hands here among the Bakhtiari than at any point since I left Jerusalem. In fact, you may tell Mrs Austen that her nephew is held in high esteem by none other than Mehemet Taki Khan, the great chief of the Bakhtiaris. Following some small services that I was able to perform, the Khan has become a great friend of mine. In fact, prior to my departure for Sûsan to continue my investigations, the Khan has insisted on taking me lion hunting with him in the mountains. A great honour indeed. Mrs Austen may take some comfort from the fact that I am living with the ease and contentment of a medieval baron among these most noble people. I am even learning the finer points of Persian poetry and letters, the task of my instruction in which having been taken on by a most civilised member of the local clergy. Who knows? My next letter may well be written in the flowing Persian script itself.

  I thank you once again for the kind assistance I have received from you in my absence.

  Believe me,

  My Dear Sir

  Yours very faithfully

  A H Layard

  The Matamet finished reading the letter and carefully folded it before handing it back to his official.

  ‘Shall I post the letter?’ asked the official.

  ‘Wait two weeks,’ said the Matamet. ‘Then post the letter as the Frank requested.’

  ‘He says very little about his objectives in the region,’ observed the official.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the Governor flatly, ‘he has told me everything.’

  He leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes sparkling in an otherwise emotionless, flaccid face.

  ‘Summon my captains,’ he said in his unearthly, feminine voice. ‘our waiting is over.’

  * * *

  Arriving at Kala Tul, Layard had felt as if he had travelled back through the centuries to some medieval court. Mehemet Taki Khan’s castle was full of servants, wives and children, courtiers, advisors and countless visitors and petitioners. Layard was given a space in the crowded guest quarters, where he felt acutely conscious of the watchful eyes of the Matamet’s official.

  Along with the official, Layard shared his quarters with a number of important visitors. They included two physicians, one from Isfahan, the other, from Shuster, a noted and ferocious-looking seyyid, a holy man claiming descent from the Prophet; half a dozen local chieftains who owed fealty to the Khan and another seyyid, also from Shuster, who spent most of his time quietly reading the Koran. The other guests had greeted Layard politely but coolly, and had made a point of asking him as an infidel to refrain from sharing the same dishes at mealtimes. The castle’s resident mullahs had been less circumspect in their hostility to Layard, protesting at his accommodation in the castle but they had been vociferously over-ruled by Ali Naghi Khan’s wife. Layard had been pleasantly surprised too to observe that Lady Moon’s mother had been supported in her opposition to the other mullahs by Ali Naghi Khan’s own holy man; he who had travelled to Kala Tul with the caravan. Immersed in the complexities and sophistries of court life, he felt that he was in need of all the friends he could muster.

  The great Khan of the Bakhtiari himself was not at home. In his absence, the affairs of Kala Tul were overseen by his three remaining brothers. On his first evening at the Castle, after having enjoyed the luxury of a bath, Layard was invited into the great hall of the castle to meet them.

  The hall had a rough grandeur. Layard’s first impression was of a shadowy space that flickered with the warm light of burning torches and coloured glass lamps. It smelled strongly of wood-smoke, rose-water and warm sheepskins. Its solid walls and heavily beamed high ceiling echoed with a constant murmur of conversation, chanting of mullahs and the singing of poetry. The castle seemed to soak up the multitude of quiet voices in its shadows and orchestrate them into a gently throbbing heartbeat. The court had none of the savage barbarism of Yusuf Effendi’s chambers or the cruel terror of the Matamet’s palace. Neither did it have any of the luxury or hospitality of the Sufi’s house. It felt to Layard to be a place of ancient power, rooted more strongly in the world of the Persian epic poems that the Bakhtiari were so fond of reciting than in any modern era. Standing in it, Layard allowed himself the fantasy that the castle was sleeping, dreaming of its antique glories, while he, a transient and parasitic thing tiptoed across it; gently lest it should wake.

  Layard stepped forward to meet the Khan’s three brothers. Each brother was strikingly different from the others yet all three gave the same impression to Layard of having been grown from the fabric of the castle itself. He had encountered Bakhtiari chieftains before – on the road with the Ghûlam and in Isfahan – but for the first time he was meeting them in the very seat of their power, surrounded by all its trappings and majesty. The fine fabrics and arsenal of weapons with which they were adorned no longer seemed outlandish or exotic to the Englishman but rat
her the natural manifestation of the castle into human agency. In them, the castle’s ancient dream had become a living reality into which he had clumsily trespassed; a pale, transparent ghost projected by a distant modern world.

  ‘Mr Layard, you are most welcome to Kala Tul,’ said one of the three brothers. ‘I am Au Khan Baba. These are my brothers, Au Kerim and Au Kelb Ali. I must apologise for the absence of my elder brother, the Khan. He will join us, no doubt in a day or two. His vizier and my other brother’s wife have both spoken highly of you. Please join us and tell us a little of your travels.’

  Au Khan Baba was a handsome man, a little shorter than Layard yet with a noble and warlike bearing. He spoke courteously but with the air of a man used to command. Layard accepted his invitation and spent the evening in the company of the three brothers, discussing his journey and taking the opportunity to observe the Bakhtiari chieftains at close quarters.

  Au Kerim was the quietest of the three. He was short and heavily muscled, with a scarred face from which dark, brooding eyes scowled. He showed most interest in the conversation when it turned to matters of combat and became most animated when asking Layard how his double-barrelled gun operated. Periodically, he would excuse himself from the company to inspect the castle’s watch, who manned a battery of heavy matchlocks, swivel-mounted on its turrets.

  ‘My brother Kerim never rests,’ apologised Au Kelb Ali. ‘He lives and breathes war. He is our brother’s most unyielding captain. Please forgive him his lack of manners. He finds conversation a little tiring.’

  Au Kelb Ali was a complete contrast to Au Kerim. He was slender and tall, with a pale consumptive complexion. His eyes sparkled with a quick intelligence and he was the most vocal in conversation, asking questions of Layard about all manner of details of his journey. He was showed a keen interest in Layard’s opinions of the situation at the border; of the mood of the Shah’s camp and also of Layard’s impressions of the Matamet. His most marked enthusiasm however was for information about any strange or unexplained events on the road. He interrogated Layard at length about the ruined Bakhtiari castle he had visited near Freydan.

  ‘And there was no sign of the people, you say?’ asked Au Kelb Ali, pausing momentarily to cough into a silk handkerchief; behaviour that seemed strangely incongruous in a wild warrior chieftain.

  ‘None at all,’ replied Layard, ‘save for the brother of the local khan, who arrived after us.’

  ‘We are hearing too many such tales at Kala Tul,’ frowned Au Kelb Ali. ‘Since we returned from the high summer pastures, it seems as if every day travellers come to Kala Tul with stories of deserted settlements and missing people. Our brother will no doubt wish to discuss this matter further with you.’

  On his first night in Kala Tul, Layard slept fitfully, woken periodically by the snoring of his companions in the cramped guest quarters and troubled by dreams of something dark and nameless prowling among the shadows of Kala Tul. He was happy the next morning to leave the oppressive walls of the castle to walk among the tents and booths of the Khan’s followers that clustered around its foot. News spread quickly among the Bakhtiari that a Frank was among them and Layard soon found himself surrounded by a group of supplicants asking for his assistance with various maladies and injuries. The Bakhtiari considered all Franks to be supernaturally adept physicians and Layard was faced with a busy day responding to their requests. He sent to the castle for his medical kit and set about administering to those of the sick and injured that he felt best able to help.

  He was preparing some salts in the tent of a young man who had complained of excessive stomach cramps when a polite cough alerted him to the presence of Seyyid Kerim, who had quietly entered the tent and was watching the Englishman go about his preparations.

  ‘My colleague and the doctor from Isfahan were called to Kala Tul to attend to the Khan’s son,’ he explained. ‘I came with my colleague from Shuster to provide company on the road, although I have no knowledge of medicine. The physicians have been treating the boy for days, but it appears their knowledge is not sufficient to cure him. His condition has deteriorated daily.

  ‘When word reached the boy’s mother that you were a physician, she asked me to come and see you to ask if you might cure her son.’

  ‘I am no doctor,’ protested Layard, ‘I simply have some European medicine with me and a little experience from my travels.’

  ‘Still, I have heard that Frankish medicine can work wonders,’ said Seyyid Kerim gently. ‘The Khanum has been most kind to me during my stay here. I would ask you for her sake to see the boy.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Layard, ‘I only meant to say that my knowledge would not compete with that of two trained physicians.’

  ‘No doubt you will find no disagreement from either of them on that count,’ smiled the seyyid.

  ‘Outrageous!’ blustered the seyyid’s colleague, his black eyes flashing angrily beneath a pair of bushy eyebrows. ‘Preposterous! It is intolerable to even consider an infidel treating the prince.’

  ‘I must concur with my learned colleague,’ squeaked the physician from Isfahan, a little weasely man with a tall goatskin cap, ‘there is no evidence that these foreign remedies have any efficacy whatsoever. Both they and the hand that administers them,’ he looked sideways at Layard, his eyes narrowing, ‘are most unclean! They would do nothing but exacerbate the boy’s condition.’

  ‘With respect, Khanum,’ insisted Layard, addressing the Khan’s principal wife, ‘your son suffers from an intermittent fever, by which I have myself been afflicted during the course of my travels. If you would simply administer the quinine I have given you, there is a strong chance that he will recover.’

  ‘My Lady, this heathen has no qualification in the matter,’ said the Seyyid angrily. ‘It is a widely known fact that diseases which infect the infidel are of a different nature completely than those that afflict a clean body. Why, the differences of diet, environment and physiology alone are such that the illnesses that affect Europeans cannot be considered in the same class. They have no clean, natural treatment for these diseases and must rely instead on their alchemy.’

  He gestured angrily at the packets of quinine that the boy’s mother now held.

  Khatum-Jan Khanum turned with pleading eyes to her husband’s chief mullah, who had impassively watched the exchange.

  ‘Is it so?’ she asked him. ‘Will the Frank’s medicine do no good for my son?’

  The mullah took the packets of quinine and walked to the doorway of the anteroom in which they were gathered. He carefully unwrapped a copy of the Koran that he carried in a bag and pulled a chain from a pouch at his belt upon which hung a brass pendant in the shape of the Hand of Fatima, set with fragments of coloured glass. He knelt on the floor and opened the Koran, flicking randomly through its pages so that it fell open on a chance verse. He held the chain up so that the pendant caught a narrow beam of sunlight penetrating the doorway. He began to read in a low, singsong voice, while twisting the chain so that bright patches of red and blue light flickered across the book, the walls and his own face. He held the quinine out so that it too was dappled with the dancing coloured light. After a few moments, he replaced the Koran and the chain and rejoined them.

  ‘The augury is unfavourable,’ he said, handing the medicine to Layard. ‘The Frank’s medicines will not help the child.’

  The Khanum looked at Layard. For a moment, he saw a look of helpless anxiety on her face. In a moment, she had collected herself and, with a calm and gracious nobility, she dismissed Layard, thanking him for his time.

  ‘You must understand that I do not share my colleague’s views,’ apologised Seyyid Kerim, as they walked back to the guest quarters. ‘I believe that there is little in the way of physical differences between believers and infidels and that there should be a place for both schools of medicine in the modern world.

  ‘Still, the Khanum had no choice but to accept their advice,’ he continued. ‘If she had gone against an
augury by her husband’s mullah in his absence, it would have been akin to going against the word of the Khan himself.’

  ‘How are they treating the boy?’ asked Layard, still smarting at the mullah’s verdict.

  ‘With prayer,’ the seyyid replied, ‘and baths of melon juice and cold Shiraz wine. To this they add fresh water that has been poured into a porcelain cup containing verses of the Koran, written in ink. I understand all concerned agree that it is the best treatment for his condition.’

  ‘And they truly think that this magic will cure the prince?’ asked Layard, incredulously.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect an infidel to understand the power of such things,’ replied Seyyid Kerim, tolerantly. ‘They can be very effective, but I fear that the boy’s fever may be too strong for them.’

  ‘Then the boy may well die,’ insisted Layard.

  ‘That would be unfortunate,’ said the Seyyid. ‘I hear that his father returns tonight. If the boy dies, the mullahs might well augur that the treatment was polluted by the presence of an infidel in the castle.’

  ‘What would that mean for me?’ asked Layard.

  ‘Ah, that is a fate which could not be contemplated with indifference’ answered the seyyid. ‘Come, these thoughts are far too dark. If your days are truly numbered, then we should be filling them with thoughts of beauty instead. Tell me, what do you know of the sonnets of Hafez?’

  The sun had set behind the tall peaks when a rumble of hoof-beats and chorus of loud shouts announced the return of Mehemet Taki Khan to Kala Tul. Along with the other guests and every other adult male in the castle, Layard rushed to the hall to greet the Great Khan. When he arrived, he found the hall packed and crackling with excitement at the Khan’s return. In its centre, on a raised platform and surrounded by his brothers, his vizier and a group of white-bearded elders who served as his advisors, sat the Khan himself. Layard pushed through the crowd to introduce himself and to have the opportunity to inspect the man who held the power of life and death over not only the greatest part of the Bakhtiari people but also, Layard imagined may well soon be the case, over the castle’s English guest.