We sat for several minutes, Holmes contemplating the sequence of events and I regretting the death of this man I had never met, until eventually the aroma of bread joined that of coffee, and we descended to take our midday meal.
When we had finished eating, the men lit their cigarettes and Holmes narrated the last scant minute of the life of Mikhail the Druse. “He was coming down into the wadi. He must have known someone was after him, because he was moving quickly, at a greater speed than is wise on this terrain, which caused him to skid and slide. He may not have known that the man with the rifle was there on the other side until the first bullet went through his turban…” He paused to lay a tuft of white threads on a flat stone. “He did wear the usual white Druse turban, I take it? I thought so. When the bullet went through it, he panicked, jumped and fell, caught himself on that rock with the black vein in it”—Ali and Mahmoud turned to look at the hillside—“and the second shot hit him, a flesh wound that bled quickly. It was on the left arm; there’s a partial hand-print farther along. This was the second round.” He took the flattened bullet from his robe and put it beside the scrap of fabric. “You can see the track of his flight down, even from here. Across the slide area, jumping to the boulder, he fell, rolled, and caught himself briefly on the dead tree, pulling it from the ground. He lost his bag then, turned to reach for it, and as soon as he stopped moving the third shot came, and he died. A short time later, the pursuer whom Mikhail was fleeing came down the same hill in Mikhail’s tracks, at a considerably slower pace. He checked to see that the Druse was dead, then went through his possessions. I would suggest that he removed something that had been written with that recently sharpened pencil we found in the pack.”
“How can you know that?” shouted Ali. “You were not there watching! Or were you?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing with sudden suspicion.
“Don’t be a fool,” Holmes replied in an even voice. “I read it on the stones. Ali, I know that Mikhail was your friend. I am sorry, but this is how he died, with thirty seconds of fear and a clean bullet.”
“And the knowledge of failure,” said Mahmoud bitterly.
“Perhaps we can change that failure.”
“But how do you know this thing?” Ali insisted. “You found the bullet and the threads, but how do you know of the second man?”
“It could not have been the man with the rifle who went through the Druse’s pack because the marksman was on the other side of the wadi, and by the time he reached this place the blood would have been dried. It was another man, already on this side, who reached Mikhail’s body and stepped in a patch of wet blood. He tracked it over to where the bag had fallen, paused there, shifting his position three or four times, and then went down to the floor of the wadi, where marks of his passing have been erased by the rising water. He wore boots,” Holmes added. “Stout ones. If you wish, I will show you the marks left by the bullets and Mikhail’s passing.”
“That will not be necessary,” Mahmoud said. “We have spent too much time here already. For all of us to examine the hillside risks attracting attention. Let us pack up and go.”
Ali was too troubled to argue. He merely rinsed out the coffee cups in one of the rain pools and stowed them away on one mule, tied the broad iron saj on another, and set off with Mahmoud up the wadi.
We followed them with the mules rattling along behind. After a while I asked Holmes, in cautious Arabic, if he knew where we were going.
“Mahmoud certainly knows,” he replied helpfully, and then ordered me to recount the history of my wide-spread family members. In Arabic, of course.
I stumbled over kinship terms and the stony ground for a long time as we continued our way up the wadi, rising always towards the tops of the cliffs. In the late afternoon the wadi’s youthful beginnings, bereft now of easy sand, forced the four of us to scramble and crawl, tugging and pushing at the outraged mules, until finally we emerged onto a high plain, a vast and empty highland lit by the low sun of evening. ?
There was not a soul in sight.
To my astonishment, Ali’s reaction to the emptiness was to tuck his skirts up a bit, settle his knife more firmly into his belt, and without a word of explanation set off towards the north in an easy jog-trot. He was soon out of sight. We followed at the speed of the walking mules, pausing to eat cold bread and let the mules rest when the last rays of the sun had completely disappeared, then resumed our march when the faint light from the new moon gave outline to the objects around us. As the moon drooped towards the horizon, bobbing lights appeared on a distant hill, and shortly after that Ali’s shout came through the night along with at least half a dozen other voices.
The men greeted Mahmoud as a long-lost brother, kissing his hand and bestowing compliments with such exuberance that I wondered if perhaps, despite their appearance and manner of speech, they were Christians—or else Moslems who had overlooked their religion’s injunction against alcohol. It appeared, however, that this group comprised a large percentage of the population of an isolated village, and visitors, particularly those not only known and useful but trustworthy as well, were cause enough for an intoxication of spirits.
Moreover, I thought that, unlike similar demonstrations of enthusiastic greeting we had seen in the previous days, this one was actually based on true friendship and long acquaintance. The vigorous middle-aged man walking at Ali’s side met Mahmoud with a hard, back-slapping embrace and loud, easy laughter. What is more, Mahmoud responded, giving the man a grin of unfeigned pleasure and slapping his shoulders in return. The expression looked quite unnatural on his face, but it lasted while the other men crowded around and took his hands in greeting.
After we were introduced all around and the initial drawn-out welcome was giving way to a redistribution of burdens to the newcomers’ backs, I witnessed an odd little episode. The headman, whose name had been given as Farash, held up the lantern he was carrying and peered at Mahmoud’s face. He even reached out and touched the ugly scar with one finger.
“It is well?” he asked quietly.
“Praise be to God.”
“And now Ali.” Farash shook his head. “You and your brother, you always come to us hurt.”
Mahmoud laughed—actually laughed. “When Ali has a sore, he fears an amputation. His head is fine.” Then, so quietly that I could barely hear, he said to the man, “Mikhail the Druse is dead.”
“Ah!” It was a sound of pain Farash made, and then he asked, “Killed?”
“Shot.”
Farash shook his head again, mournfully this time. “Another good man is lost,” he murmured. After a moment he stirred, and with a deliberate effort pulled himself back into good humour. “But you and Ali are with us again, and we shall feast.”
The festive air of the villagers carried us across the uneven ground and through a couple of minor wadis until without warning we were parading into a tiny village, through a sparse collection of mud huts with lean-tos holding them upright, past a well and some bare trees and up to the grandest villa in town, a windowless box twelve feet square and so low that even Mahmoud, the shortest among the four of us, had to stoop. There were clear signs that chickens and at least one goat had recently vacated the premises, and the fleas were appalling, but the honour was great.
Every man in the village was soon in the hut with us, with the women crowded outside of the door. Cigarettes were taken and glasses of cool water given while coffee was made and distributed by the ancient village mukhtar, whose house this obviously was. After the coffee had been drunk, four men staggered in carrying a vast platter heaped high with rice that glistened with grease in the lamp-light, topped with a mound of hastily cooked and venerable mutton. The combination of hasty cooking and the age of the animal did not make for an easy meal, at least for those of us who tried actually to chew the meat, but we filled our bellies on rice and bread and the less gristly bits, drank more coffee, and then sat listening to the fireside tales of wartime valour and pre-war derring-do until t
he wee hours, when the mukhtar abruptly stood up, shook our greasy hands with his, and departed, taking his village with him, all but a few shy and giggling children who lurked around our door until the morning.
The next day a bank holiday was declared, and all day long people from neighbouring tents and houses drifted in for the fun. Mahmoud was kept busy writing letters and contracts, Ali sat beneath a tree with needle and thread, repairing the mule packs and pads while talking easily to acquaintances, and Holmes squatted in the shade of our fine villa and absorbed the local colour and gossip. I, however, beat the dust and the wildlife from one of our rugs and took it out to a distant grove of bare fruit trees beside an irrigation ditch, trading fleas for flies and dozing to the rhythmic creaking of the mule that worked the dulab, drawing water from a deep well. I slept the sleep of the just and the profoundly weary, unconcerned about potential threats and undisturbed by the occasional passer-by checking on my well-being, until the noise of thundering hoofs made me bolt to my feet, certain that I was in the path of a cavalry charge or at the least a stampede. It was only a horse race, and it was won by a remarkably unfit-looking beast with a gloating, exuberant Ali on its back. Mahmoud, I gathered, won a great deal on his wager.
In the late afternoon the cook fires started. Following the afternoon prayers, I led the mules down to the nearest rain pool to scrub their dusty hides, accompanied by what seemed to me a number of children disproportionate to the population as a whole, who were soon wetter than the mules, if not as clean. The youngsters found me greatly amusing, a mute but comprehending boy who wore strange glass circles on his face and laughed at their antics, and I returned to the village in the midst of a noisy, wet entourage.
While I was restoring the animals to their hobbles, I heard someone call my name. To my surprise, when I looked around I saw Mahmoud, surrounded by a knot of men. He was tucking something that looked like money away into the breast of his robes with one hand, and gesturing to me with the other.
I brushed some of the mud off my garments, straightened my turban, and went to see what he wanted. To my even greater amazement, when I approached he flung his heavy arm around my shoulders and turned to his companions.
“Amir is a very clever boy with the knife,” he said, enunciating carefully enough for me to follow his words. “I will wager his throwing arm against anyone.”
The juxtaposition of my grandiose name with my unprepossessing appearance had its usual effect, reducing the villagers to helpless laughter. Mahmoud grinned like a shark and kept his arm firmly across my shoulders while I stood and wondered what was going on in that devious mind of his, and what he had in store for me.
When the villagers realised that he was seriously proposing to bet on the knife skills of the youth with the ridiculous name, they made haste to accept before this madman had second thoughts. If he wished to give back all the money he had won from them during the day, who were they to object? A couple of the men scurried off to devise a suitable target, the remaining dozen began to sharpen their knives, and Mahmoud, giving my shoulders a final hard embrace, turned his head and whispered in my ear in clear English, “Do not be too good at first, understand?”
I had a sudden coughing fit to conceal my astonishment, and turned away to watch the men bringing up a length of tree trunk and some stones to prop it upright. Mahmoud proposed to run a con game on these villagers, absorbing what remained of their hard-earned cash after Ali’s unlikely victory at the horse race. Oh, I had done the same myself in English pubs armed with darts, but I had only done my opponents out of a few drinks, and they had always been people who could afford the small loss. This was something else, and I disliked the taste in my mouth.
I pulled myself up. Mahmoud knew what he was doing; these were his people, after all. Maalesh, I said myself—as no doubt the villagers would say before too long. I only wished I could feel so easy.
Under the tutelage of Holmes and a number of others, over the last four years I had accumulated a variety of odd abilities. I could pick a lock laboriously, drive a horse or a motorcar without coming to grief, dress up in a costume as a sort of amateur-dramatics-in-earnest, and fling a fully grown man (an unprepared and untrained man) to the ground. My only two real gifts, gifts I was born with, were an ear for languages and a hand for throwing. Be it a rock or a pointed object, my left hand had a skill for accuracy that I could in all honesty take no credit for, although I had on occasion found it tremendously useful. As I was about to again.
The men giggled at the sight of my thin and obviously inadequate little throwing knife, and they slapped their knees whenever my first throws went wide of the mark. Mahmoud began to look worried— well, not worried, but he took on a degree more stoniness and his right hand crept up once to rub at the scar—when three largish wagers were swiftly lost. The villagers were ecstatic. I tossed my knife in my hand and gave Mahmoud an even look, trying to get across a mental message.
Either he received it or he well knew how the game ought to be played. In either case he trusted me. He reached into his inner pocket and drew out a considerable stash of money, which he proceeded to count out, milking the drama. He laid it on the ground in front of his feet, and looked back at me.
We took those villagers for a lot of money that afternoon, with the rest of the village, men and women, looking on. I did try to lose a bit when the less prosperous men had their bets in, but it was not always possible. My losses ceased to concern Mahmoud when he saw what a good investment they were, both in the short-term cash returns when over-confidence blossomed and in the long-term benefit of goodwill. It is never a good idea to alienate your host by making him feel completely swindled.
But we did take the money of poor men. And I did not care at all for the way Mahmoud had manoeuvred me into taking it.
Eventually, enough cash had changed hands to lower the interest in the contest. My last challenger stood down, jovial to the end, if rueful. Mahmoud folded away a thick wad of filthy paper money, tucked two heavy handfuls of coin into the purse at his belt, and gave me a look under his eyebrows that was very nearly a complacent smile. As the crowd thinned, I looked over their heads and saw our companions, standing and watching with all the others. Ali gave me a sour look, Holmes an amused one. I squatted down to sharpen the tip of my blade on a stone, slipped it back into my boot, and joined them. Feeling, truth to tell, a bit cocky but more than a little ashamed.
A long Bedouin tent had made an appearance on the hillside behind the village, and the smell of coffee was heavy in the air. The children who had followed me when I washed our mules and had been kept at bay during the contest now swarmed back to claim me, but I gratefully escaped my enthusiastic admirers by insinuating myself far enough back in the tent to be among the adult coffee drinkers, perched between the mukhtars rather messy falcon and his equally ill-tempered saluki dog.
The evening followed the standard programme for a semi-formal soirée: coffee, food, coffee, sweetmeats, tobacco, coffee, and talk. An immense brass dish was carried in by six men, laden with four whole roasted sheep that had been stuffed with rice and golden fried pine nuts. Tonight the meat was delicious and actually tender. The rice was flavoured with a small, tangy red berry called sumac and the bitter, refreshing coffee that followed was fragrant with cardamom. Narghiles and regular pipes came out, the rhythmic drum of the coffee mortars fell silent for a while, the irritating “music” of the one-stringed violin and the wailing song of its player ceased, and the stories began. To my surprise and pleasure, I found that I had no great trouble in following the thread of talk. Under the pressure of continuous use, my Arabic was improving faster than I had thought possible.
The mukhtar opened. He was a once-large man now reduced to bone, stringy muscles, and bright colours: blue robe, green turban (a claim to descent from the Prophet), and a beard reddened with henna (sign of a devout pilgrimage to Mecca somewhere in his past). His teeth were worn to a few brown stumps on his gums, but his eyes were clear, his hands stead
y on the narghile as he smoked and talked of his part in the recent war, shooting from the high ground at the retreating Turks.
Then his son—Farash, who had spoken so intimately to Mahmoud the night before and been told of the death of Mikhail the Druse—told a complicated story about some relative who had married a woman from another tribe and ignited a feud that had lasted for sixty-two years, although I may have misunderstood this. Holmes contributed a blood-curdling narrative concerning a Howeitat clan feud begun by a marriage ceremony which greatly amused the men, although I couldn’t see quite why. Ali made a brief remark that seemed to link women and donkeys, but again, I did not understand the jest. He then told a lengthy and energetic tale about two men and five scorpions, and at some point it dawned on me that the two men he was talking about were none other than Davy and Charlie, the abusive British guards on the Beersheva road, and that the sly revenge Ali was describing explained his high spirits when he had rejoined us with the armaments on the road north of town. I laughed loudly with the others, earning myself an uncertain glance from the narrator.
Next came an ancient villager, speaking in a high and monotonous voice, who launched off on a story that wandered through people and places, touching down on the occasional battle, that nearly put me to sleep and made a number of the others restless. After half an hour or so the mukhtar reached decisively for his leather canister of coffee and the roasting pan, and the continuity of that story was soon broken by the serving of coffee.
When we had all drunk our compulsory three thimblefuls, Mahmoud handed over his tiny cup and began to speak.
Silence fell throughout the length of the tent as the children were hushed in the women’s side, and all listened to the strong voice speaking of the outside world. Mahmoud was a good speaker with a compelling, even dramatic, manner, surprising for so normally reticent a person. The story he told the village concerned the final conquest of the Turkish Army three and a half months before.
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