by Marvin Kaye
A few deep laughs joined the old man’s. I was curious and hoped he would speak more. Certainly I already knew that the traditional ruling family of Riyadh had been driven from the city and the Rasheedi were considered upstarts and pretenders by everyone in the region. But the two families had been feuding for a very long time and one of them ascendant over the other meant nothing, or so I understood.
“So one of the new royalty has hired you as guides?” I prompted just a bit more discussion of the matter. “Surely he has other matters more important to attend.”
Ibn Abdullah smiled slowly, and this time there was a hint of slyness under the white teeth. “Ah, perhaps the rest of the family does,” my host agreed with me. “But young Mahmud has just returned from studies at Oxford and also in Switzerland and thinks himself rather above us here. Tell me, sir, have you ever been to Switzerland? Is there some reason that he would learn to deny his people, his heritage, his duty to God there? Those who go to the West all carry the taint of irreligious thought and no longer think that the ways of the Murrah are good enough any longer. ‘This is a new age,’ they say. ‘We should be settled and have automobiles.’ Tell me, sir, what is your thought on automobiles?”
“That they would be quite absurd in the desert,” I answered truthfully. “They are made for carefully paved roads. Here the sand would get into the engine and then it would break down.”
The old man slapped his palm against his knee. “Just so! And when it has broken, you cannot eat it or drink from its stomach or its blood, you cannot use it to warm you. And it has no sense, it cannot smell water under the ground, it cannot tell which wells are tainted and which are sweet and pure. No, I do not think that a camel is of the past and that this automobile is the way we shall overcome the desert. Though I do not hate all things Western,” he said expansively, trying to be more generous towards me. “Look.” He pulled back the white sleeve of his beautifully laundered and pressed thobe to display a Swiss timepiece as fine as any I have ever seen on a gentleman’s arm, and I lost no time in telling him so.
“Then I must give it to you,” he said immediately, taking the watch from his wrist.
“No, not at all, sir,” I protested. “It would be unseemly and ungentlemanly for me to accept such a gift on so short an acquaintance.”
“Not at all,” the old man insisted, tossing the watch into my lap. “I would be honoured if you would wear it always and remember our friendship. Besides, it is not so good to have it. Our young people must learn to read the shadows and the sun to know when it is time to pray, and not become the slaves of some foreign timepiece that could break. Only Allah’s own clock can keep time precisely enough so that we will never miss the correct time for worship. Everything else is false.”
Try as I might I could not refuse. Arabians, especially the Bedouin, judge themselves not by education and achievement as we do in England, but by piety, generosity and courage. It gave Ibn Abdullah great esteem among his people to be so conspicuous in his gift-giving. Even knowing that did not erase the last shadow of guilt, however. I should have realized that this was the proper time to have admired the watch on his wrist, to say how finely it suited him, instead of simply stating the obvious fact of its fine precision and manufacture. But the Bedouin are more sensitive to such things and while I was quite comfortable with the language and customs of the city-dwellers in places like Egypt and Syria, there were subtle differences with these desert dwellers that promised at least some diversion on the long journey ahead.
I thanked him deeply and then put the watch on my wrist. It has resided noplace else since, not only to honour Ibn Abdullah but to honour all those people of the Peninsula that I came to know and find quite admirable and respectable in a way that is not generally commonly assumed in England. There the Arabs are seen as innocent natives, all quite noble and primitive when they are not being sneaky and underhanded.
The moon rose high above the camp in a midnight blue sky. It was a thin crescent sliver shimmering among the stars, and in this clear dry air it was easy to distinguish hundreds of the lesser stars. They spilled across the sky so richly that it seemed that all heaven was ablaze with hundreds and hundreds of tiny lights. Indeed, there were even stars I could not recognize or name, and briefly wondered whether they all had names in English.
The boy who had poured my coffee showed me quickly to a sleeping place, a pile of elaborately woven rugs in the men’s area of a tent. Two others were already asleep and snoring, one of them being my driver Salah.
“Please to let me show, if you need. I happy to serve, honour the Murrah,” the boy said in heavily accented English. I was quite surprised that he attempted the language at all. I wondered idly if he were literate.
“Indeed, I can read the Koran and the Hadith and can write well enough, though my tutor said that my letters are harder to read than a camel track in the sand,” he replied in elegant Arabic. There was no question at all that he had been well schooled. “Will you be travelling with us? I would like to improve my English and my French, too, if that is possible.”
Indeed, the fact that this band was crossing the Empty Quarter and leaving immediately was an advantage. My errand in Riyadh should take no more than the morning, and it appeared that the group would not leave until the next day in any case. Besides, that would mean that no one could easily track where I was headed; Mycroft did impress me with the need for discretion in this task. There would be no record of my asking for guides, buying supplies, and making a fair show in town.
“If that is amenable to your leaders, I should find it very convenient,” I replied. “But surely you can practice English and French with this Rasheedi. He was educated at Oxford, so I understand, and studied in Switzerland. I should think that he would be most accomplished in those languages.”
The boy sneered. “I will not speak with him at all. He is the enemy of my family and some day I shall bury him in the desert and pray for his soul.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You are of the House of Saud, then?” I asked, though I hardly needed the question. The Rasheed family had unseated the ibn Saud from their royal position in Riyadh, though if it weren’t for the education he had received I could easily believe that this boy was Bedouin and felt that the Rasheeds had been responsible for some personal misfortune. However, he was far too well educated for a Bedouin, and too commanding in the company of his elders. The mark of Royal bearing was unmistakeable.
“I am Abdul Aziz ibn Saud,” he said proudly.
Not simply a member of the Royal family then, but the deposed young prince himself. Mycroft had spoken highly of him and his father in years past, and praised the boy’s keen intelligence and political bent of mind. “He will be a fine king one day, and if we do well by him he will be a good friend of England for life,” I remembered Mycroft saying from the recess of a great leather wing-back, veiled in cigar smoke.
But the ibn Saud had been displaced by their old rivals the Rasheeds, and the boy had been driven into the desert with his sister Noura. The whereabouts of his parents and other family members were still unknown, and very likely they were dead.
“Your Highness,” I said, rising and nodding sharply to him as I would to a European aristocrat of high rank. “I am honoured to make your acquaintance. My name is Sherlock Holmes and I am in Arabia on a mission from my Queen.”
“Sherlock Holmes?” the boy asked quickly. “I have read about the way you have solved many difficult crimes. Always those were the best things in the English papers that I studied. It is I who am honoured to meet you.”
He said the last in very creditable English.
That was when I decided that I would indeed accompany this band of Bedouin across the Empty Quarter. I wanted to know more about this Saudi princeling who seemed so much at home as a Murrah youth. And I wanted to meet the Rasheed who would be traveling with us as well. The information might never become important, but at least it would provide some intellectual stimulation while on the way.
The next day I accomplished my business in Riyadh by noon. Salah had driven me to both of the houses where I was to call, and threw in the ride back to the Murrah Bedouin camp for free. “It is too late to get a good fare now, anyway, and I enjoyed meeting ibn Abdullah,” the carter said with a pleasant smile. “And I will be home before the gates close for the sunset prayers.”
I gave him a generous tip before I approached the aged Bedouin leader to ask for a place on the journey. Ibn Abdullah might have lived all his life in tents on the sands, but he was as fierce bargaining over fees as he was flying his hawks. Finally we agreed upon a price that was rather higher than I would have liked and well below the budget Mycroft had set. I would have my own small tent furnished with several rugs and blankets and take my meals with the Rasheed party, which would be served by the teenage boys in the band.
I requested that Abdul Aziz be assigned to me, to pack and set my tent, to care for the camel I would ride and to make sure I was properly mounted every night. The old man insisted that there was no Abdul Aziz among the boys and that he had never heard of the House of Saud. I shrugged and said there was a boy who wanted to practice some English and French with me, and that was the one, no matter which name I had “misunderstood.” Ibn Abdullah nodded sagely and agreed that I would have such an assistant.
The Rasheed party did not arrive until the next day near sunset. They rode fine horses that ibn Abdullah insisted be sent back to Riyadh. “They will never survive the Empty Quarter,” he said, but as he surveyed his guests it appeared that he thought they would not survive it either.
There were four men in the group. Ahmed al-Rasheed was precisely the kind of Arab noble one found with such ease in Western universities. He was handsome enough, and would have cut quite a figure had he not already begun to indulge in the excesses for which his people are known. He was perhaps twenty-five years old, but already his body was thickening and his face had heavy jowls. His skin was red and blotchy, attesting to far too much fondness for drink. He would find the long road ahead difficult indeed, then, since ibn Abdullah was not about to tolerate any alcohol in his camp.
Though I am not myself a Muslim, I must admit that I admired the Murrah leader. He allowed no deviation in his faith, not in himself and not among his people. He could not be a hypocrite of any form; indeed, his absolute honesty and unfailing devotion was among the most unswerving I have ever observed. I wondered why Ahmed al-Rasheed, who appeared so much the opposite of the old man, had chosen to travel with him.
Among al-Rasheed’s traveling companions, two were servants and the third was a school friend of lesser rank among the Arab people but most likely as much wealth. He had the unlikely name of Khalid ibn Peterson, which presaged a story I was curious to hear. This Peterson probably had far more native ability than al-Rasheed, and less devotion to his vices—as is common among such friendships in England.
I watched idly, smoking my pipe, as the servants put up Rasheed’s tent. It was a grand affair with at least three rooms, several brass chandeliers and tables and several chairs carved of fine wood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A second tent was provided for the friend, much smaller but equally opulent with oil lamps and worked brass fittings.
Abdul Aziz, the young prince in his role as my squire, squatted in the shadows a bit behind me as we watched this luxury constructed in the midst of Bedouin austerity. “He does not respect his betters from the desert,” Abdul Aziz spat. “He tries to show he is superior and he only proves his own foolishness. And he thinks he will eliminate me on the way—he is a fool, indeed.”
I took a deep pull on the pipe. “It is never a good idea to underestimate one’s enemies,” I pointed out neutrally. “Though I would be interested in knowing why you find his furnishings foolish.”
“He is a fool because we will use every drop of all the water we can carry crossing the Empty Quarter,” the boy replied firmly. “We must rely on the camels, and even many of them have died on this trail. Everything they carry, every bit of weight, must be balanced against how long the camel can go without water. And if they are asked to carry too much they will die of thirst like any other beast. If the camels die, we die.”
“Hmm,” I said, gazing at the tent that was now finished and ready for occupancy. The blend in my pipe was excellently satisfying, and Abdul Aziz’s assessment of the Rasheed fit my own. The boy certainly had more talent than many Royals through Europe. Indeed, the Foreign Office could do worse than wish that some of the Hapsburgs were so astute.
Shadows moved around the sand and Abdul Aziz slipped away before Rasheed’s servant approached me. He bowed and touched his heart and forehead as if to a believer. “Please, sir, my master would like you to honour his poor tent as a guest at dinner tonight. He has heard that you are the great Sherlock Holmes of England. And as he has spent much of his life in that fair land, he considers it his true home and you a countryman of his.”
“I would be delighted to join your master at dinner,” I replied. “Let me change into something more appropriate and I shall be with him directly.”
The servant bowed again and scampered away. I ducked back into my tent with its serviceable hurricane lamp and took off the long white thobe I wore along with the native headdress. I was not attempting any deception by the guise, but the Arab robe is much cooler and more comfortable than woolen trousers and a starched collar. People who live in harsh climes know best about how to make them most tolerable, and it would be senseless to ignore their collective wisdom. However, I dressed in one of three suits I had brought along, with a fresh shirt-front and collar, to represent the England that Ahmed al-Rasheed knew. Then I crossed the small space between our tents and was ushered into what appeared to be a city palace from the inside. I was seated on a carved chair softened by silk pillows while my host came out and greeted me effusively. Then he took the ewer of rosewater while a servant held a bowl beneath my hands. Al-Rasheed himself poured scented water so that I might wash, and did so so graciously that I wondered if I had misjudged him and he would prove to be a delightful companion. Al-Rasheed offered the towel to dry my hands, and then went through the entire ritual for his friend Peterson as well.
“It is so fortunate that we have some civilized company here,” he said. “Mr. Holmes, we are deeply honoured by your presence among us. Who in all the fair land of England has not read of your most brilliant service to the cause of justice? You are the last of King Arthur’s knights among us, and your presence in my humble tent is a memory that I shall cherish all my life and into the next world as well. Especially since I heard you have in the next world . . .”
“Thank you, sir, though I fear you overstate the case. The papers have made far more of my inquiries than is appropriate. My putative death suits the mission I am on. And it is I who am honoured to meet you, a prince of the reigning House of Rasheed. And you as well, sir,” I nodded in the direction of Peterson.
“This is Khalid ibn Peterson, a friend of mine from our earliest days in school,” al-Rasheed said.
“Peterson?” I asked blandly. “That is not an Arab name.”
“No indeed, sir,” Peterson said. And as I looked at him closely in the light it was evident that his was a mixed heritage. He had the dark eyes of Arabia and the profile, but his skin was too light for this desert sun by half and what hair showed under his keffiyah was auburn, something between the deep near-black of the Arabs and what I would expect was his father’s blonde. Unlike al-Rasheed, he wore his thobe as if it were the dress of a king, and from his movement and his face I could see clearly that he was slim and well muscled and had not fallen victim to the indulgences of food and drink and sloth.
“My father came to Arabia as a student of Sir Richard Burton and one of his party. His name was George Peterson and his father, my late grandfather, was Richard Peterson, Lord Phillipsbourne,” Peterson said in unaccented English. “My father studied Arabic in Oxford, and also the True Faith, but it remained merely an intellectual exe
rcise for him until he came to Arabia to further his knowledge of the region. As I understand it, my grandfather was quite proud of his talent for languages and foreign cultures and hoped that some day George would be appointed Ambassador to Egypt or the Ottomans.
“But my grandfather was not so pleased when his only son went off to Arabia with the great adventurer Sir Richard Burton. My father has always had a great passion for the truth, and for discovering things for himself. He left Burton’s party to study with a great scholar of Islamic law in Jedda, and became so convinced by his teacher and what he had learned that he converted to the Faith of the Prophet in his second year here. He had to give up a great fortune in England, as his family quite disapproved and disinherited him.
“My father was so highly regarded by his teacher that he was brought to Mecca as a great jurist and introduced to the leading imams of that holy place. One of these leaders, the great poet Isa ibn Khalid, was so very impressed by the young Englishman that the poet arranged a match with his daughter. My mother was the greatest prize in Mecca, as famed for her piety and learning as for her beauty. Her father was one of the great imams of the Holy Places as well as a distinguished poet, and quite wealthy besides. Therefore, I grew up in a good Arab home with all the advantages of education and property. But what I hold most dear and for which I have the greatest gratitude is that both my parents and my grand-parents were people of great wisdom and deep faith. After my three uncles died in battle, my grandfather adopted my father as his son, and now that my grandfather is so old, my father stands to inherit the whole.”
“But George Peterson did inherit from the Petersons,” I said, remembering the papers. “He was the only male heir of direct lineage, and a very old codicil in some ancestor’s will insisted that the property belong only to a direct descendant. The courts upheld the decision even though much of the family was horrified.”