Monsoon

by Wilbur Smith

  Dorian shaded his eyes and looked out to sea. The ships were closer now. Four stately dhows with high poops and matting sails, the flotilla of Prince al-Malik. They had been in sight since dawn, but the wind was against them, forcing them to tack and tack again. Dorian narrowed his eyes, judging their progress, and he saw that it would be many hours still before they could enter the bay and anchor off the beach.

  He was impatient and restless. It was so long since last he had seen the Prince, his adoptive father. He turned away from the edge of the cliff, and started back along the path that led to the ancient tomb. It stood on the crest of this rocky promontory, its dome bleached by the desert suns of a hundred years.

  Al-Allama and the sheikhs of the Saar were still at prayer, their rugs spread in the shadow of the tomb, turned in the direction of the holy city that lay hundreds of miles to the north across this burning land. Dorian slowed his pace, not wishing to arrive while they were still at their devotions.

  The Saar did not know that he was not of Islam. On the instruction of the Prince, he had concealed that from them during all the time he had lived among them. He knew that they would never have taken him so readily into the tribe if they had guessed the truth, that he was an infidel. They believed that he was under a vow of penance not to pray in the community of believers, but to make his devotions to Allah in solitude. At the hour of prayer he would always leave them and wander away into the desert.

  Alone he prayed to the God of his fathers, kneeling in the wilderness, but the words were becoming more difficult as time passed and his devotions more perfunctory. Gradually this strange sense of having been deserted by his own God was overcoming him. He was losing his childhood faith, and he felt bewildered and bereft.

  He stopped on the crest of the hill and watched the men kneeling and prostrating themselves in the shade of the mosque. Not for the first time he envied them their immutable faith. He waited at a distance until they had finished and begun to disperse. Most mounted up and trotted down the cliff path to the village below. Soon there were only two men left near the tomb.

  Batula, his lance-bearer, was with the two camels, squatting with infinite patience in the patch of shade the animals threw. The bronze war shield was tied to the saddle of Dorian’s riding camel, and in the leather boot were his jezail and long lance, its point bright in the sun and the green pennant fluttering. These were all the accoutrements of the desert warrior.

  Al-Allama was also waiting for him, seated out of the wind, on an outcrop of red rock. Dorian turned towards him and strode up the path. The first streaks of grey now showed in the mullah’s beard but his skin was still unlined, and despite the months of hard riding and lean rations, his girth had not shrunk. He inclined his head to one side as he watched al-Salil, the Drawn Sword, come towards him.

  Al-Salil was tall now, and under the long, swirling robes he was lean and hard, his flesh pared down and tempered by the desert. He came on with a swinging gait, like the pace of a racing camel, and there was an air of authority and command in the set of his shoulders and the carriage of his veiled head.

  ‘His name was well chosen,’ al-Allama murmured to himself. When Dorian reached him, he made a sign of invitation and the young man dropped down beside him on the rock. His legs curled under him, he sat like one of the Saar, gracefully at ease, the curved sword in its silver and leather scabbard across his knees. Only Dorian’s eyes were visible: the rest of his face was covered by the tail of his headdress, which was wound loosely over his nose, mouth and chin. The eyes were piercing, green and bright, and despite the desert sand and glare they were not shot with blood. Slowly Dorian unwound the cloth that covered his face and smiled at the mullah. ‘It is good to have you back. I have missed you, holy father,’ he said. ‘Nobody to argue with, my life has been dull indeed.’

  ‘Dull?’ Al-Allama hid a smile. ‘It is not what the sheikhs have told me of your stay with them. Sixteen of the enemy to your own lance.’

  Dorian stroked his beard, which sprang into curls under his fingers, crackling in the dry desert air, bright as newly forged copper. ‘The Ottoman are easy to kill,’ he said deprecatingly, but the smile remained on his lips.

  He is still as winsome as the child I first met on the island of Daar Al Shaitan. Al-Allama studied his face: the high, thoughtful forehead of the scholar offset by the hard line of mouth and jaw that bespoke the warrior and the leader of men.

  ‘Why have you brought me here, old father?’ Dorian asked, leaning forward to look into his face. ‘You always have a reason for what you do.’

  Al-Allama smiled and softly asked a question in reply. ‘Do you know whose tomb this is?’

  Dorian glanced up at the weathered dome and crumbling walls. ‘That of a holy man,’ he said. There were many such ancient tombs, some guarding the scattered oases of the interior, others on the cliffs and rugged hills along the Omani coast of southern Arabia.

  ‘Yes,’ al-Allama agreed. ‘A holy man.’

  ‘I cannot read the name,’ Dorian said, for most of the inscriptions on the wall had been abraded by the sand-laden winds. There were many, some quotations from the Koran but others Dorian did not recognize. Perhaps they were the words of the dead man himself.

  Al-Allama rose to his feet and circled the tomb, pausing to read any of the inscriptions that were still legible. After a moment Dorian stood up and followed him. ‘There is a quotation from the saint who lies within. Perhaps it is of interest to you.’ Al-Allama pointed high up the wall.

  Dorian deciphered some of it with difficulty. ‘“The orphan who comes from the sea,”’ he read aloud, and al-Allama nodded encouragement. ‘“With the tongue and the crown of the Prophet . . .”’ Dorian stopped. ‘I cannot read the next line. It is too faded.’

  ‘“With the tongue and the crown of the Prophet, but with darkness in a pagan heart,”’ al-Allama helped him. Dorian went closer to the wall, peering up at it.

  ‘“When the light fills the pagan heart, he will bring together the sands of the desert that are divided, and his just and pious father shall ride upon the back of the elephant.”’

  Dorian came back to al-Allama’s side. ‘What is it? I do not recognize it from the Koran. As a poem, it rhymes neatly, but it makes no sense,’ he said. ‘What are the tongue and crown of the Prophet? How can an orphan have a father? Why the back of an elephant?’

  ‘The Prophet was crowned with red hair and, of course, his tongue was Arabic, the sacred language,’ al-Allama pointed out, and stood up. ‘In the palace of Muscat stands the Elephant Throne of Oman, carved from mighty tusks of ivory. I will leave you to consider the rest of the prophecy. If he applies himself to it, even such a dull student as al-Salil should be able to find a solution to the riddle of the holy Taimtaim.’

  ‘Taimtaim!’ Dorian exclaimed. ‘This is the tomb of the saint?’ He stared at the eroded inscription, and now the saint’s name appeared, like a figure seen through a dark mist. ‘This is the prophecy! These are the words that have shaped my life.’ He felt a sense of awe, but it was mingled with anger and resentment, that he had been deprived of so much, and been made to suffer for these few mystic words, written so long ago and now only barely legible. He wanted to challenge them, to protest and to refute them, but al-Allama was halfway down the path into the valley, leaving him in this desolate place to confront his destiny.

  Dorian remained there for many hours. Sometimes he paced angrily along the walls of the tomb, searching the other inscriptions for any further fragments of knowledge. He read them aloud, testing the sound of the words rather than the sense, trying to divine the hidden meanings that lay behind them. Sometimes he squatted and studied a single word or phrase, then he sprang to his feet again and returned to the inscription that al-Allama had pointed out to him. ‘If I am indeed the orphan you speak of, then you are wrong, old man. It can never come to pass. I am a Christian. I will never accept Islam.’ He defied the ancient saint. ‘I shall never bring together the sands of the desert,
whatever your meaning there.’

  ‘Lord!’ Batula’s voice broke into his meditation, and Dorian stood up. ‘The ships.’ Batula gestured down the cliffs. ‘They are entering the bay.’

  Batula had the camels up and moving towards the head of the path. Dorian broke into a run, catching them easily before they started down. He called to his own beast as he came loping up alongside her. ‘Ibrisam! Silk Wind!’ At the sound of his voice, she turned her head and looked down at him with those great dark eyes with their heavy double fringe of lashes, and roared softly, lovingly, to welcome him. She was a noble full-pointed Sherari. He swung up into the high saddle seven feet above the ground with a single effortless movement. He touched her neck with the tip of the long riding wand, and shifted his weight forward in the saddle, which was cushioned with the finest Nejd leather and hung with luxurious trappings, tassels and straps dyed with shades of red, yellow and blue, woven carrying-nets embroidered with silver stars and metal tissue.

  Ibrisam responded to his touch and movement, stretching into that elegant, comfortable gait that once had carried her beloved master at ten miles every hour for eighteen hours without check, from the tongue of Wadi Taub across the grisly plain of Mudhail, strewn with the white bones of lost caravans, to the brackish waters of the oasis of Ma Shadid.

  She loved Dorian like a faithful dog. After a full day’s journey through the terrible places of the sands, she would not sleep in the desert night unless he lay down beside her. No matter how fierce her thirst or hunger, she would break off from drinking or grazing to come to him and nuzzle him, begging for his caress and the comfort of his voice.

  They flew down the path, overtaking Batula before he reached the floor of the valley. The entire encampment was in turmoil, camels roaring, men shouting and ululating, firing joy shots into the air as they poured down through the groves towards the beach. Ibrisam carried Dorian to the head of this wild procession, and across the golden sands to the water’s edge.

  When Prince al-Malik stepped ashore, Dorian was the first to run forward to greet him. His face was unveiled and he fell to his knees and kissed the hem of the Prince’s robe. ‘May all your days be golden with glory, lord. Too long my eyes have hungered for sight of your face.’

  The Prince lifted him to his feet and gazed into his face. ‘Al-Salil! I would not have known you, but for the colour of your hair, my son.’ He embraced Dorian, holding him to his breast. ‘I can see that all the reports I have had of you are true. You have become a man indeed.’

  Then the Prince turned to greet the sheikhs of the Saar, as they also pressed forward and surrounded him. When he had embraced them, the Prince moved slowly up the valley in a triumphal procession. The desert warriors strewed palm fronds at his feet, called blessings upon him, kissed the hem of his robe and fired their jezails in the air.

  A leather tent, large enough to cover a hundred men, had been set up beside the well in the shade of the grove. The sides were open to allow the evening breeze off the sea to waft through, and rugs and cushions covered the sandy earth. The Prince took his seat in the centre of the floor and the sheikhs gathered around him. Slaves brought pitchers of well water for them to wash their hands. Then they presented huge bronze platters of food, piled high with yellow rice swimming in melted camel-milk butter, and fragrant stews of mutton and spices.

  Al-Malik took a morsel from each dish delicately in his right hand. Some he tasted himself, other titbits he fed to the men around him. This was an honour he was bestowing, a mark of his favour, and these hard-bitten, hawkish warriors who could not count the war wounds that scarred their faces and bodies treated him with the respect and affection of loving children for their father.

  When they had eaten, the Prince gestured for the still brimming platters to be taken out to the ranks of common warriors who squatted in the open, that they might share the banquet.

  The red sun wheeled down behind the hills, and the stars pricked through the darkening desert sky. They washed their hands again, and the slaves lit the hookahs. The sides of the leather tent were lowered, the sheikhs clustered closer around the Prince and passed the ivory mouthpieces from hand to hand. The thick, curling clouds of Turkish tobacco smoke billowed around their heads. In the yellow light of the lamps they began to talk.

  The first to speak said, ‘The Porte has sent an army of fifteen thousand men to take Muscat. Yaqub has opened the gates of the city to them.’ The Sublime Porte was the might and authority of the Turkish Ottoman empire, its seat in distant Istanbul. Al-Malik’s elder brother, al-Uzar Ibn Yaqub, the weak and dissolute Caliph of Oman in Muscat, had at last capitulated to the Ottomans without offering battle. Allah alone knew what bribes and assurances he had received, but he had welcomed the occupying army of the Porte into his city, and now the freedom and independence of all the desert tribes was in the most terrible jeopardy.

  ‘He is a traitor. Allah is my witness! He has sold us into slavery,’ one of the other sheikhs said. They growled like a pride of lions, and looked to al-Malik.

  ‘He is my brother, and my Caliph,’ said the Prince. ‘I am oath-bound to him.’

  ‘By God, he is no longer a ruler of Oman,’ a sheikh protested. ‘He has become the plaything of the Porte.’

  ‘He who has sodomized a thousand boys has become the bum whore of the Turks,’ agreed another. ‘By his treachery you, and all of us, are released from our vows of fealty.’

  ‘Lead us, mighty lord,’ urged another. ‘We are your men. Lead us to the gates of Muscat and we will help you drive out the Ottoman, place you on the Elephant Throne of Oman.’

  One after another they spoke, and all said the same thing. ‘We have pleaded to you to come to us. Now we plead for you to lead us.’

  ‘We, the Saar, are your oath-men. We can raise three thousand lances to ride at your back.’

  ‘What of the other tribes?’ the Prince asked, not rushing into such a dire decision. ‘What of the Awamir and the Bait Imani? What of the Bait Kathir and the Harasis?’

  ‘We of the Saar cannot speak for them,’ they answered, ‘for there are blood feuds between us and many of them. But their sheikhs wait for you in the sands. Go to them and, God willing, they will raise the war lance and ride with us to Muscat.’

  ‘Give us your decision,’ they begged. ‘Give us your decision, and we will give you our oath.’

  ‘I will lead you,’ said the Prince softly and simply, and their weathered brown faces lit with joy. One by one they knelt before him and kissed his feet. When he held out his curved dagger, they touched the steel with their lips. Then they took his hands, lifted the Prince to his feet and led him out of the tent to where the warriors waited in the moonlight.

  ‘We give you the new Caliph of Oman,’ they told their men, who shouted their allegiance and fired their muskets into the air. The war drums began to beat, and the eerie blast of the rams’ horns echoed from the dark cliffs above the grove.

  In the joyous commotion, Dorian came to his father and embraced him. ‘I and my men are ready to take you to meet the sheikhs of the Awamir at the wells of Muhaid.’

  ‘Then let us ride, my son,’ the Prince agreed. Dorian left him and strode away through the grove, calling to his men, ‘Saddle up! We ride at once!’

  They ran to their camels, calling them by name, and soon the entire valley was in uproar as they broke camp. The camels bellowed and roared as they were loaded with the leather waterskins, and the tents were collapsed and packed.

  Before the rise of the new moon, in the cool of the night, they were ready to ride, a long column of robed, veiled men on their tall beasts. The Prince’s camel was a creamy yellow female. When he had seated himself in the saddle, Dorian commanded her to rise. With a groan she lurched to her feet. Al-Malik sat her easily: born in the desert and a warrior from boyhood, he made a noble picture in the first rays of the rising moon.

  Dorian sent a vanguard of twenty men ahead, and a rearguard to come up behind. He rode close beside the Prince as
the column started up the valley, and headed out into the desert.

  They went swiftly, all racing camels and, but for the waterskins, lightly burdened. They climbed up and out of the valley and the desert stretched ahead, infinite and still, purple and dark hills of rock and shining dunes of silver sand stretching away to the north. Above the winding serpent of men and beasts, the stars were a dazzling field, like banks of wild white daisies after rain. The sand muted the fall of the camels’ broad pads, and the only sound was the creak of leather and the occasional soft murmur of a voice warning, ‘Beware! Hole.’

  Dorian rode at ease, lulled by Ibrisam’s rhythmic gait, and the harsh desert miles unwound beneath him. The dark hills formed strange, wondrous shapes around them, filled with shadows and mystery, and the stars and the crescent moon of Islam lit their way through the night. He gazed up at the sky, not merely to navigate through the darkness and the broken wilderness, but caught up in the mesmeric thrall of the ancient patterns of light and their inexorable march through the heavens.

  Strangely, this was the time when he felt closer to his past, when he seemed to feel the presence of Tom still near to him. They had spent so many nights together under the starry firmament when they were lads aboard the old Seraph, perched up in the rigging. It had been Aboli, Big Daniel and Ned Tyler who had taught him the names of all the navigational stars, and he whispered them aloud now. So many had Arabic names: Al Nilam, Al Nitak, Mintaka, Saif . . .

  Riding in the company of the man who had become his father, and these wild falcon-fierce warriors whom he commanded, Dorian pondered the ancient prophecy of St Taimtaim, as he had seen it written on the crumbling walls of the old sage’s tomb. Slowly he was overcome with an almost religious sense of some immutable destiny awaiting him here under these desert skies.