Scorpion

by Andrew Kaplan

  It was a language of incredible subtleties and shadings of meaning. Hidden in every phrase was a treasure-house of ambiguities and implications. Every word came from a root, usually made up of three consonants. Vowels, prefixes and suffixes were inserted to provide specific meaning and grammatical context. Thus, words with widely diverse meanings were all derived from the same root and often implied each other.

  He discovered that the art of conversation consisted not so much in surface communication, as in the exploration of the metaphors which are the only ways that human beings can truly communicate. Unlike westerners, who are concerned with apparent reality, Arabs, by virtue of the very language in which they thought, turned the most ordinary conversation into the abstractions of poetry. Arabs were not so much interested in facts as in truth, which is quite another thing.

  The harshness of the desert forced a discipline among the Bedu. Their lives were bound by many rules. It was forbidden to drink alcohol or eat pork, to converse with women outside your family, or even for a man to approach his wife during her time of the month. Yet the Mutayr never spanked their children. Nor did a man ever beat his wife. Those were abominations. All that it ever took to discipline Nick and the other children was a reminder of how intimately bound together their lives were.

  If a boy did something wrong, he would be told, “That is not the Mutayr way.” Once Youssef stood up after the iftar, which is the dinner that breaks the day-long fast throughout the holy month of Ramadan, without belching. It was a terrible breach of etiquette, comparable to a western boy spitting out his food in a restaurant. Sheikh Zaid looked at him with disgust and said: “Because of your bad manners I am ashamed to sit with my brothers. I wonder if you wouldn’t rather be a Hutaymi instead of a Mutayr.” Zaid stalked out of the tent and Youssef followed, his head hanging in shame.

  Real learning among the Bedu was accomplished by telling stories. Once Bandar, who was Nick’s enemy and never passed Nick without a sneer or a muttered word, snuck up behind Jidha and jammed his dagger between the she-camel’s hind legs. Jidha bucked wildly as a bronco, tossing Nick to the ground. Nick rolled to his feet and grabbed Jidha by the lip. He calmed her and, wadding his kaffiyah head cloth into a bulky bandage, used it to stem the camel’s bleeding. Bandar stood by, laughing.

  “Touch her again and I will forget that you are of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam against whom fighting is forbidden,” Nick said, his gray eyes smoky with anger.

  “Ra’iya,” Bandar hissed. Ra’iya were human cattle, the lowest form of infidel.

  Suddenly, Sheikh Zaid came up and glanced at the two angry boys. He had noticed Bandar’s constant abuse of the boy. Yet the little dhimmi always kept his temper. Even though he was only a child, he seemed to know that revenge was a dish best tasted cold. It can come to no good. I’d hate to be Bandar when the boy has grown to manhood, Zaid thought. He murmured the old saying: “May Allah make the end better than the beginning.”

  “Did you hurt the she-camel, my brother’s son?” Zaid asked.

  Bandar’s face flushed and he looked away, his bad eye faintly twitching. Once again, the little dhimmi had caused him shame. Sheikh Zaid raised his hand as though surrendering, something he often did when quoting a hadith of the Prophet.

  “The Messenger of God said: ‘While a man was walking on a road, his thirst grew strong. He found a well and descended into it and drank and was leaving, when he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, licking the ground from thirst. And the man said, “This dog’s thirst is like the thirst I had,” and he went into the well again, filled his shoe with water and gave the dog to drink. And Allah approved of his act and pardoned his sins. They said, “What, Messenger of God, shall we be rewarded for what we do for animals?” He replied, “Yes. There is a reward on every living creature,” Zaid said.

  Later, Zaid took Nick aside. They walked through a field of stone shingles outside the camp. “It is good you swallow your anger. Bandar is your father’s brother’s son. But beware how you nourish your revenge. The scorpion, after whom you are named, has a deadly sting. It is said that a trapped scorpion may sting itself rather than be defeated,” Zaid said.

  “I don’t understand,” Nick said.

  “Sometimes a man is slain by his own weapon, by the very thing he uses to protect himself,” Zaid explained.

  “Tell that to Bandar,” Nick said.

  Every Bedu loved stories, especially the tales of adventure. Often at night, after the recitation from the Koran, they would sit around the glowing coals in Sheikh Zaid’s tent and listen to old Mohammed tell the famous tales of the rawi storytellers. He told of the fabulous Omani sailor, Sinbad, who sailed from Muscat to the ends of the earth and of Khalid ibn al-Walid, the Moslem general who faced the fifty thousand Byzantine troops of the Emperor Heraclius at the battle of the Yarmuk. The Byzantines swore to stand or die and to prove it, they chained themselves together in ranks thirty deep. Shouting “Allah akbar!” the Arabs attacked the emperor’s soldiers, who fell like ripe wheat under the flashing swords of the Beduin. Heraclius, his army chopped to pieces in the narrow wadi, fled to Constantinople. The Moslems went on to conquer the Holy Land.

  But of all the tales, Nick’s favorites were of Antar, the Beduin warrior of the sixth century. The son of a Bedu sheikh and a black female slave, Antar was dark of skin and born of servitude. But he showed courage and won his freedom in battle. Antar rode a black stallion, faster than the wind, and fought the oppressors of the weak and the poor with his powerful sword. “With my sword will I destroy the oppressors, let Allah’s justice fall on me as He wills,” Antar vowed.

  Once Antar faced an army of forty thousand single-handed. His glittering sword scattered them like chaff in the wind. But no man is invincible. The great warrior was vanquished by a woman, the beautiful dark-eyed virgin, Abla, daughter of a great sheikh. “The eyelashes of my beloved from the corner of her veil are more cutting than the edges of sharp scimitars,” swore Antar.

  The fire burned low in the tent and even the wind fell silent as in a hushed voice, Mohammed told of Antar’s battle with the fiercest lion in the desert.

  “To prove his love for the fair virgin Abla, Antar vowed to fight the lion,” Mohammed said.

  “Ya Allah,” breathed Youssef, his eyes wide and full of wonder. Nick took Youssef’s hand. The two boys longed to be like Antar.

  “But to prevent Antar from escaping the wrath of the lion, his feet were bound by his terrible enemy, Munzar …”

  “May the raiders get him!” cried a voice in the darkness.

  “The lion crouched and sprang, looming larger than the biggest camel, but Antar leapt into the air and cleaved the beast in two with his sword,” Mohammed declared.

  “Ya Allah!” Nick murmured. Like Antar, he too came from a despised background, but his courage might yet win him honor, he thought. Antar was his hero.

  Al Aramah

  IN THE COOL SHADE, lulled by the gurgling sound of the water as it tumbled down over the rocks to the crystal pond, Abdul Sa’ad tried to return his thoughts to the infinite, the center. Reclining on his prayer rug after the afternoon salat, he inhaled deeply of the fragrance of the garden. As he glanced at the tall palms, the wildflowers and watered greens, he recited aloud the poetry of the Holy Koran:

  “‘Reclining there upon soft couches, they shall feel neither the scorching heat nor the biting cold. Trees will spread their shade around them and fruits will hang in clusters over them. They shall be served with silver dishes … and cups brim full of ginger-water from the Fount of Selsabil.’”

  He loved this peaceful oasis which sat in the middle of his country fortress surrounded by thousands of armed troops like the eye of a hurricane. How many millions had it cost him? It mattered not the blink of a gnat’s eye. Yet like the gnat, this Scorpion intruded on his serenity. With a sigh, Abdul Sa’ad turned his mind back to the report from Moscow.

  Those clumsy Russians had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, he tho
ught. Their crude Tartar mentality understood nothing of the interplay of plot and counterplot, the intricacies of the arabesque. They had the same answer for everything: more guns.

  The Americans were just as crude. Worse. They hadn’t even the excuse of being godless barbarians like the Russians. To the Americans, everything was money. They were like spoiled children. Allah had been too kind to them.

  He remembered his first trip to America, when he was in his teens. They took him to see Niagara Falls. He stood open-mouthed, his eyes wide as saucers.

  “When do they turn it off?” he had asked, unable to imagine that such a torrent of fresh water could be anything other than man-made. He remembered how his face burned as they all laughed.

  “Never,” they had said. And he knew in that very instant that Allah had damned them with an abundance that made them weak. Then they tried to corrupt Arabia with their evil.

  But he would show them the way.

  He plucked a sugared fig from a silver bowl and chewed it thoughtfully. Nothingness and sweetness; that is Islam. At the heart of the labyrinth is emptiness and submission. Absolute purity of thought, and physical sensuality. Allah had plucked him out even as he had plucked the fig from the bowl.

  Nuruddin had twice failed to destroy the Scorpion because he had not understood the nature of his enemy. An unusual mixture, this Scorpion: half Bedu and half American. But was this Scorpion a romantic who liked running around in a flowing sheet or was he truly dangerous?

  According to Moscow’s report, the Scorpion was a Moslem. That meant he was committed and therefore dangerous.

  He had lived as a Christian with the Bedu for years, and only then converted.

  How very odd, Abdul Sa’ad mused.

  Arabia, 1956

  NICK HAD BEEN LIVING with the Mutayr for nearly five years when war broke out between Egypt and Israel. They first heard the news in the souk in al Hasa, where he had gone with Sheikh Zaid, who wanted to buy some gold jewelry. The gold was for Faisal, so that he could offer a muttra, the bridal price he would have to pay in order to marry his cousin, Madawi. Sheikh Zaid held up a gold necklace. It gleamed like burning coals in the sunlight.

  “How do you know it’s real gold?” Nick asked.

  “If you don’t know the thing, you must know the man,” Zaid replied.

  “Ya Amaimi, weigh and judge, for gold cannot lie,” cajoled the gold seller. Sheikh Zaid drew a touchstone from the folds of his bisht and lightly rubbed the necklace against the stone.

  “It is by testing that we discern fine gold—and more than gold. As is the mold, so will the cast be,” Zaid explained to Nick. “Behold, it is as you say,” he said to the gold seller.

  A battered, colorfully painted Chevrolet rumbled down the dusty street, scattering goats and chickens.

  “Devil machines!” muttered the gold seller.

  “Soon these foreign machines will drown out the cry of the falcon in the desert,” Zaid said, his face troubled.

  The gold seller clapped his hands and ordered cups of sweet hot shay from a passing vendor. It was as the two men sipped and haggled over the price that the news swept the souk, like the breath of hot wind which warns of a coming sandstorm. Sheikh Zaid was thunderstruck. It was inconceivable that Arabs, even the slavish Egyptian fellahin, could be swept out of Sinai in only a few days by the lightning attack of the Jews.

  “They have won a battle, not the war. Some day we will push them back into the sea,” Zaid said.

  “What—and pollute the sea?” the gold seller laughed.

  On the ride back to their camp Nick pulled his camel alongside Sheikh Zaid and they discussed it.

  “Are we to hate the Jews?” Nick asked.

  Sheikh Zaid frowned. The world was changing in ways that were difficult to understand. For a time his gaze was lost in the distant burning plain.

  “That gold seller was wrong to curse them so,” Zaid said at last. “The sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael are both the sons of Father Ibrahim. Ours is a family quarrel. But they are wrong to steal the dira of the Falastin. Without his dira, how can a man live? Until they return the land, there can be no peace.”

  “They are good fighters, though,” Nick said.

  “It must be admitted. The Jews are exceedingly difficult to get rid of,” Zaid said with a rueful smile, urging his camel on.

  They stopped for the night in a vast sandy plain. As the sun set in a brilliant slash of red, Zaid performed the maghrib. They ate pita bread and dried meat, and brewed coffee over a fire made of camel chips. The night was cool and clear and a crescent moon hung like a silver pendant in the starry sky. Zaid, troubled by what had happened, spoke of the Jews in a quiet voice, as they reclined around the glowing embers.

  “Honor is due to the Jews. They are the People of the Book. They were the first to whom God revealed the truth, that He is one. Any religion that does not recognize this is not a religion, merely superstition. Their prophets, Father Ibrahim, Moses, Samuel and Isaiah were true prophets. Mohammed, the Messenger of God, was simply the last of the prophets, hence he is called the Seal of the Prophets. But the Jews fell away from God, first because they whored after other gods and golden calves and then because they virtually deified their Law. Also, their concept of being a ‘chosen people’ is repugnant. All men are equal in God’s eyes. No priest or saint is a hair’s-breadth closer to the Lord of the Worlds than any ordinary man. No race or people is a particle holier than any other. One of the Prophet’s wives was black and he gave his daughter in marriage to a black. Any other teaching is not religion, it is bigotry.

  “Another failing of the Jews is that they rejected Jesus, who was a true prophet, who called upon men to love each other as brothers. But the Nazarenes also perverted the teachings of Jesus. They taught that God is three, not one, and that Jesus was his son, begotten of a human female. And the Nazarenes have such strange ideas, such as ‘original sin.’ How can anyone look at the innocent newborn babe and say that he is guilty of Adam’s sin? The very idea is absurd. Every man’s sin is his own and no other. If we are not responsible for our own actions, justice has no meaning. They compound the error by confusing this original sin with sex. That too is absurd. Lawful sex is good. If it were not so, God would not have made it pleasurable,” Zaid said with a smile.

  “Islam is otherwise. With us, there are no miracles to excite the superstitious. The Messenger of God, Peace be upon him, insisted that he never performed a single miracle, except for the improbability of an unlettered man, such as himself, producing the poetic glory that is the holy Koran. Islam is based on man’s experience and his reason. If you seek miracles, look for yourself!” Zaid cried harshly, pointing up at the star-scattered night. “Look! Only a fool would cry for a sign when creation harbors nothing else!”

  The fire burned low. There was no wind and the camels were still. It was a moment of perfect silence, such as God himself must have known in the moments before creation, Nick thought.

  They lay silently for a long time, each of them alone with his thoughts. Nick’s mind whirled. His heart burned with thoughts and desires, like a furnace. Yet Zaid’s words, like the night, were so clear, so simple. The world only made sense if you accepted yourself. A man was only a man, he thought, his gaze lost in the pinpoints of light which were millions upon millions of worlds, each vaster than our own. They glittered above him, as real as anything could be, in an immutable and perfect order fixed for all time. Understanding lay in seeing that what is real is just that—real. That was the truth and all that was required of him was to perceive it as such and submit. That was what the word “Moslem” meant. One who submits.

  “How does one become a Moslem?” Nick asked.

  “You only have to say the shahadah that there is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet, and you will be of the Brotherhood of the Faithful forever,” Zaid said, his heart beating. He had waited for a long time to hear the boy ask that question.

  “That’s all?” Nick asked,
surprised.

  “Well,” Zaid replied, a twinkle in his eyes, “you have to mean it.”

  All that night the boy didn’t sleep. He lay awake wrestling with his thoughts. Ideas wheeled around his head like the stars he gazed at. He felt himself pinned to the earth, a whirling rock in space, caught in the same immutable dance as the worlds he could see, burning in the night.

  He never revealed to anyone what he thought about that night. But in the morning, as the false dawn broke, he silently knelt beside Sheikh Zaid as he prepared to perform the morning salat. As the first rays of morning cast their shadows far across the desert, Nick bowed his forehead to the still-cool sand and said the shahadah for the first time.

  Al Aramah

  ABDUL SA’AD IRRITABLY TOSSED the report aside. The Russian plan was nonsense. Idiots! Sending more Palestinians after the Scorpion was like sending an army of men with butterfly nets to capture the wind. The Scorpion was a true Bedu. He could disappear among the desert tribes at will. And should he choose to return to the Mutayr, it would take an army to get at him.

  This was a dangerous development, now when everything was poised. A faint breath of desert wind rustled the palm fronds high above him. It whispered of jihad and in his mind’s eye he saw the desert tremble under the tank treads as the armies of Allah surged across the East in holy war, flags unfurled in the wind.

  To calm his mind he sat cross-legged, Bedu-style, on the mossy banks of his pond and contemplated the goldfish gracefully flitting in the cool green depths like sparks of living sunlight. He liked looking at them. They reminded him of women: beautiful, but without souls; useful only for ornaments.

  When he had been younger he had allowed his harim women to frolic with him in the grass. He felt himself harden as the memories teased him. Later, when that grew boring, he used the naked women as footstools, resting his feet on their soft buttocks as they knelt before him; or as living statues frozen in erotic poses, sweat beading their exquisite skin as they struggled to remain immobile.