The Scorpion’s Bite (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“You all right?” Lily asked as Gideon opened his eyes and rubbed the back of his head. “We’re in Azraq.”

“The headache’s a little better. But I’ve got a bump back here the size of Cleveland.”

Lily scanned the oasis, the springs, water, waving date palms, herds of gazelle, and flocks of birds.

Gideon pointed to a somber squat building of black basalt. “That’s the British military hospital.”

Lily drove to the front of the building. “Let them have a look at you.”

“I’m all right.” He tossed his head with an air of bravado and winced.

He was frightened, Lily thought, under the veneer of courage, of fortitude and independence.

She drove to the shade of the building and turned off the motor. She helped Gideon out of the Jeep and moved him carefully toward the heavy basalt door of the hospital.

He eyed the cut on her arm. “You coming in?”

She pulled open the door with her blistered hand and winced.

They waited at a counter in the hospital corridor that smelled faintly of chlorine and ether and rotting flesh, and took in the whitewashed walls, the black and white tile floor. After a while, an orderly gave them a quizzical look.

“You want the surgery?” he asked, and led them down the hall to a doctor.

They emerged an hour later, having been told to take two aspirin and come back in the morning.

Lily sported adhesive plasters on her palms, orange Mercurochrome painted on her arm, and a butterfly bandage pulling together the edges of her cut. Gideon clasped an icepack to the back of his head.

“You’re really all right?” Lily asked.

“Of course I am. I told you.”

“No more headache?”

“Almost gone.”

“Still sleepy?”

He shook his head, winced a little, then waved an arm at Azraq, as if the oasis was his personal gift. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She gazed at the calm blue pools of water which reflected the flocks of birds hovering over them, calling, flapping wings, circling in live eddies of motion and sound.

“This is where early man hunted, this is where Romans camped, where their emperors built a fort. This is Eden. What more could anyone want?”

Lily wanted Rafi back. She wanted a big old house that creaked and sighed in the night like tired lovers. When she was a girl, when she visited her grandmother on Long Island in the summer, she would walk down to the beach along a cracked sidewalk edged with sand. She would stop at an old abandoned house with a widow’s-walk along the roof that faced the sea, with outbuildings, with weathervanes, with shuttered windows and a garden cluttered with leaves from ancient trees, and imagine living there. At the curb, a concrete step said
Mon Terrace
. For mounting horses, she supposed, maybe a carriage step. She wanted to live in this house, full of little boys, so she could play their mother.

I still want a house with groaning wooden floors and children’s feet clattering on the stairs, she thought, and I want Rafi reading a book under a lamp, not blown apart at El Alamein in the Western Desert.

“I want a bath,” she said. “I want to soak in a tub of hot water and then I want to sleep for a day and a half on a feather bed with a box springs mattress and then I want another bath. I want to win the war. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”

“If a hot bath is the highest human aspiration,” Gideon said, “then God is weeping.”

Chapter Sixteen

Two Bedouin and a Druze with a rounded white hat and trim beard stood at the edge of the saltpan. Beyond them, the blue pools of Azraq shimmered in haze from the heat. The fort, built of basalt, strangely dark and medieval, spread out behind the pools.

Next to the pan, a collection of black goat-haired tents surrounded a large white marquee with the sides pulled up to catch the late afternoon breeze.

“That’s Sheik Suleimon.” Gideon gestured toward an old man propped against pillows in the shade of the white marquee, his jaw slack in sleep. “Came here for the salt.”

Lily had heard of Sheik Suleimon, famous for his wealth; the extent of his progeny, almost a thousand and counting; and his penchant for women, especially blondes. It was said that Sheik Suleimon once spotted a beautiful young woman at a camel market, asked to arrange a marriage, and was told that it was impossible, that she was his granddaughter. It was said that he had placed ads in personal columns of British and German newspapers, looking for blond wives; that he offered ten-thousand dollars bride price; that he had accumulated more than the four wives allotted in the Moslem tradition. It was said that in his youth, he was handsome and charismatic, the inspiration for Rudolph Valentino’s films about the Sheik of Araby.

With a tilt of his head, Gideon indicated the Bedouin at the saltpan who had started toward them. “We’re in for some desert hospitality.”

“You want to meet Sheik Suleimon?” he asked Lily. “He’ll invite us to eat and to spend the night.”

The Bedouin bowed with a sweep of his cloak, asked about Gideon’s health, and invited him to the sheik’s tent. “Just some coffee,” the Bedouin had said, “and perhaps a bit of bread to speed you on your way.”

Gideon answered that he must hurry, that he must spend the night in the fort to meet with Abu Huniak.

“Just a little water.” But the sheik had already ordered his men to kill a goat, and now it was evening and they awaited a Bedouin feast in the white tent. The tent was large, the flaps closed against the cool night air, the ground and sides covered with fine silk carpets. Gideon and the two Bedouin from the saltpan sat on one side of the tent and Lily sat alone on the opposite side.

Sheik Suleimon leaned back in a pillow-covered chair on a platform at the far end of the tent, his eyes closed. He had a white
kafiya
wrapped around his head, with a gold-decorated
egal
, the cord that holds a
kafiya
in place. He wore an embroidered tunic over a long white shirt, over that a cloak, and over that another cloak, as well as a shawl across his shoulders. Two middle-aged Bedouin sat cross-legged on cushions on either side of him.

At last, a boy appeared, carrying a tiered brass stand that held a basin of water and a tray with soap and a towel. The boy left after they finished washing their hands, and returned with an enormous copper tray—a
seniyah
—piled high with meat and rice atop a layer of flat Bedouin bread. He placed it in front of Gideon. On the very top of the mound of food, and facing Gideon, was the boiled head of a goat and a pair of goat’s eyes, delicacies reserved for an honored guest.

Gideon blinked.

The boy returned again with a smaller
seniyah
that he placed in front of Lily. Her seniyah held the neck bones of the goat, the part next to the head, a singular honor for a woman. The next time she glanced toward Gideon, she saw that the goat’s eyeballs had disappeared. Had he eaten them? Had he palmed them?

She watched Gideon and the Bedouin eat, tearing off chunks of the bread, rolling it around meat and rice, and she did the same, using her right hand, only her right hand. The left, she knew, was just for washing.

The old sheik opened his eyes and squinted at her. She remembered to lower her own, not to stare, to look modest. Eye contact was brazen, vulgar in a woman.

The sheik stirred in his chair and said something to one of the younger men seated next to him. The man helped him to stand, step down from the platform, and approach Lily.

Braced by the Bedouin who held his arm, the old man bent down and peered at her with rheumy eyes clouded by cataracts. A network of wrinkles scored his face. He mumbled to his companion and his trim white beard moved with his words. Lily wasn’t sure what she should do. She kept eating, her eyes fixed on the food in front of her.

Did the sheik think that Gideon and she visited to arrange a marriage? She looked down at the
seniyah
and felt her face flush.

The old sheik muttered again, and the Bedouin led him back to his chair, one careful step at a time, the old man open-mouthed, gasping for shreds of air.

How much would he offer Gideon as bride price, Lily wondered? Fifty pounds? Twenty pounds? A camel and a goat?

***

Lily leaned back, feeling that she had overeaten. Opposite her, Gideon had done the same.

“Wonderful meal, wonderful,” he said. “I couldn’t eat another morsel.”

The boy reappeared, this time with a basin of water and soap and a warm wet towel to wipe their hands and faces. As they left, the old man stood at the door of the tent and bowed them out, with a special low bow for Lily, gesturing that his heart, his mouth, his head, were at her disposal. Again, she blushed and lowered her eyes.

“No offer of marriage?” Lily asked Gideon after they left.

“Tomorrow. It’s rude to discuss business in the tent.”

“Business?”

“For you,” Gideon said, “it would involve high finance.”

***

They spent that night in the black basalt fort. Klaus was waiting for them outside the fort. The Bedouin with the brown turban from Wadi Rum, with a mangy dog scratching a tawny coat, stood near him.

“I found someone to be our guide.” Klaus pointed to the Bedouin, a small man with the air of a bantam cock. He swaggered toward them, his hand on the hilt of a dagger in a scabbard decorated with small glass bicycle reflectors.

“He knows the area,” Klaus told them. “Says he knows of some archaeological sites around here.”

“Where did he come from?” Gideon asked. “I didn’t see anyone on our way in.”

“There’s a small Ruwalla encampment not far from here in the wadi. This is Ibrahim ibn Rashid.”

Lily wondered how Klaus knew of the Ruwalla encampment.

“This is your dog?” she asked the Bedouin.

“He follows me.”

He picked up a stone and pitched it at the dog, hitting it on the flank. The dog yelped, whined and scurried behind a rock. “Sometimes, he helps me hunt.”

Ibrahim ibn Rashid watched the dog slink away, gave Gideon a grudging bow, glanced over at Lily, then gestured toward Klaus. “He says you will pay.”

Gideon looked surprised. Someone official had usually arranged for a guide—General Donovan or Emir Abdullah.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Of course.” He fished out a half-pound note and handed it to Ibrahim.

“This is just a piece of paper.” Ibrahim inspected it and turned it over. “With a picture of a Hashemite. It is worthless to me.”

“What do you want?” Gideon asked him.

“A goat. A donkey. A camel.”

“With this note, you can buy a goat.”

“Where?”

“In Karak, in Amman.”

“How would I get there? This piece of paper is worthless to me.” He tore the note in half and threw it on the ground.

Gideon bent down to pick up the torn note and glared at Klaus.

“He’s just a Bedouin,” Klaus said. “He only knows the desert, but he knows it well.” He turned to Ibrahim. “We will get you a goat.”

***

Lily dreamed of Rafi again the next evening and couldn’t get back to sleep.

She strolled around the periphery of the pool near the fort, breathing in the sensuous, silent beauty of the desert. In the silver moonlight, the eerie outline of boulders cast deep shadows.

Gideon stood on the verge of the pool, gazing across its surface, the quiet ripples sparkling and pale blue in the night.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she told him.

“Bad dreams?”

She nodded.

They walked along the ancient shoreline, slowly savoring the night perfume of the desert, the sharp odor of wormwood, of terebinth, and gazed up at the velvet sky, bejeweled with stars.

“The ancient Babylonians,” Lily said, “thought every star was a god, that the gods lived up there in the sky in a world of their own.”

“Look there.” She pointed skyward. “A falling star.” They watched as it crossed the sky and disappeared.

Gideon turned to her and smiled. “Another Babylonian god bites the dust.”

“It didn’t even leave a track. A god is missing, and there’s nothing left to mark its place.”

“Like in your bad dream?” Gideon gazed at her. “Brightness that passed through your life and left no trace?”

“Maybe.” She turned her face away to tell him about Rafi, of their broken plans, of his last moments at El Alamein, how he was caught in the crossfire in a German minefield.

“He didn’t have time to live.” Her voice caught. “He left nothing behind. No child, no family, no heritage.”

“There’s always your memory of him.”

“And then what? Nothing else to show that he ever lived.”

Gideon took a deep breath and put his hands in his pockets. He looked up at the stars again, each one a god going about his business, winking at him before moving on.

“You think that has anything to do with what happened to you in the cave yesterday?”

He watched her, waiting for her reaction. She stared at him, blank-faced.

“In Hebrew, the root for the word for tomb is the same as that for cave.”

“I dug in caves before. Tombs as well, with never a problem.”

“I know that. The tombs at Tel el Kharub. Eastbourne, director of the site, was killed. And the cave in Morocco. That time, it was Drury who was murdered.”

Lily felt a chill. “Getting cold out here.”

“You think so?”

She clasped her arms tight across her chest.

“When did you last see Rafi?” Gideon asked.

“In Chicago, before he left. Over a year ago. Almost two years.”

“When did you find out what happened?”

“Last November.”

He took his hands out of his pockets and looked over at her. “It takes a year, two sometimes, to recover from a loss. Everyone must grieve in their own way, take their own time. Rituals are important, like the one at the mourner’s tent we saw at the Bedouin encampment. You had none.”

“You learned all this in your course on grief counseling at the seminary?”

“Something like that.”

“You sound wise, but you don’t know how it feels. I still have regrets.”

“A life without regrets is a life not lived.”

She shook her head. “Don’t give me platitudes. That’s not it. We neglected time. We thought we had all the time in the world.”

She blinked back the sting of tears, and shivered. “I’d best be getting back. Even with stars, it’s cold here.”