The Sleeper in the Sands (24 page)

All that day, their murmurings of horror rose like the waves of the sea. But the Caliph only laughed when he heard the outcry, and commanded his soldiers to put the insurgents to the sword. That evening, as he rode towards the mosque by the northern gates, the whole of Cairo seemed lit by flames and the din of strife rose high into the heavens; but the Caliph knew that there was nothing now to fear. ‘All shall be made plain,’ he told himself, as he dismounted from his horse and began to climb the minaret. ‘All shall be revealed.’ And he hurried up the stairway with a brisk and eager step.

He found Haroun in a tiny square room at the minaret’s summit, gazing through the window at the distant flames, slowly stroking his dog who lay stretched by his feet.

‘Tell me, O Haroun,’ the Caliph demanded straight away, ‘what is the sound of the Secret Name of Allah, for you have promised to tell me and now the moment is arrived.’

The shadow of something unearthly flickered across the pallor of Haroun s haggard face. ‘I must tell you first,’ he murmured, ‘how I came by the Secret, for otherwise, O Prince, you will fail to understand what its true power may be.’

‘Then tell me,’ said the Caliph, ‘for I can bear to wait no longer.’

‘It is a narrative which will stupefy you with the excess of its strangeness. Yet all that I tell you had been written for me many centuries before -- for it is the mark of the hand of Destiny, that nothing it writes can ever be escaped. The ways of this world are infinite and strange, and both the past and the future may be bound by one Fate.’

‘Tell me what you mean,’ exclaimed the Caliph, ‘for I am burning with curiosity to hear your account.’

‘With the greatest pleasure, O mighty Prince. Listen, then, and you shall hear a full account of all I did, and saw, and learned.’

THE TALE TOLD BY HAROUN AL-VAKHEL

After I left you, on the morning when the Princess had been cast beneath the spell, I sought out the company of an old acquaintance of mine, a Christian merchant, who by great good fortune had just arrived in Cairo. It was this same merchant who had made me a gift of my wife many years before, after he had found her in the ruins of a mighty temple. What this temple might have been, and what secrets it might still preserve, seemed to me now a matter of great moment, and I was resolved to visit it as soon as I was able. The merchant, I knew, would prove an admirable guide, for he had travelled there often and was learned in the customs and the ways of the ancients. At first, it was true, he was unwilling to accompany me, for he told me that Thebes had grown an evil reputation as the haunt of ghools and desert-bred things. He was a man, though, with an insatiable thirst for adventure, and I did not find it hard to persuade him in the end. My only other companion was Isis, my dog, who despite my best efforts would not be left behind, but would always run after me as I sought to ride away.

For many days we travelled, O Prince, following the course of the wide-flowing Nile, and saw many wonders, built by the pagans in long-ago times. But always, when I expressed my astonishment, the merchant would smile and shake his head, and tell me to wait until my first sight of Thebes. Then he would describe to me the marvels of that ruined city, in terms so extravagant that he would make it sound the work more of giants than of mortal men. At the same time, however, he would also warn me of the darkness which had fallen on the place, of the demons which had risen from the tombs of the kings, the
udar,
whose discharge bore the poison of maggots and worms. Of course, I reminded myself, the merchant was a Greek, and it is a well-known fact that all Greeks are liars. Nevertheless, as we travelled ever further upstream, I began to observe how settlements were growing few and far between, and how some of the villages had been abandoned altogether. The irrigation canals seemed choked by dust and weeds, and where fields should have been the desert sands were spreading.

My heart had already grown dark, then, when at last the merchant pointed and cried out, ‘Thebes!’ I gazed into the distance and saw what appeared to be colossal trees, rising from the dunes, and forming a veritable forest of stone. As I drew nearer, I saw that the trees were in truth columns of stupefying thickness, ornamented with the carvings of strange talismans and demons, the symbols of a magic which no living man could read. Passing into the shadow of that monstrous temple, I grew certain that I had indeed arrived at the object of my quest, for I did not see how, unless by sorcery, such a place could ever have been raised. Much of it had clearly been buried by the sands; but of that vast expanse which still stretched unsubmerged above the dunes, even the blocks of rubble rose larger than I did on my horse. Built on to one of the columns I discovered a mosque, and I dismounted eagerly to offer up prayers. But the mosque had been long abandoned, and its puny brickwork was already decaying; and in truth it seemed, hunched in the shadow of the far vaster wreck, like a seabird landed briefly on the back of a mighty whale.

I longed to penetrate further into the darkness of the place, for it intrigued me to imagine what might lie within its heart, what secrets and marks of the priests’ forgotten sorcery. But the sun was already sinking behind the mountains to the west, and the merchant was starting to grow uneasy. ‘We must reach the village of the tomb-robbers,’ he frowned, ‘for it is not safe to be abroad in these parts after nightfall.’ So saying, he spurred his horse forward and began to gallop towards the line of fields which stretched beyond the temple, and where we would find - or so I trusted -- a boatman to ferry us to the far side of the Nile. But my expectations were disappointed, for the fields in truth proved to be stinking marshland; and of the settlements which must have once lined the eastern bank, there was nothing left but the few bare shells of houses. ‘There must be a boat here somewhere,’ the merchant muttered, ‘for this was always a teeming stretch of the river.’ But although we rode up and down, we could find nothing of use -- and all the while the sky was growing redder to the west.

Then, just when we were both on the point of despair, we saw Isis tense and suddenly bark. She appeared frightened of something hidden in the reeds, for she was circling it and starting to growl, and when I dismounted she slunk by my side. I pushed my way through the reeds until I could see ahead of me a tiny boat, drifting in a stagnant pool of muddy water. I called back to the merchant to inform him of our good fortune, then waded out to retrieve the boat. Isis paddled beside me, but all the while she was growling deeply and sniffing the breeze; and I too, as I drew nearer to the boat, caught the sudden stench of something loathsome and sweet. Then I realised that there was an arm hanging over the edge of the prow, its hand still gripping the hilt of a sword. I reached out to pull upon the boat, the stench seemed to shimmer before my gaze and I discovered -- may blessings and peace be evermore upon him! - the body of a young boy, his eyes bulging wide, but dead, quite dead.

When the merchant joined me, he gazed upon the corpse with pity and disgust. ‘May Christ have mercy upon his soul!’ he exclaimed. ‘So it was before, when I was shown the corpse of the victim of the
udar!
And so saying, he raised the lad’s tunic, and I saw how the belly was bloated and purple. The merchant tapped it once with his staff, in the manner of someone testing a melon, and at once the skin of the belly, as though indeed over-ripe, parted and gave, and a sticky mess of worms slipped out through the gap. ‘Dear God, dear God!’ the merchant whispered, staring at the worms as they coiled by his feet. ‘You see now, O my friend, that I exaggerated neither the wonders nor the horrors of this place.’ Then he reached down and gently prised the sword from the young boy’s hand. ‘It were best, I think,’ he muttered, as he handed it to me, ‘that you keep this for yourself.’

‘But I have sworn a great oath,’ I answered him, ‘that I shall never spill the blood of man again.’

The merchant, though, laughed, a ghastly, fearful sound. ‘Then all is well,’ he replied. ‘For what makes you think that our foes might be men?’

I gazed down a moment more at the corpse of the boy, before nodding and slipping the sword into my belt. Together we swept the worms into the waters of the Nile, then bore the corpse of the boy from the boat on to the bank, where we dug a grave and raised up a pile of stones to mark the spot. Then, having made certain that our horses were safely secured, we returned to the boat and passed across the Nile. Even as we were drawing near to the western bank, I was careful to draw my sword, and as we clambered up the slope which rose from the river, I suddenly observed how Isis had grown tense and was poised like an arrow pulled back in a bow. At the same moment, from the twilight shadows ahead of us I heard a sudden scream, and then muffled shouting and a further scream. Isis leapt forward and I followed her as fast as I could, crying out a prayer to the Most High without whom there can never be either fortitude or hope. I could make out strange figures ahead of me now, three of them, and I saw that they were circling an old man whom they had trapped against the side of a crumbling wall. But the old man was holding a flaming brand, and he lunged forward with it suddenly, scattering points of light into the dark. I glimpsed two of his enemies illumined for a moment, and I could see how their limbs appeared horribly thin, like those of a water-skimming insect, yet with skulls remarkably distended and large. Then the light faded, and the figures were nothing but shadows again, and I saw them glide forward and wrestle the torch from the old man’s hand.

At the same moment, Isis leapt upon them and I followed, swinging at them with my keen-edged sword. Two of the ghools fell before me and the third slipped away, melting into the darkness. I thought to pursue him but then, from behind me, I heard the ghools rising once again to their feet, although the wounds I had inflicted had appeared to be mortal. But then I recalled the city of Lilatt-ah, and the nature of the demons I had fought against there. The ghools before me were still nothing more than shadows; yet even so, when the first one attacked me, I sought to aim as well as I could for its heart. It staggered and crumpled, as though its two legs had suddenly snapped beneath it; and I saw how its companion at once disappeared.

I turned to the old man and seized his torch.

‘You will not be able to kill it,’ he cried out. ‘They cannot be slain.’

But I shook my head. ‘With the guidance of Allah,’ I answered him, ‘all things are possible.’ And so saying, I aimed again with the point of my sword, and as I felt it enter the ghool’s chest and heart, so the demon buckled and writhed, and then fell still.

I knelt down beside it, to inspect the corpse. As I did so, I blinked and offered up a prayer, for never before had I seen a thing which filled me with such horror. In its outward form it appeared almost to be a mortal man, yet it was this very resemblance to the image which Allah granted Adam -- may peace be upon him -- which rendered the
udar
so monstrous to behold. Like its limbs, its body was very spindly, although both thighs and belly were strangely swollen; its eyes were slanted; the back of its skull was very domed, like a mosque, and extended back strangely from its pinched, narrow face. So might the faithless seem, I thought to myself, abandoned by the love of Allah after death.

I gazed up at the old man. ‘From what strange darkness,’ I asked him, ‘have these hellish demons risen?’

‘That would be a strange tale to tell,’ the old man answered, glancing around him nervously. ‘But let us first reach the safety of my village, for you have seen for yourself how the darkness is dangerous.’ Yet even as he said this, he appeared reluctant to move, and I saw that his face appeared dark with misery.

At this point, the Christian merchant stepped forward. ‘What then, O Headman, were you thinking of, to be abroad yourself at so late an hour?’

The old man’s face lightened briefly at the sight of the merchant, and he greeted him warmly, but then the shadow of misery fell again across his face. ‘I have been hunting my son,’ he explained, ‘who has been missing now these past three nights. How can I endure to return to my own hearth, when I cannot know where my poor son might be?’

The merchant caught my eye; then he stepped forward and took the old man by the arm. ‘He is in the earth, O Headman, at rest, eternal rest.’ He explained how we had come across the body of the boy, and described how we had raised a heap of stones above his head. Then he sought to comfort the Headman as well as he could.

Once he had dried his tears, the Headman turned to me. ‘It seems, then, O my guest, that I am doubly in your debt. Come with me now, and sit by my hearth, where I shall tell you it came that these
udar
were disturbed. Then, if you have any idea as to how they might be destroyed, I will listen to you with great attention, for I perceive that you are as wise in years as you are skilled with your sword.’

I bowed in acknowledgement of his generous offer, and together the three of us, with Isis by my heels, hurried through the darkness towards the fires of the village.

But at this point in his tale, Haroun saw the approach of morning and fell silent.

‘Why do you not continue?’ the Caliph demanded.

‘O Commander of the Faithful,’ Haroun replied, ‘I am still weary from my many adventures and would seek, with your permission, to spend the daylight hours in rest. If you would care to return here tomorrow evening, then I will continue my tale and relate to you what occurred to me in the village of the tomb-robbers.’

And so the Caliph departed from the room in the Mosque, and did not return until the following evening. And then, when he had sat down by the side of Haroun, he gave him orders to continue with his tale.

And Haroun said:

When we had arrived at the house of the Headman, a building of considerable magnificence for so mean and poor a village, he made us comfortable with food and drink, then related to us the story of how the
udar
had been disturbed.