Moving the Palace Page 12

  Later, toward midnight, Samuel meets with Zeid on a small hillock west of camp. Fires have been lit, around which guards are seated cross-legged, rifles on their knees. Camels grunt and snore, dogs roam about, still warring over the remains of the feast. Samuel finds Zeid behind a few arbutus trees. When he appears, two figures slip furtively away, leaving the chieftain’s son to his affairs. Samuel pulls his coat close over his chest; the cold is harsh. On the horizon, dozens of mountainous peaks seem a fine bluish lace which, with the vast bejew-eled finery of the heavens, make a grand ball gown of the nighttime desert. At least that is what Samuel thinks as he sits down beside Zeid. “I got your father’s version,” he says after a long moment of silence. “But don’t forget that I’ve promised you gifts if you tell me what you know as well.” Sitting cross-legged, Zeid wraps himself in the furs that form a rug around him. “I don’t want gifts,” he replies. “I took Darjis’s treasure from Ras es Sohr simply because I didn’t want my father to sell it, especially not to the Turks.” He is silent for a moment. A bit bewildered, Samuel says nothing. “My father did not sell Darjis to the Turks,” Zeid continues, as if setting things straight. “But he would have sold them the treasure. In his eyes, they were not the same thing. But in mine, they were.”

  The next day, Samuel and his troupe leave Raeed Hussein’s camp accompanied by Zeid and three of his friends, bodyguards or companions. All day long, they travel through the same strange and elephantine extravaganza, the same scattered flock of rocky ochre massifs. At night, after a rest from the heat, they reach the Mou’in well, dry this time of year, encircled by trees that are also dry, and ringed by mountains with wrinkled flanks the setting sun dyes pink and ruby red. “We are here,” says Zeid, his voice tinged with nostalgia. All it takes Samuel’s men is a bit of scraping at the ground by the foot of one mountain, and there they are, lying flat and only thinly buried in the sand, as if beneath summer sheets: a dozen marble and limestone bodies in a row, gods and goddesses serene and faraway of face, with full-lipped but enigmatic smiles, high cheekbones, hair pulled back, porous to eternity and at the same time locked in immemorial parley with themselves, arms stiff along torsos sometimes nude and sometimes, with the goddesses, swathed in transparent veils. Standing wordlessly beside Zeid, a dreamy Samuel has the impression this series of prostrate sculptures is like the echo of himself twelve times over, the resonance of his corporeal presence in the world. All around him, warriors and caravaners comment with uncustomary quiet on the mysterious unveiling of these stone beings. After a long moment of strange and general communion, Samuel asks Zeid if he wishes to split the treasure. Zeid replies that it all belongs to Darjis. Samuel reminds him that d’Argès no longer has anything to do with this, but Zeid shrugs. “You and Darjis are the same,” he says. Then, as if to forget his sorrow, he launches himself after one of his companions, racing off barefoot, cords of silk and gold swinging from his head. The two boys roll around in the sand, laughing and wrestling to the shouts of their friends and Hamid’s men and Mawlud’s. In the meantime, the imperial toga of the mountains all around has darkened, growing purple, then dark lilac, and finally night falls completely; fires are lit while, off to one side, the gods and goddesses stare with their petrified eyes at the great nocturnal parade of the heavens.

  10

  A WEEK LATER, SAMUEL FINALLY REACHES BIR SUHEILA and Askar Chalabi el Suheili’s camp. He finds his palace intact in its thousand pieces, an open-air warehouse spread under the sun. Beside Chalabi’s tents, it seems a cumbersome object confided to a foreigner who keeps it grudgingly for you. Samuel takes a tour to inspect the bronze-framed mirrors tossed facedown on the ground, the woodwork some of whose motifs have long since vanished, been gouged out, turned into stumps or splinters, fragments of frescoed wall where birds drinking from basins have faded in the sun of so many deserts, conical chimneys toppled on their sides or backs like beetles, and hundreds of scattered chunks, a good portion of which doubtless no longer match up. Chalabi el Suheili tells him a whole host of plausible but probably made-up stories about the lodestone this colossal hodgepodge was for nearby tribes, drawing Shammar and Sherrari looters, and the valiant guard his own people mounted to protect it, and Samuel pays him off, reminding him his words are useless and what gold has been promised will be delivered, period, end of story.

  After which they feast around platters of rice. Samuel stays with Chalabi for three days to rest before loading up his palace and his mysterious deities and setting out once more, heading north, vowing this time not to stop before reaching Lebanon. He has left his russet camel to Zeid Ibn Raeed as a souvenir, and now rides a less supple mount whose somewhat stiff steps reverberate through his body. But he is happy. Dressed in his worn-out European suit, his rebellious lock poking out from the fabric wrapped around his head, he looks like a plundering prince coming back from a raid, a conquistador returning laden with riches from a lost city. The caravan stretches out and dawdles across a desert edged with chiseled mountains. The lack of the machine gun’s protection is felt, but ten of Chalabi el Suheili’s warriors have jointed the escort. Every night, Samuel checks in with their chieftain, as well as with Hamid and Mawlud, and all agree it will take a fortnight to reach Damascus, if all goes well. And at first, everything does, more or less. They travel amidst lands upheaved by ancient geological cataclysms, carved by erosion, sculpted by the slow work of millennia. At times they climb, and at others, descend; then rocky valleys or the broad beds of dry torrents open, littered with flint and volcanic rock that bloody the animals’ feet. But they push on, the maps Samuel spreads on the rough ground when they stop from the heat are vague, but he is content to trace, through unmistakable signs, the northward advance of the long procession transporting his real estate and part of an age-old Arabian pantheon.

  After ten days, they enter the territory of the famous chieftain Unayzah Ibn Ayyad, in the area around Boutha, an oasis where a few farmers grow vegetables and tubers among the palms. In the distance, regal crests tower over Unayzah’s vast camp. He himself, however, is a small man whose smooth cheeks have been cratered like the desert by smallpox. His embroidered robes and the handsome gold and silver dagger at his belt prove that he is rich and powerful. Moreover, a joyous wind flutters his tents, lifting brocaded fabrics from all sides, while the women, whose jewelry and tattoos have made them resemble illuminated manuscripts, flock to see the new arrivals. Unayzah gathers his guests in his welcome tent and for three days they gossip, drink coffee, and eat from massive platters of rice ringed by meat and crowned with oryx heads. They discuss Faisal, of course, the war, and genealogies. Unayzah calmly traces his family tree back to the Prophet’s closest friends, out of pride and as if to urge his guest to do the same, without which his patronymic would appear to be forgery and imposture in flagrante delicto, for the old chieftain finds it highly incomprehensible that a Christian should bear the name of his own prestigious tribe. In answer, Samuel connects his family to ancient Arab Christian tribes allied with the Ghassanids, who left Arabia before Islam, heading first for Hauran and then the mountains of Lebanon. Next he speaks of ancestors who fought beside the Emperor of Byzantium against the Muslim armies. This last point bothers his audience a bit, which makes Samuel laugh because he had predicted as much. But Unayzah, who knows the duties of hospitality, begins to tell stories of wars and raids he led long ago with Hamid Ibn Mansour, and this eases the atmosphere. After which these descendants of glorious captains whom it amuses them to think were somehow cousins head out to hunt gazelles and ostriches, and laze over picnics amidst small vegetable gardens in the oasis of Boutha, with their rifles propped against tree trunks and the water murmuring down the channels.

  A few days later, Samuel leaves again. But he does not leave alone. The entire Unayzah camp leaves with him, because it is the season of the livestock markets in Ma’an. At this time, Hamid Ibn Mansour and his people decide to return to their lands at last. The Bani Suheila press on, and for a week, Samuel’s caravan
marches on surrounded by the Bani Ayyad tribe, with its opulent and pompous palanquins, its brightly colored camels adorned with saddle rugs and harnesses with tassels and pompoms. These beasts of burden, laden with tents and baggage, mingle with Samuel’s, carrying his moving palace and his stone gods, and all this is quite diverting to the eye, for the desert is growing ever flatter, its peaks rounder, subsiding and disappearing. For three days, they travel together. Then the Bani Ayyad go on their way toward Ma’an where Samuel does not wish to go. The city is a center for the Ottoman army, and he is not yet ready to look a Turkish officer in the eye, not to mention that his unusual cargo might arouse quite a few questions. And so Unayza Ibn Ayyad pitches his ceremonial tent amidst rocky hills the women drape with their washing, ablaze with color as their skin is with tattoos and their bodies are with ruby and vermilion robes. During one last banquet, the old chieftain gives Samuel some advice for the rest of his journey. Then he offers him fifteen warriors as an escort, led by his son Kays, to whom he declares before all assembled that he must go wherever our cousin Samouyil goes, and if it happens to be all the way to Damascus, then so be it, my son, you shall go all the way to Damascus.

  But Kays will not go all the way to Damascus. After a few days’ travel, first through slightly mountainous hills, then once more through the oft-crossed rocky beds of dry wadis, great breaches broad as valleys, which the caravan must descend into, then climb back out of each time, Fahim el Mawlud begins to grow restive, complaining about how long the journey is taking, balking before each and every effort until one morning, south of Hasa, he decrees that he will go no farther. Samuel takes him to one side and mentions gold, but Mawlud says that has nothing to do with it; the voyage is too long, he repeats, and it will never end. Samuel doesn’t believe a word of this, for coming from a caravaner who up till now has been richly compensated, these are not credible excuses. Finally, Mawlud confesses his real reasons. The farther north they go, the closer they get to more heavily patrolled regions where the Turks are more greatly to be feared, and he is afraid that, as they commandeer all beasts of burden for their army, they will come and confiscate his camels and those of his clan. Samuel says nothing, but an hour later, gathers his escort, announces that he wishes to press on, and warns them that he is not about to let himself be abandoned in the middle of the desert, indicating that his warriors will not be kind to mutineers or deserters. Naturally, Mawlud spends the next few days sulking, and Samuel reflects that he could quite simply commandeer the animals himself, and sideline the man, or else sidestep the camel drivers, which would not be very hard, so generously is he paying them. But Mawlud has also been their employer for a long time, and there is nothing to imply that they will dissociate themselves from him so easily. As for his own Bedouins, they are from two different tribes, which is never a good thing, and moreover the Bani Suheila are ever less dependable; they, too, seem to be starting to feel too far from their lands. Suddenly Samuel feels weary, but one morning he finds a solution.

  *

  It is, at first, nothing but a train at a standstill in the middle of the desert, a short black snake come to a halt, surprised by who knows what in the dust and white light, halfway between the stations of Hasa and Qatraneh. Through his binoculars, Samuel studies the passengers, who have stepped out in the shade of the cars; the locomotive has apparently broken down and the two stokers are perched atop it. It is but a small train, two passenger cars and three or four of goods which, with Kays and three warriors, Samuel slowly approaches. When the passengers see five armed Bedouins ride up, faces shrouded, they gather at the foot of the train while the stokers on the boiler straighten up and watch. Upon reaching the train, Samuel realizes the passengers are almost all soldiers—officers, but not Turks, rather Germans and Austrians with a few wives, ladies in hats leaning out the windows, one of whom, moved by curiosity but not wishing to expose her face to the searing air, opens her parasol outside the car. Meanwhile, to avoid any misunderstanding that might end badly, especially as the officers have begun reaching for their sidearms, and rifles instead of umbrellas are poking out the through the windows of the second car, Samuel has unwound the cloth of his keffiyeh and is now advancing with his face unhidden, greeting them in Arabic and asking, with an amused air, if anyone speaks the language. Then he follows up in French, asking the same question. Officers and civilians alike are no doubt astounded by his light-skinned face, albeit darkened by a severe tan, his Anglo-Saxon mustache, and above all the fact that he is speaking French. Samuel’s European slacks and his boots dangling from his saddle round out the confusion. One officer answers aggressively that they speak German here, or Turkish at the outside, but before Samuel can react, and no doubt fearing an unexpected reaction on his part, another younger officer declares with the barest trace of an accent that in fact everyone speaks and understands French. Samuel then inquires what the matter is. The officer explains, pointing at the boiler (a Jung or rather a Hartman 1910, Samuel thinks, remembering what he learned in Al-Wajh about the Turkish rail forces and the little German locomotives, even as his gaze slips slowly along the steam engine, from the cylinders down the coupling rods, stopping at the spigot on the water tank), that they have had a breakdown, and now here they are waiting for repairs, or for the station at Qatraneh to send out a patrol to investigate the delay. The officer has no doubt added this last part to put Samuel’s odd-looking group off any possible mischief. Samuel is about to ask if he can help in any way, to demonstrate his peaceful intent, when behind him, in an inadvertent dramatic reversal, as if he’d just summoned them with some imperceptible sign, another group of Bani Ayyad warriors appear, followed by Bani Suheila warriors and behind them, the first groups of packsaddle camels with their cargo. What seemed at first to the officers and the train’s passengers a small number of pillagers now looks like an entire tribe. Before their eyes, Samuel transforms into a kind of adventurer leading plunder-hungry nomads to war, who have picked as their target a train broken down in the middle of the vast stony void of the desert, with neither machine guns nor armor plating, its passengers surprised while lounging about or stupidly stretching their legs. There are indeed rifles poking out the windows of the second car, but they won’t be enough against what, to the German and Austrian soldiers still reeling from surprise, now seems like an army of Bedouins. To put them at ease, Samuel suggests the officers tell their soldiers to lower their weapons. Meanwhile, his own warriors have lined up beside him, and he curbs their tendency to want to surround the train, recommending their rifles remain pointed at the sky. At the moment, one of the soldiers, also speaking French, but with a strong accent and a firm but not yet bellicose tone, asks Samuel just what it is he wants. And so, with a mocking smile, his gaze dancing an imperceptible saraband, Samuel offers to send his men to the stations in Hasa and Qatraneh to notify them of the locomotive’s breakdown, but on one condition. The officers and the handful of civilians are silent for a moment, baffled, waiting for the next part, which gives Samuel the chance to examine them and deduce that they are all Austrians, no doubt returning from Ma’an, or even Medina. And since he has not said a word, one of the Austrians, with great sideburns, asks what his condition is, and Samuel declares that actually, well, his condition is that he’d like to take a bath.

  With these words, Samuel pivots his camel a quarter-turn and, passing between his warriors and the officers, he rides up to the engine and calls out to the stokers, who descend from atop the boiler. They are Syrian, Samuel speaks with them, and still atop his mount, he heads for the water tank. There, at last, he bids his mount kneel, slips off, and for a good dozen minutes, like Louis XIV among his courtiers, or any Oriental despot far-fetched of whim, he washes himself at the spigot, the water from which is quite hot. The warriors and caravaners assembled to one side laugh and make amused commentary, while the Austrians appear to be calmly awaiting the end of what they consider a worrisome ritual whose follow-up they fear. That is why they are not laughing, and are quite likel
y considering possible actions to take against these strange aggressors. But the Bedouins are watchful and no one makes a move except Samuel who, rid of his old military slacks, his tatty tunic, and his Arab headgear, is scrubbing himself with pumice collected from the oasis in Boutha. Then he lets himself dry off as he rummages about in his saddlebags. After which he dons another pair of slacks and a dress shirt and pulls on his boots, which he has also rinsed off. Once all this is done, he walks over to the group of soldiers who at this point no doubt take him for a madman, a plundering chieftain who finds amusement in staging lugubrious scenes before slaughtering his enemies. He stops before what looks to him like the highest ranking officer, to judge by the insignia and the number of stars on his uniform, the one who spoke first, likely a colonel, who is now standing with his arms crossed in a stance of impotent defiance—and Samuel introduces himself. He says that he is a Lebanese merchant, with a caravan of merchandise he has been transporting for years through desert and savannah, which explains why the presence of running water, even from a locomotive cistern, exerts an irresistible appeal on him. The officers and civilians have drawn cautiously closer and are listening to this strange character who has, in yet a third metamorphosis, become a perfectly civil merchant, with what seem to them impeccable French and manners. They’ve gotten over their initial surprise when Samuel summons four Bani Ayyad and, after listening to the two stokers and asking the highest-ranking officer if he has any special message to pass on to the two stations, he dispatches all four riders with word that train number 118 has broken down at Kilometer 402, a problem with the flue in the smokebox.