Moving the Palace Read online

  After a few months, the caravan leader demands dues for every day of waiting. It will be the ruin of him, but Abyad pays, though the black princes never want the palace. It’s too expensive for them; they’re like petits bourgeois in whose home some addled salesman has just shown a hundred-carat diamond once worn by the Queen of England; they try to negotiate, they want it all except the north wing, or just the divan and the stateroom, or only the ceiling, or the wall with the birds on it, or the mirrors—always the mirrors!—and Abyad says no, all or nothing, and goes on his way again. After a year, he’s changed camels and camel drivers three times and is seriously starting to fear raiders, for word of him has spread about. What’s more, the nomad tribes he meets want to see the merchandise; tales of a castle straight from the Arabian nights roaming their inhospitable lands have fired their imaginations. Abyad balks but, fearing their touchiness, pulls back the sheet covering one of the mirrors pressed flat to a camel’s flank. The silvering, which has reflected the figures of Roman and Sicilian princesses, and then Barbary corsairs or their favorite Circassian women, now shows nomad chieftains with cream-puff turbans and wispy beards their own images, a spectacle at which they sometimes laugh and sometimes meet with an offended pout, staring aggressively at the vast halted convoy carrying, beneath canvas tarps, its staterooms, divans, and staircases of sculpted wood. At every such encounter, Abyad fears the worst. At last, at a fort held by the French army and commanded by a lieutenant from Dijon, he requests an escort. The lieutenant, who can’t yet bring himself to believe what Abyad has told him about his cargo, wants to see it for himself. Upon discovering the great hewn blocks, the ornate pool, the carved ceilings supported by equines that look like snooty ladies, he lets out a fantastic burst of laughter and declares that he’s just understood the etymology of the word “caravanserai”: a seraglio on a caravan! So that’s it, eh? and laughs till there are tears in his eyes, his noncommissioned officers looking amusedly on and the black soldiers unruffled. Shafik Abyad, who spent a few years at a French Marist Brothers school in the Lebanese mountains, no doubt understands the wordplay, but doesn’t laugh. He’s more emaciated than ever, his ascot looks like a tired old hanky, his shirt floats about his skeletal frame, his suspenders hang askew, and he’s starting to look lost, for his eyes are too wide for a face that shrinks a little more each day.

  *

  Of course, the French lieutenant cannot spare him an escort, and so Shafik Abyad comes to an astonishing decision. He decides to leave a part of his property in the zeriba, under the minuscule garrison’s guard—the east wing, let us say (though in fact, we cannot speak of wings east or west, it’s all jumbled up now, and everything will depend on where it’s reassembled), along with the mashrabiya, the doors, and one of the bell-shaped chimneys, not to mention a good many numbered stone blocks. With the west wing, including among other things the massive Italian mirrors with their bronze frames, the other chimney, and the frescoed wall, he sets out once more in search of a buyer, a new African king or powerful tribal chieftain anxious to treat himself to a palatial little gift.

  He heads south, and on the way doubtless believes luck is smiling on him at last, for he learns that the sultan of the Masalit has just been overthrown by one of his cousins. New ruler, new seraglio, Abyad is probably thinking, but before he reaches his destination, a messenger tells him that because of the situation in Dar Massalit, the zeriba has had to be abandoned for another farther south. Leaving the caravan by a well, he turns back and, four days later, finds his merchandise intact in the desert fort but left to the four winds and all the sands of the savannah. He spends a night amidst the disorder of this packed-up, portable construction site. Eyes riveted to the twinkling stars, he wonders for the first time if he hasn’t made a colossal mistake in leaving Tripoli with this cumbersome cargo. A few days later, he rejoins the rest of his party to learn, stoically, that there’s been a quarrel among its members, that some of them have decided to leave, taking the staircase, a section of the elaborate roof, and one large mirror with them for their pains. The west wing is maimed, though its stones, all those numbered stones, are still there. But who will want so many stones, even if they are numbered? Nevertheless, Shafik Abyad continues on his way. He no longer wants to go to Masalit. He wishes to stay in the French-controlled areas, in order to recover what he left in the fort as fast as he can. He’s not even looking for a buyer anymore, not a king nor an African chieftain nor a Bedouin. He wanders and goes in circles awhile, hoping to find some camels to buy along the way. And that is when, one and a half years after leaving Tripoli, two hundred and fifty miles south of the Sultanate of Ouaddaï and one hundred eighty miles west of Darfur, as he is dining beside a fire one night with members of a tribe he met by a well, he hears tell for the first time of a Lebanese man fighting beside the sultan of Safa and at last, from down in that chasm where he seems to have touched rock bottom, he glimpses a glimmer of hope.

  *

  For while he, Shafik Abyad, has been wandering the deserts of Chad, Samuel Ayyad is still with Qasim Wad Jabr. In the wake of Moussa Bellal’s defeat, Samuel is helping him rebuild the former Sultanate of Safa, the last black kingdom in the region. And so he finds himself mixed up in tribal warfare, struggles between chieftains; he witnesses great bloodstained banners, surrenders under the baobabs, and severed heads. Moore’s gold sometimes serves to negotiate a matrimonial alliance, or to buy spies. But for all the rest, the rifles are enough, and long talks by firelight or on sofas in the shade of acacias, in the dry desert wind. Besides, in Wad Jabr’s eyes, Samuel is worth more than the gold whose burdensome custody he’s been entrusted with, gold Gawad transports in little bags whose contents no one suspects. His mere presence stands surety, for Samuel passes for an envoy from Khartoum, Cairo, even London; everyone takes him for the man tasked with implementing English policy in the region, and when he speaks, they all listen in silence, as if John Baring, the powerful English consul in Cairo, or even the British prime minister spoke through him. We might go so far as to imagine the presence in that region of the man who will one day be my grandfather makes France believe the British have decided to intervene in western Darfur, a fact that drives them, in 1912, to lay their own hands on the neighboring Sultanate of Ouaddaï. Samuel lets them think what they will, and inside, laughs when he thinks that he’s there only due to the whims of a slightly batty colonel. And sometimes, he, too, has his doubts; Moore suddenly seems to him a dreadful manipulator. But he doesn’t care, he himself might even be filled with the colonel’s dreams now, and during this entire time, which is to say, six months, or a year, or two—at any rate, the time it takes Shafik Abyad to get close enough to this part of the Sudan, with his woolgathering little seraglio on the backs of hundreds of camels like the flotsam of a splendid ship bobbing on the waves after a storm—during all this time, Samuel has been dashing through the desert beneath great banners, in a European suit, an imma on his head, his light skin bronzed by the sun, stiffened by wind and sand, his gaze still like a prow, sailing ahead of the world. They call him, with fearful respect, El Inglizi, or El Lebnani, but the sultan calls him Samouyil Wad Nassib, Samuel son of Nassib, after his father, the literature professor from the Lebanese mountains, and whenever the sultan calls Samuel this, in front of other chieftains or by firelight vigil, he tells him that you Lebanese are incredible, you mingle Christian and Muslim names so well that I can’t tell anymore if you’re one or the other—so you, Samouyil, what are you, eh? What are you? And Samuel mumbles that he is both at once—and that, Wad Jabr, you will never understand, no matter how many times I explain, you will never understand. And it is no doubt by addressing him respectfully as Samouyil Wad Nassib one morning that a famished black man flanked by two turbaned warriors from the sultan’s guard appears before him and hands him a letter. Let us say this happens in the heart of an oasis, by a well where the horses are giving themselves a good shake. Great birds rise into the dazzling sky above the acacias and the broom. Samuel,
sitting on a rug, back against a tree trunk and feet on a crate, sits up uncomprehendingly, hair disheveled, eyes cheerful, and adopts an expression of curiosity that makes him squint, opens the letter, and learns of the existence of Shafik Abyad.

  5

  WHEN TWO LEBANESE EMIGRANTS MEET EACH OTHER thousands of miles from their native land, the first thing they do, I suppose, is delight in greeting each other in their common tongue, rediscovering those familiar liquid syllables, those open vowels, savoring that easing of elocutional effort, especially if, as is no doubt the case with Samuel Ayyad and Shafik Abyad, they’ve spent years speaking a rough, abrupt Arabic not their own. Here they are shaking hands, a bit like Stanley upon finding Emin Pasha or Livingstone, and Samuel is probably saying something like “Shafik Abyad, I presume,” but in the Beiruti tongue. Shafik Abyad nods, holding on to the man’s hand for a spell, the man who’s just joined Shafik where Shafik has stopped to wait for him, a few hours on foot from the abandoned city of Ouara, amidst lightly wooded hills covered in broom and even holm oaks not entirely unreminiscent of Lebanon. And this is one of the first things Samuel remarks on to Shafik. The latter agrees, and as they go to sit in the shade of an acacia, on rugs or low chairs, the two future accomplices recall the pines of Chouf and the olive trees of Koura, then speak of their origins, trying to untangle their genealogies, unreel the itineraries of their lives to see if, somewhere, they might not have crossed paths, or if an unsuspected family tie connects them, for Lebanon is so small. Sipping tea that the caravaners sitting off to one side serve them (to another side sit Gawad and Samuel’s escort of riders), they finally come to what has brought them to this thankless land.

  When Shafik is done with his story, he takes Samuel for a stroll among the hundreds of bundles of freight spread out beneath the sycamores, among the shrubs of broom and the thorny thickets, lavish yet pathetic, like a royal eviction overseen by a bailiff. And that is when Samuel discovers the mirrors in their bronze frames beneath their worn tarps, the wall frescoed with birds tossed on the sand like an old rug in the sun’s harsh menace, and the fragments of sculpted ceiling, one side concealed by coverings of makeshift scraps and the other peeking through, like bedmates disputing a single too-small blanket. Now as Shafik drags him around with a tired air from one piece to another of his Barbary palace pathetically unbundled in the middle of the savannah, Samuel stares hard at his fellow countryman, whose explanations he no longer hears. Besides, these grow ever shorter and wearier, finally no more than vague hand waves that serve as much to point out the numbered sections of a Moorish marble fountain or a bell-shaped chimney as to say that all this is most likely destined for imminent disaster, and sooner or later, Samuel naturally comes to wonder if Shafik Abyad isn’t a bit touched in the head. Then he thinks if maybe, after suffering the whims of Colonel Moore, he must now suffer those of Shafik Abyad. But he is the kind of man to shoulder other people’s whims, to make them his own, and here he is letting himself be swept along on Shafik’s oddball odyssey. At first, it is just to lend a helping hand, of course—Samuel has twenty-five black warriors (from Gawad’s tribe, on loan from Qasim Wad Jabr, but who would let themselves be torn to shreds for him), he has maps (which are useless, since he’s the one who draws them up from what he sees, but they give him confidence), and above all he has Moore’s gold (of which he says not a word, at first). And besides, things are always easier with two people.

  So at first, the two men decide to recover what was left behind in the French zeriba. It is Samuel who goes to the small fort, where it is clear tribes have camped and caravans stopped for the night. There are traces of fire, the fragments stored there have been rummaged through, but on the whole they appear present and accounted for, from the mashrabiya to the carved doors and the bell-shaped chimney. From all appearances, the tribal chieftains and camel-drivers must have scratched their heads over the spectacle of this treasure straight out of Ali Baba’s cavern; they must have looked in vain for gold or precious objects, for lack of which they contented themselves with sleeping amidst this incomprehensible pomp before departing with a shrug of their shoulders.

  When the east wing has been reunited with the rest of the palace, the latter, more or less intact, sets out once more on the backs of a hundred animals, under the protection of twenty-five warriors and the double command of Shafik Abyad and Samuel Ayyad. For months, they will pay visits once more to tribal chieftains and black princes, in a vast procession it takes ten minutes at a gallop to travel from one end to the other, stretching out against the same unchanging backdrop of red sand, dotted by thickets of broom, acacia, and baobab, where, from time to time, the wind raises pillars of dust that seem to bend and beckon to travelers. But the convoy’s grandeur in fact conceals massive problems. Shafik Abyad is bankrupt, he owes his men money, they follow him now only in hopes of getting their due. Meanwhile, they do as they please, give their opinion on each new destination instead of serving as guides or looking after the animals, balk at going one place, believing another will be luckier, as if selling the cargo had become their business and no longer that of the two Lebanese men—and this is an excuse for endless consultations, discussions, and disputes from which Shafik Abyad emerges exhausted and demoralized. And so it is that after a fortnight of this carrying-on, Samuel intervenes, brandishing the gold from the British Treasury chest, which Colonel Moore has placed at his disposal for other causes, and right before Shafik Abyad’s astonished eyes, he convenes the escort and pays them what they’re owed. To lend the ceremony some decorum and make an impression, he sits himself down like a king beneath a baobab, has himself surrounded by his black warriors, and it is Gawad who, on his orders, settles everyone’s debts. After which he declares in a tone that brooks no rejoinder that from now on the two White Men will decide everything without discussion. Then, turning to Shafik, who feigns protest, he explains in an aside that this money was but a loan on his part, and he expects to be reimbursed once the palace is sold.

  *

  Now of course, the palace remains unsalable. The lands they pass through are ever poorer, their princes ever less powerful. The sultan of Tama sends messengers to hasten the caravan along, claiming interest, but when it arrives before his brick dwelling he recants, no doubt finding the merchandise above his means, and so as not to lose face, he declares himself indisposed for several days. In Sila, the sultan receives Samuel and Shafik, but gives them a disillusioned speech: “I have the French to the west and the English to the east. In due course, one or the other will send in their armies, and perhaps one day soon there will be no more sultan of Sila, so what is the point of purchasing a new domicile to house a dynasty without a future?” Then he falls silent, and the next day, the caravan heads out again. One afternoon, a few of Samuel’s riders go off game hunting. They take their time, vanishing from view, but from atop a small hill, come in sight again in the savannah, and Samuel, to entertain his troops a little, has one of the bronze-framed mirrors uncovered, using it to reflect sunlight and send signals to the lost horsemen. Then Shafik Abyad, who has recovered his good mood thanks to Samuel’s presence beside him, laughingly suggests that instead of selling their cargo, they could use the stones and mirrors to build a lighthouse meant for men and beasts lost in the desert. Everyone thinks this a marvelous idea, and much more useful than a palace no one wants. Meanwhile, every morning, Shafik and Samuel use the mirrors to perform their daily grooming, unswaddling the great cheval glasses with their frames of twined acanthus leaves, before which they shave themselves and scrub their bodies. As a result of their meeting, the two men feel a sudden need for some of the creature comforts they’ve been deprived of for years. They dream of a cigar after every meal, and also sitting down at a table to eat. For this last, they commit the sacrilege of setting two carved wooden doors atop a chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl, thus fashioning the furniture of their dreams. And then one day, on their way through a French fort, they spend a fortune on a captain’s common office chairs (and f
aced with the sovereign stamped with King George’s likeness that Samuel displays, the French officer hesitates, then pockets the coin, declaring, “Ah! You’re British Army, then. I guess they’re rich in the British Army!”). After which, having lugged a seraglio and its furnishings around for months, even years—its bronzes, woodwork, and frescoed walls museums the world over would envy—they sit down with childish glee, they sit down each night at a table on a pair of rickety chairs in the middle of the desert, or among the acacias of an oasis, or beneath a baobab in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by animals that have been unloaded and a camp that has been pitched, conversing over dinner as they might in the dining room of a middle class Beiruti household.

  But apart from that, nothing changes. Upon leaving the sultan of Sila, Shafik declares unsmilingly that he’s had enough, he doesn’t believe in it anymore, he might just go to Khartoum to try and sell off the most interesting pieces of his merchandise, pity about the rest. Just then, Samuel thinks of the sultan of Safa, but Safa is far to the south now, and he doesn’t want to go back there anymore. His mission is over, and he realizes that he, too, dreams of returning to Khartoum. To be done with this business once and for all, he suggests heading westward once more, toward Ouaddaï: “Let’s try one last time. I hear Ouaddaï princes are richer than the others, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll head back to Khartoum.” Shafik Abyad lets himself be won over; they set course westward, and all this will still take months upon months on foot accompanied by the unrelenting routine of the desert and the savannahs, arguments among the caravaners; camels that throw incredible tantrums, tearing out eyes and biting off ears, scorpions in shoes and snakes in blankets, days so hot the caravan can get going only in late afternoon, freezing nights when they sleep with their heads against the animals’ haunches; but also iridescent nights when they lie down with a constellation to their left, and when they wake a bit later, there it is on the right; brief and bloody hunts for gazelles, panthers, and lions everyone fantasizes about but no one ever sees; and erratic tribes, distant caravans, wells where suddenly a crowd crops up as at a fountain in a city, umbrella-like acacias and imposing baobabs, and also singular princes, madcap adventurers, mirages that aren’t mirages at all. In Abéché, for example, Prince Daoud tries to help himself to the palace. At first, this personage who thinks the French will put him on the throne of Ouaddaï comes, out of curiosity, with his court to inspect the hundreds of pieces unpacked outside his city walls. He is interested in the mirrors, the ceilings, the frescoed walls; he is tall, with rings on his fingers and silken, splendid lips. At one point, without explanation, he gives an order to halt. A canopy is unfurled overhead; seats are brought for the prince and his court, in which there is a French officer with a profoundly distant air. Shafik and Samuel sit down on their own chairs. Daoud waves for the two White Men to be brought seats, but Samuel protests and explains that to himself and his friend, these chairs are the most precious thing they have in all the world. “I’ve even heard that you white men sit down on chairs to do your necessaries,” says the Ouaddaï prince with a laugh. “Naturally, and much more besides,” replies Samuel, who embarks on the story of the bourgeois Beiruti who offered his wife a trip to Europe by boat as a wedding gift. Once aboard, he continues, the delighted wife takes up quarters in her luxury cabin. She has just enough time to display her admiration at the European-style bathroom with its gilded marble commode when she suddenly feels seasick from the swaying, for the ship has begun to pull away from the port of Beirut. Her husband has her brought up to the deck; they fan her, they speak to her, but no sooner does she open her eyes than she feels on the verge of fainting, and the husband, who has authority and a name, demands that he and his wife be put back on solid ground. There is much discussion, the captain himself is summoned, and orders that a lifeboat be lowered to the water. A few months later, Samuel concludes, the rich bourgeois Beiruti has the first European-style bathroom in all the Orient installed in his home, with a commode for bodily functions, which he offers to his wife in lieu of the wedding gift gone wrong.