Moving the Palace

by Charif Majdalani

  When he is done, much rambling on ensues about the oddness of the Lebanese and women in general, but the French officer impassively declares, as if insidiously insinuating in Daoud’s ear the poison of doubt, that a commode is also called a “throne” in French and quite possibly even in English. This casts a pall, and by the time the prince steps from the shade of his awning, a peculiar atmosphere has reigned for quite a spell. Moreover, from that day on, a metaphor begins spinning out its wicked filaments in Daoud’s mind; for him, marriage becomes an allusion to his union with the French, which can lead only to a single conclusion: that wife, to whom a commode is being offered, can be none other than himself. This sends him into a fury, or else he pretends it does. He sends a message to the two Lebanese expressing his affrontedness and demanding reparation. Samuel and Shafik, to whom it seems clear all this is but a maneuver to confiscate the palace, nonetheless make the prince a gift of the chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl. But the next day two mounted guards burst into camp and hurl the chest unceremoniously into the dust. As things seem to taking a turn for the worse, Samuel persuades Shafik to strike camp, which they do under cover of night, and at dawn the vast caravan leaves the outskirts of town. Furious, Daoud sets out in pursuit. Samuel’s riders, who have stayed behind, keep him from leaving the city; shots are exchanged, Gawad’s riders employ their English rifles to great effect, and Daoud, who cannot engage them without compromising what he believes are his chances of being restored to the throne of Ouaddaï, orders his warriors to stand down.

  Two days later, Samuel abandons his positions. At an oasis where he stops with his troops to spend the night, he dines with a Lebanese adventurer—yes, another one, who turns up out of nowhere on camelback in the middle of the savannah and introduces himself, in explorer’s garb, with a monocle and a tic that keeps his nostrils aquiver. Accompanying him are three large black men, and he takes a seat beside the fire that Samuel’s men have lit for dinner. He knows about Shafik Abyad’s cargo, he’s been hearing about it for months, and he makes Samuel a proposition: why don’t his two fellow countrymen come with him and sell it to Suleiman Kurra, a powerful sheikh in Gimr, soon to be married, to whom he himself is bringing goods for the wedding.

  “He will buy your palace to house his new wives,” the Lebanese explorer assures Samuel.

  “How many is he marrying at once?” asks Samuel, who doesn’t like the looks of this man, for he has a slightly unbalanced stare and a disturbing smile, his stare and his smile never agreeing, the former blazing while the latter remains frozen, the latter unleashed without warning even as the former remains glum.

  “He’ll have his pick,” says the man. “He’ll soon be getting four slaves, and he’ll choose his bride-to-be from among them.”

  So saying, he gives his very delicate nostrils a pinch.

  “And meanwhile, he’s putting them all up at his own house?” Samuel asks as the cries of foxes ring through the night.

  “Why, of course,” says the Lebanese man with the bizarre smile that has nothing to do with his face. “He’ll put them up in the seraglio you sell him. He’s buying children, girls he’s having brought over from the heart of Equatoria. He’ll let them grow up under his eye and then one day, he’ll pick the prettiest one to marry.”

  And as he speaks, with a mocking air, he leans forward to pluck a mouthful of millet from a passing platter. Samuel watches him, taken aback, as the platters of rice and vegetables pass from hand to hand, and then the man adds, “At least this way, he can train them himself. It’ll save him from ever being asked for a solid gold crapper, like in that story you tell everywhere you go.”

  And he bursts out laughing, then suddenly falls silent and looks at Samuel mischievously as a madman before going on: “Don’t worry, I’ll help you sell him that palace of yours. Trust me.”

  “I’m not worried in the slightest. And what are you going to sell Suleiman Kurra?”

  “What he needs most for his wedding,” says the Lebanese explorer, his stare unwavering but his smile cheery.

  “And what is that, exactly?” Samuel insists.

  “Women,” says the Lebanese explorer, whose stare and smile match up for the first time, whose entire face is gleeful and gloating. A long silence follows, which he seizes upon, with an ambiguous gesture, to clean the monocle he never places over his eye.

  “No doubt you know the French have serious punishments for slave traders in the region,” Samuel says at last.

  “I can take care of myself!” says the other man, letting the monocle fall.

  And as if to punctuate his rejoinder, he waves at one of his black companions, with their martial stares. The man rises, disappears into the darkness of the oasis, then returns with a saddlebag from which he pulls, before those gathered in a circle, a strange potbellied object he places on the sand as he might a severed head. And only gradually does the nature of this trophy become clear to Samuel’s incredulous eyes: it is the battered helmet of a Roman legionary from antiquity, standing on its neck guard and pointed ear guards like a shelled creature, empty, hollow, inert but inundated with the immeasurable mystery it represents, risen from the depths of time in the middle of the African desert, recalling the fabulous encounter between the black tribes and the crests, crimson capes, and eagles of Rome. It takes Samuel a moment for his memory to stir, and he remembers reading once, long ago, about legions gone to seek some mythic realm or another, who strayed and were lost forever in the deepest Africa.

  “Where did you get that thing?” he asks his fellow countryman.

  “From the sands of Dar al-Arba’in,” says the other man, whose face has recovered the euphoric simultaneity of fixedness and motion. “Somewhere in the desert. There lie bones worn rougher than pumice, and weapons, and helmets.”

  “You went there?”

  “Who can, without going mad? But I have my suppliers. And let me tell you, for a gift like this, the French officer in charge of the garrison at Gimr will always look the other way.”

  In the morning, the Lebanese explorer comes to see Samuel, with his half-frozen, half-animated air and quivering nostrils, monocle dangling uselessly from his French chemise. In answer to the question about his decision on last night’s offer, Samuel tells him of course not, and as for any commission on the sale, sorry, that won’t happen either. “However,” he says, “I’d like very much to buy that Roman helmet from you.” The Lebanese man hesitates, his whole face freezing in a moment of fleeting astonishment, then mobility returns at all once—to his blazing eyes, then his leftward-leaning smile. The man sighs, pouts—pure playacting on the his part, Samuel thinks—and indeed he finally comes out and says, all right, fine, I can’t say no to a fellow countryman, but naturally it’ll be quite expensive, even with the deal he’s cutting Samuel. I don’t want any deal, Samuel says, and an hour later, he’s back on the road with his riders, with English gold and the helmet of a lost legionary wrapped up in fabric, dangling from the side of his mount like a trophy. But after just a few hours, he retraces his steps, and for three days circles the oasis, watching the trails to try to ambush the goods the Lebanese man with the monocle is waiting for. One day, with his binoculars, he spots a convoy coming from the east with great utfas nodding on the backs of several camels, attesting to the presence of women. The encounter is dramatic, Samuel’s orders accompanied by the horses’ snorts of impatience. Gawad also makes a few menacing gestures to his warriors, but their searches turn up nothing. The women beneath the canopies of the camel litters are merchants’ wives returning from Khartoum, whose husbands let the White Man see them, as everyone takes him for a British soldier in civilian clothes. On the third day, they force a caravan transporting goods from Equatoria to a halt. But there are no women, only ivory, precious woods, and preposterous animals: green parrots and pink-buttocked baboons, in particular four females squealing and clucking in four cages. At the sight of them, Samuel bursts into laughter, then asks where the caravan is going.

  “Dar
Gimr,” states the man in charge.

  “Whom are these little monkeys meant for?”

  “Suleiman Kurra,” says their owner.

  “Is Suleiman Kurra getting married?” Samuel asks.

  The other man makes a face as if to say, how would I know?

  “Did a Lebanese man arrange this deal?” Samuel insists.

  “Yes,” says the merchant. “Do you know him?”

  “He’s waiting for you at the oasis in Badr,” Samuel replies. “But tell me one last thing. Is there a French garrison in Gimr?”

  “Not at all. Gimr is a free sultanate.”

  “Then farewell.”

  *

  Now, while Samuel is seeing to this little affair concerning the desert explorer, Shafik Abyad is making his way east when, on the third day, things take a bad turn and his camel drivers fall into their old habits, refusing to go any farther. The reason is clear. Samuel’s unexplained departure has sown doubt among Shafik’s men, who are now convinced the two White Men have gone their separate ways. Which means the guarantee that Samuel embodied, of wages at every step along the way, has vanished into thin air. Not to mention that the mysterious treasure from which Samuel would pull the deciding argument in any conversation had wound up exerting a powerful magnetism on them. It was at work on their dreams, and secretly fed their whisperings. Its tacit presence galvanized and reassured them, as if they went everywhere accompanied by a comforting force, an occult source of energy defended by dark warriors from Safa. And now the warriors have vanished along with Samuel, and explain as he might that they will return, it does Shafik Abyad no good. “Let us wait for them,” one of the caravaners says at first, but Shafik refuses. They keep pressing on eastward one more day, and finally, mutiny breaks out; to test him, the men challenge Shafik to pay them for the past few days. When he refuses, they gather, hold a lengthy parley, and decide not only to change their route, but if Abyad resists, to abandon him by a well. Unable to impose his plans upon them, the Lebanese man finds himself forced to give in, such that just as Samuel is trying to rejoin him by galloping eastward, he is being led south despite himself, like a captain imprisoned on his own vessel. But desperation drives him to a most singular decision. On the very site of the mutiny, he leaves one of the bronze-framed mirrors in hopes it will catch the eye of Samuel’s riders. Then a few hours later, he has a camel driver loyal to him jettison one of the carved wooden doors, and from then on, whenever he gets a chance, he leaves a piece of his palace behind: easily spotted pieces at first, parts of the Moorish-style pool, sculpted wood from the roof, a chest, and then, by turns, sometimes a striking object, a portion of mashrabiya, a section of frescoed wall, and sometimes numbered stones from walls south, east, and west... For days and days he goes on like this, sloughing the palace behind him, sowing it across the savannah at the feet of boxwood hedges, beneath acacias, on the red and ochre sand, the long tail of a caravan whose cargo its owner is liquidating with a belligerence no longer motivated only by the desire to leave some trace of his passing but also the will to avenge himself on fate, to have done—coldly, meticulously—with this entire affair. And as Shafik Abyad abandons his absurd dream piece by piece, the caravaners head stubbornly south, occupied with their own business, not suspecting a thing. Then, of course, they finally take notice and another secret meeting is held. Some laugh and declare it proof that Samuel is coming back to them. But others protest and say that if the Safa warriors find their trail, their vengeance will be terrible. A quarrel breaks out as Shafik is sitting beneath a baobab with a few faithful followers, and from a distance, he manages more or less to grasp that the mutineers are now convinced Samuel will return. Some think they’d be better off waiting for him, even if it means explaining themselves, while others think it’d be too risky, and suggest departing as soon as possible, leaving Abyad behind. Finally, they decide to try to reach the town of Wak, in Dar Tama.

  And so they set out once more while, on his end, Samuel and his twenty-five warriors have been galloping toward the rising sun ever since the oasis in Badr. After three days, doubt sets in, they stop, go in circles, and begin exploring the various available trails—the one for Musbat, then the one for Bi’r Furāwīyah, and also the one going from Gimr to Teiga until, one afternoon, a group of riders get a shard of sunlight right in the eye from a singular piece of glass and find, where the path to Qumqum crosses the one to Dar Tama, the bronze-framed mirror leaning against an acacia. Its silvering, murkier than ever, can still reflect the desert path, the green and dusty stands of trees—and perhaps it has also reflected, in the past few days, gazelles galloping by, slow, snooping hyenas, and stilted ostriches. After this discovery, Samuel and his troops have only to push southward for a bit before they find, crowning a thicket of wild broom, one of the carved doors from Abyad’s palace and then, a day’s walk away, part of the green and turquoise Moorish-style fountain, forsaken under a baobab. “Something’s wrong,” Samuel says. When ashlar follows every half-day—block number 105 (“stateroom”), number 72 (“windowsill, women’s divan”), and then number 42 (“bedrock, gallery wall”)—he realizes what might have driven Shafik to act as he did, and quickens his pace, now passing without even stopping the other, ever more lavish pieces strewn across the savannah like old rags, and catches up with the caravan just as it is setting out again after the secret meetings and arguments.

  Taking things back in hand inevitably involves some severity. The main leaders of the mutiny are driven out. Standing on a pile of canvas tent tarps, Samuel makes a scathing speech to the others, surrounded by the glowering faces of the Safa horsemen. But that night, seated at the table, he tells the story of the Lebanese explorer. Shafik laughs and makes jokes. He’s started losing weight again, but his eyes recover a bit of cheer in Samuel’s presence, and throughout the entire meal, the Roman helmet, set down like a ferocious table decoration, takes on strange aspects, ghostly or menacing depending on the whim of the fire they’re eating next to, which sets their shadows dancing around them. When they are done, and Samuel announces that plans must be made to recover the cargo scattered across the savannah, Shafik’s face grows somber once more, his gaze goes dark, and he declares firmly that it’s out of the question, he’s had enough, this time he’s through and the palace will stay where it is, he’s strewn it all about because he no longer wishes to hear of it. A bitter exchange breaks out; Samuel declares that they haven’t done all this for nothing. But that’s exactly what they’ve done, Shafik replies, and he’s had enough, he’s been an idiot, he’s ruined himself, but that’s how it is. Samuel insists that nothing is lost, one option still remains, maybe the best one, and after suffering Shafik’s irony once more, an irony Shafik turns against himself before consenting to shut up and listen, Samuel declares that they still have an option: they’ll sell the palace to the British government in Khartoum. For a moment, Shafik Abyad thinks he’s being funny, and eyes Samuel with the same bitter irony.