The Devil Is a Black Dog

by Sandor Jaszberenyi

  Our conversation was interrupted only when the doctor came by, but that didn’t happen too often. The doctor saw me just four times in my four days at the hospital. On his visits he would ask me to lie back in my bed and follow his pen with my eyes. He wrote the results in a white notebook and hummed with satisfaction.

  Abed and I really talked about everything—that is, everything besides how we had each landed in the hospital. Abed avoided the topic, and I was mostly concerned with how I could best get some sleep. Luckily I’d been given some pills by the doctor to take before bed. My daily four hours were assured.

  Despite this, the nights were still unspeakably long. The cement tower blocks, like the one we were in, slowly disgorged the heat that they had absorbed over the course of the day. Even with the fan running, the stiflingly humid air of the room seemed almost still.

  It was on one of those nights when Abed told me about how he broke his leg. We were already in bed, but neither of us could sleep. The light from a streetlamp was shining in through an open window, so we could see still each other clearly. Unable to find a comfortable position, Abed stirred restlessly in bed.

  “You know how this happened?” he asked, finally turning toward me and tapping on his cast. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

  “I promise.”

  “The thing is, I have this Chinese pistol.…”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It’s a fine pistol, but you always have to keep it in good repair and well-oiled because of the sand.”

  “Don’t tell me that …”

  “Yes, I pulled the trigger. I didn’t think that there was still a bullet in the barrel. Don’t you dare laugh!”

  “You were lucky.”

  “The doctor said God was merciful with me. The round went straight through my leg. I didn’t even need surgery or anything.”

  “You really were lucky.”

  “God loves me.”

  We went quiet. Once again it was Abed who broke the silence. “And you, Abu Magari”—this meant “Hungarian father”—“how did you come to be here?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “People don’t usually go to the hospital for that.”

  “I haven’t been able to sleep for three months.”

  “And before these three months, how could you sleep?”

  “I was another person.”

  “And what happened?”

  “My wife abandoned me and took our child.”

  “She cheated?”

  “I believe so. Many times.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I don’t know. That’s probably why I can’t sleep.”

  “No, I mean what did you do when you found out she cheated?”

  “I came back to Africa.”

  “Why didn’t you put a bullet in her head?” he asked with sincere outrage.

  “That’s not a custom with us.”

  “If you had shot her in the head, at least you could get some sleep.”

  Abed wouldn’t let anybody visit because he was embarrassed that he had shot himself in the leg. On the fourth day, however, when it was time for him to be released, his brothers came.

  That morning the doctor had told Abed that he could go, but the cast needed to stay on his leg for a few more weeks. I don’t know if it was because we were together in the room, but the doctor also told me I could leave. There was just one problem with this: the bus that would take me to my hotel in Cairo wouldn’t leave until evening.

  It was around ten, and we were just picking over the remains of a late breakfast, when two teenagers in track suits stepped into the ward, sandals on their dirty feet. They grinned as they went over to Abed’s bed and greeted him. They spoke in the Bedouin dialect, so I didn’t understand a word. They helped Abed up from the bed, pressed a crutch into his hand, and then, at the man’s order, began to pack his stuff from the wardrobe.

  Abed changed into his brown jellabiya, then looked over at me.

  “Get ready, Abu Magari, because you are coming with us,” he said with a smile.

  “Why?” I asked, though I reflected that the question should really be, Why not? For three months it had been my policy to strike the word “no” from my vocabulary.

  “Does it really matter where you can’t sleep?” Abed asked.

  “When it comes down to it, not so much.”

  “So get your stuff together. Come with me. We’ll have a good meal and I’ll show you the desert.” The two teenagers quickly picked up on the situation. The boys each shook my hand and introduced themselves. They were called Muhammad and Ahmed. I quickly packed my stuff, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and headed out with them.

  It took us a while to make our way down the hospital steps, because of Abed’s cast. Waiting in front of the building was a white Mitsubishi pickup. One boy flipped open the vehicle’s tailgate, jumped in, and helped Abed up, then moved into the front seat and started the ignition.

  “Now what is it, Abu Magari, are you waiting for night to fall?” yelled the grinning Abed. I climbed in next to him. “Move the rifles if you need more space.”

  Three weather-beaten AK-47s lay next to where Abed sat. I pushed them aside, took a place next to the Bedouin, and hung on. With his palm, Abed hit the side of the vehicle. The back wheels churned up dust and in no time we were on the road to Sheikh Zuweid.

  Abed the Bedouin lived in a large cement house with his family. Next to the house stood a white tent, which was always full of the men of the Sawarka tribe. Although Abed’s father lived a few miles away, he walked over every day so he could discuss business affairs with the tribal elders. They had much to talk about: for instance, they couldn’t make sense of the civil law book and didn’t understand why it would be a criminal matter if they sold arms to their Muslim brothers in the Gaza Strip—not a day went by without a dispute with the local authorities. And, at the market, they bickered with other tribes over customers.

  The men received me with a great show of affection after Abed explained the situation. Later that same day the two boys took me to show me the tunnels in Rafah. They proudly chattered in the front seat as we drove past the collapsing, sagging houses on the dirt road, beneath which ran the tunnels.

  By the time we’d returned from Rafah, the men were getting ready for dinner. Everything had been set out in the tent for twenty people.

  We ate together, in Bedouin fashion: without utensils, and using the right hand to scoop up the food, then washing the hand clean in a common bowl once finished.

  After the meal, the lively gathering continued in the tent; the conversation lasted until eleven. Many of them joked that they would take a Hungarian woman as a second wife no matter what the cost. After midnight, however, the men began to trickle home.

  “I’ll show you your room,” said Abed, when it was just us two. “You are a good person, Abu Magari, and I am glad you are here. Stay for as long as you want; you are always welcome as my guest.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Bedouin led the way to my floor. In the room was a single bed that Abed’s wife had made up with a fresh sheet.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go shooting,” he said. Then, with his crutch under his arm, he shuffled away.

  I lay in bed for two hours, trying to sleep. I closed my eyes and waited for a dream to arrive. But none came.

  At three I got out of bed and opened my backpack to look for my medicine case. When I found it, I spilled the entire contents on the floor, in the hope that I might find a few stray Xanax pills, because in the hospital they had confiscated the lot of them. There were none to be found.

  Right then I caught sight of an old book under the bed. It was in German, published in 1936, written by one Hans Alexander Winkler, entitled Die reitenden Geister der Toten. A handwritten dedication on the title page, in black ink, read: “Für Abd el Radi mit Liebe. Hans Alexander, Cairo, 1938.”

  To distract myself from my torment, I began to read. It
was an anthropological study about a certain man named Abd el Radi, who was a ghost rider. People like him were called ghost riders because allegedly they could mount the spirit of a dead person, who could then communicate with the living through them. The book dealt at length with how the Bakhit, or spirit, bound people with or released them from curses, tying such knots and untying them, and how it conjured up vengeful fire spirits from ash and blood.

  By six the next morning I had finished the book. My nerves were on fire. Devil take me, I thought. And that didn’t seem like a bad idea.

  The machine gun crackled in my hands. In the distance, clouds of sand shot up far from the soda bottles we had set out as targets.

  “Try again,” said Abed. “Use your shoulder to better brace the gun.” I did as he said and fired again. This time the sand cloud rose closer to the bottles.

  We were by Mount Halal, somewhere in the middle of the desert. The sun was blazing; I was faint with sleeplessness.

  “You can’t concentrate.”

  He took the gun from my hand. The wood stock of the Czech Kalashnikov gleamed in the sun.

  “Well, no,” I said and wiped my brow. Squinting, I watched how the Bedouin fumbled with his bad leg to position himself for the shot. He took a long time to aim, and then pulled the trigger. His shot didn’t find the target either. He swore loudly, and then secured the gun.

  “It seems I can’t either,” he said with a grin. “Now, come, Abu Magari, let’s go back to the city and have something to eat.”

  We walked back to the truck. Unperturbed, Abed drove with his bad leg, though for this he needed to push the seat all the way back. He floored it past the villages, and slowed the vehicle only when we drove past the ruins of an Israeli airport, where, in the distance there appeared the metal fence and palm trees that lined the base of the international peacekeeping force.

  “I found this last night,” I said to Abed, pulling the book from my pants pocket and placing it on the table. We were sitting in a small restaurant in Arish, eating roast chicken. “It’s dedicated,” I pointed out.

  “Yes. My grandfather’s younger brother was Abd el Radi. Where did you find it?”

  “Under the bed.”

  “My father must have left it there when he stayed with us.”

  “He knows German?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did he have it?”

  “There are pictures in it. Sometimes he’d look at them. We don’t have many pictures of my grandfather and Abd el Radi.”

  I listened as I pushed rice around with my fork.

  “I’d like to go see a ghost rider,” I said.

  “For what?” asked Abed. “Because of your wife, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You should have shot her and been done with it.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Age-old mistake.”

  We went quiet. Abed picked his teeth with a bone, and then pointed to the book.

  “That was a long time ago. Since then things have changed. There aren’t many ghost riders left. Let’s drive a little then watch some TV. Or we could find somebody with an Internet connection. For the other stuff, you need to be a Bedouin.”

  “It was just an idea.”

  “A bad idea.”

  We left it like that and went back to the house. Abed had to take care of some things in the afternoon; I left him to it and wrote an article about the Egypt-Israeli border, the tunnels that ran under Rafah, and the Bedouins who ran them.

  Abed returned around sunset. After eating dinner with the men, my host introduced me to his two small sons.

  Both boys were five. The Bedouin introduced me like I was a film star, after which the boys hung on me and pulled at my hair. They simply couldn’t believe I had blonde hair.

  I began to feel increasingly tense, however, as bedtime neared. The melting of days into each other, one of the first symptoms of chronic insomnia, is still bearable, especially in company. The hell begins when you find yourself alone in the night.

  By morning my eyes were totally bloodshot. When Abed found me I was sitting on the floor, so I could watch the sun rise from between the hills of the desert.

  “OK,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll take you to a ghost rider.”

  We left the house at noon. Abed had to make several calls to figure out where a ghost rider lived who would be willing to see us. No sooner did he find one than we were off. The desert was blindingly white; before our eyes the ultramarine sky melted into the horizon.

  We had been driving for an hour before Abed spoke.

  “You know you will have to pay him.”

  “I do. Do you know the man?”

  “No. My nephew told me how to find him. He’s called Ahmed Ustazi.”

  “OK.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “To drive away the devil.”

  “Anything more concrete?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We’ll see what he recommends.”

  We let it drop. A few minutes later a row of palm huts appeared in the distance. When we pulled up, all the village’s children were standing along the road, gaping at the car. Abed slowed to a stop and greeted them.

  “Peace be upon you. Where can we find Ahmed Ustazi’s tent?”

  The kids scattered at the mention of the ghost rider’s name. We started off toward the center of the village.

  “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” I asked Abed.

  “I’m sure.”

  We were at the outer huts, when we noticed an old woman.

  Abed, leaning his crutch up against a hut, asked her where the ghost rider lived; she pointed to the distance. A brown tent stood almost half a mile away.

  As we approached the tent, my nose caught the smell of carrion. Abed went into the tent first; I followed. For a few minutes I couldn’t see anything in the dimly lit space, then, as my eyes adjusted, I was able make out the interior.

  From the tent’s ceiling the rotting carcasses of kestrels, their wings spread wide, hung on plastic cords, flies buzzing around them.

  Under the kestrels stood a beat-up writing table covered with bowls and trash. A forty-something man in a jellabiya sat in front of the table in a woven chair. His face was grubby, and he was missing an eye.

  “Peace be upon you,” he said. That was the most I understood of his Bedouin dialect. We approached the table, then Abed explained the situation, waving his hands for emphasis. The man turned toward me and said something I couldn’t understand.

  “He said he doesn’t know a curse that can drive away the devil,” Abed translated, then added, “But he does know one to use if you can’t rest, if you never feel satisfied and can’t love anybody, not even yourself.”

  “That will work,” I said. Right then, I felt that the tent was dissolving, me along with it. I teetered, and then reached into my pocket, where I kept a bottle. I took a few swigs of the lukewarm mineral water.

  Abed looked at me with worry. Again, the ghost rider spoke.

  “He said that this would be the strongest knot.”

  “OK.”

  “You will need something of your wife’s. Do you have anything from her?”

  “A boy,” I said, and leaned on the table for support. Abed translated. The ghost rider picked up a rusty scalpel from the table. Before I had time to realize it, he’d made a two-inch-long cut on my hand. It was deep, and blood began to immediately flow from the wound. From under the trash on the table, he produced a blue plastic dish. He held my hand over the dish, so my cut could drip into it. He scattered bird feathers and sand in the blood, then began to chant.

  Because of my sleeplessness, the tent again began to spin, only that this time I didn’t lose my balance. I gazed at the ghost rider, who was bending over my hand, mumbling something; I watched my blood, how it rhythmically dripped into the plastic dish.

  A cell phone sounded. It started quietly, but became increasingly loud, until the prei
nstalled Nokia ringtone filled the tent. The ghost rider stood upright, then reached into the pocket of his jellabiya, took out the phone, and began to talk. He spoke in a Cairo accent, which I understood perfectly. The topic of conversation was a car. I gathered that he was selling it and a potential buyer was on the line. Abed and I looked at each other questioningly, but the ghost rider wasn’t in the least bit embarrassed.

  The man described the car’s attributes at length: the tires and condition of the rims, as well as the battery, which he had changed just a few weeks ago. When he finished the conversation he carefully put the phone back in his pocket, looked at me and my bleeding hand, and said only this:

  “We’re alright.”

  Abed translated, though it wasn’t necessary. This, I already understood. I also well understood the next sentence:

  “That will be a hundred dollars.”

  I reached into the pocket of my leather jacket, took out my last hundred-dollar bill, and pressed it into the man’s hand. I then left the tent. Abed followed.

  I took my scarf from my neck and wrapped it around my hand, then sat holding it in the car.

  We pulled away quickly, soon leaving the village behind. We gazed at the desert that rushed past and the hills in the distance.

  For a while we sat in silence, then the Bedouin said, “You know, you can still shoot her.” We then agreed that although the wound on my hand wasn’t too serious, it would be a good idea if we stopped in Arish to pick up some disinfectant.

  The Dead Ride Fast

  Wie flog, was rund der Mond beschien,

  Wie flog es in die Ferne!

  Wie flogen oben überhin

  Der Himmel und die Sterne! -

  “Graut Liebchen auch? … Der Mond scheint hell!

  Hurra! Die Toten reiten schnell! –

  Graut Liebchen auch vor Toten?”

  “O weh! laß ruhn die Toten!”

  How flew to the right, how flew to the left,

  Trees, mountains in the race!

  How to the left, and the right and the left,

  Flew town and marketplace!

  “What ails my love? the moon shines bright: