He disconnected.
Cairo? I had had my heart set on Paris, on a plâteau de fruits de mer and a bottle of Meursault, on French girls, on the light of the Impressionists, on thugs I knew, Kalash’s men, rather than Egyptians I did not know. The last place I wanted to be was in a city full of crazed louts, every one of whom was licensed to kill Horace Hubbard.
At Cairo airport, the passport control officer, who wore a full Islamic beard, examined my blue U.S. passport as if it were the head of a pig that I had passed through the wicket with my left hand. However, he waved me through after spitting on his stamp and slamming it down on a fresh page. Customs paid no attention to me. Neither did anyone else as I stood against a wall outside the arrival hall and put my phone back together.
This time, I got Kalash’s voice mail. I left a message. Two minutes later, my phone rang. In the earpiece, Kalash’s voice said in English, “You are in Cairo?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“At the airport.”
“Go to the general aviation terminal. Ask for my pilot. His name is Captain Khaldun. Like the dead historian.”
“How will I know him?”
“He’ll know you. He will bring you to me. Do you have warm clothes in your kit?”
“Yes.”
“Good. It’s cold here at night and the women won’t sleep with a heathen.”
Click.
Captain Khaldun turned out to be a handsome fellow in his thirties, mute as a stone. We took off at dusk in a venerable Learjet and landed about three hours later at an airstrip in a desert. Kalash was right about the temperature. It was cold. A sickle moon hung in a velvety field of stars, so bright against the blackness that I began remembering the names of constellations I had learned in the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History. Captain Khaldun disappeared. I was all alone in the desert (but which desert?) with nothing to be seen except the stars and nothing to be heard except the piano-tuner ping of the jet’s engines cooling in the frigid air.
A Greek sniper who hunted Turks when he was young told me that he always took a position downwind from the enemy when working at night. When a Turk urinated, as one almost always did sooner or later, he fired a whole clip of ammunition at the smell. He often got his man. It was a particular satisfaction, he said, to kill an enemy you hated while he held his most precious possession between his fingers and his thumb. I emptied my bladder. Urine drilling into the sand made quite a loud noise. Apart from the discordant music of the cooling engines, the silence was total, so any rifleman assigned to take me out would be able to put at least two of the five senses to work as aids to marksmanship. It seemed unlikely that Kalash, even if he had had a reason to kill me, would have gone to all the trouble of flying me to a mysterious destination in order to shoot me. It would have been far easier and more economical to rub me out at the airport. One more dead Yank. Killer unknown, motive obvious.
An edgy wind blew. I dug my parka out of my bag and put it on. It was more than I needed against the desert chill, but it was all I had. Outside the bright spot created by the Lear’s parking lights, a vast noiseless pool of darkness stretched in all directions. I decided to take a little walk. I kept the Big Dipper over my left shoulder—not that I needed the stars as long as I did not lose sight of the airplane and the glowing bulbs on its tail and wingtips. There were shrubs and rocks in this desert. Walking in a straight line was difficult. After about ten minutes I turned around to orient myself with the Lear and saw nothing but darkness. Somebody had turned off the lights.
I sat down on a rock and searched the sky. There, by golly, was the Big Dipper, with the North Star off by itself just where a former second-class Scout would look for it. Since I had no idea where I was, this knowledge wasn’t particularly useful. In the absence of a map I had no way of knowing where I’d end up if I steered by Polaris. I said aloud, “Nice going, Horace.” I have been alone for most of my life—in half-empty houses smelling of absence after my parents divorced, in underheated snowbound schools where everybody else wanted to be a lawyer or a stockbroker, in a profession where no one was called by his true name, in Pennsylvania. I am in the habit of talking to myself. Even when not engaged in one-man conversations with him, I think of Horace as “he,” a man apart whom I am watching, listening to, not quite understanding.
A voice said, “You will end up as hyena dung if you keep this up. Do you know what hyena dung looks like?”
It was the inimitable Kalash. I said, “Hyena dung? Not actually, no.”
“It looks like pulverized crockery because hyenas chew up the bones and digest them.”
It was not so dark as I had thought. There was enough light from moon and stars to make out my host, a very tall figure wearing Arab robes. The darkness in which I had imagined myself lost had been darkness only because there had been nothing to see.
Kalash said, “Why are you wandering about like this?”
“Enjoying the stars. They’re very bright tonight.”
“They’re very bright every night in the desert unless there is a sandstorm. Follow me.”
He turned around and strode off into the night as if walking up the Champs-Élysées with the Arc de Triomphe as his landmark. Now that my eyes had adjusted to starlight I found it possible to keep him in sight. I heard a noise behind me, looked over my shoulder, and saw two squat figures who looked like wrestlers dressed in windblown kaffiyehs and caftans. They carried AK-47s, unmistakable even in silhouette.
A couple of hundred meters away we came upon two Range Rovers, parked with their lights out. I must have walked right by them, or near enough. Another wrestler, Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, held open the door of one of the vehicles for Kalash. I made a move as if to follow him. The two bodyguards behind me steered me to the other car. Except for the driver I was alone in the vehicle. Melancholy Arab music played—a contralto singing in heartbeat rhythm about how the airplanes of the Great Satan had killed her one true love in Afghanistan.
For the moment the use of hereditary titles was inconvenient in Sudan, but by all that is holy and eternal, Kalash was an emir. In the desert as in Paris, he lived like one. The tent into which I was shown after the drive from the airstrip was used for dining. Handsome carpets, heavy and thick, covered the sand floor. There were the usual big pillows and a long low dining table. Tapestries embroidered in gold thread with verses of the Koran hung from the eaves, stirring gently in the moving air. Hidden musicians tuned their instruments. Servants scurried about. One of them brought me a gin and tonic in a tea glass. Not my favorite drink, but I was glad to have it. Another offered me figs. I ate two, my first food since Istanbul. Behind the table, all in a row, a half dozen hooded peregrine falcons perched motionless on shoulder-high T-shaped perches inlaid with what looked like ivory and lapis lazuli.
After a half hour or so, Kalash entered. He had changed into camel’s hair robes. A servant followed, carrying a large, hooded falcon—Kalash’s favorite, I guessed—on his arm. Other servants marched in with five more falcons and placed them gently on the perches. When Kalash sank to a sitting position—a considerable sight to see in a white-bearded man dressed in flowing robes who could not have been less than six foot ten inches tall—the first handler took up station at Kalash’s elbow, falcon on his forearm, every muscle frozen. I wondered how much the bird weighed.
I wondered, too, when Sir Cecil Hardwicke would enter, costumed as a British general in scarlet tunic and decorations, and convey the best wishes of the Queen Empress to the emir, who would smile like the original serpent at this eunuch who was in the service of a woman.
Kamal gazed with affection at the birds. “Do you know what these are?”
Yes, I knew. But even on short acquaintance I also knew how much Kamal liked to instruct, so I lifted the end of the word with a question mark when I said, “Falcons?”
“Peregrine falcons. They are used for hunting.”
“What is the quarry?”
�
�Other birds,” Kalash said. “Sometimes small animals. A peregrine falcon kills its prey by grasping it in its talons while flying at more than two hundred miles per hour.”
“That must make the feathers fly.”
“Yes. And the blood. A man from National Geographic, an excitable fellow named Wilbur something, took some photographs of kills.”
“Do you still have them?”
“No. Pictures lie. The colors were wrong, like a cartoon, and a kill really doesn’t look like that at all, frozen into a single instant, silent.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like what it is, an epiphany. Many things happen in a split second but it can seem much longer if you know how to look at what is happening. The impact, the talons, the prey fighting back, trying to escape, not dying at once. Tomorrow you will see.”
“I can’t wait.”
Kalash said, “My father hunted with eagles. An eagle can kill jackals, even antelope.”
“Not hyenas?”
“The hyenas would eat the eagle, then probably the other hyena because it was bleeding from the eagle’s talons. Once my father’s eagle attacked an ostrich. The ostrich ran away with the eagle. The eagle held on like a jockey for miles, trying to kill this enormous thing, then finally let go and flew back to the wrist.”
A servant arrived, holding aloft a huge platter on which an entire roast lamb was arranged. Other men followed with other platters of rice, vegetables, figs and dates, hot unleavened bread.
“As honored guest you’re supposed to eat the eyes, brain, tongue and so on,” Kalash said. “It’s a great honor.”
“No, thank you. Roasted sheep’s eyes and half-cooked brains disgust me.”
“Commendable honesty. Most kaffirs gobble them down to be polite. They are anxious not to insult the ancient customs of desert hospitality. They look like they’re going to vomit at any moment. ‘More, take more!’ we say. And usually they do. It’s a great joke among the servants.”
While we ate the delicious greasy meal with our right hands only—more difficult for a kaffir than you might suppose—Kalash continued his lecture on falconry. All the falcons in the room responded to his voice only, Kalash said. Most falconers of his rank employed underlings actually to launch the birds, but Kalash’s father had taught him that a man who did that was a mere spectator.
“He even launched eagles by himself?”
“Certainly. Of course he was larger than I and very strong. With a sharp sword he could cut a man in half with a single stroke. The bird is always held on the right arm. This strengthens it for the sword.”
He was less imperious than he had been in Paris. I was content to listen. It’s rare in my experience that a descendant of the Prophet says anything interesting in the interminable interval that it takes him to come to the point. During our lengthy friendship, Ibn Awad was rarely coherent and even more rarely came to the point. Of course his only subject was God’s will, in which my interest is limited. Kalash, on the other hand, was teaching me a lot about a practical matter.
For training purposes, Kalash was explaining, only a freshcaught wild falcon will do. It must be female because in all species of hawk the female is larger, stronger and fiercer but easier to dominate.
“She falls in love with her master,” Kalash said. “That is the object of the training. You keep her in a dark room, always hooded, with a bell tied to her leg by a leather thong. The thong is tied to the perch. Of course the bird falls asleep. You go in and speak to her in the dark. She wakes up. She must hear no other voice but yours and you must always make the same sound.”
“What sound?”
“I can’t make it or all these falcons would fly. Each time you visit the falcon and wake it up you must speak to her and give her something to eat. Raw meat at first. Then a live mouse or a pigeon. You don’t put it in the beak, you touch the bird’s legs and feathers with it and let her lunge for it. You wear a thick glove for this. You must whistle, two short notes, while she swallows. In time she will connect the sound to feeding and will grip with her talons when she hears it. After this phase you can carry her about among people to accustom her to the sound of them, then do the same with the hood off so she will see what men look like from ground level. Wild birds do not know this. Falcons always see us from a great altitude, so they don’t realize how big we are, even though their eyesight is eight times more powerful than ours.”
He went on: Gradually the bird is accustomed to light and movement and is fed outside the dark room. She feeds in broad daylight while perched on the hunter’s arm. More training follows. Eventually she flies, kills, abandons what she kills without eating it, which is against her nature. Then she comes back to the falconer’s arm.
“The falcon does not tear and eat her victim because you have fed her before the hunt, so she is not hungry,” Kalash said. “Now she is a pure killer, killing for pleasure only and always ready to kill again. Training a virgin is quite similar. In the case of the virgin, one uses chocolate and new clothes and perfume and sometimes jewels instead of raw meat and dead pigeons. But both things happen in the dark and the voice of the master is very important. Obedience creates desire and desire creates obedience.”
Coffee was brought. Kalash drank it down, a thimbleful, then rose to his feet.
“Tomorrow we hunt,” he said.
He strode from the tent. His exit was anything but unceremonious. His bodyguards, who had been standing behind the perched falcons, followed him out, Kalashnikovs at port arms. The music stopped in mid-chord as he stepped across the threshold into the dark.
2
I was not alone for long. A servant entered from outside and said something rude to me in Arabic. It never occurred to him that I understood. I did not enlighten him. Smiling now, he beckoned me to follow him. He led me to a small tent. It was decorated in the same way as the dining tent, but this time with a bed in the center. The covers were turned down, as in a hotel. I was more tired than I had thought. The flights, the heavy supper, the sheer effort of listening to Kalash’s certitudes for the simple-minded, had worn me out. I undressed, washed my face in the bowl of water the servant had left, and got into bed. It was an extra-long bed. Kalash was the first host I’d ever had who was taller than me.
When I put my head on the pillow, something crackled. I looked underneath and found an aircraft map of Central Asia. I spread it out on the bed. It was a very large, detailed map. The area covered stretched from the Arabian peninsula to northern Iran and northern Afghanistan and beyond that to Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Xinjiang. This vast territory was essentially a patchwork of deserts. At various points on the map, airstrips had been drawn in by hand, with latitude and longitude and the length of the strip entered in a neat draftsman’s hand.
I knew what the map meant. I thought I knew why it had been given to me. However, I wondered about the lengthy inventory of other possible motives. But not for long. I fell asleep as if drugged. Judging by my dreams, in which Mikhail assured me that absolutely no one was my friend and Kevin showed me Christopher in a box, perhaps I had been.
The stars were still out when I was awakened by the sulky servant who had put me to bed the night before. He brought tea and yogurt, flat bread and figs. I took the tea outside. Venus was large and bright among the fading constellations. Septimus Arcanus’s sky must have been something like this, but (I had read this someplace) with a Venus the size of a lemon.
Suddenly Kalash’s voice, close behind me, said, “Do you know the zodiac?”
“By heart.”
“So did Christopher. A strange expertise for a man who didn’t believe in fate. Do you believe in fate?”
“In luck, maybe.”
“Luck is the fate of the unbeliever.”
As we drove away with the windows open I heard a voice in the camp calling the faithful to prayers. Kalash paid no attention. The driver was in radio contact with someone who was telling him whic
h way to go, where to turn. At our destination, a patch of desert that looked very much like the ground we had been driving over, we were greeted by a dozen of Kalash’s men. Half of them were wrapped in blankets against the lingering night chill. The rest carried falcons on their right arms.
“This is a good place to find the houbara bustard,” Kalash said. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Not even a picture of one.”
“Even cameras cannot see them when they do not wish to be seen.”
It was no longer dark but it was not yet light, either. The sun came up over the rim of the desert. Long rippling shadows formed. The falcons, all hooded, did not move. The human beings had already turned their backs to the sun to protect their eyes. From the first instant you could feel its heat through your clothes. Kalash walked away very fast, heedless of the rough footing. I was able to match him stride for stride. The others trotted to keep up. A few yards farther on, two lookouts in sand-colored clothes were sprawled on their stomachs in the sand. The men behind us stopped in their tracks in unison, as if in response to a silent command. Kalash sank to his knees. He crooked a finger to me and to one of the falconers, then crept toward the lookouts up ahead. We followed and reached the lookouts in moments. They made hand signals. It was quite strange to be in the company of four Arabs and not hear a word spoken.
Kalash’s men were gazing intently at a bush about twenty yards to the front. At first I saw nothing. Then I remembered my birder’s lore and looked for shadows in the horizontal light. I spotted a likely one and followed it back to a brown speckled bird about the size of a partridge but with a longer neck and longer legs and pointier beak. It was frozen in position, head thrust forward, one leg raised. Its camouflage was amazing. It looked like nothing living—like a divot gouged from the desert floor. Without the shadow as guide I might never have seen it, though I have spent many happy moments sorting birds out of foliage. I snorted in admiration.
The Old Boys Page 26
