Nomad's Dream

by August Li

  Janan knew the things he felt and imagined as he watched Isra remove his jubbah, watched the way the morning light accentuated the lean muscles of his back, weren’t allowed, wouldn’t be accepted. He wanted to look away from Isra as he stepped naked into the pool but found he couldn’t, and when Isra turned and met Janan’s eyes, Janan hurried to look away. He realized afterward that his failure to meet Isra’s gaze made him look more guilty than innocent, and he forced himself to face the other man, though his cheeks burned and sweat sprung from his forehead.

  Isra smiled up at him, his hands circling just beneath the water’s surface, making little waves lap against his flat belly and waist. At the way it made his dark skin sparkle and the hair on his torso curl, Janan’s mouth went dry. If he let his attention wander a few inches, he’d be able to see much more. The water was very clear.

  “Are you coming?” Isra asked.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Don’t you want to bathe?”

  Janan did, desperately. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt clean. But what would happen if his body betrayed him when he had no means to hide it? Already he struggled not to stare at the play of Isra’s muscles beneath his wet skin as he moved through the water. He dreaded being caught more out of fear of losing their budding friendship than any danger to himself.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Isra’s brown eyes looked so warm, so open.

  Taking a deep breath, Janan nodded. He was not an animal, and he could control himself. Still, he kept his body angled away from Isra and his eyes fixed firmly on the ground as he undressed.

  The water had a bite as he lowered himself in, but his body soon acclimated, and he reveled in the current carrying away months’ worth of dirt, the grime of the city. He dipped his head and scrubbed at his scalp, raking his nails through hair he couldn’t ever remember washing properly. And if he forgot his dilemma for a moment, it returned as soon as his head broke the surface of the water.

  Isra stood close—so close Janan could count the wet black hairs framing his slightly parted lips, the few strays meandering onto his neck. By the way Isra quickly averted his gaze, Janan knew: he’d been watching him.

  Isra turned and moved to the lip of the pool, where he dug around in his bag until he located a shard of yellow soap and a cloth. He handed them to Janan with that shy smile Janan was growing to know well. When Janan took them, their fingers brushed, and he expected Isra to pull away.

  He didn’t, and for many moments, they stood regarding each other, the desert still as the sun crept higher into the sky.

  Finally Janan cleared his throat. “Thank you. It feels good to be clean.”

  Isra seemed to struggle to respond, and for a few more seconds, he just stood before finally forcing a smile. “I have a comb in my pack, and a towel when we’re ready to dry off.”

  He moved back toward the rocks, and Janan set about washing himself. What had just happened? He couldn’t deny something had passed between them, something significant, but he was afraid to look too closely, to consider that it was more than wishful thinking, a result of his loneliness.

  Chapter Six

  ROSE GOLD morning light sparkled through the branches of the acacia trees, promising a clear day and painting intersecting stripes over Janan’s sleeping face. Isra smiled at how peaceful his new friend looked. The past week of doing little besides walking the desert, baking bread, and talking around a fire until neither of them could keep their eyes open had done wonders for the other man. Janan had washed, combed, and tied his mahogany hair back in a tail. He trimmed his beard close to his chin. Isra thought he looked… elegant. He was a handsome man, and he moved over the hills and through the gullies with the lightness and care of a cat. Isra liked watching him, liked the obscure topics they found to discuss, and even liked the long, companionable silences as they sat together. But Isra had a wealth of experiences to share, years’ worth of memories before this short time with Janan, and Janan didn’t. For him, this week in the desert and the few months scrounging in the streets of Qena were his whole life, and Isra knew that wasn’t fair. Today they would go back to the city and try to find some clue about who Janan had been. As if to escape his guilt over not looking forward to success, Isra hurried out of their little enclosure to gather water for coffee.

  Flicker sat perched on a rock at the edge of the small pool, the light reflecting off his jewelry and burnished bronze skin. His smile stabbed another prong of guilt into Isra’s belly. For the past week of showing Janan the ibex herds, the gazelles at their watering holes, and the hidden trails and crevices in the red rock, Isra had spent barely a handful of moments thinking about the arafrit. He hadn’t met Flicker in his dreams at all.

  “Miss me?” Flicker arched one perfect brow. He’d changed his attire back to his usual filmy loincloth, and the water steamed when he dipped his graceful feet. “Haven’t forgotten me already, have you?”

  “I apologize,” Isra said. “I’ve been distracted.”

  Flicker grinned wickedly. “That sounds promising.”

  Cheeks warm, Isra focused his attention on filling the water skin.

  With a flip of his toe, Flicker splashed some water on Isra’s cheek. “Going to pretend you don’t know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Isra said definitively.

  Flicker pouted. “Why?”

  Isra looked up into his eyes. “Because I don’t want to hurt this man with my foolishness, and I don’t want to hurt myself by believing in some fantasy. Janan will be gone soon. We’re going back to Qena today to ask about his family.”

  “While I should be happy to have you back all to myself, I have to note that you’re being quite hasty.”

  “How so?” Isra asked.

  “In assuming the things you want are a fantasy. That they might not be mutual. Tell me. Are you really obtuse enough not to notice the touches? The glances? Or are you just ignoring them?”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  Flicker shrugged. “What else am I going to do?”

  Isra turned his head toward the rustle of leaves as Janan emerged from their shelter, mussed and rubbing one eye with his fist. It was easy—too easy—to imagine seeing him that way every morning. But entertaining those thoughts would only make their inevitable parting more painful. Each day Isra became more convinced a man like Janan couldn’t be nobody. Somewhere, someone missed him and likely longed for his return.

  “I thought I heard someone talking,” Janan mumbled.

  Isra looked away. He wouldn’t lie, and of course Flicker was gone.

  “Must’ve been dreaming. What are you doing?”

  Isra held up the water skin. “Coffee.”

  “Mmm. Sounds good. Cold this morning.”

  “It’ll make the walk to Qena more pleasant,” Isra said. They’d decided hunting down the camels was more trouble than it was worth. Janan’s surprise at the Bedouin habit of turning the animals loose and counting on them to come back, or hoping to find them, had been comical.

  “It’ll make bathing less pleasant,” Janan grumbled.

  Isra smiled. “We’ll heat some water to wipe off. But after breakfast.”

  Isra cooked fava beans and rice, and the chill tempted them to linger over their steaming tin mugs of coffee, but they couldn’t spare the time. On foot, it would take several hours to reach Qena, and they wanted most of the afternoon for research. So after they’d eaten, washed, dressed, and stowed their supplies, they set out.

  “What offenses do you think are unforgivable?” Janan asked after they’d walked a few miles.

  “God forgives everything,” Isra answered, nervous about where this was going. What if Janan had seen Flicker and knew Isra was lying?

  “I know what we’re told of God. I mean you, Isra. What can you forgive?”

  “Why ask?”

  “I’m afraid of what we’ll find out,” Janan admitted. “And I don’t want to lose your friendship. Or I guess I should say I want
to know to expect it. So… what? What if you find out I was a thief? Could you forgive me that?”

  “Yes,” Isra said quickly. “It would have only been born of necessity.”

  “And if it wasn’t?”

  Isra shook his head. “You’re not that kind of man.”

  “But if I am? If I was? What if I was a blasphemer? A heretic? What if I slept with other men’s wives? What if I was a liar or… a killer?”

  Isra stopped in the dusty road and faced Janan. “I’ve told you before it isn’t possible. Your heart is good. You’re a good man.”

  “And you’re so sure a man cannot change?”

  “No. Not that much,” Isra said.

  “We are taught redemption is possible,” Janan argued gently.

  “Then there is no issue with anything we find,” Isra replied. “No matter what you might’ve done, you’re redeemed.”

  Janan sighed. “In God’s eyes, perhaps. But you… you’ll know. If we learn I was an adulterer or a liar, you’ll always know. You’ll never see me quite the way you do now.”

  “Your opinion of me could also change.”

  “I can’t see how. We know you’ve never stolen or seduced anyone or probably done anything questionable. Isra… you’re the finest man I’ve ever known. Not that I’ve known many. That I can remember. But still….”

  Isra wanted to tell Janan about Flicker, tell him of the things he’d imagined since they met, but if their association was destined to end, why not let Janan remember him fondly? Still, he could not hold the secrets in and meet Janan’s eyes. He looked away, but Janan cupped his chin and urged Isra to face him again. “Isra, my opinion of you won’t change because… if you admire me.”

  Isra sucked in a sharp breath. “What?”

  “You’re not alone. I notice you too. When we’re bathing, or at night when we’re lying close for warmth. I find you beautiful. The time we spend together means a great deal to me, and I don’t want to lose it.”

  “No. I wouldn’t want that either.”

  Janan breathed a loud sigh of relief. “I’m glad to know you feel the same. I barely managed the courage to say anything, and I might not have if the alternative wasn’t worse.”

  “What do you want to do?” Isra asked, sure he’d stumbled into another dream—a dangerous one.

  Janan took his hand from Isra’s face and swiped a stray lock of hair from his own. “I don’t know. The way you look at me… I like it. I don’t want it to change because of what we might learn.”

  “It won’t,” Isra practically whispered, surprised he could find words at all. “We could go back. Back to the desert. Give up on looking. But….”

  “But?”

  “What if you have family? A mother worried sick? A heartbroken father? Brothers and sisters. What if you have wives and children? We have to know, don’t we?”

  “I suppose we do. Sometimes I have the sense that I might’ve… left something unfinished. Maybe something important.”

  “We have to know,” Isra said again, trying to convince himself. After what they’d admitted to each other, he didn’t know if he could stand to learn Janan was married. But it would be wrong to keep him from his family, and Isra didn’t need to add to his list of trespasses.

  Janan grabbed Isra’s hand quickly, almost violently, and pressed it to his chest. The rapid beat of his heart pulsed against Isra’s palm. “We’ll be friends,” Janan said wildly. “No matter what happens, we’ll remain friends.”

  “Friends,” Isra agreed. For now, the desire to stay in each other’s lives, never mind the practicality, felt like a victory. Isra only hoped what they discovered wouldn’t reduce it to a minor one.

  THEY STARTED their search at the suq, where Janan had spent so many days hanging around, hoping for spare change or an overripe piece of fruit. After speaking to almost a dozen shopkeepers, they knew nothing more than they had weeks ago: one morning Janan had shown up in the market, disheveled, barefoot, and disoriented. No one had ever seen him before, and no one had come looking for him.

  After lunch, they went to the local library to pore over old newspapers, hoping for some mention of Janan. All they learned there was that Janan could read much faster than Isra.

  “This isn’t a good sign,” Janan said.

  “Oh, it might not mean anything,” Isra argued.

  Janan shook his head.

  “You are not a criminal. Do you know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “You must’ve been some kind of scholar. A teacher maybe. You seemed so at home in the library. You looked at the books like they were made of solid gold. You ran your fingers over the spines as if they were precious.”

  “Being there did give me a sense of… something. I felt excited around those books, all the possibilities they held.”

  “But nothing concrete?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Isra leaned against the wall of the nearest building and nodded at a passing old man in a skullcap. Frustration deepened the lines on Janan’s forehead and around his eyes, and Isra felt powerless to help his friend.

  Janan bowed his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Where does this leave us? It isn’t like we can go to the police—not without a hefty bribe. They won’t be interested in helping us. They might even throw us in a cell for bothering them.”

  “There are villages between here and Qift,” Isra offered. “They’re used to seeing Bedouin pass through. Those people might be more inclined to help us, and we might even find your people in one of them. We can go ourselves, or I can put out word among my tribe. We’re a fair-sized group, and between all of us, we visit almost every village and town between the Nile and the Red Sea.” He put his hand on the base on Janan’s neck and rubbed the tense muscles. “Someone will have heard something.”

  For whatever reason, those words visibly calmed Janan, and he leaned against the building next to Isra, smiling. “That means we can go. Go home?”

  “Home?”

  “Back to the desert.”

  Isra wasn’t prepared for the impact those words had on him. He grinned wide and wanted nothing more than to pull Janan against him and hold him tight. Though he still had no idea what forces had brought them together—Flicker had served as only an intermediary—the meeting had enriched both of their lives, and in ways Isra had never expected.

  And Janan loved his desert.

  Their desert.

  Home.

  “It’ll be a long walk,” Isra said. The late-afternoon sun gilded Janan’s face, but it lent him a gentleness unlike Flicker’s sculpted perfection, his neat whiskers and smooth skin soft, the crinkles around his eyes replacing the lines of frustration. For a few moments, they stood looking at each other and smiling, oblivious to the shoppers and tourists bustling home or to the stalls and restaurants.

  “I don’t care,” Janan said. “I’m not tired, and I want to get away from here.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Male friends holding hands as they walked were a common enough sight, and Isra reached over to take hold of Janan’s long fingers. Janan looked over at him with a smile and squeezed back, and for a while they meandered through the market and toward the eastern edge of the city, joined arms swaying.

  By the time they reached the outskirts, the sun had set, leaving the vast sky a velvety purple plumed with feathery mauve clouds and turning the sand lavender. With the darkness came a chill.

  “At least we accomplished one thing today.” Isra handed Janan the cobalt burnoose they’d procured, and Janan slipped it on. “A flattering color.”

  Janan ran his fingers along the edge of the thick wool hood. “You do so much for me. I used to wonder why.”

  Isra stopped and looked behind them, where a few miles back, Qena glowed like an orange bubble rising from the flat land. Ahead was hilly, dark, and studded with stars, sharp and gemlike in comparison. “And now you don’t?”

  Shrugging, Janan said, “
I don’t know what kind of man I was… before, but living in Qena made me suspicious. Some people were good, but I often had to wonder if kindness came with a price, if those who offered to help me expected something in return.”

  Horrified, Isra said, “You think I expect something… in trade?”

  Janan bent to pick up a whorled and petrified-looking branch, bleached white enough to stand out in the gloaming. When they resumed their trek, he used it as a walking stick. “Not at all. Meeting you made me realize I don’t want to be the kind of person who questions every act of mercy. I decided to believe you’re simply a good man, one I can trust. You make it easy to believe that.”

  Isra smiled, relieved but also a little guilty. “Does it ever feel to you like we’ve met before? Do you believe that destiny can bring people together?”

  “For what reason?”

  Isra shook his head. “I don’t know yet. We might never know.”

  “Perhaps it was just good fortune. It certainly was to my benefit. Although—”

  “What?”

  “The circumstances were quite remarkable. What are the odds that you, just wandering, would happen to find me at the temple? Do you think it could’ve been God’s mercy? Some plan of his?”

  Isra looked over his shoulder, almost expecting Flicker to pop up and say something disparaging. But even though the arafrit remained absent—or at least unseen—Isra couldn’t steal the credit his friend had earned for bringing him to Janan. “Not God.”

  “Because we… because of the way we feel, you don’t believe God would aid us?”

  Isra waved a hand. “It’s not that. My people are faithful, but we tend toward following God’s overreaching laws. Some of the details seem less important, as long as a man’s heart is pure. Good intentions mean more than the empty adherence to rituals.”

  Janan nodded. “God gives a set of guidelines, but he wouldn’t have provided man such a clever mind if he didn’t expect us to work some of it out on our own. And you’re right. Love, mercy, caring for others, not doing harm… those are the important things. I’ve always believed that.”