The Arabian Nightmare

by Robert Irwin

  ‘But who was following me and why?’

  ‘I imagine that it was once a woman and that it was trying to collect your semen—not that I left her much.’ Zuleyka laughed lazily, and added, ‘The numbers of the dead increase only slowly and they wish to procreate. Go back to sleep now.’

  ‘But the walk through the cemetery was only part of my dream, wasn’t it?’ Yet as he said this he realized something else.

  4

  The Citadel

  And where was I while Balian was conducted to Roda Island? Well, having eluded my pursuers—there is always a hue and cry for someone in this city—I retired to a coffee house on the banks of the Nile where I hoped to be alone with my thoughts. As it turned out, that was not to be, but that is another story. What I wish to say now is that it is often necessary for me to withdraw into solitude to compose my thoughts and get the sequence of events straight. If too much happens to me in a day, I become uneasy. Too much material for one of my stories is as bad as too little, and after so much excitement I fear that I will not be able to digest it all and that my sleep will be heavy.

  It is obvious from the scenes I have just described that my sister Mary is a very desirable woman. That must surely be clear, but I shall elaborate no further on her charms. I share, in one respect at least, the oriental compunctions of my fellow citizens. I do not think it proper that strangers should eye my sister up and down and guess from her deportment whether she is a virgin or not, or that they should try to estimate from the brightness of her eyes and the turn of her ankle what her bride-price would be. A woman loses her fascination if she ceases to be mysterious. I shall be at pains to see that my sister plays no part at all in the story which remains to be told, if possible...

  He awoke, almost choking in his own blood. His half smothered shouts drew Bulbul and Mary to his side almost immediately, yet they did nothing but watch as it jetted out through his nostrils and his mouth; they simply waited until it mysteriously stopped. Then they took him out to the clearing, and Mary went away to fetch a pitcher of water to wash away the slowly congealing blood. Bulbul propped him up against the side of the hut. It was daylight, though overcast. The air was intensely humid in the Roda woods; it prickled against the skin. Balian felt sick and dizzy. His initial relief at escaping was rapidly replaced by a feeling of despondent helplessness. He was unable to imagine by what sort of elaborate pantomime he could communicate his experiences to his alien companions.

  Mary returned with her pitcherful of water, and they set to work to clean him up. In the daylight, in the open air, Mary seemed to glow with well-being and sensual good health. He reflected bitterly that they did not seem to have spent a disturbed night. Why should he be the victim?

  At length, when he felt stronger, he communicated in sign language his wish to leave them and return to mainland Cairo, but they in turn made vigorous signs indicating that he should stay, no, must stay. ‘Yoll. Yoll,’ they repeated insistently.

  Balian replied in English. ‘I am sorry, but I am not waiting for him or doing anything else that will involve me in your schemes, whatever they are. I am going back to the caravanserai. Thank you for your hospitality.’

  Balian made a half bow to Bulbul—Mary he did not look at directly—and strode off hastily. Mary and Bulbul did not rise but sat there watching until he was out of sight.

  Balian felt like crying as he entered the caravanserai later that morning. True, he was thousands of miles away from home, yet here at least there was a tiny enclave of Christian and European values, of figures familiar to him since childhood: the merchant, the friar, the ship’s captain, the pilgrim and so forth. As long as he stayed awake inside the caravanserai he was, he felt, staying in a world unbemused by oriental fate and dreams.

  This feeling of high exhilaration did not last long. He became aware that the others in the caravanserai were taking pains to avoid him, whether because of his illness or because he had been seen to go off with Vane he could not guess. The Venetian consul, it was true, shouted to him as he passed, ‘Where were you last night? Not out whoring, I trust?’ But there was something forced in the consul’s jollity. Everything was in a great bustle. The public holiday for the circumcision of the Sultan’s son was over, and the government offices reopened today.

  Near the entrance of the caravanserai a party of pilgrims was in the process of organizing itself to visit the Dawadar’s office to secure the visas necessary to proceed to St Catherine’s. Balian, feeling more confident about such a visit in full consciousness and in the company of his fellow Christians, tagged on to the party. So he set out again for the Citadel. The group was not composed solely of pilgrims, he discovered, for some of the party were Venetians selected by the consul to protest at the arrest of Giancristoforo and to plead for his release.

  So a group of twenty or thirty Westerners made their way through the crowded streets to the Citadel. The sky had cleared and the day was brilliant. The irregular skyline of Cairo was picked out sharply against the deep blue of the sky. At points, where it could penetrate into the streets, the sun was blinding. As they approached the Citadel in daylight Balian found that it bore little resemblance to the miasmic fortress of evil of last night. He lowered his eyes and listened to the almost professional chatter of the pilgrims around him: the quality of the hostels in Compostella, the state of the relics market, the rise in Genoese pilgrim tariffs and so on. ‘St Catherine’s is only six days away.’

  ‘Out in the desert, there one can find peace.’

  Balian was almost alone among the pilgrims in being fashionably dressed in the Burgundian style. For the most part they presented a sombre array as they shuffled up the hillside with their broad-brimmed black hats, shaggy beards and light-grey cloaks, the pilgrim’s red cross crudely stitched upon them. They were covered in dust from head to toe, and they stank. When silent, their eyes glittered, considering within themselves perhaps the mystery of the rosary or perhaps the efficacy of relics, driven onwards and upwards by inner fires. Balian wished that he was truly one of them.

  At the top of the hill there was a long wait outside the first gate while the officers of the guard conferred. The pilgrims squatted on their hunkers. It was the first of many long waits that day. The sweat streamed continuously into Balian’s eyes, stinging him with its salt. If one moved rapidly in this heat, one was liable to faint. Much to his surprise, Balian found that he was eventually approached in conversation by Emmanuel, whom he judged to be one of the toughest and most experienced of the pilgrims. Emmanuel had been in Egypt before and had been up the Nile looking for its origin, he said, and he chuckled mysteriously.

  ‘Of course, your friend would know all about that.’

  ‘My friend?’

  Emmanuel did not reply directly but pressed his lips together and, putting his hand on Balian’s shoulder, drew his attention to the view over Cairo from the gateway of the Citadel. Over the hippodrome, the stables of the Mamlukes, the suqs, the palaces of the nobility and the mosques, the eye travelled across the Nile to rest upon the pyramids of Giza, barely solid in the shimmering haze. Emmanuel pointed at them.

  ‘Most of the locals here say that those are Joseph’s granaries; he had them built by slaves to store away the produce of the seven years of abundance. ’ His grip on Balian’s shoulder tightened. ‘But that is characteristic of their infidelity and coarse worldliness. I have been out there to Giza and I have spent the night out there and slept on top of one of them, with only a rag wrapped round my neck to protect me from cutthroats.’ He hawked up some spit.

  ‘Those buildings were never granaries, and no human hand ever built them either. Nothing but magic could have raised them from the earth, and those who go scurrying about in their insides aren’t looking for the grain of abundance either.’

  He finally spat and a glistening gob of spit landed very close to Balian’s feet. Balian’s hand went instinctively to his left hip, where his sword would have been if he had been in a Christian country. Emmanuel
noticed the reaction, and his tone became more conciliatory when he began to speak again as they moved through the outer gate into the first courtyard.

  ‘I was just trying to let you know what the feeling is among those of us who are true, believing Christians about your friend Vane. Well, it’s my belief—no, it’s more than a belief: I know—that inside those mighty stone things out there lie thousands of the dead waiting for the Last Days and the Resurrection. They do not know anything of putrefaction and the worm but lie there, changeless, waiting for the Trump and the rolling up of the heavens. They used to embalm the dead in this country, and now the Arabs out at Giza trade in these bodies. Hundreds of years ago those corpses were soaked in an embalming fluid, mutnia they call it. Vane is one of those who pays a good price for such morbid things. That traffic, like most of the man’s enterprises, imperils his immortal soul, and I counsel you as a friend to keep yourself free of him.’

  Balian replied that it was advice that he devoutly hoped to be able to follow, and the conversation flowed on to less difficult topics. Emmanuel’s vocabulary and manner of delivery still reminded one of his nautical past, and his experiences had been no less extensive and colourful than his vocabulary. While they continued to stand or squat, first in one great white courtyard and then in a second, he discoursed on the Egyptian nobles who had visited Pope Pius, on the phoenix’s temple at Heliopolis, on the Prophet’s tomb in Medina that hung in the air suspended by great lodestones to bemuse the credulous.

  Time passed rapidly as Emmanuel’s words ran on about strange seas, flying horses and cities at the end of the World. In the second courtyard they were allowed to look down into Joseph’s Well. Here and there were little kiosks, stained white with pigeon droppings; the purpose of the kiosks was mysterious, but Emmanuel said that they were probably spy posts. He went on to give his opinion on what could and could not safely be said of Prester John and the assistance that this great potentate might furnish to a new crusade, and from there he rambled on about how he had journeyed up the Nile, questing for its origin.

  Emmanuel had pursued his journey through chasms and gorges, beyond the last cataract, until he entered a desert land where the river ran smoothly between steeply shelving banks and there were few watering places where animals could drink. Therefore, Emmanuel said, the animals mingled at these rare drinking spots, and copulation took place across the species. The closer to the source he got, the more monstrous the creatures became.

  At length Emmanuel approached Happy Valley, where the castles of the Laughing Dervishes were situated. ‘And there, on the threshold of Happy Valley, I learnt of the worst horrors yet, monstrous designs hatched in their cracked brains. They are an order of men dedicated to ribald hocus-pocus. They initiate with riddles and meditate on puns. They have a Shaykh whose identity is so secret that even he does not know who he is!’

  Balian giggled and Emmanuel smiled. ‘Well, we laugh, but there is such a thing as dangerous nonsense. In the eastern lands the heat and the idleness breed among the inhabitants leisured and lethal fantasies. But that was not the horror I was about to tell you of. I read in their secret book, The Galleon

  But here the conversation had to break off, for they were now shepherded in small groups into the outermost corridors of the palace, into the shade at last. Once inside they were searched thoroughly for secret weapons.

  They were assigned a dragoman to interpret and began the long trail up through sloping arcades to the Audience Hall. Normally the Sultan Qaitbay held court there, but today the Dawadar presided to receive and, if necessary, vet foreign visitors. Shavushs in smart uniforms, carrying tipped staves, ran up and down the corridors shouting instructions. Guards clashed their pikes as one small group after another entered the hall. At length heavy drapes were pulled aside and Balian and Emmanuel’s group entered the hall itself. It was a massive cavern of marble, striped black and yellow, hung with great festoons of netting, draped from the centre of its vaulting like a mad spider’s web. Gyroscopic brass censers spun at random across the floor. The dais in the centre of the hall was deserted; this was reserved for the Sultan on the days when he gave audience. Instead, a little to one side, on a chair of ivory and horn, dwarfed by the distances of the audience hall, sat the Dawadar. He did not, of course, rise to greet the pilgrims as they entered. Beside him stood his squire, who displayed the armorial bearings of the Dawadar, and behind sat an orchestra of lutes, rebecs and viols that played harsh music. The dragoman gestured frantically, and the pilgrims kissed the ground. They advanced a few steps forward and kissed the ground again. And again. The floor was very cold and smelt of some sickly incense, patchouli perhaps. Raising his head from the floor a third time, Balian eyed the Dawadar coldly.

  The Dawadar was young and negligent. He slumped in the depths of his chair and let his long-nailed hands dangle loosely over its arms. He wore a white jacket, white trousers and a yellow sash. His head was shaved in the normal Mamluke fashion, but his eyelids were painted mauve. He transacted none of the business. This, in fact, was done by his translator and a panel of scribes in a corner of the hall. The Dawadar just looked on, apparently without interest. One by one the pilgrims shuffled off to collect their visas from the panel of scribes, but when it came to Balian’s turn the Dawadar motioned with his hand and muttered to the translator.

  The translator came forward and said to Balian, ‘My master says that unfortunately there is no visa here for you today. He asks you to come back the day after tomorrow.’

  Balian knew that it was useless to protest or question. Clearly now the Dawadar was regarding him and struggling to repress a smile. Balian bowed and walked out of the hall, pushing past the Venetian delegation waiting still to raise the matter of Giancristoforo’s arrest, conscious as he did so of the Dawadar’s eyes following him. Other petitioners moved on forward.

  He said aloud to himself, ‘I must pray to St Catherine that she will free me from the toils of mystery and delay.’

  A leisurely sojourn in Cairo to collect intelligence no longer seemed attractive to him.

  He walked at random in the city for hours before he began to take note of his surroundings and realized that he had no idea where he was. Then he began to try to follow a straight path in the hope that it would take him to the Nile or one of the walls of the city, but the roads, forking and curving back upon themselves, would not allow him to do this. He found himself having to sit down frequently and rest; the place was like a furnace, and his sleep in the past few nights had brought him no refreshment. He attempted to ask the way of several groups of small children, but his words brought gestures of noncomprehension.

  Darkness came on rapidly. He thought of something Emmanuel had said: ‘One street resembles another very closely in Cairo, especially by night, but the perplexed traveller may direct his steps according to the stars. Beware, though, for it is not unknown for the stars to move in their courses with the aim of misleading the unwary.’

  This did not seem worth the effort then, for Balian was sure that he would prove to be one of the star-crossed wanderers whose unhappy fortunes had been evoked by Emmanuel.

  Time and again he found himself crossing the Place of the Zuweyla Gate, with its lively concourse of entertainers and entertained, but the bear dancers, the storytellers, the performing slaves in cages, the shadow theatre, the music for evening made no appeal to Balian. He wanted to sleep.

  Re-entering the square a final time, Balian noticed a little alley he had not been down before and moved off into it, fleeing from the lights and the crowd. The darkness fitted him like a glove. All day it had been hot and dry, yet here the walls ran with damp. He edged himself forwards, feeling his way along the walls, thinking about each step as he made it. A wall ended and he groped his way round a corner. He did so with caution. There was always a faint fear in his mind that his exploring hand might meet something welcoming, something soft and living and unknown. In the dark distances and obstacles were magnified, he knew. It was like feelin
g a boil in one’s mouth with one’s tongue.

  Noises were reassuringly faint now. Without losing touch with the wall, he sank down to the ground and curled up in the blackness, intending to sleep there in the gutter. Thoughts of insects, dogs and, above all, footpads detained him. He lay at the foot of the wall, shaking and looking sightlessly up. He carried no money with him. He had nothing but the body and clothes he lay down to sleep in. There is nothing they can take save my life, he thought as he arched his neck to meet the imaginary knife of a stealthy robber. No knife met his throat. ‘Nobody wants to die, but we all want to sleep,’ he pronounced drowsily.

  He found it difficult to compose himself for sleep. He twitched and jerked. A light breeze blew over his face, or was it whispers of Arabic? He opened his eyes.

  The moon was up and something extraordinary was happening. He walked back into the Place of the Zuweyla Gate to get a better view. A rope had been stretched from the Citadel to one of the tallest of the minarets. High over Cairo a man walked, treading the rope with soft, padding feet, eyes fixed on the towers of the Citadel. The crowd oohed and aahed.

  Two dwarfish men stood in front of Balian and he heard one of them say to the other, ‘Don’t you wish you were him?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the other. ‘Even he does not know that he is him. Look, he is asleep!’

  Balian looked and it was quite true. The funambulist’s eyes were closed and he was sleepwalking. When he wakes, he will fall, he thought. Then he became aware of two familiar figures pushing their way through the throng towards him, the one in a grey burnous, the other in a ratskin coat and broad-brimmed felt hat.

  His fear gave him stimulus to pull away from the dream. He must have dozed off, he thought groggily. The play had already begun. He was still, in fact, in the Place of the Zuweyla Gate, in the tent of the shadow theatre. The candlelit screen was in front of him and behind it silhouettes of pasteboard and filigree danced on sticks. The play was, as ever, about that one-eyed rogue Karagoz. Karagoz had found employment as a servant in the house of the Emir Fulaan and, grumbling, worked under the supervision of the emir’s major-domo, Said Ali Anna.