In the Country of Dreaming Caravans

by Gerard Houarner

  A ripple of laughter passed through the gathering. Aini passed a hand over her face, surprised by sweat in the evening’s cool air. Across her other hand, a dung beetle crawled.

  “I suppose we have nothing to lose,” Al-Lahu said.

  “Only her,” Dejjal added.

  Their laughter broke free, at last. Even Al-Azrad’s.

  Aini crept away on her hands and knees, keeping low even when she reached the camels and their keepers laying on the ground. The stench, the silence as she pushed through unmoving bodies, the yielding softness of a leg beneath her hand, the hum of flies disturbed and the tickling of worms and beetles on her skin told the truth of the tale she was living, a truth she’d known as soon as she’d seen the seven men waiting for her, but had refused to accept.

  To her surprise, she’d joined the Caravan.

  The fire was still burning outside her tent when she returned, though the servants, living slaves she now understood the caravaners kept to comfort living guests, did not show themselves. Warm tea and figs waited for her inside.

  She tried to sleep, but her skin crawled and itched, her thoughts raced each other in circles. The weight of the dead pinned her to the carpet and the dry, barren earth beneath. Sorrow spilled from the holes left in her by Ajouz’s death, by the thief who had sold her vanishing over a ridge, by a dog and a brother left behind, a mother’s and father’s abandonment. Tears gave her no comfort, as some women had told her they would. They didn’t make thinking about what to do next and how to survive any easier. She forgot everything but misery and begged for dreams.

  When dawn and the caravan’s rousing woke her, she didn’t feel as if she’d slept a moment. But time had passed without her knowing, and the sun was already baking the air and etching shadows in the sand. Her throat was sore, as if she’d tried to speak or scream through stolen sleep. She felt empty, stripped clean of every fancy, blinded to the twists and turns a life might take given opportunity and a drop of courage.

  She stepped out and looked over the line of fully-laden camels beginning to move out, and beyond, to the much longer lines of men, women and children extending to the horizon, moving toward the rising sun’s terrible maw. Faces were raised to the light, eyes staring unblinking. Jackals moved through the lines of the dead, picking over anything that could no longer move. Larger than most cities she’d known, the Caravan of the Dead was like nothing she’d ever seen.

  “A magnificent sight,” Abd Al-Azrad called out from a wide palanquin crowded with scrolls and tomes, carried by slaves. “Our tail is so long, by the time it puts down to camp, the head is already rising to start a new day.” He turned away, his bearers veered and joined the mass heading east.

  Servants appeared, helped her on to a camel even as she tried to refuse and get up on her own. They led her into the wake of the caravan lead as her tent pole was brought down and the sheeting packed. The little girl was gone. The rest said nothing and kept their gazes lowered, even when she greeted them with a song about the sun rise.

  Houssin came first, riding high in the shade of a small but ornate howdah, the camel’s gait rocking him gently from side to side. He rubbed paste from a leather bag over his hands, across his brow and around his eyes. His flesh filled out a little in the harsh light.

  The servants quickened their pace and moved ahead. Aini missed them as soon as they were out of sight.

  “Do you know the one about silk merchant and his son?” Houssin started. “He came for business to a town and lost track of his son, who was stolen. The merchant sent his treasurer through the streets, offering a thousand deben, but the thief heard the sum and hoped for more, so he didn’t answer. On the second day, the merchant offered only five hundred coppers, and—”

  “—got no answer, and when on the third he offered a hundred,” Aini said, “the thief surrendered his son. Yes, and when the thief asked why the ransom had gone down, the merchant told him how he thought the son had acted as a prisoner and the thief answered that it had been so between them.

  “Then the merchant said that by refusing to speak, the son remained pure and noble on the first day. But he’d surrendered honor to hunger on the second by accepting bread from the thief, and lost half his worth. And when on the third his son became a beggar by asking for food, the boy’s worth had gone down to only a hundred.

  “I never liked that one,” she continued, trying to grasp the elusive threads of her own variants with which to batter Houssin with story. But in the garden of night that had taken her over, she found no inspiration for paths others had not already taken.

  She pushed on quickly, before Houssin could challenge her with another tale. Words spilled from her as she recalled the story of a shah who came across a woman weeping. When the shah asked what troubled her, the weeping woman told him she was mourning for her dead son, who’d worked for her and kept her alive, but with him gone she would soon die.

  Houssin jumped in as Aini took a breath. “Yes, yes, and your shah gave the woman a mule so she’d survive, and then he met another weeping woman mourning her son, but this one said he entertained nobles and other men of high standing with feasts, and was generous with his favors and his affection. And the shah told this woman to keep weeping, because there was nothing to be done to comfort the loss of such a man, and no way to make up for his absence.

  “But, when I was very young, I once heard in the Marrakesh medina, in the triangle corner of the Jama’ Al-Fna where merchants from every corner of the world bring their goods to market, how sailors were found in the middle of the desert beside their ancient ship, reminiscing about the sea that had once covered the land. And—”

  Aini leapt in, saying, “—and, their stories were so heart-breaking they made whoever heard them shed tears, which they collected until they had enough to spill to make a river that would take them and their ship back to the sea.”

  She wasted no time jumping into stories about Antar bin Shaddad, the slave who became a warrior and poet, won his love Abla through great deeds, and led his people to victory in war. But Houssin finished every episode she remembered, eventually throwing back the tale of Baibars defeating the Crusaders, which she finished, and then answered with Baibars’ turning back the Mongols, which Houssin in turn completed.

  They went back and forth through the morning, challenging each other with Sinbad and Aladdin, Clever Hasan and Abu Hajlan, Tagurmat and Boulkhou, finishing the other’s story with the regularity of a smith hammering steel on anvil. She barely had time for a drink of water, and Houssin took advantage whenever she did to squeeze in more words, more story, before she interrupted. She wanted to complain about the unfairness of his never having to drink, but in the heat of their battle there was no time.

  Camels and the dead flowed around them in a sluggish river of flesh. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the faces of the dead, as if searching for the inspiration to overwhelm Houssin’s dedication to what had been told before, seeking the liar’s conviction in the truth of a lie to make him believe a new ending she gave to an old story was authentic in its origins, rather than something fished out of the moment.

  The dead knew could not even give her what she needed to find new endings. They could only show her the end that came to all stories.

  Blind to her own dreams, cut off from the possibility of discovering truths deeper than those found in tales clinging to life lessons so worn they could double as lies, she had no other choice but to answer Houssin’s challenge by his rules.

  She licked her lips often, thirsting for what would help her overwhelm his slavish dedication to what had been told before. She reached for authenticity, a critique that had been leveled against her too many times, often accompanied by a stone’s throw. But as she’d known all along, one town’s Sinbad is not always another’s, and if in one souk a hero’s vest was jade green trimmed in scarlet, in another it was golden with black brocade.

  Not all his variations on her beginnings were familiar, and she was sure many of hers
were new to him. But he never questioned her accuracy, leaving her no opening to question his.

  Even the art of telling was lost, with what audiences of the traditional found most entertaining when all else failed—the vital lessons of each tale, the details of blood and battle, the seduction and sex—forgotten in the rush to prove that a tale was known. Aini felt like a fool chained to a fool, trapped in a ridiculous contest to find a tale the other could not end.

  Bound by the rules of their game, Aini’s frustration grew.

  They were in the middle of an exchange of djinn tales, starting with the Fisherman and the Djinn Aini felt sure people of the desert were born knowing, and moving through King Solomon and even the Queen of Sheba’s demonic origins, when Abd Al-Azrad’s palanquin appeared beside them. The other caravan men lurked nearby, listening. Dejjal came forward, smiling. Bomaye, wiggling a finger in his ear, circled like a restless dog.

  “You have many long nights ahead of you,” Al-Azrad said to Aini. He waved Houssin on, saying, “No need to wear out our guest the first day. Save some tales for the next camp. Go down the caravan line, instead, and have a look to see if all is well.”

  “It’s Sifr’s turn,” Houssin said.

  “I saw raiders on the ridge line, perhaps our friend the thief’s thinking to steal her back and bargain again,” Bomaye said.

  “That one?” Houssin shook his head. “He doesn’t dare.”

  A cloud seemed to pass over Dejjal’s smile. “This isn’t one of your stories. Things don’t turn out the way you think they will.”

  “It’s only the djinn, playing tricks,” Houssin said, with a wave of his hand. “Or the ghuls, culling.”

  “You should know better than talk about the djinn,” Abd Al-Azrad said.

  Aini remembered a man in white in the desert, the wind’s voice, the master thief’s warning. She covered her mouth to show she knew something about the danger involved, and said, “I’ve been warned, more than once, about djinn. But I’m still telling stories about them.”

  Houssin turned his camel and headed for the lines of the dead. “She doesn’t know that much,” he said as he left.

  Aini searched the horizon, but it was masked by dust. “Is the thief really coming back?”

  Al-Azrad was silent. She looked to him, and he smiled.

  “Of course not,” he said. “What could he steal from the dead?”

  “What he wants most,” she said, realizing she was hoping vengeance might someday lose to love.

  “There’s nothing here except the dead and a virgin storyteller, who may not be worth as much as we thought.”

  “My name is Aini.”

  “I never asked.”

  “I know.”

  His silence and gaze could have been what chilled the desert air every night.

  “You’re not as I imagined you’d be,” she said, feeling the circle of Al-Alzrad’s dead men around her, like the hardened circle that had welcomed her to the first caravan. This time, talk of secret hearts and a bargain based on stories wouldn’t be enough to forge a peace between them.

  “You’re not accustomed to the dead,” Al-Azrad said, his attention distracted by the dusty horizon.

  “Yes, I am,” she answered. “But not still burdened by their old bodies.”

  Al-Azrad turned back to her and said, “We are more than a haunting.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe it’s the smell that offends,” Dejjal said.

  “I was raised mostly with camels, so I don’t mind their stink so much, anymore. I’ll get used to this stench, too.”

  Al-Azrad made a sound deep in his throat. He waved a hand, and his palanquin broke away from Aini’s side and pushed for the caravan’s head.

  Dejjal’s litter came alongside on her left. The slightly parted curtains to his palanquin were thick, and the sun danced in their silken sheen. Their embroidered mountains, lakes and rivers were like a mirage wavering in the sun-bleached countryside. He parted them a little wider, displaying the shaded, pillowed space beside him, and smiled. “You could make a man sell his soul,” he said, his voice like rippling water.

  “Is that an offer?” Aini asked.

  “I have none to sell.”

  She looked hard into his eyes and understood he was telling the truth. She saw, as well, that he had little more in him to give.

  “You are beautiful,” he continued. “Your smile is serene like the moon’s crescent, the body supple and shifting as the sands, a thing of beauty to watch. The sunset comes to rest in your eyes, the campfires that light up their darkness burn long and hard in the night promising warmth and protection.”

  He gave her space to graciously accept his compliments, and she said, “You tell me these things as if they should mean something to me. I’m Aini. I tell stories. I happen to be a virgin. That’s all.”

  “Is that really all there is to you?”

  “I don’t care what you think of me or anything else. What you do is all that matters.”

  “What would you command me to do?”

  “Let me be.”

  “In my arms, too gladly.”

  “I have my own arms.”

  Sifr’s palanquin, a tiered and stepped creation engineered in exact angles with hinged and louvered panels, loomed to her right. “Come to claim your property?” Sifr asked, sitting tall in a chair of woven palm.

  “She doesn’t lie, she’s still a virgin,” Dejjal said. “Of all of us, I can make the most use of her.”

  Sifr looked down on Aini. His fingers tapped away in his lap. “You are well past the age of marriage, and yet no one has taken you.”

  “Men seem to feel they can get something better by keeping me as I am.”

  “Or you are too much trouble.”

  “Everything has a price.”

  Al-Lahu’s shaded litter, suspended from a long, thick, curved bone supported by five bearers at each end, cut her camel off. The animal protested, and she had to matche the beast’s stubbornness to bring him back under control. Sifr’s and Dejjal’s bearers stumbled while Al-Lahu looked down at her, grinning, from a height greater than any of the others.

  “There is emptiness inside you,” he said.

  “In all of us, I think,” Aini said. “Maybe the desert’s taken root in us.”

  “I can fill that emptiness with meaning.”

  Dejjal barked with disgust. “You’ve ruined the mood.” He lashed out with a long cane, and his bearers quickly took him away.

  “You would know how to do that,” Aini said, and waited to see if Al-Lahu would interpret her response through his lust or pride.

  “I have fulfilled the lives of millions,” he said.

  “Did you count or imagine their number?” Sifr asked.

  Aini bowed her head to hide her slight smile. It felt good to play, even in peril’s heart. “What happened to these fulfilled lives?”

  He encompassed the caravan’s long tail with a sweep of his arm. “Some still follow.”

  “I wouldn’t burden you with another lost soul, then.”

  Al-Lahu leaned out of his bed, pointed a thick finger at her. “You’ve seen much,” he said. “I’ll grant you that. But I’ve seen and done far more. You cannot even imagine the things I could teach you. There is so much more to see, to understand.”

  “You would not be the best of us to teach her anything,” Sifr said.

  Al-Lahu stared to answer, Sifr droned over him. Aini urged her camel out from between them to leave the two arguing while she moved back along the caravan line to find relief among the dead. Her gaze moved restlessly over the faces turned toward her.

  She veered away from Houssin, who lingered on the flank across from the heights. She took a long drink from the water skin the servants had packed, caught Mafufunyana and Bomaye behind her. She drifted into the dust raised by dead porters dragging a sled bearing a stone head, searching for a moment’s peace. Mafufunyana appeared, gave her a long look, grinned.

  Aini f
elt as if she’d been surprised while bathing at an oasis. Instead of urging the camel to move on, she pulled him to a stop.

  “Later,” Mafufunyana said. Something flicked in his mouth. He picked up a pair of fallen porters and carried them off.

  Aini followed him as he walked against the caravan line’s flow. A hyena barked, others answered. Vultures circled overhead. Bomaye appeared, carrying three broken corpses, followed by hyenas.

  “I thought he couldn’t talk,” she shouted.

  “He knows a trick using a sand viper in his mouth,” Bomaye said, with a crooked smile. “We’ll show you, later.”

  The pair stopped at a small pile of bodies and dumped their burdens. Jackals and hyenas were already feasting on flesh. The two went back to the lines of walking dead while the vultures descended. Aini waited, watched. The dead swerved around the mound, and her camel, showing no interest in their kin being devoured, or in Aini. Unlike their brethren closer to the head of the caravan, these dead were clothed in rags, their origins in faraway lands as warriors or farmers or workers nearly stripped by time and wear. Boots and shoes were gone or nearly so. Most walked at camel’s pace, but a few seemed to be half-carried forward by the close quarters and momentum of those around them. Some were missing arms, or like Bomaye, had parts of their skulls missing. A few looked as if they had already been partially consumed. Clouds of flies surrounded them. The stench was far worse than what she’d endured in the company of the caravaners.

  Houssin shouted from the other side of the line, signed for her to come to him. She turned away, slowly, and glimpsed Dejjal, on foot, breaking away from a line and back-tracking closer to her. She wondered if the others were observing from the safety of their palanquins, through smoke, mirrors, water or whatever other witch tricks she’d seen displayed in the corners of dying souks.

  Bomaye and Mafufunyana made one more sweep through the dead, dumping more bodies on to the feeding mound. Jackals and hyenas, a leopard, snakes, and dark, shaded forms even the mid-day sun could not penetrate and define, swarmed over the bodies. Vultures dared to push into the melee, as if in a final insult to the desert’s order of creatures allowed to dine on corpses.