The Sleeping Sands (2 page)

The Matamet would not allow his soldiers to harm the tribesmen. He had, he joked, offered them his word of a truce. Rather, he said, he would build a monument to their valour in opposing the Shah, which should serve as an inspiration for the whole province. Some among the younger tribesmen took heart from his words and continued to hope for mercy. The older and wiser men kept their counsel and watched; grim and silent as soldiers were sent out to clear and level a patch of ground, not far from the ruined city, in view of the Zagros Mountains and beside an ancient, twisted pine.

The Governor of Isfahan proved as ingenious an architect as he was a crafty negotiator. To begin the building, he had a thick layer of mortar laid, in a circle of about fourteen feet in diameter. Around this circle were laid ten men, their wrists and ankles bound, so that their feet faced each other’s and so that each man’s head was clear of the circle. The gaps formed between each of their bodies and by the smaller circle of their feet were carefully filled using bricks from the ruins of the ancient city. When they were set in place and all the gaps filled with bricks and mortar, a second thick layer of mortar was laid and a second tier of ten men added, again with each head free of the mortar and facing to the sky. The gaps carefully filled, a third layer was added and so on, until at last a thirty-storey tower graced the plain of Marv Dasht, competing with the ancient majesty of Persepolis.

When their women found them, many of the Mamesenni warriors still lived. So artful was the tower’s design that, despite its great weight, only a very few had died from being crushed or choked by its construction and these were mostly in the bottom few tiers. Others, near to the bottom of the tower had succumbed to rats and snakes and several nearer the top had been lost to vultures and eagles. On the second night, a striped hyena had discovered the tower and on the third night it had made its first kill. By the time the women came, the mortar and bricks had baked so hard in the sun that it was impossible to free the warriors. Even if the women had possessed the tools or the strength after their long journey on foot to try to free their men, a guard of Arab lancers had been left in the vicinity by the Matamet to ensure no such attempt was made. Still, many of the warriors lived and of those some still retained their eyes or even, in a few cases, enough reason to recognise their loved ones.

So the women stayed. Some wept and mourned while others comforted and prayed. Some brave souls even tried to sing a lullaby, while holding a water skin to their lover’s cracked lips. Desperate to reach men on the upper tiers, women would clamber over the heads of the living and the dead alike, praying, when they heard a weakened neck snap, that it had been one of the dead ones.

The women stayed while the men died. Soon, disease became rife around the tower and the women too began to die. With fewer living men to care for each day, the risk of infection growing and no hope of recovering the bodies, the women began to drift away. There were fewer women each day to drive off the predators and carrion birds. In time the tower became a place of birds, no longer intimidated by the small group of sickening, weakened women and their futile attempts to preserve what little life was left. Their voices became weaker and diminished until one day there were only birds.

The voices were all gone. Even his own, as he tried to scream out what was left of his agony and rage. Nothing but a cracked whisper came out, like the sound of a few blades of dead grass blowing across a marble floor. He remembered and he knew that he was the last. He knew that night would fall and that beasts would come and that he would never again gaze upon his pine tree nor his beloved mountains nor hear that listened-for, longed-for voice that had kept him alive for all of this eternity. He remembered.

He remembered and he spoke. Summoning the last reservoirs of his hatred and his loss, he whispered his curse. He whispered it to the pine tree, to the sky, and to the mountains. He whispered it to those last congealing drops of the elemental mountain blood in his veins. To that blood he whispered it, as it drained from his body and permeated the porous mortar and bricks of the tower. To that blood he whispered it as it joined with the blood and fluids of three hundred warriors and sank deep into the fissures of the rocks below. To that blood he whispered his curse and, deep below, something answered.

B
OOK I

T
HE
D
ESERT

C
HAPTER 1

B
EHIND THE HEAVY WOODEN DOOR, THE HOUSE ECHOED DULLY
with the young man’s knocking. No other sound gave any evidence of life. He waited, trying to pick out any faint noise above the usual business of the street. Nothing. He knocked again, this time less politely, unconsciously folding the letter he held in his left hand.

In the dusty street, his dragoman, Antonio, absently scratched the ears of one of the mules, all the while looking around with his habitually nervous glances. Away from the breeze of the scrubby olive and pomegranate groves in the hills around the town, the early afternoon sun burned. The young man was uncomfortably aware of the heat and the sweat dripping down his back. He screwed up his eyes against the relentless sun, listening. The hot air smelt of charcoal smoke and animal dung, with the faintest hint of wild thyme. He knocked again. Still nothing from the house; just the cries of men and animals from the street and the sound of a nearby brush sweeping rhythmically over stone. He had never been good at waiting. He hammered on the door once more, calling out, ‘Elias!’

‘Elias is not here, Effendi.’

An old woman had been watching the tall European. Distracted from sweeping the doorway of the neighbouring house, her curiosity about the stranger had overcome her modesty.

‘You won’t find Elias here – the house is empty.’

Mustering his Arabic, the European asked in a faltering tongue, ‘where is Elias? I have a letter. I need to see him.’

The old woman grinned, her lined face breaking into a web of ancient creases, picked out in the afternoon sun. She shuffled over to get a closer look at the stranger. She smelt of age and rosewater. The woman spat in the dust and spoke again, rapidly, her shyness now completely forgotten in the light of an opportunity to gossip about her neighbour. His ear defeated by the woman’s enthusiasm, the young man turned to his dragoman and spoke to him in Italian.

‘What is she saying, Antonio?’

‘The man, Elias, is a tax collector, Effendi. She says that he has been thrown in prison by the Muteselim for cheating good Muslims.’ He exchanged a few more words with the woman. ‘She says that when he was arrested, all his servants ran away and the house is empty. We will find no shelter here, Effendi.’

A curse began to form on the European’s lips. He remembered that Antonio, raised by Italian friars, was not worldly and, stifling the curse, turned instead to thank the woman; despite her rather indecorous glee at the fate of her Christian neighbour.

‘Come Antonio, it’s too hot to tarry here.’ He walked over to the mules, running his fingers over their packs and mentally noting all of the equipment and his long double barrelled gun were secured and present. ‘We will seek out the Muteselim and deliver both his and Elias’s letters. He will no doubt give us lodgings.’

The old woman watched the men go. Strangers were no uncommon sight in the town of Hebron, particularly at the house of Elias, who prided himself on his hospitality to travellers. Arabs, Jews and Christians from neighbouring villages; officers of the Egyptian government, Turks and even occasional Europeans all found business in the town or else passed through, en route to Jerusalem. The woman had spent seventy years watching strangers come and go. She entertained the conceit of the old that she could read their characters and tell their secret purposes. She saw some of them dripping with greed and the desire to make money (more often than not at the expense of pious Arabs). She smelled the blood on shiftless, wild desert dwellers, looking for throats to cut and the delight of violence and robbery. Some visitors came to foment revolt and others to crush it. Some came as shadows; tools of strange and godless foreign powers who would bend the sacred lands to their wills. Others simply looked lost or afraid, on their way to be engulfed by the vastness of the desert. She watched them all as she swept her doorway or tended her little dusty orchard. Beating her carpets in time with the rhythm of their feet, tramping through the years past her door, she had grown complacently familiar with all their purposes and permutations.

Watching the two men become gradually swallowed by the bustle of the street and the haze of the afternoon heat, she could not escape a feeling that this traveller stood out from the others. It was not simply his physical presence. Even now, his tall figure could be made out, looming above the crowd as he turned the corner and disappeared from view. There had been something in the demanding urgency of his voice and the directness of his stare that had awakened some primitive sense in the woman. Far from the false wisdom of the old and complacent, this was a deeper and more fundamental certainty. That young man had been more completely free of fear than any being she had encountered and driven by something she could not explain but which left her both anxious and expectant. She returned to her sweeping, nodding to herself. Wherever it was, that young man was heading for trouble.

The young man’s name was Henry Layard. As well as a powerful physical presence, his acquaintances would often list as proof of his good character an indomitable sense of humour. After a hot journey from Jerusalem with two bad-tempered mules and the disappointment of failing to find his expected lodging at the tax collector’s house, Layard however, was finding his humour to be distinctly domitable. In a maze of narrow streets, filled with asses, mules and camels, all accompanied by a noisy throng of bustling traders and tribesmen, he was becoming increasingly frustrated by his failure to find the offices of the Muteselim, the Governor of Hebron. The buildings of the town all appeared to be in the same ruinous state as the ancient rock-tombs that surrounded it. The few olive and fruit groves in the neighbourhood provided very little wood and each building seemed to tumble into its neighbour in a chaos of rubble, makeshift repairs and awnings, so adding to the general confusion of the streets. The concentration of men and animals, dwellings, bazaars and street vendors created a cacophony of sounds and smells that blurred into a singular sensory assault. The sheer unfamiliarity combined with the dust, heat and the tumbledown maze to disorient and discomfort the travellers.

Layard winced as a stray Arab elbow caught him in the ribs and turned, to find that Antonio and the mules had drifted several yards behind him, cut off by the press of the crowd.

He snapped at the young dragoman, ‘Antonio, for Pity’s sake, can you not keep up? We will never find lodgings at this rate and will have to sleep in some god-forsaken stable. Did your friars teach you nothing about handling animals? I would be better with the mules leading you!’

Seeing the hurt expression on Antonio’s face, Layard immediately repented his words. The boy was an intelligent and conscientious servant and had already served him well on the trip from Jerusalem. Layard walked back and laid his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.

‘I am sorry Antonio,’ he said softly, ‘I know that you are doing your best. Forgive my ill temper.’

The boy opened his mouth to speak but something behind Layard caught his attention and his eyes widened in apprehension.

‘Layard!’ boomed a voice, ‘Mr Henry Layard!’

Layard turned round to find himself confronted by two burly Egyptian soldiers, with gleaming pistols and sabres in their sashes and carrying long, evil-looking hippopotamus-hide whips. Accompanying them was a sharp-featured, pale-skinned man dressed in a spotless Egyptian colonel’s uniform. Scowling, he stepped forward and tilted his head up, so that his long aquiline nose was levelled towards Layard’s. He prodded him on the chest with a bony finger.

‘Mr Henry Layard. It is you, no?’ He spoke in English, with only the barest suggestion of an accent.

A smile broke across Layard’s face.

‘Yusuf Effendi, if I am not mistaken. I was told to look out for you’

‘And I for you, Mr Layard.’ The scowl vanished and was replaced by a well-mannered smile. The Colonel continued politely, ‘May I ask your business in Hebron?’

‘I am en route to Damascus, via the Syrian desert, where I hope to inspect a number of remains, prior to rejoining a travelling companion,’ explained Layard. ‘I have some letters for the Muteselim and was just in the process of looking out lodgings.’

‘How fortunate,’ laughed Yusuf, ‘I can present your letters to the Muteselim and, if you will do me the honour, I will be very pleased to offer you quarters at my own humble house.’

Layard realised that he had very little choice other than to accept the colonel’s offer. As a high ranking officer in the Egyptian army, the courteous Turk held greater authority than the Muteselim and it would be unwise to antagonise him, if he was to proceed with plans to cross the desert. He had no doubt that the Colonel was eager to have the opportunity to find out more about his business in the region; from both his company and the opportunity afforded by his letters; but he felt that he had little yet to hide. Besides, if all he had been told about Yusuf Effendi were true, chances were that the thin man already knew as much about Layard’s business as did Layard himself. He bowed politely to the colonel.

‘We are honoured by your invitation, Effendi.’

Yusuf Effendi’s house was in a similar state of semi-ruin as the rest of Hebron, but it was spacious and comfortably furnished by the Colonel, whose hospitality proved to be impeccable. Having arranged accommodation for the mules and undertaken to deliver the letters, Yusuf left the travellers to bathe, before entertaining Layard with a meal of tender young mutton, baked with dates and cardamom and accompanied by sweet flat bread and mint tea. After dinner, the Colonel insisted upon a report of his journey from Europe. The talk was accompanied by a well-bodied Palestinian wine, from Hebron’s famed vineyards and soon Layard found himself becoming drowsy. Seeing his guest’s fatigue, the Colonel politely excused himself to attend to some official business and Layard retired to an upstairs room and the comfort of his bed. Almost as soon as he laid his travel-weary body upon the rich silks of the Colonel’s guest room, he slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep, his last conscious memory the single cry of a night bird outside the window.