The Scorpion’s Bite (2 page)

Chapter Three

Trans-Jordan lies east of the Jordan River, east of the Dead Sea, east of the deep declivity of the Wadi Arava. Four fifths of it is desert. East of the deep valleys of the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the Wadi Arava, the land rises to 4000 feet, studded with villages and green with small farms, vineyards, and fig orchards cut into the terraced hillsides. Beyond that, in the rain shadow of the mountains, the hills descend almost imperceptibly into a scrub desert some twenty to twenty-five miles east of the ridge. The Hejaz railroad runs along this boundary between the desert and the sown.

This is the land of the Bedouin.

The lorry whined its way up the Wadi Rum, disturbing the elegant silence of the desert. Behind them, the Jeep wobbled against the tow-chain and stirred a cloud of dust in their wake.

For a while, none of them spoke.

As they bumped along toward the Outpost at Rum, Lily wondered how Jalil knew that the body was Qasim’s. Did Klaus tell him? And what made Jalil think that Gideon had killed Qasim? Did Klaus say that too?

“Why did you arrest Gideon?” Lily asked from the back seat.

Jalil swerved to avoid a boulder in their path and the Jeep rattled behind them. “To keep the peace. An unsolved death like Qasim’s could start a round of feuds among the Bedouin unless someone is held responsible.”

“But why Gideon?”

“He had the opportunity.”

“We didn’t see Qasim all day. I was with Gideon the whole time. Why not accuse me too?”

Jalil turned his head slightly to glance at her. “You’re a woman. A woman couldn’t attack a man powerfully enough to kill.”

Lily bristled. “Yes I could,” she said, defending her right to be accused of murder, before she realized how foolish it sounded.

All this time, Gideon, his eyes wide, his mouth open in astonishment, had been staring at Jalil. “It makes no sense. Why would I kill him? I had no motive. He was our guide.”

“You can argue that it was accidental.”

In the distance, Jebel Rum loomed ahead of them.

“It won’t be so bad,” Jalil said after a while. “You’ll just pay a fine to Qasim’s
khamsa
for the loss of one of their members.”

“But why Gideon?” Lily asked again.

“All Americans are rich.” He banged on the steering wheel, sending drifts of dust into the air. “Howeitat are poor.”

The rest of the way, they rode in silence.

As they came closer to Jebel Rum, the sheer red cliff of the mountain seemed to climb into the sky and beyond. Lily caught a glimpse of the Outpost of the Desert Patrol at the base, tucked up against the mountain so closely that it seemed that the mountain might fall and bury it.

From this far away, the building looked small and derelict, like the forgotten toy of a careless child.

On their right, the first signs of darkness appeared in the eastern sky.

As they drew closer, the scrub vegetation that surrounded the Outpost emitted the sharp aroma of broom and tamarisk and thorn bushes. Lily made out a squat building of large cinderblocks with turrets at the corners and a round cistern on the roof. The yard outside had a pump house, a well surrounded by mint, and a trough for watering animals. A bucket and a washbasin sat next to the well. An old, faded blue Buick was parked a short distance away. Jalil’s camel was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s your camel?” Lily asked.

Jalil grinned. “The desert is a haunted place. Don’t you know that at night, djinn leap out of the chasms and caves to steal away with our camels?”

Gideon turned toward Jalil. “It isn’t night yet. Where’s Klaus?”

“He said he had business, an appointment, and rode out on the camel. Like a djinn.”

“Did the djinn who rode the camel take anything with him?”

“His camera and some water.”

“He say where he was going?”

“Just left. Down the wadi and over the hill.”

Jalil led them inside to the back of the building and escorted Gideon to a room on the far side of an office. Lily could see the bare cinder block walls through the half-open door. The room had a high window, a sleeping palette, and two buckets near a water spigot.

Jalil escorted Gideon inside, then locked the door.

He showed Lily to the front of the building. Her room had a bed with a straw mattress, whitewashed walls, a real sink with a bucket next to it, and a drain in the center of the cement floor.

“You can wash,” Jalil said. “The cistern on the roof holds a day’s supply of water. Don’t drink it. I keep boiled water in the kitchen for drinking.” He started to leave and then turned back. “There’s an outhouse behind the building. Be sure to use plenty of lime.”

Jalil left, with the promise of a meal in perhaps an hour.

Lily went outside to retrieve the washbasin, brought it back to her room and filled the basin with water, still hot from the day’s sun that beat on the flat roof.

She rummaged in her duffel bag for a soap dish and sponge, and laid out a towel and clean clothes on the mattress: jodhpurs, a shirt and a change of underwear.

She stepped out of the sand-heavy clothes she wore and into the basin, squeezing water from the sponge over her hair and neck, down her shoulders and back, along her legs, feeling the delightful bite of the hot water, and wondered about Klaus.

Where did he really go when he took off, the way he did today from the Outpost? He had done it before, left them for the day, and returned, with no explanation other than a shrug.

She and Gideon joked about it sometimes, speculating that he went out to meet a lady in the desert wilderness, where they made wild love all night long without ruffling his moustache.

Evenings, when they sat around the campfire, Klaus would tell them how he had escaped from Germany, how he had to leave his wife and son behind, how the Hagganah, the Jewish secret defense force, smuggled him out and landed him in Palestine on the beach at Nahariya on a moonless night. He had gone to Jaffa, he said, and gotten a job as a photographer’s assistant at Balian Studios, learned Arabic by dealing with the customers, and learned Hebrew by writing down each new word he heard on a pad he always carried and looking up the word in a dictionary.

Then he would show them a picture of his wife and his son, running his fingers lovingly over their image in the flickering firelight. “They’ll be all right,” he would say. “They live in the country with my wife’s family. They’re not Jewish, you know.” And then he would sigh, put the picture back in his wallet, and take it out again the next night.

Lily soaped herself and released more water from the sponge, soaped and washed again and again until the water in the basin was clouded with sand. Finally, she stepped out of the basin, dried herself, and dressed.

***

She was surprised to find Gideon in the kitchen, helping Jalil with dinner.

Jalil lined a large platter with flat Bedouin bread piled it high with mutton, eggs, and rice and set it in the center of the table. He put a warmed, damp towel at each place.

They ate with their hands, folding a piece of the bread around the rice and mutton, their hands greasy with mutton fat, laughing as it ran down their chins with each portion, reaching for the damp towels between mouthfuls.

When they finished, Jalil brought out cups of sticky-sweet tea that left Lily thirstier for drinking it, and they leaned back and talked.

“Where does the water come from?” Lily asked. “You truck it in to the cistern every day?”

“There’s a high water table here,” Gideon told her, “with springs and wells.
Ain esh-Shallaleh
, the Spring of the Waterfall. It’s called Lawrence’s Well by some. He used Rum as headquarters for a time during the last war.” He tilted his chair back precariously, then leaned forward. The chair legs landed on the floor with a bang. “There’s a Nabatean temple here dedicated to the Lady Allat, and some Thamudic inscriptions.”

“The Lady Allat?” asked Lily.

“The Lady Allat, the daughter of God, Goddess of the Moon, the maiden, the mother, the wise woman. She’s all these things. She’s even mentioned in the Koran. Herodotus called her the Arabian Aphrodite.”

“You’ve been here before?”

Gideon nodded. “At the Nabatean Temple.”

Lily thought about it, and about Gideon helping Jalil in the kitchen instead of being locked in the room on the other side of the outpost.

“You’ll show me the temple tomorrow?”

“No,” he said. “Tomorrow, you will go to Petra.”

“Petra?”

“A wonderful place,” Jalil said. “
Al-medina al-wardah
, the legendary rose-red city.”

“But why?” she asked him.

“Glubb Pasha says you must learn to shoot a gun.”

Chapter Four

Lily turned the key in the old Buick and pulled out the choke. It whined and coughed and finally caught.

Jalil leaned into the car and smiled. “Be careful.” He gestured toward the road. “A
ghula
, a witch, dwells hidden in the caves, lying in wait, ready to jump out and devour whoever passes by.” And then he laughed. “If you enter the cave of a witch you will not leave alive.” He threw out his arms in a helpless gesture and laughed again. “Maybe.”

After a quick breakfast of eggs and what was left of last night’s bread, Jalil had told her about the car that was parked in the yard of the Outpost early this morning. It was an old Buick, he said, that belonged to Glubb Pasha.

Jalil had made a pot of Bedouin coffee, boiled up three times and laced with sugar and cardamom. He gave the first cup with the foam to Lily, making a show of pouring it from a height to create the froth.

She suspected that the offering was a bribe of some sort, that she was going to be asked to do something difficult. Gideon confirmed the suspicion when he spread out a British Ordinance Map on the table.

“Jalil has already filled the canvas bag and your canteen with water,” Gideon told her. “And boiled you some extra eggs for the trip.”

“What trip?”

“Abu Huniak radioed me,” Jalil said. “You’re borrowing his old Buick. I filled it with petrol.”

“Abu Huniak?”

“Glubb Pasha. We call him Abu Huniak, little jaw. Part of his jaw was shot off in the Great War.” Jalil ran his fingers along the thick stubble on the right side of his chin to demonstrate. “He doesn’t mind if we call him that. We do it with love.”

Glubb Pasha was Colonel John Glubb, British officer and commander of the Arab Legion, who had trained Bedouin to form the Desert Patrol.

“You’re going to meet him in Petra,” Gideon told her. “He’s waiting for us.”

“For us?” She felt less apprehensive about the trip. “You’re coming with me?”

Gideon threw up his arms in a helpless gesture, raised his eyebrows in question and smiled at Jalil.

Jalil smiled back at him. “El Tanib is under arrest,” he said to Lily. “You must go alone.” He leaned back and sipped his coffee. “You’re going to Petra! The glory of the Nabateans, the ancient masters of the desert”. He leaned forward again, his face animated. “The red-rose city, half as old as time,” he added, quoting a Victorian poet, much to Lily’s surprise.

“Actually,” Gideon said, “the first signs of occupation were in the sixth century B.C.E., probably Edomite. The Nabateans probably showed up sometime in the fourth century B.C.E.”

Gideon had excavated Nabatean sites, written a book and numerous articles about them.

“Some say the Nabateans came out of Saudi Arabia, predatory camel-nomads who raided and traded frankincense and myrrh from Arabia Felix. Others say they are descendants of the Edomites. And some say they are mentioned in the Bible, as the Nebaioth, one of the sons of Ishmael.”

In Roman times, the Nabateans controlled the desert trade of Imperial Rome. They built watchtowers to monitor caravans that crossed the desert tracks, stopping them for tribute. The Nabateans grew wealthy exacting payment for access to water from springs and wells, and for stops at caravanserai. They extorted tolls for perfumes brought from Arabia, for spices and silks that had traveled from India and China along the Silk Route as they crossed the desert on the way to Mediterranean ports.

Petra was the Nabatean capital.

Jalil turned back to the map. “There’s a track out of here leading north. Follow it until you reach a large wadi, where the track turns left.” He traced the route on the map with his finger. “Keep going.”

“Here it turns north again.” Gideon indicated a curve on the map. “Pass Jebel Quweira and the remains of a Roman fort. The track forks here at Ras An Naqb.” He pointed to the spot. “There’s a steep slope and a wadi on the right fork. Take the fork to the left.” He leaned back with a wistful smile. “That’s Nabatean country.”

Lily wondered how she could go off to Petra without Gideon. He was the expert on the Nabateans.

“From there, it’s a straight shot to Wadi Musa.” Gideon looked inquiringly at Jalil. “You need this map? Can she take it with her?” When Jalil nodded, Gideon reached into a pocket for his pen, and began to ink in the route. “You’ll pass two villages on the way. Here.” He circled two small spots on the map with his pen. “And here.”

***

The drive along the hard packed desert pavement took less time than Lily had imagined. By early afternoon, she had reached Wadi Musa, the Valley of Moses, just east of Petra.

In the midst of stark desert crags, a little brook, derived from numerous springs, ran through a narrow ravine with a small village of mud-brick houses. According to tradition, this was the place where Moses smote the rock to bring forth water for parched Israelites on their way to the Promised Land after they fled Egypt. Now the copious water from the springs of Moses irrigated terraced fields planted with grapes, figs, and olives.

Lily stopped next to a large house near the entrance to the village where Gideon had told her someone would be waiting. Behind the mud-brick wall that encircled the compound, she saw outbuildings and a courtyard with sway-backed horses buzzing with flies and tied to a hitching post.

After a few moments, an older Bedouin emerged from the house, threw horse blankets stiff with sweat on two of the horses, saddled them, attached some lengths of frayed rope as rudimentary bridles, and came smiling toward her.

He bowed with an elaborate gesture, sweeping his cloak behind him with one hand, extending the other toward her in greeting.

His long hangdog face was framed by patches of hair that were neither beard nor stubble, his dark eyes looked as if they were on the verge of tears. A faint mustache quivered above his upper lip. His face had all the discreet pathos of a basset hound.

“
Ahlen we Sahlen
,” he said. “You are most welcome.” He glanced at the Buick and back at her. “Abu Huniak said you will be wanting a horse to take you through the Siq.”

He went back to the horses and led out the saddled pair, Arabians who had seen better days. Their unwashed coats, sore with bare spots, had an acrid stench, their once-proud tails were sagging, and their long Arabian faces were sad and menacing.

The Bedouin cupped his hands for her to mount and gave her a boost. She landed with an ungainly bounce in the saddle. He mounted the other Arabian and reached for her makeshift bridle to lead her into the Siq, a cleft in the earth created by some long-ago earthquake.

“
Ismi Awadh el Bdoul
,” he said as they passed through the Bab es-Siq into the shade of the canyon. “
Shu ismik
? What is your name?”

Lily nodded. “
Ismi
Lily.”

They rode past the spare remains of a monumental arch hewn out of the living rock by the Nabateans that once had topped the entrance to the Siq. Around a curve, they came upon three massive carved blocks that stood in front of the facade of a rock-cut tomb, and Awadh began to sing.

“Careful when we pass here,” Awadh sang. “Those blocks were carved by djinn.” His nasal voice sang out as he said in a tuneless song, “No one knows what they will do. Djinn are fiery spirits, older than beasts. They are smokeless fire, like electricity. Very dangerous. They can burn your soul.” He reached into a sack on his belt for some worry beads, and kept on singing. “I can take care of them. The djinn, they are afraid of song.”

The horses plodded on, weary under the weight of their riders, the sound of their hoofs echoing off the cliff walls, past a tomb carved into the rock then around a bend as the Siq began to narrow.

Some votive niches were hewn into the rock. Dwarfed by the high walls of the Siq, Lily looked up. The sides leaned toward each other like an enormous corbelled arch, blocking out the light.

The remains of water channels that had brought water into Petra from the spring at Wadi Musa were cut into the sidewalls. As they clomped through the narrow winding gorge, claustrophobic within its towering walls, Lily noticed the faint deposits left from the levels of water that had run through the Siq during countless winters.

Sometimes water poured through the Siq in a roaring flash flood when a desert torrent raged. Lily recalled the story of Madame X who was drowned in the Siq during a sudden downpour. No one knew who she was, and now she was buried in one of the tombs of the Iron Age cemetery on the grounds of the École Biblique in Jerusalem next to Pere Vincente.

Would there be a flash flood today, and would she be buried there in Jerusalem, next to Madame X, as Madame Y, in The Tomb of the Unknown Tourists?

“Are there flash floods here often?” she asked Awadh.

“No, never.” He kicked his horse to speed it up and gave a pull on Lily’s rope. “Only sometimes.”

The Siq seemed to go on forever, darker and narrower, in some places with room for only one horse at a time. Awadh handed her the rope that served as a bridle for her horse and let her lead as the horses trudged further and further. At last, around a twist in the narrow chasm, Lily saw a shaft of bright yellow sunlight.

Awadh hung back and smiled.

And then, around the next bend, at the end of the narrow cleft of the Siq, she saw it and took in her breath.

There, in front of her, rosy-bright in the afternoon sun, cut into the living rock of red sandstone was the Khazneh, the magnificent rose-pink
Khazneh el-Far’un
—the Pharaoh’s treasury.

Rising to the sky, with steps leading to a columned portico, and a second story above, it looked like a Roman temple. It was a tomb fit for a king, rich and powerful, perhaps the tomb of Aretas IV Philopatris, King of the Nabateans and friend of the people.

And on the top of the Khazneh with its cornice on either side was a huge urn carved in the rock above the central
tholos.
The Bedouin thought it held the treasure of the Pharaohs.