The Scorpion’s Bite (3 page)

Chapter Five

Inside the valley, Awadh dismounted. He held the rope on Lily’s horse with one hand and reached for her elbow with the other in a clumsy attempt to help her alight.

“You see there?” He pointed to the urn carved into the rock of the Khazneh. “The great pharaoh of Egypt hid his treasure there.”

Lily stared at the legendary Khazneh, at the urn pockmarked with rifle shots, at the Bedouin standing in front of it, dwarfed by its monumental columns, and started toward it. It was like walking in a dream.

Awadh was talking to her, but she didn’t hear him.

She had seen the painting by David Roberts, who immortalized the Romantic Arab for Queen Victoria, where Bedouin in colorful clothing lolled on the steps or pointed rifles at the urn, waiting for it to break open like a piñata and shower them with gold. Now the Kazneh stood before her, elegant in its classic carvings, its floral capitals, while Awadh droned on and she ignored him.

Finally his voice roused her from her reverie. “When you finish here,” he was saying, “say to anyone ‘
Bukrah al mishmish
,’ and he will come get me.”

He leaned forward, waiting for an answer.

“What does that mean,
bukrah al mishmish
?”

He tied the horses to a hitching post across from the Khazneh, hobbled them, sloshed some water into a tin watering trough.

“Does it mean anything?” she asked, and turned to look at the Kazneh once more.

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “Nothing at all.” His words hung in the air as he turned and started to walk up the valley.

Lily followed him for a while along the Street of the Façades that was lined with monumental rock-hewn tombs, some with false fronts like temples, some with crenellated decoration and a simple gabled door, some with engaged columns and crow-step decoration.

A strange roseate aura was reflected from the pink limestone of the surrounding rock. Lily was spellbound by the mystique of Petra. She thought of the quixotic early nineteenth-century explorers who, disguised as Arab pilgrims, rediscovered this hidden place for God and country.

Here and there, she saw footholds carved into the rock next to the tombs for climbing the cliffs or for holding scaffolding. Gideon had told her that the elaborate facades had been carved from the top down.

Up ahead, she saw Awadh near the remains of the Roman theatre where the valley curved to the right and rose to where the city began.

Someday, when she had more time, she would come back and explore the city. She would climb to the High Place, visit the temple of the god Dushara that the Bedouin called the Palace of the Pharaoh’s Daughter. She would walk along the colonnaded Paved Street built for Hadrian’s visit in 130 C.E. Before Hadrian, in 106 C.E., the Emperor Trajan had absorbed Nabatea into the Roman Empire, swallowed it whole like a snake ingesting its prey.

As Awadh trudged along toward the eastern bank of tombs, he passed a gang of adolescents, unwashed and scrawny, who seemed to be playing a rough sort of game. One of them had a soccer ball, which he would bounce and toss with both hands at one of the other boys.

They shouted something at Awadh as he passed. He shook his fist at them, shouted back, and continued up the valley past the theatre.

The one with the ball threw it at Awadh. It landed in the middle of his back, hard enough to knock him off balance. He didn’t turn around. He staggered, squared his shoulders with an effort, and kept walking toward the elaborate set of tombs beyond the theatre. Lily watched him until he was out of sight and around the bend in the path to the city, and the adolescents disappeared into the ruins of the theatre, laughing.

As she walked along Lily pictured ancient Petra with the noise of workmen busy chiseling the great facades, cutting into the rock to hollow out interiors. She visualized the funerary processions, lines of camels stepping in somber pageant along the valley. She imagined what it would have been like then: the early Nabateans using Petra as hideaway for a nomadic Hole in the Wall Gang, and later, when the Nabateans were the proud rulers of the desert and its caravans, with Petra as their capital, a city with gardens and burbling fountains.

And here in this valley, in these rock-cut tombs that looked like temples, they buried their dead.

What were they like, these ancient Nabateans? Were they the descendants of the Edomites? Were they like the Saudis, with white kafiyas and flowing white cloaks?

She had read about them in Roman histories. It was rumored that they were cruel and avaricious, that they had captured Judeans as they fled from a burning Jerusalem and slit the captives up the belly to see if they had escaped with hidden treasure.

***

A child, a girl about five years old, sat in the path in front of her. With one hand, the child scratched at a tousled mop of black curls; with the other she drew stick figures in the rosy dust. Her faded dress was streaked with the pink dust of the path. A smear of clay-colored mud smudged her cheek. She looked up at Lily with doe’s eyes, smiled with tiny pearl-like teeth, stood up and smiled again.

Lily began to go around her. The child moved to the side as Lily moved to the side, back again when Lily moved back, threw out her arms and laughed. Lily took both of the child’s hands and the girl tossed her head, giggling, her curls bouncing as they moved back and forth, swaying, dancing, laughing.

When Lily stopped, out of breath, she took off her hat and jammed it playfully on the child’s head. The girl posed, this way and that, hands on hips.

As Lily was about to take back the hat, she remembered how the tiny disheveled girl scratched her head, and thought of head-lice. She tilted the hat on the child’s head, and stood back to admire it.

“Beautiful,” Lily said. “
Kawais
,
jameel
,” and tapped the hat to set it more carefully on the child’s head.

“Keep the hat.” She patted it again, and waved goodbye. “
Ma’a sa’alama
.”

The girl understood that the hat was a gift and ran off, smiling, skipping, calling “
Abou, abou
,” holding the hat in place as she ran.

Lily continued walking up the valley toward the theatre, passing the tombs hewn into the colored rock, with crow-stepped crenellations, with cornices and pediments reflecting the bright tints in the sun. In some places, she noticed the holes pecked into the rock for scaffolding for the workmen who had carved the tombs.

And crushed underfoot along the way, the ceramic remnants of the Nabatean funerary feasts, sherds of fine eggshell-thin ware, deep red, decorated with orange, or red, or dark purple-black paint depicting leaves and fronds and feathers, or tendrils and vines.

She got as far as the remains of the monumental theatre, hewn into the cliff and the face of damaged tombs. The curved tiers of the amphitheatre must have held over five thousand people.

The gang of boys that had harassed Awadh erupted out of the theatre toward her, hooting, shouting in Arabic, their leader bouncing the ball.

Lily backed up, apprehensive, then turned and rushed back down the valley where she felt safer.

She reached the Kazneh, climbed the steps to the colonnaded portico, and held onto one of the columns, panting. When she caught her breath, she checked the rooms on either side of the portico. They were empty.

Calmer, she went up more steps to the entrance to the central chamber and into the dark interior.

There was little there—open niches on each of the sidewalls to hold sarcophagi, a more elaborate one on the back wall, and an unpleasant musty smell. Nothing here to protect her.

When she came out, the gang of scruffy teenagers stood on the steps and blocked her way.

There were five of them. The one with the soccer ball bounced it once. The others fanned out in a semi-circle, cutting off any escape.

“Hello,
habibi
.” The boy leered and bounced the ball again.

They moved up the steps, closing in like a pack on the hunt. The leader gave her a quick smile with rotted teeth.

She shrank into the doorway of the Kazneh.

He bounced the ball, creating a sharp retort against the rock, and moved up. She caught the stench of him—the sour breath, the fusty clothes—and she backed away into the darkness of the tomb.

Chapter Six

A rapid string of guttural Arabic, an array of curses, stopped her stalkers. The words bounced off the walls from behind them, freezing the ruffians in place.

The leader flared his nostrils, tossed his head, and flung the soccer ball at the next boy. The sharp retort of a rifle firing into the air startled him and the ball bounced down the steps into the road. Without turning, the boys stepped back and scurried after the ball, bending low to grab it.

A Bedouin holding a rifle stood in the road, his face distorted in anger. He started shooting at the dirt in front of the ball, chasing it up the valley. The boys ran after it, past the theatre, around the bend in the road, out of sight.

The Bedouin slung the rifle onto his shoulder by the strap, started up the steps toward Lily, and bowed with a flourish of his cloak and a grand sweep of his hand.

Her champion. Who is this man? “Thank you for rescuing me.”

“You are our guest. I am called Adan el Bdoul.” He smiled at her.

“Awadh, the man with the horses, is your father?”

“My uncle. We are all el Bdoul here. The desert belongs to the Bedouin, and Petra belongs to el Bdoul.”

“Even the boys who threatened me?”

“Those boys are worthless as a cracked cup. They mean nothing.” He shrugged and held out his hands, palms up. “You are the guest of el Bdoul of Petra. No one snarls at a guest but a dog.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “You should keep your head covered. Your hair glints golden in the sun, brings out the dogs.”

She raised her hand to her head self-consciously. “You live here?”

“I have a three cave apartment.” He laughed with a proud toss of his head. “One for a guest room, one for a bedroom, one for a kitchen. Come, let me show you.”

He led the way up the valley along the Street of the Façades past the rock-cut tombs on the west side, past the theatre, to the part of the valley where the tombs were arranged to the east.

“You played with my daughter,” he told her. “You danced with her and gave her a hat.”

“It was nothing,” Lily said.

“It made her happy.”

He entered a doorway decorated with a pediment and carved pilasters. “Come in, come in,” he called to her and waved his arm past the pilasters toward the dark interior.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness after the bright glare of the valley sun. Inside was cool—the air tinged with an odor of wet moldy stone, smoke, and spiced coffee.

A bench covered with several layers of red-striped coarsely woven cloth ran around the inside walls. Three
loculi
, places for ancient sarcophagi, were cut into the walls above the bench and stacked with coarse rugs and cushions covered with cloth striped and dyed the same deep red.

The dirt floor was swept clean. In the center was a hearth with a blackened coffee pot beside it.

“Sit, sit,” Adan said.

He took two of the cushions and placed them on the ground near the hearth. Lily sat with her feet folded beneath her, remembering Gideon’s admonition not to insult a Bedouin by showing the bottom of her feet.

Adan lit the fire and nestled the coffee pot into it. Like Jalil, he boiled the coffee up three times, taking it off the fire and tapping the side of the pot each time. He poured the finished coffee into small cups and handed Lily the first cup, the one with the most foam.

“What does
bukrah al mishmish
mean?” she asked.

Adan began to laugh. “Awadh told you that?”

“What does it mean?”

“Nothing. It’s just a piece of foolishness.” He took a sip of coffee. “It means nothing. It means ‘tomorrow the apricots.’”

Sitting on the ground, even on cushions, felt uncomfortable, straining her legs. A physical anthropologist once told her that westerners who sit in chairs don’t have squatting facets—modifications of the anklebone, like some Asians and Africans have, so they are unable to squat without strain for more than thirty seconds. Now she understood.

The coffee was hot and sweet, spiced with a lingering taste of cardamom. She sipped it, savored it, and sipped again. She put down the cup and shifted her legs to kneel on the pillow with her feet behind her.

“The
tanib
is not with you?” Adan asked.

“He stayed behind in Rum.”

Adan poured a second cup of coffee, and Lily drank it slowly and carefully, adjusting her legs again.

“Someone is waiting for you here.” Adan poured a third cup, this time without sugar, and Lily realized that that was a signal to leave.

“Abu Huniak. Glubb Pasha. He is waiting for you.”

“Where?”

He doused the fire with what was left of the coffee and went outside. Lily followed.

They strolled down toward the Urn tomb. Two stories of arches made it look like a giant columbarium.

A man wearing a seersucker suit with a white linen vest stood in the middle of the street watching Lily. Straw-colored hair was plastered on his forehead, except for the tufts that stood straight up in a cowlick on the back of his head. It made him look like a fractious child. As Lily passed, he didn’t move, but his eyes followed her. She felt his intense gaze penetrate her wake and she rubbed the back of her neck.

Adan pointed to a ledge above the arches of the Urn Tomb. “Up there.”

A man was seated in a camp chair in the shade by the open flap of an olive green army tent. He wore a British army uniform topped with a red-checkered kafiya instead of a military cap. He had a thin military moustache, a slightly lop-sided jaw, and he was reading a book.

Lily turned to Adan and said, “
Bukrah al mishmish
.”

Chapter Seven

In the hotel, Lily opened a musty closet, shook her dress out of the duffle, put it on one of the wire hangers, and brought it into the bathroom to steam out the wrinkles while she showered and bathed. She intended to do both.

Colonel Glubb had driven her to the hotel in Amman in his old Buick to arrange for her to speak to His Majesty, Emir Abdullah, about Gideon being held at Rum.

The dress, pale green, had cost five dollars—the sort of dress her mother would have called unacceptable and gauche. But it had sleeves that covered her elbows, a high mandarin collar, and reached down to her mid-calf, modest enough for an Arab city like Amman. The belt was a sort of sash that wound around her waist twice and tied in a loop.

Tomorrow, she would go to a palace and talk to a king. She should have gone to the souk and bought something else. Too late for that.

The bathroom was a step up from the bedroom, to accommodate plumbing under the floor, she supposed. The soap had a drawing of olives on the wrapper and smelled of jasmine. In the shower, she worked up a lather with the flimsy washcloth, savoring the perfume, rubbing the cloth against her skin, worrying about Gideon, wondering what she could say to the Emir to have him released.

Iridescent bubbles formed and burst and washed in a stream to a drain in the middle of the floor. She watched the water swirl counter clockwise down the drain, remembering Rafi. He would stand at the kitchen sink finishing the dishes, swishing the water counterclockwise, trying to make it turn against nature. Numb with grief, she still expected to find him everywhere: across a fruit stand at a souk, sitting in a chair in the next room, his hands resting on the wooden arms. But he was gone, vanished in the furious hellhole of el Alamein, never to return.

She dried with the thin hotel towel and crept into bed. Three box-like sections of ticking filled with straw crackled when she moved, and the tired springs creaked and groaned with each shift of her body. She slept fitfully, waiting for morning, dreaming of Rafi again, dreaming that he was still alive, that el Alamein had never happened, that there was no war, that they were still in Jerusalem.

In the morning, she clambered into the ball-and-claw tub, holding on to the high rim with both hands. The water was lukewarm and rusty and when she got out, she slipped on the tile floor, reached out and caught herself on the edge of the sink. Was this how the day would go? Stumbling, righting yourself just in time?

She put on the pale green dress, dumped the dirty clothes from the duffel on the bed to be laundered, and went downstairs. Breakfast in the garden there included strong coffee, pickled fish, and cheese, with fresh butter on a crisp, circular roll covered with sesame seeds.

Colonel Glubb came for her at ten in a gleaming black Packard town car, with tiny Trans-Jordan flags fluttering atop the front fenders.

At the palace, a guard from the Desert Patrol saluted, opened the door ceremoniously and motioned them through. Glubb led her down a long corridor, moving briskly past wall hangings of silk rugs woven into garden scenes or portraits of the royal family, past arched windows that framed a bright rose garden. Breathless, Lily scurried to keep up.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Glubb turned and gave her a reassuring smile. “He’s a gentleman all through. When he first came to Trans-Jordan, he held court Bedouin style on the outskirts of Amman.”

Glubb slowed. Lily caught up with him and they walked in step. She realized that they were marching.

“Trans-Jordan has changed since Abdullah took over. Things are orderly now. He’s a good ruler. When he came here, there were four rivals factions. He achieved a measure of unity. Different from the infighting of other Arab countries.”

They had reached the end of the corridor where a guard stood before an ornate pair of carved wooden doors.

“Wait here,” Glubb said. The guard stood aside. “I’ll see if His Majesty is ready.”

Glubb disappeared into the room beyond, and the guard resumed his position before the doors and in front of Lily. His legs apart, his rifle cradled at a slant, he stood motionless, staring at Lily. A bee buzzed along the corridor and danced between them. From the garden, Lily thought.

The guard’s eyes followed the bee and he smiled at Lily. When it landed on his shoulder, he flicked it off with snap of his finger and winked at Lily. She stepped back.

The guard opened the double doors. With a sweep of his arm, he invited Lily to enter the room beyond—a long room with a travertine floor. Tables with mother of pearl inlay, armchairs with tasseled cushions, and elaborate folding chairs were scattered on a pair of fine, palace-size Nain silk rugs. Along one long wall, windows with graceful pointed arches bordered with mosaics opened onto a dappled garden with a pool and fountains. A large inlaid ebony desk surrounded by tiles set into the wall stood against another.

At the far end of the room, the Emir was seated on a dais in a cushioned chair with mother-of-pearl inlays. A handsome child with dark, liquid eyes—his grandson, Prince Hussein—clung to the leg of his chair and rested his head on the Emir’s knee. The Emir’s son, Crown Prince Talal, sat cross-legged on a cushion on his right, and Glubb Pasha moved to stand behind him on his left.

Lily was offered a seat below the dais to the right of the Emir.

The Emir leaned forward. “And how is my friend Gideon Weil?” His smile encouraged Lily.

“He’s been arrested.”

The Emir frowned. “How? Where? What happened?”

“Our guide was killed and a man from the Arab Legion arrested Gideon. They’re holding him at the fortress at Rum.”

“Your guide was a Howeitat. They are the traditional enemies of the Beni Sakhr,” the Emir said, as if that explained everything. “I shall send word to the guard at Rum, tell him to release my friend.”

He stroked the tumble of curls on his grandson’s head and leaned back. A soft smile played on his lips when Hussein looked up at him. “Once we were more powerful than the British,” he said to the child in a soft voice. “We have a long and proud history.”

He sighed, stood up, strolled to the window and gazed at the play of water in the fountain. “We have everyone here. Moslems, Christians, Armenian artisans, Druze from the mountains, Circassian warriors, gentlemanly Bahai, fellahin in the towns and villages, merchants in the cities.” He spoke to Lily now. “And Bedouin. We are all Bedouin. The others come and go, Romans, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, Palestinians, British.” He turned around to face her. “But we will be here forever.”

He returned to the dais. “And we own the land.” He seated himself again in the ebony chair. “The land belongs to the Bedouin.”

He leaned back against the cushion and said to Lily, “I will assign a guide to you from the Beni Sakhr who is fit for the task ahead of you.”

“And what is the task ahead?” Lily asked.

“Someone who knows Rum, who knows the routes, who knows the eastern desert.”

So we’re going to the eastern desert, that much she could gather. Secrets, secrets, she was surrounded by secrets. Well, there’s a war on. What did that poster say? A slip of the lip can sink a ship? There were no slips, no ships here in Amman. A cat can look at a king, but it can’t make him purr, she thought. Abdullah knows more about the survey for the OSS than I do.

With a wave of his hand, a smile, and a slight bow of his head, the Emir dismissed her. “
Mashallah
,” he said. “May Allah preserve you.
Ma’a es salaam
. Go in safety.”

Colonel Glubb accompanied her on her way out along the long corridor.

“The Hashemites are a Bedouin tribe?” Lily asked him.

“The most prestigious of them all. Far more important than the Saudis. The Saudis stole Mecca from the Hashemites. Mecca is the birthright of the Hashemites. Abdullah’s father was ruler of Mecca, King of Hejaz.” He stopped walking and turned to Lily. “The Prophet himself was a Hashemite, did you know that?”

She noticed that the colonel referred to Mohammed as the Prophet and thought he’s been living among Moslems for a long time.

“You don’t think much of the Saudis, do you?” she asked.

“They’re satiated with plunder. Drunk on greed and religion.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“They base their power on Wahhabism. Recent sect, eighteenth century. Ultra conservative, militaristic. As far as I can see, it’s a distortion of Islam, will set them back a thousand years.”

“But the British support the Saudis.”

“For the oil. It seems we’re running short of coals in Newcastle.”

They continued down the corridor and Glubb turned to her again.

“When you get to the eastern desert,” he said, “watch out for Gerta Kuntze. She’s a troublemaker. She lives among the Rashidi, the Bedu on the Iraqi border, moving from tent to tent, stirring up problems. We don’t need her. We have enough worries.”

So, we
are
going to the eastern desert.

Glubb looked out the window for a moment, where petals from overblown roses caught in the breeze and wafted to the ground. “Kuntze thinks of herself as the modern-day Gertrude Bell. Calls herself the Empress of Mesopotamia. But she’s no Gertrude Bell. For one thing, Kuntze is German, not British.”

“Gertrude Bell, the woman who was called the Queen of Iraq? Lawrence’s friend?”

“The very same. I met Gertrude Bell once in Cairo. She was a silly egomaniacal windbag, a virago, and the world’s greatest expert.”

“Expert on what?”

“Everything. Ask her anything, she knew more about it than God.”

Behind them, a door closed and they heard the tap of small scampering feet.

A child’s voice called out, “Wait for me, wait for me,” and they turned to see Prince Hussein running toward them.

Hussein clasped Glubb’s hand. “Grandfather says that Abu Hun…Glubb Pasha is a great hero,” he said to Lily. “Grandfather says that he saved my cousin Faisal’s life and rescued Iraq from the Germans. My cousin is the king of Iraq.”

He was talking about the eight-year-old king, the grandson of Lawrence’s Faisal.

“You were going to call Colonel Glubb ‘
Abu Huniak
,’ weren’t you?” Lily asked the young prince.

“It’s not polite to call someone a name. Someday, I will be king, like my cousin Faisal, and kings are always polite.”

“Your grandfather told you that?” Lily asked.

“Grandfather is wise and kind. He is always polite.”

“Who taught you English?” Lily said. “You speak it very well.”

“When the war is over, grandfather says, when it is safe in England, I will go to school there, to Harrow with my cousin Faisal. And then I shall go to Sandhurst, like Glubb Pasha, and become a great warrior.”

A door along the corridor opened, and a uniformed guard approached. “Your Highness, His Majesty is looking for you.”

Hussein released Glubb’s hand. He went with the guard, turned back, and waved at them. “
Ma’a es salaam
,” he called as Lily and Glubb watched him continue down the corridor.

Glubb waited until he was out of sight before he said, “Back to Gerta Kuntze. She stirs up the Bedu to plot against the Allies for her friend Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.”

“The former prime minister of Iraq?”

“The very same, the engineer of last year’s insurrection, a plot to kill young Faisal. We intervened, rescued Faisal, and sent Rashid Ali into exile.”

“Rashid Ali is a Nazi sympathizer?”

“More than that. Sold Iraqi oil to the Kraut, sent Iraqi artillery against our base in Habbaniya. We took care of him last year,” he said again, and laughed. “They call it the Anglo-Iraqi War. Imagine that.”

She had heard about the war. Glubb led the invasion.

He stood against the window. The bright sun behind him outlined his silhouette and made it difficult for her to see the expression on his face. “Rashid Ali fled to Berlin. Now he and his friend, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, have tea and cakes with Hitler.”

Behind Glubb in the garden blowsy Damask roses nodded in a slight breeze that blew the spray from a fountain in the center toward the ring of dark pink flowers.

“While they talk about their plans to rule the Arab world and eliminate the Jews?”

“Just so.” He took a deep breath, shook his head. “None of it is easy. Lawrence had it right. We’ve been led into a trap in Mesopotamia that we can’t escape with dignity and honor. And all the while, Gerta Kuntze travels from tent to tent, lives like a Bedu, lice and all, calling herself the Empress of Mesopotamia.”

“She’s an archaeologist?”

“Vocational.” Glubb sighed. “Rashid Ali may be in Berlin, but he still pulls the strings in Iraq.”

Lily remembered a picture she had seen of little Hussein and the young king, Faisal, standing together, arms over each other’s shoulders. They looked like twins, but Hussein’s eyes were laughing while Faisal’s were sad and full of foreboding.

“The Arabs believe in fate. If Faisal is fated to be killed by Rashid Ali, then he will be.”

“Even if it takes forty years?”

“Or less,” Glubb said.

***

Lily rode back to the hotel in the Packard. She sat straight in the plush beige back seat, feeling grand and a little royal, wondering if she should give a queenly bow and wave to the fellahin who gazed after them when the town car passed.

Before she went upstairs, Lily sat outside at the café across from the hotel, watching the traffic along the dusty street: old carts and new cars; men wearing three piece suites and carrying briefcases bustling along; Bedouin on sleek Arabian horses; women in Paris dresses; women wearing head scarves and embroidered abayas. And everyone walked down the center of the road, casually blocking traffic.

Amman was still a town that was building. Some streets were paved, some not yet finished; everywhere, half-built stone houses, some Turkish style, some modern Bauhaus with curved balconies and glass brick partitions.

She had ordered a crème caramel and a bottle of Jordan Valley water. While she waited, the man with the straw-colored hair who had been watching her at Petra snaked through the tables toward her.