5

WELL, we did not get annihilated by any thunderbolt or whirlwind, and I cannot recall that anything else of significance happened on that journey until, as I have remarked, we did come to a second green oasis in that dun dreariness, and again made camp, intending to luxuriate there for two or even three days. In keeping with my resolve, I did not this time let Aziz out of my arm’s reach while we drank our fill of the good water and watered the camels and topped up our water bags and—especially—while we bathed our bodies and laundered our clothes, during which time he and all the rest of us were necessarily naked. And when again we were disposed to pitch our tents privily apart from each other, I made sure that his and mine were side by side.

We did, however, all cluster together around the camp fire for our evening meal. And I recollect, as if it were yesterday, every trivial incident of that night. Aziz took his seat across the fire from me and Nostril, and first my uncle sat companionably close beside him, and then my father plumped down on his other side. While we gnawed gristly mutton and munched moldy cheese and dipped shriveled jujubes into our water cups to soften them, my uncle gave arch sidewise looks at the boy, and I and my father cast wary looks at both of them. Apparently unaware of any tension in the group, Nostril casually remarked to me:

“You are beginning to look like a real journeyer, Master Marco.”

He was referring to my new-grown beard. In the desert, no man would be fool enough to waste water on shaving, or vain enough to endure a lather that must get mixed with abrasive sand and salt. My own beard was by then of a manly density, and I had ceased even to use the easy depilatory of the mumum salve, letting the beard grow as a protection for the skin of my face. I took only the trouble to keep it clipped to a tidy and comfortable shortness, and I have worn it so ever since.

“Now you may realize,” Nostril chatted on, “how merciful it was of Allah to give whiskers to men, but not to women.”

I thought about that. “It is clearly good that men have beards, for they may have to go into the scouring desert sands. But why is it a mercy that women have them not?”

The camel-puller raised up his hands and his eyes, as if in consternation at my ignorance. But before he could reply, little Aziz laughed and said:

“Oh, let me tell him! Think, Mirza Marco! Was it not considerate of the Creator? He did not put a beard upon that creature who could never keep it shaven clean or even trimmed to neatness, because her jaw waggles so!”

I laughed, too, and so did my father and uncle, and I remarked, “If that is the reason, then I am glad for it. I would recoil from a whiskered woman. But would it not have been wiser of the Creator to create females less inclined to wag the jaw?”

“Ah,” said my father, the proverbialist. “Wherever there are pots, they will rattle.”

“Mirza Marco, here is another riddle for you, Mirza Marco!” chirruped Aziz, merrily bouncing where he sat. The boy was admittedly a soiled angel, and in many respects more worldly-wise than any adult Christian, but he was, after all, still a child. His words almost tumbled over each other, he was so eager to get them out. “There are few animals in this desert. But there is one to be found here which unites in itself the natures of seven different beasts. What is it, then, Marco?”

I knit my brow and pretended to think ponderously, and then said, “I give it up.”

Aziz crowed with triumphant laughter, and opened his mouth to speak. But then his mouth opened wider, and his big eyes got bigger. So did the eyes and mouths of my father and uncle. Nostril and I had to spin about to see what they were staring at.

Three shaggy brown men had materialized out of the night’s dry fog, and were regarding us with slit eyes in expressionless faces. They wore skins and leathers, not Arab garments, and they must have ridden far and fast, for they were coated with dust caked by perspiration, and they stank even from the distance where they stood.

“Sain bina,” said my uncle, the first to recover from his surprise, and he slowly got to his feet.

“Mendu, sain bina,” said one of the strangers, looking faintly surprised himself.

My father also stood up, and he and Uncle Mafio made gestures of welcome, and they went on speaking to the intruders in a language I did not comprehend. The shaggy men drew three horses by their reins out of the fog behind them, and led the animals to the spring. Not until the horses had been watered did the men take a drink.

Nostril, Aziz and I got up from the fire, and let the strangers take our places. My father and uncle sat down with them, and got out food from our packs and offered it, and continued sitting and talking while the visitors ate voraciously. I scrutinized the newcome three as well as I could while standing discreetly apart from the confabulation. They were of short but sturdy stature. Their faces were the color and texture of tanned kid leather, and two of them had long but wispy mustaches; none wore a beard. Their coarse black hair was womanly long, and plaited into numerous braids. Their eyes, I repeat, were mere slits, so very narrowly slitted that I wondered how they could see out of them. Each man carried a short and sharply curved-and-recurved bow slung on his back, with its bowstring across his chest, and a quiver of short arrows for it, and at his waist what was either a short sword or a long knife.

I recognized, now, that the men were Mongols, for I had seen the occasional Mongol by this time, and this land was, although nominally Persia, a province of the Mongol Khanate. But why were three Mongols prowling out here in the wilderness? They did not seem to be bandits or to mean us any harm—or at least my father and uncle had quickly talked them out of any such notion. And why were they in such an apparent hurry? In the everlasting desert, no man hurries.

But these men stayed in the oasis only long enough to eat to repletion. And they might not have halted for even that long, except that our foodstuffs, unappealing though they were, must have seemed real viands and delicacies to the Mongols, for these men carried no traveling rations at all except strips of jerked horsemeat like rawhide bootlaces. My father and uncle, to judge from their gesturings, were cordially and almost insistently inviting the newcomers to rest for a while, but the Mongols only shook their shaggy heads and grunted as they devoured mutton and cheese and fruits. Then they rose, belched appreciatively, gathered up the reins of their horses and remounted.

The horses rather resembled the men, being exceptionally shaggy and wild-looking and almost as small as the hinna’ed horses of Baghdad, but much more stocky and muscular. They were crusted with dried foam and dust, from having been hard ridden, but they acted as eager as their riders to be off and going again. One of the Mongols, from his saddle, jabbered to my father a lengthy speech that sounded monitory. Then they all tugged their mounts’ heads around, and cantered off southwestward, and almost instantly they were gone from our sight into the foggy dark, and the creak and jingle of their arms and harness was as instantly gone from our hearing.

“That was a military patrol,” my father made haste to tell us, perceiving that Nostril and Aziz looked quite frightened. “It seems that some bandits have lately been, er, active in this desert, and the Ilkhan Abagha desires to have them brought quickly to justice. Mafìo and I, being naturally concerned for the safety of us all, tried to persuade them to stay and guard us, or even to travel for a time in our company. But they prefer to keep on the trail of the bandits, and press them hard, hoping to wear them down by thirst and hunger.”