However, long before I could make the least conversation with our three escorts, I had discerned from their behavior some of the Mongols’ curious ways and customs—or, I might better say, their barbaric superstitions. While we were still in the oasis, Nostril had suggested to them that they might like to wash the blood and sweat and long-accumulated dirt out of their clothes, and so have them fresh and clean for the next stage of traveling. The men declined, giving as a reason that it was unwise to launder any article of apparel when abroad from one’s home camp, because that would raise a thunderstorm. How it would do that, they could not say, and would not demonstrate. Now, any man of ordinary good sense, in the middle of a parched and bleached desert, would scarcely object to any kind of wet storm, however mysteriously produced. But the Mongols, who fear nothing else under Heaven, are as terrified of thunder and lightning as is the most timid child or woman.

Also, while still in that abundantly watered oasis, the three Mongols never once treated themselves to a thorough and refreshing bath, though God knows they needed one. They were so crusty they almost creaked, and their aroma would have gagged a shaqàl. But they washed no more of themselves than their heads and hands, and did that little washing most miserly. One of them would dip a gourd in the spring, but use not even the dipper’s amount of water. He would slurp from the gourd only a single mouthful, and hold it in his mouth, then spit the water into his cupped hands, a little at a time, and with one spurt wet his hair, with the next his ears, and so on. Granted, that may not have been a matter of superstition, but of conservation, a custom decreed by a people who spend so much of their time in arid lands. But I did think they would have been a more socially acceptable people if they had relaxed that stringency when it was not needful.

Another thing. Those three men had been traveling from out of the northeast when they first came upon us. Now that we were proceeding in that direction, and perforce so were they, the men insisted that we ride a farsakh or so to one side of their prior trail, because, they assured us, it was unlucky to return over the exact same route by which one has gone out.

It was also extremely unlucky, they remarked, during the first night we all camped together on the trail, for any member of a party to sit with his head hanging as in sorrow, or to lean his cheek or chin on his hand as an aid to cogitation. That, they said, could bring sadness on the entire company. And they said it while glancing uneasily at Uncle Mafio, who was sitting just that way, and looking mournful indeed. My father or I might jolly him into sociability for a while, but he soon would lapse into gloom again.

For a very long time after the death of Aziz, my uncle spoke seldom and sighed often and looked miserably bereft. Where earlier I had tried to take a tolerant attitude toward his unmanly nature, I was now more inclined to an amused and exasperated contempt. No doubt a man who can find sensual pleasure only with one of his own sex can also find a deep and lasting love for one of them, and such a true ardor—like the more conventional instances of true love—can be esteemed and admired and commended. However, Uncle Mafio had had only a single and insignificant sexual encounter with Aziz, and otherwise he had been no closer to the boy than any of the rest of us. We all grieved for Aziz, and felt sorrow at his loss. But for Uncle Mafio to carry on, in the way that another man might grieve for a wife lost after many years of happy marriage—that was lugubrious and farcical and unworthy. He was still my uncle, and I would continue to treat him with all due respect, but I had come privately to conclude that his big and burly and strong outer semblance had not much inside it.

No one could have been sorrier for the death of Aziz than I was, but I realized that my reasons were mainly selfish, and gave me no right to make loud lamentation. One reason was that I had promised both Sitarè and my father that I would keep the boy from harm, and I had not. So I could not be sure whether I was feeling more sorry for his death or for my failure as a guardian. Another of my selfish reasons was that I was grieving because someone worth keeping had been snatched out of my world. Oh, I know that all people grieve so, on the occasion of a death, but that makes it no less a selfish reason. We survivors are deprived of that one person newly dead. But he or she is deprived of everything—of all other persons, of all things worth keeping, of the entire world and every least thing in it, all in an instant—and such a loss deserves a lamentation so loud and vast and lasting that we who stay are incapable of expressing it.

I had yet another selfish reason for lamenting the death of Aziz. I could not help recalling the Widow Esther’s admonition: that a man should avail himself of everything life offers, lest he die repining for those opportunities he neglected to seize. It was perhaps virtuous of me, and laudable, that I had declined what Aziz offered me, and so left his chastity unsmirched. It would perhaps have been sinful of me, and reprehensible, if I had accepted, and so despoiled his chastity. But, I asked myself now, since Aziz would have gone so soon to his grave in either case, what difference could it have made? If we had embraced, it might have meant one last pleasure for him, and a unique one for me: what Nostril had called “a journey beyond the ordinary”—and whether it had been innocuous or iniquitous, it would have left no trace on the all-covering quicksand. But I had refused, and in all the rest of my life, if any such chance ever came again, it could not come from the beautiful Aziz. He was gone, and that opportunity was lost, and now—not on some putative future deathbed—now I was sorry.

But I was alive. And I and my uncle and my father and our companions journeyed on, for that is all that the living can do to forget death, or defy it.

We were not accosted by any more Karauna, or any other sorts of lurkers, and we did not even meet any other fellow travelers during the rest of our desert crossing. Either our Mongol escort had been unnecessary or its presence had discouraged any further molestation. We came finally out of the lowland sands at the Binalud Mountains, and up through that range to Mashhad. It was a fair and pleasant city, somewhat larger than Kashan, and its streets were lined with chinar and mulberry trees.

Mashhad is one of the very holy cities of Persian Islam, because a highly revered martyr of olden time, the Imam Riza, is entombed in an ornate masjid there. A Muslim’s worshipful visit to Mashhad earns him the prefix of Meshadi to his name, as a pilgrimage to Mecca earns him the right to be addressed as Hajji. So the greater part of the city’s population consisted of transient pilgrims and, because of that, Mashhad had very good and clean and comfortable karwansarai inns. Our three Mongols led us to one of the best, and themselves spent a night there before turning back to resume their patrol of the Dasht-e-Kavir.

There at the karwansarai, the Mongols demonstrated yet another of their customs. While my father, my uncle and I gratefully took lodging inside the inn, and our camel-puller Nostril gratefully took lodging in the stable with his animals, the Mongols insisted on laying their bedrolls outside in the center of the courtyard, and staked their horses to the ground about them. The Mashhad landlord indulged them in that eccentricity, but some landlords will not. As I later discovered, when a Mongol party is commanded by the innkeeper to lodge indoors like civilized folk, the Mongols will grudgingly comply, but they still will not depend on the karwansarai kitchen. They will lay a fire in the middle of their chamber floor, put a tripod over it and do their own cooking. Come night, they will not repose on the beds provided, but will unroll their own carpets and blankets and sleep on the floor.