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It was Sunday and by all accounts a wonderful afternoon. Though the sun laid in the sky its warmth was soft; and smoothed itself with generosity across our faces. We had been crossing the Nefud for ten days by then. The camels were starving; the people quite tired; but we were making steady progress. Out of delicious solitude came Ali to hassle me. ‘You were right, English,’ said he rather reproachfully. He was wonderfully coloured, his brown eyes of such a size they seemed to consume the entirety of his face. Across his upper lip was a well-manicured moustache in which he took particular pride, and I particular delight.
‘About what?’ inquired I.
‘The Nefud,’ continued he, ‘it can be crossed, for we are crossing it now.’
‘Of course it can be crossed. If it is a body of land a man must cross it.’
‘But not just any man. A god, perhaps. Not a mortal.’
Scoffing, I said politely, delicately, as much as I was able, ‘Know this, Ali: I do not pretend to be any more than I am.’
‘Then you are foolish,’ said he. ‘Look at these men, see what you’ve inspired them to do. You wouldn’t use that?’
'Arabs do not trust God, nor Allah nor anyone they cannot see. They trust the physical, what they can validate with their own two eyes. Thus they trust me; they trust humanity. I will keep mine if that’s acceptable to you.’
For a few moments Ali thought about this. He seemed rather consternated. ‘Yes,’ said he at last, ‘I suppose it is.’
‘Thank you’; and having dismissed him in some way I expected him to retreat. Ali was a smart man; he ought to have understood social cues when they were parried at him. But in this he remained totally of his own moral code. He kept beside me, rather close to my camel, whipping his own with a golden crop more or less so as to keep in step with mine. Daud and Farraj continued to bring up my rear, and seeing Ali’s ungentlemanly attempts at keeping stride with me they began to laugh and lunge forward as if to strike Ali’s camel and send him veering off-course. However off-put I was by Ali’s attentions, I would not allow him this humiliation. The moment Ali seemed to glance away from me — his eyes moving instead to the roving sea of sand and stone and blistering heat — I turned around to face the lads and lent them an expression they were quick to decipher and understand with resolution. The smiles fell from their faces; and they moved their eyes from the rear of Ali’s camel to the very same sand on which the Sherif now glanced.
After some time we were obligated to stop and rest for the afternoon. Every one dismounted his camel and laid in the sand beside it, organising their robes about themselves so as to construct a makeshift blanket for warmth. Being somewhat senior among these men, Ali boasted with him a small tent which he suspended in the air by the tip of his riding crop that he’d now buried in the sand. I sensed somewhat that Ali desired my accompaniment within, but too weary of favours I denied him by saying nothing and remained close to Farraj and Daud, who were now wrestling in the sand. Their hands were creeping with increasing steadiness toward the front of each other’s torsos.
Yet again I fixed them with that stern and Rhadamanthine expression. They stopped at once and stood at attention for me. ‘Yes, Lord?’ asked Farraj who was busily and with some effort setting his robes to rights.
I had entertained the idea of telling them off, but witnessing them in their rosy-cheeked youth now I found there was no point in it. This humiliation was enough to dissuade them for the night at least, and should they wish to pursue such carnal avenues again it would not be my business to interfere, so long as they were not being indecent. Indeed I found my English and rather agamic principles encroaching on those of the Arabs I had befriended; and all at once I was flooded with a terrible sense of shame.
Daud asked, ‘El Aurens?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m all right,’ replied I, sniffing violently and scrubbing with my hand at my nose, which was filled with sand and dust — the only reason I would allow for its abrupt stuffiness and dismay. ‘It is nothing, boys; disregard me entirely.’
Daud and Farraj looked wearily between each other, as if they could not quite believe what I had just told them. ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boys in perfect unison, and while they scrambled back to regain some privacy, for the rest of the afternoon, just as I’d envisioned, they did not violate it or each other. They remained rather chaste and limited their connection to mere repartee.
In this time I grew distinctly ill at ease. I felt every bit the foreign dictator, ordering about like that. Despite my leniency the shame would not leave me; and my entire view of the rest of the day was one of utter defeat and dejection. I would not sleep, nor eat, nor speak with anyone no matter their importance. My world narrowed to my shame and seemed about to remain as such. Then Ali’s head emerged from his small tent and once again beckoned me to come join him.
My guard lowered, I found it not within myself to this time deny him. I stumbled somewhat slowly toward him before taking my place at his side. So small was the tent that our arms were flush and brushed together on more than one occasion, which was torture for me but nothing for the Sherif. As the moon lowered in the sky Ali at last began to talk: ‘Had you an issue with your servants?’
‘No, no!’ said I, eager to get off the subject.
‘You had; I saw you shout at them.’
‘I didn’t shout.’
‘It was quite a ways away from talking. I told you not to take them.’
‘They have been most helpful to me along this entire journey.’
‘Then why reprimand them now?’
I did not want to say why. Ali must have known this, and thought the act of getting me to reveal my dirty secret to be a matter of some amusement and politicking on his part. He told me once that he would accept many a man, but not a liar — though I could not see the harm in lying by omission.
However Ali was a strong man; quite easily and with much grace — so much so that on many occasions the victims of his careful manoeuvrings did not realise he had moulded them until it was too late, indeed if they ever realised at all — he could bend me to his will, and sitting so close to him in that small, somewhat dank tent I was easily and with much grace bent. To him I explained everything, in a great deal more detail than I ought to have employed; but he seemed so understanding then, and I had spent far too long a time without a sympathiser to refuse commiseration when I found it.
When I finished Ali looked at me with a blank expression. I feared for some time that I had offended him. This was hardly the case; at last said Ali: ‘Well, that is all very normal. When we are out here, alone and without women…’ For a few beats of our hearts he thought it all over. Then he continued to explain with an eloquence that shocked me: ‘The public women of the rare settlements we encounter in our months of wandering are too unsustainable a sight for their raddled meat to be palatable to a man of healthy parts. In light of this, our youths have begun to indifferently slake one another’s few needs with their own clean bodies. They are but friends quivering together in the yielding sand, with intimate hot limbs tangled in supreme embrace.’
‘You make it sound sexless,’ insisted I; ‘almost pure.’
‘One might say that, yes’; and the manner in which he spoke this insinuated that at one time perhaps he too had engaged in such practices. To him I was some foreign jury, and he seemed desperate to plead justification.
We were silent yet again. Outside the winds stirred through the starry sky and the sands moved with them, jumping from place to place with childlike enchantment. The talk beyond the tent was quiet, sparse, and spoken in low tongues; it was as if the common men did not wish to rouse us. What they supposed we were doing within this tent was unimaginable to me, and in some aspects unimportant. Ali’s arm brushed mine yet again, this time with devilish insistence, as if he wished to drag me back from the quagmire and into the tent which we now happened to share.
I turned to face him; and all at once he placed his lips upon my mouth. They were strong, fluid, and capable. After a time I began to fall into it, my stomach kicking up at the action, and Ali brought his hand behind my head and into my hair so as to press our bodies closer. We had privacy; we had time; and we had Allah watching out for us. In a flurry of groans Ali began to divest me of my robes; however I stopped him. ‘I adore you, Ali,’ said I, panting quickly, ‘but this is a thing I desire to do with no man or woman.’
‘Yes,’ said Ali after a time, ‘I think I understand’; and he retreated most graciously from me. For some moments he simply stared at my face, which was sand-stained and flush. Fingers twitching, at last he asked: ‘Might I still kiss you, though?’
‘Yes,’ said I, thrilling that he was so earnest; ‘yes, of course.’
And he did. This we continued to do for what appeared to be hours, perhaps days, until at last we were spent with it and simply laid alongside one another. We stared into the other’s eyes, completely bewildered and enchanted. Then we began to talk and laugh and trade stories with sudden severity. It was all great fun, and I believe that he as much as I enjoyed the evening immensely. Then for fear of what the men might think, I insisted on leaving the tent and sleeping beside my own camel.
‘You will come back to me sometime?’ asked Ali with endearing urgency.
‘Yes; yes, of course.’
He grabbed my hand and held it softly within his, which was calloused, brown, and rather tender to the touch. Then he released it and muttered with all that was left of his reserve, ‘Good night, El Aurens.’
I made the Arab farewell which was custom amongst these people. ‘Good night, Ali’; and on light, sandy feet I slipped from the tent and returned to my lonesome camel.