called for Marta to bring water, had wet his lips and face and
hair, and studied all the folds and pinches in the cloth at her
waist. 'There's always water to be had, if you know where. Do
you know where? The principle's the same as finding honey
with a stick. But not the parable. Not the parable that he has
given us. ' He waved the staff at Shim. 'My parable is this, that
someone with a nose for trade like me can always sniff out what
he wants. Honey, water, gold . . .' He sniffed dramatically, and
Marta almost thought he'd winked at her. 'My tum to talk.'
He told them how he'd crossed a desert once where nothing
grew, a desert - 'let's say' - forty days from side to side. Five
camels, and four cousins, and himself They'd taken sixty goats,
salted mutton, indigo and horns to trade with black men on the
river with three banks. The journey had been easy and all their
goods were quickly sold. They had obtained a hundred monkeys
in exchange which they could sell in Nabatee where monkey
flesh was thought to be . . . he winked again; he did not say the
word . . . an aphrodisiac.
'Alas, we had been fools. Don't anybody nod. We didn't
know how thirsty a hundred monkeys could be,' he said. 'Or
how much noise they'd make. A hundred hairy Shims. Clackerchack-chat all day.'
At first they meant to put the monkeys on leashes and let
them walk behind the camels. But the monkeys were riotous.
They didn't want to walk. They tugged on the leashes. A hundred
monkeys, with their heels dug into sand, are stronger than three
camels. So Musa and his cousins had to bunch the monkeys up
like chickens and tie them by their legs to the leathers on the
flanks of two of the camels. Musa rode the third; his cousins
could walk. They were small enough, and fit enough, and more
obedient than monkeys.
They loaded the other two camels with bullock-skins filled
with water, and set off through the fringes of the desert early in
the morning while the air was cool. The monkeys didn't seem
uncomfortable. Hanging upside down in bunches was customary
for them. They screamed and gibbered without cease. At first,
it was amusing. Musa and his cousins screamed and gibbered,
too. But after a few days the noise became a torture.
They made slow progress. The desert proved itself to be as
fickle as a carpet, smooth and welcoming if stroked with the
pile, but tough to drag the fingers through against the lay of the
wool. Their little caravan had stroked the pile on its journey
out. Now it was travelling against the nap of the wools. The sun
was at their backs, and baking hot. The monkeys gibbered,
screamed as ceaselessly as crickets, even when the camels snapped
and spat at them. They only quietened when his cousins gave
them water. His cousins gave them water all the time.
After fifteen days, said Musa, they realized that they were lost:
'No prospect of enlightenment, no sign of any god.' That had
never happened to their caravan before, although they'd crossed
a hundred deserts. One of his cousins, called Habak the Hawk
because ofhis long nose, normally could be blindfolded and only
had to sniff a palmful of soil to recognize the smell of every place
they'd ever visited. He put this desert dust and powdered rock
against his nose, but could not put a name to where they were
or point towards their destination. They span him round to sniff
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the air; he couldn't say if he was standing on his head or feet.
They looked for signs of any caravans. But there had been high
winds, and even the tracks that they had made themselves on
the journey out had been swept away, together with the smell.
They persevered, hoping to encounter other travellers, or find
horizons broken up by trees, or recognize some star beyond the
dust-filled night, or see a bird.
After twenty days they found their own tracks again. But no
goat tracks, just four men walking and five camels, and the
channels made by monkeys trailing their long fingers in the sand.
They'd travelled in a five-day circle to this place, and now their
bullock-skins were running out. The monkeys, with hardly any
water left to keep them quiet, coughed and cackled through the
night. It didn't bother them that their heads were full ofblood.
Musa paused to pull his own empty water-bags across, and
hold them up, an illustration for his listeners. This is what a
shortage of water looks like; this is thirst; this is what I had in
mind for Shim. He wasn't sure quite where his tale was leading
him. He had no end for it, not yet. There was no point to it,
except to charm. But Aphas and Marta didn't seem to care. They
nodded to the story-teller to urge him on. This was better than
any parable. It didn't matter that it had no point, except to make
them wonder at the world. Even Shim was listening, despite his
tightly fastened lips and eyes.
'We had to save the monkeys and ourselves, though there was
not enough water there for both of us,' continued Musa, glad
to see how loose of posture and how opened-eyed the woman
had become. 'What would you do? Don't say. You'd throw the
monkeys on the sand; you'd club them all to death, and drink
the water all yourselves. Admit it now. Of course you would.
But then you are not merchants. And you do not understand
how trading is the truest test of man. It shows his strength, his
worth, his piety. To buy and sell is just as spiritual as prayer or
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going without food. Will any of you say it's not?' He looked at
Shim. 'A merchant's never-ending quest is not for things that
you can't touch or buy, like Shim's enlightenment - what use
is that? - but for something . . . ' He had to stop to recall the
exact words he'd heard his eldest uncle use a hundred times.
' . . . but for something new and real and grand. And valuable,
of course. To make the world a richer place. We're gods, we're
little gods. We're big. And so . . .' He looked at all the faces
there, except Miri's, obviously, and would not look away until
he'd won a smile and nod from each of them. ' . . . we could not
go back from the desert to our uncles with nothing to show for
our long efforts, with nothing to sell except the bloody remnants
of the monkeys. Who'll buy those? A merchant never goes with
empty panniers. That shows a loss of faith.' He paused. He
smiled, a real and joyous smile. 'What will you have to sell when
you go home? What will you show your uncles after forty days
of quarantine?' He held his hand up. They should not reply.
Musa told how he and his cousins had persevered against the
desert's grain. They'd travelled forward, day by day, in hope of
finding wells or springs or dry river-beds where they might dig
for water. They blindfolded their cousin Habak, to concentrate
his sense of smell. They put him on his hands and knees to sniff
the sand in search of moisture, but all he smelled was barrenness
and heat. They hunted without luck for any evidence oflife but
they found nothing apart from themselves. They dreamed of
finding tamarisks with lakes of water at their roots, and honeydew along their stems, but there was nothing to be found, excepting thirst.
'Still our monkeys laughed,' said Musa. 'They were glad to
see us lost. They liked to watch us frying in the sand. It suited
them. They didn't want to go to Nabatee and end up in a pot.
Who would? They'd rather starve. Never trust a monkey on a
camel's back. That's good advice . . . Never trust a thirsty woman
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or a dog.' He laughed, but turned the laugh into a sudden cry
of pain. He held his chest, and winced. A little indigestion,
possibly. 'Perhaps, I ought to rest a while,' he said. He touched
his brow. 'I'm hot.' He closed his eyes.
'You're teasing us,' said Aphas. 'I hope you're teasing us.
What happens to the monkeys now? Of course, do rest if you're
unwell. We wouldn't want you to be unwell . . .'
'Ah, so our neighbour would trade the ending of the storyteller for the ending of his story,' said Musa, breathing heavily.
'The monkeys matter more than me . . . ? I would have hoped
a sick man such as you would have more feeling for a fellow
invalid.'
'No, no, do rest . . .'
'I will not rest. There is some respite to my pain, thank god.
Bring water then. Put that good shawl the woman has around
my shoulders. I will continue while I can.' The shawl was warm
and sweet, and smelled a little gingery from Marta's balm.
The time had come, Musa said after he had drunk the water
and clutched his chest a few more times, when he and his
caravan had journeyed through the desert to death's door. Drink
something, anything, or die, that was the choice. They'd have
to take a knife to Musa's camel. He'd have to walk like his
cousins, ankle-deep in sand. They'd cut into the camel's hump
and stomach. They'd have to drink her waters, blood and milk,
and let the monkeys find what sustenance they could by dining
on her entrails and her fat. The monkeys would have to swallow
camel upside down.
'But no one makes me walk,' said Musa, rubbing his side. 'A
clever merchant never walks. I closed my eyes. I put my head
to work. I thought, let's kill a couple of the monkeys. Let's take
our meat and drink from them. The meat's already nicely hung,
it should taste good. But think of it. What did I say about the
monkey meat? Why do they savour it in Nabatee? It makes a
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man thirsty for his wife. What use would that be for the five of
us, with nothing there to comfort us but sand? It is a sin for a
man to waste his seed with camels. Our sons would have two
toes.
'And so I didn't take a monkey by the throat and use my knife
on it. I cut one monkey free. I held its tail. I whispered in its
ear, I said, Find water. You're a bee. I didn't have to put it in a
hollow stick or block its backside with an apricot. You should
have seen it run. It knew its only chance of getting away, back
to its river with three banks, was first to find some water and
then be off My quickest cousin, Raham, followed it into the
dunes until he lost it. Monkeys move like rats. So does my cousin
Raham. But the monkey soon went out of sight. It didn't buzz.
We couldn't follow that. But we could track its little steps in the
sand, its tail, its swinging hands, until we found it once again,
exhausted by the running and the sun. Half dead. No water yet.
We tied it up, we hung it by its ankles with its brothers and its
sisters. Then we let another monkey go . . . I whispered in its
ear, Enjoy your run, you monkey boy . . . '
It took them fourteen monkeys and two days, Musa said, but
finally they saw a line of rocks and thorn which led down to a
dry valley bed and there they found their fourteenth monkey
sitting in an open cistern underneath a slab of stone, bathing like
an empress in a bowl. 'We helped ourselves. We didn't have to
smoke out bees. We washed. We drank up to our brims. We
refilled our bullock-skins. And then we let the camels in. Sweet
water, with a touch of ginger to its taste.'
Now they left the desert in the past, and followed down the
valley, taking their directions from the gullies cut by the last
downpour of rain a year or so before, until they came to leafy
trees and habitations and to fields which had, Musa said, 'a wispy,
adolescent beard of grass'. They got to Nabatee in time to make
a profit, with only twenty monkeys perished on the way, and
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