The Sleeping Sands (5 page)

Winded, though unhurt and secretly relieved to be dismounted from his malodorous and apparently homicidal transport, a dust-covered Layard sat at the head of a parade of scattered encumbrances and watched the remaining members of the party chase his ill-natured mount for half a mile into the vanishing haze of the desert. His feelings were mixed when, twenty minutes later, they returned with his re-captured yet unrepentant animal.

A day and night of uncomfortable but uneventful travel by camel followed, heading south from the Dead Sea, through a series of deep, stony ravines. Until the morning of the second day, Layard had begun to believe that the wasteland through which they laboured was utterly devoid of life. Then, just as the sun had risen high enough to begin to dissolve the horizon into shimmering blur, a cloud of dust appeared out of the haze. The dust cloud grew bigger and more defined. Within it, dark forms could now be seen, rapidly approaching. Soon, Layard could hear the drumming of horses’ hoofs. He could now make out a group of a dozen mounted Bedouins, carrying long, plumed spears. The sharp points of the spears flashed in the morning sun as the riders drew nearer, moving effortlessly across the hard baked earth. Layard felt his pulse quicken and an involuntary rush of excitement tightened the muscles around his mouth, curling his lip into something between a sneer and a wild grin. With a sharp command to Musa, Awad took up a position to the party’s left, levelling his long gun at the approaching riders. Musa took up a similar position to the right, a little higher and away from the group to allow a wider area of covering fire. Layard slipped from the rear of his camel, slipping his double barrelled gun free of its sling and taking a position by a large rock, to the right and rear of Awad, blocking the riders’ access to the camels and their equipment. With a whispered prayer, Antonio grabbed the camels’ reins and dragged them back into the shelter of the steep-walled gulley.

Seeing the travellers’ guns and the defensible position that they had taken, the riders slowed their horses a trot as they neared and reined them to a halt, a few yards from Awad. One of the Bedouins ushered his mount a few steps towards Awad and demanded to know why the travellers were pointing their guns at his companions as they were simple desert tribesmen who meant the travellers no harm. He dismounted and carefully laid his spear to one side, to emphasize his avowed peaceful intent. Awad dipped the barrel of his gun to the earth and stepped forward to negotiate with the man, who appeared to be the leader of the group. Meanwhile, Musa and Layard kept the party covered. Stealing a glance back to the camels and their precious equipment, Layard saw Antonio, half crouched behind a camel, peering around the side of its pack with wide eyes and an ear cocked to follow the conversation between Awad and the leader that was now in full, lively flow.

Awad reported that the Bedouin leader claimed that they wanted simply to beg some bread from the travellers. Layard looked suspiciously at the fierce horsemen, with long red cloaks and ostrich-plumed spears armed with long, evil-looking points. With a careful grip on his gun, he nodded assent and instructed Antonio to lay out carpets and bread. The Bedouins dismounted, stacking their lances against the rocky wall. With polite exchanges of formal Arab greetings, the two parties sat down to share bread and smoke some of Layard’s tobacco. Layard made a point of politely enquiring the Bedouins’ names and noted them deliberately in his pocket-book. While they relaxed, Antonio, half-covering his face with his hand, came to squat next to Layard. He leant close and spoke quietly in Italian.

‘Effendi,’ Layard noticed a slight quaver in the young dragoman’s voice, ‘Awad did not tell you the whole story. The Bedouins asked our guides to join them in robbing you. They say all Franks carry at least fifty purses and robbing you could make us all rich!’

‘Really?’ Layard took a bite of the sweet, flat bread and continued to speak lowly, his mouth half full.

‘What did our guides reply?’

‘They said that they were under orders from Abu Dhaouk to ensure our safe passage. They wouldn’t make a deal with the tribesmen.’

‘Well, then, I doubt we have too much to worry about. Enjoy your bread.’

Layard smiled and tapped the dragoman reassuringly on the upper arm, while smiling and nodding at the nearest seated Bedouin. Antonio could not help but notice, however, that the Englishman’s left hand rested a little closer to the double-barrelled gun lying at his side.

After the meal and a further exchange of pleasantries, the parties took their leave of each other. The Bedouins headed to the north and Layard’s group continued south. Awad hung back a little, informing Layard that he should stay behind to ensure the horsemen did not double back and attack them from the rear. Two hours later, when he rejoined the group, which had stopped to await his return, Layard asked him what the Bedouins had really wanted.

Awad smiled a wide grin and drew his thumb slowly across his neck.

*                      *                      *

Heading deeper into the hills, the travellers were forced by the unsteady ground to dismount their camels and proceed by foot. Hot, disorientated and footsore, they wound their way through the twisting maze of the hills, until they came at last to the rocky crag on the edge of the Wadi Musa, the Valley of Moses, where the guides were at last sufficiently sure of their safety to make camp.

Night had fallen by the time their rudimentary camp, of carpets spread beneath the cold desert sky, was set. After another simple meal of bread and dates and a smoke of their precious and dwindling tobacco, Layard stretched out on his carpet and listened to the grunting, rhythmic breathing of the sleeping camels as he watched the cloudless, starlit sky. Gazing at the great sweep of the Milky Way and its myriad constellations, he mused that he was nearing each day that great cradle of civilisation where men had first given names to the stars and unravelled their mysterious secrets. Little evidence remained of those great cities of Assyria, Persia and Babylon among the wild and lawless tribesmen they had encountered on the road. He wondered what those Bedouins, eager for an opportunity to steal a few pieces of gold or beg a crust of bread, would have said if they had known the true object of his mission.

Against the infinite expanse of the stars and thinking of the enormity of the responsibility that the Society had placed upon him, Layard once more felt a compelling sense of isolation and helplessness. He rolled over to look at the hulking shapes of the sleeping camels, their breath steaming in the cold night air. Pulling his blankets up against the cold, he closed his eyes and fell slowly into a fitful sleep.

A cackling group of red-legged partridges rudely woke Layard the next morning. He was beginning to get used to the sudden, noisy populations of birds that would apparently materialise out of nowhere during the cooler hours of early morning and late afternoon in the otherwise deserted landscape. Rueing his guides’ advice to refrain from shooting any birds for the table – for fear that gunshots would draw unwelcome attention – Layard joined his companions in breaking camp and packing the camels. Awad and Musa were keen to leave the Wadi Ghor as quickly as possible and would not stop for even a rudimentary breakfast. As the sun was beginning to peer above the rocky hilltops, the party entered the Wadi Musa – the Valley of Moses – and within an hour and a half they were riding through the steep-walled ruins of Petra.

Layard felt that he had never encountered a place as strange as the deserted city of Petra. The wild and twisted desolation of the surrounding landscape was by no means diminished by the mark of ancient hands. Rather, the weathered rocks of friable limestone seamlessly intertwined with the ruins of ancient buildings and tombs so that sometimes it seemed impossible to distinguish the artifice of civilized man from that of a crazed and savage nature. No vegetation relieved the monotony of the parched brown earth of the valley. Among the chaos of weathered rock-forms and tumbled masonry, impossibly huge columns stood and giant staircases were cut into the rock. Among the walls of the arid and unforgiving valley, countless dark eyes gazed down upon the travellers. Thousands of doorways and windows, cut by an unguessable multitude of forgotten hands – their temples, theatres and tombs a defiance of any rational sense that this should be a place that could sustain life.

Now, the city was deserted and dead beyond any imagining of death. In the windless solitude and hot silence of the valley it seemed as if even ghosts could not bear to haunt its sad and lonely shadows. Exposed to the empty and cavernous eyes of the city, Layard shivered, despite the intolerable heat of late morning. He gave orders to the party to climb up the side of the valley to where a broad platform below a group of rock tombs offered a promising campsite and a good spot for breakfast. The group moved slowly up the steep, rocky incline, the faint sounds of their footsteps and dislodged rocks swallowed into the all-pervading silence of Petra. Layard fancied that anything that belonged to the world of the living, such as movement or sound, could not long survive in this domain of the dead. They made their way in silence to the platform and pitched camp. As he settled down on his carpet, Layard felt an even stronger sensation of being watched. He turned and looked over his shoulder at the tomb entrances around the campsite. In each of what had moments before been empty caves there now stood groups of strange and wild-looking Arabs. Before Layard had the chance to warn his companions a host of them swarmed out of the hillside and surrounded the party. They had made scarcely a rustle. Layard looked at the ring of silent, staring tribesmen. They were like no other Arab tribe he had yet encountered. They wore little clothing save for rags and tattered cloaks and their hair was worn in long, matted locks that reached almost to their waists. Each of the men carried either a long spear or a curved sword and each wore a strange necklace of what Layard suspected were bones around his neck. Each man wore a red thong around his upper arm and had blackened his upper cheeks with thick streaks of soot or kohl that made his eyes look unnaturally white.

The fierce looking men stood and watched in complete silence as Layard called for some bread and milk from Antonio and settled to his breakfast. Antonio’s hands shook as he brought the food forward and Awad and Musa anxiously watched the crowd and began to re-secure the camel’s packs. All the time, the men stood and watched, seemingly unblinking eyes immune to the glare of the heightening sun. Layard deliberately and carefully finished his breakfast and then turned to look at the tribesmen again. None moved or spoke. He nodded, then began to pack up his carpet. At last, movement. One of the tribesmen stepped forward and stood between Layard and his camel, pushing his face forward and staring into the Englishman’s eyes. He said something but with an accent that made it impossible for Layard to understand. His voice was dry and sibilant with a sound like sand slipping through cracks in ancient rocks. Layard called Antonio forward to translate. The tribesman spoke again.

‘If you wish to walk among the ruins, you must pay the Dead their price.’

‘Really,’ replied Layard through Antonio, ‘and who are you that speak for the Dead?’

‘We are those they left behind to watch. We are those who collect the debt that the living owe the dead.’

‘Well, I am a visitor and under the protection of Sheikh Abu Dhaouk, so I do not feel that I owe any debts to the dead of this place. I am of course happy to provide recompense for any provisions that your companions might be able to sell to my party; but as for the dead, I am sure they will be quite content without my contribution.’

‘The dead are never happy. That is why you must pay the debt.’ The tribesman named a figure well in excess of any funds Layard carried.

‘That is a ridiculous price,’ laughed Layard, ‘I am afraid that I have every intention of visiting the dead without paying it and we will just have to see what they will do about it!’

The tribesman put his hand to his sword as the crowd stepped forward to make a tighter circle around Layard’s party.

‘All must pay the price,’ he hissed, ‘that is why we watch.’

‘And, if we don’t pay?’ asked Layard, staring defiantly back and reaching for the butt of his gun.

‘You will pay – one way or another.’

Layard stifled a derisive snort. The tribesman’s eyes widened in anger and his lips curled into a snarl, revealing two rows of stained, irregular and unnaturally sharp teeth. He drew his sword a few inches from its scabbard and his voice, dry as the scrape of rusting steel against ancient leather, took on a tone of incantation – as if chanting a well rehearsed liturgy.

‘The sands are shifting and the day is coming when all the old debts are paid. That is why we wait and watch. Those who come here bring new stories that tell us the day is getting near. Across the land, crops are failing and animals are dying. There is a sickness spreading among the holiest of places. Plague has cut off the trails to Damascus and villages and encampments are being abandoned once more to the dead. The old secrets have been disturbed and those that seek them,’ he leaned forward so that their noses almost touched and Layard could feel his hot breath upon his face. The pitch of his voice dropped to a dry hiss, ‘those that seek them should fear the price for disturbing them thus.’

Layard said nothing. An anxious fear began to twist in his stomach. He leaned back from the tribesman, who continued.

‘The price we ask is trifling next to the price that is being paid for the blasphemous disruption being suffered by the land.’ He drew his sword fully and waved it in Layard’s face. ‘You will pay the price, Frank!’

Layard pulled up his own gun and cocked it. ‘Antonio,’ he barked, ‘tell these men that we under the protection of Sheikh Abu Dhaouk and what’s more of Ibrahim Pasha too, and, if anything happens to us then their tribe will not only owe a blood debt to Abu Dhaouk but also will face extermination at the hands of the Egyptian army.’

Terrified, Antonio stuttered out a translation of Layard’s defiance. The tribesman spat back.