The Scorpion’s Bite Read online

  Chapter Eleven

  They reached the camp of Khalid ibn Achmed near Qusayr Amra by late morning. He had arranged for a large encampment of Bedouin to gather there to bear witness to the bisha’a.

  Qusayr Amra was the abandoned hunting lodge of the desultory eighth century Umayyad Caliph al-Walid. Lily and Gideon had been there once before during the survey, and been awed by frescoes on the domed ceilings in the bath, with paintings of animals, of naked dancing ladies, of plump, scantily clad singers clutching ouds. Klaus had busied himself with his tripod and light meter while Gideon commented that the slaves who stoked the hypercaust must have used pasturage for miles around for fuel while goats and sheep of the Bedouin starved. That day, Klaus took two rolls of film, and used all his flash bulbs, saying “ooh” and “aah” each time the flash went off, while Gideon parodied the excesses of the long dead caliph, shouting, “More heat, more heat,” with an imperious gesture to slaves he pictured laboring to produce it.

  ***

  The encampment was located on high ground near a wadi. As they approached the camp, sounds carried on the wind: the bray of donkeys; the tired honking of camels complaining about their fortune; the bleating of sheep and goats; the clucking and crowing of wandering chickens; the call of crows, flapping and cawing and picking on garbage at the edge of the camp.

  Closer to the camp, dogs chased them, barking and growling, playing tag with the wheels of the vehicles. Jalil parked the Buick down-slope, near the edge of the camp; Gideon pulled the Jeep up next to it.

  “What is bisha’a,” Lily asked Jalil as they trudged up the hill toward the camp.

  “It’s a fire test, a test of guilt or innocence. A red-hot piece of metal is placed against the tongue of the accused. If his tongue burns, he is guilty.”

  Lily shook her head, astonished. “That’s trial by ordeal,” she murmured. “It’s medieval.”

  “Not to worry,” Jalil said. “Gideon will come through it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It works on a principle similar to a lie detector. If he’s lying, his mouth will be dry, and his tongue will burn. Otherwise, not.”

  Lily threw up her hands. “And what happens if his tongue burns?”

  Jalil shrugged. “Then he’s guilty. It’s up to the judges. And Khalid. This has all the authority of a court procedure.”

  Lily heard a sharp intake of breath from Gideon.

  “Have you witnessed bisha’a before?” she asked Jalil.

  “Just a couple of times. Once, the accused burnt his tongue so badly he got blood poisoning.” He thought a minute. “Actually, gangrene.”

  To die slowly, of hideous, evil-smelling sores. Lily glanced over at Gideon, at his pale face, at his labored breathing as he plodded up the hill, and knew that his mouth was dry with fear.

  Guilty or innocent, Khalid isn’t out for money or camels. He’s out for vengeance.

  Lily backtracked to the wadi, picking at the scrub vegetation, searching the surface of the wadi.

  “What are you doing down there?” Gideon called.

  She picked up a few water-washed stones. “Nothing really.”

  She plucked two tiny wildflowers, climbed back up, called to Gideon, “Look what I found.”

  She handed him the wildflowers, pressed the pebbles into his palm surreptitiously, and whispered, “Put these in your mouth. Hide them in your cheek.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “It’s an old Indian trick,” she said. “I learned it from the Cahuilla Indians around Palm Springs when I was growing up. They would suck on stones when they walked in the desert to keep their mouths from going dry.”

  “This works?”

  “Worked for them. It’ll work for you.”

  In the camp, men were seated around campfires, blackened coffee pots ever present, talking, smoking, while women hammered tent posts, ground flour, pulled ropes hand over hand to haul buckets of water from an ancient cistern.

  Black goat-hair tents clustered around a sheik’s larger tent sheltered by pistachio trees on the edge of the wadi. One side of the sheik’s tent was open to the breeze.

  Some of the Bedouin women, green and blue tattoos around their mouths and eyes, approached Lily with laban and eggs to sell. She shook her head, clicked her tongue, repeating, “No, no. Laa, Laa,” then changed her mind.

  “Laban,” she said, pointing at the bowl of soured Bedouin milk, and found a piastre in her pocket. She gave it to one of the women who handed her a dollop of laban in a soiled paper cup while chickens strutted and worried around her, pecking at the dirt.

  People wearing black robes were coming and going from a tent on the edge of the encampment.

  “That’s the mourner’s tent,” Jalil said. “In the mourner’s tent, they wear black. They serve only black, unsweetened coffee.” He gazed at the crying women, raising their arms in despair gathered around the entrance to the tent.

  “Black is the color of mourning, and death is bitter,” Jalil told her, while she wondered how she could give the laban to Gideon without being noticed.

  Gideon was still pale, still frightened. She picked up a handful of dirt, threw it toward the wadi just beyond the chickens and they scurried noisily after it, squawking, cackling, wings flapping. While the Bedouin women ran after them, she slipped the cup of laban to Gideon.

  “What am I supposed to do with this,” he asked.

  “Put it in your mouth of course.”

  Gideon began to laugh. “When you’re through with me, I’ll have so much saliva, I’ll dribble.”

  It was a nervous laugh. He’ll get through it, Lily thought. He has to.

  A sour-faced, redheaded woman, awash with freckles, came out of the mourner’s tent. Her forehead seemed incised with a perpetual frown, her thin mouth turned down in a crescent. She wore a black abaya, with a black scarf placed loosely over her hair, spilling down her back. She perched on a low stool with a rush seat in the shade of the sheik’s tent, crossed her arms, and tried to catch Klaus’ eye.

  “Your friend Gerta Kuntze,” Lily said to Klaus, indicating the redheaded woman with a lift of her chin.

  “I don’t know her.”

  Behind Klaus, Hamud shook his head, clicked his tongue, and winked an eye. Klaus was lying.

  Hamud leaned forward and whispered in Lily’s ear. “Look at her. She’s a devil. Hair is the color of flames, fly specks all over her skin, and her eyes. Green and cold as stone, like I told you.”

  The man with the brown turban whom Lily had seen in the Wadi Rum squatted next to the redheaded woman and they began to talk, sitting so close that the sweeping gestures of their arms and hands almost tangled. Gerta Kuntze seemed to glance toward Klaus, no more than the flick of an eye.

  Klaus rose. “I’ve heard of Gerta Kuntze, of course,” he said. “She’s what my grandfather used to call a topf-loefel, a pot stirrer.”

  Without even a nod to Lily, he strolled away, out toward the desert.

  Lily looked back at Gerta Kuntze. The man with the brown turban was gone.

  ***

  The judges were ready for the bisha’a.

  They sat in the shade of the sheik’s tent around an open fire, the mubesha in charge—a Howeitat elder—on one side, with Gideon next to him. Three judges were seated on the far side of the fire, with Khaled ibn Achmad facing them. A long-handled pan was heating on the embers.

  The rest of the witnesses sat under the open flap of the tent. Hamud was among them, but Lily didn’t see Klaus anywhere.

  The mubesha stirred the pan in the fire while he talked in a low voice to Gideon. The pan was almost red hot.

  Lily sat cross-legged on the ground away from the others. She was alone at first. Then the redheaded woman squatted next to her.

  The woman held out a hand. “Gerta Kuntze.” She gave Lily’s hand a vigorous shake. “You are the sister of el Tanib?”

  Lily nodded.

  Al
l the while, the mubesha stirred the pan in the fire, taking it out red hot, blowing away the ash, putting it back in the fire to heat again, talking, talking, as he watched Gideon’s face.

  Gideon’s eyes were large with terror. He sat with his hands folded, his cheeks puffy, his lips distended. The pebbles? The laban? Would it work?

  “Your friend is gone?” Gerta Kuntze asked.

  She means Klaus? “It seems so. Would you like to speak with him?”

  “No, no. Just asking.” Gerta gestured toward the mourner’s tent. “Terrible thing, that. In Iraq, under Rashid Ali, such things were not allowed to happen. But here…” Her voice trailed off and she swept her arm around toward the west, indicating the desert, the hills, and for all Lily knew, all of Trans-Jordan. “They let the British take over with their lax British ways. No discipline. No order.”

  So she admired Rashid Ali, the former Prime Minister, the Nazi sympathizer, the man who led the insurrection and plot against young King Faisal, the man who fled to Berlin when Glubb invaded Iraq. What was Klaus doing with her?

  Gerta looked pointedly at Jalil. “And now the British think they can do the same to Iraq.” A faint wind shifted the scarf on her head and she adjusted it. “We won’t have it. For the sake of Iraq, we won’t let it happen.” She held out her hand again. “Tell that to your British friends.”

  She gave Lily’s hand a firm shake. “I bid you good day,” she said, and went back toward the mourner’s tent, while Lily watched the mubesha continue his preparations while watching Gideon.

  A man detached himself from the Bedouin seated across from the elders, and squatted next to Lily. She looked closer, then recognized him as the man with the straw-colored hair from the sidewalk café. He wore a long white shirt and a voluminous blue cloak. A white kafiya covered his straw-like hair, and he had grown a mangy stubble of a beard the color of an old penny. Instead of the curved Bedouin dagger, he wore a knife with a steel handle jammed into a leather scabbard in his belt.

  No matter what he did, he couldn’t be mistaken for a Bedouin.

  The mubesha kept the pan on the fire, talking while Gideon nodded.

  “In Amman, you ignored my offer,” the man with the straw colored hair said.

  He moved closer. “That was a mistake.”

  Lily felt her skin crawl. She shifted away from him, still watching the mubesha and Gideon.

  “You will live to regret it.” The man stood up. “Soon. When you least expect it. You will find out what it means to ignore me.”

  He turned and went back toward the mourner’s tent.

  Now the elder cleared his throat and said to Gideon, “We do the fire test.” He leaned forward expectantly. The others around him did the same. “There is no way back from the fire test. You understand?”

  Gideon nodded. The elder spilled some water from an ibrit into the hot pan. Gideon flinched at the sizzling sound of water hitting the hot pan, and nodded again. The elder spilled the water from the pan onto the sand and put the pan back on the fire to heat again.

  “You understand what to do,” the elder said. “You will lick the pan three times with your tongue, moving your head neither to the right nor to the left.” He instructed Gideon by licking his own hand three times. “Then you will rinse your mouth with water three times. The third time you will hold the water in your mouth longer.”

  Again, Gideon nodded, stiff with fear, his nostrils dilating with each breath.

  It will blister, Lily thought, become infected. Please don’t let it blister. Don’t let Gideon die in pain from gangrene, from an amputated tongue.

  Klaus had returned. He squatted among the men by the sheik’s tent next to Hamud.

  “If the pan leaves a mark,” the elder said, “or a burn or swelling, then we know you lie. If your tongue is clean, then you are innocent.”

  “May Allah help us do justice.” The elder called to all assembled to witness the test of fire, and reached for the red-hot pan. He shook off the ash lightly from the bottom with his fingers and held it straight up before Gideon. The crowd waited, sat silent, watched.

  Three times Gideon licked the pan without moving his head to the right or the left; and three times he rinsed his mouth with water from the ibrit, holding the water from last rinse in his mouth for a longer time.

  “Show me your tongue.” The elder inspected Gideon’s mouth, grasped Gideon’s chin and moved his jaw from side to side.

  He showed no expression of the outcome, neither a smile nor a frown, nor the flicker of an eye.

  “Show the judges.”

  The elder sat silently, clasped his hands, bowed his head. Gideon went around the fire and showed his tongue to each of the judges.

  Lily continued to hold her breath.

  “We are all witnesses,” the elder called out, raising both arms above his head. “The man is innocent.”

  Khaled ibn Achmad jumped up, his face red and hard as a sandstone wall, and shook his fist. “How can that be? Do it again.”

  “He is telling the truth.” The elder said, his look rigid. “There is no other way. The bisha’a is final.”

  “Ignore him,” Jalil told Gideon. “He is so ignorant, he can’t sort the wheat from the lentils.”

  But Khaled’s nostrils flared as he drew in a deep breath and fixed Gideon with the rancorous eyes of a snake whose split tongue spit fire.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jalil and Gideon thanked the elders and said goodbye with florid waving of arms and elaborate bows, and Klaus’ hand caught in the neck of Hamud’s shirt as they rose to leave.

  The bisha’a was over. The decision was final. Gideon was officially cleared of killing Qasim.

  But Lily still wondered who would want Qasim dead? And why? The man with the brown turban? Lily had spotted him watching them in the Wadi Rum before he turned up here at the trial. Did Qasim’s death have something to do with the Rashidi? Something to do with the message that Qasim had tried to give Gideon as the wind carried it away?

  Someone had killed him with a knife, but every Bedouin in the desert carries a knife. Even Qasim. Qasim’s knife was distinctive, with a tooled leather handle and sheath. Klaus had a folding knife with a long blade and a stag handle.

  Jalil led the way down the slope as they trudged toward the cars. All but Klaus, who had disappeared again, this time into the mourners’ tent.

  “I see you met Gerta Kuntze,” Jalil said to Lily.

  “The Empress of Mesopotamia?”

  “She’s no el Khatan. She doesn’t travel like Gertrude Bell with servants and bathtubs and silver service and Paris gowns.”

  “What does she travel with?”

  “She travels with cases of Mausers, German rifles. Passes them out like candy.”

  “And that’s how she goes from camp to camp as a welcome guest in Bedouin tents?”

  “It works for her.”

  Laughing, Jalil continued down the slope. He told them that they had to go to Azraq, the oasis in the eastern desert. “Azraq means blue,” he said. “And the oasis is blue with water.” He said they had to meet with Colonel Glubb. He called him Abu Huniak.

  “There are rumors,” Jalil said, “of infiltration from Syria.”

  On the gradient, Lily’s foot glanced off a rock. She skidded along the incline, almost lost her footing, threw out her arms to gain her balance and collided with Hamud.

  He cried out, screaming “Scorpion,” and began tearing at his cloak, trying to pull it off.

  Lily stood back, astonished, wondering what she had done.

  Hamud fell to the ground, rolled onto his back, and writhed on the rocky slope, still screaming. He roared in Arabic, his voice heavy with pain as Jalil ran back to him, shouting for help. Screaming, Hamud gripped Jalil’s leg and pulled him closer, beseeching Jalil in a coarse whisper as he struggled.

  Jalil bent down, to grip his shoulder. “Scorpion bit him on the back,” Jalil said. “Inside his cloak
.” He dragged Hamud to his feet.

  Gently peeling off Hamud’s cloak, first from one side, then the other, he shook the cloth and tossed the scorpion to the ground. Jalil stomped on it with his sandal, again and again, until it was ground into the sand.

  “Whoever the scorpion bites will reach the grave,” Hamud said, as if fate had decreed his death. He clutched at Jalil’s arm.

  “He wants to go back to his people.” Jalil led the ashen, shivering Hamud to the Buick and eased him inside.

  Jalil started the motor, called out to Gideon to meet him in Azraq, and took off in the direction of Amman.

  Klaus still seemed to be in the mourners’ tent when Lily and Gideon arrived at the Jeep. They waited. Gideon reached into the Jeep, sounded the horn, and they waited longer.

  Lily looked back again at the encampment. Nothing. Klaus was nowhere in sight; she saw only an empty matchbox dancing in the wind along the slope.

  Lily and Gideon carefully examined below the seat for scorpions before getting in. Gideon leaned on the horn, shrugged, and tapped the steering wheel impatiently.

  “Klaus is gone again.” Gideon started the engine, attacked the horn once more, waited, gunned the motor.

  “Let him walk.” Gideon finally put the Jeep in gear and drove off without Klaus, heading eastward into the measureless silence of the desert.

  ***

  They traveled over rolling, flint strewn hills.

  Once, the noise of the Jeep roused a herd of gazelle that danced gracefully from crag to crag.

  Gideon declared, “Behold, he cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart.”

  “That’s from the Song of Solomon, isn’t it?”

  Gideon nodded.

  “It seems odd to me that something so sensual, so full of sexual desire, would be in the Bible,” Lily said.

  “There’s a lot in the Bible. Incest. Adultery. Murder. Most of all, love.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “And lust.”

  “You mean it’s a porno book, not a religious tract?”

  “It’s the human story. Everything is there. Cain against Abel; Sarah against Hagar; David with all his flaws, and his whole dysfunctional family. And love. Jacob and Rachel, Abraham and Sarah…it echoes the human condition, exposes the human soul.”