The caravan enjoys a brief sanctuary in Mazar, where Darius reflects on turning sixteen and watches Weili form an unexpected new friendship.
Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18
Please note that I moved the ending of the previous chapter to this chapter, and made a few small changes.
* * *
An Incredibly Decent Man
Most nights, once the caravan was secured for the night, I found Weili, and we sat and talked. But sometimes she could not be found. She had her moods, and some nights a kind of darkness would come over her, when all she could see was what she had lost, and what she didn’t have. On such nights she wanted to be alone. She’d sleep in one of the cargo wagons, or even lay her bedroll in the trees far from camp. I’d told her that the latter was unsafe, but she persisted.
On such nights I might find Ahmed’s campfire. There was always a circle of brothers sitting with him as he talked about the meaning of a Quranic surah, or told the life story of one of the sahabah. The number of his followers had grown steadily, and some nights there were fifty men sitting around his fire. Many of the guards were Hui Muslims from non-practicing families, with little knowledge of Islam, who had never attended any Islamic services beyond Eid prayers or the occasional janazah when a relative died. Now, however, many were praying regularly, and memorizing the Quran with Ahmed.
It wasn’t just his knowledge, or the stories he told. Ahmed was a fortyish, compact man of medium height who carried himself with a quiet dignity. I was an observer of people, and I’d seen many things. When a man was overcome with depression at being so far from his family, and sat alone in the darkness, feeling as if no one in the world cared, Ahmed would show up to sit with him and put a hand on his shoulder. When a mule was overloaded and struggling, Ahmed would whisper a word to Sergeant Karim, who would redistribute the load.
Once, when we passed through a town near Samarkand, I followed Ahmed from a distance as he rode off alone. He went to the local market and spent what must have been a month’s salary to buy dozens of pairs of shoes, which he distributed to barefoot children who had likely never owned such a thing. Their smiles and squeals of delight touched me, and I almost cried. Ahmed never told anyone in the caravan about that or his other acts of charity, and I never mentioned it either. But people knew what an incredibly decent man he was, and they loved him.
Other nights I might find Longwei, who had his own group of fans who enjoyed his raucous tall tales.
Yet other nights I practiced Five Animals, and that drew a crowd of its own. I ran through my empty hand forms, then spear and finally the dao. Many of my watchers had never seen a classically trained martial artist, and even if they had, likely not one of my caliber. That sounds vain, but it’s true. People gasped and applauded. Occasionally some shouted derisive comments:
“You’re very good at massacring imaginary opponents, Bridge Killer!”
“I think you missed the jinn on your right, farm boy!”
Yet I knew that behind their derision was envy, for they had seen how I fought. Sergeant Karim sometimes paid bonuses to guards who fought especially well in defense of the caravan, and three times I had received such bonuses. So no matter the comments, I walked away from my practice sessions with my head high – maybe too high.
Orange Bellbird
One night, however, I was tired. My horse Belly had been giving me a hard time all day, balking at bridges, shying away from odd-shaped sticks or stones, and at times simply stopping for no discernible reason. Weili could not be found, I was not in the mood for Longwei’s travel tales, and while I always enjoyed Ahmed’s lectures, on that night I wasn’t in the mood. So I made camp, read my medical textbook for a while, then doused the fire and prepared to sleep.
I had just closed my eyes when a voice I knew well said, “Have you considered my poem?”
I opened my eyes and looked up at Longwei’s tall, powerful form standing over me, his pot belly bulging over his belt.
“Which one?”
He regarded me solemnly. “Never mind the poem. In the forests of Southeast Asia there is a bird called an orange bellbird. It’s small, but sings more beautifully than any lute or harp. When you hear it, you are reminded of Allah’s angels. You feel that the world is beautiful, and that everything is possible. Yet if you catch it and cage it, you will be disappointed, for it will sit silently, and will soon die. You can never own an orange bellbird. You can only appreciate it from a distance.”
I made a helpless gesture. “Are we talking about flowers or birds?”
Longwei pursed his lips. “Neither.” He walked away, and I fell asleep and dreamed that I fell into a hole and found myself in a cave, and when I emerged I was on the other side of a mountain range from the caravan, and could not find my way back.
Safe Harbor
For two weeks we passed through unrelenting mountains. We traveled roads that hugged the sides of cliffs, where a single wrong step would send a man to his death. Strangely, my horse Belly, who was normally so willful and independent minded, took every step carefully, and obeyed my every command.
We crossed mountain passes where we layered our clothing and put blankets on the animals. We shivered through the nights, even with fires burning. Anyone who was not on guard duty slept inside the covered wagons, crammed in among the goods we transported.
One particularly cold night I found a group of guards huddled around a blazing fire, listening to Memdooh. He was a young man in his early twenties, thin with a scraggly beard. A decent fighter, but not spectacular. He engaged in a unique art form in which he created poetry that he made up on the fly. It was always boastful and sometimes funny. Sometimes I found him annoying, but one night I was passing his campfire, and the applause from the watchers drew me in, so I paused to listen. It was a long, arrogant rhyme about his fighting ability, which I did not care for. But one stanza made me smile:
I ride from a northern land
curved sword in my hand.
I’m young but I’m hard
for I’m a caravan guard!
I remembered those lines. Later I turned them into a little song that I would sing to myself as I rode.
A few days later we crossed a pass and in the distance saw a wide valley filled with green orchards and blue streams. Far in the distance was a city. My heart soared to see it, and my grin nearly split my face.
Sergeant Karim called everyone together.
“This region,” he announced, “is part of the Khanate of Bukhara, but the city you see ahead is a Tajik city called Mazar, and it is a safe harbor for Five Stars. We have a relationship with them. We bring them goods from other lands, we buy their glassware and woodworks, and they host us. They are friends.
“Tomorrow is Yawm Arafah. I know many of you will be fasting. We will roll on tonight until we reach the walls of Mazar, and there we will camp. Though you may be fasting, there is a lot of work to be done. We will remain in Mazar for the three days of Eid ul-Adha, and you will have the time off to relax and enjoy as the merchants conduct their trade.”
A loud cheer went up at this.
“After Mazar,” Karim continued, “we will enter Afghanistan. It is a wild, lawless land, and you will have to be on guard. I will need you at your best. After Afghanistan, we will be in Persia.”
Again the audience applauded.
“Back to your stations,” Karim concluded. “Mazar awaits. Oh, and by the way -” He looked around for Weili. “Mazar always has a huge archery competition on Eid.”
We traveled all night long, and shortly before dawn pitched camp a short distance outside the walls of Mazar. We prayed Fajr, and then nearly all of us – with the exception of a handful of guards – slept the sleep of the dead.
Yawm Arafah
The following day proved that a stationary caravan was no idle caravan. If anything, there was more work than usual. Nearly all the Hui guards were fasting, largely due to Ahmed’s influence.
Wagons that had groaned and rattled over thousands of miles were finally inspected properly. Wheels were removed, axles cleaned and greased, loose iron bands hammered back into place, cracked planks replaced, ropes re-tied, canvas repaired, and inventories checked against the merchants’ ledgers.
The horses required even more attention. Their hooves were cleaned and trimmed. Shoes were replaced where necessary. Harnesses were mended, saddles repaired, manes combed free of burrs and tangled hair. A few animals had rubbed sores beneath their tack, requiring medicine and several days’ rest. Others were bathed in the nearby river until their coats shone once again.
We did all this while fasting. There we were, in sight of the walls of a safe and friendly city, and we spent the entire day working on empty stomachs. By the end of the day my stomach ached with a deep hunger of a kind that I had not felt since I was a child living alone on the farm while my father was in prison. But I knew that it was ‘ibadah, and that the hunger was its own kind of barakah. I wasn’t hungry because I’d been abandoned and forgotten, but because I had chosen to make a sacrifice in service to Allah. That made all the difference.
As a result, neither I nor anyone else complained about the work. We were too immersed in the spiritual state of the fast, and the introspective thoughts that came with such a state.
As the sun dipped below the horizon that day, Ahmed called us together. A large group of townspeople had come out to greet us, bringing with them dates, roasted mutton, fresh bread and yogurt. We broke our fast with them, and I felt content. Only then did I understand Sergeant Karim’s strategy. He had also somehow managed to have an entire caravan repaired from axle to harness without anyone complaining very much. I suspected he had planned it that way from the beginning.
As we ate, Weili peppered the townspeople with questions about tomorrow’s archery competition. All these peoples of Central Asia spoke some variation of Turkic – so Longwei said – and many of us guards had picked up the common words. So some level of communication was possible.
Every time Weili asked about the competition, however, the locals slid their eyes over her recurve bow, smiled, and shook their heads. Weili gave me a puzzled glance, and I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe they don’t let women compete?” I offered.
“I don’t think that’s it. It’s my bow they’re looking at, not me.”
Salat Al-Eid
The following morning, before sunrise, the town came alive.
Streams of people flowed toward the great field where Salat Al-Eid would be held. This field was in fact outside the city walls, and within a long arrow shot of our caravan.
Families walked together carrying prayer rugs beneath their arms. Children skipped ahead in new clothes, scarcely able to contain their excitement. Old men embraced one another before the prayer had even begun.
I had never seen so many Muslims gathered in one place.
Nor had I ever seen such beautiful clothing.
The men wore embroidered robes in deep blues, emerald greens and rich crimson, with woven belts and elaborately wrapped turbans. The women seemed to have gathered every color Allah had placed in the world. Flowing dresses shimmered with intricate embroidery, and silver jewelry caught the morning sun.
The people themselves seemed remarkably handsome.
I found myself wondering whether the mountain air or the clear water somehow made them that way.
“Don’t stare at the women,” Ahmed murmured beside me.
“I wasn’t,” I said indignantly.
“You were.”
“I was observing the people.”
I noticed a boy no older than twelve weaving quietly through the crowd. His eyes never lifted higher than the waists of the worshippers around him. I watched him slip two fingers toward the purse hanging from an elderly man’s belt.
I reached out and caught his wrist. He froze.
I looked him in the eye. “Not today, kid.”
His face turned crimson. After a moment he nodded sheepishly, and I released him. Without another word he disappeared into the crowd.
The prayer itself was unlike anything I had experienced before. Row after row stretched across the field until they seemed almost to merge with the horizon. Ahmed stood somewhere among the worshippers, yet from where I stood I could no longer pick him out.
The imam delivered the khutbah in the local language. I understood very little beyond the occasional Arabic verse from the Qur’an. It was something about the Muhajireen and the Ansar. Something about the generosity of the Ansar? I wasn’t sure. I wondered if it might be about us, the caravan. Were we the Muhajireen, and the locals the Ansar?
Thousands of voices answered the takbirs together. Thousands made ruku’ and sajdah. I was reminded that I belonged to an ummah larger than any city or nation.
After the prayer workers immediately began setting up in the same field for the archery competition. Meanwhile, people embraced one another. Children compared sweets and toys. Merchants hurried to construct and open stalls that offered grilled meat, fresh bread and sweet pastries drifted through the air.
I purchased two skewers of roasted lamb wrapped in warm flatbread, along with a small paper cone of honey-coated almonds. I thought about the last Eid I had spent with my uncle, aunt and cousin, and something suddenly occurred to me. Excited, I went looking for Weili.
A Realization
I eventually found her sitting alone beneath a broad tree at the edge of the field, watching families celebrate in the distance.
“There you are,” I said, dropping down beside her. She and I had grown very close by this point. We spent a lot of our free time together, though always in public. Our relationship was not physical, but I found myself dreaming about her occasionally. Even though Kuangren’s wedding had been a fiasco held at swordpoint, I thought about it a lot. Kuangren’s bride was no older than Weili. Yet whenever I considered the prospect of marrying Weili, my mouth became dry, and sweat broke out on my forehead. I knew that Weili liked me, but beyond that I was not sure of anything.
She smiled.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“I just realized something.” I could not keep the grin from my face.
“What?”
“I’m sixteen.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I turned sixteen. A few months back, actually. It hadn’t occurred to me until today.”
“Oh.” She looked at me for a long moment. “Are you serious? You’re only sixteen?”
I laughed. “What do you mean, only sixteen? Yes, I am sixteen! I feel like I’m saying the word sixteen a lot.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
She tilted her head.
“I thought you were older.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“You carry yourself like someone older. You take your duties seriously, you’re literate, you study. And your fighting ability…” She trailed off, still looking faintly puzzled. “I just assumed.”
I laughed. “Well, now you know.”
She smiled politely, but there was something thoughtful behind her eyes that I couldn’t quite read.
“You know that I’m nineteen, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know that.”
She lapsed into silence. I noticed she wasn’t watching the festivities at all. Her gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the crowds.
“Why are you sitting here by yourself anyway?”
She was quiet for a while before answering.
“Eid always makes me think about my parents.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded absently. “It’s alright.”
Another silence settled between us.
Then, almost as though speaking to herself rather than to me, she added, “You’re too young to really understand.”
I frowned. It struck me as a bizarre thing to say. I had outlived both of my parents. I had seen men die, and had killed them myself. I supported myself and worked hard. What did age have to do with anything? Yes, she was three years older than me, but three years was nothing.
These words rose to my lips, but I swallowed them.
Instead I simply sat beside her beneath the tree while the laughter and scents of the festival drifted toward us on the warm afternoon breeze.
Tournament Rules
Within a few hours, the field had been transformed. Banners hung from rooftops and fences. People continued to arrive. Families rode in on carts and horseback. Musicians played, and there was hardly a space to stand. Apparently competitors traveled from throughout the region to participate in the archery competition, and the winner received not only a substantial prize but considerable prestige.
Even Kuangren came along to the competition, accompanied by his wife Gulnur, which I thought was a singularly strange name, though in light of her beauty, who really cared? Kuangren walked with a cane, and leaned on Gulnur for support.
He hadn’t been the same since the lashing. He walked bent over like an old man, and didn’t like for anyone to touch him. He still had not been able to resume his duties. Yet Sergeant Karim continued to pay Kuangren’s salary, and to give him and his wife a wagon of their own. I wasn’t sure I would ever understand Karim.
When I’d first beheld Gulnur, riding hard at her father’s side with a knife on her hip and a bow on her back, her long chestnut hair streaming behind her, I’d thought her a wild thing. I imagined the wars that would rage between her and Kuangren as he continued his scandalous ways, and she tried to reform him.
There had been no wars, however. Maybe it was just Kuangren’s physical incapacity, but he seemed different. For all his protests at the wedding, I saw the way he looked at his wife now, as if she were the brightest star in the sky. I never would have expected it. SubhanAllah. Allah could change anyone by means of anyone.
Weili came out of her funk and grew excited, bombarding the locals with questions about the competition, the rules, the bows and the previous champions. Her excitement was infectious, and I was excited for her.
Unlike the tournaments I had known, this gathering was divided into three separate contests. They were all archery contests, but there were categories based on skill level or strength. In the first, the targets stood at perhaps sixty paces. In the second category the targets were twice that distance away, while the third row of targets seemed so impossibly distant that I wondered whether anyone could strike them at all. Each contest required its own entry fee and offered its own prize, with the greatest reward reserved for the archers bold enough to attempt the longest shot.
Each archer would get only three shots.
I watched Weili, curious to see her reaction. She had, after all, won the archery contest back in Deep Harbor. That’s why she had been hired by Five Stars. And her skill wasn’t just theoretical. I had seen her shoot men down in combat, drawing her arrows as fast as a man might fling pebbles, one after another, with people screaming in rage or fear, horses whinnying and enemy arrows flying past her. I’d even seen her shoot from horseback, on the move, firing while she controlled the horse with her knees.
To my surprise, it was not the targets that captured Weili’s attention. It was the bows. She wandered over to a group of competitors preparing for the contests and stopped short. The bows they carried were enormous. Even unstrung, many stood taller than the men themselves. The bows were thick and powerful, built not merely to shoot arrows but to hurl them extraordinary distances.
Now I understood why the villagers had been giggling at Weili’s bow.
“I’ve never seen anything like these,” she murmured.
One of the local archers, a thick-bodied young man with a bald head and a lazy smile, grinned at her curiosity and, with a friendly gesture, offered her his bow. He tapped his chest. “Arslan.”
Weili gave her name, and accepted the bow with both hands, then laughed aloud.
“It weighs as much as a child.”
I took the bow from her, planted my feet, and attempted to draw it. I got the string halfway to my chin. Several nearby spectators chuckled good-naturedly.
“You see?” Weili said with a grin.
“I think these people must have grown up lifting yaks over their heads.”
One of the older men clapped me on the shoulder approvingly. I had no idea if he’d actually understood me. Some of these people, especially the merchants, did speak our language.
Arslan
A man stood on a podium and made an announcement.
“Did he just say,” I wondered, “that you can only enter if your name is rainbow?”
Weili punched me in the shoulder. She had learned more of these languages than me. “He says last call to enter, and you must bring your own bow.” She flashed me a smile. “I’m signing up for the middle one.”
“You aren’t serious,” I said.
“I am.”
“These people have probably been shooting since they could walk.”
“So have I.”
She paid a few silver coins and entered the middle competition.
There were a number of women in the short-distance competition, but Weili was the only woman in the middle range category. The local archers regarded her slender recurve bow with open amusement. Beside their towering longbows it looked like a child’s toy. A few exchanged smiles, and one elderly competitor shrugged as though indulging an enthusiastic foreigner.
Then the shooting began.
One after another the contestants loosed their arrows. Most struck the target somewhere upon its face. A handful found the center.
Then Weili stepped forward.
She inhaled slowly, raised her bow high to account for the distance – it looked like she was aiming at the sky rather than the target – and drew the string with smooth confidence.
The arrow flew high and clean, arced down and struck almost dead center.
The murmuring stopped.
Her second arrow landed scarcely a hand’s breadth from the first, and the third split the edge of one of her earlier shafts. It was an unparalleled, stunning performance. Of course I had seen her shoot many times, but never like this.
When the scores were announced, there could be no doubt. The foreign woman had won the middle-distance category.
The applause was warm and genuine. Smiling broadly, Weili accepted an embroidered riding cloak, a small purse of silver, and a carved wooden plaque bearing the seal of the local archery guild. She bowed awkwardly to the crowd, provoking another round of cheerful laughter.
As she stepped away from the field, the broad-shouldered young bald man – Arslan – approached her. He looked perhaps twenty years of age, with sun-darkened skin, powerful forearms and the easy confidence of someone who had spent his entire life with a bow in his hands.
“You win,” he said. “Very good.”
Weili grinned and bowed with a flourish.
Arslan pointed toward the farthest range, then mimed drawing a bow. “I shoot. You come?”
Weili nodded enthusiastically and we joined the crowd watching the long distance competition. It proved astonishing. Several competitors failed even to reach the distant targets. Others managed only glancing hits upon the outer rings. Then Arslan stepped forward carrying his immense longbow.
He drew it as effortlessly as I might have drawn my dao. The bow bent into a graceful arc, the string sang, and the arrow flew straight and true, with only a slight arc. It struck on the middle ring of the target, not at the center but close. The second landed closer, and the third buried itself squarely in the heart.
The field erupted in cheers.
Children chased after him while older men embraced him proudly. Even the competitors he had defeated smiled and applauded.
Weili applauded as enthusiastically as anyone.
“I’ve never seen anyone shoot like that,” she said quietly.
I hadn’t either.
Eventually Arslan made his way over to us, still surrounded by admirers. Spotting Weili, he smiled and approached. They attempted a conversation using little more than gestures, smiles and the occasional borrowed word supplied by passing merchants who knew fragments of both languages.
Watching them, I found myself smiling as well. At that moment there was no jealousy in me. Only admiration for remarkable skill, and amusement at two strangers trying so earnestly to understand one another.
I like this as a closing scene. I made one small change: rather than having Darius say, “I have a lot of good things in my life,” I let him realize it gradually. It feels a little more like him, and I think it lands harder.
Belly
The camp had grown quiet by the time I wandered back among the wagons. Here and there a few low conversations drifted through the darkness, punctuated by an occasional laugh, but most of the caravan had already turned in. Tomorrow the festivities would continue, and after that we would leave Mazar behind and enter Afghanistan.
Belly lifted his head as I approached. Moonlight gleamed faintly upon his black coat. He gave a soft whicker that might have been a greeting, or might simply have meant he hoped I had brought him something to eat.
“I know,” I said, smiling. “You always think I have an apple hidden somewhere.”
He stretched his nose toward my pockets anyway.
“And guess what?” I said grinning. “I do. You think I’d forget you on Eid?” I took a large, juicy green apple out of one pocket and fed it to him. He chewed noisily, head tipped back, dripping juice.
I laughed quietly and fetched the brush.
“You were a good horse today. Better than yesterday, anyway. Remember when you refused to go over the mountain pass the night before last because you couldn’t see what was on the other side? At least today you didn’t decide a stick was a snake, or that a perfectly ordinary rock was secretly a tiger.”
He flicked one ear back at me but otherwise ignored the criticism.
As I worked the brush through his thick coat, he gradually relaxed. His head lowered, and one hind leg cocked comfortably beneath him.
“You know,” I said after a while, “looks like Weili’s made a new friend.”
Belly twitched an ear.
“Good for her.” I wasn’t sure whether I really meant it. Maybe I did.
For a time I brushed him in silence, then another thought returned to me.
“Isn’t it funny that I forgot my own birthday?”
Belly breathed warmly through his nostrils.
“My birthday is sometime in the summer, when the cicadas are loud. I don’t know the day. So Zihan Ma decided that from now on it would be the fifteenth day of the eighth month.” I smiled to myself. “Seems as good a day as any.”
I paused, running the brush slowly down his neck.
“What’s wrong with being sixteen anyway?”
Belly seemed to consider the matter deeply before turning his head to investigate my pockets once again.
“No more apples, sorry.”
He snorted.
“You wouldn’t know this,” I continued, “but last year Zihan Ma gave me a white kufi cap and a sandalwood sabhah for my birthday.”
My throat tightened unexpectedly.
“No one ever gave me birthday presents before.”
The brush slowed in my hand.
“Of course…” I swallowed. “No one gave me anything this year.”
The words hung in the cool night air. To my embarrassment I felt my eyes begin to sting.
“But…” I said softly, “…that’s alright.”
I rested my forehead against Belly’s neck. He smelled of leather, clean hair, and the faint sweetness of hay.
“I have a lot, don’t I?”
He answered by nudging my shoulder insistently.
I laughed despite myself. “No, I still don’t have an apple.”
He searched my pockets one last time, unwilling to believe me. I scratched him behind the ears.
“Afghanistan next,” I murmured. “Let’s hope you’re a little less stubborn over there.”
Belly merely snorted, as if making no promises at all.
* * *
As-salamu alaykum dear readers. I was stuck for a bit. I needed to get to the heart of the story. After a conversation with my daughter, I figured it out, alhamdulillah.
Come back next week for Part 20 – Bloody Afghanistan
Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!
See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.
Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com .
Related:
Pieces of a Dream | Part 1: The Cabbie and the Muslim Woman
Trust Fund And A Yellow Lamborghini: A Short Story
The post Far Away [Part 19] – An Apple For Belly appeared first on MuslimMatters.org .