it over, and I will ask flatly whether this would be an irresistible temptation, and on that basis we will decide.”
Then they noticed my presence, and abruptly dropped whatever it was they were privily discussing, and my father said, “Yes, it was as well that we stopped these few days. There are several items we need which are unobtainable in the bazar during this holy month. When the month ends tomorrow, they will be purchasable, and by then the lame camel will be healed, and we will aim at departure the day after. We cannot thank you enough for the hospitality you have shown us during our stay.”
“Which reminds me,” she said. “I have your evening meal almost done. I will bring it out to your quarters as soon as it is.”
My father and I went together to the hayloft, where we found Uncle Mafio perusing the pages of our Kitab. He looked up from it and said, “Our next destination, Mashhad, is no easy one to get to. Desert all the way, and the very widest extent of that desert. We will be dried and shriveled like a bacala.” He broke off to scratch vigorously at the inside of his left elbow. “Some damned bug has bitten me, and I itch.”
I said, “The widow told me that this city is infested with scorpions.”
My uncle gave me a scornful look. “If you ever get stung by one, asenazzo, you will learn that scorpions do not
The Widow Esther made several crossings of the yard, bringing out the dishes of our meal, and we three ate while bent together over the Kitab. Nostril ate apart, in the stable below, among the camels, but he ate almost as audibly as a camel eats. I tried to disregard his noises and concentrate on the maps.
“You are right, Mafio,” said my father. “The broadest part of the desert to cross. God send us good.”
“Still, an easy route to keep to. Mashhad is just a little north of east from here. At this season, we will only have to take aim at the sunrise each morning.”
“And I,” I put in, “will frequently verify our course with our kamal.”
“I notice,” said my father, “that al-Idrisi shows not a single well or oasis or karwansarai in that desert.”
“But some such things must exist. It is a trade route, after all. Mashhad, like Baghdad, is a major stop on the Silk Road.”
“And as big a city as Kashan, the widow told me. Also, thank God, it is in the cool mountains.”
“But beyond it, we will come to genuinely cold ones. We shall probably have to lay up for the winter somewhere.”
“Well, we cannot expect to go through the world with the wind always astern.”
“And we will not be on territory familiar to you and me, Nico, until we get all the way to Kashgar, in Kithai itself.”
“Distant from the eye, Mafio, is distant from the heart. Sufficient the evils of the day, and all that. For the time being, let us not plan or worry beyond Mashhad.”
3
THE next day, the last day of Ramazan, we spent mostly in just lazing about the widow’s property. I think I have neglected to mention that, in Muslim countries, a day’s beginning is not counted from dawn, as one might expect, or from the midnight hour, as it is in civilized countries, but from the moment of the sun’s setting. Anyway, there was no point in our haunting the Kashan bazar, as my father had remarked, until it should be again fully stocked with goods for purchase. We had no other tasks except to feed and water the camels and shovel their manure out of the stable. Of course, Nostril attended to that—and at the widow’s request he spread the manure on her herb garden. Now and again, I or my father or uncle would go out for a stroll in the streets. And so did Nostril, in the intervals between his chores, and in the process, I have no doubt, managed to consummate some more of his nasty liaisons.
When I went walking out into the city in the late afternoon, I found a crowd of people standing at a corner where two streets intersected. Most of them were young—good-looking males and nondescript females. I would have assumed that they were merely engaged in the favorite occupation of the East, which is standing and staring—or, in the case of Eastern men, standing and staring and scratching their crotches—except that I heard a droning voice proceeding from the center of the group. So I stopped and joined the audience, and gradually worked my way through them until I could see the object of their attention.
It was an old man seated cross-legged on the ground: a sha‘ir, or poet, and he was entertaining the people by telling a story. From time to time, evidently whenever he spoke an especially poetic and felicitous phrase, one of the bystanders would drop a coin into the begging bowl on the ground beside the old man. My grasp of Farsi was not good enough to enable me to appreciate anything of that sort, but it was good enough at least to follow the thread of the tale, and it was an interesting tale, so I stood and listened. The sha’ir was telling how dreams came to be.
In the Beginning, he said, among all the kinds of spirits which exist—the jinn and the afarit and the peri and so on—there was a spirit named Sleep. He had charge then, as he has now, of that dormant condition in all living creatures. Now, Sleep had a whole swarm of children, who were called Dreams, but in that far-off time neither Sleep nor his children had ever thought of the Dreams getting inside people’s heads. But one day, it being a nice day, and Sleep not having much to do during the daytime, that good spirit decided to take all his boys and girls for a holiday at the seashore. And there he let them get into a little boat they found, and fondly watched as they paddled out upon the water a short way.
Unfortunately, said the old poet, the spirit Sleep had earlier done something to offend the mighty spirit called Storm, and Storm had been waiting an opportunity for revenge. So when Sleep’s little Dreams ventured upon the sea, the malevolent Storm whipped the sea into a frothing fury, and blew a driving wind, and washed the frail boat far out into the ocean and wrecked it on the rocky reefs of a desert island called Boredom.
Ever since that time, said the sha‘ir, all the Dream boys and girls have been marooned on that bleak island. (And you know, he said, how restless children become when subjected to idleness in Boredom.) During the days, the poor Dreams must endure that monotonous exile from the living world. But every night—al-hamdo-lillah!—the spirit Storm must wane in power, because the kindlier spirit Moon has charge of the night. So that is when the Dream children can most easily escape for a while from their Boredom. And they do. That is when they leave the island and go about the world and occupy themselves by entering the heads of sleeping men and women. That is why, said the sha’ir, on any night, any sleeper may be entertained or instructed or warned or frightened by a Dream, depending on whether that particular Dream on that particular night is a beneficent little-girl Dream or a mischievous little-boy Dream, and depending on his or her mood that night.
The listeners all made gratified noises at the tale’s conclusion, and fairly showered coins into the old man’s bowl. I tossed in a copper shahi myself, having found the story amusing—and not incredible, like so many of the more foolish Eastern myths. I found quite logical the poet’s notion of innumerable Dream children of both sexes and mercurial temperaments and meddlesome ways. That notion could even suggest an acceptable explanation of certain phenomena frequently occurring in the West, and well attested but never before explicable. I mean the dreaded nighttime visitations of the incubo which seduces otherwise chaste women and the succubo which seduces otherwise chaste priests.
When sundown marked the close of Ramazan, I was at the back door of the Widow Esther’s house, and Sitare let me into the kitchen. She and I were its only occupants, and she seemed in a state of barely suppressed excitement: her eyes sparkled and her hands fluttered. She was dressed in what must have been her very best garments, and she had put al-kohl around her eyelids and berry juice on her lips, but the pink flush on her cheeks had not come out of a cosmetic jar.
“You are attired for the feast day,” I said.
“Yes, but to please you, too. I will not dissemble, Mirza Marco. I said I was glad to be the object of your ardor, and I truly am. Look, I have spread a pallet for us yonder in the corner. And I have made sure that the mistress and the other servants are all occupied elsewhere, so we will not be interrupted. I am frankly eager for our—”
“Now wait,” I said, but feebly. “I have acceded to no bargain. You are a beauty to make a man’s mouth water, and mine does, but I must know first. What is this favor for which you wish to trade yourself?”
“Indulge me only for a moment, then I will tell you. I should like to set you a riddle beforehand.”
“Is this another local custom?”
“Just sit on this bench here. Keep your hands at your sides—hold onto the bench—so you are not tempted to
