He gave me a look, but he answered with deliberation, as if I had not spoken spitefully. “True, we Jews adapt to the circumstances in which our dispersal puts us. But one thing the Domm do which we never will. And that is to seek acceptance by cravenly adopting the prevailing local religion.” He laughed again. “You see? Any despised people can always discern some more lowly people to look down on and despise.”
I sniffed and said, “It follows, then, that the Domm also have someone to look down on.”
“Oh, yes. Everyone else in creation. To them, you and I and all others are the Gazhi. Which means only ‘the dupes, the victims,’ those who are to be cheated and swindled and deceived.”
“Surely a pretty girl, like your Chiv yonder, need not deceive—”
He gave an impatient shake of his head. “You walked in here yammering about beauty as a basis for suspicion. Were you carrying any valuables when you came?”
“Do you take me for an ass, to carry anything of worth into a whorehouse? I brought only a few coins and my belt knife. Where is my knife?”
Shimon smiled pityingly. I brushed past him, stormed into the back room and found Chiv happily counting a handful of coppers.
“Your knife? I already sold it, was that not quick of me?” she said, as I stood over her, fuming. “I did not expect you to miss it so soon. I sold it to a Tazhik herdsman just now passing at the back door, so it is gone. But do not be angry with me. I will steal a better blade from someone else, and keep it until you come again, and give it to you. This I will do—out of my great esteem for your handsomeness and your generosity and your exceptional prowess at surata.”
Being so liberally praised, I of course stopped being angry, and said I would look forward to visiting her soon again. Nevertheless, in making my second departure from the place, I slunk past Shimon at his wheel, much as I had slunk from another brothel at another time in female raiment.
2
I think Nostril could have produced for us, if we had required it, a fish in a desert. When my father asked him to seek out a physician to give us an opinion on the seeming improvement of Uncle Mafio’s tisichezza, Nostril had no trouble in finding one, even on the Roof of the World. And the elderly, bald Hakim Mimdad impressed us as being a competent doctor. He was a Persian, and that alone certified him as a civilized man. He was traveling as karwan keeper-of-the-health in a train of Persian qali merchants. In just his general conversation, he gave evidence of having more than just routine knowledge of his profession. I remember his telling us:
“Myself, I prefer to prevent afflictions, rather than have to cure them, even though prevention puts no money in my purse. For example, I instruct all the mothers here in this encampment to boil the milk they give their children. Whether it be yak milk, camel milk, whatever, I urge that it first be boiled, and in a vessel of iron. As is known to all people, the nastier jinn and other sorts of demons are repelled by iron. And I have determined by experiment that the boiling of milk liberates from the vessel its iron juice, and mixes that into the milk, and thereby fends off any jinni that might lurk in readiness to inflict some childhood disease.”
“It sounds reasonable,” said my father.
“I am a strong advocate of experiment,” the old hakim went on. “Medicine’s accepted rules and recipes are all very well, but I have often found by experiment new cures which do not accord with the old rules. Sea salt, for one. Not even the greatest of all healers, the sage ibn Sina, seems ever to have noticed that there is some subtle difference between sea salt and that obtained from inland salt flats. From none of the ancient treatises can I divine any reason for there being such a difference. But something about sea salt prevents and cures goiters and other such tumorous swellings of the body. Experiment has proven it to me.”
I made a private resolve to go and apologize to the little Chola salt merchants I had laughed at.
“Well, come then, Dotor Balanzon!” my uncle boomed, mischievously calling him by the name of that Venetian comic personage. “Let us get this over with, so you can tell me which you prescribe for my damned tisichezza—the sea salt or the boiled milk.”
So the hakim proceeded to his examination diagnostic, probing here and there at Uncle Mafio and asking him questions. After some while he said:
“I cannot know how bad was the coughing before. But, as you say, it is not very bad now, and I hear little crepitation inside the chest. Do you have any pain there?”
“Only now and then,” said my uncle. “Understandable, I suppose, after all the hard coughing I have done.”
“But allow me a guess,” said Hakim Mimdad. “You feel it only in one place. Under your left breastbone.”
“Why, yes. Yes, that is so.”
“Also, your skin is quite warm. Is this fever constant?”
“It comes and goes. It comes, I sweat, it goes away.”
“Open your mouth, please.” He peered inside it, then lifted the lips away to look at the gums. “Now hold out your hands.” He looked at them front and back. “Now, if I may pluck just one hair of your head?” He did, and Uncle Mafio did not wince, and the physician scrutinized the hair, bending it in his fingers. Then he asked, “Do you feel a frequent need to make kut?”
My uncle laughed and rolled his eyes bawdily. “I feel many needs, and frequently. How does one make kut?”
The hakim, looking tolerant, as if he were dealing with a child, significantly patted a hand on his own backside.
“Ah, kut is
“I think you do not have the hasht nafri.”
“Not the tisichezza?” my father spoke up, surprised. “But he was coughing blood at one time.”
“Not from the lungs,” said Hakim Mimdad. “It is his gums exuding blood.”
“Well,” said Uncle Mafio, “a man can hardly be displeased to hear that his lungs are not failing. But I gather that you suspect some other ailment.”
“I will ask you to make water into this little jar. I can tell you more after I have inspected the urine for signs diagnostic.”
“Experiments,” my uncle muttered.
“Exactly. In the meantime, if the innkeeper Iqbal will bring me some egg yolks, I would have you allow the application of more of the little Quran papers.”
“Do they do any good?”
“They do no harm. Much of medicine consists of precisely that: not doing harm.”
When the hakim departed, carrying the small jar of urine with his hand capping it to prevent any contamination, I also left the karwansarai. I went first to the tents of the Tamil Cholas and said words of apology and wished those men all prosperity—which seemed to make them even more nervous than they always were anyway—and then wended my way to the establishment of the Jew Shimon.
I asked again to have my tool greased, and asked to have Chiv do it again, and I got her, and as she had promised, she did present me with a fine new knife, and to show my gratitude I tried to outdo my former prowess in the performance of surata. Afterward, on my way out, I paused to chide old Shimon yet again:
“You and your nasty mind. You said all those belittling things about the Romm people, but look what a splendid gift the girl just gave me in exchange for my old blade.”
He humphed indifferently and said, “Be glad she has not yet given you one between your ribs.”
I showed him the knife. “I never saw one like this before. It resembles any ordinary dagger, yes? A single wide blade. But watch. When I have stabbed it into some prey, I squeeze the handle: so. And that wide blade separates into two, and they spring apart, and this third, hidden, inner blade darts out from between them, to pierce the prey even more deeply. Is it not a marvelous contrivance?”
“Yes. I recognize it now. I gave it a good sharpening not long ago. And I suggest, if you keep it, that you keep it handy. It formerly belonged to a very large Hunzuk mountain man who drops in here occasionally. I do not know his name, for everyone calls him simply the Squeeze Knife Man, because of his proficiency with it and his ready employment of it when his temper is … . Must you dash off?”
“My uncle is ailing,” I said, as I went out the door. “I really should not stay away too long at a time.”
