OF IBN KHALDUN
I woke reluctantly, lying on my back with my left cheek pressed into a soft pillow that smelt of sunlight. A foot from my eyes was a rough wall, warmly illuminated by the steady yellow light of a candle, or a lamp. I did an inventory of my body, decided that my head ached abominably, my stomach felt equally wretched, and the rest of me seemed to have been run through a clothes wringer. Gingerly, slowly, I eased my throbbing head over to face the room.
I was in an attic of some sort, judging from the low and sloping ceiling. An oil lamp made out of clay burnt on a tea-chest beside my bed, its small flame rising from the wick as perfect and without motion as a Vermeer painting. I was not alone: a child sat on the floor on the other side of the lamp, propped into the angle formed by the opposite wall and the stack of wooden chests that had been pushed up against it. Her head was resting back against the wall. She was asleep.
I lay for a long, peaceful time, contemplating the pure, small flame and the pale throat of the sleeping child. She was wearing a light-coloured dress, blue, I thought. It had an embroidered yoke. Her arms were folded across her chest, elbows on her drawn-up knees, hands resting on their opposing shoulders. The sleeves of the dress had fallen back to reveal half a dozen glass bangles on each thin wrist. Her left earlobe gave off a gleam which, I decided after some thought, indicated a small gold earring looped through it. Nearer by, my spectacles lay folded on the tea-chest; I could see twin reflections of the lamp flame in the two lenses, and a long, tall reflection up the side of a glass of water.
It was very pleasant, lying there, and absolutely still, so silent I could clearly hear the light rattle of breath down the young throat. I did not know how I came to be here, but I did know that I wanted neither to move nor to remember, because both would cause pain. Although I was dimly aware that at a distance there was sound, a vague impression of voices and movement, in this room it was so quiet I fancied I could hear the tiny hiss of the oil burning off the wick. I was quite disappointed when the child snorted and woke, blinked once, and then looked straight at me. The bangles on her arms jingled musically as she rubbed her eyes.
“Hello,” she said, only it was not “Hello” and it was not “
“
“You were hurt,” she said, and then in Arabic continued, “Mahmoud brought you here.” Switching back to Hebrew, she asked, “Do you speak Ivrit, then?”
“Not well.”
“It sounds all right. I just asked because Mama said I should speak Arabic if you woke up.” And in Arabic she continued, “Are you feeling better now?” Her speech sounded odd, and it took me a minute to realise what was wrong: She was using the feminine form, not the masculine to which I was accustomed.
“Where am I?” I asked, sticking to Hebrew.
“You are in a storage room in the top of our house. My name is Sarah.”
“And where is this house, Sarah?” I asked patiently. The child was even younger than I had thought.
“In Ram Allah,” she replied, which meant nothing to me at the moment.
“Where are my friends?” Much as I wanted the continued bliss of ignorance, memory was pushing against my mind with increasing urgency.
“Uncle Mahmoud went away after he brought you here, but he said he would be back. Ali went with him.”
And then it was all there, the car, the crash, and blood. My mouth, already dry and foul tasting, turned slowly to shoe leather and the cold began to trickle down my spine. “What about the other men?” I demanded in English, and when the child looked at me nervously, I put the sentence together in Hebrew.
“There were no other men,” she said, puzzled.
“A car?”
“It was wrecked. That’s how you got hurt, Uncle Mahmoud said, but we weren’t to let anyone find you, so that’s why we put you up here. It isn’t very nice,” she confided, wrinkling her nose and glancing at the cobwebs.
None of her speech registered, only the fact that Holmes was not here. And hadn’t there been a driver? I couldn’t seem to remember what we had been doing and where, but I knew Holmes had been with me, and now he was not.
I could not lie here, not knowing; I had to know, and the first step was to move. Pain came with motion, but no agony, nothing broken or dislocated, as I shifted over onto my right side and began to slide my feet over the side of the low bed. I set my left hand against the coarse sheet in front of my chest, glanced down at it, and froze: it was caked with some dry and flaking red-brown substance. I lay back and brought my hands up before my eyes in the feeble light, and saw on both hands the same cracked brown stain smeared across skin, palm, fingernails.
There was blood on my hands.
“We were going to wash you but Uncle Mahmoud said it was better to let you sleep. It isn’t your blood,” the child said, trying to comfort me. I closed my eyes and, putting my hands beneath me again, slowly levered myself up until I was sitting. My head gave a violent throb, my stomach heaved, but my feet were on the floorboards and I did not actually pass out, just sat with my head collapsed forward onto my knees, waiting for the worst to fade.
There was an exclamation from the doorway, and the child Sarah scrambled to her feet and flew across the room. I could not summon the reserves to raise my head, so my first sight of Rahel was her bare feet.
“My daughter, I thought I told you to come and fetch me when our guest awoke.” Her Hebrew was sweet on my ears; for a brief moment she sounded like my mother.
“Sorry, Mama. I was just going to come.”
The woman had a lovely voice, and her hand on the side of my neck was cool. She did not seem to be feeling for a pulse or estimating fever, but rather was conveying sympathy and comfort, and I could have slumped on that pallet with her hand on my neck and her words in my ears for the rest of my life. Instead I asked her a question.
“There was another man in the car. Two other men. What… happened to them?”
“One is dead and one missing.”
“Which?” I had to force the question out, past my closed throat and the pounding in my head.
“The driver was killed. That is his blood you have on your—” She made a startled noise and caught my shoulders, said something rapid and urgent to the child, and held me firmly as her daughter scurried out of the room and came back a minute later carrying a bottle and a glass.
The brandy steadied my head and brought my stomach back to earth, and after a while, moving with great caution, I sat straight up. The oil lamp on the tea-chest stopped whirling. My head continued to throb, but I thought perhaps it would not actually come off my shoulders.
“Where have Mahmoud and Ali gone?”
“They went to look for your friend. He was taken away by the men who attacked your car.”
“When?”
“You were set upon at about noon. It is now ten o’clock at night. They left you here perhaps seven hours ago. How are you feeling?”
“I will live.”
“Nausea? Dizziness?” she asked in English.
“Not too bad.” It seemed more natural to remain in Hebrew—the switching back and forth made me feel dizzy.
She reached behind her and took up the lamp. “Look at me,” she ordered, and held the flame up between us, moving it slowly back and forth while she stared into my eyes. She was not satisfied with whatever she saw there, or didn’t see, and paused with the lamp in her hand.
“You look bad,” she said frankly.
