“As for the suburbs and the villages, all the inhabitants perished except for a small number, some of whom left home to seek refuge elsewhere…”

They had a respectable caravan, and if not numerous of good account. Babyr’s and two of his Turks led the way. Niko, the Greek boy, led Abd al-Latif on his sturdy donkey, Ibis always protectively by his side, Tuman the fisherman of Tennis by his other side. Ibrahm and Beadra followed along closely, the boy reciting the Holy Koran to the Christian slave in order to hopefully someday save her from damnation. Yusuf, on his ornery pony, and Abdul Matin, on a donkey of his own—ridden, not led by a boy, which he no longer could afford—brought up the rear of their small column.

‘Merciful God I am in good company and could imagine being no more secure. I thank you in this informal way. Be assured that though prayer is not demanded while traveling, that I am a student of astronomy and will always determine the direction of Mecca. My prayers shall not cease, for I remember, and am grateful for the good fate that has succored my house as so many have fallen to want, dearth, sin and detestable degradation.’

Ibis was watching the roadsides like a towering hawk.

‘God Compassionate, have you surrounded me with people of such dispirit belief that they be damned, in order to aid me? In order to test my faith? In order to make of me an agent of submission to your will?’

Tuman seemed—as ever, particularly after meeting Shamballah Ali—to be concerned with Abd al-Latif; his health, his opium requirements, his soul perhaps from doctoring the insane?

The Turks rode ahead under the pale morning sky, the blazing sun just casting its glow over the right hand horizon from the quarter of India.

To the right of the road the ground rose steadily toward the dry plateau above. The regular appearance of the lone dwellings that had supported roadside gardeners, laundresses, innkeepers, and even those who provide the scholar with his bookish supplies, all stood empty, devoid of habitation.

‘I suppose these folk were the first to move off—or move to Cairo. If to Cairo they are no more. Five-hundred bodies interred in the famine graves every day for three months—as well as the things unspeakable I have seen and heard of—these must have accounted for you good people who greeted my arrival three years gone. Merciful God may these simple folk find cool waters in Paradise. It is best I have given up the writing of the book that so sorrowfully recounts the miseries of Misr. I strike out now in your name God-oh-so-Great.’

They had been two hours up the road, and in two hours more would make camp at Atfih, surely deserted in this time of dearth—and wait out the heat of midday.

To the left of the road was the stubble of reeds, the scorched remnants of a waiving in the wind forest of hollow grass that once sheltered many animals and birds. The reeds were burned dry from the sun’s cruel glare all the way to the river bank, the immediate line of the Tannic Nile outlined by the few paces deep of reeds that yet clung to this bank. The far bank though was a mass of reeds, willows and water plants, a wilderness of crocodiles—‘A place of The Deceiver I think.’

Yusuf could be heard issuing a challenge from behind them and they all turned, Babyr’s two Turks fanning out with knocked arrows prepared to support their lone rearguard.

Walking stiff-legged and hurried, at once youthful in pace and ancient in gait, came Shamballah Ali, his mouth gaping, his one empty socket dressed and patched, his one living eye bulging as it regarded his doctor, who had left him this morning in the care of a good colleague. Shamballah Ali had been eerily grateful when Abd al-Latif had left him Sina’s book, reasoning that he could replace it in Bagdad easily, for the farther East one went, the more Sina was read in medical circles. Shamballah Ali, who had not spoken since he lost his eye, hurried past Yusuf, Abdul and the others to stand beside Abd al-Latif next to Tuman, who stepped off a bit. The insanity sufferer then patted the book case by his side to indicate he had brought Sina’s work. He then drew from the sack that hung lose at his other side, Abd al-Latif’s manuscript, which he had discarded at the base of one of the Commandant’s immolation stakes, where his struggle to document Cairo’s agony could go up in the flames meant to cleanse it.

“Shamballah, friend, you should not be on the road.”

For answer the one-eyed former slaver held out Abd al-Latif’s manuscript. Ibrahm spoke up, “A sign from God that the book of Abd al-Latif should not burn, Master.”

‘The boy is right of course, and this lunatic patient is adamant.’

“Why thank you Shamballah,” he said, as he took the small papyrus book and placed it in his travel bag. The swan quill he had been writing with, and from which he could not part as it was a gift from Ibrahm, would now have company.

Shamballah swelled their ranks by another, and based on his spry pace, he would be no burden.

‘My patients continue to outstrip me in physicality and energy. I must revitalize my mind and body. Perhaps finding the cult center dedicated to The Deceiver by the worst of these people-eaters might go a long way toward healing my own mind.’

Shamballah Ali kept perfect pace with Abd al-Latif as they journeyed on, his one eye forever beadily regarding him.

Before the sun grew too high and hot in the sky the Turks led them into Atfih. This small town was thought to have been long deserted, yet a formal guard of two shepherds, whose flocks had long ago withered under the curse of famine, stood with slings and crooks, and greeted them.

The taller of the two bowed to Abd al-Latif, “Greetings traveler, lodging is free, as the innkeepers are all gone. Water is clean and may be drawn at will. The stables are empty, shady, and free! Clothing is available, along with what food remains, at the grocer’s stall.”

Both of the shepherds then shouted in unison, as if trained to do so by some coin trader, “Welcome to Atfih!”

They preceded in silence, all of them having grown to distrust strangers of the lower classes.

‘I suppose such hard times break the sanity of many, even turning proud shepherds into barter barkers.’

At last, stretching his legs as Niko and Abdul tended to the mounts under the watchful eye of Yusuf and the Turks, Beadra slid up next to him and touched his forearm demurely, “Master it will be cold at night in the Sinai and we have brought so little. Permit me to purchase some linens from the grocer, and I shall make you a cozy bed each and every night.”

He nodded down to her and smiled, “Of course Beadra, whatever you advise. We are still a household while travelling.”

Here blue eyes smiled and danced above her veil and she fell in dutifully behind him as he walked off toward the only open stall in the deserted town bazaar. Ibis preceded him flanked by Babyrs. Tuman, Shamballah and Ibrahm kept close to Abd al-Latif .

A woman dusted off and refolded linens and blankets, tapestries and garments. Her young son worked diligently behind her cutting a bolt of cloth to some specification. Her husband, master of this stall, and it appeared of the entire bazaar and small town as well, greeted them heartily, “Nice to see you travelers. Spare linens for the Sinai nights, a silk scarf and matching robes for your fetching slave-girl, water skins filled to bursting from our good well for the dry upland trek, braziers and incense for the scholarly fireside reading I can well imagine you fine men conducting, and, provisions—enough for all and to spare!”

Abd al-Latif gave over his purse to Beadra, drawing a raised eyebrow from Ibis and a snort of Disdain from Babyrs. Ibis then fixed the Turk with a wicked glare and this continued until the Turk broke the stare and recovered by demanding to see the available provisions. As the women conducted their business off to the side the grocer summoned his son and they began to haul up numerous glass jars with wax-sealed lids, announcing the quality of his wares, “Preserved in our own clean well water, and the finest Red Sea marsh salt, in Venetian glass righteously taken in slaughter not traded with vile Christians, with lids of Cypriot cork.”

Within the dozens of jars proffered for their inspection was soaked flesh, deftly butchered and pickled.

‘What an outrage!’

“Esteemed grocer, the consuming or trafficking in human flesh is a burning offense in Cairo. What is the sense of this—how do you perceive this as a decent practice?”

The ‘shing’ of the blades of Babyrs and Ibis sliding from their scabbards ushered in a tense moment of silence. The wife and Beadra stopped their haggling, and all eyes came to rest on the grocer, who appeared unperturbed. He was a small man with a large head and long narrow limbs who seemed a bright fellow. He raised his hands and spoke calmly in his defense.

“Good man—a civic official I presume—the Sultan’s men came through and told us we must fend for our self as best we could, that the roadside towns were on their own. Our young were all seized—except for my boy here—by the those rascals up in Misr, who kill people and eat them. The rest of our folk perished from starvation even after we shared out the last of the grain. The shepherds brought their flock to water and we lived upon mutton. The mutton ran out months ago. We have never killed, never stained our hands. As the people died of want and dearth we de-fleshed the bodies and buried the bones and innards. We have dug scores of graves. No one is left for the scavengers.”

Yusuf’s voice cracked harshly by his ear, “You are the scavengers. I shall slay you myself dog! Let me find a baby and you die slowly!”

Babyrs was dragging the wife off to a row of huts on the other side of the small bazaar. His men had come up with Yusuf, and accompanied him.

‘Merciful God, I came to render aid along the way, not bring the damnation of the stakes with us up out of Cairo!’

The boy was scampering off behind the grocer’s shed with Ibis after him.

Yusuf was now strangling the grocer with one hand as Beadra cried. In the meantime Tuman, Ibrahm, and Shamballah, quietly observed the rest, no two of them ever looking at the same person or thing at the same time, giving the appearance of a fakir’s mesmerized snakes.

Yusuf spoke between clenched teeth, “Doctor, examine the pickled flesh for age, if that is a portion of your art.”

‘Let it be no baby flesh so that this Grocer’s end will be quick.’

Abd al-Latif reached for a jar of smaller cuts as the grocer spoke in his own defense. ‘The good folk free of sin have all been taken up by the famine. This is the end. This is Hell. The rains shall not return. I was simply being prudent. If we waited any longer to start jarring our neighbors, what with the dearth continuing, they would not have enough meat on them to make them worth eating, let alone pickling.”

He picked up the jar and saw with a start that a small fetal form floated therein. Yusuf saw it too and his knife sent a gout of blood splashing across Abd al-Latif’s shoulder, causing him to wince and lose his grip on the jar. As the jar fell he was in a panic not to let it shatter lest the tiny baby’s body be defiled furthermore. He was stooping and reaching as the jar broke on the flagstone, tearing open his finger just as his hand closed on the shattering jar.

He stood now with his finger running blood, holding it out away from his travelling robes out of habit. A doctor with bloodstained garments did not imbue the patient with confidence. The boy could be heard screaming as Ibis slew him behind the building by means best left unknown. Yusuf cleaved the jars of pickled humanity like a mad man. Off behind them Niko could be heard singing to the horses and his donkey to keep them calm. To his right, from the recesses of a hut that once housed a family the creak of leather, the grunts of Babyrs and the inconsolable whimpering of the wife who was minutes ago folding linens, completed the sound picture of Hell in his mind.

‘Merciful God, please send me a sign that the grocer was wrong, that Hell has not taken root on earth.’

Ibrahm had taken his hand, and before applying a dressing, was just now sucking the blood off of Abd al-Latif’s finger!

‘What?’

“Ibrahm, I see your concern for sparring my garments. However, if one is to be a doctor that detestable act must not be repeated. Why even as you work towards submission-to-God and the embracing of Truth, you have gone and done this Christian thing. Never consume the blood of your patients—even a drop to tidy the finger—for it is a peculiar Christian superstition. Ibrahm, you do not want people thinking you are some dirty blood-drinking Christian priest do you?”

Beadra cried as she leaned against Tuman. Ibrahm looked up into his eyes for a long moment, the most faraway look in his eyes imaginable. The boy seemed slowly to come to a sense of his surroundings and smiled up at his master and would-be father.

“Do not worry Master, I know your mind.”

He then applied the dressing as expertly as Abd al-Latif, a doctor of some fifteen years, ever had, where just yesterday he had fumbled the dressing of Shamballah’s eye socket.

The sound of steel and a gurgling whimper from the hut brought Beadra to a quietly quickening hysteria, so he gathered her in his arm as Ibrahm completed the finger dressing.

‘Merciful God, give me the strength necessary to maintain dignity on this wretched road.’