“Often a traveler would pass through a sizeable village without finding a single inhabitant alive.”

He had held his head in the lap of Beadra through all of the hot hours of the afternoon, in an attempt to wipe the most recent horrors from his mind. Ibrahm, Tuman, and Shamballah Ali squatted on their haunches and watched him like three wise men. Only Ibrahm spoke, in the wise voice that seemed to reflect a newly won wisdom ever since his return from the ill-fated attempt to deliver a message to the Commandant a month ago, “Master you have worried so much on behalf of others, given so much care to the babies and mothers, and advice to the warriors. Do not sorrow over this. It was beyond your control. The goodness in your soul We know. It is apparent We see, and will serve you safe and in good health.”

Beadra continued to pet his head, which she had relieved of its turban so that she could cool him with well water and comb his hair.

He looked from her lap to Ibrahm, seeming so serene and sounding so compassionately wise, a boy; leader of these two haunted men, both old enough to be his father. They appeared for all the world like a conclave of sufis.

The boy and the two men then rose and began assisting Niko with watering the mounts and feeding them from the unused hay store found in one of the stables, the donkeys therein having been used for food before their own sustenance had been exhausted. Beadra then began to speak in her soft way as she petted his thin beard.

“Master, when I was being transported down this road on donkey back under the sign of Pisces, my owner passed this very spot. There was still the appearance of a community as the people began to move to Cairo. The man who owned me sent me over across the road with a pot of water to wash his gown on the washing stones among the reeds while he lazed over here. The reeds yet stood close to the road. I followed a path to where the washer women said their stones were; ‘not all the way to the river’, they said, for fear of crocodiles, but just out of sight.”

Her hand began to pet his beard more vigorously, as if his chin whiskers were some sort of memory aid. Her voice became more distant, and yet more precise in diction.

“Among the reeds there were woman-made alcoves—little forsaken spots where the Faithful ladies would beseech God beyond the hearing of their masters. Growing over curious I took one byway and came to a sickly-sweet-smelling room; a floor of beaten reeds, open to the sky. A woman sat cradling a bloated and decomposing corpse, eating flesh from the thighs, raw with her quivering fingers. She was free and Faithful, I a slave and Unbeliever, so I was in no position to make a formal reproach. My gasp served for that, and she snapped to her defense, tears running down her famished face, ‘It is my husband. Our flesh is bound one-to-one. Get on with you slut.’

“Even then Master, it did not dawn upon me that I was destined to be sold for food; that I would bring more as mutton than as concubine. I have never been more fortunate than to have been rescued by you.”

She kissed his head in an attempt to complete her spell as the men and boys watered the donkeys in what might have been a scene of bucolic bliss in better days.

‘I have never been more fortunate than to have the slave girl of my heart’s desire conveniently forget that it was my man-servant who rescued her as I clung dumbstruck and in panic to my boy-servant’s heroic donkey!’

‘Perhaps then you might live up to her misplaced adulation and do something heroic for once in your inquisitive life. The ‘Good Doctor’, the ‘Baby Doctor’, the ‘Learned al-Latif’, my ‘Kind Master’, blah, blah, blah. I would give over all of those fawning accolades for one moment as a Man! To stand as a Man in defiance of this evil world, I would give my very soul!’

Even as she noted the tension in his breast and softened her caresses, and he by habit counted the beats of his heart in an absentminded quantification of its capacity, he received a message either from God or from The Deceiver. For as Abd al-Latif’s silent pledge to give his soul for a moment of manliness passed within his mind, Shamballa Ali, Tuman, and Ibrahm all turned to look at him as if he had just shouted their names—and they looked to him with a maternal love in their eyes, a loving look that he remembered well from his days as a boy, ever on his mother’s knee as she praised his good intentions and noble aspirations.

‘I do not know what should be worse, to be heard damning my soul by God above, or his jealous angel below?’