They approached the outskirts of Misr and saw few signs of occupation. This sister town to Cairo was shared by Shepherds who did their herding across the dry table lands, miners who worked the small quarries, merchants who had set up on the road to Syria to enjoy first pick of trade bound for Egypt, but mostly served as a refuge for those who preferred the pure Arab lifestyle to the more cosmopolitan Islamic life of Cairo. Now, a pall hung over Misr on the late afternoon heat. The minaret of a mosque rose sublimely above the low two-story skyline, but the cry of the adhan to prayer would not sound. They had only taken this diversion to Misr as a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Imam of the Great Azhar mosque, who wished them to determine the fate of his fellows who had stayed in Misr to man the holy place.

‘And here we ride, nearly into its shadow. Merciful God let us find a survivor.’

Yusuf called a warning halt and they all looked to him, “Ho!”

He pointed over to the Southwest in the quarter of Cairo, to a great dust cloud blowing their way. The air pressure was noticeably absent and unnaturally still. There was a murmur. Babyrs rode back to him, “Doctor what is that?”

“You foolish beast sprung from the loins of an illiterate nation! Just because my brain is unto yours as an ostrich egg is to a sparrow’s does not mean that I can divine every matter of natural phenomena of a land to which I am not native! You should look to your own split lentil of a mind at least as a matter of decorum first, before broadcasting your grasping ignorance for all to hear!”

They all froze in silence as Abd al-Latif’s words fell on their ears.

‘Oh my, that was meant to be but a critical thought!’

Babyr’s looked to him eye-to-eye with utter amazement. He was in such shock over these candid words that anger was the furthest thing from his tongue.

‘Is this it, will Ibis and this maniac now cross swords because of my slipping mind?’

The eyes of Ibrahm, Shamballah Ali, and Tuman all glared at Babyrs with a reptilian intensity. Abdul Matin sat with his mouth wide open and eyes bugged out.

The hearty laugh of Yusuf, as much bark as anything, then split the silence like a hammer. “Well said Doctor, in the Turkish diplomat’s very own tone.”

Babyrs now had a worthy foe to become angry with and he nudged his cruel massive warhorse—quite a different beast from the ponies his two men rode—in a circle toward Yusuf, who merely whistled to his beast to get it to rear and take the high ground with an arrogant snort that seemed like an insult cast from one member of horse-kind upon another.

As the men circled for advantage on their agitated mounts, with hands on sword hilts, Niko was tugging his gown, “Master, Master, you are all foreigners aren’t you, except for Tuman and Shamballa, and Tuman is a delta skulker?”

“Well yes, I suppose we are—you too, no?”

“Oh Master I was born in Cairo. Shamballah and I know what is happening—what that is. My grandfather told me all about it!”

Yusuf and Babyrs let loose some curses and then drew their blades. Ibis nudged his thigh with his shoulder, “Master I’ve been waiting for these two to go it. I have some of my own coin if you’d like to hazard a wager.”

‘What? I am the cause of this—no.’

“Babyrs, I apologize. We are all strangers to this land except the boy and Shamballah here. Let them speak.”

The men nodded to each other as if they had never known hate, and re-sheathed their weapons. They were all now in a circle around Abd al-Latif. Abdul Matin spoke first, “Go on Niko, what is it. I’ve been in Cairo for ten years and have not seen the like.”

Niko nodded to the mutely insane Shamballah Ali, indicating that he would like affirmation of his statement, and Shamballah gave it, with a grave nod. The boy—who was regarded as a bit slow in the head as a general consensus—put his hands together and grinned, then, sure he had an attentive audience did a nice piece of oratory.

“My grandfather spoke of it as caused by severe drought and a lack of fertilizing. You see all of the shit that the farmers lay out in mounds and then turn over in their fields when the flood comes to make the ground grow with plants. That city-load of shit has all been drying in the sun for a year now! And now, God is angry at us people for eating each other and he’s blowing up a wind out of the desert across the Nile. Don’t you see stupid heads, we are about to get hit by a shit storm! This is a big thing. I never thought I’d see a shit storm, let alone watch warriors get knocked from their horses by mountains of flying shit!”

Shamballah Ali was nodding in agreement. Niko was so excited that he grabbed Ibrahm by the hands and the two boys danced in a circle of joy. Babyrs barked an order in Turkic and he and his three men made off at a gallop toward the ruins of Misr.

Yusuf barked like a dog, “Grassland babies! Hell, I crawled through the sewers of Granada. Granted it was a bit wetter and better quality shit than this, but all you need fear is mouth and nose. Scarf up everyone, like a good wife!”

By the time the pelting fecal wind storm hit them they were walking well-covered two-by-two—mounted people to the storm, and walkers sheltered beside them—behind Niko, who all thought should lead the way triumphantly into Misr since he had proved the Astronomer of the Day.