In the Eye of the Storm (Storm and Silence 2)

I filled my lungs with air. ‘Kneel, you bloody flee-ridden beast! And stop chewing on my sleeve!’

Nothing happened. Youssef cleared his throat again. ‘Well, you could try to…’

‘Kneel!’

The cold, hard voice cut through Youssef’s like a knife through butter. The camel’s knees buckled and I yelped as my feet suddenly hit the ground. Quickly, I braced myself against it and scrambled up into the saddle. When I turned my head to look, I already knew whom I would see.

There he was: Mr Ambrose - the real one, not the camel - sitting in the saddle of his own mount as if it were the armchair in his very own office, his back ramrod straight, his gaze cool and assessing. Unlike all the others, who were all swathed in white Arabian dress, ready for the desert, he was still wearing his back tailcoat. Even his black top hat was still on his head.

‘Thank you.’ I gave him a nod.

He returned it, curtly. ‘Let’s stop wasting time.’

‘Agreed.’ I urged my camel forward. ‘Let’s go, Ambrose!’

‘Excuse me?’ My employer’s eyes sparkled dangerously. ‘Since when do you give orders to me?’

I gave him a charming smile. ‘Oh… I wasn’t talking to you.’

*~*~**~*~*

It didn’t take Mr Ambrose long to discover the name I had given to my dear, trusted friend, the camel.

His reaction?

Well, let’s just say he wasn’t best pleased about it. Of course, he didn’t throw a fit or scream at me or anything like that. Oh no. He was Mr Rikkard Ambrose after all. Words of anger were a waste of his precious time. Instead, he attacked and punished me with the stoniest, coldest, most absolute silence that ever refused to be heard by a human ear. All I got whenever I tried to make conversation was a baleful glare, so I mostly conversed with Ambrose (the one I was sitting on, I mean) instead. I didn’t get any more conversation out of him, but at least he spat at me now and again, in quite a nice way, really.

The days dragged by. We followed a well-travelled road, crossing the arms of the Nile at several points, always travelling towards the sunrise. The air was incredibly heavy and humid, the ground moist beneath our feet. I tried to enjoy it as long as it lasted, knowing that all too soon the ever-present moistness would be replaced by dry, hot desert air. But the mosquitos that flew around and around me, attacking every inch of my skin, made enjoying the trip rather difficult.

Mr Ambrose’s silence meant that any distraction was out of the question. I couldn’t even get an answer out of him about what he planned to do when we ran into the bandits. The few times I tried asking, I was met with a wall of silent ice, and his men weren’t much more forthcoming.

The one ray of sunshine in the whole situation was that after a few days journey, we were joined by our long lost companion, who had been riding ahead, scouting, and avoiding everyone in the hope for the miracle of accelerated beard growth.

‘Karim!’ My face lit up. The rider who approached us had his face covered against the mosquitos, but there was no mistaking that giant form, those massive shoulders, and the even more massive turban. ‘It’s a joy to see you after all this time! Come on, get rid of that rag hiding your face. Show your old friends a smile!’

Very, very slowly, the Mohammedan reached up and drew back the cloth that hid the lower part of his face.

Oh. Apparently, the hoped-for miracle had not occurred.

A word of caution about beards here. Everyone knows that a beard covers your face. But what most people who decide to grow beards don’t consider, and what I learned only now, was that if you grow a beard, the upper half of your face will get a lot of sunlight, while the lower half will get none at all, causing strongly varying degrees of tanning. If then, at some later point, for whatever reason, you have to shave the beard off again, the result will look… interesting.

I stared.

‘Ah. Oh.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Um… so good to see you got out of the fire without any um… major injuries.’

His bushy eyebrows drew together. A storm cloud seemed to appear over his turban, and his eyes flashed.

One word, those eyes seemed to say, one word more and I’ll…

‘Well… so good to see you again,’ I repeated, smiling as broadly as I could, fighting to keep my face straight. ‘So very good. I suppose you want to see the others now to, um… chat. Or whatever it is you men do in your spare time. Well… cheerio, then.’

His eyes flashed warningly one more time. Then he spurred on his camel - a monster of an animal that seemed just able to bear its enormous burden - and rode past me, towards Mr Ambrose. I waited until he was well out of hearing range. When he was, I waited five minutes longer, just to be sure.

Then I collapsed onto Ambrose’s neck, biting on my thobe to conceal my laughter. ‘Oh my God! His face! His bloody face! He looks like… he is so… Oh my God!’

*~*~**~*~*

That was just about the only noteworthy historical event during our expedition though the Nile Delta. The rest consisted of silence, stale bread and an occasional bowl of gruel around a campfire. We passed a few more crossings and a lot of peasants working in the fields. Finally, the vegetation grew sparser, and one day we were standing under a few lonely trees, looking out into the distance, and there were no more trees there, and neither were there bushes, grass, or any other vegetation. All there was were rocky crags, sand, dust and more sand, stretching to the horizon.