The milk was still warm and frothy and it calmed me.
Only after Saba had returned and we were mounted and had climbed the first dune did my heart fall. For there, in all its endless, treacherous glory, the vast wasteland that swallowed even the strongest men seemed to stretch to the end of the world. And above, the sun that turned those same men to dust dared us to try crossing.
I had thought our journey the night before marked my initiation to the Nafud. How naïve was I.
CHAPTER SIX
OUR CAMELS PLODDED those searing sands for hours before we found shade beneath boulders during the hottest time of the day. If not for the wide, flat stretches between the dunes we would have had to rest much sooner. In that shade we rested several hours before mounting again and pressing on.
We drank no water, only milk, which was already beginning to sour from the morning’s draw. To this end Judah placed a stone at the bottom of a bowl and poured milk to the top of the stone. This much he served to each of us in turn, for no Bedu man will take more than any other, and they gave me the same portion.
Judah and Saba favored the sour milk more than I, but with such a parched throat, I relished each drop. And was this not true also of my parched soul? The thought of how far we still had to travel tormented me.
“When will we reach a well, Saba?” I asked as the sun began to set.
“We pass no wells where we go,” he said. “Only when we reach the other side.”
I was alarmed. “And how far?”
“Ten stages with good fortune.”
“We have enough water?”
“With good fortune. The water is for the camels. We drink only milk.”
I had counted the sagging skins of water—there were twelve, each quite large, two of which were seeping moisture. It is said that Bedu can live for a month on camel’s milk alone, for it is food as well. I knew that camels could endure five days without water, but struggling over such steep sands, Shunu looked haggard already. Yet if Saba said it was enough water, I would believe that it was enough.
“And with bad fortune?” I asked.
“There will be no such fortune,” Judah said. “You are safe with us, Maviah.”
But I didn’t want his optimism then. I wanted to put my fear to rest with reason, which Saba provided.
“We have enough for eight days,” he said. “Then we will be out of water and the milk will no longer flow. We can then travel for another two days. With bad fortune it will take longer.”
“Yet we have the male to slaughter,” Judah said. “This will give us more time. You will see, Maviah.”
My mind then began imagining all manner of bad fortune.
“I’ve heard that many get lost in the Nafud,” I said. “By night you have the stars, but by day only the sun. The desert looks the same to me—only sand and more mounds of sand. How can you know we travel true?”
“The sand speaks,” Saba said. He indicated the small dune ahead and to our left. “The wind at this time comes from the southeast, making the horns of this dune point northwest. Our path is now west.”
“How do you know the wind comes from the southeast?”
“Because I know,” he said. “And when the largest dunes fail to bend with the wind, or we find reason to detour, then three sides is the quickest way around.”
I glanced at Judah, who looked at me as if this should make perfect sense. It didn’t. But I wasn’t leading the way.
I had other concerns and found no reason not to express them in turn.
“What if we meet other Thamud ahead?”
“Then we will avoid them,” Judah said.
“What if they see us first?”
“Then we will kill them.”
“What if one of the camels breaks a leg?”
“Then we will eat it.”
“What if a sandstorm comes?”
To this neither gave a reply.
“You have many questions for a woman,” Saba finally said.
Judah ignored him. “If the sands blow, then we will pray.”
Unlike most Bedu of the north, Saba rode shirtless in the heat, baring his well-muscled chest, arms, and back to the sun. It is known that a cloak keeps sweat from drying too quickly and so preserves one’s water and cools the body, but this wasn’t the way of his people, who were Bedu from the far north, he said. I knew that he’d come to my father when his tribe had been slaughtered by the Thamud while he was tending to a caravan far away. Under Rami, he lived only to seek vengeance.
Judah wore a white undershirt and an earthen-colored aba. His headcloth was white as well, held in place by a black woolen agal. And yet even he periodically stripped off his aba and his cloak to bare his skin for a short while.