“Added by holy men,” Al-Khal said angrily.
“Certainly. But we choose the ways we enforce our religious beliefs in the behavior of daily life. This is true of all cultures. And we can choose new ways. You must free your women.”
“I do not like to be given a sermon by anyone but a mullah,” Al-Khal said, mouth tight under his moustache. “Let those who are innocent of crime preach what is right.”
Zeyk smiled cheerily. “This is what Selim el-Hayil used to say,” he said.
And there was a deep, charged silence.
Frank blinked. Many of the men were smiling now, looking at Zeyk with appreciation. And it came to Frank in a flash that they all knew what had happened in Nicosia. Of course! Selim had died that night just hours after the assassination, poisoned by a strange combination of microbes; but they knew anyway.
And yet they had accepted him, taken him into their homes, into their private enclosures where they lived their private lives. They had tried to teach him what they believed.
“Perhaps we should make them as free as Russian women,” Zeyk said with a laugh, extricating Frank from the moment. “Crazed by overwork, don’t they say? Told they are equal, but actually not?”
Yussuf Hawi, a high-spirited young man, leered and cackled: “Bitches, I can tell you! But no more or less than any other woman! Isn’t it true that in the home the power always goes to the strong? In my rover I am the slave, I can tell you that. I kiss snake’s butt daily with my Aziza!”
The men roared with laughter at him. Zeyk took their cups, and poured another round of coffee. The men patched up the conversation as best they could; they covered for Frank’s gross assault, either because it was so far beyond the pale that it only indicated ignorance, or because they wanted to acknowledge and support Zeyk’s sponsorship of him. But only about half of them looked at Frank anymore.
He withdrew and listened again, profoundly angry at himself. It was a mistake to speak one’s mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did. Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy. Out on the escarpment he had forgotten that.
Disturbed, he went out in a prospector again. The dreams became less frequent. When he came back in, he did not take any drugs. He sat silently in the coffee circles, or spoke about minerals and groundwater, or the comfort of the newly modified prospecting rovers. The men regarded him cautiously, and only included him in the conversation again because of Zeyk’s friendliness, which never flagged— except for that one moment, when he had most effectively reminded Frank of one of the basic facts of the situation.
One night Zeyk invited him over for a private dinner with him and his wife Nazik. Nazik wore a long white dress cut in the traditional Bedouin style, with a blue waistband and bare-headed, her thick black hair drawn back into a flat comb and then left to fall down her back. Frank had read enough to know that this was all wrong; among the Bedouin of the Awlad ‘Ali, women wore black dresses and red sashes, to indicate their impurity, sexuality, and moral inferiority, and they kept their heads covered, and used the veil in an elaborate hierarchical code of modesty. All in deference to male power, so that Nazik’s clothes would be deeply shocking to her mother and grandmothers, even if she was, as now, wearing them before an outsider who didn’t really matter. But if he knew enough to understand, then it was a sign.
And then at one point, when they were all laughing, Nazik rose at Zeyk’s request to get them dessert, and she said to Zeyk with a laugh, “Yes, master.”
Zeyk scowled and said, “Go, slave,” and took a swipe at her, and she snapped her teeth at him. They laughed at Frank’s fierce blush, and saw that he understood: they were mocking him, and also breaking the Bedouin taboo against showing marital affection of any kind, to anyone. Nazik came over and put her fingertip on his shoulder, which shocked him further. “We are only joking with you, you know,” she said. “We women heard about your declaration to the men, and we love you for it. You could have as many wives among us as an Ottoman sultan. Because there is some truth to what you said, too much.” She nodded seriously, and pointed a finger at Zeyk, who wiped the grin from his face and nodded as well. Nazik went on: “But so much depends on the people within the laws, don’t you find? The men in this caravan are good men, smart men. And the women are even smarter, and we have taken over entirely.” Zeyk’s eyebrows shot up, and Nazik laughed. “No, really, we have only taken our share. Seriously.”
“But where are you, then?” Frank said. “I mean where are the caravan’s women, during the day? What do you do?”