The Bird

One fine afternoon, as Salim guided his donkey through the arid moonscape of the Jebel Hafaz he saw something quite unusual.

He was taking a short cut back from market in the neighbouring valley – as many did. His donkey was laden with honey combs, Turkish figs, tubs of Greek yogurt, spices and a dozen other items requested by his housekeeper, other servants and, of course, his mother. He could have sent his housekeeper – she would have loved the opportunity for a dilatory afternoon’s gossip, spending more of his money than was strictly necessary – but he felt a need to live out the homilies of his good friend Sr Hassan and ‘get in touch with the reality of the common man’.

You would have thought he was proposing a reformation of the municipal code! But he was persistent. He overrode the disappointment of the housekeeper and had her furnish him with a detailed list and copious instructions; assured his mother that his sandals were stout enough and that he would wear ample head-dress and take water; and soothed the groom who was in a fluster as to which of his animals would prove the most tractable. And here he was, on his way back.

What Salim saw was a small cage. At first he merely glimpsed the bleached outline of an angular concatenation of sticks. He would have dismissed it, but a metallic glint gave him pause. As he drew near he saw that it was in fact a trap of sorts wedged between the harsh powdery rocks. And trussed within was the intimation of a living creature. With a most extraordinary appearance! Even amid the dust the parts visible seemed to shimmer with coppery accents as if lit by an inner fire.

As he crouched over the cage he was enveloped by a sense of enormity – enveloped, as an open doorway is inevitably buried beneath drifting desert sand. He could not yet tell what he was looking at, but somehow he knew that here was injustice and tragedy. Brittle sticks and twists of rusted wire confined something lustrous. Fur? - Or, now that he peered more closely, strange feathers. Dead surely – and the looming sense of portent jogged his gut, like a rudely jesting fate. Cautiously he worked a finger between the sticks and wire (absently worrying about fleas, and disease). The flesh was still warm – probably the sun. Then it squirmed and he recoiled, shocked. And immediately a torrent of indignant compassion welled up. In a rage of pity he laid hold of the cage and would have torn it apart with naked hands, but the wire resisted, deforming, and the wounded creature writhed and gave a faint, weak mew of discomfort. Horrified, he wished he had a pair of tin snips to hand.

Gently he tried to lift the cage. It shifted only a little. It seemed stuck between two of the powdery rocks. Gently, now. His mother would scold him for scuffing and griming his hands. Ignoring pain and unease (scorpions!) he forced his hands between the rim of the cage and the rocks, feeling for an obstruction, an anchorage, some kind of tether. And something dislodged. Carefully, patiently he was able to work the cage loose. It was tethered to a stake. Doggedly he worked the stake back and forth, trying to disturb the cage as little as possible.

At last, it was free.

In an anguish of tenderness, he balanced the bundle on one of the panniers and steadying it with his left hand persuaded the stolid donkey to walk. Every step seemed unacceptably jarring and in a froth of anxiety he naively prayed – half his mind bluntly petitioning the deity for the survival of his burden, the other half grimly focused on traversing the drifting sands of his shifting path.

*****

Salim stood framed in the courtyard archway and imperiously summoned aid. Abandoning the donkey to the flustered housekeeper (‘put upon’, she was, as she remarked to the flagstones – a housekeeper, not a ‘donkey-manager’) he ordered the groom to fetch his tools and meet him in his apartments immediately.

“What sort of tools master?” the groom inquired, impressed by Salim’s sense of urgency and neglecting to inject his usual querulous note.

“Tin-snips, pliers, wire-cutters, what-have-you. I need to cut through this without damaging the contents!” He gestured at the bundle balanced on the pannier.

The groom peered at it, not really taking it in. Then his curiosity piqued: he had glimpsed enough to excite the gossip and meddler in him. But the edge of Salim’s voice brought him back.

“Quickly, before mother comes!” And without further ado his master gathered up the bundle and cradling it in both arms glided swiftly up the exterior staircase to the entrance of his suite.

In haste, carrying an assortment of work boxes, draped with tool bags, anything to hand, the groom shuffled awkwardly up the staircase, announcing himself with impressive throat-clearing and a muttered afterthought of, “Master!” Salim did not turn but peremptorily waved him forward. ‘Not like his normal, courteous self’, the groom found time to reflect even as he rose to the apparent urgency of the occasion: ‘What’s got into him?’

The bundle lay on the marble floor beneath the open balcony windows (even in his aroused state Salim baulked at getting muck on his Persian carpet). Demanding a pair of snips, Salim inserted the point beneath one of the wire strands and began to cut. With each snip the trap was unstitched, surrendering its integrity. Pieces were removed: bleached, fragmented sticks knotted with cruel barbs and twists of rusty wire littered the serenity of his polished floor. And within was revealed the like of which he had never yet seen, or even heard.

It was a bird, long necked and with metallic coloured feathers that seemed to reflect every fiery hue of the spectrum. So intriguing was the brushed plumage that Salim involuntarily forgot his urgency and ran his finger lightly over the creature’s flank. And one again its flesh trembled.

Galvanised, Salim began to think rapidly: he must prepare a nest – the house keeper would have materials; and who would know about birds? – He must ask Sr Hassan. Wasn’t there an amateur falconer somewhere in the southern part of town? Bird-food? – better wait on someone knowledgeable.

The groom broke in on his thoughts: “I’ve got some liniment that’s very good master, if you’d like some…”

“For donkeys. This is a bird. Please go and tell Sr Hassan that I need him. I need someone who knows about birds. Ask him about the falconer in south town. And send the housekeeper up immediately. You can take these tools with you.”

‘Unlike himself’, reflected the groom, smarting as he trudged downstairs.

The house keeper arrived in her habitual fluster. Salim demanded nesting materials. In short order, the housekeeper returned with torn shirts, scrappy blankets and worn out sheets.

Then mother arrived. Just as Salim, with painful tentativeness began to attempt to transfer the bird to the freshly improvised nest.

“Don’t hurt her!”

“Why do you assume it’s female?” Secretly, he was annoyed – this had been his find, his adventure.

Mother subsided with a disapproving moue while Salim, emboldened by his annoyance wrapped his hands gently around the bird’s chest and began to lift. It protested faintly and weakly tried to bat against his grip. Steeling himself Salim began to gather its wings firmly together as a prelude to decisive action. And then checked. There was something under the wings, shielded by them.

Two chicks were revealed, prostrate, spent in exhaustion.

Salim’s mother gave him a knowing look of vindication but disdained to verbalise her triumph. Instead she gave orders to the housekeeper in a tone that seamlessly synthesised injury, matriarchal authority and virtue: “milk, an eyedropper, spirit lamp and saucepan: quickly now!”

Salim perched on a coffee table while his mother fed the chicks with the eye-dropper. Sr Hassan arrived, exclaimed in learned wonderment and then hesitantly demurred, pointing out that birds don’t suckle their young – that being a mammalian trait – ‘and was mother certain that milk was appropriate’.

“Everything that lives can take nourishment from milk”, pronounced mother with feminine complaisance.

Sr Hassan started to witter about lactose intolerance but was eclipsed by the arrival of the falconer. “Raw mince-meat, bloody if possible”, he pronounced. “From the hooked beak and talons you can see the dame is a bird of prey.” Salim ordered that meat be fetched. The housekeeper crossed paths with the groom as he straggled in from being sent after the falconer by Sr Hassan.

Peering between voluminous robes and bodies the groom saw that the chicks were still ravenous and mother was refilling the eye-dropper. The bird strained her neck wearily at the sound of their squabbling and then, reassured, allowed her head to subside on the marble paving. Salim’s heart lurched pitifully – she had refused all food thus far.

The chicks demolished the mince, drank more milk, even ate crumbled biscuit slipped to them by the housekeeper (and indulged by mother) and, no doubt, would have consumed even the groom’s tarry throat lozenges given the opportunity had not Salim quietly but decisively taken control. He ordered the housekeeper and groom out, profusely thanked the falconer and promised his attendance to consult that gentleman’s extensive texts on avians, and was left with Sr Hassan and his mother in attendance. After a further five minutes of concern and counter-protestation he virtually shoe-horned his mother out of his door, but only after promising to allow her back in the morning to check on the patients. (He pointed out that the mother bird obviously could not be moved and that it would distressing and deeply injurious to her to be separated from her chicks in her fragile state: therefore, the chicks would ‘remain in his custody – thank you!’) Then, after a further quarter hour’s musings in which Sr Hassan informed him gravely and in detail that he had absolutely no idea what kind of bird it was – that worthy gentleman and scholar departed, leaving copious assurances that he would not rest until he had consulted every book in his library, and further afield if necessary in his quest to illuminate the mystery.

The bird had still not eaten. The chicks slept, snugged up under the curve of its wings, only their tiny beaked heads peeping out from shelter. Salim had failed to transfer the bird to its fabric nest. It still lay on the remnants of the dismembered cage and on the cold marble floor beneath. Worried, Salim remarked, “What are we going to do with you?”

Silence deepened. He had paperwork to catch up on – the whole afternoon and evening had been spent on this…mission of mercy. He should focus. Distant street sounds intruded momentarily – laughter; the sound of a door closing. Then silence gathered again, thicker than before. He could hear the bird breathing – a slightly hoarse and laboured sound: he could even hear the counterpoint of the chicks lighter and more rapid breaths.

Work was impossible. He looked up from his desk. One of the bird’s pitch black eyes seemed to be regarding him. Impossible to tell – he could not imagine what thoughts or intentions lay behind that bead – or if the bird regarded him at all.

He fretted.

“Why won’t you eat?”

And, “Your babies were hungry enough!”

Then, “Do not even think of dying on me!”

But there was no reaction.

Cast back on himself he considered what he should do.

Salim knelt of the flagstones besides the bird and began to pray. And as he began to pray he experienced an unexpected sense that something was listening to him. His perspective shifted: it was like plunging into ink-dark water – down, down – concerns and pre-occupations ablated from his person – he drifted timeless and naked. After an immeasurable moment he opened his eyes and found that the bird had moved its head and was clearly regarding him. Compassionately he placed a gentle hand on its back and slipped once again into prayer. He had never experienced such certainty before: he told God, respectfully and with a trusting heart, that it was imperative that the bird recover; and he knew that he was heard.

For time unmeasured he remained in this posture, his hand resting gently on the quiet bird, until his knees grew numb beyond feeling and he felt himself detached and serene.

He awoke just as the dawn rays were peering over the hills. He had never imagined that he could fall asleep in such an uncomfortable position, collapsed on his side, half on the Persian rug. He was cold.

The bird was also asleep. It had spent the night on the marble floor. He looked intently – it was still breathing. Subsiding he stared sightlessly at the ceiling and allowed his aches to present themselves.

‘Respectfully, one by one’, he mused: “Sir this is you knee reporting…”

‘I slept with a bird. How absurd. This is the morning after. Other young men would be curled up with a harlot – badge of manhood, isn’t it? Or a wench, somewhere. What the heck is a harlot anyway? In theory, yes. But what does one smell like, feel like. What does she talk like and what’s behind her eyes that I should desire? Where would I find one – no, let’s not think of that.’ (He dismissed images of thin outcasts hovering like flies in the vicinity of the city gate – instead Salim’s mind slipped voluptuously into imaginations of a tall regal woman of piercing beauty swathed in magnificent silks.

“I spent the night with a bird. “

“Did anything happen?”

“No.”

“Are you Serious!?”

“Well, the bird didn’t die.”

“Hah! Is that what usually happens to you? Watch yourself Salim. As the American’s say, ‘Get a life’.”

The bird seemed stronger. Salim experimentally stoked a finger down the feathers of its back. It did not flinch.

“And, how are your chicks today?”

If anything it seemed as if the bird stiffened slightly in disdain. But it could have been his imagination. Where was the eyedropper. And the milk and other paraphernalia. But before he could stir himself he heard the muted swish of a robe and the soft footfall of his mother.

Mother had brought a hamper filled with all the necessaries. The chicks guzzled their milk and devoured their meat. They squabbled happily, heads bobbing frenetically. They seemed recovered, quite. But the bird ate nothing; merely watched with relaxed indulgence, if a slight unstiffening of the long and plumed neck that supported that cruelly beaked head could be called ‘indulgence’.

“I’m going to pay Mrs Salomon a call this morning.”

“That’s nice, mother”

“She says you haven’t seen Sophia in ages”

“For heaven’s sake, Sophia and I were friends in school!”

“Well, she’s turned out very nicely.”

Salim did not deign to reply, and after a charged pause, mother left, chin held high.

And left behind her an unwelcome and curious visitor. Unnoticed, her corpulent and long-indulged tomcat crouched behind drapes watching – his particular interest, the chicks. Lucy, as he was known (short for Lucifer – a girl’s name was not inappropriate; he was, after all, a eunuch) was possessed of a dark and greedy nature: as lord over all household vermin he thought the chicks (and their mother) quite within the ambit of his business and was determined to do something about them.

Patiently he waited. Salim washed himself, breakfasted; prepared to go about his business. Messengers arrived with letters, agendas, contracts, resolutions – paperwork of all kinds, and Salim received them at his desk in the adjoining office suite. And the bird, tempted by curiosity and boredom came to the doorway, where she took up station ignoring the bustle of feet that flowed respectfully around her. That is when Lucy made his move.

The first Salim knew about it was an ear shattering call that blended the hauteur of the peacock with an eagle’s rage – and this piercing sound was immediately under-laid by yowling and hissing. Salim raced to the doorway, scattering papers and an astounded equerry behind him. He barely glimpsed Lucy, no more than a sooty smudge cowering in the orbit of the drapes, before his attention was entirely captured by the bird. Half turned away from him, her wings were outspread and glowing with metallic splendour. Her neck was outthrust and her beak wide, sinuous tongue vibrating with the energy of her shrieking challenge, and one set of talons clawed upon the floor. The chicks, aghast, clustered beneath her. So brilliant was her rage that the air about her seemed to shimmer with colour, light and heat.

Lucifer made good his escape as Salim rushed forward. He reached out his hand towards the bird, as if to stay her; then thought better of it – she might easily amputate one of his fingers. But withdrawing his hand he was even more disconcerted. She was warm. Hot! He could feel the heat beating on his skin. He could feel it on his face, like the open door of an oven.

*****

The rest of the morning passed without routinely. Salim was, of course, disconcerted, even a little frightened at what he had witnessed. He was not completely sure that his experience was objectively real. There was some slight discolouration of the paint opposite where the bird had done her ‘pyrotechnic’ threat display; but then he could not swear that it had not been there before. He supposed that if the bird was similarly roused again she might display the same behaviour. But then, she might not – it could hardly be an objective test of something, the mechanism of which he had no understanding. In any case, the thought of deliberately upsetting her was not one which he found easy to entertain.

Early that afternoon, Salim set about providing the bird and her chicks a safer refuge. The falconer responded to his call for a consultation (bring several choice trade pamphlets and periodicals with him) and waxed both lyrical and dilatory about the ‘magnificent predator’ needing a suitable eyrie amid ‘towering rocky crags’ and ‘close to heaven’. (The bird preened herself, approvingly – as if she understood.) Salim nodded and exclaimed in agreement and admiration of this disquisition. What he took from it however was that an elevated pillar should be constructed, topped by an overhanging platform inaccessible to (less magnificent) predators, (such as Lucy). This he instructed the groom to accomplish and by evening it was done. The platform was even furnished with nesting material – sticks, twigs, a few rags – arranged into the semblance of a nest.

Salim approached the bird wearing thick workman’s gauntlets – he had no wish to lose a digit. “Do I need a fencing mask?” he asked, “or are you going to behave? It’s for your benefit. Actually, it’s mainly for the benefit of your chicks.” She made no resistance when, cradling the chicks in rough palms, he removed them to the top of the pillar. With a shrug of her wings she joined them there.

The rest of the evening passed off without incident. Unless the complaints of Salim’s mother, who had to mount a set of steps in order to feed the chicks might be counted as an incident. ‘My mother, God bless her’ – Salim let slip his thoughts in an uncharitable moment – ‘is a walking, talking incident all in a league of her own!’

During the night Salim smelled smoke. It didn’t smell like the groom smoking a pipe. It smelled altogether more acrid. Like wood burning. A house burning somewhere? He padded to the balcony, thinking fussily, “If its that groom, he’s going to get a talking to – I’m not having him smoking under my window.”

In the courtyard there was a faint glow of coals. By the bird’s nest. Salim propelled himself downstairs, judging in a split second that he did not have time to put on sandals. Ignoring some things sharp that insulted his feet he reached the plinth on which the nest stood. It was smouldering. On tiptoe he swept away some of the smoking nest material heedless of his singeing hands. Bur carefully now – he did not want to hurt the chicks further… if they were there… if they still lived.

He cursed the darkness. Fortunately there was some moon. But its light was too uncertain. He could not see the chicks. Or the bird.

Suddenly, like the belling of a curtain stirred by sudden airs, there she was, spreading the arch of her wings. She seemed to be glowing. He could see the chicks now, nestled in the sanctuary of her breast. Was she glowing or could he see them by the moonlight? The chicks seemed fine. She was radiating heat. His hands were burning. She looked at him disdainfully, down her beak, for all like a lady rudely disturbed in her private chambers.

“What is it with you?” he exploded, goaded by pain and fear. “Are you setting things on fire? Are you?”

If anything, she seemed to glow a little brighter. A twig burst into flame. The chicks were loving it. Basking!

It is, perhaps, to Salim’s eternal credit that his response was practical. After a brief stunned pause he simply said, “Oh well then, I suppose ordinary nest material won’t do for you. We’ll sort it out tomorrow.” With that he turned on his heel and hobbled back to bed, via the bathroom, where he applied a little salve to his hands. They were not badly burned. Not enough to fuss about and wake the house. Besides, he wanted to think about developments first.

But events superseded Salim or, to put it another way he slept late – later than he should have. As he drowsily reached towards consciousness he became aware of conversation in the courtyard. Conversation marked by a certain tension of cadence! Rapidly concentrating his thoughts and moving with an alacrity unusual for his just having woken he reached the balcony and, keeping a low profile, peered over the balustrade.

The groom had discovered the burnt nest material. His mother, bent on her breakfast ministrations to the chicks, had encountered the groom. As water simmers in a pot coming to the boil their conversation had begun to percolate, not with any wise or efficacious objective in view, but with heat, noise and steam. Mother was, understandably affronted, concerned, even frightened; the groom was perplexed and waxing superstitious; the bird watched them both with haughty detachment, cosseting her drowsy offspring under the curve of a wing.

Salim pattered down the stairs: “Nothing to fuss about – entirely expected – just as the falconer predicted – it’s what they do, that kind of bird.” And flatly, in response to the grooms expostulation, “Yes, of course she set fire to the nest material: we should have realised beforehand.” (Aside, to mother – “Don’t fuss so: the chicks are fine – I’m sure they will be grateful for the milk…and mince…are those dried figs!?) And before his momentum with the groom was lost: “Doesn’t Mother have a marble washbasin in storage – you know, for when her room is renovated? Well, could you please find it and bring it here!”

Within half an hour, spurred by the force of Salim’s ruthlessly manufactured confidence, they had installed the basin on the plinth, its plug-hole bunged with a nicely rounded stone. And, in turn, the chicks had been installed in the basin where they quickly developed an amusing game: half-clambering, half-propelling themselves the rim by frantic beating of their immature wings, they then slid down on their tail-feathers to collect in a tangled but hilarious heap around the bung. The mother bird, initially doubtful, had begun to get into the spirit of things and was softly cawing over them.

Salim felt it was time for a well-deserved cup of coffee.

Released from immediate duty, the groom, with a muttered excuse, headed straight for the courtyard gate and the street beyond. ‘And the coffee house’, thought Salim: ‘There goes trouble.’

“You stole my basin”

“You wanted the chicks to have it”

“You didn’t ask… And you’ve been promising me a new one ever since.”

“It’s been two weeks, mother.”

“Months!”

“Mother! We’re not planning on doing the renovations before autumn.”

“I’ve invited some of your friends for supper this Saturday.”

“Oh… and I suppose you expect me to come.”

“I told them the invitation was from you.”

“You’re meddling. I’ll develop a bad flu, or something.”

“You can’t. Sophia is coming. You need to get out more in any case.”

“Mother, you are impossible. Sophia may appeal to you, but what about me?”

“What’s not to like about Sophia?”

“It’s just that…I don’t know…”

“She has good morals and is kind with it. Good family. And she’s a beautiful girl.”

“Yes, but…”

“I can’t claim to understand how men see these things, but she seems to have the… physical attributes that men look for. She is attractive isn’t she?”

“There’s nothing wrong with Sophia’s looks. Mother, this is embarrassing!”

“And she is a hard worker – skilled on the loom and in the kitchen, and she’s been groomed to be an excellent household manager....”

“Mother!” Salim growled a sub-vocal warning but was ignored.

“…If her mom is anything to go by… And she’s been to all the right schools.”

Salim raised an interdicting hand: “I can’t imagine you wanting competition, especially is she’s as competent as all that.”

“You misunderstand me. We’ll get on fine. God didn’t see fit to bless me with daughters but I grew up in a hard-working household. Ever since your father passed I’ve been dreaming of a good daughter in law.”

“To boss around, like me!”

“Boss around?... My boy, it may be all very well for you to follow in your father’s footsteps as an administrator, but I come from a line of merchants. I want someone I can work with.”

“It sounds like you’re more interested in what you want than who I might get on with. I’m sorry you felt stifled by father, but I’m not sure that using me to get what you want…what you wanted…” Salim foundered, still a boy, unprivy to the holiness of his parents’ griefs. But his mother pressed on, heedless.

“Your father was a good man, but there was such a lot of him…sometimes it felt like having a cow lie on top of y.ou.”

“He was a bull!” spluttered Salim

“Whatever. It felt like being covered in a carpet of meat. I had to be a thorn” – she laughed wryly – “a thorn in his side…just to keep a little breathing space: I was a good wife though.”

“How can you speak like that?” Salim responded, aghast, “You’ve grown into a whole thorn bush since!”

“That is a bit unkind of you. I have become a tree.” And then archly, “A strong thorn tree. And if you look at my branches you will see that though the thorns are like bayonets that impale my enemies, they are quite widely spaced and there is room for little birds to perch between them. There is room for you – always will be – and there will be room for Sophia too.”

Salim glared blackly at his mother. ‘Meat blanket!’ he thought. She was a small woman but her weight sometimes seemed disproportionately unbearable.

“There are other good reasons for you having your friends around on Saturday, and even better reasons for you courting Sophia, or at least being seen to pay her proper attention. The rumours about you and that bird of yours are undermining your standing.”

“Ridiculous!”

“See it from the towns-folk’s point of view. You go everywhere with that creature perched on your shoulder, on that smelly leather apron thing.”

“Well, she invited herself along. And it’s a hawking-sheath – the falconer sold it to me.”

“And there are the stories the groom has been spreading about her fire-starting abilities: increasingly lurid tales hinting at large conflagrations and heaps of charred corpses, I hear.’

“Darn! I warned him not to trifle….”

“And I hear of an incident with the cooper’s donkey…?”

“She has healing powers. The donkey was nearly dead”

“From what I heard, the incident was quite colourful. The workshop was largely destroyed.”

“That’s an exaggeration. A few barrels were overturned.”

“I heard that she sank her talons into the animal’s rump; there was green fire and smoke and the donkey bolted in uncontrollable terror.”

Salim guffawed and raised his hands entreating reason: “Back from the dead, mother. And there was no fire. Once the cooper realised that the donkey was healed there were no complaints.”

“But that is not the story I heard – and it is not the story the townsfolk are hearing. You are being touted as a wizard and the bird as your familiar.”

*****

Sconces burned, casting their flickering light on the walls of the dining chamber. Salim sat in state at the head of the table. He was wearing his best clothes. He felt a little uncomfortable – overproduced – but at the same time he felt a tingle of excitement and pride. Mother and the housekeeper really had done quite a fine job. He was gratified: most of his friends had turned up. Ser Hassan was the oldest, and by his weight lent dignity (even profundity) to the proceedings. There were quite a few others, even a scapegrace cousin of his. But the most significant guest… (Salim could not help feeling she was illuminated, as if by raging fires, or the beams of the rising sun…or at least the moon – but this was entirely subjective – her illumination was accomplished by his latent sense of social awkwardness and a subliminal conviction that everyone was watching – in fact she was very demure)… the most significant guest was Sophia.

Her fine shawl, of delicate, dark muslin, was tightly drawn around her porcelain face which seemed to bob in the torch-lit shadows like a rising moon undulating on the waters of a slow river. So compelling was this momentary impression that Salim involuntarily lifted his eyes to the ceiling expecting to find the real Sophia floating there, serene and utterly still, regarding the party beneath her with resigned and faintly melancholic compassion.

Instead he saw a flash of burnished copper: there was the bird, on her perch. Mother had insisted that the perch not be placed behind him – it would only reinforce the wizardly image that this party was designed to help him shuck. (And, before that, he had insisted that the bird be present – “If she wants to be.”) But he wasn’t sure that placing the bird behind Sophia was a well-considered idea.

General conversation pattered on, like the ceaseless babble of a cataract or a reach of stony rapids. Salim found himself responding reflexively to questions and comments about municipal issues and political currents. Courses were served and wine was drunk. In due course he found himself on his feet circulating among his still seated guests, murmuring greetings and platitudes of good will.

But when he reached Sophia, he found himself tongue-tied. She blushed deeply and looked down, shrinking. He wished a pox on all interfering relatives. Blundering forward, he reached out an inappropriate hand and mouthed something about it being ‘awkward’, and they should just ignore parents. She raised a shocked and timid face.

And the bird gave a piercing scream and stooped from its perch, cruelly raking the shawl from her head with its talons. Sophia shrieked, cowering and covered her head with delicate, hennaed hands. And after a frozen instant, Salim launched himself forward, moving to bat the creature away. But she was too quick for him and in an instant had launched herself into the air and back, where she perched on a tall cupboard.

“How dare you!” roared Salim, his self-control vanishing in an instant conflagration of indignation and pity on behalf of the defenceless Sophia. ‘How dare you, after all that I have done for you?’ But this last was unspoken though, in Salim’s mind, the thought seemed to reverberate deafeningly.

She regarded him with burnished hauteur. Unmoving. The shawl burst into flame and disintegrated, falling piecemeal from her talon.

On Sunday morning Salim lounged by the pool in the central courtyard. It was quite a large pool. Water-lilies covered one end of it. Water fed from a spring dribbled into it. Dragonflies flitted about.

Salim was in a sulk, but in spite of that the bird was there, on her perch. They were like two lovers, angry with each other, but unwilling to do without each other.

“Darn!” muttered Salim. “Well, that was a pointless exercise. Self-destructive. Embarrassing… Very embarrassing!”

“And you!” He lifted a hostile glare at the bird. “You are your own worst enemy. Mother will be outraged – never mind how fond she is of your chicks, she will want you in a cage. Somewhere far away. For my good. No doubt she will say its for your good too.”

Salim ruminated blackly while water continued to slop into the pool.

“I suppose I’m just fooling myself. You are an animal. A wild animal – that’s what you are!” The bird fluttered down to perch on the arm of Salim’s chair.

“I keep on feeling that there is something more.” Salim looked up pleadingly. “But how could you turn on Sophia like that? She is harmless. In fact, she is sweet. Gentle. And rather beautiful. She would make a good mistress for you, and a good wife.”

The bird snapped forward, drawing blood from Salim’s knuckle.

Convulsively, Salim whipped his hand back, crying out, “Aaah!”

And then, removing his hand from his mouth: “Blast! That’s it. I must be insane…crazy! But things are going to change. Right now! You are going in a cage. You’re not riding on my shoulder anymore, or coming with me anywhere.”

And then in final, emphatic self-reproof: “Salim, boy, wake up! This animal is dangerous!”

After a long-drawn moment a single, black tear oozed from the corner of the bird’s eye. Salim froze as she gazed down on him, hurt and sad. Then, throwing up her head she spread her wings and with deep and powerful strokes soared into the blue of the sky. Like a firework, she trailed sparks and flame, and at her apogee, high, small and bright, wings crucified against the heavens, she surrendered to fire. It consumed her, defacing, obliterating her once stately form. And down the remnants tumbled, a blazing, shapeless slag, to drown hissing and smoking in the placid pool. Water slopped carelessly against the edges and the ripples faded.

Gentle reader, all of you know the moment of shock, when the world is stripped of detail and form. There is no coherent thought yet, only a numbing bulk of wrongness that looms and intrudes. And in the grey there are flashes, harbingers of the storm of regrets that will batter and eviscerate in the weeks and months to come. But not yet. Now there is only amazement.

Salim staggered to the brink of the pool. And, as if compelled, over the brink. At the edge the water was knee-high. Bereft of volition, he subsided, coming to rest on the coping, his hands on his knees while he regarded the stilling waters with desolation.

A woman’s head emerged from the water, dark hair slicked back from her tanned and aquiline face. Jewelled droplets clung and dripped from her breasts and shoulders. She stood and the rippling waters lapped, caressing her thighs. Unashamed and glorious she waded slowly across the pool towards Salim.

In honesty, she was rather enjoying the effect she was creating. Slack-jawed, Salim resembled a stranded fish. He, for his part, for all the confusion of his emotions, found time for her extraordinary beauty to pierce him through the heart (such are the imperatives of the male psyche).

A serene and secret smile toying on her lips, she nudged between his outspread knees and with her left hand pushed gently on his shoulder. He fell back leaning on both palms. Motionless, they gazed at each other. Eventually, she reached out her right hand, palm upward.

“Come”, she said.

Wordlessly, he took her hand, rose and followed her, up the stairs, to his apartments and to his bedroom.