Chapter IV

The following morning, he found her sitting outside, by the water, washing clothes in a large copper bowl.

“Esma”, he called.

“Oh hello! Good morning”, she said, looking towards him, and appearing to be pleasantly surprised by the interruption. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes”, he answered. He had initially not been able to sleep at all, fearing that perhaps his current reality was simply yet another strange and vivid fabrication, and that when he would awake, he would instead find himself in some entirely different circumstance. However, when he did eventually sleep, it was deep and peaceful, and he woke up in a pleasant mood, excited and looking forward to seeing Esma. He had already decided that he would reveal to her what he had seen in his dream.

“There’s something I feel you must know”, he said, and proceeded, to recite to her the events that he had witnessed, in as much detail as he could remember. Her reaction, when he had finished, was that of deep fascination, rather than the startled and concerned expression he was expecting. Instead, her eyes widened and she gasped and smiled as she came to a realization that pleased her.

“And then I gave you a name!” she said, and thrust both of her hands into the sky, which caused the series of gold bracelets on her wrist to clatter and ring, as they fell higher onto her arm. She smiled, and added, “So I am the name-giver! What a great and noble responsibility”. She gripped the sides of the bowl she was washing the clothes in. “I name this the great bowl of tedious chores!” she cried, as a humorous smile found its way across the corners of her lips.

He looked away as he realized she was not taking him seriously.

“Oh come on, Alnilam!” she said, attempting to relieve him of his obvious mental burden. “Look, the desert has a way of awakening one’s imagination. Your mind had probably just convinced itself that the woman you encountered in your dream, was me.”

She smiled again, and her voice returned to its regular, cheerful intensity.

“Anyway, there is no place for concerned contemplation today. Tonight, there is a feast! And there is only joy on the night of a feast!”

He wanted to debate the topic further, but she had already returned her attention to the washing, so instead, he sat beside her and helped her finish.

The nomad had divided all of the remaining meat of the goat from the day before, and distributed it among the inhabitants of the village. Because of this, a feast was scheduled to occur in the centre of the village, at sundown. By the time they had finished with all of the necessary daily chores, then sun was setting.

A large fire had been set up and he took his place around the fire, beside Esma and her father, and was immediately offered a plate of food by a little girl from the village. News of the strange traveller’s arrival had spread quickly among the village people, and they were keen to glimpse the nomad’s guest, as outsiders to the village were rare.

As the night progressed, he was becoming increasingly enchanted with the village people. The majority of their population consisted of children. The elders of the village stood up frequently throughout the night and told stories – wild and colourful fables about people from faraway lands. When someone would stand to tell a story, the audience became ghost-quiet, and the only sounds to be heard were the crackling of the fire and the details of adventure.

The children had approached him several times to ask if he had any stories to share, and it became apparent to him that although the children genuinely enjoyed the tales that their elders told, they had in fact, heard them before, and that, to them, the wanderer resembled the strange and exciting characters from faraway lands that existed in the stories they heard. When he apologized to the children for not knowing any stories to tell (he would have been more than happy to have simply remembered any mundane detail of his own past), they scurried off and suspected that perhaps, they had somehow offended the strange foreigner.

A moment later, one of them returned – a pretty little girl with light-brown hair and honey-coloured eyes, dressed in a plain white dress that covered her arms. She stuck out her clenched fist towards him, and unravelled it one finger at a time, to reveal a single date in the palm of her hand. She offered it to him as a gesture of the children’s apology – a gesture, which he found truly endearing.

When the last story of the night was told, and the pleased laughter of the audience had died down, and everyone had finished eating, one man produced an Arabian instrument known as the Oud, and began to play and sing a beautiful love song. Alnilam turned to face Esma, who looked back at him and smiled. Beside her was her father, whom Alnilam noticed was staring into the fire, and wearing the same deep, sad, melancholic expression that he was wearing when he had encountered him in his dream – when he had explained to him that he was a demon who had lost his own name. The nomad stood up and, without even saying so much as a goodbye, or even looking at anyone, parted from the crowd and disappeared in the direction of his house. Alnilam returned his attention to Esma.

“You know, there’s still the problem of me not having any memory of where I’ve come from, nor any recollection of any part of my past, for that matter” he said.

The fire’s reflection danced rapidly in her eyes. She paused for a moment before answering him.

“Are you happy?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“In this very moment, is your heart at ease? Do you feel calm, and content with the world?”

“I suppose…”

“Then don’t question it. Happiness in life is much too rare and infrequent to be questioned. Too much of life is spent in mourning over the past, it is a blessing to have no memory of it, to be forced entirely into the present, to be liberated from the dark prison of what once was, and instead, to be content with what is, and fall with marvel at what could be.”

The pretty little girl who had earlier acted as the children’s ambassador returned, alongside her mother, who was carefully bearing a large metallic plate, with small, glass cups of tea. Esma removed two glass cups from the plate and smiled at the little girl, before returning her attention to Alnilam and offering him one of the cups, which he accepted.

She took a sip, rested the cup in the sand and spoke softly, “You are a wealthy man, Alnilam. There will always be worries and grievances in life, but we need to recognize our own wealth, and be grateful for it. You are at peace, you have enough to eat, are in good company, and in good health. That is all we really need in life – that is true wealth.”

He could see a profound sympathy in her eyes, but it took him a moment to realize, that her sympathy was not intended for him.

“Don’t be like him. Don’t sentence yourself to a poor man’s life” she said, looking in the direction of the nomad’s house.

The nomad, he learned, had loved twice in his life; the second was when he had first laid eyes on the smiling face of his daughter; the former, was when his eyes had met those of her mother’s, Lyla.

The nomad had woken up one day to discover that a camel had escaped from the village. The old man who owned the camel, recruited the nomad, who was then young and capable, to retrieve it. The nomad was determined, and set out with resolve, confident in his ability to reunite the owner with his beast. He quickly gathered his things and began his journey by noon, travelling east, in the direction that the footprints of the camel led. He moved quickly, the desert was his home, and he knew that a sandstorm was coming. He knew that if he did not locate the camel before then, finding it would become improbable.

Lyla, then known as Lady Lyla Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, was an Englishwoman whose family usually spent several months of the year at their estate, on the outskirts of Cairo – a thirty-two-acre apricot orchard. The blonde, blue-eyed, rebellious young woman had always despised the aristocracy, and resented her title. Since inheriting it from her father, she had moved permanently to her Cairo estate. She had a particular taste for adventure, and acquired a fascination for the Arabian Peninsula (then, a mystery to the world). Lyla was determined that she, equipped with her favourite riding mare, would become the first Englishwoman to accomplish the incredible task of crossing the Empty Quarter of Arabia.

The sandstorm had caused the nomad to abandon his search for the lost camel, and he set up his tent to wait for the wind to calm, which, by the time it eventually did, night had already fallen. So, the nomad decided it would be best to wait – that he might still be able to find the camel the next day in the light.

Of course, as fate would have it, the nomad never did find his camel, and Lyla never crossed the Empty Quarter. It seemed their destiny was instead, to find each other. Tempted by the light of the nomad’s fire in the black, star-lit desert, Lyla approached the tent.

They fell in love and married, becoming the parents of Esma, and when Esma was five, Lyla had fallen ill and passed. Since then, the nomad, every year, on the anniversary of the day that his heart had first betrayed him, and without his permission, sought another; he would seek the place he first met his wife, and spend the night, gaze up at the stars, and recite silently to them, the greatest love story he had ever known.

One year, he was interrupted when his trained, Bedouin ears heard the sound of someone’s footsteps approaching.

I’d better get the tea ready, he thought.