Mrs Pollifax Unveiled Part 13

A shabby gray Austin rattled past them with a man driving it who glanced briefly at them and then, not far up the road, stopped his car. Leaving it, he knelt beside it, plunged his hands into the earth to clean them, and then, prostrating himself, appeared to begin his prayers to Allah.

Observing this, Joe frowned. Glancing at the position of the sun in the sky he said, "Something's wrong, it's not time for the 'Asr, it's far too early, and look, he's not even facing east."

"You think he's waiting for us?"

Stoically Mrs. Pollifax said, "We keep walking, there's nothing else to do."

Joe nodded. "Okay, stay casual. Amanda, stop looking so scared."

"Things just keep happening," she told him. "Of course I'm scared."

As casually as possible they walked toward the parked car, taking care not to look at the man, except for Joe, who gave him a nod as he rose to his feet.

The man said in English, "I look for four Bedouin on their way to Bosra."

We've been trapped, thought Mrs. Pollifax.

"On way to Citadel" he emphasized.

They looked at each other in consternation. They had not expected this.

Joe said, "Meen hadetak? Who are you?" and politely, "Shu btusgtughal Hadertak? "

"DeJil. La tekhaf -do not fear. Habid-friend." And losing his patience he said angrily, "For the love of Allah, get into my car. My name is Antun, I have looked and looked for you. There is trouble-come!"

Thoroughly alarmed, as well as confused, they tugged at the door to the Austin and climbed in.

"What trouble?" demanded Farrell.

"I am betrayed," he said. "I must go to Jordan with you cdyum. Today."

"Betrayed?" echoed Mrs. Pollifax.

With the car in motion he had to shout over its noisy rattlings. "It was three days ago Fuad ibn Zazi came to village, he -"

"Who?" interrupted Joe.

"Ash'shurta -police of here. He questions me, do I smuggle people to border? I say I am innocent, but he does not go away, he watches-for three days he has watched. It is now my knowledge that two peoples I take to border one week ago betrayed me, may Allah curse them. So Fuad watches. He waits."

Astonished, Mrs. Pollifax said, "And in spite of that you're still here -to take us to the border?"

He said simply, "I need the money you will pay me."

There was logic in this, and Mrs. Pollifax nodded.

"But there is more," he said, frowning. "This morning - early this morning-very gharib-"

"Very strange," interpreted Joe.

"Excuse, yes . . , strange. Two men come to the village - strange ones-looking for one man and two women in Bedu clothes, if they have been seen, they ask."

"But we are four," Amanda said quickly.

"And we have not been followed," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax. "I know this, we have not been followed."

Antun glanced in his rearview mirror and seeing no traffic he pulled the car to the side of the road and stopped. Turning to look at them he said, "You must tell me where have you come from, you are so sure you have not been followed."

Joe spoke to him at length in Arabic but the only words they understood were Camp Al-Khamseh, Amanda, As Sikhneh, bus, and Damascus .

Antun frowned. "So you waited on Deir Ez Zor highway for bus at As Sikhneh, at night, up north in desert. Four of you as Bedu?"

There was a startled silence and then Mrs. Pollifax, pointing to Joe, said, "No, he traveled in American clothes."

"So in As Sikhneh there were three of you," said Antun. "And these gharib men look for three."

"But how could they know?" protested Mrs. Pollifax. "We were careful, very watchful, and it was night. I can't believe this."

Antun shook his head. "It is like the hunt for small animals. If you learn the hole they go into you can guess where they will come out. There is no need to follow if enough is known. If you must get to a border to leave Syria there are only four borders: Turkey , Iraq , Lebanon , Jordan , and if you are American it would be Jordan . You waited long at As Sikhneh?"

"Several hours," said Joe.

"For the Damascus bus?"

"Yes," said Farrell, looking puzzled.

Antun nodded sadly. "They need only know that. It is this girl they are after?" He gave Amanda a curious glance. "If you were seen there -a woman, a man and this girl-"

"But we weren't seen," protested Farrell.

Mrs. Pollifax said, "No, and I don't understand why you suspect - oh dear G.o.d," she said abruptly.

"Oh dear G.o.d what?" asked Farrell.

"You were asleep," she told him. "Amanda, too. There was a man, the only one who looked, really looked at each of us as he pa.s.sed us. But he didn't get on the bus when it came."

"You didn't tell us," said Farrell.

She said helplessly, "How was I to know? We were at As Sikhneh, miles from Damascus , and a fair distance from where we found Amanda, and disguised, or so we thought. And it was night, and although I watched him he didn't get on the bus with us."

Antun sighed. "We have a saying: 'Man is a target for the accidents of time.' Damascus ?" He shook his head. "If they look to you to flee the country Damascus would mean Jordan . And not Der'aa, where tourists cross." He shook his head. "They look for you at small towns near border." His sigh deepened. "The village police are human. A few questions of Fuad and he might tell them there is man in Bosra he has learned may smuggle peoples across the border. I do not know if Fuad takes baksheesh but this is always possible. The police in this country -the mukhabarat especially- they are Alawis, as is President a.s.sad-and that is all that matters. Some are-what is word, weak? No, corrupt? But Fuad is in Bosra, and the two men were here in the village, early."

"What . . , what," faltered Amanda, "did those two men look like?"

"They were all legs. They wore shorts, like tourists." He shook his head in disgust.

Amanda sank back in the car in horror. "From the camp? It sounds as if they must be from the camp. I feel sick."

Antun gave her an alarmed glance. "No, no, they did not stay, they were gone when I left."

"Good," said Mrs. Pollifax, and considering this no time to consider possible complications she changed the subject by saying briskly, "Now what are your plans for us?"

"No Citadel. In backseat you note small bag on floor, my best clothes for Jordan and photograph of my dead wife. Keep bag for me. Now dir b alak."

"Pay attention," nodded Joe.

"I leave you at Bal al-Hawa, the western gate, the Gate of the Winds. There is kina tree there for shade. Me, I will restore car to Bosra and at maghrib -"

"Sunset," supplied Joe. "After call to prayer."

He nodded. "I go for small walk -and meet you."

"And how far is the border?" asked Farrell.

He shrugged. "A rough walk. Two wadis to cross. Ten miles."

Mrs. Pollifax winced, but Amanda broke in to ask, "Is there a fence at the border? Is it electrified?"

"Yes and yes," said Antun, "but we will not cross where I led the peoples who betrayed me. I have dug a new hole under the fence. Maalesh, it is covered with earth, across from a big, big Mjar shaped like a beid."

"Egg," translated Joe. "A big rock shaped like an egg. But the country's so flat, and so rocky, and without a light to guide us?"

"Me you have to guide," said Antun. "I know the stones." He pointed to the mountain in the east. "That is Jebel Druze, the border we cross is in its shadow and that is when we light a f a.n.u.s to find the stone. Only then. There are cities up on Jebel Druze: Salkhad, Dieben, Alghariyeh, there will be lights on the mountain."

"But - fa.n.u.s?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

"Lantern," explained Joe.

Antun nodded. "This too lies at your feet, I leave it with you to keep safe for us."

The ground ahead of them was changing now, rising out of the valley toward Bosra. They could see the shape of a town, the silhouette of a spire, a line of columns such as they had seen in Palmyra , and ahead of them a large stone arch with the detritus of what had once been a wall scattered across the earth.

"The Gate of the Winds," said Antun, and glanced at his watch. "You would still not be here if you walked; Allah be praised I find you fast!"

He stopped the car beside the arch. "Go," he said. "Not quickly -I have given ride to four weary people, no more. Sit. Be quiet. Rest. And pray at sundown."

Once they were out of the car he rattled away in his dusty Austin down a cobbled street, leaving them to take shelter under the shade of the kina tree that he had promised them.

"So," said Farrell, as they seated themselves on the earth among the bricks of the vanished wall. "We have made it to Bosra . .. He strikes me as a reliable man."

"A desperate one," suggested Mrs. Pollifax. "But he didn't ask for money."

"Not even rab un -earnest money," Joe said. "It would be his right to ask for some when he comes at sunset."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Pollifax, with a worried glance at Amanda, who had withdrawn from them and looked tense and anxious. She said to Joe, "Talk to us. Tell us something about this country we've scarcely seen. At the Tell Kham-seh, Amy Madison told me of the lovely places we were missing."

Joe smiled faintly. "Yes, you've pretty much traveled underground all the way." He too was watching Amanda.

"Can people still write books here?"

"Oh, yes, if they are nonpolitical. Love stories are very popular, often about other eras. One of my favorites is the poet Nizar Qabbani, who left Syria years ago, but ironically - he writes so obliquely-President a.s.sad calls him a national hero. I especially remember a few lines from his Notes on the Book of Defeat, supposedly addressed to a long-ago sultan: 'Half your people have no tongues, what good their unheard sighs? The other half, within these walls, run like rabbits and ants, silently inside.'

"Which pretty much applies to the people here, full of unheard sighs. But," he added with a reminiscent smile, "so friendly and generous a people."

"You sound really attached to the place," Farrell told him with a smile.

"It's so full of history," he said simply. "Up north near the Turkish border archaeologists have uncovered what they're convinced is the long-lost Urkesh . . , it's all so biblical. I'm continually astonished to come across places I heard about in Sunday school, and yes," he admitted with a grin, "I was taken to Sunday school as a child, not always happily, but it was a darn good background for an archaeologist, I admit it freely."

It was doubtful that Amanda had heard anything he said, her mind was obviously struggling over the meaning of the two mysterious strangers who had arrived in Bosra that morning. Because Joe had just quoted a line of poetry, Mrs. Pollifax found herself remembering a line from the Emily d.i.c.kinson poem that Amanda had brought with her -"I looked in windows for the wealth I could not hope to own"-and she was surprised at how fiercely she wanted to see Amanda placed inside of life, not outside looking at it through gla.s.s. The girl had moved from subtle cruelties to malevolent cruelties and she deserved better-if, of course, they successfully crossed the border to safety.

There were no more efforts at conversation; they sat in the heat and dust looking out at the fields over which they must soon make their way, fields of red soil littered with black basalt rocks, although in the far distance she could see a grove of stunted trees offering a small amount of cover. If they could reach them.

She sighed, never enjoying suspense. It held one in thrall, plucking at tired nerves, and she was already tired. She would love to have a warm bath now -how many days had it been?- and then sit down to an American dinner. "Of hot dogs," she heard herself say, and was looked at in surprise by Farrell.

"Hot dogs?" he said. "Are you all right, d.u.c.h.ess?"

She laughed. "Just wistful."

Soon the call to prayer could be heard from the town beyond the gate, and, bringing out her white scarf, she placed it over her suffocating burqa and joined Farrell, Joe, and Amanda in prostrating themselves, with only Joe murmuring the words of the Sala. When the prayers' reverberations had died away the last rays of the sun had vanished, leaving them in a brief twilight and Jebel Druze starkly black against the darkening sky. There was a peaceful stillness following the Sala; they didn't hear Antun's approach but he was suddenly with them, squatting on his haunches and speaking in a low voice.

"We go first slow, looking for maybe azhar. . .."

"Flowers," said Joe. "Or something lost?" he suggested.

"Na'am. Or battikh asfar?

"Sweet melons," nodded Joe. "I gather they harvested a crop somewhere in those fields."

"You see the trees?" said Antun. "We must go to them before the kamar -sorry, before the moon rises high; it will be still bright this night. They grow thick to the tarik along the border."

"Tarik?"

"Road," murmured Joe. "Apparently there's a road that runs along the border. For the patrols."

"How often the patrols?" asked Farrell sharply.

Antun shrugged. "Ma'alesh."

"He means never mind," Joe explained, and Amanda stood up and said in a strangled voice, "I feel like screaming."

Joe smiled at her and grasped her hand. "But you won't."

She looked at him with widened eyes. "No." she sighed, and drew her hand away. "I'll be all right. Can we please, please gol"

"Yes, but first some 'earnest money,' " Mrs. Pollifax said firmly; she was ready for this and pa.s.sed to Antun half of their remaining Syrian pounds. "The rest once we're across the border."

His round face shone. "So much! I will be rich in my new country -Shukren! Oh, I take taib care of you!"

"You'd better," murmured Farrell.