Читать книгу Mustafa's Last Well - Tony Preedy - Страница 8

Chapter 2

It was the year 1234 Hijri: AD 1819

Queen Victoria is born, along with British democracy, after the massacre of the Peterloo protesters in Manchester

Some who had known Mustafa al-Wyly since childhood called him a healer, after word spread of his performance at the camel race, and others called him a mystic, but the fear of fatwa made him reclusive from all men. The farm lay outside the coastal town that was the capital of the Emirate of Naamlah. Now suffering the ravages of sixty years, his back was bent, and the deterioration of his lungs, due to a fondness for the hookah, caused him difficulty breathing. His reputation came about when, as a boy, he demonstrated that he was blessed with an unnatural power; today this is believed to have been the ability to harness the energy of torsion waves, by which he was able to correct errors in the DNA of his patients – but in his country, at that time, it was considered sorcery.

Naamlah lay on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf, separated from its eastern neighbour, the small country of Haqum, by a natural geological fault known as al wadi al kabier, the great dry river. This stretched from the mountains, which lay several hundred miles inland, to the south, and out into the sea. Some claimed that occasionally, when storms occurred in the mountains, the wadi would carry water to the sea, but no one living could recall such an event. The Naamlahn side of the sea was shallow and famous for pearl-bearing oysters, which were relatively easy to harvest. On the eastern side, the waters of their neighbours were deep, and any oysters that lived there were beyond the range of divers. Naamlah prospered on trade whilst the neighbours, who were still mostly nomadic, subsisted only on their flocks of goats and sheep, which they exported to Persia through their small seaport. Later generations on both sides of the border would have hopes of oil being discovered in their land, as it would be in some other Gulf countries.

***

Mustafa never took a wife because he was only attracted to young men. His adult life was, therefore, one of frustration, because the Prophet gave no advice in such circumstances and such relationships were thus declared either as sodomy or non-existent by the religious men. He consulted the Imam, who said it was his duty to father children, but Mustafa found the prospect distasteful. When he had aged and become unfit to dig wells, nor pick dates, he decided to purchase two slaves. He found that the bids for physically fit specimens at the auction were beyond his means but when two young Somali brothers were displayed, a plan came to mind. They were both displaying signs of ill health; other potential slave owners had rejected Hassan because he had a withered arm, and Salim was considered defective because of a persistent cough. Mustafa, therefore, bought them both for a pittance and installed them at his farm. Ever since he had healed the lame jockey, he had yearned to attempt another healing. He saw the brothers as his opportunity to covertly experiment with his mystic power. In defiance of his promise as a boy to the now-dead Imam, he successfully used his healing technique to convert the slaves into healthy, strong workers. The boys therefore felt an uncharacteristic obligation of loyalty towards their owner, both for allowing them to stay together and for healing them.

***

Naamlah’s traders, who travelled through the desert to sell their pearls via the port of Salalah in the Hadramat, had long needed a source of drinking water to sustain them, for they could barely survive the journey with the quantity that their camels could carry. Mustafa had been commissioned by a consortium of traders to provide a well on the Naamlahn side of the mountains, where the trail ran close to the wadi. A price had been agreed and half payment had been accepted, with the balance due on completion. Preparations were made for the task by the boys, Hassan and Salim. They had now been with Mustafa for twelve years, during which they had matured into strong young men as a consequence of their healing, working on the farm and digging wells. Hassan thought that he might be 19 years old, which would make his brother 17, as there were two years between them. Hassan was cultivating a beard, which gave him an imperious appearance, belying his slave status. Salim was clean shaven and was taller than his older brother. Either could have overpowered Mustafa and run from his service, but they had remained dependent on him as they had no funds to sustain them if they did succeed in escaping. Besides, they had come to accept their status because they were devout Muslims, and did not the Holy Book tell of their social status as slaves?

Three camels were burdened by himself, the slaves, their food, bundles of straw, a tent, tools, and a generous ration of water. To the annoyance of the boys, their master insisted on accommodation being found for his hookah. After traveling south for five days, which took its toll on Mustafa’s health, their caravan had arrived at a depression in the wadi where gravel and rocks were visible among the sand and where, from his years of experience, Mustafa was confident of finding water. The boys were set to work erecting the tent in which their master would rest as soon as they had hobbled and unloaded the camels. By the time the camp was established, the sun was near the horizon. After ritual washing, as was dictated by their religion, using sand rather than precious water, it was time for all three to prostrate themselves towards Mecca in prayer before the sun disappeared. After their meal, the boys lay with the camels, whilst Mustafa retired to the tent, where he would attend to his journal and then relax smoking his hookah.

As dawn broke, after fajr prayers, Mustafa was summoned to eat with the boys, who had prepared milk from the camels and dates that they had harvested from Mustafa’s farm. Whilst cawah was brewing on the fire they had made of camel dung within a ring of stones, Mustafa collected his dousing equipment from the tent. He carried a bundle of short sisal rope ends over an arm and a Y-shaped dowsing stick in one hand. The dowsing stick was made from hazel, a wood imported from Europe and known for its favourable reaction to the “mystical” torsion waves/“dowsing fields.” Before the sun was high, he marched, puffing and panting, back and forth with the stick held before him until a field was detected and transmitted to his arthritic fingers, causing the apex of the stick to dip. At this point, he dropped a piece of rope. He continued until another response was observed, and dropped another piece of rope. Eventually, when satisfied that he had formed a suitable line of rope pieces, he changed direction and repeated the process until he had two lines that crossed. The boys were ordered to dig at the intersection, even though whether they were in Naamlah or the adjacent land of Haqum would be debatable.

The boys shovelled sand all day, with breaks only for refreshment and prayer, whilst Mustafa rested and puffed in his tent. The routine continued on the second day, when the sand gave way to gravel, but no sign of water. Their working conditions improved as they descended into shade. That evening the gravel gave way to rock and progress slowed, as the boys picked and chiselled at the rock and carried the off cuts to the surface. At this point in their digging, Salim made a discovery that brought their work to a halt. He made sure that Mustafa was resting before showing to Hassan the dahab he had found. In his hand was a nugget, unmistakably of gold, which was the size and shape of a ripe fig, with three nodules on its surface. Spurred on by this discovery, the boys worked harder than ever.

“We must tell the master,” said Salim.

“No; he would not share the gold with us. It must be our secret,” replied Hassan, and that was what they agreed. As smaller pieces of gold continued to be liberated from the rock, they were hidden in the camel blanket in which they kept the dates. They knew Mustafa never looked in there. On the fourth day of excavation, they were past the gold-bearing rock, which had progressively been replaced by clay.

Mustafa was pleased with their progress and ordered them to make a separate pile for clay. As his mind was now deteriorating, he unnecessarily informed them because they had done it many times before: “Inshallah (if Allah wills it), the first water from the well will be added to clay to make bricks, reinforced with the straw we have brought on the camels.” The boys were now working about four meters below the surface and progress was slow, as they had to form steps in the rock to enable them to bring up the clay. Slowly, the clay beneath them became damp, and water started to flow into the hole to cover their feet. Mustafa was summoned and showed his delight by giving thanks to Allah, but not to his slaves. Mustafa made the oldest slave, Hassan, taste the water. After no adverse reaction, he offered water to the camels, who drank it rapidly.

That night the boys plotted to abandon their master and try to return to their homeland. It was, therefore, with feelings of guilt that they made plans to desert the man to whom they owed so much.

Now that they had resources their loyalty to Mustafa was of secondary importance. Neither of them could remember much from before their abduction. They had been taken by armed men from their family’s camp between Hargeisa and Berbera. After two days marching, whilst chained by their ankles, they arrived at the port of Berbera. From here they were taken by dhow to the Persian Gulf. They were not sure which direction to take, but they knew they must travel to the south. From what little he knew of geography, gained from listening to traders, Hassan said that they should aim for Al’Adan on the coast of Yemen and ask how to cross to Somaliland. Hassan added that he knew the dhows sailed from their old country to Al’Adan, and must return. Until now they had not had the means to escape, but now they were confident of buying passage by dhow across the Arabian Sea from Al’Adan to the port of Berbera in Somaliland. From there, they thought, it could only be a camel ride to Hargeisa, where they would search for their tribe.

The following day the boys were set to making bricks with which to reinforce the well above the rock level, and then to extend above the surface to enclose the well against drifting sand. As the bricks in the wall hardened in the sun, Mustafa prepared a map by which the traders, guided by stars, could find the new well. In his tent, whilst puffing contentedly on the hookah, Mustafa was anticipating breaking camp and starting the journey home that evening – tomorrow in the old Arabic calendar, in which the new day started at sunset – but the boys outside were already preparing to abandon him. Two of the camels were laden with food and well water, but the blanket that concealed their find was heavy and could only be placed on the camel whilst she was sitting. Getting her on to her feet took much effort from both boys, because her burden now was more than she was used to carrying. Whilst loading the camels in haste, Salim had dropped the large nugget in the sand, but before he could recover it one of the camels kicked it away into the distance. It was abandoned, because Hassan would not wait whilst Salim searched for it by moonlight.

***

When Mustafa awoke, he found only one camel and little food. He managed to get water for himself and the camel from his well. He cursed the boys as he set out for home, guided only by the oppressive sun on his back by day and the stars by night. The effort was too much for a man in poor health, and Mustafa did not survive. His camel returned to the farm. Its owner’s body was never discovered, but a record of the activity at the well and a map of its location were found with his hookah in the blanket pocket of the camel. The traders held out for a month, hoping by then that no near relative would come forward to claim the balance of Mustafa’s payment. They were disappointed when the Emir, who was of the same tribe as Mustafa, insisted the money, if not claimed, should be given to the Imam for charitable work. The Emir decreed that henceforth, in recognition of his sacrifice, the watering-place would be known as the Well of Mustafa.

***

Without knowledge of stellar navigation, the boys wandered across the desert in the general direction of Yemen by observing the direction of the sun at its zenith but failed to find a passage through the mountains. Their food and then water ran out, causing a slow death from the mixture of hunger, thirst, and exposure. One of their camels returned weeks later to the date farm, but the one carrying the gold could not keep up, for she was weighed down by her burden, and perished.

***

Two riders searching for grazing had been surprised the previous day to come across a newly built well at the near side of the great wadi, from which they eagerly drew water for their flock of sheep. They decided that it must have been built by their neighbours. The two, father and son, argued as to in whose territory it was situated.

The son said, “We should claim it to be on our land,” but the older man, the Sheikh who ruled the country, replied:

“Son, it is not important where the border lies. No one has ever disputed this because the relationship with our neighbours has always been amicable, and besides, the wadi land is a worthless desert.”

They found no vegetation and moved the flock back to what was undisputedly their territory, where they agreed that, after prayers, they would tell the rest of their tribal group to camp for the night.

The pair were wakened from their sleep beneath the stars by the sound of the wind rapidly strengthening from the South and burying them in sand. Hastily they loaded their camels, which were hobbled nearby, and started searching for their flock.

***

The traders, being keen to inspect the new well and have it blessed, organized a caravan headed by a brother of the Emir, which included the Imam and a youth, Juma, the eldest son and heir of the Emir. They were accompanied by three slaves from the Emir’s household; two young men from Burundi, who had been sold to the Arabs of Dar-es-Salaam by the chief of their tribe to punish their father, with whom the chief had quarrelled – they had been taken to Zanzibar and held until the arrival of the monsoon that allowed their transport by dhow to the Gulf; the third was Joseph, an older man with thin, grey hair, who had served the Emir since his arrival from Nubia as a child. Joseph stood head and shoulders above the other two men. Their arrival, which coincided with the festival of Eid al Fittah, saw them setting up camp near the Well of Mustafa. The slaves were ordered to erect their tent quickly, as a strong wind had started to rise from the south, where dark clouds and lightning could be seen over the mountains. After the men had retired to the tent a herd of sheep gathered in its lee, joining the camels and slaves, where they sought shelter from sand carried on the wind.