Darius is sent on a journey that shows him sights he never would have imagined, as well as feelings he did not expect.
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Back Into the Fold
The next few months passed without serious incident. Our caravans were attacked a few times, but the attacks were clumsy and undermanned. I knocked a man out, broke another’s leg, and slashed another’s hamstring, hobbling him, but I did not kill anyone. This was deliberate on my part. After what had happened last time, I wanted no more blood on my hands, no murdered souls haunting my nightmares.
I began praying again. Ahmed welcomed me back into the fold without comment. By then I had earned a reputation within Five Stars Trading Company as disciplined, reliable and unusually calm under pressure. I arrived to work early, maintained my equipment carefully, avoided gambling houses and never drank. I also fought well enough that older guards stopped treating me as a curiosity.
Back in Deep Harbor, I was summoned unexpectedly to the company offices overlooking the western canal.
Shah Suliman stood waiting beside a large map covered in ink markings and trade routes.
“You read maps?” he asked abruptly.
“Not really, but I learn quickly.”
“But you are literate?”
“Yes, of course.”
One eyebrow lifted slightly. “Interesting. Come, let me show you.”
Using a slender stick, he pointed out to me the features of the map: mountains, rivers, provincial and national boundaries. He showed me the scale that indicated the relationship to actual distances, and the green lines that represented standard Five Star routes.
Then he pointed toward a route stretching westward farther than any I had traveled before.
“Have you heard of Persia?”
I twisted my mouth to the side and thought. “Far away land. A Muslim land. Where the flying carpets come from. And pistachios.”
Suliman laughed loudly at that. “Carpets indeed. Not flying, but yes, the Persians make intricate, durable and iconic carpets. Pistachios, as you say, and other nuts as well, along with dates and dried apricots, and a variety of spices. And horses! You have never seen horses like these, Darius. The Emperor’s horse is one we brought from Persia.”
“It sounds amazing. Have you actually been there?”
“Yes. And you are going in six days. There will be sixty wagons. The route is dangerous, and the potential for profit immense. We are sending Sergeant Karim with you.”
For a moment I thought I had misheard him. Then a smile crept over my face.
“You are sending me to Persia?”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “Prepare well. The war has cut into our profits. We are hurting more than anyone knows. This expedition must not fail.”
I felt honored that Suliman had confided in me, and vowed that, for my part, I would not fail him.
Sixty Wagons
The caravan that departed Deep Harbor was unlike anything I had ever seen. Sixty wagons stretched along the road like a moving village. There were merchants, translators, scribes, cooks, teamsters, laborers and guards, along with more than three hundred horses and pack animals. Every wagon carried cargo worth a small fortune. All the recruits I had trained with were together on this voyage.
As we rolled out through the city gates, I looked back only once. Deep Harbor’s walls receded behind us, then vanished into the morning haze.
At first the journey felt much like any other route. We crossed familiar provinces, camped beside familiar roads, and listened to the same complaints from merchants who thought the world existed solely to inconvenience them. They complained that the horses smelled, the road was too rough, and that we took too many breaks or not enough.
A common complaint was that the guards were not subservient enough. They wanted us to bring them food or drink, wash their clothing and polish their boots. We were not there for that. Our job was to be vigilant.
I had a small dual-language copy of the Quran with me. In the evenings, when I was off shift, I sometimes spent time reading it, working my way through the Arabic letters as Zihan Ma had taught me, learning the shorter surahs in Arabic, and memorizing the meanings in my language.
I sometimes noticed Weili watching me as I did so. Oh, she pretended she was brushing her horse or mending a tear in her tunic, but every now and then she’d glance my way. This made me smile. Weili was a beautiful young woman. There were a lot of men in the caravan who wanted her company, both merchants and guards. All were older than me, and some had money. The fact that she chose to spend her time spying on me as I read the Quran filled me with a warmth I did not care to examine.
When I had memorized a surah, I would sit with Ahmed, and he would check and correct my pronunciation, and tell me something about the tafsir or asbab an-nuzul.
Thin Air
The landscape began to change.
Mountains rose higher than I had ever seen or imagined. We crossed over a high altitude pass where, bundled like sheep, we shook with cold and gasped in the thin air. Several horses died of pneumonia and were slaughtered for food, though the Muslims among us did not eat of that.
Longwei, the poet of our group, composed a short poem:
Six horses drink from a mountain stream.
Two are soon to die.
A dragonfly buzzes from wagon to wagon.
The mountains watch us pass
without a whisper or a nod.
Meilin groaned. “If this journey does not kill me, old man, your poetry will.”
As for me, I found Longwei interesting. In the evenings when the caravan camped for the night, the guards took shifts keeping watch and guarding the perimeter. When Weili and I were not on shift, we often joined Longwei around his campfire. He was the eldest of us by far – perhaps sixty years old – and, by his account, as well travelled as anyone in the world. He claimed to have studied horsemanship in Mongolia, kung fu at the Shaolin temple, philosophy at a great university of the west, and poetry with a disciple of the tradition of Su Dongpo.
I could not guess at the truth of all that, except for the martial arts. I had noticed that Longwei always woke with a groan, clutching his back and rubbing his knees. Once he warmed up, however, he went through a series of morning exercises that looked much like my own Five Animals warmup. In combat, he was not acrobatic or flashy, but rather highly efficient in his movements. That kind of efficiency only came from training. His movements were in fact reminiscent of snake style, and reminded me of how my father used to move.
Often Meilin joined us around the fire, though I could not imagine why, since all she did was poke fun at Longwei.
A Drinker and Gambler
As we moved on, I saw rivers wider than any in my homeland, and valleys so fertile it seemed that they could feed the world. We passed through cities whose names I could not pronounce and whose markets sold foods that were gloriously spicy and strange. One town was famous for melons so large that a small child could sit inside one. Another sold sweet cakes flavored with rose petals.
Longwei composed:
A river as blue as a lung full of air.
Rose petal cakes.
A moment in time
fading to the sound
of the wagon wheels.
I liked it. It made me feel wistful and slightly sad. Yet Meilin cackled and said, “Those cakes went to your head, old man. Who do you think you are, Li Bai, the Poet Immortal? As for me, I welcome the sound of the wagon wheels, for with every moment it takes us closer to our destination.”
As for Kuangren, the little punk was missing in action half the time. He might be the son of a noble, trained in riding, etiquette, and archery, but he was a degenerate drinker and gambler. He owed money to a score of merchants and guards, and carried a flask from which he drank like a pelican, even when on duty. Our caravan did not pass through cities – we skirted them – but whenever we were within a few hours riding of one, Kuangren inevitably disappeared. Sometimes he returned looking spooked, as if someone were chasing him.
Other times he came back whistling, often with a trinket he hadn’t possessed before. He might return with a silver ring, silk gloves, a carved pipe or a jade figurine. When questioned, he refused to say how he’d come upon them. We guessed that he was either a thief, or – judging by the smell of perfume that sometimes clung to him – a seducer of wealthy women.
“Do you not care,” I asked Sergeant Karim once, “that Kuangren might be a thief?”
“I despise thievery,” he replied, “but first, I cannot prove anything, and second, what I care about is this caravan. If he steals from someone on the caravan, or if his thievery imperils us, I’ll deal with it. Otherwise, it’s not actionable.”
I did not know how Karim would “deal with it,” but I was sure it wouldn’t be anything pleasant.
Alhamdulillah
One night as I sat with the Quran, Weili approached me openly.
“Would you teach me?”
“Sit,” I told her, and without further discussion I began to teach her Surat Al-Fatihah.
“Zihan Ma taught me,” I told her, “that we begin every day with Bismillah, and lie down to sleep with Alhamdulillah. When Adam’s soul was breathed into his body, he sat up and sneezed, and said, ‘Alhamdulillah.’ This was the first word spoken by a human being, because it expresses the fundamental relationship between humankind and the Creator. We praise Him, and we are grateful to Him. Both of these attitudes are included in the word hamd.”
Weili smiled at me, and it was as if the sun had risen in the middle of the night.
“Darius, you’re very smart,” she said.
I blushed, and was grateful for the cover of night. “Not especially. I was fortunate to have a teacher.”
“My father taught me some things when I was small,” she said. “But I don’t remember. He was Muslim, but my mother was not. My family were farmers from the south. The invaders attacked our town. My father was killed, and my mother was taken captive. All my close relatives were slaughtered. I hid in a water urn and survived. I was sent to live with my aunt’s cousin in Deep Harbor. Her husband is an archery instructor. But he’s not Muslim.”
She said all this in an apologetic tone, and I felt deeply sad for her. I had often felt sorry for myself, but her story was far more tragic than mine. Yet she never complained. She rode tall in the saddle, practiced her archery, fought well when necessary, and cared for herself without asking for help from anyone.
That was the moment I began to fall in love with her.
The Birth
One evening the caravan stopped beside a stream. While we were making camp, I heard someone – a portly merchant with long, braided hair – say that one of the mares was acting strangely. I and a few other guards went to look. The other horses were feeding, but this mare was pacing, then lying down, then standing back up again. Her coat was slick with sweat.
“She’s in labor,” Weili said.
“Why would someone bring a pregnant horse on a caravan?” I asked.
She shot me a look. “It’s not always obvious. Don’t ask dumb questions.”
“Don’t we need boiled water, clean towels and I don’t know what else?”
“No,” Sergeant Karim said, arriving on scene. “Just back up and let the mare do her job.”
At that, a few dozen people stood at a respectful distance and watched as the mare gave birth, then licked the foal to clean away the birth fluids, and nudged the foal to breathe. Within an hour the foal was standing on wobbly legs. It was astounding, and all I could say was subhanAllah.
The next day Longwei recited a poem:
A mare knows how to clean the afterbirth.
A swallow builds a perfect nest.
Even turtles know where to bury their eggs.
Yet we humans walk where there is no path,
and often fail to earn our daily bread.
We kill from desperation,
and walk in darkness
in the midday sun.
Meilin groaned. “Just kill me now, please. Darius, do one of your insane moves and cut me in half with your sword.”
Coming out of the mountains, our caravan went south. We moved slowly as always, and the mare who had given birth – freed from the duty of carrying a rider or pulling a wagon, trotted alongside, as did the foal. The foal was brown with a white chest and white feet, and Weili named him White Chest, which I thought was a silly name, though I kept my opinion to myself. When White Chest became tired, he was ushered up a ramp onto a wagon, where he slept as the caravan rolled on.
A Barren Land
I kept thinking of Longwei’s poem. I had found the foal’s birth to be a beautiful and miraculous event, yet the same event had pushed Longwei’s mind to thoughts of loss and death. What had he been through to see the world that way? And what did he mean that we kill from desperation? I killed as a last resort, to protect the property of my employers. It was not an act of recklessness or despair.
We stopped at a river, and Sergeant Karim commanded us to fill every container we had with water. Continuing on, we passed through sparsely wooded foothills, then into a land of flat red earth that baked beneath the sun. When Sergeant Karim saw a man using the water generously to perform wudu, he punched him hard enough in the chest to knock the wind out of him. As the man lay gasping, Karim shouted, “A trickle only! Enough to wet your skin for wudu, no more! Any man who wastes water will be put on horseshit duty and cut to half rations.”
Trees in this land were scarce, and were twisted and stunted. In the villages we passed, everyone was barefoot. The men bore spears and hard stares, the women looked disconsolate and overworked, and the children had bloated bellies.
As we rode, Longwei recited another poem he’d composed:
A dry forest and a roasted plain.
A raven pecks at a monkey’s corpse.
I suddenly feel that I am dreaming
of my own future.
At this, Meilin laughed uproariously.
Kuangren gave a disgusted cluck of his tongue. “Why are you laughing? It’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”
Meilin grinned. “That’s what’s funny. The poet opens his mouth, and just when you think he might offer a wing of hope or a glimpse of heaven, he slaps you with a handful of baked earth.”
Weili, riding past, sitting upright and alert in the saddle, smiled. “That was well put. You are a poet too, Meilin.”
“Heaven forbid,” Meilin muttered.
The One I Missed
The foal, White Chest, grew quickly, and often ran madly up and down beside the caravan, making everyone laugh. At some point I realized that I was no longer lonely. I rarely thought of my parents, or of my aunt, Zihan Ma and Haaris. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about them. I loved them. But I was young, and every day was an adventure. There was always something new to see. And the job was demanding. I didn’t often have the luxury of daydreaming. By the time my head hit the pillow at night, my body was a wrung dishrag. I always fell asleep almost immediately.
The only one I truly missed was Far Away, which was strange. Why should I miss one mangy old cat more than the people who had taken me in and cared for me? Yet I did. I made dua for him after every salat: “Ya Allah, protect Far Away and care for him. Don’t let him run off or come looking for me. And let me see him again one day.”
One evening, after Karim caught two guards neglecting their horses, he marched the entire company into the camp enclosure and delivered one of his lectures.
“If your horse goes lame,” he growled, pacing before us, “the caravan slows down. If the caravan slows down, merchants lose money. If merchants lose money, Five Stars loses money. If Five Stars loses money, Shah Suliman becomes unhappy. And if Shah Suliman becomes unhappy, Karim becomes unhappy.”
He pointed at the guilty guards.
“You do not want Karim unhappy.”
“No, Sergeant,” everyone answered.
Karim was not satisfied. He paced up and down. “You all have grown lax,” he said at last. “We have not had a serious attack in some time. You have grown complacent. Men swapping shifts without permission, not oiling and sharpening their weapons, neglecting their horses, gambling.” He smiled at us, but it was like a tiger’s smile before it rips your throat open.
“It’s my fault,” he went on. “I’ve been too easy on you.” He pointed, and moved his finger along the line of men. “Not anymore. The next guard I catch neglecting any aspect of their duties, there will be consequences.”
I soon found out what those consequences were. I had often been astounded that Kuangren got away with half of what he did. One night, apparently, it was too much for Sergeant Karim. What happened next shocked me.
* * *
As-salamu alaykum dear readers. Just a quick note to assure you that Darius’s story is taking him far from where he began, but the road has not forgotten its destination. Stick with me, and inshaAllah we’ll get there together.
Come back next week for Part 18 – The Glory of Persia
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Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.
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The post Far Away [Part 17] – The Caravan appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.
(d. 23 AH/644 CE) for a policy he enacted while caliph that limited the amount of mahr (marital gift) a woman could request upon marriage. While the general contours of her story are well known, what is missing is a closer analysis of the transmitted historical narrations about this incident and the remarkable details they reveal about the changed cultural ethos of seventh-century Arabia regarding women. More significantly, when we use this incident as a benchmark to measure women’s access, visibility, and advocacy in North American mosques, it reveals critical gaps that need to be addressed within our Muslim communities. 
), this female companion demonstrates a deep spiritual connection to God and her faith in divine justice. In one of the narrations in Ibn Kathīr’s tafsīr, after ʿUmar