In the Eye of the Storm

  ‘Well?’ Leaning forward, I ticked the camel below the chin. ‘Do you like your new name, Ambrose?’

  The camel spat at me again.

  ‘There, you see? He likes it! He’s downright enthusiastic!’

  Grabbing the saddle, I tried to swing myself up, like I had seen horse riders do. All I managed, however, was to dangle from the camel’s side like an over-ripe plum. No matter how much I pulled, I couldn’t get myself up there!

  Blast! If you weren’t so heavy you could do this! It’s all because your derrière is so f-

  No! My derrière wasn’t fat! Just generous. That was the word. Generous.

  Behind me, Youssef cleared his throat ‘You have to make the camel kneel down before you can get on, Hanem.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to do that?’ I growled, pounding on the beast’s hairy side. ‘Let me up, you smelly monster, you!’

  Ignoring me, the camel went back to chewing on its reins.

  Youssef regarded the camel cautiously. ‘Um… well, actually they should be trained to kneel when someone approaches them.’

  ‘In case you haven’t noticed, that hasn’t happened yet!’

  Spitting out the reins, Ambrose turned his head and began chewing on the sleeve of my thobe instead. Ah! A gourmet camel, eh?

  ‘Um… yes, Hanem. Well, in that case, you simply command him to kneel in an authoritative tone of voice. That should be enough.’

  I filled my lungs with air. ‘Kneel, you bloody flee-ridden beast! And stop chewing on my sleeve!’

  Nothing happened. Youssef cleared his throat again. ‘Well, you could try to…’

  ‘Kneel!’

  The cold, hard voice cut through Youssef’s like a knife through butter. The camel’s knees buckled and I yelped as my feet suddenly hit the ground. Quickly, I braced myself against it and scrambled up into the saddle. When I turned my head to look, I already knew whom I would see.

  There he was: Mr Ambrose - the real one, not the camel - sitting in the saddle of his own mount as if it were the armchair in his very own office, his back ramrod straight, his gaze cool and assessing. Unlike all the others, who were all swathed in white Arabian dress, ready for the desert, he was still wearing his back tailcoat. Even his black top hat was still on his head.

  ‘Thank you.’ I gave him a nod.

  He returned it, curtly. ‘Let’s stop wasting time.’

  ‘Agreed.’ I urged my camel forward. ‘Let’s go, Ambrose!’

  ‘Excuse me?’ My employer’s eyes sparkled dangerously. ‘Since when do you give orders to me?’

  I gave him a charming smile. ‘Oh… I wasn’t talking to you.’

  *~*~**~*~*

  It didn’t take Mr Ambrose long to discover the name I had given to my dear, trusted friend, the camel.

  His reaction?

  Well, let’s just say he wasn’t best pleased about it. Of course, he didn’t throw a fit or scream at me or anything like that. Oh no. He was Mr Rikkard Ambrose after all. Words of anger were a waste of his precious time. Instead, he attacked and punished me with the stoniest, coldest, most absolute silence that ever refused to be heard by a human ear. All I got whenever I tried to make conversation was a baleful glare, so I mostly conversed with Ambrose (the one I was sitting on, I mean) instead. I didn’t get any more conversation out of him, but at least he spat at me now and again, in quite a nice way, really.

  The days dragged by. We followed a well-travelled road, crossing the arms of the Nile at several points, always travelling towards the sunrise. The air was incredibly heavy and humid, the ground moist beneath our feet. I tried to enjoy it as long as it lasted, knowing that all too soon the ever-present moistness would be replaced by dry, hot desert air. But the mosquitos that flew around and around me, attacking every inch of my skin, made enjoying the trip rather difficult.

  Mr Ambrose’s silence meant that any distraction was out of the question. I couldn’t even get an answer out of him about what he planned to do when we ran into the bandits. The few times I tried asking, I was met with a wall of silent ice, and his men weren’t much more forthcoming.

  The one ray of sunshine in the whole situation was that after a few days journey, we were joined by our long lost companion, who had been riding ahead, scouting, and avoiding everyone in the hope for the miracle of accelerated beard growth.

  ‘Karim!’ My face lit up. The rider who approached us had his face covered against the mosquitos, but there was no mistaking that giant form, those massive shoulders, and the even more massive turban. ‘It’s a joy to see you after all this time! Come on, get rid of that rag hiding your face. Show your old friends a smile!’

  Very, very slowly, the Mohammedan reached up and drew back the cloth that hid the lower part of his face.

  Oh. Apparently, the hoped-for miracle had not occurred.

  A word of caution about beards here. Everyone knows that a beard covers your face. But what most people who decide to grow beards don’t consider, and what I learned only now, was that if you grow a beard, the upper half of your face will get a lot of sunlight, while the lower half will get none at all, causing strongly varying degrees of tanning. If then, at some later point, for whatever reason, you have to shave the beard off again, the result will look… interesting.

  I stared.

  ‘Ah. Oh.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Um… so good to see you got out of the fire without any um… major injuries.’

  His bushy eyebrows drew together. A storm cloud seemed to appear over his turban, and his eyes flashed.

  One word, those eyes seemed to say, one word more and I’ll…

  ‘Well… so good to see you again,’ I repeated, smiling as broadly as I could, fighting to keep my face straight. ‘So very good. I suppose you want to see the others now to, um… chat. Or whatever it is you men do in your spare time. Well… cheerio, then.’

  His eyes flashed warningly one more time. Then he spurred on his camel - a monster of an animal that seemed just able to bear its enormous burden - and rode past me, towards Mr Ambrose. I waited until he was well out of hearing range. When he was, I waited five minutes longer, just to be sure.

  Then I collapsed onto Ambrose’s neck, biting on my thobe to conceal my laughter. ‘Oh my God! His face! His bloody face! He looks like… he is so… Oh my God!’

  *~*~**~*~*

  That was just about the only noteworthy historical event during our expedition though the Nile Delta. The rest consisted of silence, stale bread and an occasional bowl of gruel around a campfire. We passed a few more crossings and a lot of peasants working in the fields. Finally, the vegetation grew sparser, and one day we were standing under a few lonely trees, looking out into the distance, and there were no more trees there, and neither were there bushes, grass, or any other vegetation. All there was were rocky crags, sand, dust and more sand, stretching to the horizon.

  ‘The desert,’ I heard a cool voice beside me. Looking over, I saw Mr Ambrose regarding the craggy landscape before us with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ I told him. ‘I think I realized that much myself.’

  No reply.

  ‘Don’t take that as a criticism, though,’ I continued. ‘Those are the first words you’ve said to me in more than a week. You’re making progress. Now you’ve just got to remember that your vocal cords are actually good for something, and maybe we’ll have a nice chat one of these days.’

  No reply.

  ‘Or not.’

  Again, no reply. With a snap of his cane, Mr Ambrose spurred his camel forward, forging ahead, into the desert. His top hat didn’t wobble in the slightest from the camel’s march on the rough ground, but remained still and steady as a black marble tombstone.

  ‘Beware of the sun!’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Beware of the sun,’ I muttered. ‘What helpful advice! Why, thank you for mentioning that before you force me to ride hundreds of miles through the desert!’

  Sighing, I eyed the glowing, simmering landscape in fron
t of me. Well… what was one desert? Just a stretch of land without trees, after all. It couldn’t be that bad.

  I spurred my camel forward.

  *~*~**~*~*

  ‘Please, please let me die!’

  Mr Ambrose glanced over at me. ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you!’ I groaned, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Or at least one litre of it. Another six litres remained, stuck to the skin under the scorching sun. They felt more like glue than perspiration. ‘I was talking to God!’

  ‘I see.’

  Blast him! How could his voice be this calm, controlled and, most baffling of all, cool in this abominable heat? Balefully, I glared at his face. His voice wasn’t the only part of him that was cool.

  ‘How is it,’ I demanded, ‘that while I’m quite literally sweating my guts out, there’s not a drop of sweat on your face? Not a single blasted drop!’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You just bloody shrugged! That’s no bloody answer!’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Gah!’ Grasping the hem of my headscarf I tried to pull it further down to get at least a little more shade, but to no avail. The sun had already heated up the cloth mercilessly. It was like a woven oven. ‘Still, not a single drop of sweat! And you’re not even wearing anything for protection!’

  ‘Certainly I do,’ he contradicted me, one long pail finger tapping the side of his black top hat.

  ‘That’s no protection against sunlight! At least it’s not supposed to be! Why do you think the Arabs make all their clothes from white cloth? Because black attracts heat!’

  ‘Does it indeed?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I see…’ He gave me a long, cool look. He didn’t even have to speak the words out loud, I could hear them as clearly as if Moses himself had shouted them from the nearest mountain: Then why are you sweating, and I’m not?

  I was damned if I was going to give him an answer! Especially since I had none.

  ‘You should put on a thobe and headscarf yourself, or you’ll get heatstroke!’ I prophesied darkly, hoping to hell I was right.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’ll start sweating any minute now, I warn you! Not even you can stay cold as an iceberg in this heat!’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’

  A hot breeze picked up, blowing sand our way. I coughed, and buried my face in my camel’s foul-smelling neck to avoid the worst of the dust. Mr Ambrose just sat straight in the saddle, ignoring the stinging grains of sand as if they didn’t exist. When the breeze died down, he carefully removed his top hat, and began dusting sand off it. The sun now hit his perfect, sculptured face full-on, and he still didn’t even blink.

  ‘The heatstroke is coming!’ I warned. ‘Just you wait! In a few minutes you’ll be dead on the ground. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’

  ‘If I am dead, I will not be likely to say much.’

  ‘More than when you’re alive, that’s for sure!’

  Silence. What a big surprise!

  ‘Won’t you at least try on a headscarf to protect you from the worst of the sun?’ I grumbled.

  ‘I don’t think so. On the contrary, I think you should rid yourself of that bathrobe and the remainder of your current attire.’ He sent a cold look at my form, bundled up in white linen. ‘It is thoroughly un-English.’

  ‘So is being a miserable skinflint,’ I shot back. ‘Are you sure you don’t have Scottish blood in you?’

  If it was possible at all for something already rock-hard to stiffen, then his posture did. ‘Quite sure.’

  His tone roused my interest from its siesta, providing the first distraction from the heat for hours. ‘So… where do you come from, exactly?’

  Somehow, I didn’t know how, he managed to lower the temperature of his gaze below the freezing point - even here. ‘That is none of your business.’

  ‘It is Scotland, isn’t it? I knew it!’

  ‘No!’

  The corner of my mouth twitched. ‘Why would you want to hide it, unless it’s really Scotland? Come on, admit it!’

  ‘It is not Scotland,’ he told me, his voice even stiffer and colder than before.

  ‘Oh, really? Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. My home lies nowhere near Scotland!’

  ‘Hm… how far away is it, exactly?’

  The thin line of his mouth thinned into an even thinner line. ‘Quite far!’

  ‘Come on! How far, exactly?’

  His left little finger twitched. ‘If you have to know, three miles and one thousand and thirty-five yards from the southern Scottish border.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ I tried to keep my face expressionless while I nodded solemnly. It wasn’t easy. ‘That’s incredibly far away, of course. Nobody could ever take you for anything resembling a Scotsman under those circumstances.’

  ‘Mr Linton?’

  ‘I’m still wearing your wedding ring. I don’t think you want to call me “Mister” in public - not unless you want to have some interesting explaining to do when we return to England.’

  His eyes narrowed infinitesimally. ‘Fine. Mrs Thomson?’

  ‘Yes, Sir! Right here, Sir!’

  ‘I have a very important order for you.’

  ‘Yes, Sir! I will obey your every wish, as is my duty as your… what am I currently? Wife? Secretary? Dogsbody?’

  ‘The order is,’ Mr Ambrose said, ignoring me completely, ‘Be silent!’

  ‘Yes, Sir! Immediately, Sir!’

  *~*~**~*~*

  Did you ever hear the saying ‘Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it?’

  Well, I didn’t. I had never heard of the damn saying in my whole life, but that didn’t stop me from inventing it for myself the moment the sun began to sink behind the horizon.

  The whole blasted day I had done nothing but pray for cold, cold, cold, cold… and now the desert was giving me exactly what I asked for, in concentrated form. The moment the sun’s last, warming rays vanished below the earth, the warmth seemed to be sucked out of the barren landscape like the juice from an orange. My skin, heated just a moment ago, became cold and clammy. I started to shiver.

  ‘W-what’s this?’ I demanded, wrapping my thobe more closely around me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The matter?’ Mr Ambrose cocked his head. ‘Whatever can you mean?’

  ‘The cold, of course! Why is it suddenly so bloody cold?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be? There’s no vegetation to hold the heat. It just evaporates when the sun sinks.’

  ‘And that doesn’t bother you at all, does it?’ I demanded, glaring at him. His Serene Mightiness, Mr Ambrose, still sat in the saddle like a stone idol of the God of Commerce, not even showing the slightest sign of discomfort.

  ‘Certainly not. Why should it?’

  But about ten minutes later, when he thought I wasn’t looking, I saw him rub his hands together. Ha! He was mortal, after all!

  ‘We’ll make camp here!’ came his order about half an hour later. I nearly dropped from my saddle in relief. For a moment I considered cuddling up to the warm form of the camel, but the stink of the creature would keep me at bay till I was at death’s door from freezing. Anyway, there was work to be done.

  ‘Pitch the tents! Cook food! Set guards!’ Mr Ambrose’s pelted us with orders, and we hurried to obey. Luckily, Youssef, and not I, got the task of collecting the camel shit to light a fire with.

  ‘You there! Scout ahead as long as the moon is still up! I want to know what’s out there! Be back in half an hour! And you, get my maps and instruments! I have to determine where exactly we are!’

  Soon we were all huddled around a campfire that, while smelling rather peculiar, at least prevented our blood from freezing in our veins. There was warm food, companionship and even the occasional laughter. I didn’t understand any of the jokes, since they were all in Arabic, but I laughed along anyway. Mr Ambrose, to nobody’s surprise, did no
t laugh.

  Finally, though, our evening’s kettle full of warm stew ran out. Not long after, the day’s camel shit ran out as well, and the fire began to die down. The men started to disperse, some gathering in groups around the warm, if stinking, forms of the snoring camels. Others with more sensitive noses just moved closer to the glowing remains of the fire and huddled together there.

  This left only few solitary people: the guards surrounding the camp in a circle, and Mr Ambrose, and me, lying on the ground alone, separated by several feet of cold desert air. Shivering, I drew my thobe closer around me. Blast! I should have bought a woollen cloak, too!

  I glanced over at Mr Ambrose. He was lying, stiff as a board, his arms folded in front of his chest as if daring the night to freeze him to death. I couldn’t see his eyes - but I’d bet a month’s wages on the fact that they were colder than the dark night around us.

  Yes, his eyes might be cold. But the rest of him… Bloody hell, he has to be warm! Warmer than you, anyway!

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Dick?’

  No answer.

  I sighed. ‘Rick?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’

  There was a moment of silence, then: ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s rather cold, Sir.’

  He didn’t move an inch, didn’t even turn to look at me. ‘I had observed that much for myself.’

  ‘The others are all huddling together.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Against the cold, you know. Huddling together helps keep the cold away.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat again, and waited for a moment, giving him the opportunity to continue. He didn’t, preferring rather to lie stiff as a stiff and glare up at the stars. I cleared my throat for third time. It felt incredibly dry. ‘So… I was wondering… why don’t you?’

  Now he did turn his head, very slowly, very deliberately. When his eyes met mine, I had to shiver again.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  I licked my lips. ‘I said why don’t you huddle together with, um… someone? Or cuddle, whichever you prefer.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t cuddle.’