Hi Jolly!

by James Arthur Kjelgaard.

1. Ali Finds the Dalul

The first gray light of very early morning was just starting to thin the black night when Ali opened his eyes. He came fully awake, with no lingering period that was part sleep and part wakefulness, but he kept exactly the same position he had maintained while slumbering. Until he knew just what lay about him, he must not move at all.

Motion, even the faintest stir and even in this dim light, was sure to attract the eye of whoever might be near. In this Syrian desert, where only the reckless turned their backs to their own caravan companions, whoever might be near--or for that matter far--could be an enemy.

When Ali finally moved, it was to extend his right hand, very slowly and very stealthily, to the jeweled dagger that lay snugly sheathed beneath the patched and tattered robe that served him as burnous by day, and bed and bed covering by night. When his fingers curled around the hilt, he breathed more easily. Next to a camel--of course a _dalul_, or riding camel--a dagger was the finest and most practical of possessions, as well as the best of friends.

As for owning a _dalul_, Ali hadn't even hoped to get so much as a baggage camel for this journey. When it finally became apparent that the celestial rewards of a trip to Mecca would be augmented by certain practical advantages if he made his pilgrimage now, he had just enough silver to pay for the _ihram_, or ceremonial robe that he must don before setting foot in the Holy City. Even then, it had been necessary to provide Mustapha, that cheating dog of a tailor, with four silver coins--and two lead ones--and Mustapha had himself to thank for that!

When Ali came to ask the price, it was five pieces of silver. When he returned to buy, it was six.

But the _ihram_, as well as the fifth silver coin which Mustapha might have had if he'd retained a proper respect for a bargain, were now safe beneath Ali's burnous. The dagger was a rare and beautiful thing. It had been the property of some swaggering desert chief who, while visiting Damascus, Ali's native city, had imprudently swaggered into a dark corner.

Though he frowned upon killing fellow humans for other than the most urgent reasons, and he disapproved completely of a.s.sa.s.sins who slew so they might rob, it never even occurred to Ali that he was obliged to do anything except disapprove. He knew the usual fate of swaggering desert chieftains who entered the wrong quarters of Damascus, and, when the inevitable happened, he did not spring to the rescue. That was not required by his code of self-preservation. So the a.s.sa.s.sin s.n.a.t.c.hed his victim's purse and fled without any intervention. Ali got the dagger.

In the light of the journey he was undertaking, and the manner in which he was undertaking it, a dagger was infinitely more precious than the best-filled purse. Mecca was indeed a holy city, but of those who traveled the routes leading to it, not all confined themselves to holy thoughts and deeds. Many a pilgrim had had his throat slit for a trifle, or merely because some bandit felt the urge to practice throat slitting.

A dagger smoothed one's path, and, as he waited now with his hand on the hilt of his protective weapon, Ali thought wryly that his present path was in sore need of smoothing.

He'd left Damascus two weeks ago, intending to offer his services, as camel driver, to the Amir of the nearby village of Sofad. He would then travel to Mozarib with his employer's caravan. The very fact that there would be force behind the group automatically meant that there would also be reasonable safety. Located three days' journey from Damascus, two from Sofad, Mozarib was the a.s.sembly point and starting place for the great Syrian _Hadj_, or pilgrimage. It went without saying that, if Ali tended to his camel driving and kept his dagger handy, he would go all the way to Mecca with the great _Hadj_, which often consisted of 5000 pilgrims and 25,000 camels.

Thus he had planned, but his plans had misfired.

He reached Sofad on the morning scheduled for departure, only to find that the Amir, at the last moment, had decided to make this first march toward Mozarib a cool one and had left the previous night. Hoping to catch up, but not unmindful of the perils that beset the way when he neared the camp of the Sofad pilgrims, Ali had decided that it would be prudent to reconnoiter first. It had indeed been prudent.

Peering down at the camp from a nest of boulders on a hillock, Ali was just in time to see the Amir and his fourteen men beheaded, in a most efficient fashion, by sword-wielding Druse tribesmen who'd taken the camp. Afterwards, the raiders had loaded everything except the stripped bodies of their victims on their own camels and departed.

It was a time for serious thinking, to which Ali had promptly devoted himself. Unfortunately, he failed also to think broadly, and the only conclusion he drew consisted of the fact that it was still possible for him to go on and join the _Hadj_. Camel drivers were always welcome.

Sparing not a single thought to the idea that Druse raiders would rather kill than do anything else, Ali had almost been caught unawares by the one who had slipped hopefully back to see if he could find somebody else to behead. Ali had taken to his heels and, so far, he had proved that he was fleeter than his pursuer. Tenacious as any bloodhound, the Druse had stayed on his trail until yesterday morning. Now he was shaken. Ali knew that he was somewhere south of Damascus and, with any luck, might yet join the _Hadj_.

Help would not come amiss. Ali drank the last sip from his goatskin water flask, shifted his dagger just a little, so it would be ready to his hand should he have need of it, and made ready to address himself to the one unfailing Source of help.

Though he had no more water, there was an endless supply of sand. Good Moslems who could read and write had a.s.sured him that this statement appears in the _Koran_: "When ye rise up to prayer, wash your faces and your hands and your arms to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet to the ankles." Though it was commonly a.s.sumed that one would cleanse himself with water before daring to mention Allah's name, special provisions applied to special occasions. For those who had no water, sand was an acceptable subst.i.tute.

His ablutions performed, Ali faced toward Mecca, placed an open hand on either side of his face and intoned, "G.o.d is most great." Remaining in a standing position, he proceeded to the next phase of the prayer that all good Moslems must offer five times daily.

It was the recitation of the opening _sura_, or verse, of the _Koran_.

Ali, who'd memorized the proper words, had not proceeded beyond, "In the name of the merciful and compa.s.sionate G.o.d. Praise belongs to G.o.d--"

when he was interrupted by the roar of an enraged camel.

Ali halted abruptly, instantly and completely, forgetting the sacred rite in which he'd been absorbed and that had five more complete phases, each with prescribed gestures, before he might conclude it. When he finally remembered, he was a little troubled; Allah might conceivably frown upon whoever interrupted prayers to Him. But Ali remembered also that Allah is indulgent toward those who are at war, in danger, ill, or for other good reasons are unable to recite the proper prayers in the proper way at the prescribed times.

Surely a camel in trouble--and, among other things, the beast's roar told Ali that it was in trouble--was the finest of reasons for ignoring everything else. Not lightly had the camel been designated as Allah's greatest gift to mankind. To slight His gift would be to slight Him. His conscience clear on that point, Ali devoted himself to a.n.a.lyzing the various things he'd learned about when a camel roared in the distance.

The earliest recollection of Ali, who'd never known father or mother, was of his career as a rug vendor's apprentice in the bazaar of The Street Called Straight. His master worked him for as many hours as the boy could stay awake, beat him often and left him hungry when he was unable to steal food. But the life was not without compensations.

Though no longer enjoying the flourishing trade it had once known, Damascus sat squarely astride the main route between the vast reaches of Mohammedan Turkey and Mecca, the city that every good Moslem must visit at least once during his lifetime. The Turks came endlessly, and in numbers, and since it's only sensible to do a little trading, even when on a holy pilgrimage, when they reached Damascus, they stopped to trade at The Street Called Straight. But though the pilgrims were interesting, Ali found the camels that carried both the Turks and their goods infinitely more so.

He knew them all--plodding baggage beasts, two-humped bactrians, the hybrid offspring of bactrians and one-humped camels, and all the species and shades of species in between. But though he liked all camels, he saved his love for the dromedary, the _heira_, the _hygin_, riding camel, or, as Ali called them, the _dalul_.

Invariably ridden by proud men and never used for any purpose other than riding, they were a breed apart. Slighter and far more aristocratic than the baggage beasts, they could carry a rider one hundred miles between sunrise and sunset, satisfy themselves with a few handfuls of dates when the ride ended, and go without water for five days. Their pedigrees, in many instances longer than those of their riders, dated back to pre-Biblical history. The owner of a _dalul_ considered such a possession only slightly less precious than his life.

It was when he became acquainted with the _dalul_ that Ali invented his own mythical father. This parent was not a nameless vagabond, petty thief, or fly-by-night adventurer who never even knew he'd sired a son and wouldn't have cared if he had, but a renowned trainer of _dalul_. It was he who went to the camel pastures and chose the wild young stallions that were ready for breaking. Though they would kill any ordinary man who ventured near, Ali's father gentled them and taught them to accept the saddle and rein. Ali determined that he himself must go out with the camels and promptly ran away from his master.

Because he was too young to be of any imaginable use, the few caravan masters who condescended to look at him usually aimed a blow right after the look. For two years Ali was one of the numerous boy-vagabonds who infested the bazaars of Damascus. If such a life did not elevate the mind it could not help but sharpen the wits.

Then, just after his ninth birthday, Ali got his chance to go out with a caravan. It was a very small and very poor one, fewer than fifty camels, and the caravan master decided to take Ali only because he was a boy. As such, quite apart from the fact that he could safely be browbeaten, it was reasonable to a.s.sume that he had not had time to learn all the tricks of experienced drivers, the more talented among whom have been known to get rich, and leave the owners poor, on just one journey.

Apart from their uses and physical functions, which he learned so precisely that one glance enabled him to cite any camel's past history, age, present state of health, and what it would probably do next, Ali came to appreciate the true miracle of a camel. He was the one in ten thousand, the camel driver who knew everything the rest did--and much they did not--and who transcended that to understand clearly the nature of the camel itself. So fine was his touch and so complete the affinity between camels and himself, that even beasts thought hopelessly unmanageable responded to him.

Nine years old when he made his first trip, Ali had spent the past nine years on the caravan routes. He'd been to Baghdad, Istanbul, Tosya, Trebizond. He went where the camels went and never cared if it was two hundred miles or two thousand. But though every member of a caravan is ent.i.tled to trade for himself, and many a camel driver has become a caravan master or owner, Ali was as poor as on the day he started.

Partly responsible for this was his consuming pa.s.sion for camels and his negligible interest in trading. Far more at fault was his origin. The men of the caravans knew him as Ali, and only Allah could know more about camels. To the merchants, who saw camels merely as the most convenient method for transporting goods, he remained the orphan waif of Damascus. They turned their backs upon one who had neither family nor prestige, who could point to no achievement other than an outstanding skill with camels. Now, camels were very convenient, but, as every merchant in a perfumed drawing room knew, they also smelled!

So Ali had a most compelling reason for deciding to undertake his pilgrimage at this time. After he'd been to Mecca, like all others who have completed the difficult and dangerous journey, he'd be ent.i.tled to add the prefix "Hadji" to his name. That alone would never make him the equal of the wealthy merchants who also had been to Mecca, but it would surely make him the superior of all who had not. And this was a vast number, since the life of a merchant is not necessarily conducive to physical achievement and the journey to Mecca is hard.

Now, in a desert wilderness, while on the way to Mecca, a camel had cried out to Ali, and he could not have helped responding, even if the camel had cried while he was at prayer in the _masjid-al-haram_, the Great Mosque of Mecca.

Its roar had already told Ali many things about the beast, including the exact direction he must take to find it and approximately how far he must go before locating it. The sound had had a certain timbre and quality that hinted of regal things and regal bearing, therefore it was not a baggage animal. However, neither did it have the awesome blast of a fully-grown _dalul_. It was not challenging another stallion to battle, but roaring in rage and defiance at something that it did not know how to fear.

Ali's hand slipped back to the hilt of his dagger. Unmindful of the hot little wind that had just arisen, and that would become hotter as the day grew longer, he started toward the camel. Although he had never been here before, he had traveled similar country often enough to make a reasonably accurate guess as to the terrain that lay ahead.

It was a land of low hills, or hillocks, whose sides and narrow crests supported a straggling growth of Aleppo pine intermixed with scrubby brush. There was more than average rainfall, so the trees were bigger and not as parched as those found in very arid regions. The camel was in a gulley between the second and third hills. Ali climbed the hill, slunk behind an Aleppo pine, peered around the trunk and gasped.

There was a camp in the gulley--and a string of baggage camels and men--but at first glance Ali saw nothing except the _dalul_. Of a deep fawn color, which stamped it as one of the Nomanieh dromedaries, it was still so young that it had not yet attained full growth. Located apart from the rest, each separate leg was held by a separate rope, and the bonds were stretched so tightly that the beast could hardly move. A fifth rope, that encircled its neck, was equally tight.

Evidently bound in such a fashion for many hours, the young _dalul_ was weary, thirsty and choking. But, despite its obvious misery, this was far and away the most magnificent beast Ali had ever beheld. It was the riding camel he'd often dreamed of when, plodding along some lonely caravan trail, he'd conjured up mental images of the perfect _dalul_.

Further examination revealed why the young _dalul_ was bound so cruelly.

Ali's lip curled in contempt.

The men--he counted nineteen--were part of the same band of Druse tribesmen who'd pillaged the camp of Sofad and ma.s.sacred its people.

Evidently they considered themselves safe here, since they kept no watch at all and seemed to be unconcerned about anything. The twenty-nine camels on the picket line were all stolid baggage animals such as even Druse could handle. The young _dalul_ was something else.

There was no telling just how it had fallen into the hands of the Druse; a _dalul_ so fine would certainly be carefully guarded.

Regardless of how the raiders had obtained the animal, they could not handle it. Obviously, it had turned on them and probably hurt somebody--Ali voiced a fervent hope that the injury was not a light one--and now the _dalul_ was tightly bound, to insure that it would hurt n.o.body else.

Ali whispered, "Have patience, brother."

Slowly and thoroughly, beginning at one end and letting his eyes move alertly to the other, Ali inspected the camp and confirmed an ugly truth that had already been pointed out by common sense. With eight good men at his back, and the element of surprise in their favor, he would have a reasonable chance of storming the camp. But, as things were--

He'd help neither the _dalul_ nor himself by joining his ancestors at this moment, Ali decided. He pulled the burnous over his head, drew the dagger from its sheath and settled down to wait.

The light grew, and the heat with it, as the sun climbed higher. Ali risked moving just enough to pick up a pebble and put it on his tongue.