The Desert. Only mountains, rocks, sand. 2. A small village. Muck-colored houses. Figures go by, women with pots on their heads, children, camels, dust, men in long white robes, others in blue robes, other in black. And some soldiers. Everyday life. 3. A small street. A light wind blows curls of sand into the air…Nearby there is an old, rather battered car. Inside it there is a man, David Locke. Thirty three years old. Unshaven. There is a tape recorder on the seat beside him, and a case for a 16mm camera on the seat behind.
Locke: Je peux vous parler un moment?
Man: Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?
Locke doesn’t answer directly.
Locke: Vous êtes Musulman, n’est-ce pas?
Man: Oui
-The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni, opening scene
We all ate out of the same bowl and drank from the same water skin for thirty nine days. Maseehi and Muslim. Kababeesh and Cape Codder- David was from Barnstable. A man from Bara and a Brincetonian- Arabs can’t pronounce their “p”s. Even Adam Hamid of the Hamari tribe, the youngest drover in our group, fell in with our common eating, drinking, snoring, and shitting. Until Day 39.
We were close to Aswan by then. In Adam’s mind, whatever centripetal force brought us together out there suddenly turned centrifugal. He said he’d no longer eat with a Maseehi, a Christian. (Lucky for him he didn’t say with a Brincetonian.)
So he ostentatiously cut out a piece of aseeda and put it in a small bowl of his own and ate apart. It looked a bit silly.
And KhairAllah didn’t like it at all. His job was to keep up the esprit de corps at all times. So he got out his hippo hide whip and gave Adam a few lashes. He told him he was a young stupid idiot, that David and I had ridden and eaten and drank and snored next to him for the whole trip. And now this? So he whipped him some more. Adam came back to the common food pot, acted sullen for a few more minutes, then joined in the conversation as if nothing had happened.
I never held it against Adam, maybe because I didn’t really understand what was happening and why. Muslim? Aywa. Maseehi? Yes. Al-’itnayn ma’a ba’d. The two together, said KhairAllah.
