Report to Grego (39 page)

The camel's sure, undulating rhythm transports your body, your blood takes on the rhythm of this undulation, and, together with your blood, so does your soul. Time frees itself from the geometric subdivisions into which it has been so humiliatingly jammed by the sober, lucid mind of the West. Here, with the rocking of the “desert ship,” time is released from its mathematical, firm-set confines; it becomes a substance that is fluid and indivisible, a light, intoxicating vertigo which transforms thought into reverie and music.

Given over for hours on end to this rhythm, I began to understand why Anatolians read the Koran swaying to and fro as though on camelback. In this manner they impart to their souls the monotonous, intoxicating movement which leads them to the great mystic desert—to ecstasy.

Extending before us as far as the eye could see was a tempestuous rose-colored expanse. I supposed it was the sea. The three Bedouins came together, whispered secretly to one another, then separated again. We continued on. It was not the sea; all that rosy
expanse was the desert, churned up by a fearful tempest which gave the burning sand clouds their rosy hue. Before long we entered the sandstorm. It took our breath away. Taëma cut short his song; the three Bedouins wrapped themselves tightly in their burnooses and covered their mouths and nostrils.

The sand rose up, striking our faces and hands, wounding them. The camels began to spin about, unable to keep their balance. Although the tortuous passage lasted three hours, I rejoiced secretly that I had been enabled to add this terrible desert whirlwind to my experiences.

The sun began to set; we had left the storm behind us and were finally nearing the mountains. Little by little the desert commenced to turn violet and be covered with shadows. Taëma, who had been going in the lead, stopped and gave the signal to set up camp.
“Krr! Krr!”
gurgled the Bedouin throats. The camels snorted. They knelt on their front legs, then fell back on their hindquarters, thundering like houses crumpling to the ground.

We unloaded them and pitched the tent, working all together. Aoua made a pile of the bits of wood he had taken such great care to collect along the route. He lighted a fire. Mansour, removing the casserole, rice, and butter from a sack made of braided straw, began to cook, while Taëma mixed fine cornmeal with water, thumped out the dough in the pan with his slender fingers, and prepared little pancakes resembling tortillas. The pilaf, meanwhile, started to give off a delicious aroma. Sitting together around the fire, we ate, made tea, then brought out our pipes and smoked, gazing sometimes at the dying embers, sometimes at the large disquieting stars suspended above our heads.

A strange sense of well-being flooded my body and soul. But I tried to bring all this romanticism—Arabia, the desert, the Bedouins—under control, and I scoffed at my heart for thumping away so excitedly.

Lying down inside the tent, I closed my eyes, and all of the muffled, inscrutable murmurings of the desert flowed into my mind. The camels were chewing their cud outside; I could hear their jaws grinding. The whole of the desert was chewing its cud like a camel.

The next day at dawn we began our journey through the mountains, those desolate, arid mountains which hate and repel human
beings. Sometimes an ash-gray partridge beat its wings with a metallic sound in the black cavities of the rocks; sometimes a crow soared in circles over our heads as though it desired to smell if we had begun to exude the stench of cadavers, and then to pounce upon us.

All day long the camel's rhythm and Taëma's monotonous lulling song. The sun fell upon us like fire; the air trembled above the stones and our heads.

We followed the route which the Hebrews had taken three thousand years before in their flight from the rich land of Egypt. This wilderness we were traversing had been the terrible workshop where the race of Israel had hungered, thirsted, groaned, and been forged. With insatiable eyes I regarded the crags one by one, entered the sinuous ravine, imprinted the blazing mountain crests in my mind. I was reminded of how, once on the Greek coast, I had advanced for hours inside a cave filled with bulky stalactites, gigantic stone phalli which gleamed brilliantly red in the torchlight. Formerly the cave of a large river, it had been left empty because the river had altered its course over the centuries. The thought flashed through my mind that exactly the same had happened with this ravine we were now traversing beneath the sun. God—pitiless Jehovah—had dug out these mountain ranges in order to pass through.

Before He crossed this wilderness, Jehovah still had not firmly defined His identity, because His people had still not been firmly defined. The various Elohim were not one; they were innumerable spirits spread about in the air, all unnamed and invisible. They blew the breath of life into the world, procreated, descended upon women from on high, killed, flashed, thundered, came down to earth in the guise of thunderbolts. They had no homeland, belonged to no single person, nor to any single tribe. But gradually they took on flesh and became visible, preferably on huge rocks, prescribed sites of high elevation. Men smeared these rocks with lard, offered sacrifices, coated the rocks with blood. Whatever a man held dearest to himself—his first-born son, his only daughter—that he was obliged to sacrifice to God in order to creep into the Lord's good graces.

Over the centuries, with prosperity, the race slowly softened, became civilized. God softened also, became civilized. Animals
were sacrificed to Him now instead of humans; He began to be given appearances within reach: snake, hawk, golden calf, winged sphinx. Thus in this rich and sated land of Egypt the God of the Hebrews commenced to vent His ferocity. But suddenly the hostile Pharaohs came, uprooted the Hebrews from their rich lands, and cast them into the Arabian desert. Hunger and thirst began, as did grumbling and rebelliousness. It must have been in this very vicinity that they halted one noontime when they were thirsty and famished, and cried out, “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and when we did eat bread to the full!” And Moses, incensed, lifted his hands in despair and cried to God, “What can I do with these ungrateful people? In a moment they shall pick up stones and stone me!”

And God bent over His people and heard. Sometimes He sent them quails and manna so that they could eat; sometimes He sent a sword and cut them down. Day by day, the farther they advanced into the desert, the fiercer His countenance became, the more fiercely did He approach them. Nighttimes He became fire and marched at their head, daytimes a pillar of smoke. He crammed himself into the ark of the covenant; the Levites elevated Him with terror, and the hand that touched Him was reduced to ashes.

His countenance became defined ever more firmly. It grew harsh, took on the fierce appearance of Israel. He was no longer a group of nameless, invisible spirits scattered through the air without a homeland, no longer the God of the entire earth. He was Jehovah, the hard, vindictive, bloodthirsty God of only a single race, the Hebrew race. He had to be hard, vindictive, and bloodthirsty because He was passing through difficult times, was warring with the Amalekites, the Midianites, and the desert. He had to conquer them—by suffering, intriguing, killing—and save Himself.

This arid, treeless, inhuman ravine we were traversing had been Jehovah's fearsome sheath. Through here He had passed, bellowing.

How can anyone have a true sense of the Hebrew race without crossing this terrifying desert, without experiencing it? For three interminable days we crossed it on our camels. Your throat sizzles
from thirst, your head reels, your mind spins about as serpent-like you follow the sleek tortuous ravine. When a race is forged for two score years in this kiln, how can such a race die? I rejoiced at seeing the terrible stones where the Hebrews' virtues were born: their perseverance, will power, obstinacy, endurance, and above all, a God flesh of their flesh, flame of their flame, to whom they cried, “Feed us! Kill our enemies! Lead us to the Promised Land!”

To this desert the Jews owe their continued survival and the fact that by means of their virtues and vices they dominate the world. Today, in the unstable period of wrath, vengeance, and violence through which we are passing, the Jews are of necessity once again the chosen people of the terrible God of Exodus from the land of bondage.

That noon we were finally going to reach the Sinai monastery. We had climbed to the Midian plateau, an elevation of more than 5,000 feet. The previous night we had spent in a Mohammedan graveyard, where we erected our tent in front of the sheik's tomb. We awoke at dawn. The cold was biting, snow had covered our tent. The whole of the plain stretched before us, brilliantly white. Dismantling the roof of a dilapidated hut in the graveyard, we lighted a fire. The flames tongued upwards. The four of us crouched around the fire to get warm. The camels came close too and stretched out their necks above us. We drank date raki and made some tea. Then the Bedouins spread a mat over the snow, knelt, and began to pray, their slender sunburned faces turned toward Mecca.

They were plunged in ecstasy, their faces radiant. It was with great respect that I watched those three buffeted, hungering bodies being so agreeably filled. Mansour, Taëma, and Aoua had experienced an Ascension; paradise had opened its gates and they had entered. It was their own paradise, the Mohammedan, Bedouin paradise of sun, white camels, and ewes grazing in green pastures, multicolored tents with women sitting cross-legged outside them, their heads thrown back in laughter, silver bracelets around their wrists and ankles, their eyes painted with kohl, their hair dyed with henna, two false beauty spots on their cheeks; and the meal was steaming: pilaf with milk, dates, white bread, and a jug of cold water; and there were three tents bigger than all the other tents, thirty-three camels faster than all the other camels,
and three hundred and thirty-three women more ravishing than all the other women: the tents, camels, and women of Taëma, Mansour, and Aoua.

The prayer terminated; paradise closed its gates. The Bedouins descended to the Midian plateau, drew close to the fire without speaking, and cheerfully resumed their humble earthly tasks. After all, just how long could this life last? Paradise would follow, so best be patient.

Extending my hand to Taëma, who was sitting at my right, I recited to him in Arabic the hallowed Mohammedan cry: “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” He jolted with astonishment; it was as though I had uncovered his secret. His face radiant with joy, he glanced at me and pressed my hand.

We set out. I proceeded on foot, no longer able to tolerate the camel's slow, patient rhythm. Mountains of red and green granite rose on either side of us. Now and then a jockey-like bird passed overhead, small and black, with a tiny white calotte. A file of camels appeared at the end of the road; the Bedouins uttered cries of joy, and we halted. “Salaam aleikum”—“peace unto you”—the two approaching camel drivers said in greeting. They clasped hands with our drivers; the two pairs bent forward to each other and, cheek against cheek, spoke in hushed, lulling voices, prolonging the greeting. The simple, age-old stichomythy began: “How are you? How are your wives? Your camels? Where are you coming from? Where are you going?” The words salaam and Allah came again and again to their lips, and this encounter in the desert took on the sacred, elevated meaning which should always characterize the encounter of man with man.

I have a heartfelt admiration for these children of the desert. Look how they live—on a few dates, a handful of corn, a cup of coffee! Their bodies are nimble, their shins are slender as a nanny goat's, their eyes like a hawk's. They are the world's most indigent people, and also the most hospitable. Though hungry, they never eat their fill, but save a little coffee, a little sugar, a handful of dates to offer to a stranger. At Raïtho the Superior told me how a small Bedouin woman stood gazing at an English tourist who had opened his tins of conserves and begun to eat. The Englishman offered her a mouthful, but she declined out of pride; then, suddenly, she swooned from hunger and collapsed to the ground.

The Bedouin's first love is his camel. I used to watch Taëma's, Mansour's and Aoua's delicate ear shells wag with anxiety whenever they heard one of the camels utter the slightest sigh. They would stop, adjust her saddle, examine her belly and hoofs, collect whatever desiccated grass happened to be available, and feed her. In the evening they unsaddled the camel and covered her with a woolen blanket; then they spread a cloth out on the ground and carefully removed any impurities from her grain.

There is an old Arab poem which extols the Bedouin's beloved companion:

The camel steps upon the desert and proceeds.

She is as solid as a coffin's planks; her firm thighs resemble a high fortress gate.

The traces of the cinch on her flanks are like dried-up lakes filled with pebbles.

Touch her there and you think you touch a rasp.

They are similar to the aqueduct built by a Greek engineer and covered by him with tiles!

W
e were hastening up the mountains, burning with desire to finally encounter the monastery. A bit of water in a natural basin, a few date palms, a stone hut, and a little farther on, a wooden cross implanted in the rock. Suddenly Taëma raised his arm.

“Derr!” he cried. The monastery!

Below us on an exposed stretch between two tall mountains appeared the celebrated monastery of Sinai, girded by high walls. I had greatly desired this moment, but now that I held the fruit of so much effort in my hand, I rejoiced quietly, without vociferation. Nor did I increase my pace. For a second I felt an impulse to turn back; there flashed through me the thrice-callous pleasure of not harvesting and enjoying this fruit of my desire. But then suddenly a warm breeze blew, carrying the aroma of blossoming trees. The human being in me triumphed, and I proceeded onward.