Perhaps it was this thought alone that drove Issa to think of taking the gold bar. He may have wished to reinstate his power over his private mountains at the price of breaking the authority of those strangers and shattering their arrogance. For he had no intention whatsoever of keeping the gold bar. He decided to take it, and at the same moment he decided to return it.
He urged his camel on in the desert night, the gold bar in his goatskin wallet glued to his breast as if it were a shield protecting him from unknown evils. Surrounded by his three companions, he headed south in the desert. They crossed Ra's Samadi and passed by al-Sharm; they could see the Ziyyara mountain to the west, on their right. Before dawn they arrived at Ra's Bushdadi; they crossed the Valley of Camels at the first light. They headed for the wells of Ringa, Hamata, and Ra's Nikrat, and reached the sea by afternoon, then veered westward once more toward the desert. They left behind them the ruins of the city of Baranis, built by Ptolemy-the-Flute-Player over a thousand years before in honor of his daughter. After they passed the Gulf of Banas, they rested for an hour at the foot of Batuga Mountain, then continued walking to the Shalatin well across from Zarkat al-Na'am on the route to the holy white Mount of 'Ulba, which they reached after two more days.
There they all collapsed, exhausted, at the foot of the mountain, as if prostrated in prayer like messengers returning from a holy mission.
The mountain loomed proud above them. A few random wild goats grazed on the upper slopes as if they were competing to reach the clouds. They moved cautiously so as not to slip on the green slopes. From between the dry rocks of the mountain, water flowed southward and westward into the Valley of 'Aidhab, to irrigate a thick forest there. The Baja tribes believed that it enclosed the spirit of their great ancestor, Koka Lanka, who spent his life in a deep cave inside the white mountain of 'Ulba, praying and worshipping, until, as time went by, his body changed into a rock itself. Meanwhile, according to the myth, his soul proceeded to tunnel out through the mountain in the form of springs so as to create a forest where it could dwell.
Thus that early morning at the foot of this mountain, which contained the rock which was in the past Koka Lanka, Issa, his descendant, took out the gold bar from its hiding place and placed it on a rock. He and his companions stood around it as if making their great ancestor Koka a witness to their act, reassuring him that his descendants continued to wield power over the desert and its mountains. All the Bashariyya, 'Ababida, and other different branches of the Baja tribe did likewise when some problem befell them: They took their worries and acts to the mountain that rose high into the sky, its impregnable crest surrounded with a white halo of clouds. The mountain became their shrine, like the Ka'aba at Mecca, an object of many pilgrimages. Down through the ages it had received the different migrations from across the sea, from the east, and even after the tribes dispersed to the west they always returned to the mountain. Issa believed in the power of the mountain as well as in its myth. As a boy he had learned that when God created Adam, He showed him the whole Earth spot by spot. When Adam saw Egypt, he saw 'Ulba Mountain covered with light. He named it the Blessed Mountain, and he prayed for it to be blessed and made fertile. Could there be any doubt that Adam was in fact their great ancestor Koka Lanka?
Issa, therefore, called on his ancestor as he stood at the foot of the mountain. He cried out loud so that Koka Lanka could hear him in his elevated cave. He told him in detail what he had done, and he lifted the gold bar as if bringing it nearer to the eyes of his ancestor. The sunlight gleamed on the bar, and Issa vowed that he would return the bar to its place in the mountain; for stealing was not part of his code of morals, and he asked for the blessing of his ancestor to guide him.
From the foot of the mountain came some of Issa's relatives and friends. They took the gold bar in their hands, turned it in the face of the sun two or three times, threw it against the rock to test its solidity and authenticity; then they returned it to Issa, blessing him. Issa placed it back in the goatskin and prepared his camel and set forth with his companions back to the mine.
They spent the night traveling, guided by the moon, the stars, and the planets. In the morning they passed a wild shrub near which they found a hat which Issa recognized as Nicola's. He ordered his men to look for the foreigner. After two hours of searching and smelling the ground, they found him. He was slumped over a rock, the cracked skin of his fingers bloody as if from digging for water.
He looked as if he were already dead. Issa bent over him, listening to his chest. Then he wet Nicola's face, careful not to pour more than a couple of drops at a time on his lips until he was able to drink. When Nicola started opening his eyes, he drank water in small sips, trembling. Issa took off his cape and covered him with it. Then he put him on the back of his camel.
So Nicola did not die, although he had been ready to. He had set forth five days before to recover the gold bar, but had become lost and had wandered for days in an exile of thirst. His fingers had scratched the ground but had failed to extract water from the rocks, just as he had failed to find the stolen gold.
He was not aware, of course, that the gold bar was hidden in Issa's garments all the time that Issa was leading the camel. They walked on toward al-Sukra and the mine, from the edge of death back toward life, with Issa as silent as he had been when he guided Nicola's camel on the day when Nicola first came into the desert.
On their way across the desert they passed the ancient cities in the Valley of 'Alaqi, the piles of stone of the fortresses in the Valley of Shanshaf and Wadi Sakit and al-Kharrit. They saw the old roads that the armies of the ancient Egyptians and the Roman Emperors had made—conquering as they went or else stopping off to subdue or to guard their already subjugated captives—on their way to the quarries where they mined the marble and precious stones to decorate the palaces and temples of Pharaohs and Emperors.
Wherever Issa's small caravan went, their eyes fell on remains of those old mines with their ancient inscriptions. Nicola trembled in awe and respect. These surroundings took hold of his disturbed feelings and made him feel that at last he was about to find a home, a place he would want to belong to.
He was sure he had won Issa as a brother and friend. He was unable to speak or move, so he looked at Issa. And at other times he would look at the desert around him, where there were only pale yellow sands and the washed-out pale blue sky and the shriveled earth hardening under the sun. And as they left these scenes behind them, they seemed to become mirages. Nicola stared at the disappearing scenes. At the beginning he saw thick shadows on the horizon, only shadows. As he studied them he thought he could distinguish domes and minarets, walls and gates. He could have sworn he saw thick leafy trees heavily laden with shimmering fruits. He tried to uncover the riddle of those shadows which at times turned into domes and minarets, and at other times into gardens and water fountains. But even more serious was the fact that they made him believe what he saw.
He realized then that the riddle was within himself. He was aware enough of his situation to realize that hope and desire are traps that human beings set for themselves and that they run panting after them only to fall into them. When he had begun walking into the desert five days before, was it merely a mirage that he was pursuing? That mirage had led him until he lost all sense of direction but he still ran toward it persistently, seeking refuge under its domes, water from its fountains and trees. He stumbled and then rose again to resume running, driven by the extraordinary force of thirst, until he collapsed on the rocks with cracked mouth and gullet, never reaching the domes or leafy trees, for they were only an illusion that his needs had created.
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