Quarantine

Musa understood her awkwardness, ofcourse. A woman guilty of adultery, willingly or not, would be embarrassed for herself, or fearful that her husband might find out and have her stoned. But he would tell her that she had nothing to be frightened of. What happens between people in the privacy of night is hidden even from the scrutiny of god. For god must sleep. And men and women ought to make the most of it. He’d give her one of the little phials of perfume, well, half a phial, if she’d only lift her head and look at him. That should be enough to make amends.

What should he do about the tent? It would not satisfy him to leave the wreckage there, as Miri suggested, and aHow their misfortunes with the wind to benefit some undeserving traveHer or provide free shelter for the badu, should he still be in the scrub. So Musa had the women pile up the poles and walls of the tent, and throw on anything that would bum — the bits of damaged cloth, tom curtains and rush beds, the pieces of the broken loom, even uprooted bushes.

‘Go on ahead,’ he said to Miri. Marta turned away. ‘And wait for me when you get to the top of the scree.’ He was a small, spoilt boy who wanted to light a fire and enjoy the damage and the flames aH by himself.

Musa took his flintstones from their pouch and struck a spark on to a little pile of kindling. There was, thankfully, no wind. The flame seemed eager to oblige. He added twigs, and soon had sufficient heat and flame to make himself a brand of sticks and cloth.

The bushes were the first to flare. Blue flames, and then grey smoke as what little sap there was inside the stems bubbled out of the wood. The loom and tent poles soon joined in, but were made from harder woods and burned more slowly and with whiter smoke. Then the goat-hair tent sides gave in to the heat. They did not bum. There were no flames from them. They blackened, reddened, glowed and fell apart. They smelled like sacrificial meat. Their smoke was yellower and more dete

There was no one to help Musa now. His uncles and his cousins were as insubstantial as the smoke. His two porters were out of sight. The women were too far away to caU. The silence in the scrub was so deeply brewed that Musa did not know if he should cry out loud for joy or for help. He left the fire to itself and set off, across the scrub, and through the wind-blown remnants ofhis life. There was a copper pot he recognized. Some cloth. A scarf He walked as quickly as he could to seek the company of women.

And there his fever devil stayed, below the caves, its feet in flames, its body shrouded in the yellow smoke. It curled above the salty scrub, shivering and abandoned, insubstantial and attached to no one, biding its time.

30

Marta and Miri had not stopped to watch the smoke. They were too busy walking. They hardly talked. The path was difficult and narrow, and kept them apart for much of the time. Even when they reached the wider tracks worn by the many caravans which came across these hills to Jericho they did not walk side by side. Marta led the way, nervously avoiding any vegetation and rocky ground where there might be snakes or scorpions, but she hurried nevertheless, hastened by a mixture of fear and excitement. Ahead was better than behind.

Miri needed space around her to cope with the pa

It was easy for Marta to hurry, thought Miri. She only had one bag to carry and some clothes. Her load was relatively light for such a tal and wide-boned woman. And she was not six months pregnant with a child. Her hips and back were not oppressing her. ‘Slow down, slow down,’ she said a few times to herself. But not too loudly. She was increasingly a

Miri could have stopped and rested had she wanted to. She couldhavefound some block ofshade andwaited for herhusband. Then she could have walked at his slow pace and made Marta wait alone for them at the summit of the landfall where the scrub collapsed into a steep ravine of scree. But Miri wanted time alone with Marta. She wanted to recapture, if it were possible, the cheerful times when they had worked together on the loom. The landfall was the final opportunity for them to finish what they’d started. While her slow husband laboured like a swaying cart across the scrub, she and Marta could sit cross-legged, facing each other, with the purple and orange birth-mat stretched between them. They’d spread the still untied ends across their laps. They’d bunch the warps in fours and each complete the birth-mat with a hundred knots. They’d finalize their bold, unlikely friendship by tying it into the bold, unlikely wools.

So Miri did her best to keep her friend within sight. It didn’t matter that her arms felt stretched and that her shoulders ached almost beyond endurance so long as she could still see Marta walking ahead of her. By early afternoon they had crossed the plateau and were waiting side by side, at last, at the su^mmit of the landfall as Musa had instructed. Below them, Shim and Aphas had already begun the descent. They could see Shim’s blond head and hear the tumbling scree as he slid through the stones. Aphas was a little way behind, using all the larger rocks to steady himself but moving quickly for a man who’d been so faltering and il. They were not carrying their loads.

‘Look there,’ said Marta, pointing to a ledge of rocks a few steps from the summit of the scree. There were Musa’s saddle- packs, the rugs and bedding, the sack of grain, the two bags of utensils. The men had simply dumped them there and fled.

Miri dropped her bags and pa

‘Come on,’ said Miri. ‘Sit down with me. Let’s finish this. Before he comes.’

They had not finished it when Musa finally came into view. He waved Shim’s staff at them from the sloping plateau which led down to the landfail, and called, ‘Wait there.’ He was tired of his own company. He hadn’t spent so much time alone and without assistance for years. The journey so far had been u