Chapter 18

‘For a sack of mule feed? You thieving old scoundrel,’ Nisham shouted. In any order his following four words would have been explicit, but in the order Nisham chose to use them and with his vulgar tone they became obscene. The older man simply bowed his head; he accepted the words and kept his price.

Fareeha tightened her headscarf then put her hands over her ears; she kept well back. She had no choice but to meet the vulgar man and would attempt to do so as soon as she had struck his deal with the wholesaler. She winced as another expletive tore into the poor old man and almost abandoned her mission; but Nisham’s patience was as short as one of his mules tails and he was soon flying past her, red-faced and steaming.

Fareeha sucked in a deep breath. ‘Oh, Nisham, can I have a word with you?’ She said it with all the humility she could muster. She saw his heat rising and went on quickly. ‘I have a letter for the front; would you take it with you on your next trip?’

Nisham’s leather boots clopped to a halt, like unshod hooves. He turned and reared up, flaring his nostrils down at the woman who had so brazenly stopped him in the street. ‘Oh, it’s you, Fareeha Azziz,’ he brayed. He turned his head and spat, a show of contempt, perhaps, but also to release the juices from his chewing tobacco. A fly that had been buzzing around his bushy moustache flew after the trajectory.

Fareeha remembered her neighbour’s words about the Armenian’s mule train, ‘What do you think he smuggles in? Pictures of the Sultan?’ A day or two before, she might have been interested in what was inside his mouth, might have tried to peek at the packet in his shirt pocket, find out how much it was worth. Such thoughts today, however, were far away. ‘Disgusting habit,’ she murmured as she pulled out the envelope, the folded second wrapper that she had peeled from the pile next to her stove—crude but practicable.

Nisham squinted down at the name and read it aloud with a pronounced sneer in his voice. ‘Ha, if I can find him!’

Fareeha was surprised that he could read. ‘I hope you can,’ she said.

He spat again. ‘Friggin’ mess up there.’ He nodded vaguely to the south, where the mountains would have been seen shimmering in the afternoon haze if it weren’t for the municipal structures that ringed the bazaar. ‘Next mule train won’t be going out until Friday,’ he said without a sign of apology, ‘if I can get any friggin’ feed that is.’ He looked back for the wholesaler but the old man had vanished. Then he held out a leathery hand. ‘Two dirhams.’

Fareeha took a pace backwards, as if to resist a daylight robbery. ‘Two dirhams!’ she repeated.

Nisham, with a smirk, made to give the letter back to her, ‘Take it yourself if you like.’

Without thinking, she snatched it back, but then she said, ‘No, no, the letter must go; it’s just that two dirhams is a lot of money.’ She thought of all the flour two dirhams might buy. ‘Two dirhams . . . I don’t know if . . .’

Nisham shrugged and turned his back on her and without further words began to walk off down the street.

‘All right,’ Fareeha pleaded. She scurried after him and held up the letter. ‘All right, two dirhams.’ She was breathing hard. ‘But I will have to go and get the money.’

Without interrupting his swagger, Nisham spoke: ‘Money first. I leave on Friday.’

Fareeha pulled up and let him go. She dropped her arms and the fisted letter fell against her thigh: her last hope pinned against the dusty, blue cotton of her dress.