Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky

During the middle of the day it was no longer the sun alone that persecuted from above—the entire sky was like a metal dome grown white with heat. The merciless light pushed down from all directions; the sun was the whole sky. They took to traveling only at night, setting out shortly after twilight and halting at the first sign of the rising sun. The sand had been left far behind, and so had the great dead stony plains. Now there was a gray, insect-like vegetation everywhere, a tortured scrub of hard shells and stiff hairy spines that covered the earth like an excrescence of hatred. The ashen landscape as they moved through it was flat as a floor. Day by day the plants grew higher, and the thorns that sprouted from them stronger and more cruel. Now some reached the stature of trees, flat-topped and wide, and always defiant, but a puff of smoke would have afforded as much protection from the sun’s attack. The nights were moonless and much warmer. Sometimes as they advanced across the dark countryside there was the startled sound of beasts fleeing from their path. She wondered what she would have seen if it had been daylight, but she did not feel any real danger, At this point, apart from a gnawing desire to be close to Belqassim all the time, it would have been hard for her to know what she did feel. It was so long since she had canalized her thoughts by speaking aloud, and she had grown accustomed to acting without the consciousness of being in the act. She did only the things she found herself already doing.

One night, having stopped the caravan to go into the bushes for a necessary moment, and seeing the outline of a large animal in the dimness near her, she cried out, and was joined instantly by Belgassim, who consoled her and then forced her savagely to the ground where he made unexpected love to her while the caravan waited. She had the impression, notwithstanding the painful thorns that remained in various parts of her flesh, that this was a usual occurrence, and she suffered calmly the rest of the night. The next day the thorns were still there and the places had festered, and when Belqassim undressed her he saw the red welts and was angry because they marred the whiteness of her body, thus diminishing greatly the intensity of his pleasure. Before he would have anything to do with her, she was forced to undergo the excruciating extraction of every thorn. Then he rubbed butter all over her back and legs.

Now that their love making was carried on in the daytime, each morning when it was definitely over, he left the blanket where she lay and took a gourba of water with him to a spot a few yards distant, where he stood in the early sunlight and bathed assiduously. Afterwards she, too, would fetch a gourba and carry it as far away as she could, but often she found herself washing in full view of the entire camp, because there was nothing behind which she could conceal herself. But the camel drivers paid her no more attention at such moments than did the camels themselves. For all that she was a topic of intense interest and constant discussion among them, she remained a piece of property that belonged to their masters, as private and inviolable as the soft leather pouches full of silver these latter carried slung across their shoulders.

At last there came a night when the caravan turned into a well trodden road. In the distance ahead a fire blazed; when they came abreast of it they saw men and camels sleeping. Before dawn they stopped outside a village and ate. When morning came, Belqassim went on foot into the town, returning some time later with a bundle of clothing. Kit was asleep, but he woke her and spread the garments out on the blanket in the ambiguous shadow of the thorn trees, indicating that she undress and put them on. She was pleased to lay aside her own clothes, which were in an unrecognizable state of dishevelment at this point, and it was with growing delight that she pulled on the full soft trousers and got into the loose vests and the flowing robe. Belqassim watched her closely when she had finished and was walking about. He beckoned her to him, took up a long white turban and wound it around her head, hiding her hair completely. Then he sat back and watched her some more. He frowned, called her to him again and produced a woolen sash with which he bound the upper part of her body tightly, pressing it against her bare skin directly under her arms and tying it firmly in the back. She felt a certain difficulty in breathing, and wanted him to take it off, but he shook his head. Suddenly she understood that these were men’s garments and that she was being made to look like a man. She began to laugh; Belqassim joined her in her merriment, and made her walk back and forth in front of him several times; each time she passed he patted her on the buttocks with satisfaction. Her own clothes they left there in the bushes, and when an hour or so later Belqassim discovered that one of the camel drivers had appropriated them, presumably with the intention of selling them as they passed through the village presently, he was very angry, and wrenched them away from the man, bidding him dig a shallow hole and bury them then and there while he watched.

She went to the camels and opened her bag for the first time, looked into the mirror on the inside of the lid, and discovered that with the heavy tan she had acquired during the past weeks she looked astonishingly like an Arab boy. The idea amused her. While she was still trying to see the ensemble effect in the small glass, Belqassim came up, and seizing her, bore her off bodily to the blanket where he showered kisses and caresses upon her for a long time, calling her “Ali” amid peals of delighted laughter.

The village was an agglomeration of round mud huts with thatched roofs; it seemed strangely deserted. The three left the camels and drivers at the entrance and went on foot to the small market, where the older man bought several packets of spices. It was unbelievably hot; the rough wool against her skin and the tightness with which the sash was bound about her chest made her feel that at any moment she would collapse into the dust. The people squatting in the market were all very black, and most of them had old, lifeless faces. When a man addressed himself to Kit, holding up a pair of used sandals (she was barefoot), Belqassim pushed forward and answered for her, indicating with accompanying gestures that the young man with him was not in his right mind and must not be bothered or spoken to. This explanation was given several times during their walk through the village; everyone accepted it without comment. At one point an aged woman whose face and hands were partially devoured by leprosy reached up and seized Kit’s clothing, asking alms. She glanced down, shrieked, and clutched at Belqassim for protection. Brutally he pushed her away from him, so that she fell against the beggar; at the same time he poured forth a flood of scornful invective at her, spitting furiously on the ground when he had finished. The onlookers seemed amused; but the older man shook his head, and later when they were back at the edge of the town with the camels, he began to berate Belqassim, pointing wrathfully at each item of Kit’s disguise. Still Belqassim only smiled and answered in monosyllables. But this time the other’s anger was unappeasable, and she had the impression that he was delivering a final warning which he knew to be futile, that henceforth he would consider the matter outside the domain of his interest. And sure enough, neither that day or the next did he have anything to do with her.

They started at dusk. Several times during the night they met processions of men and oxen, and they passed through two smaller villages where fires burned in the streets. The following day while they rested and slept there was a constant stream of traffic moving along the road. That evening they set out even before the sun had set. By the time the moon was well up in the sky they bad arrived at the top of a slight eminence from which they could see, spread out not far below, the fires and lights of a great flat city. She listened to the men’s conversation, hoping to discover its name, but without success.