The Sheikh didn’t answer.
He had gotten stuck with a lazy camel and was furiously whacking its bald rear with a saxaul stick.
CHAPTER 31 BAGHDAD
For seven days, the camels hauled the newly minted sheikhs across the desert.
At first, Ostap had a great time.
He was amused by everything: Alexander bin Ivanovich floundering between the camel’s humps, the lazy ship of the desert trying to shirk its duties, the bag with the million, which the grand strategist occasionally used to prod the recalcitrant sheep.
For himself, Ostap took the name of Colonel Lawrence.
“I am Emir Dynamite!” he shouted, swaying on top of the tall camel-back. “If within two days we don’t get any decent food, I’ll incite the tribes to revolt!
I swear!
I will appoint myself the Prophet’s representative and declare holy war, jihad.
On Denmark, for example.
Why did the Danes torment their Prince Hamlet?
Considering the current political situation, a casus belli like this would satisfy even the League of Nations.
No, seriously, I’ll buy a million worth of rifles from the British—they love to sell firearms to the tribes—and onward to Denmark.
Germany will let us through—in lieu of war reparations.
Imagine the tribes invading Copenhagen!
I’ll lead the charge on a white camel.
Ah!
Too bad Panikovsky isn’t around anymore!
He would have loved a Danish goose!”
But in a few days, when all that was left of the sheep were the cords and the kumis was finished, even Emir Dynamite lost his verve, and could only mutter dispiritedly:
“Lost deep in the barren Arabian land, three palm trees for some reason stood in the sand.”
Both sheikhs had lost a lot of weight, become disheveled, and grown stubby beards—they were starting to look like dervishes from a parish of rather modest means.
“Just a little more patience, bin Koreiko—and we’ll reach a town that rivals Baghdad.
Flat roofs, native bands, little restaurants with an Oriental flavor, sweet wines, legendary girls, and forty thousand skewers of shish kebab: a la Kars, Turkish-style, Tartar, Mesopotamian, and Odessan.
And finally, the railroad.”
On the eighth day of the journey, the travelers approached an ancient cemetery.
Rows of semi-spherical tombs stretched all the way to the horizon, like petrified waves.
People didn’t bury their dead here.
They placed the bodies on the ground and built stone domes around them.
The frightful sun glared over the ashen city of the dead.
The ancient East lay in its sweltering graves.
The two strategists prodded their camels and soon entered the oasis.
Poplars reflected in the waterlogged checkerboard of rice fields and lit the town all around them like green torches.
Elm trees stood alone, shaped exactly like giant globes on wooden stands.
Little donkeys carrying fat men in cloaks and bundles of clover started appearing on the road.
Koreiko and Bender rode past small stores that sold powdered green tobacco and stinking cone-shaped soaps that looked like artillery shells.
Craftsmen with white gauzy beards labored over sheets of copper, rolling them into tubs and narrow-mouthed jugs.
Shoemakers dried small ink-painted skins in the sun.
The indigo, yellow, and blue glazed tiles of the mosques sparkled like liquid glass.
For the rest of the day and the following night, the millionaires slept a deep and heavy sleep at the hotel. In the morning, they washed in white bathtubs, shaved, and went into town.
The sheikhs’ radiant mood was dampened by their need to drag along the suitcase and the bag.
“I consider it my sacred duty,” said Bender boastfully, “to introduce you to an enchanting little club.
It’s called Under the Moonlight.
I was here some five years ago, lecturing against abortion.
What a place!
Semi-dark, cool, an owner from Tiflis, a local band, chilled vodka, girls dancing with cymbals and tambourines.
We can spend a whole day there.
Can’t public health physicians have their own tiny little weaknesses?
My treat.