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hissing, possessed variously by djinnis of birds, beasts, snakes. A sorceress, failing for a moment to look up, squats in his path: “Want to capture a girlic’s heart, my dear? Want an enemy under your thumb? Try me out; try my little knots!” And raises, dangles a knotty rope, ensnarer of human lives—but, seeing now to whom she speaks, lets fall her disappointed arm and slinks away, mumbling, into sand.

Everywhere, noise and elbows. Poets stand on boxes and declaim while pilgrims throw coins at their feet. Some bards speak rajaz verses, their four—syllable metre suggested, according to legend, by the walking pace of the camel; others speak the qasidah, poems of wayward mistresses, desert adventure, the hunting of the onager. In a day or so it will be time for the annual poetry competition, after which the seven best verses will be nailed up on the walls of the House of the Black Stone. The poets are getting into shape for their big day; Abu Simbel laughs at minstrels singing vicious satires, vitriolic odes commissioned by one chief against another, by one tribe against its neighbour. And nods in recognition as one of the poets falls into step beside him, a sharp narrow youth with frenzied fingers. This young lampoonist already has the most feared tongue in all Jahilia, but to Abu Simbel he is almost deferential. “Why so preoccupied, Grandee? If you were not losing your hair I’d tell you to let it down.” Abu Simbel grins his sloping grin. “Such a reputation,” he muses. “Such fame, even before your milk-teeth have fallen out. Look out or we’ll have to draw those teeth for you.” He is teasing, speaking lightly, but even this lightness is laced with menace, because of the extent of his power. The boy is unabashed. Matching Abu Simbel stride for stride, he replies: “For every one you pull out, a stronger one will grow, biting deeper, drawing hotter spurts of blood.” The Grandee, vaguely, nods. “You like the taste of blood,” he says. The boy shrugs. “A poet’s work,” he answers. “To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” And if rivers of blood flow from the cuts his verses inflict, then they will nourish him. He is the satirist, Baal.

A curtained litter passes by; some fine lady of the city, out to see the fair, borne on the shoulders of eight Anatolian slaves. Abu Simbel takes the young Baal by the elbow, under the pretext of steering him out of the road; murmurs, “I hoped to find you; if you will, a word.” Baa! marvels at the skill of the Grandee. Searching for a man, he can make his quarry think he has hunted the hunter. Abu Simbel’s grip tightens; by the elbow, he steers his companion towards the holy of holies at the centre of the town.

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