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The Grandee lolls in his bedroom while concubines attend to his needs. Coconut—oil for his thinning hair, wine for his palate, tongues for his delight. The boy was right. Why do I fear Mahound? He begins, idly, to count the concubines, gives up at fifteen with a flap of his hand. The boy. Hind will go on seeing him, obviously; what chance does he have against her will? It is a weakness in him, he knows, that he sees too much, tolerates too much. He has his appetites, why should she not have hers? As long as she is discreet; and as long as he knows. He must know; knowledge is his narcotic, his addiction. He cannot tolerate what he does not know and for that reason, if for no other, Mahound is his enemy, Mahound with his raggle-taggle gang, the boy was right to laugh. He, the Grandee, laughs less easily. Like his opponent he is a cautious man, he walks on the balls of his feet. He remembers the big one, the slave, Bilal: how his master asked him, outside the Lat temple, to enumerate the gods. “One,” he answered in that huge musical voice. Blasphemy, punishable by death. They stretched him out in the fairground with a boulder on his chest. How many did you say? One, he repeated, one. A second boulder was added to the first. One one one . Mahound paid his owner a large price and set him free.

No, Abu Simbel reflects, the boy Baal was wrong, these men are worth our time. Why do I fear Mahound? For that: one one one, his terrifying singularity. Whereas I am always divided, always two or three or fifteen. I can even see his point of view; he is as wealthy and successful as any of us, as any of the councillors, but because he lacks the right sort of family connections, we haven’t offered him a place amongst our group. Excluded by his orphaning from the mercantile elite, he feels he has been cheated, he has not had his due. He always was an ambitious fellow. Ambitious, but also solitary. You don’t rise to the top by climbing up a hill all by yourself. Unless, maybe, you meet an angel there . . . yes, that’s it. I see what he’s up to. He wouldn’t understand me, though. What kind of idea am I? I bend. I sway. I calculate the odds, trim my sails, manipulate, survive. That is why I won’t accuse Hind of adultery. We are a good pair, ice and fire. Her family shield, the fabled red lion, the many-toothed manticore. Let her play with her satirist; between us it was never sex. I’ll finish him when she’s finished with. Here’s a great lie, thinks the Grandee of Jahilia drifting into sleep: the pen is mightier than the sword.

The fortunes of the city of Jahilia were built on the supremacy of sand over water. In the old days it had been thought safer to transport goods across the desert than over the seas, where monsoons could strike at any time. In those days before meteorology such matters were impossible to predict. For

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