Chapter 10
Yazan ~ continued from Chapter 10 | Jews Hope for Camels
Little Yazan sat cross-legged in the other broken chair, his dark eyes larger than cups of mint tea. The rug seller, his long, flowing camel hair robe blowing in the afternoon wind, stood at the entrance to his shop smoking and listening.
Kalil would have Yazan recite each part of the camel’s body:
“Sanam is the hump, Sulb the back, Gharib the shoulders,
Farsam the foot, Burtam the snout, Shabib tip of the tail.”
Kalil would make Yazan repeat these simple things over and over again but the waif did it with joy and had the ability to sit at his master’s feet for hours on end while he saw the others running in the streets. His young mind was quick and he desired only to learn more each day so that one day he could become a trader and escape the streets. He still stole bread and dates in the morning and perhaps an Ajet Beythat or d’Abeen Ghorayebah in the afternoon but now the shopkeepers only smiled. They knew where he would be and that he was an apprentice of Kalil the camel trader.
The boy’s life was still hard; he slept in a donkey stall with straw and when he could steal incense he would sell it on the streets for a paltry amount of silver. Then he would have to hide his earnings or risk losing it to older boys with their steely knives who quickly became the thieves of the marketplace.
And so he learned:
“A camel can drink up to eight liters at once and 20 liters daily,” he explained to Kalil. “When they don’t have enough water they tear up, moan and stop grazing.”
“And?”
Kalil looked at the skinny, brown child.
“And he cannot urinate,” Yazan said.
The rug dealer looked over at Kalil and smiled as he turned back into his stall. Kalil took another puff on his hookah.
“What do you do if there is no water?”
Yazan looked away in disgust, “Not me. I’d rather rot.”
“Hmm,” Kalil said as he looked at his apprentice.
“Gather the cud, squeeze it for fluid or make tea out of the urine.”
Yazan stuck his fingers down his throat and spat into the dirt of the narrow, dusty market street.
Kalil sat up and looked at his charge. “Camels will not find water or food,” he said. “They are dumb and you need to know every watering hole and how many days to the next one, child.”
“Yes, Master.”
Yazan laughed as he remembered his master and slowed Baby down on the steep hills that came down from the mountains. As he came around the sharp turn in the road he saw Shimea and the guards off in the bush waiting and watching.
Three mountain lions were hunched over their kill, a large gazelle that was now dead with its neck broken.
Yazan dismounted, tied the reins around a tree and moved quickly toward the group while staying behind bushes.
“Do we want meat?” Yazan whispered as he slapped Shimea’s shoulder.
“What?” one guard whispered.
“We can have meat tonight,” Yazan said to the leader. “We approach as a single unit, all of us, and walk toward the lions. They will run and we can take some of the meat.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Confidence.”
Yazan stood up and the others followed him.
“Walk straight, look at them.” He moved slowly.
The men walked out of the bush and straight towards the feasting animals. One lion, his mouth full of blood and meat, looked up from his kill and waited and watched the approach- ing group. He flicked his tail and quickly made for the shade of a large bush. The other lions did the same.
Yazan quickly moved toward the kill, took out his long knife and cut off a large section of leg and shoulder.
The lions were pacing behind the highland bushes, hungry and impatient.
“Come.” Yazan carried the bloody meat over his shoulder and made for the bushes. He turned to Shimea as he put the meat in a large cloth sack.
“My master Kalil did this with ten lions. I was there.”
He smiled as the other men looked at him.
As the troop traveled slowly down the hill, the mountain passes gave way to the valley below and the horse trails turned into a narrow strip of cobblestone road.
A Rider suddenly appeared and flew down the valley road.
The leader raised his hands and made the small group stop for the horseman.
“This is Harrumbra Road and that is the Rider,” one of the guards said.
He controlled his horse as it moved off the cobblestone.
“Harrumbra, the Assyrian, built these roads for his horsemen to travel,” said the leader as he guided his horse back onto the stone road. “Even in war when two sides are in battle we stop and let him ride.”
“Rider, that’s his name,” the other guard whispered as the horseman disappeared down the dust and wind.
Yazan and Shimea could not know that eight days before nine Riders had galloped out of the great gates at Asur and like great, dusty fingers spread out over the empire on their appointed rounds. They traveled as far as Lydia to the north, south to great Memphis and as far east as the Hindu Kush in India.
Shimea remembered that Obed, his grandfather, was a horse- man and the stories he had told of Harrumbra’s royal stables.
Obed’s father Boaz taught him to ride and from then on he was never far from his horse.
He smiled beneath his keffiyeh as he remembered Boaz’s 214-day training regime: trot, canter and gallop before a rider or even driver was on the horse, three times a day workouts then rest days. Interval training included three stages: the first two for strong legs and the cardiomuscular system, the third for pure conditioning.
Boaz was quick to add brief rest periods to the lower heart rates. He also added swimming and then rest periods.
Kings and princes came to Boaz from miles around and would use only him to train their war horses — rugged, deep- chested beasts with slow-twitch muscle fibers.
And so with this training Boaz’s stable of horses could travel 1,600 miles, a distance that would take caravans three months to traverse, in a little over nine days.
Harrumbra’s royal stables held hundreds of horses and they were used to travel across the empire to deliver royal decrees and letters to disgruntled governors and to quell minor dis- putes over food stores and legal disputes.
The horsemen themselves were agents of the king and treated with reverence by both Assyrians and the many tribes that bordered the empire. They came and went as they wished.
Along the vast routes were waystations all within a day or so ride from each other so that fresh horses were always ready and another Rider would carry the king’s news far down the line and deep into the territory.
The men were a wild breed who did not need the shelter of a city or village but instead only a narrow road and mission. They were single-minded in purpose and welcomed the hardships and danger that lay on the roads.
They were born to ride.
Continue reading… Chapter 11 | That Is Life
[…] Chapter 10 Yazan ~ continued from Chapter 10 | A Wild Breed […]