That slave, for all his squalid person and sexual erethism and detestable character, was an experienced traveler, and told us or showed us many things of use or interest. For example, on our very first night in that wasteland, when we stopped to camp, he got down from his camel and stuck his prodding pole into the sand, pointed in the direction we were going.
“It may be needful in the morning,” he explained. “We have determined to go always toward the spot where the sun rises. But if the sand is blowing at that hour, we may not be able otherwise to fix on the spot.”
The treacherous sands of the Dasht-e-Kavir are not its only menace to man. That name, as I have said, means the Great Salt Desert, and for a reason. Vast extents of it are not of sand at all; they are immense reaches of a salty paste, not quite wet enough to be called mud or marsh, and the wind and sun have dried the paste to a surface of caked solid salt. Often a traveler must cross one of those glittering, crunching, quivering, blindingly white salt crusts, and he must do it gingerly. The salt crystals are more abrasive than sand; even a camel’s callused pads can quickly be worn to bleeding rawness, and, if the rider has to dismount, his boots can be likewise shredded, and then his feet. Also, the salt surfaces are of uneven thickness, making of those areas what Nostril called “the trembling lands.” Sometimes the weight of a camel or a man will break through the crust. If that happens, the animal or the man falls into the pasty muck beneath. From that salt quicksand it is impossible to climb out unaided, or even to stay put and wait for help to come. It slowly but ineluctably draws down whatever falls into it, and sucks the fallen creature under the surface, and closes over it. Unless a rescuer is nearby, and on firmer ground, the unfortunate fallen one is doomed. According to Nostril, entire karwan trains of men and animals have thus disappeared and left no trace.
So, when we came to the first of those salt flats, though it looked as innocuous as a layer of hoarfrost unseasonably on the ground, we halted and studied it with respect. The white crust gleamed out before us, clear to the skyline, and away as far as we could see to either side.
“We could try going around,” said my father.
“The maps of the Kitab show no such details as this,” said my uncle, scratching meditatively at his elbow. “We have no way of knowing its extent, or of guessing whether a north or a south detour would be shorter.”
“And if we are going to skirt every one of these,” said Nostril, “we will be in this desert forever.”
I said nothing, being totally ignorant of desert travel, and not ashamed to leave the decisions to the more expert. So we four sat our camels and looked out over the sparkling waste. But the boy Aziz, behind us, prodded his pack camel and made it kneel, and he dismounted. We did not notice what he was doing until he walked out from among us and walked onto the salt crust. He turned and looked up at us, and smiled prettily, and said in his little bird voice:
“Now I can repay your kindness in bringing me along. I shall walk ahead, and I can tell from the trembling underfoot how strong is the surface. I will keep to the firmest ground, and you have only to follow.”
“You will cut your feet!” I protested.
“No, Mirza Marco, for I am of light weight. Also, I took the liberty of extracting these plates from the packs.” He held up two of the golden dishes the Shah Zaman had sent. “I shall strap them under my boots as an extra protection.”
“It is dangerous nonetheless,” said my uncle. “You are brave to volunteer, lad, but we have sworn that no harm must come to you. Better one of us—”
“No, Mirza Mafìo,” said Aziz, still staunchly. “If by chance I should fall through, it would be easier for you to pluck me out than any larger person.”
“He is right, masters,” said Nostril. “The child has good sense. And, as you remark, a good heart for courage and initiative.”
So we let Aziz precede us, and we followed at a discreet distance. It was slow going, keeping to his shuffle pace, but that made the walking less painful for the camels. And we did cross that trembling land in safety, and before nightfall had come to an area of more trustworthy sand on which to camp.
Only once that day did Aziz misjudge the crust. With a sharp crackle, it broke like a sheet of glass, and he plummeted waist-deep into the muck under it. He did not exclaim in fright when it happened, nor did he make so much as a whimper during the time it took for Uncle Mafio to get down from his camel and make a loop in his saddle rope and cast it over the boy and draw him gently back above ground and onto a firmer place. But Aziz had known very well that he was, for that while, precariously suspended over a bottomless abyss, for his face was very pale and his blue eyes very big when we all clustered solicitously around him. Uncle Mafio embraced the boy and held him, murmuring inspiriting words, while my father and I brushed the fast-drying salt mud from his garments. By the time that was done, the boy’s courage had returned, and he insisted on going ahead again, to the admiration of us all.
In the days thereafter, each time we again came upon a salt flat, we could do no more than make guesses or take a vote to determine whether we should venture upon it at once, or camp there at its near edge and wait to start upon it early the next morning. We were always apprehensive that we might find ourselves still in the middle of a trembling land at nightfall, and therefore have to take one of two equally unappealing alternatives: try to press on, braving the night’s dark and its dry fog, which could be much more nerve-racking than making such a crossing by day; or camp upon the salt flat and have to do without a fire, for we feared that laying a fire upon such a surface might melt it, and drop ourselves, our animals and all our packs into the quicksand. Surely it was only through good fortune—or Allah’s blessing, as our two Muslims would have put it—certainly not through any wisdom informing our guesses, but each time we guessed right, and each time got across the salt to safe sand by nightfall.
So we never had to make a cold camp on the dreaded trembling lands, but making camp anywhere in that desert, even on the sand which we could trust not to dissolve from under us, was no holiday treat. Sand, if you look closely enough at it, is nothing but an infinite multitude of little tiny rocks. Rocks do not hold heat, and no more does sand. The desert days were comfortable enough, even warm, but when the sun went down the nights were cold, and the sand under us even colder. We always needed a fire just to keep us warm until we crawled into our blankets inside our tents. But many nights were so very cold that we would rake the fire into five separate fires, well apart, and let them burn a while to warm those separate plots of sand, and only then spread our blankets and raise our tents on top of the warmed places. Even so, the sand did not for long hold that heat either, and by morning we would be chilled and stiff, in which unjoyous condition we would have to rise and face another day of the joyless desert.
The nightly camp fires served for warmth, and for some illusion of homelikeness in the middle of that empty, lonely, silent, dark wasteland, but they were not much use for cookery. Wood being nonexistent in the Dasht-e-Kavir, we used dried animal dung for fuel. The animals of countless generations of earlier desert crossers had dropped easily found supplies of it, and our own camels contributed their deposits for the benefit of future wayfarers. Our only comestibles, however, were several varieties of dried meats and fruits. A hunk of cold dry mutton might be rendered more palatable by soaking it and then broiling it over a fire, but not over a fire built of camel dung. Though we ourselves already reeked of the smoke of those fires, we could not bring ourselves to eat something similarly impregnated. When we felt we could spare the water, we sometimes heated it and steeped our meat in it, but that did not make a very tasty dish either. When water has been carried for a long time in a hide bag, it begins to look and smell and taste rather like the water a man carries in his bladder. We had to drink it to survive, but we less and less desired to cook our foods in it, preferring to gnaw them dry and cold.