From the depths of the unlit fireplace, he drew out a span of bamboo as thick as a cane and half as long, onto which he fitted a clay bowl as big as a briar pipe for tobacco, packing it full of my keef. We smoked the first pipe together in absolute silence. Hearing the Brothers arrive in the courtyard, Singer clapped for them to come stumbling in, slipping off their sandals in the sand, murmuring greetings and blessings as they shuffled up one by one to snatch kisses from my lucky hand before settling down in a ring. The big pipe was stoked and lit by Singer, who passed it around the full circle, instead of letting each man finish his much smaller pipe as we do in our chapter at home. I was only mildly surprised. Some of those present had come three and four weeks by camel across the Sahara to be with us that night. In such scattered communities as these, small divergencies creep in.
The pipe passed and passed again. I knew they had never smoked any keef like this before. Without thinking, some of the Brothers began to recite. With a smile, because I am not really one of them, I drew slightly out of the circle to let Singer lead them into more intricate patterns of words but he arrested them all with a great clap of his hands before anyone could start to profess. Abruptly, they stopped and rose to their feet as two latecomers slipped into place. Singer, their master, stepped into the center of the circle as the Brothers joined hands. I remained in my corner, seated in their leaping shadows. They stamped and swung hands in order to catch up the rhythm and, then, they began jumping and shouting in unison:
AL-lah … AL-lah … AL-lah …
Exhale on the first syllable, inhale on the second. It becomes:
HA-ha … HA-ha … HA-ha …
And then:
A-a … A-a … A-a …
And, at last, the cyclical, rattling word of our zikr, a pair of unvoiced aspirates, our Key and our Link: what the matches say to the box.
When the master raps out a command, they all go into reverse. The dancers stop jumping; exhale, knees bend; inhale, straighten up. Then, they stand still while they jump with only their chests. Inhale a sharp gasp on the “AL” and exhale at great length on the “lah.” From sixty paired strokes to the minute, they drop to about forty-five. Eight minutes for each. It is always advisable to have one Brother outside the circle to act as an assas or guardian who can pick people up if they fall too soon and put them back in their place.
Singer moved about the inside of the circle, looking sharply into the eyes of each Brother as he strummed rapidly on his gimbri. When he bent down to where I was sitting, I gave him a quick lift of my chin to indicate two Brothers who were faltering and he jumped back to switch them in line. Outside the circle again, I began clapping my hands as Hamid instructed me back in Morocco but Singer shot me a flash of distress for, suddenly, one after another the Brothers stepped forward with eyes completely revulsed, crying out in rapturous tones; bliss and exquisite pain thrilling along on one nerve. I left off as he caught them up to pull them along as he knows them best, on the strings of his gimbri with hands strumming too fast to be seen.
Beyond that, when the word of our zikr has opened them up, they enter into a state where they bark or grunt from the very depths of their entrails. It is a very curious animal sound brought up from the solar plexus. I have heard something like it made by ecstatic women worshipers in storefront churches back in the States. Here, only male voices are used and this is more frightening, for the voice of Ghoul bubbles up from the pool of their depths; a truly subterranean sound in which the Voice, singing throat and the song are all one! At this, the Brothers all drop to their knees, still jumping their chests until they fall in convulsions, flat on their faces in a star formation; beating their heads on the ground in a ring about the feet of Sweet Singer, their shekh.
In this close place, their youngest Brother fell over my knees, so I kissed him on top of the head. He got up at once to take his place tightly wedged in beside me. Singer went on twanging his gimbri over the heads of the others in the orthodox way, making the strings say:
Allahu ak BAR … Allahu ak BAR … Allahu ak BAR …
God is Great … God is Great … God is Great …
over and over again until they began to sit up, wiping the sweat out of their eyes, the foam from their lips. Singer started them swaying to a new lilting tune as I refilled the pipe with my excellent Ketama to send it passing around the re-formed circle on the mat. I told Youngest Brother I had come further across the Great Waste of the World than he — from beyond a great river of salt called the Atlantic, which runs away in the sands to the west. For the River, I quoth, hath more need of the Fountain than the Fountain hath need of the River. I am that River, running away on your Afrique shore where, from your lips tonight, dear Brother, I have heard the Fountain well up; bubbling up from the great fossil underground river where the blind crocodile of our Master, Hassan-i-Sabbah, Old Man of the Mountain and Great Sandy Waste, has lurked for centuries in darkness. Youngest Brother nodded eagerly: “Yes, one day he will break out to devour our Enemy the Sun!”
“Ah, so he will, indeed!” I thought: “Mister Ugly Spirit himself, disguised as a hydro-helium bomb.”
Yet, oh, the strange relaxation of it! I alone of all these Assassins had ever been foolish enough to conceive of happiness. The staggering assumptions in my young companion’s calm eyes would make my white American compatriots collapse with a whimper or run screaming for the police. There is no friendship: there is no love. The desert knows only allies and accomplices. The heart, here, is all in the very moment. Everything is bump and flow; meet and good-by. Only the Brotherhood of Assassins ensures ritual continuity, if that is what you want and some do; for the lesson our zikr teaches is this: There are no Brothers.
Sun just crashed over the other side of the oued, trailing no dusk. A copper-green disk rimmed with magenta burned on the back of my closed lids for a minute or two and, when I opened my eyes again, the stars were out. Sunset hit me like this twenty-four times in Tam. There was no way I could go on further south. The man with the whip had summoned me, early one morning, to the fort, where a drunken Arab civilian employee advised me in bad French to go back to America; my visa was cancelled. It turned out to be true. Day after day, the captains remained adamant. I had consorted with undesirable elements: there was no appeal. When I protested too loudly, I was put under “hotel arrest” in my room. I was not to leave Tam until a military convoy was ready to go north. All other carriers were warned not to take me.