By Lord Dunsany. The Tent of the Arabs
DRAMATIS PERSONAE THE KING BEL-NARB, camel-driver AOOB, camel-driver THE CHAMBERLAIN ZABRA, a notable EZNARZA, a gypsy of the desert
SCENE:--Outside the gate of the city of Thalanna.
TIME:-- Uncertain.
ACT 1.
Bel-Narb
By evening we shall be in the desert again.
Aoob
Yes.
Bel-Narb
Then no more city for us for many weeks.
Aoob
Ah!
Bel-Narb
We shall see the lights come out, looking back from the camel-track; that is the last we shall see of it.
Aoob
We shall be in the desert then.
Bel-Narb
The old angry desert.
Aoob
How cunningly the desert hides his wells. You would say he had an enmity with man. He does not welcome you as the cities do.
Bel-Narb
He has an enmity. I hate the desert.
Aoob
I think there is nothing in the world so beautiful as cities.
Bel-Narb
Cities are beautiful things.
Aoob
I think they are loveliest a little after dawn when night falls off from the houses. They draw it away from them slowly and let it fall like a cloak and stand quite naked in their beauty to shine in some broad river; and the light comes up and kisses them on the forehead. I think they are loveliest then. The voices of men and women begin to arise in the streets, scarce audible, one by one, till a slow loud murmur arises and all the voices are one. I often think the city speaks to me then: she says in that voice of hers, "Aoob, Aoob, who one of these days shall die, I am not earthly, I have been always, I shall not die."
Bel-Narb
I do not think that cities are loveliest at dawn. We can see dawn in the desert any day. I think they are loveliest just when the sun is set and a dusk steals along the narrower streets, a dusk that is not of the night yet not of the day, a kind of mystery in which we can see cloaked figures and yet not quite discern whose figures they be. And just when it would be dark, and out in the desert there would be nothing to see but a black horizon and a black sky on top of it, just then the swinging lanterns are lighted up and lights come out in windows one by one and all the colours of the rainments change. Then a woman perhaps will slip from a little door and go away up the street into the night, and a man perhaps will steal by with a dagger for some old quarrel's sake, and Skarmi will light up his house to sell brandy all night long, and men will sit on benches outside his door playing skabash by the glare of a small green lantern, while they light great bubbling pipes and smoke nargroob. O, it is all very good to watch. And I like to think as I smoke and see these things that somewhere, far away, the desert has put up a huge red cloud like a wing so that all the Arabs know that next day the Siroc will blow, the accursed breath of Eblis the father of Satan.
Aoob
Yes, it is pleasant to think of the Siroc when one is safe in a city, but I do not like to think about it now, for before the day is out we will be taking pilgrims to Mecca, and who ever prophesied of knew by wit what the desert had in store? Going into the desert is like throwing bone after bone to a dog, some he will catch and some he will drop. He may catch our bones, or we may go by and come to gleaming Mecca. O-ho, I would I were a merchant with a little booth in a frequented street to sit all day and barter.
Bel-Narb
Aye, it is easier to cheat some lord coming to buy silk and ornaments in a city than to cheat death in the desert. Oh, the desert, the desert, I love the beautiful cities and I hate the desert.
Aoob
[pointing off L.]
Who is that?
Bel-Narb
What? There by the desert's edge where the camels are?
Aoob
Yes, who is it?
Bel-Narb
He is staring across the desert the way that the camels go. They say that the King goes down to the edge of the desert and often stares across it. He stands there for a long time of an evening looking towards Mecca.
Aoob
Of what use is it to the King to look towards Mecca? He cannot go to Mecca. He cannot go into the desert for one day. Messengers would run after him and cry his name and bring him back to the council-hall or to the chamber of judgements. If they could not find him their heads would be struck off and put high up upon some windy roof: the judges would point at them and say, "They see better there!"
Bel-Narb
No, the King cannot go away into the desert. If God were to make me King I would go down to the edge of the desert once, and I would shake the sand out of my turban and out of my beard and then I would never look at the desert again. Greedy and parched old parent of thousands of devils! He might cover the wells with sand, and blow with his Siroc, year after year and century after century, and never earn one of my curses-if God made me King.
Aoob
They say you are like the King.
Bel-Narb
Yes, I am like the King. Because his father disguised himself as a camel-driver and came through our villages. I often say to myself, "God is just. And if I could disguise myself as the King and drive him out to be a camel-driver, that would please God for He is just."
Aoob
If you did this God would say, "Look at Bel-Narb, whom I made to be a camel-driver and who has forgotten this." And then he would forget you, Bel-Narb.
Bel-Narb
Who knows what God would say?
Aoob
Who knows? His ways are wonderful.
Bel-Narb
I would not do this thing, Aoob. I would not do it. It is only what I say to myself as I smoke, or at night out in the desert. I say to myself, "Bel-Narb is King in Thalanna." And then I say, "Chamberlain, bring Skarmi here with his brandy and his lanterns and boards to play skabash, and let all the town come and drink before the palace and magnify my name."
Pilgrims
[Calling, off.]
Bel-Narb! Bel-Narb! Child of two dogs. Come and untether your camels. Come and start for holy Mecca.
Bel-Narb
A curse on the desert.
Aoob
The camels are rising. The caravan starts for Mecca. Farewell, beautiful city.
[Pilgrims' voices off: "Bel-Narb! "Bel-Narb!"]
Bel-Narb
I come, children of sin.
[Exeunt Bel-Narb and Aoob.]
[The King enters through the great door crowned. He sits upon the step.]
King
A crown should not be worn upon the head. A sceptre should not be carried in Kings' hands. But a crown should be wrought into a golden chain, and a sceptre driven stake-wise into the ground so that a King may be chained to it by the ankle. Then he would know that he might not stray away into the beautiful desert and might never see the palm trees by the well. O Thalanna, Thalanna, how I hate this city with its narrow, narrow ways, and evening after evening drunken men playing skabash in the scandalous gambling house of that old scoundrel Skarmi. O that I might marry the child of some unkingly house that generation to generation had never known a city, and that we might ride from here down the long track through the desert, always we two alone till we came to the tents of the Arabs. And the crown-some foolish, greedy man should be given to its sorrow. And all this may not be, for a King is yet a King.
[Enter Chamberlain through door.]
Chamberlain
Your Majesty!
King
Well, my lord Chamberlain, have you more work for me to do?
Chamberlain