Balthasar's Odyssey by Amin Maalouf Page A

advantage of bringing me close to the rest of my party, who gathered round waiting for me to decide what to do. Some other travellers had already chosen to turn back at dawn without more ado. Admittedly they had joined us only at Tarsus, or Alexandretta at most. We, who come from Gibelet and are already more than halfway, can’t just give in at the first alarm.
    The caravaneer suggests going on a bit further and changing our route later on if circumstances require it. I still find him as unattractive as I did when I first set eyes on him, but that seems to me a sensible idea. So on we go, and the grace of God be with us!
    28 September
    Today I said some things to Maïmoun that he thought significant, so perhaps I should write them down.
    He had just observed that people nowadays can be divided up into those who believe that the end of the world is at hand, and those who are sceptical — he and I being among the latter. I answered that in my opinion people can also be divided up into those who fear the end of the world and those who wish for it — the former thinking of flood and disaster, the latter of resurrection and deliverance.
    I was thinking not only of my friend’s father and the Impatient Ones in Aleppo, but also of Marta.
    Then Maïmoun wondered whether people in Noah’s day were just as divided between those who applauded the Flood and those who were against it.
    At that we started to laugh, and laughed so heartily that our mules took fright.
    29 September
    From time to time I cull a few verses at random from the book by Abu-l-Ala that an old bookseller in Maarra put in my hands three or four weeks ago. Today I came upon these lines:
    The people want an imam to arise
And speak to a silent crowd
An illusion; there is no imam but reason
It alone guides us day and night.
    I made haste to read this passage to Maïmoun, and we exchanged silent and meaning smiles.
    A Christian and a Jew led along the path of doubt by a blind Muslim? But there is more light in his dimmed eyes than in all the sky over Anatolia.
    Near Konya, 30 September
    The rumours about the plague have not, alas, been denied. Our caravan has had to skirt round the town and set up its tents to the west, in the gardens of Merâm. The camp is crowded, because a lot of families from Konya have fled here from the epidemic, to be in the healthy air amid the streams and fountains.
    We arrived towards noon, and despite the circumstances there’s an air — I was going to say a sort of holiday air about the place, but it’s more like that of an improvised picnic. Everywhere vendors of apricot juice and cordials clink their glasses invitingly, washing them later on at the fountains. On all sides there are booths whose appetising fumes draw young and old alike. But I can’t help gazing at the town nearby: I can see its walls, with their towers, and guess at its domes and minarets. There different fumes rise up, hiding and darkening everything. That smell doesn’t reach us, thank God; we sense it, and it makes our blood run cold. The plague; the fumes of death. I put down my pen and cross myself. And then go on with my story.
    Maïmoun, who joined our party for the midday meal, spoke at some length to my nephews, and for a little while to Marta. The atmosphere was such that we couldn’t avoid talking about the end of the world, and I noticed that Boumeh knew all about the predictions in the Zohar concerning the Jewish year 5408, our 1648.
    â€œâ€˜In the year 408 of the sixth millennium’,” he said, quoting from memory, “‘they who rest in the dust shall rise up. They are called the sons of Heth.’”
    â€œWho are they?” asked Habib, who always likes to oppose his brother’s erudition with his own ignorance.
    â€œIt’s the usual name for the Hittites, in the Bible. But what matters here is not the actual meaning of the word Heth so much as its numerical value in Hebrew