Stillness Dancing

By Jae Erwin

Lilliane has always been drawn by the desert — its emptiness, its eerie beauty and its people. When she takes the trip of a lifetime to a Bedu camp, she finds herself ensnared in a complex web of politics, blood feuds, terrorism and ancient spirits.
Karim is trying to find his path in the material world and to marry the girl of his dreams. But his soul cries out for the spiritual path of his fathers.
Lilliane’s and Karim’s stories collide in a forgotten, blood-soaked corner of Sinai. Brutalised, captive and bereft, they must find their own ways to survive.
A taut, unusual thriller set in the fascinating world of the modern Bedouin, Stillness Dancing shows us that the hardest paths can lead to the deepest wells.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Firedance Books
• Release date: Aug 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909256262

Jae Erwin

Stepping away from the world of occupational psychology and small business consultancy, I racket around between writing, editing, and helping to run a small press publishing co-operative - Firedance Books. I also teach yoga and explore anything weird and wonderful that takes my fancy. I live on the Pennines, have a husband, three sons, a dog, two cats, three chickens and four vegetable beds - don't ask me which one I love the most. I have one novel published, two more in progress and have written many short stories, several of them published. A poem or six lurk in my dim and distant past.

Book preview

Part One

Chapter 1

Two months earlier

AN ACHE PULSED FROM THE BASE OF HIS THROAT to the pit of his belly. Karim, sitting against the wall of their home, waited to hear his fate from the men of the village.

They will not take Anez’s side. They cannot!

The previous night’s food sat in a hard lump in his stomach. The air burned in his chest.

He pushed aside his future: leaving Bir Al-Helw, his mother, sisters alone… and Nadia. His father dead, maybe murdered. He refused to face the risk to his own life.

I have no choice but to be strong. Only women can wail and collapse—at least for a time. Men must simply endure like the desert rocks.

Karim had left the village many times—to earn money, to visit kin, to fish on the coast—but never before without a thin line of expectation to return.

How can I bear to leave?

No, they will not expel me!

He heard, as if from a distance, his mother keening to the bitter dawn breeze. The rising sun had yet to peer from behind the shoulders of the valley. Karim’s sisters, eyes thick-lidded from weeping, tended the fire and stole glances in his direction.

Staring at the shifting grains of sand underneath the grimy rubber of his flip-flops, he retraced his steps to the beginning. It started easily, simply.

He loved Nadia. He waited quiet and still at any rare gathering where she sat, out of her father’s line of sight; he would rather not die young and dishonoured. Sometimes he crouched downwind of her as if she were a nervous gazelle, watching to see what she laughed and smiled at, what she grimaced at, what scared her.

Karim inherited his social standing from his father’s spiritual role, as in the old ways, but that was not enough to impress Nadia’s father and brother. They listened to cold, hard cash and Karim had very little, even for a Bedu. He had followed a false trail. If only I had not been so blind. Idiot! I did not see it.

He watched the grains of sand trickle from under his feet; wood smoke drifted his way on the wind. The soft sounds of his sisters’ domesticity barely broke through his thoughts. Now I’m caught in the middle of drug smugglers and blood feuds, with bombs killing people all around…

In his disgrace, only the wise man, Abu Dahn, spoke for him, while Anez and his allies hovered, ready to strike like a falcon on a rabbit. In revenge for a betrayal he didn’t commit; Anez’s son, Tarek, in an Israeli jail for drug smuggling.

The men will not believe I betrayed Tarek.

His mother’s soft keening stopped. Karim hoisted his head as she rushed to straighten embroidered cushions; Abu Dahn approached.

His sisters turned to her to take charge. ‘Set the water to re-boil for tea and then leave us.’

The old man weaved his way around the jumble of rocks cleared from around their home: the clutter of rugs, cushions and utensils outside, as personal as inside. His mother drew her black veil over her head and his sisters slipped inside the house. Abu Dahn beckoned and Karim joined him beside the fire.

The old man smelled of smoke and sage. ‘Salaam alekum.’

‘Wa ‘alekum es salaam.’ Karim rushed the greeting. What did they decide?

‘I want you to do something for me.’ Abu Dahn skipped the usual small talk. ‘It will take you away for a while, then who knows? Allegiances change, power moves, you may be able to return. If you go now before you can be expelled—or worse—there is a small possibility of return.’

Shock slammed through Karim’s belly. ‘The men believe Anez! He has bought them with his money.’

‘Not all of them, but enough. Leaving is your only option for now.’

‘Did you not tell them? Fight for me?’ Karim’s anger blasted to ashes his respect for the old man.

Abu Dahn met Karim’s glare, a wall of acceptance and love, despite the younger man’s fury, the implied insult of cowardice.

Karim breathed deep, went beneath the anger and found fear. ‘I am sorry, Abu.’ Abu: father—a term of respect.

His mother stole a glance and he guessed she tried to gauge his response, whether his common sense would be stronger than his passion. She influenced him more than most of the tribe’s mothers did their sons—he was different, like his father who had been educated in Britain for a time—but old habits died hard and she still doubted her sway.

Karim shifted, softening out of the tension. ‘How long will I be away?’

His mother released her breath slowly and quietly as she poured and passed round the tea. ‘Ya Shakur.’ She muttered her thanks to Allah for his mercy and a tear escaped down the deep crease beside her nose.

‘I do not know; it depends on what you find on this path. Nothing in life is certain, you know that as well as I.’ Abu Dahn took sips of strong, sweet tea from the one glass without a chip in the side, the best Karim’s mother could offer. ‘The task might let you repair your reputation…’

‘I have done nothing wrong!’

Abu Dahn took another sip of his tea. ‘…and give you time to think about what is next for you. It will be hard, but that is life for the Bedu.’ He lifted one shoulder in acceptance. ‘That is life for all when we step outside of our quiet, inner self, letting normal pain and the fruitless attempts to avoid it transport us into suffering.’ One of Abu Dahn’s favourite teachings. Karim understood the concept; many did not.

Karim dropped his head. The pain in his chest eased a little, but not his loathing of Anez. He turned to his mother who nodded; it was enough.

‘I have watched you over the last six seasons,’ said Abu Dahn, ‘and seen you stepping onto a different path and I was unsure whether to intervene. Everyone’s journey is their own to make; sometimes it is unclear where the track leads. Sometimes the hardest paths lead to the sweetest wells.’

Karim knew the old man spoke the truth. ‘I betrayed myself, my beliefs, to gain Anez’s approval.’ His belly hollowed with shame. ‘I gave up my place at your fire—the poems, the stories, the body meditations—I abandoned it all for a mirage.’ Karim shook his head. ‘So what is the task? And I need to ask some questions.’ He glanced towards his mother who had moved away a little. ‘About my father.’

‘I want you to work with Mohammed and his tourists again. He will pay you well.’ Abu Dahn seemed to hesitate. ‘I have a sense you need to be there.’ The old man shrugged. ‘And now is not the time to talk about your father. Come and see me before you leave; for now, I will ensure you go unmolested.’ The old man stood. ‘Ma’is salaama.’

‘Allaysallemak.’

Karim watched Abu Dahn’s retreat past the jumbled mixture of buildings. He tried to soak up what he could as an antidote to despair. Stone houses, now, instead of woollen tents, but decorated in the old ways. The homes in the very centre of the village were built into sandstone hummocks, shaped like the heart of the place. Children and goats clambered and jostled for position on top. He could see them from where he sat.

The scratchy palm-frond awnings and windscreens of his people’s desert origins rattled around him. Deep within, he held tight the Bedu certainty that the winds of turmoil would sweep across them again; someday soon, Karim guessed, if the bombing of tourist resorts continued. The Bedu were fighting back. They might yet need the sanctuary of the desert narrows and tumbles.

His breath caught as he gazed over the mosaic of his nomadic heritage. Flapping and fluttering at every turn, rugs, palm screens and veils. Gardens carved out of the rocky land thrived by the main well: date palms had fruit trees for neighbours; corn for the goats gave shade to the herbs for tea; winter barley swayed heavily, ready for reaping.

‘None of us are strangers to leaving, my son.’ His mother, at his shoulder, spoke into his tearing pain, to their people’s history. Not only did the whims of fortune send them into the desert; sand, rocks, caves and spirits called them, too. Every so often one of them would wander into the shimmering heat haze, to return at some point, or not. Whole families would set off with the basics for survival loaded onto camels or the heads of the women, or even, in this modern age, piled onto the back of a 4x4; everything else they would find along the way. The desert was their soul, forever tugging at them like the incessant wind.

Even so, the thought of leaving Bir Al-Helw raked Karim’s heart.

Chapter 2

Present Day

SWEAT TRICKLED DOWN LILLIANE’S BACK despite the cooling fans. She eased her lilac cheesecloth shirt away, hoping a tell-tale patch hadn’t formed. Some chance. ‘Can you see her?’ Two lines tightened between her eyebrows as she and Lauren trundled their suitcases through the arrivals area of Taba airport. Men in uniforms watched, everywhere. She could feel more of her shirt sticking to her skin.

They’re only doing their job.

‘No…oh yes, there she is. Come on, Lilliane.’ Lauren, at least, knew what their host looked like. Lilliane slalomed her way through dark men holding tatty pieces of cardboard with names scribbled on, and tour company reps with orange faces and clashing neckties.

Ignoring social niceties and trailing a hunched man behind her, their host, Sue, swept up and over them like a sandstorm, obliterating all self-determination in her path. ‘Have you got everything? Come on, this way.’ Her skirts billowing, the busty redhead marched ahead of them through the automatic doors and across the sun-blistered car park. The man bowed them through the door, insisting the newcomers go before him.

Lilliane eased past him.

‘The car’s over here,’ Sue trilled as Lilliane scurried to keep up without shredding her heels on her suitcase.

‘Your flying carpet, ladies.’ The man overtook them and moved to the side of a white 4x4, his hands caressing her flanks. ‘My beautiful camel.’ His gaze slid over Lilliane’s face and away.

A flash of fear burned through her. I don’t trust him.

Stop it! You’re being neurotic. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice man. She untangled the strands of tiny bells and beads dangling from the front of her ankle-length gipsy skirt: deep pink, to set off her dark hair and pale skin.

Sue handed over bottles of mineral water. ‘Have these, you must keep drinking while you’re here. Mohammed will put your suitcases in the back, just climb in.’

So, this is Mohammed. Lilliane watched him while pretending to look at the scenery, disappointed by his jeans and T-shirt. Mohammed’s face shifted from adoration of his car to closed-up resentment as he turned to fling their cases into the flat bed, muttering under his breath. Sue had already wafted away. I wonder if they’ve had an argument? Lilliane held back on the eye-roll and slid across the back seat, watching for clues to what was going on.

She only knew the potted history that Lauren had given her when they booked the little adventure: ‘It’s a real Bedouin camp, Lilliane, just like in one of your books. Sue set it up with Mohammed, her Bedouin husband.’

‘How did she meet a Bedouin? You don’t generally find them in the supermarket.’

Lauren had sniggered. ‘She met him on holiday in Egypt, after a nasty divorce. Her settlement paid for the land and building work.’ Lauren had met Sue a couple of times, via a work friend. ‘I’m not sure of all the details; I don’t know her that well really.’

That last comment came back to Lilliane with a wave of unease through her gut. Stop it. You’ll be fine. The Foreign Office gave out the same advice for Sinai as anywhere with tourists these days. This trip is what you’ve always wanted.

As they drove out of the car park and through a checkpoint, Lilliane stared at the broken stone and grey, square buildings around them. I hope it’s only the airport that’s so dismal. The views through the tiny aeroplane windows as they came in to land hadn’t boded well. I’m sure it’ll be gorgeous where we’re going. It’s an adventure.

Lunar-landscape mountains surrounded them on the sick-making route to their camp. It was like driving through a massive quarry: fracture and rubble. The humming of the tyres on the road added to Lilliane’s nausea.

‘Here, have a mint.’ Lauren, as ever, had come prepared.

‘Thanks, you’re a life-saver.’

Bundles of cloth rose from the rocks and stones at the side of the road, to materialise into outlandish hitchhikers. Lilliane nudged Lauren. ‘Look.’ She grinned at her old school friend, excitement bubbling up inside. ‘Real Bedouin people.’ Lauren had put up with Lilliane’s lifetime passion for all things Middle Eastern and had engineered this trip to cheer her up after her latest romantic bust-up. I’m really here!

Each time they passed the hitchhikers Mohammed and Sue shook their heads and raised helpless hands in Lilliane and Lauren’s direction.

‘Our custom is to give a ride to others if we have room. We take care of our own.’ Mohammed craned around to inform them, with a manic, teeth-exposing grin. He veered onto the other side of the road, squeezed between towering rocks; his cigarette wafted wreaths of smoke over them.

Lilliane grabbed hold of the door armrest. Don’t throw up. Concentrate on the scenery; look straight ahead through the windscreen. Nausea-clamminess dampened her face as she breathed into the wave of heat washing through her.

Mohammed slowed the car as two huge turquoise arches loomed ahead of them and barriers blocked the road.

Lauren leaned in close to Lilliane’s ear, wafting away the smoke between them as the car slowed. ‘What is it with all these checkpoints?’

Lilliane kept her voice low so Sue wouldn’t hear her. ‘I wasn’t expecting this, were you?’

Lauren shook her head, her blonde spikes catching the sun.

‘Security; we’re close to the Israeli border.’ Lilliane made the connection. ‘There’s lots of smuggling, especially into Gaza.’

‘I didn’t know we were that close.’

Lilliane watched Mohammed slump down into his seat and drop his chin to his collarbone as he drove towards the straddle-legged men in uniforms. It’s an adventure. ‘Well, at least we know they’re keeping an eye on things.’ I thought all the trouble was up in Cairo and the pyramids.

She listened as Mohammed answered the soldiers’ questions. ‘We take care of our own,’ he had said. Do we count as ‘our own’? Of course we do; we’re their guests.

****

Lilliane climbed down from the 4x4 and walked stiff-legged for a few steps until her circulation started to flow again. Well, at least it’s not grey here. Soft primrose light brushed and gilded stones, rocks and buildings around her.

‘Leave your suitcases, the boys will get them,’ Sue called. ‘You’ve each got your own hut—there’s no electricity in them, we’ll get you some candles—and the loos are in that building over there.’ Sue waved to where the toilet block squatted at the bottom of the hill. ‘The plumbing’s a bit limited so please don’t put anything down them, even toilet paper. Use the little bin. The showers are next door.’

Lilliane and Lauren nodded as they followed Sue up the hill.

Ugh! Shitty paper and flies everywhere. Lilliane shuddered.

‘Which huts are ours?’ asked Lauren.

‘This one,’ Sue flicked her hand to a small stone building on the right. ‘Here, at the bottom. It’s got a lovely veranda. And that one.’ She pointed to another building halfway up the hill. ‘It’s smaller but it’s got a better view.’

Lauren turned to Lilliane. ‘Which one do you want?’

‘I’m really not bothered.’

Lauren didn’t hesitate. ‘I’ll have the bottom one then. I’d rather be closer to the loos.’

Lilliane chewed on her bottom lip. Damn, I should have thought of that.

Sue led them up the stony hill. ‘Up there is the lounge. It’s where we’ll eat too.’ She pointed to a big grass hut above. ‘The one right at the top is for groups, workshops.’ Each part of the site sat on its own little plateau flattened out of the incline like a shelf.

‘That’s my house.’ Sue pointed to the Spanish hacienda festooned in pink flowers behind Lilliane’s hut. ‘Are you OK with dogs? We have two; they’re around somewhere.’ She didn’t wait for a reply and strode ahead to the next plateau beside the lounge hut. ‘Sit and have a drink while we wait for the meal.’ She sank down on one of the cushions scattered around a rug and rearranged her skirt so it fanned around her in a colourful semi-circle.

Lilliane chose a place, back to the flimsy grass wall so she could see all around. She patted the cushion beside her and Lauren, long and lean in loose sports clothes, folded gracefully onto it. Lilliane had given up trying to sculpt her body to match her friend’s a few years back. She was never going to be athletic.

A young man carrying small glasses and a teapot on a silver tray climbed the slope. Kicking off his sandals at the edge of the rug, he sank down onto his haunches and eased the tray onto the ground.

Sue fired a stream of Arabic at the man and reached for the teapot. ‘This is Saleh.’

Mohammed, following behind the man, smiled wide at the women. Foreboding punched Lilliane in the gut. Stop it. He’s being friendly.

Saleh kept his eyes down as he poured and handed round the dark tea.

Sue shook a little silver bowl at them. ‘Sugar?’

‘No, thanks, I don’t take it,’ Lilliane replied.

Lauren shook her head. ‘No, I don’t either.’

Lilliane took a sip, winced, swallowed the bitter liquid and smiled.

‘How was the flight?’ Sue finally settled down to the niceties.

‘It was fine. We had to do a bit of shuffling things around in suitcases at the check-in; mine was too heavy,’ replied Lauren. ‘The camp’s very nice. I like these cushions,’ she added, after another tentative sip.

‘The women in the village embroider the covers. Have you been to this part of the world before then, Lauren?’

‘No, that’s Lilliane’s pet subject, not mine. How long have you lived here now…?’

Lilliane watched and listened. Lauren had always done the socialising for both of them.

Sue leaned forwards and held out her glass for a refill of tea. ‘Lilliane. That’s an unusual name. Is your family French or something?’

My turn for interrogation.

‘No. My mother read the name in a book somewhere and liked the sound of it.’

‘Riiight.’

That was her little box sorted then: daughter of a hopeless romantic; highly suspect. Nothing new there.

‘So what’s this about a pet subject?’ Sue swivelled her head from one friend to the other.

‘I speak a little Arabic.’ Lilliane hitched a shoulder in light dismissal. ‘I’ve had a passion for the Middle East since I read the Arabian Nights as a kid.’

‘Have you been here before?’

Lilliane scratched her nose. ‘No, I’ve just admired it from afar.’

‘That’s why I organized this trip.’ Lauren grinned at Lilliane. ‘So she’d stop moaning about deserts and oases.’

Lilliane punched Lauren in the arm. ‘I have to listen to your monologues on sport, remember.’

Lilliane still wasn’t sure why the two of them were such good friends. Opposites attract I suppose. She peered into the grass hut. The palm-frond walls were backed with dark woollen blankets. Long cushions along the sides surrounded a fire pit at one end.

Lounge! I don’t think so. The last thing she wanted was her Arabian dream turned into a suburban cliché.

Light from the setting sun retreated across the ground, gilding pockets of green. ‘You have a lot of plants and trees.’ Lilliane succumbed to the small talk. ‘They must take a lot of watering in the desert.’

Mohammed got up from the cushions and stroked a nearby leaf. ‘This tree is lemon, this one orange and this one pomegranate. The corn for the goats is in the bed there by Lauren’s house.’ Lilliane heard a greedy tone to his incantation as he swayed towards different parts of the camp with each phrase. He all but rubbed his hands together.

‘We’ve lots of herb plants too,’ Sue added. ‘Karim’s always helping himself to a handful of leaves from one or other of the shrubs beside the huts.’

Who is Karim?

‘Oh here he is. You’re back from your foraging, then?’

The small, dark man had approached so quietly that he appeared at Sue’s shoulder as if by magic. Karim carried plates to a low table inside the hut and then brought a platter over to the centre of the rugs. ‘Yes. I found the herbs Jamil needed.’ He moved back to the fire pit and sorted kindling materials ready for lighting.

‘Help yourselves to the sweets.’ Sue took a small piece and waved the friends on.

Turkish Delight, my favourite. Icing sugar, carried on the breeze, sweetened Lilliane’s tongue even before she popped the rose-scented jelly in her mouth. She licked the powdered sugar off her fingertips. ‘Mmmmm.’

‘Jamil is Mohammed’s nephew, you’ll meet him soon,’ Sue added.

****

Comfortably full after their evening meal, Lilliane let the stress of the journey dissolve.

‘It’s a relief to be here and settled in.’ Lauren shuffled her bottom on her cushion.

They leaned into each other’s shoulders, across the fire from Sue and Mohammed.

‘Mmmm.’ Tired, Lilliane allowed the easy silence to stretch out.

A sudden hubbub of agitated voices drowned out the soft crackling of the indoor fire. Mohammed sprang to his feet, shouting a question in Arabic.

‘Bombs in Dahab,’ Lilliane translated. She’d taken basic Arabic night-classes at her local college, much to her mother’s distress: ‘Why can’t you do something normal like art or dressmaking?’ But the lessons were already standing up to the challenge.

‘It’s on the radio. Mohammed, put the television on,’ Sue commanded as she levered herself up. They rushed off to their house.

Lauren and Lilliane stared at each other, abandoned.

‘Bombs? Where’s Dahab? How close do you think it is?’ Lauren clambered to her feet.

‘I didn’t hear anything. It can’t be that close.’

Lauren widened her brown eyes further. ‘What does a bomb sound like?’

‘I don’t know. Loud I suppose.’ Lilliane pulled her friend back onto the cushions; they linked arms and stared out the doorway into the night. ‘We’ll be fine.’

After what seemed an age of waiting, Sue and Mohammed returned. He paced over the rugs. ‘I have family and friends in Dahab. I hope they are staying home.’ His accent had thickened.

Why would they need to stay home? Lilliane raised her eyebrows at Sue.

‘It happens every time.’ She breathed hard and hugged her wrap close round her shoulders. ‘They send police from Cairo, so the local cops go overboard, proving themselves. They don’t like the tribesmen at the best of times and love the chance to bring in everybody they can find. It’s safer to stay in our villages. Officials are still frantic from last month’s bomb in Sharm el Sheik. It’s so bad for business.’

‘What happens to the people they take in?’ Lauren’s eyes shone wide in the firelight.

‘Prison for God knows how long.’ Sue pulled her wrap even tighter. ‘Sometimes just a night, other times it can be weeks or months. And the stuff that goes on; there are whispers of mass murders… but that’s just gossip. It’ll be all over the news too,’ she added with a shrill note of disgust. ‘More bad publicity. Just what we need. As if the tourist numbers weren’t already down enough.’

Lauren leapt to her feet. ‘Oh, Michael, he’ll be worried.’ Her husband had been happy to trade her trip to Egypt with a golf holiday of his own later in the year.

‘We need to phone home.’ Lilliane’s stomach lurched, picturing her on-off boyfriend, currently off, watching the news on the television. He won’t be bothered. But John will be. Her brother and nephew were all the family she had left. At least I don’t have to worry about Mum.

‘We’ve no reception here,’ said Sue. ‘Mohammed, we need to go back out.’

No phone reception? Lilliane clenched her jaw in panic.

Scuttling and sliding down the slope, they headed for the truck and Mohammed drove them out into the dark night, winding their way up the rocky tracks, like some kind of desert snake. The headlight cones sliced through the pitch black, picking out the rocks. Lilliane hunched silently in the back, peering out into the dark. Mohammed, a man they barely knew, held their safety in his hands.

‘This should be far enough.’ He pulled on the handbrake but left the engine rumbling, lights on.

They tumbled out of the truck and began the mobile phone signal search. Lauren slowly pirouetted on the spot, part-way up the loose shale incline, with her arm in the air like a Freddie Mercury tribute, trying to coax the signal down to her phone.

‘Mine’s got no signal,’ Lilliane wailed.

‘I’ve got one. You can borrow mine once I’ve spoken to Michael,’ said Lauren. ‘It’s ringing… Oh! Hi there, it’s me…’ Lauren turned and Lilliane stepped away to let her speak in private.

Once she had reassured her brother, Lilliane rang her ex. His response to the drama inevitably took the form of a joke: ‘I’ve been on the internet looking for cheap coffins—just in case, you know!’ His inability to grow up was one of the reasons for their most recent separation.

Why could she not find a man who behaved like an adult? Who cherished her? ‘Very funny—not!’ she retaliated. ‘Well I’m fine; we’re miles away from the bombs and it’s not like we’re connected to any of this.’

Lilliane didn’t raise the possibility of sheer bad luck; being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as her mother had been in the car crash.

****

Back in the lounge, Lilliane strummed her fingers on her nearly empty glass. All this small talk. I hate small talk. I’d rather be in my bed—before the lights go out. Fear of being caught in the dark space between the generator switch-off and lighting the candles in her hut niggled, but she didn’t want to be the first to leave. It would be rude, even though their hosts had all but forgotten them because of the bombs.

‘I’m really tired. I’m off to bed,’ said Lauren, stretching, her long arms gold in the firelight. She brushed down her loose joggers as she rose.

Lilliane blew out the tension. ‘Me too.’

They crunched down the hill, the path lit as far as Lilliane’s hut.

‘See you in the morning.’ Lilliane squeezed the top of her