a handful of vowels—his unlikely moniker was the only solid detail the amateur herdsman was ever to learn of the boy’s identity. He turned up unannounced and took for granted the Jew’s unoffered hospitality, but while he was clearly a bit deranged—a mejdoub, he called himself, a born fool—Ruby began to look forward to their encounters. Their initial meeting had occurred during the fugitive period following the Baal Shatikah’s prison escape, when he’d returned to the kibbutz after months of hiding out. He was still lying low, abstaining from the night patrols and tending to avoid the settlers as well—who were themselves not altogether happy to be hosting him, especially since his uncles of blessed memory were gone. So it surprised Ruby to discover that he welcomed the unscheduled visits of this quaint interloper; nor did it seem to matter that communication between them was so restricted, as the Arab apparently required no comprehension from his audience and the Jew had long since lost the habit of conversation.
They would sit together for hours, Ruby nodding at the weird modulations of Iqbal’s chin music and sometimes sharing his water pipe. Their flocks never mingled; Iqbal’s dog, Dalilah, saw to that. A nobler, curlier breed than Abimelech, she would weave among the lambs and ewes, encircling them in an invisible fold, though the snowy Arab flock would have shunned the Jewish bunch for their uncouthness in any case. It never occurred to Ruby to draw a moral from the situation any more than he was moved to speculate about the boy’s origins: Iqbal was a denizen of the wilderness who had befriended the Jewish incendiary the way a jackal might approach a campfire to partake of the warmth. For the boy was very like a wild animal, or several animals, a mimic who spontaneously impersonated the behavior of whatever creature happened into their field of vision. If, say, a long-legged bustard flew overhead, the boy would rise on one leg flapping his arms and screeching hysterically; he would bay at the brindled wildcats and hyenas, who answered him with a forlorn plangency. Throwing back his burnoose, he might reveal the cowpie of his hair twisted into love locks plastered with butter, or lift his djellaba to withdraw from his sagging diaper a warehouse inventory of utensils and tools, which he offered for sale. In the heat of the day he would erect on the single pole of his shepherd’s staff a haircloth tent whose shade he offered to share with the Jew.
His sack also contained, along with a waterskin and various spices, ingredients exceeding the uses of ordinary condiments, such as crows’ wings, powdered porcupine quills, and pressed scorpion, which Ruby figured were employed in casting spells. At some point in the afternoon or evening the boy would gather his possessions and take up his crudely carved staff; Ruby would lift his rifle and the two of them would depart without ceremony in their separate directions. Often days, weeks, even months would elapse before they set eyes on each other again, upon which they would resume their chance acquaintance as if no time at all had intervened. But time did pass, and though the shepherd remained as unreconstructed as ever, Ruby noted that sparse hairs had begun to sprout over his tawny cheeks, and a knavish cast had entered his eye. Moreover, certain of his sheep had conceived the suspicious habit of nuzzling their backsides against him with a brazen immodesty.
The mongrel Abimelech, who barked at shadows and chased echoes, never bothered to signal the shepherd’s approach. (He adored Dalilah and attempted to court her with acrobatics resembling rabid convulsions, though she spurned his overtures and left him to hump the sultry air.) Iqbal, however, always announced his own advent with the usual insults, most of which remained unintelligible to Ruby. But mostly Ruby was indifferent to the shepherd’s language and satisfied to hunker beside him as he dredged a brazier from his bottomless sack for roasting gobbets of shashlik. Then the two of them would gnaw the leathery meat, their faces slathered with the grease, and afterward Iqbal, still unweaned, would suck the teat of his single goat until it staggered.
Once, as they sat among the saline bushes in a sandy stream bed, their sheep resting in the shade of the shallow chasm, the sun clouded over and a sudden storm came up. Even Iqbal, attuned though he was to every mood of the weather, was caught off guard. So torrential