Free The Last Camel Died at Noon by Elizabeth Peters

called it 'danced' - for us. I would have felt myself a traitor to my sex if I had missed any opportunity to lecture the poor oppressed creatures of the harim on their rights and privileges - though heaven knows, we Englishwomen were far from having attained the rights due us.

    An attendant led me through the courtyard, where a fountain trickled feebly under the shade of a few sickly palm trees, and into the part of the house reserved for the women. It was dark and hot as a steam bath, for even the windows opening onto the courtyard were covered with pierced shutters, lest some bold masculine eye behold the forbidden beauties within. The sheikh had three of the four wives permitted him by Moslem law, and a number of female servants - concubines, to put it bluntly. All of them were assembled in a single room, and I heard them, giggling and exclaiming in high-pitched voices, long before I saw them. I expected the worst - Ramses's Arabic is extremely fluent and colloquial - but then I realised that his was not among the voices I heard. At least he was not entertaining them by telling vulgar jokes or singing rude songs.

    When I entered the room, the ladies fell silent, and a little flutter of alarm ran through the group. When they saw who it was they relaxed, and one - the chief wife, by her attire and her air of command - came forward to greet me. I was used to being swarmed over by the women of the harims; poor things, they had little enough to amuse them, and a Western woman was a novelty indeed. On this occasion, however, after glancing at me they turned their attention back to something - or, as I suspected, someone - hidden from me by their bodies.

    The heat, the gloom, the stench of the strong perfumes used by the women (and the aroma of unwashed bodies those perfumes strove to overcome) were familiar to me; but I seemed to smell some other, underlying odour - something sickly sweet and subtly pervasive. It may have been that strange scent that made me forget courtesy; it may have been the uncertainty as to what was happening to my son. I pushed the women aside so I could see.

    A rug or matting, woven in patterns of blue and red-orange, green and umber, had been spread across the floor. On it sat my son, cross-legged, with his cupped hands held out in a peculiarly rigid position. He did not turn his head. Facing him was the strangest figure I had ever seen - and I have seen a great many strange individuals. At first glance it appeared to be a folded or crumpled mass of dark fabric, with some underlying structure of bone or wood jutting out at odd angles. My reasoning brain identified it as a squatting human figure; my mother's heart felt a thrill of fear bordering on horror when my eyes failed to find a human countenance atop the angular mass. Then the upper portion of the object moved; a face appeared, covered with a heavy veil; and a deep murmurous voice intoned, 'Silence. Silence. The spell is cast. Do not wake the sleeper.'

    The elder wife came to my side. She put a timid hand on my arm and murmured, 'He is a magician of great power, Sitt Hakim - like yourself. An old man, a holy man - he does the boy honour. You will not tell my lord? There is no harm in it, but -'

    The old sheikh must be an indulgent master or the women would not have dared introduce a man, however old or holy, into their quarters, but he would be forced to take notice of such a flagrant violation of decency if someone like myself brought it to his attention. I whispered a reassuring, 'Taiyib matakhafsh (It is good; do not fear)' - though, as far as I was concerned, it was not at all good.

    I had seen such performances in the suks of Cairo. Crystal-gazing, or scrying, is one of the commonest forms of divination. It is all nonsense, of course; what the viewer sees in the crystal ball or pool of water or (as in this case) liquid held in the palm of the hand is nothing more than a visual hallucination, but the deluded audience is firmly convinced