In the desert the wind is the grand architect, sculpting the soft rising and setting of the dunes and scraping clean the rock pillars that litter the landscape.
When I was little the priestesses took us all the way down the canal to the ocean for a whole day. The desert wind is like the ocean wind. It just works on a longer timescale. Each moment in the ocean is like a million moments in the desert. The sloping dunes, with their crests and valleys, are slowed-down waves made of sand instead of water. You can even sink into dunes the same way you sink into ocean waves—just slower.
A flowing column of native men lead our procession. They carry tent poles and clubs and march single file through the dune valleys like a trail of ants. The men are followed some distance behind by a column of ghostly indistinct blue shapes—the native women. Their robes leave swishes on the sand astride their footsteps.
Far behind, me and Kiddu follow this trail. Jaruna brings up the rear with his sister. The four of us are quite segregated from the natives. The nearest native woman is a good bow-shot away.
In the morning the wind is cool and the sun keeps below the crest of the dunes ahead. As the sun rises the wind becomes hotter and hotter.
The river of people flows up the skirt of a dune. Far to the east, I see a strange sight.
A curtain in the sky.
It’s a swath of grayish-yellow. It hovers above the horizon, a bit left of the sun’s rising circle. At first it looks almost like a darker extension of the desert into the blue. If you squint, you can see the curtain move, swirling like the wind—and yet it stays in one place.
“What is that?” I ask.
“A sharuq,” Jaruna says.
“What’s a sharuq?” says Kiddu.
“That is a sharuq.”
The sun hangs fat overhead now and pours white light down. Ahead, the columns halt and spread out over a valley between the dunes, pooling into blue and tan circles.
Jaruna and Ayan hurry ahead to join the crowd for the Noon Prayer. Kiddu and I observe this from a distance.
“What a waste of time,” she says. “I know we should try to be respectful. But really, three times a day? As if Asham needs the attention.”
“If I’m going to be a mystic—mujasha…whatever—I’m going to have to do that too.”
“How often do you pass gas when you’re praying? I did a bunch of times back at the Temple. Three times a day—it’s got to happen all the damn time. I wonder if Lord Sun God Asham hears it. He probably gets pissed off. More than usual, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He’s all-seeing Asham, not all-hearing Asham.”
“Then how does he hear people’s prayers?”
“Lip-reading, obviously.”
As we sit the heat becomes so unbearable that I start to wonder if the Sun God is actively avenging our blasphemy. I almost take a swig of water but Kiddu smacks my hand and tells me to save it for the afternoon. Apparently the afternoon is worse.