The Time and Space Furnace, Episode 2: Camel

The key to riding a camel is to take the rocking in your hips so your head stays straight. It’s like a baseball bat: you swing your arms this much, but the bat’s farther away and it swings more and harder. The camel’s so tall that every step it takes sends your head swinging everywhere and you need to throw up. You can’t explain stuff like that to Dewan. He only gets it if he reads in a book that says “center of gravity” or “angular momentum” or whatever. 

So I said, “Dewan, center of gravity. Think about angular momentum” because his head was bobbing all over the place and I didn’t want to get puke on my shoes.

“What?” he said.

“To keep your head still. Umm…Torque?” 

I was just trying to get his mind on something else, but just then a girl about my age came racing across this dusty field we were on. I guess I was expecting sand dunes when we got on the camel, but I didn’t have much time to think about it, because I had really been expecting a sanlun che to take us back to Linhai, not a camel, but I guess you just take what comes out of the furnace and get on. 

Anyway, we weren’t crossing the Sahara, we were crossing like a dried up field or maybe a dirt parking lot with some scraggly plants that looked like they’d hurt to touch. The buildings were earthy shades of tan and pale adobe with flat roofs. The approaching girl distracted Dewan from his seasickness and got him reaching for his phone to get the translation program Mimic going so we could talk to her.

She grabbed the camel by the reins and started babbling at us. She looked really happy and relieved, but there was something going wrong with Mimic, because it just repeated all the same sounds she was making, except for the odd word like “camel” and “thank you.” She had red hair, not exactly like mine, hers was more burgundy and her hair was more wispy and dry. She had light greenish brown eyes that looked eerily pretty in her face because her skin and eyebrows were so dark it looked like her eyes should be dark brown. She had high flat cheeks and a windburned look.  

When she pulled the camel’s rein down, it knelt its front legs. Even though I saw it coming, it still nearly spilled me over its head, because a camel’s got looonggg legs. Dewan wasn’t ready and his phone actually flipped out of his hand and he had to catch it with the other and then the first and then the other again, cause dude’s got butterfingers. 

Then the camel knelt its back legs and we nearly fell the other way. It was like being on a ship deck when one those giant rogue waves they have on movies hits. Dewan seemed to think Mimic was malfunctioning because he said to it really slowly “I’m Dewan. This is Mindy. We’re from America.”

The girl cocked her head to listen with all her attention and then laughed. She said several sentences back, but again the program only repeated the sound without recognizing the words.

Finally the girl said, in very slow English, “My name Titrit. I am Moroccan.” Dewan looked a little relieved, but still punched away at the phone.

“This is not going to be easy if Mimic isn’t working,” I said. 

Dewan stopped tapping menus and moved only his eyes up. “Next time you’re looking for something easy to do, how about we just…” he threw his hands open like he’d just had a bright idea, “skip the camel and eat Doritos at my house.” I guess he was still mad that I made him come, but you know he wanted to know if what happened before was real. Still it was a nice idea, going to Dewan’s. His house was really nice, and he didn’t have a little brother.

I swung a leg over the hump and jumped down. “Really? You never invited me to your house before.”

“I never had a mystery-teleportation-based friendship before. Sorry I didn’t know the protocol.” He sounded a little miffed but he followed me down.

I rolled my eyes but still said, “I meant to say ‘that sounds fun. Thanks.’” 

Titrit stood with an ear cocked toward the phone and a scrunched-up look on her face. 

As she got the camel back on its feet, Dewan tried again. “What city is this?” She listened again intently. 

Again she answered in whole long sentences, but Mimic returned only a few English words. Still “Meknes” was clear enough, and we could look that up in the guidebook I grabbed from the groundskeeper’s shed. 

“I don’t understand why when it translates what I say into Arabic, she mostly understands it, but it doesn’t understand anything she says,” Dewan mused.

Titrit pointed to the phone and said in English, “Saudi. Arabic.” She waved her finger back and forth in the air. “Not Moroccan.”

“Oh!” It dawned on Dewan. “Moroccan Arabic is really different from standard. She probably learns Standard Arabic in school but can’t talk.”

Titrit nodded dramatically. She was leading the camel away now, and Dewan and I saw nothing to do but follow her across the dusty lot. 

She put the large camel into a pen with its baby, shut the gate and yelled something at the shelter, which was really just a stack of cinder blocks with a sheet of iron propped on the top. 

“Adood,” she said. Mimic said “Adood” and the text onscreen had the quotation marks.

“Allons-y?” she asked after a moment’s thought. A dusty little boy of about 6 ran out of the shelter and took Titrit’s hand.

Great! I thought, just what my life was missing, a dirty little boy.

But I said, “Allons-y.” 

When I said that, Dewan looked up like he wasn’t sure if he’d found a rope or lost a cow because Mimic wasn’t telling him what that meant.

“It means ‘come on,’ Dewan. It’s not Arabic.” He looked at me like an Amish electrician. “It’s French. Remember you made me get a Duolingo account when Mr. Richardson made you?”

“I know why you started French.” He straightened his shirt as they hurried after Titrit. “I just wasn’t expecting you to be better at it than me.” 

Titrit and the boy, called Idir, obviously her little brother, led us into a narrow alley and down some twists and turns.

“I don’t how your hero arc goes, but stabbed by a cartoon owl is not how I die. Duo says practice, I practice,” I said.

“You don’t even have a phone.”

“My mom goes to bed at like 7. Then I use hers.”

“Why’s she go to bed so early?”

“Have you met my little brother? She’s tired.”

We followed Titrit and Idir through the narrow alleys, occasionally passing a shop with items on display. Some had plastic junk like you get at a carnival and some had the bright scarves the women wore on their hair billowing in the breeze. It made no difference what it was, Idir got his grubby hands all over every single object within reach, and if it was out of reach, he climbed something to get it. I saw two different men with damp washcloths tend to a display case in his wake.

The alleys opened up to a square like a marketplace in Aladdin or Indiana Jones, except without the turbans and flowing pants--something I’d have sworn was just an artist’s fantasy a minute before. Hundreds of people bustled across this open area. We stuck to the right, where bright red and orange carpets hung from the wide open doors of shops and shopkeepers sat on tiny wooden stools pulled up to etched metal tables. They held bright silver teapots over their heads so that when it trickled out to the little glasses below there was froth on the top. 

Idir’s tiny hands ran along braided carpet fringes, toes kicked at table legs. Bright beaded bracelets were snatched up. Everytime, Tirtrit only pushed the objects back, warned gently, put herself between Idir and temptation. Shopkeepers ruffled his shaggy hair like they thought it was cute and sent a reprimanding word at Titrit, who shrugged and smiled. I couldn’t believe it. The kid needed to be sent to his room without any snack, but all the adults seemed to be telling Titrit to go easier on the little scamp.

 Up ahead bright colored pyramids of spices--red paprika, yellow turmeric, rusty cinnamon-- and mountains of olives of every type, soared above their bags. They were so pleasingly stacked in these rounded off piles that you wouldn’t think could stand up in that shape. The olives were shiny with oil and some had little flecks of hot red peppers mixed in. I went to stand between Idir and the bags and, as he stumbled near one of the display tables, I shouted at him “Idir!” But Tirtrit pointed at a dancer across the open space and spoke excitedly, drawing his attention there as she hurried him past the colorful mounds. 

When Idir dropped his sister’s hand and took off toward the little crowd gathered to watch the dancer, I just slapped my head, drawing a deep breath to take off after him. A man standing by the group eyed Titrit’s hurry after the racing child and scooped him up in his arms, returning him with a smile. Maybe because I knew they didn’t understand me I said “calm down, you little brat.” He was just like Daniel.

The man who had helped frowned at me, whether understanding the words or just my tone, and replied in English, “he’s just a kid.”

Just-a-kid walked along a wall the rest of the way to school (Madrasa was one of the few words Mimic seemed to know), even stepping over and around adults seated there, who inexplicably just grinned at him and helped him keep his balance. 

We passed in front of this unbelievable set of stone arches, all carved with geometric designs and inlaid with colorful tiles, with a central set of wooden doors like 50 feet tall. When Titrit said it was “Bab El Mansour,” Dewan looked it up in the Morocco book. I didn’t even notice him pull it out of my hand because this gate was like the gate to heaven, if the rest of the fence around heaven were just a really tall old mud wall. I mean the wall was sturdy, but you know, just a wall and the gate was…wow. 

“Commissioned by Sultan Moulay Ismail, completed in 1732.”

“1732?” I shouted. “That door is older than America?”

He checked the book again. “Yep.”

A boy in a red t-shirt ran by and shouted at Titrit something that Mimic said was about a camel, but that’s all it got. He pinched his nostrils closed and mimed drinking something disgusting. Another boy joined him making a hissing sound, and they laughed as they ran by. They said her name in a sing-song chant. Idir stopped where he was on the wall and came to put his arms around his sister, who hung her head and sighed painfully. Then she shoved his arms off her and started running down the street, dodging through the busy lines of people. We had no choice but to follow: we had no idea where we were or what to do with Idir without her.

We caught up to her only inside the corridor of a white painted public school building, sobbing in the arms of a teacher with hair wrapped in a royal blue scarf. 

“How dare you talk to her that way!” The teacher snapped at us in excellent English. “Titrit’s family has a proud history, and if the centuries-old practice of using camel urine in traditional medicine is distasteful to you, let’s hear your suggestion for offering hope and comfort to people with serious medical problems.” Titrit was trying to protest, but the teacher sort of pushed her behind her in a protective gesture like she thought she was only trying to stop her from embarrassing her. 

Idir ran to his sister and we just stood there looking like well, like we had an urgent unexplained need to defend our beliefs about camel pee. We made exactly no progress on that point in the time it took Titrit to set the teacher straight in huddled whispers.

“I’m Miss Farida, Titrit’s English teacher. I apologize; I understood that you were the bullies saying she drank camel pee.” She took a step forward and extended her hand. “Now I see you found her camel and returned it, and are in need of an English speaker.”

It was a long story after that, and I think Miss Farida was as good a sport as possible considering she was grown up and was never going to believe that we found the camel in a furnace in Iowa. 

Anyway, we finally got that Titrit’s family business is selling camel products that people in the Sahara and the High Atlas swear cures everything from cancer to kidney disease. Dewan just about exploded with excitement when he found out that camel pee might be some kind of health drink. Sounds gross to me, but he gets about science that still needs to done like my dad got when Kansas City won the Superbowl--there’s no following why he’s so excited.

Titrit’s family had only been in Meknes a little while and she didn’t go to school when they lived in the mountains.

“You didn’t go to school?” We both asked at the same time, but I said it like “lucky dog,” and Dewan said it like “poor baby.”

“It was far away, and girls don’t always go,” she explained, relying on Miss Farida to translate. “But in the city, everyone has to go, so I started late.”

Miss Farida took over the explaining. Lots of kids were mean to Titrit because she was old for third grade and didn’t speak French and Standard Arabic well. 

“It’s okay. I’ll quit after sixth grade and never have to see bullies again,” Titrit declared defiantly. Miss Farida looked sad about that, and I guess I was sad too because it didn’t seem like she’d get to hang out and climb trees and play baseball instead; it sounded like she’d just have to work all the time.

Dewan understood something totally different. “But you could help your family a million times more by studying the science of camel pee!” We looked at him like he had really lost the thread, but he went on, “They do scientific testing on all kinds of traditional medicine now and they keep finding real reasons why traditional methods work. I mean, maybe this one isn’t real, but imagine if you got the next big patent medicine from camel pee!”

Miss Farida translated all this and the sparkle in Dewan’s eye started to shine in hers too, and Titrit’s. “She’s asking me if I can help her to look up science about this.”

We stayed the afternoon looking up articles and planning Titrit’s science fair project. Miss Farida was great. When I mentioned the amazing gateway we’d passed on the way to school, she told us the legend of Bab El Mansour.

“The legend is that Moulay Ismail commissioned that gate and the architect built it. It was a long process and the result, you can see was stunning. Moulay Ismail called the architect in and asked him ‘is this the best gate you could build? Could you build a better one?’ Looking forward to another commission, and after working with his team and learning from the work, he confidently replied ‘Yes, I can build you a better gate.’ So Moulay Ismail had his head cut off.”

All of us looked stunned, but I liked it: so decisive, so witty.

“I don’t know if that story is true, but what do you know about Moulay Ismail?”

“He had 888 children, the largest number on record,” Dewan returned without hesitation, a fun fact from his mental catalog.

Miss Farida suppressed a smile. “I meant what do you know about him from the story.”

“He was tough! And liked to make a point,” I blurted out. 

Dewan looked at me, horrified. “He was a bloodthirsty tyrant?”

Titrit was quieter. “He could never get a better gate,” she said hesitantly.

Miss Farida grinned at her and nodded very slightly. “Never,” she repeated. “You have to learn from your mistakes and let other people make their own. You have to build on what came before.”

Seeing how great they worked together, I finally asked, “How come you two never looked this up before?”

“Titrit avoids me outside class because she doesn’t want the other kids to hear her speaking Tamazight.”

“Tamawhat?”

“Tamazight.”

“Her native language. The language of Morocco from before the Arabs came. When the other kids hear us talking, they laugh at her for being country.”

“Oh! Dewan! It wasn’t just that Mimic can’t do Arabic. Titrit was speaking another language completely.”

“She didn’t need us at all!” Dewan practically jumped up and down.

“Why are you so enthusiastic about that?” I wanted to know. “You’re like great news! I’m a complete waste of space!”

“No! She didn’t need us! We didn’t have any tools to help her!”

“You’re kidding?” I mocked, “Our contributions are totally worthless? Excellent!”

“The furnace just puts us where we need to be! It was our job NOT to know Tamazight so that Titrit would come talk to Miss Farida! She needed Miss Farida, not us!”

“Huh? I’m still not following why that makes you so” I waved my hand up and down in front of his chest “bouncy.”

“It means we can’t fail! Which means…I might not be that scared of camels.”