35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘MANY GHOST HERE’
peoples, the removal of rajas and their private armies took away
most of their religion’s meaning. Philosophy is wasted on a soldier
who has no war to fight.
As we ate, our weariness turned into silence. And no silence is
like the silence of deserts – not utter, but vast, the multifarious tiny
noises within it so much tinier in the desert’s mass. Somewhere far
off, a hyena cackled at its own joke. Then, floating in from those
billowing shadows, came a few shy local villagers, offering to
entertain us.
It felt like an ancient pleasure, sitting there filled with food and
relaxed with weariness, watching a dance accompanied by the
mournful, atonal lament of some old song that told the story being
danced. Every muscle in my body glowed rather than ached. The
moon peeped out from behind a marbled sheen of low cloud,
silhouetting the sphinx-like forms of our aloof camels as they lay,
legs folded at impossible angles beneath them, noisily regurgitating
their dinner, gazing dispassionately at something invisible beyond
our pulsing cocoon of firelight. The world felt as if it were finally at
bay, and a pungent alchemy was now at work transforming the
inner self. We’d got even with that tyrant, Time. Almost.
As the wind drove the fierce fire upon her, she shook her arms
and limbs as if in agony; at length she started up and approached
the side to escape. A Hindu, one of the police who had been placed
near the pile to see she had fair play and should not be burned by
force, raised his sword to strike her, and the poor wretch shrank
back into the flames . . .
– Fanny Parks, Wanderings of a Pilgrim
During the hushed depths of a dream-wracked night, a vicious
sandstorm hit the flysheets of my frail little tent, flapping like dragon’s
wings at my head. I scrambled around, tying knots, pulling poles
upright and trying to sink them deeper into the sand. Outside, a
howling white wind enveloped everything in a coarse, swirling mist
of stone. Voices called out in the chaos; tent pegs were driven down
by unseen hands.
‘You can turn the fucking hurricane machine off now, Mr de Mille!’
I heard Bentley shout somewhere nearby.
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