"George Alec Effinger - Marid 3 - The Exile Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

"MaтАФ" I began. My throat tightened up. I pointed to my lips. The man understood me and passed me a goat-skin
bag filled with brackish water. The bag stunk and the water was the most foul-tasting I'd ever encountered.
"Bismillah," I murmured: in the name of God. Then I drank that horrible water greedily until he put a hand on my arm
and stopped me.
"Marid," I said, answering his question.
He took back the water bag. "I am Hassanein. Your beard is red. I've never seen a red beard before."
"Common," I said, able to speak a little better now that I'd had some water. "In Mauretania."
"Mauretania?" He shook his head.
"Used to be Algeria. In the Maghreb." Again he shook his head. I wondered how far I'd wandered, that I'd met an
Arab who had never heard of the Maghreb, the name given to the western Muslim lands of North Africa.
"What race are you?" Hassanein asked.
I looked at him in surprise. "An Arab," I said.
"No," he said, "I am an Arab. You are something else." He was firm in his statement, although I could tell that it
was made without malice. He was truly curious about me.
Calling myself an Arab was inaccurate, because I am half Berber, half French, or so my mother always told me. In
my adopted city, anyone born in the Muslim world and who spoke the Arabic language was an Arab. Here in
Has-sanein's tent that relaxed definition would not do. "I am Berber," I told him.
 "I do not know Berbers. We are Bani Salim." "Badawi?" I asked.
"Bedu," he corrected me. It turned out that the word I'd always used for the Arabian nomads, Badawi or
Bedouin, was an inelegant plural of a plural. The nomads themselves preferred Bedu, which derives from the
word for desert.
"You treated me?" I said.
Hassanein nodded. He reached out his hand. In the flickering lamplight, I could see the dusting of sand on the
hairs of his arm, like sugar on a lemon cake. He lightly touched my corymbic implants. "You are cursed," he said.
I didn't reply. Apparently he was a strict Muslim who felt that I was going to hell because I'd had my brain wired.
"You are doubly cursed," he said. Even here, my sec-ond implant was a topic of conversation. I wondered where
my rack of moddies and daddies was. "Hungry," I said.
He nodded. "Tomorrow, you may eat, inshallah." If God wills. It was hard for me to imagine that Allah had
brought me through whatever trials I'd endured, just to keep me from having breakfast in the morning. He picked up
the lamp and held it close to my face. I With a grimy thumb he pulled down my eyelid and ex-amined my eye. He had
me open my mouth, and he looked at my tongue and the back of my throat. He bent forward and put his ear on my
chest, then had me cough. He poked and prodded me expertly. "School," I said, pointing at him. "University." He
laughed and shook his head. He slowly bent my legs up and then tickled the soles of my feet. He pressed on my
fingernails and watched to see how long it took for the color to return.
"Doctor?" I asked.
He shook his head again. Then he looked at me and came to some decision. He grabbed his keffiya and pulled
it loose. I was astonished to see that he had his own moddy plug on the crown of his skull. Then he carefully
wrapped the keffiya around his head again.
I looked at him questioningly. "Cursed," I said.
"Yes," he said. He wore a stoic expression. "I am the
shaykh of the Bani Salim. It is my responsibility. I must
wear the mark of the shaitan." '
"How many moddies?" I asked.
He didn't understand the word "moddies." I re-phrased the question, and found out that he'd had his skull
amped so that he could use just two modules: the doctor moddy, and one that made him the equivalent of a
learned religious leader. Those were all he owned. In the arid wilderness that was home to the Bani Salim,
Has-sanein was the wise elder who had, in his own eyes, damned his soul for the sake of his tribe.
I realized that we were understanding each other thanks to grammar and vocabulary built into the doctor : moddy.
When he took it out, we'd have as much trouble communicating as we'd had before. I was getting too weary to keep
up this conversation any further, though. Any more would have to wait until tomorrow.