—
They stayed in town that first night, just long enough to eat a couple of chicken dinners and drink some beer. Then they rode back out into the desert a little ways, where other nomads had pitched their own temporary neighborhood, and set up camp in the midst of it.
The next day, Milo became part of Akram’s remarkable magic act.
Here’s how that happened:
Akram woke him around midday and said, “You may wish to come into town with me. I’m going to get some breakfast and maybe put on a show.”
“Sure,” said Milo, shrugging.
They left the tent and the animals behind and made their way toward the heart of the oasis.
Milo pointed out that Akram hadn’t brought along anything with which to juggle.
To which Akram replied, “How mysterious!” and said nothing else.
There was, Milo noted as they made their way to the bazaar, no shortage of entertainers already hard at work. Anywhere you looked, anywhere there was room, were people doing a whole spectrum of things to get travelers to stop, look, and maybe toss some coins in a hat.
There were jugglers already. Some better than others. There were snake charmers, hucksters, and musicians. People who would draw caricatures of you. Fortune-tellers. Face-painters. Body-painters.
Not all of the entertainment was in the form of talent. Some of it bordered on the mystical, like a man who had tied himself into a complicated knot. For a dollar, you could try to undo him. Milo tried and failed. There was a woman who could talk to animals, and a man, prudently concealed behind a canvas drape, who would shit you a gold necklace for five bucks. It was all very interesting, but it made Milo uneasy, too. These were people who had been hanging around the afterlife for some time and had no plans to be reborn anytime soon. They had found their way to the edge of things, for whatever strange reasons.
Anonymity? Apathy?
“How long has it been,” Milo asked Akram, “since you lived an Earthly life?”
“Five years,” answered the juggler. “Maybe more.”
They stopped for burritos and coffee.
“How long,” Milo asked, “before you think you will go back again?”
Akram sighed and chewed.
“There are these two universal women,” he said, “named Obong and Glee. They are my counselors. Everyone has them, yes? Well, they blew in on a sandstorm one day and suggested I go back to Earth as a tax accountant. I told them I would think about it. I have been thinking about it for some time. In my last life, I was in a coma for seven years. With apologies, Milo: The world of the living doesn’t interest me much.”
Milo began to ask another question, but Akram forestalled him.
“They will not allow me to wander forever, I suspect. I know this. Eventually I will throw off the precious balance of things and have to go be a salesgirl or a mule or a coffee bean, and I will be sad. No, no more questions. Peace.”
They purchased Milo a tent of his own.
“Not that I mind sharing,” said Akram. “I just might wish to entertain a houseguest or two, some evening, if—”
“I get it,” said Milo.
So now here he was, walking down the bazaar, balancing a load of canvas and tent poles over one shoulder. This left him blind on one side. He turned to make sure Akram was following.
He wasn’t.
“Akram?” Milo called.
The crowd milled around him. No one answered.
Then something caught his eye. Several paces away, amid the crowd, something shiny flew into the air, caught the sun with a flash—it was a brass lamp, the kind you burn oil in—and came back down.
A moment later it rose again, followed by a wooden bowl.
Finally, the lamp ascended a third time, followed by the bowl, a basket, someone’s hat, and a plastic spray bottle of some kind. At this point, the crowd spread out to make room for whatever dervish was causing these phenomena, and of course it was Akram.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Akram had collected a bunch of merchandise from one of the stalls and begun tossing it into the air, quite without permission or explanation. The shopkeeper stood before him, throwing a fit.
“Good people,” Akram said to the crowd, “you will now be treated to a demonstration of aerial sorcery! I heartily recommend that, afterward, you visit this fine gentleman’s stall—what’s your name? Bill? Visit Bill’s stall. His goods are not only aerodynamic but of the finest quality, priced to move.”
Mollified, Bill the shopkeeper withdrew. Milo returned his merchandise.
“Now,” said Akram, cracking his knuckles, “someone throw me something to juggle.”
Someone tossed Akram a pair of sandals and a straw hat. He tossed these things in a lazy circle.
“Make it interesting,” he challenged the crowd.
Someone called out “Yo!” and tossed him—what? Something long, like a question mark in the air, something that moved— “Holy shit!” cried Milo and a lot of other people.
A snake!
Akram cried out, too, but he caught the creature, and around and around went the hat, the shoe, and the snake. The snake hissed, twisted, and tried to bite, but Akram winked and boomed laughter.
The crowd showered him with applause. He tossed the shoe and the hat back to their owners, leaving him with the snake, which he let slide down his arm and off through the crowd. This caused some jumping around, but most of his audience remained to see what would happen next.
They were happy they did.
Akram performed for another half hour. They threw him knives, bricks, hot coals, and stools.
Akram seemed perfectly at ease, even when they threw him a whole sack of golf balls all at once. He snatched them from the air, his hands so fast that he and the golf balls became like a cloud. He wasn’t perfect. He dropped one or two but easily flipped them back into play with the toe of his sandal and kept smiling.
His only failure, if you could call it that, was when someone threw him a bucket of water. Not the bucket itself, just the water. Akram stood there dripping, looking unsurprised. He bowed to the woman with the empty bucket.
“My congratulations, madam,” he said. “You have offered me the one thing that can not be juggled.”
The crowd applauded. Akram concluded his act by juggling three pretty girls, collected his earnings, and waved to Milo.
“We’re rich!” he said. “For the moment. Tonight we’ll buy baked cheese and beer.”
He was kind enough to shoulder Milo’s tent for a while as they walked back out of town.
“How strong are you?” Milo asked, thinking of the three pretty girls.
Akram shrugged. “It’s all in the wrist,” he said.
—
Later, after a lot of food and drink, they were struggling to put up Milo’s tent, and Milo blurted, “I want to work with you.”
Akram hiccupped and said, “I work alone.”