Gold Dust

At the heart of Gold Dust is the relationship between Ukhayyad, son of a tribal chieftain, and his beloved piebald thoroughbred Mahri camel. The relationship is both a physical interdependency and a spiritual communion. At times the camel seems to be a projection of Ukhayyad.
A tribal sheikh tells Ukhayyad:
"We always say that the Mahri is the mirror of his rider. If you want to stare into the rider and see what lies hidden within, look to his mount, his thoroughbred . . . Whoever owns a Mahri like this piebald will never complain for want of noble values."
Ukhayyad would do anything for his camel and we witness this when he almost dies himself when trying to cure the camel’s mange: "Flesh met flesh, blood mixed with blood. In the past they had been merely friends. Today, they had been joined by a much stronger tie."
Ukhayyad has an innocence about him. He does not understand all the rules of the desert culture and tends to be blind to the deviousness of others. His father had wanted him to marry his first cousin so that Ukhayyad rather than one of his father's nephews would inherit leadership of the tribe. But Ukhayaad married instead the beautiful songstress Ayur, a refugee from the drought-stricken south. His father's curse "Marry her and be damned!" lies like a shadow over him. Ukhayyad also sees himself to be cursed because he failed to keep his promise to sacrifice a fat camel at the desert shrine of the ancients where he had prayed for his camel's recovery from mange.
The novel is set at a time when life for the desert dwellers is precarious. In the north there is fighting with the Italians while in the south there is severe famine (at one point a starving Ukayyad cooks and eats his leather sandal). Ukhayyad's alienation from his tribe may seem like freedom, but it leaves him vulnerable to exploitation.
When Ayur's rich trader relative Dudu arrives from the south, Ukhayyad is manipulated into pawning his camel to him. Dudu then makes the return of the skinny and deteriorating camel to Ukhayyad conditional on his divorcing Ayur who, Ukhayyad learns, Dudu had wanted to marry himself.
Matters escalate and Ukhayyad is virtually forced by the shame of his circumstances into becoming a vengeful murderer.
The group in Tuesday’s class did an excellent job getting us to really take a deep look inside the details of this book. I hadn’t really thought much of the book until the group had us answer specific questions to the plot. In general I thought the book was interesting. Not one of my favorites but a pretty good read.