The Boy Who Had A Moon On His Forehead And A Star On His Chin

Imagine a castle grander than any English King ever desired. The palace in Kha-za-dan was twenty-seven stories high and had more than just bedrooms and bathrooms, it had a University, a hotel, fine restaurants, and a theatre, several auditoriums, aquariums, museums, and of course, a vault full of rare rubies, diamonds, and gold. It was more like a city than a palace, but the Sultan’s quarters, his harem, and their personal slaves lived apart from the rest of the palace visitors in a place called The Sanctum.

The Sanctum was a varicolored tower with stained glass windows that depicted scenes from the lives of prior Sultans. One window pane showed the flag of Kha-za-dan waving over the sea and another depicted Sultan Ramm and a lover in a passionate embrace. Often the sun shone brightly on the side of the Sanctum which faced the desert sprawl and at that time the windows were set afire with color, and visitors on camel back, coming up the sand often said the palace in Kha-za-dan is full of rainbows, but that is not so. The palace was full of treasures. Every window had silk curtains and every ceiling had a mural. The walls had tapestries, tiles, and sometimes stenciled spirals. The floors of the great rooms were marble and the bedrooms had rich, wood floors lavished with Persian rugs and plush carpets. No English King ever enjoyed such limitless wealth as was found in the palace in Kha-za-dan.
Anyone who knows anything about castles, especially magic ones, would expect to find such a wondrous place in Ramblewood, the ancient elf forest, or Dunedin, the mountainous dwarf land, or Timberlake, the faerie fields, or any greenish, bluish, beautiful place. But who would expect to find such a palace in the middle of a wasteland desert like Thar. Yet there it stood.

Now imagine what a jackal like Golden would think of growing up in such a place. Being a jackal, he had neither care nor use for the luxuries that thrill humans. He enjoyed food, milk, toys and more than following his master around the palace, licking her painted toes and listening to the gurgles while he slept on her belly. But the more jackal-looking he became, the less the concubine liked to play with him and eventually Golden found himself walking through the palace with not much to do other than dodge feet, avoid being shut indoors, and chase the house-crows that frequented the city palace. And sleep, of course.

Golden’s canopied bed had a green pillow stuffed with down, it had been moved from the concubine’s chamber into a forgotten sitting room on the second floor of the Sanctum. Thus, when he turned two years old he no longer had a master. For the second time in his life, Golden had been abandoned. Unfortunately, Golden didn’t know how good life had treated him and often, he walked around the castle bored from the tip of his tongue to the whip of his tail. And it became his greatest wish to belong to someone. Masses lived with Golden in the Sanctum tower. Important people like the Sultan, his three hundred wives and 800, miserable slaves.

The Boy With A Moon On His Forehead And A Star On His Chin

It was a nippy, starless night. The wind scudded across the tops of sand dunes and all across the desert little holes were being filled with fuzzy tarantula, slithering vipers, and fighting scorpion. Thar was not unlike the deserts in the movies, a desolate wasteland night or day, but more frightening at night--during the hours of the jackals. Unseen by its wary prey, a starving jackal made her way, silently padding across the sand, toward a tired old man who had lost his way in the most desolate place on earth, the Thar.

The old man was sitting under a dead acacia tree, regretting his ambition to travel, while eating his last stick of cured beef. His camel was quite fond of the desert and enjoyed a rest on a dune nearby. The old man was on a pilgrimage, a long journey to a land much holier than the one he was from, but he had lost his way in this monotony of unremarkable valleys of dead trees and sand mountains.

One valley of dead trees looked no different than another, unless perhaps he’d thought of marking the trees as he went along, which he hadn’t. Then no sand mountain looked any different than the next after his footsteps had been erased by the constant desert wind which swirled, rather than blew over the desert wasteland. The old man found the desert wind terribly confusing, since he was used to the winds blowing straight out of the north during this time of year in his own land.

If he had left during the Spring, it would have been an easier trip, because the desert wind didn’t blow at all during the Spring, that was the time when the Thar was full of caravans of sojourners crossing hither and thither, but the old man had not put a lot of thought into his trip. God had spoken to him in a dream and as soon as he was awakened by the bleating of his goats in the field, on a day that he had planned to go to market and sell goats‘ milk and fresh eggs, instead he packed an underestimated portion of food and set out on faith, and his camel, Kona.

But Thar is a vast and dead place, no place for a tired old man with a dull sense of direction. He told himself he was stopping to eat, but the truth was he had lost his will to go any further. And that is how the starving jackal found him.
Wolves, foxes, and dogs belong to the same family as jackals, which are doggish in size, wolfish in strength, and cleverer than foxes. Three days ago, was the last time this jackal had a bite to eat or lapped from a pool of water. She was hungry, thirsty, and plenty pregnant. Another time she might have attacked on sight, broken his neck with her powerful jaws, but even jackals don’t fight when they’re pregnant. As she stood above, looking down from a sand mountain, the jackal made up her mind to steal the old man’s food and water. She crept slowly down into the valley, but coming forward she saw that the camel did not wear a pack, and the old man wore the only leather sack he carried with him, pouching with water, around his neck.

Promptly, the sly jackal devised a new scheme. She limped into the shabby camp, whimpering, her slack jaw lolling a red tongue that rolled pitifully over her black gums.
The old man waived his hand as soon as he saw the jackal, welcoming her company. After all, he was on God’s journey and he expected to meet with divine things, like jackals do not attack men on sight, but beg like common street dogs. She limped closer to him and nuzzled his shoulder and the old man scratched the top of her head as if she were one of his own loving goats.

“Salaam, mother.” said the old man, since the moon was bright he could see that though the jackal looked withered, she had a bulging belly.

“Praise be to Allaah, for sending me one who knows this forsaken desert. Here,” and he broke a quarter from the beef stick and tossed it on the ground. The jackal snatched it up quickly. “We will make a deal. I will give you half of my food and water, if you will show me the way to the Holy Land tomorrow.” He held up a piece of meat again, smiling wearily. But this time he waited for a sign. Wisely, the jackal did what she had seen the precious few humans she knew in her lifetime do, which was nod and smile. Her long, white teeth frightened the old man, but nevertheless he threw down the meat and unscrewed the leather sack. He poured water into the palm of his hand three times, judging that to be almost the half of what he had left. The jackal lapped the water, thirstily, and gobbled the meat with an adept jerk and jaw snap. Then the old man rested his head against the tree and slept.

Next morning the man was awakened by the sound of something not unlike crying, a whining, whimpery, snarlish cry. The rest of his beef stick was gone and his leather sack had not a drop of water in it, but those things did not bother him as much as what was left at the foot of the dead tree.

A trembling baby jackal was wriggling in its bloody afterbirth. Two dead siblings lay nearby.
“May God receive both our prayers.” said the old man, and he wrapped the baby jackal in his shirt and mounted his camel. Before sunset he reached a city called Kha-za-dan, it was not the Holy land, but a great city, known as the jewel of Thar. On his first day in Kha-za-dan, the old man saw a dog suckling puppies in front of an Inn. He put the baby jackal amongst the brood, before going inside the Inn to inquire about a room for the night. Unfortunately, that is where we leave our faithful pilgrim. Whether he ever made it to the Holy land or not, I do not know, but what I do know is that that baby jackal was mistaken for a puppy by a concubine who didn’t pay much attention to details.

She begged her husband, the Sultan of Kha-za-dan, to bring the baby jackal along to the palace. She named him Golden, for his sun-kissed color. Slaves, little bare-footed, half naked children, served Golden his meals on a silver plate and he never gnawed a bone that didn‘t start with meat on it. Golden’s mother would have turned over in her sandy grave if she ever learned what became of her deserted son.