Sharjah, Birds Market
Scene 7
Maille visited the Sheikh's art museum, which offered an exhibition of oriental photography: pictures from a time when only a few huts had stood on the swathe of land between the sea and the desert where bored Bedouins played with their dates. Later, he wandered through the painstakingly restored city centre of Sharjah – a luxurious affair, as flawless as deserted. More businesses and shops were to be found in the markets that specialized in the sale of fish, vegetables, mutton and poultry.
At one bird-seller's shop he saw falcons, with grand crests of decorated leather, sitting stock-still in rows on long rods. The falcons belonged to a different category from the tame pigeons that Odette kept in her kitchen and whose consumption the cook would have allowed only over her dead body – a sentiment Maille felt was grossly exaggerated. He clicked a photo of the falcons with his mobile camera and sent it with words of comfort via telephone – over the desert and sea, through sunlight and night, time and climatic zones – to his cook in Santa Lemusa, who was undoubtedly dreaming up a recipe at that very moment for the feast to celebrate Maille's homecoming: «Also in some pigeons hides a dangerous hunter».