Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  He asked for a cup of tea. She brewed it carefully, borrowing the leaves from the White Father’s own sacred preserve. She would find a way to replace it.

  He asked for an orange. She walked all the way to the central market of Wargla so she could pick it out herself. She got a whole box. The juice ran down into his beard and she knew the long trip had been worthwhile. He smiled at her, and touched her cheek. “I need a shave,” he said. She helped him with water and scissors and she wielded Father Jean’s razor. The result was bloody, “but not nearly as bad as getting shot,” she told him.

  Next it was an apricot. “Hakeem loved them,” he said. He started to tell her about Hakeem, but his voice broke and he began to cry. She held his hand and he looked away, embarrassed by his weakness. She thought he was wonderful.

  “Fish,” he said, and she panicked. There were no fish to be had within a hundred leagues. She bribed the second cousin to the first servant of the agha of Wargla, who produced a packet of dried sardines caught off the Barbary coast. She thought it awful but he clearly loved it.

  “Tu es un ange,” he told her. You are an angel. No one had ever said that to her before.

  He watched her coming and going and cherished each moment. She laughed often and each time it brightened his soul.

  “I know nothing about you,” he said one afternoon. “Tell me of Melika.”

  “There is little to say,” she smiled. “My life is this mission. It is what I know. It is what I do. I am happy here. I do not wear a veil like the women in Wargla. The marabouts leave me alone, and the White Father lets me do as I can. As I wish. Father Jean says he is going to send me to France someday to study, but I don’t think he will. There is more to do here in a day than there are hours. There are always too many children without families, too many illnesses. It was so yesterday, and it will not change tomorrow. I will stay and help.” She shrugged. “That is Melika.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Not far from here. My mother was Shamba. She died when I was very young. She was said to be very beautiful.”

  “It is true. I know it by looking upon her daughter,” he said, and she blushed.

  Well after he felt strong enough to get up by himself, he didn’t. He preferred to sit in the little room and let her tend to him. He wondered how to make it last forever. She fed him couscous, lifting the spoon to his lips. He intentionally spilled it so that she would have to clean him. She was happy for the excuse. She longed to do it.

  He learned to moan, to emulate pain.

  She was there instantly.

  He loved her smell. He loved her smile. He saw the concern in her eyes. For the briefest moment it made him feel guilty.

  But mostly it made him feel wonderful.

  When he was strong enough she took him for walks, little ones at first. She packed a small basket of goat cheese and bread and fruit and they sat in the mission gardens. In the distance he could see the richness of Wargla, with its flowers and date palms and gardens. He had wanted for so long to see that sight, and now had no desire to go the rest of the way. He picked a palm frond and presented it to her. She laughed in delight and hugged him.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and she clung to him, and he to her. She was his escape from the terror. She had brought him back from the abyss, and given him back his life. She was beautiful.

  He was falling in love with her.

  The walks grew longer. “I have a place to show you,” he said.

  He took her to the top of a dune, a lovely place. “I stood here once, with a friend,” he said.

  “You were here?”

  “A lifetime ago,” he said, “with a man named Remy.”

  “You spoke of him often, when you were unconscious.”

  He changed the subject, and talked of another companion. She laughed when he told her about rolling down the dune with the dog. But he didn’t say what had become of the dog, either. His story came out only in fragments. She still knew very little. She let him talk when he wanted to talk, and left him in silence when he needed that.

  Paul knew the time was coming when he should report to the garrison. It was already past time. He was well enough, really, or soon would be. He had much to do, in the matter of the Tuareg. But he couldn’t bring himself to think about all that just yet.

  * * *

  One day a visitor came. Melika greeted him in the courtyard, near the garden, and thought at first he was a new patient for the infirmary. He was a gaunt old man with graying hair. He could not walk unassisted. Two men supported him, lifting him by his arms. He was a light load for them; he looked to Melika as if a gust of wind might carry him away. He was sun blackened and his body was spent but there was great strength in his face. He was polite and his eyes were kind and she liked him immediately.

  “Istanna,” she said, indicating a seat by the garden. “Rest there, please. I will get the lieutenant.”

  He shook his head. “I have come too far to rest. I will accompany you, if it is all right.”

  “Of course.” She led him to the little room and showed them inside. Paul looked up and for a moment was too overcome with emotion to react. His eyes brimmed with tears.

  “El Madani.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  Paul rose to greet him. El Madani let go of the two men and stood alone on unsteady legs. Gently, trembling, they hugged, the old Algerian and the young Frenchman, and for a long time neither man could speak. They patted each other on the shoulders and held each other’s eyes, and just nodded and smiled. Paul helped him sit, while Melika and the two tirailleurs slipped from the room.

  Paul scolded him. “You should not have come yourself. You are not strong enough. You should have sent word. I would have come to you.”

  “When I heard you were alive I could not resist. I had to bring you the news myself.”

  “How did you—”

  “A shepherd found us.”

  “Us? How many—”

  “Twelve.”

  Paul closed his eyes. “Twelve,” he whispered. Twelve out of ninety-eight.

  “Thirteen counting you, Lieutenant. This is the second time you’ve come back from the dead.”

  “Pobeguin?”

  Madani shook his head.

  Paul bit his lip and looked away, overwhelmed. He was the only Frenchman to have survived.

  “I went looking for you, Lieutenant, after you ran off and Belkasem started yelling about a Tuareg raid. He said there were six of them, that they’d killed you. I found the body of the tirailleur, with a Tuareg spear in his chest. You were gone by then. All I found where you’d been was your blood. I guessed it was yours, anyway. And I found what I’d found before – one set of camel prints, out of place.”

  He waited, but the lieutenant volunteered nothing. “I’ve gone weak in the head, I suppose. It took me a long time before I figured it out. The camel prints were never out of place at all. They were there, Lieutenant, for you.” El Madani looked at Paul, searching his eyes.

  Paul didn’t know what to say. “I’ll explain it to you one day, Madani,” he said, “when I understand it myself.”

  * * *

  Captain Chirac, the new commandant for the Wargla garrison, arrived from Paris, and immediately paid a visit to Lieutenant deVries.

  “You are a hero,” Chirac told him. “All France knows your name. There is certain to be a promotion.”

  “A promotion.” Paul was incredulous and laughed bitterly. “For not getting killed?”

  Chirac shrugged. “Better than a medal for dying. Most men would be content at the distinction.”

  Paul knew he deserved nothing of the sort, but his mind was on retribution. “What is France going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “To the Tuareg, of course. I assume an offensive is being planned. I want to be involved, sir.”

  “Unlikely, Lieutenant. I have received no official word, of course, but a friend of mine in the ministry has sent me accounts of the debat
e in the National Assembly. People are outraged about le mission Flatters,” he said. “It is a national scandal, a disgrace. But there is fear over outside reaction to an invasion of the Hoggar in force. The Turks, the Italians – it’s all very ticklish. And, frankly, there is considerable doubt that it can be done at all. Our garrisons are too far to the north.”

  “Send me.” Paul’s eyes were intense. “I can do it.”

  “As much as I would like to, it is not within my province to send a renegade force into the Hoggar. I cannot act without orders.”

  “So there is to be no reaction then. None at all.” Chirac handed him a paper. “The foreign ministry condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attack…”

  Paul threw the paper to the floor, furious. “To hell with that,” he said. “We need to do something that matters.”

  Chirac sympathized with the young officer, but in Paris he had seen all the grand talk of railway and empire collapse as completely as the failed mission. All the indignation was simply rouge for an embarrassing blemish on French pride. There would be no military response to the massacre, no response at all. France would soon forget the ugliness of Flatters and find a pretty bauble to occupy her attention.

  “Be patient,” Chirac told him. “I know how you feel. Time will do nothing to make you forget, but it will take the edge off your bitterness.”

  “Nothing but defeating the Tuareg will do that, Captain.”

  “For now that is out of the question. Perhaps later. Sentiment may build as you hope. Who knows how the winds in the assembly may blow in six months? But never mind that. I am sending you home now. You can recover your health in Paris.”

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  “I am not giving you a choice, Lieutenant. As soon as you have recovered sufficiently to travel, you are to depart for Algiers. The governor wants to hold a reception for you. After that you are to go home, to France.” Chirac looked at the dejected officer. “Look, I sympathize with you,” he said truthfully. “The lack of response has been a blow to the morale of all the men here.”

  “The lack of response is an insult to the men who died, Captain. I do not intend to forget them. I do not intend to forget the Tuareg.”

  Afterward Paul brooded for days. “Is there something the matter?” Melika asked. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I’m sorry.” But his mind was in turmoil. He believed in his heart that he had been a poor officer on the march north. He had failed the men who had relied on him. So many things he could have done, that he had not done. To leave them unavenged would be to fail those men twice. He needed to go to Algiers, to see the governor, but not for a party. He needed to stir opinion, to buy back the honor of France with the blood of the blue men.

  * * *

  The rains had disintegrated a section of the mission’s wall, and Father Jean was laboring in the hot sun to rebuild it. One of the children brought lime and sand and they mixed it on a big piece of canvas. Father Jean laid bricks and troweled on the mortar. Paul watched him working, and volunteered to help. “Let me help you,” Paul said.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, but you are better off saving your strength.”

  “I haven’t done anything for weeks now. I need to do something.” He began handing bricks to the priest, and lifted water. The exercise felt good.

  Across the garden he saw Melika leaving to go into Wargla for supplies for Father Jean. The priest watched him watching.

  “She is a special woman,” Father Jean said.

  “Yes, she is. She adores you, you know.”

  “She has little choice,” the priest smiled. “I’m the only family she’s ever known.”

  “Where is she from?”

  “Shebaba. Southwest of here, in the desert.”

  “She told me her mother was Shamba.”

  “Yes. She was raped during a raid. She died giving birth to Melika. After the mother died no one wanted the child. Melika might have been left outside to die, but she was lucky. A trader brought her here.”

  “They would leave a baby to die?”

  “A baby like her, yes,” Father Jean nodded. “The people of Wargla don’t care much for this orphanage. They need the infirmary, all right, but they don’t like barbarians raising their children. Sometimes we have no children at all here, even when there are many in need. Yet Melika was the child of a Tuareg raid. After she was brought to Wargla no one cared enough to take her, and she ended up here.”

  Paul set down the bucket of water he was lifting and looked at the priest. “A Tuareg raid?”

  “Yes, it was the Kel Ajjer. The Tuareg of the Tassili. Hand me that trowel, would you?”

  Paul stood dumbly, not responding. Father Jean saw the color had gone from his face. “Are you all right, Lieutenant? Have you taken ill?” Paul stood mute, breathing heavily, struggling to comprehend what the priest had just told him.

  “Melika is the child of Tuareg?” His voice was a whisper.

  “Yes,” Father Jean said. “But more than that, she is the child of God.”

  A Tuareg! Oh sweet Jesus!

  Feeling suddenly dizzy, he stumbled against the new wall. He knocked part of it down, and a heavy palate of mortar fell to the ground.

  The priest helped him up. “Here, here, sit—” he started to say.

  Paul waved him off. “I’m all right, Father. I need to be alone.”

  In shock he made his way into the garden, walking beneath the palms, blind to the beauty there. A cold wind had blown across his soul, and the flowers they had so enjoyed looking at together might as well have been dead. The air that had smelled so sweet now carried the scent of the Sahara, all the dark stench of his life.

  God, how he hated the Tuareg! How could she be one of them?

  He walked blindly and did not hear the birds or see the butterflies. His insides knotted and his head pounded with it all. He could not let her interfere with his duty. He did not trust himself with her, did not trust what she would make him do, did not trust his own feelings. His first duty, his only duty, was to avenge the men of the expedition. Honor demanded it; After that— there was no after that.

  He could not bring himself to see her. He didn’t think he could tell her good-bye. He knew he couldn’t explain. When he found himself at the mission gate he just kept going.

  CHAPTER 30

  The hawk rested easily on his arm. She was at home there. He stroked the feathers behind her neck and she arched in pleasure. “Taka, Taka,” he cooed. “I shall miss you.”

  Moussa undid the knots that held the short leather jesses to her legs. The straps fell away. She flexed her talons, unaccustomed to the feel of freedom.

  He stood and pulled away her hood. Taka looked for game. She saw nothing. He launched her. She rose on strong wings that flashed in the sun, gaining altitude quickly, seeking the updrafts that would carry her for hours without effort. She looked below, to Moussa and his mehari. Instinctively she knew she was not to come back. She didn’t remember flying without jesses. She circled, testing the currents, soaring higher and higher.

  Moussa watched her with pride and sadness. He would miss her company. She was the best he’d had. She was special and he had kept her long past the normal time. Summer was near. She would have to hurry to find a mate. She needed to breed. He knew she would be fine, though; Taka would always be fine. He would catch her daughter, or her granddaughter, and they would fly together again.

  She circled a long time. Her seeming uncertainty reflected his own mood. He sat alone in his camp outside In Salah. He’d been there four days, trying to decide where to go, what to do. He was restless and torn.

  The horrors of the past weeks had left him drained and uncertain. He felt as if there was nothing for him in the camps of the Ihaggaren. There was always his mother, of course, and Lufti. He still had the affairs of his vassals to mind, and their douars to patrol. No matter what had happened at Tadjenout or Aïn El Kerma, life went
on with them as before. They depended on him. Yes, even needed him. But it didn’t feel like home just now. Had it ever? Had he ever belonged? He had long ago accepted the fact that he was different. But was he forever doomed to be on the lonely side, the other side, the outside?

  A part of him wanted to go away, to leave it all behind. He thought of traveling to France. He was curious about his native land. He wondered if its reality would resemble his memory. Yet it was a foreign place, just as foreign now as if he’d never been there. He knew no one but his aunt Elisabeth and Gascon, and after what had happened to Paul he didn’t think he could face them. Besides, he’d forgotten the customs. He would be coarse cloth in a silk world. Paris would think him a buffoon. By itself that didn’t matter, but it was another place he would be looking at from the outside, the lonely side.

  A part of him wanted to demand justice from the amenokal, to bring him to account for lying, to make him repudiate the actions of Attici and Tamrit. Yet his own objections counted for little. His desperate protests had been ignored. He knew that most Ihaggaren would be offended by the initial false offer of safe passage and the poison. The rest of it, as awful as it seemed to Moussa, was nothing more than desert warfare. It had been done properly. It was the way of things. And it did not really matter now how others viewed it. It was already done.

  He could stay alone in the desert. It was perhaps the most appealing of his choices, and yet there was something about such solitude just now that left him longing.

  No, not “something” that left him longing.

  It was Daia, he knew it.

  It had been almost three months since he had seen her, and she weighed more heavily on his mind than ever. He had tried to put her out of his mind, honestly tried, but he couldn’t. He wanted to see her again, before she married. He knew it was wrong, that such a visit could only be awkward for her, or for himself. It would upset matters that had been settled. And then, too, he had no idea what he intended to say, or how he would say it. As he thought of all the reasons not to see her, he thought of his mother’s words as well. I knew from the moment I met Henri that I would listen to my heart. Do I have to tell you which was right?