Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  Four years! He would sooner die.

  Abdulahi smiled sympathetically at his discomfort. “You will get used to the work, Sidi. Your body will adjust to the cold, and your skin will toughen. Soon you will get to the end of the day and not feel it as you do now.”

  “No,” Moussa said, determined. “Never. I will never get used to it, because I will be gone first.” He started to say more, but the door opened suddenly and the food bowls were handed through. He had to force himself to get up. He needed to eat, to keep up his strength. He sat up. It was nearly dusk. He started on the rock-hard couscous and then remembered the dates still in his turban. He’d forgotten to eat the rest of them during the day. He mixed everything together and ate with his fingers. He noticed his hands were shaking. He wolfed the food down. There wasn’t enough – not nearly enough.

  “How can I escape?” He said it in a low voice so the sound would not be heard outside the room.

  Abdulahi chuckled. “Can you fly, Sidi? It will help greatly if you can.”

  “I am serious.”

  “As am I. There is no escape without wings. Do you think I would sit here if it were possible to leave? Few men try it. All of them die. A man cannot get past the desert that surrounds us.”

  “Then go toward the west. There are other oases there.”

  Monjo nodded as he licked his fingers. It was the first time he’d spoken. “The man who occupied this room before you was the last to try that. Ammoun was his name. He stored his food, date by date, until he had a bag full. We gave him our own rations when he was ready. He stole a blanket to cover himself from the sun. He made a water bag from used goatskins of the foggaras. It took him six moons to have everything ready. He waited until a day when the regular guard was ill. He hid in the latrine that morning and slipped over the wall after the work parties were gone. The new guard didn’t notice. Ammoun made for Timoudi.”

  “It is a nearby oasis,” Abdulahi explained, “along the Saoura, the river that sometimes flows in the west. Well out of the pasha’s district.” Moussa nodded. He knew of the river.

  “By day Ammoun hid so that he would not be seen by travelers. By night he walked. After twelve nights he made the oasis. He was nearly dead, but he thought himself a free man. He pretended to be a pilgrim making his way to Fez. Then he was seized by agents of the agha of Adrar. He was taken to the slave market there and was eventually sold to a passing caravan. After two months he ended up in the Great Hall of none other than Jubar Pasha, his former master. You can imagine the pasha’s displeasure when he realized that the man being sold to him was already his property. He purchased Ammoun a second time, and hung him by his ankles over the gate to our compound. The crows left a leg bone. It is still there if you look.”

  Moussa shrugged. “It was a bad plan. He didn’t go far enough. He should have taken a camel.”

  “A camel, indeed!” scoffed Mahmoud. “There’s a fine trick for a Tuareg dog! But there are no camels here, as you have seen. They are all kept behind the wall of Timimoun. You would have to sneak into Timimoun to steal one, then slip out again. It is not a large oasis. Men know the business of other men. The guards know the identity of those who pass through the gates. It is not possible to do such a thing unnoticed.”

  “Unlikely perhaps. Not impossible.” Moussa was thinking of the guard at In Salah, the one who had slept through his visit to the town in search of supplies for the French mission. “Guards are the same everywhere. They sleep. They take bribes.”

  Mahmoud shrugged. “If it is Allah’s will you might succeed,” he said. “So far Allah has not willed it for any man.”

  “I do not wait for Allah to will a thing,” Moussa replied. “I must will it myself, and do it.”

  “We have all heard that Tuaregs know no God,” Mahmoud said. “You may doubt the power of the Almighty, but do not rub our noses in your blasphemy.”

  “Then do not rub mine in your surrender,” Moussa replied. “There is a way out of here. If you do not seek it, it will remain unknown to you. I intend to find it.” Mahmoud gestured in frustration. The Targui was insane.

  “It is not such a bad life when you grow accustomed to it,” Monjo said. “If you work there is food. They are not cruel to us. They do not beat us, unless we give them cause.”

  Moussa could not understand waiting to die. “Can I walk in the oasis?”

  “No.”

  “Can I eat the fruits grown there?”

  “No.”

  “Can I leave when I wish?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I will never grow accustomed to it.”

  “So you will die.”

  “Then let it be so.” Moussa looked at the others. “When I find a way to escape, do you mean to say you will not come with me? That you will not help? You would stay here forever?”

  “I would go, of course,” said Abdulahi, “but you will not find a way.”

  Monjo shook his head. “I came from nothing and to nothing I shall return, Sidi. There is nowhere for me to go that is better than this,” he said. “I can never make it back to the southlands. Better a slave here in a hell I know than a slave somewhere else, in one I don’t. I can die here as well as anywhere.”

  Mahmoud sighed. The Targui was mad. But he just might be the will of Allah, waiting to be worked. “I have no wish to die in the dragon’s belly. Better to die with you outside. I will go.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The Storm struck first on the slopes of the Djebel Amour, the Mountains of Love, killing a French farmer and his family. The farmer had immigrated two years earlier and scratched a hard living from land that had been confiscated from an Algerian. He had improved the well and added irrigation ditches, but the soil was poor and his figs and olives withered under the sun. He was clearing rocks for a new vegetable garden while his young son played nearby. His wife and infant daughter were inside their farmhouse.

  He saw them coming, a dozen men on camels who descended from a ridge. At first he was not alarmed. There had never been trouble. He saw they were an odd lot of men of different tribes. They rode quickly. He saw one was a Targui, and only then suspected something was not right. The Tuareg did not often venture so far north. When he saw their weapons unsheathed the farmer snatched up his son and started to run toward the house. Mahdi overtook him easily and struck him down. The farmer was dead before he hit the ground, falling on top of the little boy in a futile attempt to save him. It didn’t help. The boy died next. Then the raiders swarmed around the house where their swords flashed again. A torch finished the work. It was all done quickly.

  The smoke could be seen from a neighboring farm. That farmer, a paroled Sicilian convict, grabbed a rifle and mounted his donkey and rode quickly to help. On the way he encountered the men of the jihad. He was able to get off one shot before he was overwhelmed. His own farm was next.

  There were four more raids before the first alarm reached the French garrison in Laghouat. The commandant was not overly concerned; there had been sporadic but ineffective uprisings for years. He sent out a party of ten tirailleurs under the command of Lieutenant Lebeque, a supremely confident Parisian. His troops rode magnificent Arabian horses. Mules pulled a supply wagon that carried his tent and a casket of wine and the other necessities of life in the wretched regions in which he traveled. He was contemptuous of the filthy lot of ruffians he was chasing. His scouts picked up their trail and followed them into a wadi that ran into the open desert. His wagon became stuck. The horses struggled against the deep sand. His men were busy trying to free it when the lightning of the jihad struck again. This time there were more of them, thirty men now, and they used rifles and swords. There was a great shrilling as the warriors of Islam dispatched the French force. Lieutenant Lebeque was the last to die. The life of one tirailleur was spared. The rebel leader spoke to him as he was being released. “Tell them my name is Tamrit,” he said, “and that my cause is holy. Tell them I will not stop until they are all gone from this place.
Tell your brother tirailleurs that those who help the French shall also die, even the Muslims among them.”

  To drive home the point, two Algerians who administered land for the French were murdered that same day in broad daylight in their town squares.

  Tamrit’s name was made. He was terrorizing a huge area, while hundreds of miles to the west, Bou Amama was mounting a similar insurrection. The settlers were growing panicked. Deputies began making speeches in Paris, decrying the intolerable lack of security. More patrols, stronger in number, were sent from Laghouat. The garrison in Wargla was alerted.

  * * *

  Months before the raids began, Paul had journeyed toward home, as ordered by Captain Chirac, the commandant at Wargla. In Algiers, as Chirac had promised, Paul was greeted by the governor himself, who insisted on feting him. The lords and ladies of Algiers gathered around him, chattering gaily and fawning over him like a hero, the lone French survivor of a martyred expedition. A young woman in a breathtaking dress tried to seduce him. Paul was shocked by the adulation, which only intensified his feelings that he was a low failure rather than the hero they sought to worship. Where is their anger? They ought to hold me in contempt. But the governor was a gifted orator and the audience was receptive. During a speech at dinner Paul listened, incredulous, as the politician managed to turn the Flatters expedition into a triumph of French will. He suffered through it until he could take no more. Then he rose abruptly and left the room, retiring to the quiet of the governor’s study. He found brandy there and got roaring drunk.

  He couldn’t stomach the thought of enduring more of the same in Paris. He could not return home without honor. He did not take the boat for Marseilles. “I don’t want to go,” he told the governor the next day. “I want to return to Wargla. I want to kill the enemies of France.”

  “That is a lot of killing.” The governor smiled gently. “A matter for a nation, not for one man.”

  “The nation will not do it,” Paul said. “So I must.”

  As glib as the governor was before an audience, he sensed what the young officer had been through, and was deeply troubled by what he saw in his eyes. “Give yourself some time. Return to Paris, at least for a while. Find yourself a girl and have a good time. In a few months all this will fade. Then you can decide what you must do.”

  But Paul knew what he wanted. He pulled family strings he had never tested in order to get it done. It was far easier than he’d ever imagined. The minister of war himself overturned the order for his return to France and granted his request for a posting to the garrison at Wargla. If redemption was ever going to be possible, the opportunity would come there.

  But he miscalculated. Nothing was happening in Wargla, and inactivity sharpened his sense of failure. His hatred for the Tuareg simmered, while his guilt over the cowardly way he left Melika tortured him. He didn’t know himself, or understand what he was going through. He was too young to know what to do with his hatred. He seethed inside, slowly disintegrating in the acid of his obsession.

  He sat in the dark and thought of Melika and drank himself into a stupor. He ate little. He stopped shaving and didn’t bathe. There was no joy in him, no spark of life. There was nothing left of the naïve but enthusiastic officer who had once found treasure in the smallest discoveries of the desert. He wouldn’t talk to the other men about what had happened. They began to avoid him, averting their eyes when he walked past, muttering about le cafard, the profound depression that carried so many desert soldiers to the very brink of sanity, or beyond.

  He did practice with his rifle, and cleaned and polished his weapons. The soft sounds were repeated each day in his room – the stroke of the sharpening stone along the blade of the sword, the soft whisper of the oil cloth against the guns, the cork returning to the neck of the bottle.

  He thought of his father, sitting drunk and alone in his room at the château after the court-martial, sharpening his sword and sending everyone away. Both father and son had come to a bitter end. What surprised him was that the son had gotten to the end so much more quickly than the father.

  One day a sentry arrived to tell him that a woman was at the gate of the garrison, asking for him. “She says she knows you, sir. Says her name is Melika. She’s quite good-looking for a local—” He almost said whore, but thought better of it. He envied the lieutenant his wench.

  Paul looked away. He took a deep breath.

  “Send her away,” he said quietly.

  A few days later she came again. “Send her away,” Paul said. From a window he watched her leave.

  The next time she came the sentry didn’t bother to ask. He invited her inside the watch house and unbuttoned his trousers. She turned away angrily. He caught her by the arm and offered her money, pressing the coins into her hand. She slapped him hard and he let go. “Only good enough for an officer’s prick, are you?” he sneered.

  Father Jean came to the garrison. Paul was disheveled and smelled of rum. But there was no escape from the priest, who had been shown directly to his quarters. Paul stared at him through dull eyes.

  “I came to ask if you are well,” Father Jean said. His eyes registered disapproval but he said nothing of it.

  Paul shrugged, embarrassed by his own condition. “I know you saved my life,” he said after an awkward silence. “I should have thanked you for that. I’m sorry I left without saying good-bye.”

  “As am I, my son,” the priest said, his voice on edge. It was the real reason for his visit. Melika was a daughter to him. She had been shattered by the lieutenant’s abrupt departure. He permitted himself only a trace of scorn.

  “You could have at least said good-bye to her. She cared for you.” The words turned inside Paul like a knife.

  “I couldn’t,” Paul whispered. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Then help me understand. I will listen.” The priest’s eyes filled with compassion. He could see Paul’s agony.

  “I can’t, Father.”

  “Then let us pray together. Ask the Lord for what you need. He will listen.”

  “I don’t believe in God, Father. I only believe in the devil. I’ve seen the devil. I’ve seen who he is. I’ve seen where he lives. But I’ve never seen God. If He’s there He doesn’t listen. I won’t pray to the deaf, not anymore.” Father Jean started to say something but Paul waved him off. “I don’t want to argue this. Leave me alone. Mind your own business.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to intrude.” He turned to go, then hesitated. “Is there any message I can take her?”

  Paul shook his head, but as the priest’s hand touched the door he changed his mind.

  “Yes there is, Father. Tell her… tell her Paul deVries is dead.” He fought to control his voice as he said it, but it broke anyway.

  “I cannot lie to her.”

  “It isn’t a lie, Father.”

  * * *

  When Captain Chirac received word about Tamrit’s raids he summoned three of his officers and ordered each to assemble patrols to hunt and kill the rebel. The captain was concerned about making Lieutenant deVries one of those officers. Like the governor, he worried about Paul’s look. Yet he knew the assignment might be the very thing deVries needed to regain his confidence and control. The lieutenant was just near enough to madness that his passion in the pursuit of Tamrit would also serve the interests of France. Indeed, Paul accepted his orders with enthusiasm the captain hadn’t seen in months. He pulled himself from his lethargy and didn’t touch another drop of alcohol. He was ready to depart a full day before the other patrols.

  Paul took twenty men, a third the number the captain suggested. Paul persuaded him that too large a force would be a hindrance, not a help. He chose as his deputy Messaoud ben Sheikh, a crusty NCO who reminded Paul of El Madani. Messaoud was from Algiers, a half-breed whose father was a French seaman and whose mother was Algerian. He hated the Shamba and the Mzabites and the Tuareg and every other tribe whose blood he considered inferior to his own. Even though
France would never make him a citizen or allow him to advance past his current rank, he was fiercely devoted to everything French. He was a disciplined soldier who followed orders. He suited Paul perfectly and saw to the details of arming and provisioning the detail.

  They passed through the gate of the garrison just after dawn. From the shadows near a well Melika watched them go. He passed only a few feet from her. She called out but he didn’t hear. And then he was gone.

  * * *

  Tamrit moved through the desert like a phantom. He was seen and then he was not. He moved quickly and at night. His force was small but created fear everywhere. He struck without warning and then vanished, only to strike again a great distance away. No one knew for sure what he looked like. It was said he wore the veil of a Tuareg, or that he wore no veil and was dressed like a merchant of the Mzab, or that he wore the rags of a beggar. Still others swore they’d seen him and that he was of the Ouled Sidi Sheikh. His eyes were brown; his eyes were blue; his eyes were gray. There was a scar on his cheek; his face was unblemished; one could not see his face at all.

  Paul knew the man he was chasing, if not his face. He had heard the name during his long night in the cave with Moussa. He remembered all the names: Attici, Mahdi – and oh yes, Tamrit. Ahitagel’s inner council of treachery. Tamrit. He had been there, at Tadjenout. Paul knew it. He had been one of those watching as the poison did its work at Aïn El Kerma and the men of Flatters died one by one. Only Attici bore more guilt, but Attici was for later. Tamrit was for now.

  Lieutenant deVries pushed his men to their limit, crisscrossing the desert, traveling vast distances in pursuit of shadows and rumors. He slept little and never permitted his men to grow comfortable in camp. He posted sentries and tested them himself, determined not to be caught by surprise. His men struggled with their horses, which were ill-suited for the desert fringes but always used by the French for patrols. The captain had refused his suggestion that they use camels. “Too undignified,” he said, “and far too slow.” Paul didn’t think so. It was the horses of the hunters that failed on long marches, not the camels of the hunted. Yet he obeyed the captain, at least in the beginning.