‘Yes, thank you. Here are your passports. You are free to continue your journey.’ The customs official pushed a manila envelope across the desk. The tiny office contained no other furniture, apart from a scratched metal filing cabinet and the wooden chairs on which the three of them were sitting. Above their heads a ceiling fan rotated at a sluggish pace, stirring the dust particles, which shimmered in the wedge of light from a barred window high on the wall.
‘Terrific,’ said Hugo reaching forward.
‘But,’ the official was too quick for him, placing the palm of his hand down on the package, ‘you must leave your technical tools here and collect them on your way home.’
‘What? Go on without any measuring equipment?’ Hugo took out a grey handkerchief and applied it to his forehead. The sweat was pouring off his scalp. In spite of the early hour the heat was already formidable. Apart from a few beads of perspiration – or was it oil – on his moustache, the customs officer looked cool and unruffled. There were knife-edged creases in his brown uniform, as though it had just come out of a packet, and he smelled strongly of cologne. ‘How are we supposed to conduct our research without it?’
This was answered with a shrug.
‘As for picking it up on the way back, we’re not even coming back this way – we’re getting the boat from Oran.’
Another shrug.
‘We are here at the invitation of your government,’ Nina put in, even though Hugo had instructed her not to intervene unless called upon to translate something complicated. She was feeling the heat, too, in her long dress. Hugo had told her to cover herself up, and, from the way the douanier and the gendarme outside had looked her up and down, it was clear his advice hadn’t been unwarranted.
‘I’ve said all this before,’ Hugo muttered. ‘What do you imagine we’re going to do with a set of ranging rods and an anemometer? Bring down the government?’ This was clearly the wrong thing to say to a representative of that organization, as his thick black eyebrows gathered into a frown, and he drew the envelope fractionally towards him. ‘You might sell them to the Moroccans,’ he said finally.
‘Hasn’t the meteorological office confirmed our credentials yet?’ Hugo demanded. His tone was growing less and less conciliatory. Nina had seen this pattern before. The next stage was outright belligerence, shouting and fist-waving, which would sabotage any advantage so far achieved.
‘We are still waiting for the telex from Algiers,’ said the man.
‘We are effectively hostages,’ Hugo announced, dramatically.
‘Not at all. You are free to go.’ The man lifted his hand from the passports.
‘This is an outrage,’ said Hugo, pompously, standing up and pulling Nina to her feet. ‘Come on. We shall have to contact our embassy.’ As they reached the door the man beckoned Hugo back. Nina, who had had enough of Algerian bureaucracy and Hugo’s aggressive negotiating style, carried on across the road to the patch of waste land where Martin and Guy, watched by several local children, were playing a game of pétanque using four tins of golden syrup and a stone. They had attempted to set up a camp, but had been thwarted in their efforts by the hardness of the ground. Half a dozen bent pegs and a headless mallet lay alongside the sunken and swaying tent, the slack guy-ropes held down by rocks. Nina gave them a thumbs-down sign as she approached. Martin lobbed one of his tins high in the air in frustration, and it landed a few yards away, stoving its side in on a protruding flint, so that the lid burst open and a golden tongue of treacle flopped out into the dirt.
‘They’re still on about the equipment,’ Nina said, watching the children pounce on the abandoned tins and start throwing them in the air. ‘They seem to think we’re going to spy for the Moroccans.’
Guy raised his eyes skywards. ‘Typical of these paranoid third-world countries,’ he said, kicking the dust. ‘They’ve got nothing and they like to think everybody wants it.’
‘Hugo doesn’t exactly charm his way out of trouble,’ Nina went on. ‘You can see him winding the guy up until eventually he decides to keep us hanging around here just to be bloody-minded.’ She stopped as Hugo himself appeared around the corner of the douane, smiling and shaking his head.
‘Progress,’ he called, as he came within earshot. This was greeted with raised eyebrows from the other three. ‘Yes. He said they’ll let us through with the equipment, provided he can sleep with Nina.’ There was a moment’s silence as they digested this.
‘He actually said that?’ asked Nina.
‘Well, he said “the blonde”. I assume he didn’t mean Martin.’
‘And what did you say?’ Nina inquired, sweetly.
‘I said I’d ask you.’
‘You said what?’
‘He’s not unattractive,’ Hugo wheedled.
‘Tell me he’s joking,’ she appealed to the other two, who laughed at her indignation.
‘Well, I must say I’m disappointed in you, Nina,’ said Hugo. ‘Passing up this opportunity to help your friends out of a tight spot.’
‘Of course he’s joking,’ said Guy, though he didn’t sound completely convinced. That was the trouble with Hugo. He couldn’t be relied upon to hold the orthodox opinion.
‘Actually, I declined on your behalf,’ Hugo admitted.
‘Now what?’ said Guy.
‘More waiting. They’ll give up soon. Now that they’ve established they’ll get nothing from us. You’ll see.’
‘Do you know what the best thing about this trip is?’ Nina said suddenly. The others looked blank. ‘No, neither do I,’ she said. ‘I can tell you the worst thing though. Dehydration.’ She crawled into the tent and returned with a bottle of orange squash, now hand hot and smelling strongly of Sterotabs. They had filled their water canisters from the tap at the gendarmerie. It had been marked eau potable, but they weren’t taking any chances. She took a swig and passed it on, her thirst unquenched. However much she drank she still felt sick and depleted.
‘Dehydration, frustration, constipation, and lack of copulation,’ said Martin bitterly, and they had all laughed at that, even Nina.
‘Do you think if we get ourselves arrested we’ll be thrown into a nice, air-conditioned cell?’ Guy asked later, as they skulked in a patch of shade behind the small kiosk, which served a lone petrol pump (out of order), next to the waste ground where the tent sat abandoned in full sunlight. They had removed one of the bench seats from the Land Rover, which was still impounded, and propped it against the kiosk wall, and now sat in a row, reading, like strangers waiting for a train. Guy was engrossed in an account of Scott’s last voyage.
‘Not exactly morale-boosting stuf,’ Martin pointed out.
‘I thought reading about frostbite might cool me down,’ was Guy’s explanation.
Nina had finished A Glastonbury Romance and was well into Hugo’s copy of The Doors of Perception. She was a fast reader, and running out of books was a real concern. If Martin didn’t hurry up with The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, she’d have to resort to Hugo’s guidebook on Algeria, which would hardly offer the escapism she was seeking. She had only been in the country four days – and only just inside it, at that – and she hated the place already. The children, whom she had considered so sweet at first, with their huge dark eyes and skinny shoulders, and smooth, dusty skin, flatly refused to run along when instructed, and followed her everywhere, wanting to touch her blonde hair. Even when she went to the toilet – a dark, foul-smelling shack behind the douane, with a hole in the floor – they would trail along after her and peer through the gaps in the door, so that she almost fell over them when she emerged, gasping and beating off flies.
Occasionally some of the older villagers would saunter over to the camp for a good gawp. They seemed utterly unembarrassed to be caught staring, but would stand their ground and watch for ten minutes at a time, while the four travellers turned the pages of their books in a pantomime of concentration. It was Nina who bore the brunt of local hostility. On their first day in Souk Ahras she h
ad been cursed and spat at in the street by a shambling old man. She had taken him for a lunatic, lost in dementia, but then it had happened again and again; wherever she went men looked at her with hatred or worse.
‘Why me?’ she wanted to know.
‘Because they think you’re a whore,’ said Hugo, kindly. This, and the fact that she was now roasting in an ankle-length batik dress while the boys went around in nothing but shorts was beginning to get on her nerves. And now that revolting perfumed customs official wanted to sleep with her: it was enough to make her flesh crawl. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine England: green grass, hedgerows, gentle rain. She had already forgotten the drought they had left behind not more than a week ago. Come on, Nina, she urged herself. It hasn’t even started yet. It was disappointing to discover how easily her thirst for adventure could be slaked. She was disturbed in her reveries by a nudge from Guy. The shade was on the march and he needed to move the bench seat. A bright sword of sunlight struck her across the eyes as she looked up. Hugo and Martin had disappeared.
‘Are you feeling homesick?’ he asked, when they had shifted the bench, and Nina had flopped back on to it with a sigh.
‘Just sick,’ said Nina. ‘I haven’t got a home.’
‘You should take a salt tablet,’ Guy suggested. ‘Do you want me to get you one?’
Nina shook her head. ‘Not on an empty stomach. Is that book any good?’
‘Gruesome. Listen to this: Sunday 18 March. My right foot has gone, nearly all the toes – two days ago I was proud possessor of best feet. These are the steps of my downfall.’
Nina pulled a face. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I’m starting to feel better.’
‘Okay. What about the death of Oates? He has borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and to the very last was able and willing to discuss outside subjects. He did not – would not – give up hope till the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning – yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.’
‘What a terrible way to die,’ said Nina. ‘Alone and frightened.’ She felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes. I mustn’t cry, she thought. He’ll think I’m a great big baby. ‘Perhaps I will have one of those salt tablets,’ she said, but as she hauled herself to her feet there was a whoop, and Martin appeared from behind the gendarmerie, climbed into the Land Rover and brought it bouncing across the track towards them. ‘Get that tent down,’ he called through the window. ‘The telex has just arrived from Algiers. We’re off!’
‘So our friend at Customs never got his £3,000 backhander,’ said Guy, when they had finally loaded up and were on their way. This exercise had been performed at great speed and without much care in case a fresh excuse to detain them was suddenly devised.
‘And he never got to sleep with the blonde!’ laughed Martin, one hand on Nina’s knee.
Now that they were on the road again, with a warm breeze blowing through the open windows and the empty track winding before them up into the Atlas mountains, spirits were high, and all their old hostility to the country was forgotten.
‘But the really good news,’ said Hugo, reaching through the slashed vinyl of the passenger seat with one hand, and producing a small piece of crumpled foil from the tangle of springs and webbing, ‘is that they didn’t find the dope.’
This announcement was greeted with a stunned silence.
‘You had better be joking,’ said Nina at last, in her head-prefect-on-the-rampage voice.
Hugo replied with a dismissive laugh.
‘He is,’ said Guy. ‘There’ll be nothing in there but a bit of old chewing gum.’ Nina leaned over and snatched the piece of foil. Inside was a brown cube of cannabis resin.
‘You stupid wanker,’ said Martin. ‘If they’d found that . . .’
‘They didn’t find it though,’ said Hugo, still wearing the fake grin of someone determined to brazen his way out of a tight spot.
‘How dare you put us all at risk,’ Nina went on. ‘If you want to moulder away in an Algerian jail for years go ahead, but don’t try and drag the rest of us with you.’ It was his nonchalance that was so maddening – when she could already imagine herself raped and shackled in a filthy cell. ‘You’re not even sorry.’
‘You’re all acting as if we got caught,’ Hugo complained. ‘We didn’t. Events have vindicated me.’ He turned to Guy. ‘You’re on my side, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ said Guy. ‘I’m with Martin on this one: you’re a stupid wanker.’
‘Okay, you’re all mad at me now,’ Hugo said. ‘But you’ll be happy to share a joint later, I bet.’
Nina gave him a disgusted glance and looked away, and the argument was allowed to die there.
25
Guy’s diary: 9th July
After the Souk Ahras experience we decided it would be better to camp in the middle of nowhere rather than in a town, so we only stopped in Constantine to take on petrol and water. Now we are camped by the side of the road in a field of fleas miles from anywhere. There is a strong smell of wild garlic in the air, but I can’t see any growing. Hugo is ostentatiously smoking a joint: the rest of us are ostentatiously abstaining. Earlier, while Nina and Martin were putting up the tent and we were changing a tyre he said to me, ‘Nina’s being a bit short with me. Have you noticed? Do you think it’s PMT?’ I advised him not to suggest that in her hearing.
I’ve taken quite a few photos, usually through the Land Rover window as we hurtle along. I didn’t know what to expect from the scenery – I suppose I thought it would be just sand dunes from the moment we crossed the border, but it’s nothing like that. The Atlas mountains are rocky and barren with small scrubby trees on the low slopes. We’ve passed a couple of working farms – dry, stubbly wheatfields surrounding an arrangement of brown, thatched buildings. At one of these a bony horse was harnessed to some sort of threshing machine – trudging round and round in circles, poor thing, in a cloud of chaff and flies.
This evening, as Hugo was cooking up another of his famous tuna curries, a white saloon car crawled over the horizon from the direction of Constantine.
‘Oh-oh. Les flics,’ said Martin, as soon as the car was close enough to be identified.
‘They probably saw us driving through the town and have come to leer at Nina,’ said Hugo, at which point Nina, who had changed back into her bikini top and shorts outside Souk Ahras, gave a sigh and retreated into the tent.
‘They’re probably not even going to stop,’ I said. ‘Let’s not get paranoid.’ Directly I said this, of course, the car pulled up with a screech of brakes, showering us with dust and grit, and two gendarmes in dark blue uniforms climbed out. One of them had a gauze pad over one eye.
‘Leave the talking to me,’ said Hugo, master tactician and diplomat. Martin and I shared a moment of eye-rolling.
‘Bon soir,’ said Hugo. ‘Est-ce qu’il y a un problème?’
‘English?’ barked the one with the eye-patch.
‘Yes,’ Hugo conceded.
This established, he proceeded to address us in high-speed French, now and then pausing obligingly to translate anything self-evident – dangereuse, for example – and leaving us to guess the rest. The gist, I gathered, was that this wasn’t a good place to camp and they couldn’t guarantee our safety. At one point the other bloke actually said ‘Les voleurs’, and drew a finger across his throat with a ‘tsk’. Just like a cartoon. They kept glancing over at the tent, against which the silhouette of Nina struggling into a pair of jeans was clearly visible. I wondered if I should go and tell her to turn the torch off. Anyway, we declined their offer to escort us back to Constantine, and after a burst of shrugging and head-shaking, they drove off the way they’d come and we were alone. Then night came down like a guillotine, and we sat under the stars eating curry and not admitting we were
nervous. Martin got the guitar out and entertained us with a Bob Dylan medley until we begged for mercy.
‘That should keep the voleurs away,’ Nina said, and I said, ‘No, it just means they’ll kill us first.’ And that reminded us all over again that we were stuck out in bandit country with nothing but a shovel and a set of ranging rods to defend ourselves.
10th July
Up at the crack of a hot dawn, still alive and unmolested by voleurs. Hugo, fearless, or just stoned, slept out under the stars with only the short legs of his camp-bed between him and the seething insect life below. Nina and Martin took the tent, although Hugo had made it clear at the outset that they weren’t to expect what he called ‘honeymoon facilities’. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I slept on the roof of the Land Rover and felt quite safe and pleased with myself, as if I’d bagged the top bunk. I made the mistake of leaving my boots on the ground overnight, and when I gave them a shake this morning, a little black scorpion dropped out. I didn’t have the presence of mind to whack it – I just leapt back and watched it scuttle away into the wheat.
Hugo is the only one who seems to be coping with the heat; the rest of us are sick as dogs. The temperature inside the Land Rover when we got in this morning was 68°C. Even the wind is hot – Nina compared it to being stuck under a hood-dryer all day. Humidity must be zero. It’s such a dry, enervating heat, you don’t even enjoy the luxury of a good sweat. Every so often we had to pull over for a Vomit Break. We’re drinking and drinking our water supply, which is warm and tastes of swimming pools, but I don’t think any of it is getting as far as my kidneys.
In the afternoon we decided to stop for a chance to stretch our legs and take on water. We’d been driving across a scorched, featureless plateau for hours when we saw Ghardaia, lying like a pile of discarded pink and white boxes in the valley below. Marking the boundary of the town were plantations of squat, dusty palm trees, and it all looked very much less lush and inviting than the image of an oasis that I’ve been carrying in my head since school. Just another example of reality failing to deliver. We inquired about fresh water at the gendarmerie, and were pointed in the direction of a standpipe outside. Two emaciated mongrels, covered in weeping sores, were fighting over the minute puddle of mud that had formed at its base. Every so often one of them would jump up and lick the slowly forming drop of water from the end of the tap. This did nothing for our queasy stomachs, so we moved on.
A Dry Spell Page 21