A Handful of Honey

by Annie Hawes

  It is evening by the time we arrive at the encampment – to find nothing at all like the couple of horny-handed shepherds I’ve imagined, all alone with a couple of dozen sheep. There must be several hundred sheep and a good fifteen adults all living up here, and as many children again, in half a dozen of those broad, wide tents made of woollen strips – not red and black striped, this time, but a warm browny-beige. The Ait Atta use a mixture of camel-hair and the brown wool of Jacob’s sheep, Kebir tells us, as we pull in onto the stony land and park, annoying two hobbled brown camels, who gurgle crossly at us before hopping lopsidedly off towards the tents.

  We head for the centre of the camp, the circle of palm mats around a fireplace. There must be other cooking places beneath the wide awnings of the tents, too, judging by the wisps of smoke rising about them. The ground smells of thyme with every step we take, but there is no sign at all of the plants here, until you bend right down to discover sad little woody stumps, chewed to the quick. The poor sheep must be desperate. Beyond the tents, two horses are tethered. And beyond the horses, the women of the camp are finishing milking the sheep.

  How do you make a sheep stand still to be milked, in a wide empty, stony landscape? You tie it, by the horns, head to head with another sheep. Flummoxed, unable to move either backwards or forwards, both sheep go into a trance and wait quietly and patiently while the job is done. Each woman has a row of twenty or thirty sheep immobilized like this and is working her way down the row with a bucket; when it fills, she walks over and empties it into the massive ceramic pot over by the tents.

  Kebir is off wandering round the tents, seeking Rashid. Mohammed introduces us to everyone – too many names to remember, though I do grasp that Rashid’s business partner is called Nazir, and his son is another Sayid, and his wife is Dahlia, just like the English name, except that here you pronounce the ‘h’. And also that, here among the nomads, women count as full human beings: they are included in the introductions, even while busily milking.

  A wild and frenzied bleating has been coming from inside one of the tents: the lambs have been taken from their mothers while they are milked. Now, milking over, they are let out, and their mothers released from their confusing bondage. A loud and joyous baa-ing reunion takes place amid a blinding cloud of dust.

  Two men are coming towards us through the dust-cloud, one leading a camel – the noble white kind with the extra baraka. Kebir and Rashid – amazed, as predicted, to see me up here. He hands the camel to Kebir, who gets on with hobbling its front leg, while Rashid and I both squeak and jump up and down and have a few hugs, and I introduce him to Gérard and Guy.

  Soon we are all sitting round the fire trying to catch up, while the sheep, too, seem to have decided they need to keep warm. They are all slowly crowding up around us, more and more of them, a woolly maa-ing sea pressing in closer and closer, bringing their dust-cloud with them, until Nazir, fed up, jumps to his feet, stomps off into the middle of the flock, grabs a ram by the back leg and drags it off, bellowing with rage, a hundred yards away. The others all follow. Peace at last – and time for tea.

  We discover from Nazir, with the help of Rashid as translator, that nomads like himself call us sedentary people ‘wet chickens’, and take great pride in the fact that they, unlike wet chickens, do not engage in manual labour. (Obviously they don’t count their women, who never seem to stop labouring, and are now carrying the heavy jars of milk off into the tents, two by two.) This is a new type of alliance, they tell us, oasis-dweller and nomad, Rashid and Nazir, even though they are second cousins by blood. The nomads, Rashid and Mohammed say, have always regarded the oasis-dwellers as their inferiors, as dirt-digging clodhoppers, whose lowly destiny was to provide the fruits of the earth that a noble nomad needs to continue his travels.

  Nazir nods his agreement, grinning happily. Rashid liked to think of himself as a herdsman, though he knew nothing about sheep, says Nazir – until his nomad cousins took him under their wing. Those creatures they keep in Timimoun are not real sheep, but overgrown rabbits. Do we know that a Saharan lamb at four months weighs as much as a two-year-old ram of their sickly oasis breed?

  And Nazir, meanwhile, says Rashid, getting his own back, knew nothing of scientific sheep-rearing methods. Do we know how he would cure a sick sheep, until Rashid forced him to use the services of modern veterinary medicine? He would walk it seven times around the nearest marabout! And a fine sight it was, when the whole flock got foot disease one time, to see Nazir trying to get a hundred wayward sheep seven times round a whitewashed tomb!

  Night-time round the camp-fire. Mohammed has pulled out the precious marabout sand and given it to one of the older men here, another of Nazir’s cousins, I think, who is going to wait till moonrise, then sprinkle it in a circle around the fire. Kebir and Nazir are sure they can smell rain in the air, anyway. But the cousin is determined to use his sand while it is fresh and extra-full of luck and holy grace. Gérard hopes it works. He wants to try those truffles. Guy says, po-faced, that he personally wants sheep-pasture more than truffles. Has Gérard no fellow-feeling for our hosts?

  But Gérard hasn’t, at the moment. He did not enjoy witnessing the death of the animal we are about to eat – or, to be more precise, its very efficient skinning, which is done here by cutting a small hole in the animal’s back leg, applying the lips to the hole, and blowing very hard, until its body puffs up like a big woolly balloon, signifying that the skin is now fully detached. The only way to proceed, though, Mohammed said, if you want the skin in one piece for your water-skins.

  Our fire is of camel dung, dried in the sun: the only free fuel in this wood-free zone. The men add bundles of aromatic armoise to perfume the roasting meat. Over by one of the tents, two of the young boys are duelling in rhyming couplets, while their friends alternate between applause and howls of laughter. Can they have heard rappers, then? We are amazed.

  Rashid thinks this is very funny. Of course they have. They don’t live their whole lives up here! They have villages they go home to for a good half of the year. But this verbal jousting is a tradition of their own, anyhow – something kids have done for centuries, in this part of the world, to entertain themselves. In Timimoun, if they’re really good at it, they’ll get trained up to the Ahellil.

  The moon has appeared; Nazir’s cousin gets up and begins sprinkling his sand in the finest of streams, making it last till he’s circled the fire seven times for extra power – much to the annoyance of the two teenage girls who are trying to baste the meat, and of many other members of the group around the fire, whose commitment to the efficacy of the charm is seriously undermined by the fact that they have got nice and warm and comfortable and don’t wish to move. I am with them, though I’m too polite to mention it, since everyone else is doing my grumbling for me.

  Round the shared meal, conversation turns to the marabout’s charm for Men’s Problems – which turns out, somewhat to our disappointment, to be for a horse, a stallion whose love-life, it seems, leaves a lot to be desired. The charm in the red leather needs to be stitched up carefully and put around his neck as an amulet. But not until the other piece of paper has been put into a mixture of water and vinegar and stirred up with pinches of powdered cloves and of henna. Once the powerful words have dissolved off the paper and into the liquid, it will be massaged into the affected area. It is best, though, the company agrees, to wait for the full moon – the day after tomorrow – when both treatments will be more efficacious. Fingers crossed.

  From horses and astrological conjunctions we move on to the trouble in the north – the link is a little obscure to us, but we can’t expect people to translate every word, after all. Nazir says that it is the oil that has ruined Algeria – it has given his country two left hands. This is hotly disputed by many of those present. Everyone fears for Mohammed Boudiaf ’s safety – the army may have called him in, but they are not going to put up with him for long. He is too brave for his own good, challenging the powers-that-be at
every turn. He has threatened the Pouvoir by actually suspending five officials for corruption. And then turned around and sacked a general of the armed forces! There was a shocked silence for a few days, but now, we hear, the army has picked the general up, brushed him down, and put him into the Ministry of Defence.

  Kebir laughs bitterly at this. The general, he says, was out of favour with the Pouvoir, anyway, from what he’s heard. He was thrown to Boudiaf as a sacrificial lamb, along with the evidence of his corruption: French bank accounts and investments in some Paris clinic. It was only when Boudiaf called for a public trial that they suddenly changed their minds. Because how had the general annoyed those above him? He’d refused to rubber-stamp a defence contract with France, which stood to make the powers-that-be a fortune, and keep Algeria in debt for decades! That, Kebir thinks, is why France so happily provided the evidence against him. But the Pouvoir certainly didn’t want their own dirty laundry washed in public, which was bound to happen if the general took the stand. And look – now he has landed himself a nice new job!

  Deep waters indeed, says Nazir, to growls of assent from all around the bonfire. Everyone here thinks it won’t be long before Boudiaf gets assassinated by a mystery assailant.

  And they are right. By the end of June, just a couple of months from now, Boudiaf will be dead: shot by a member of his own bodyguard who, according to the powers-that-be, claims to have killed him ‘for personal reasons, and for religion’. A perfect formula. Was it the army? The Pouvoir? The Islamists? All sides can now blame one another, and virtual civil war break out, while the economy is quietly re-formed into a shape more pleasing to Algeria’s advisors.

  The debate gets more and more heated. Soon, nobody can be bothered translating to us any more. Their conversation is too exciting. Or, for some, too boring. Rashid, who has evidently not lost his love of music since we last met, is over among the rappers now, joining in the dance and percussion section with a will. I have long lost the thread and am drifting off to sleep on my lovely pile of sheepskins, warmed by the fire, belly full of lovely roast lamb, when I am suddenly awoken by an outbreak of major excitement all around me. And, yes, by drops of rain on my face! Big, fat drops of rain! Everyone is standing now, congratulating one another, shaking hands, holding hands . . . Was it the Lucky Sand? Would it have happened anyway? Have we Europeans brought them extra baraka?

  Who cares? says Nazir. If only it will keep on all night, inshallah, everything is going to work out fine!

  We settle down snug under Rashid’s tent and fall asleep listening to the happy sound of the thundering rain on our oiled-wool roof.

  In the morning I am awoken by a much less welcome sound: the tramp of marching feet. In big chunky boots. Nobody here wears such a thing. Soldiers, of course. The fighting has come to get us, all the way up here. I close my eyes tight and dig my head deeper under my blanket, a cosy burnous on loan from Rashid. I don’t want to know. The tramping goes on and on; my heart goes on pounding; and still nothing seems to come of the marching boots.

  At last, I give up trying to ignore it, and open my eyes – to a sight worse than anything I have imagined. There is a deep hole in the ground, right next to my face, and inside it a horrendous snake-like creature with a monstrous hairy tassel of a head is flailing about, in time to the marching feet. A moment of utter panic, and the snake-thing comes flying out of its hole, to reveal that it is attached to the back end of a pair of furry ears and two bright, intelligent eyes. I have inadvertently made my bed, right at the edge of the tent, on top of a desert gerbil’s nest. The thumping was the poor creature desperately digging its way out from under my pillow.

  The next sound to awake me is a rhythmic flapping one, accompanied by a strange guttural gurgling. Too weird altogether. I can’t come up with any explanation of it at all, never mind one I could panic about. I crawl across the rugs and sheepskins, and poke my head out of the tent.

  Of course! Naturally! It is the sound created by four goatskins full of sheep-milk being shaken vigorously back and forth on tall bentwood tripods by a pair of nomad housewives, already up and busy, preparing breakfast for thirty. They are churning the milk, as predicted by Mohammed, till it separates into breakfast butter and leben. And I am happy to say that as far as the eye can see, the ground is looking distinctly damp.

  People soon begin straggling towards the fireplace. Breakfast is lovely hot galette, the flat pancake-bread, with lashings of newly made butter melted onto it, and a novel kind of jam: date jelly from the fruits of the Timimoun groves. The buttermilk to drink, with or without added dates to sweeten it. Perfect in this fresh mountain-after-rain air. And some klila cheese next, with sweet, strong absinthe tea. If you want something more protein-packed, there is a wind-dried version of bekbouka, to be sliced wafer-thin, salami-style.

  Guy accidentally spills the date-buttermilk all down the front of his brand new white gandoura – purchased only yesterday in Timimoun, at Kebir’s instigation – and to his surprise gets a hearty round of applause. Guy, mystified, sits and stares. The man next to him claps him heartily on the shoulder. Now Nazir calls for a speech. Another round of applause.

  Dates and buttermilk, it is eventually explained, are purposely thrown down the robes of a successful candidate to the djema’a before he addresses its members for the very first time – to humble him and remind him that, though he may now have great powers, he is still as fallible as everyone else.

  Naturally, it is not long before we tourists are demanding a go on a camel. We can come later to the water-hole, Nazir says, when a whole convoy needs to go down. And for now, we can just have a quiet seat on Rashid’s one, like the wet chickens we are.

  I get first go – and very disconcerting a camel turns out to be. It stands up back legs first, so you think you’re about to be thrown over its head, then at the last moment jerks up onto its front legs and saves you. A much more endearing feature of camels is the way they chew the cud. It’s hilarious to watch. I didn’t know the camel was a ruminant like the cow, but it is. You can actually see the bolus of food creeping up its long curvy neck, taking for ever, till it finally arrives in its mouth: whereupon the creature – taken, it seems, completely by surprise – suddenly widens its great soppy eyes with the absurdly long thick eyelashes, utterly amazed. Making me laugh out loud every time.

  One of the nomad cousins has a grumpy brown camel that does horrible, throat-gurgling growling and is constantly threatening to spit – they really can spit their stomach acids at you, our host tells us. Everyone steers well clear of the cousin and his ill-humoured steed. The cousin’s wife, impressed by my courage in the teeth of the ferocious beast – a courage born, did she but know it, from utter ignorance – takes a liking to me and brings me in to visit the women’s side of the tent, separated off by a thick curtain, where she shows me, as if it was a great secret between us, the contents of an amazing bag of medicines: herbs and spices and coloured powders, and odd things like a dried chameleon, each one wrapped up in its own little square of pristine white cloth. Women’s mysteries, it seems, into which I need to be initiated. Or is she just showing me the contents of the medicine cabinet, in case of emergencies? Alas, I can make very little of its contents, all unrecognizable – apart from, of course, the chameleon. The medicine bag itself is clearly the whole body of a small sheep, skinned by the blowing method. The sheep-bum has been sealed with a leather spiral, its legs have been extended by leather thongs into handle-straps, and its neckline has been carefully folded into a concertina, the thongs passed through a set of holes punched around the top. Pull the strings and the neck of the bag closes neatly. Don’t know if I’ve described it well enough, but when you see it, you are in no doubt that you are looking at the antecedent and inspiration for: the duffel bag!

  We have no shared language, alas, as so often happens when I meet women here, so I can glean no information about the contents of the fascinating bag, though naturally enough we have a giggle about my breasts, and this time
I squeeze hers in return, causing even more hilarity.

  Mohammed and Rashid tell me later that the nomads supply many of the herbs and spices sold in those perfume-and-chemist type shops in the cities. And that one of the uses for a chameleon was, once upon a time – they hope no longer – to attract would-be fiancés to your daughters. If nobody had made an offer for a young girl’s hand, the chameleon would be set on a little brazier, and the girl in question would stand over it, keeping the fumes inside her skirts, for as long as she could bear it.

  Thank goodness Rashid is here, these days, with his scientific spirit. Hopefully there is a brighter future for chameleons. And for young women, too.

  Afternoon prayers now, and the few men who are going to bother praying start to wash themselves – hands, face, behind the ears and all – using a smooth pebble instead of water. Apparently there is a special dispensation for this type of symbolic washing in the Koran, for times of water shortage. What water there is left must be saved for the sheep. The two horses get buttermilk to drink: easier come by, here, than water. Time for the water-caravan to depart. I get to ride one of the brown camels to the water-hole – only, I suspect, because it doesn’t really need a rider anyway, being just part of the string. It’s an hour’s walk there and back and it really is like being on a boat. Not a ship of the desert, though, as the camel always seems to be described. Much more like a small rowing boat lurching through a billowing oily sea. I soon feel horribly sick, although I do my best to cover it up. Bad enough being a wet chicken, without acting like one.