Stories of the Sahara

by Sanmao

  I went back to the edge of the quagmire to find José. He didn’t utter a sound, looking at me in stupefaction. I scrambled wildly around the area, hoping to find a piece of rope on the ground, a few planks of wood, anything. But there was nothing in the vicinity except for sand and rocks. José was hugging the rock. His lower half was submerged in mud, but he wasn’t sinking any further for now.

  ‘José, I can’t find anything to pull you out with,’ I called to him. ‘Hang in there.’ There were about fifteen metres between us.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to comfort me. ‘Don’t worry.’ Some­thing in his voice had changed though.

  All around there was nothing but the sound of wind, specks of sand flying in the hazy air. A huge quagmire in front, the mountain maze behind. I turned to look at the sun and saw that it was about to set. Spinning back around, I saw that José was also looking towards the sun.

  The sky at dusk was usually a beautiful scene, but there was no way I could appreciate it in my current state. The wind came in cold gusts. I glanced at the flimsy clothes I was wearing, then at José stewing in a pit of mud, and then back at the setting sun – it looked like the gigantic red eye of a cyclops blinking shut. Temperatures here would drop to zero within a few hours. If José couldn’t get out by then, he’d be frozen alive.

  ‘Sanmao,’ he called to me. ‘Get in the car and fetch help.’

  ‘I can’t leave you here,’ I said, suddenly becoming emotional.

  I could certainly figure out directions to drive my way out of the mountain maze. But by the time I got from there to the checkpoint and found help, night would already have fallen. It would be next to impossible to go back through the mountain maze and find José in the dark of night. We’d have to wait until daybreak. And by then José would certainly be dead.

  The sun was completely out of view now; temperatures were dropping rapidly. This was an inevitability in the desert night.

  ‘Sanmao, get in the car,’ José called, sounding angry. ‘You’ll freeze to death.’ I was still squatting at the edge of the quagmire, thinking about how much colder José must have been than me. I was shivering so badly that I couldn’t even speak.

  José clung to that rock with half his body. Whenever he stopped moving, I stood up and said to him, ‘José, José. You have to keep moving. Turn your body a little. Be brave…’ When he heard this, he would stir for a moment. But it was too hard for him to move very much under the circumstances.

  The sky had already darkened to a pigeon grey. Twilight was beginning to blur my vision, little by little. My mind was in turmoil. If I left him to find help, I’d risk not being able to come back and rescue him. It would be better to keep him company and freeze to death together.

  Suddenly I saw headlights on the horizon. Startled, I jumped up. They were definitely headlights! Far, far away, but they were driving towards us.

  ‘José!’ I yelled. ‘José, there’s a car coming.’ I went to honk the car horn, over and over again in a frenzy. I also flashed the headlights to attract attention. Then I climbed onto the roof, waving my arms, jumping and yelling like a madwoman.

  Finally, they saw us. The car was driving over.

  I came down from the roof and ran to them. I saw the car very clearly now. It was a Jeep used for driving long distances in the desert. There were lots of wooden trunks stuffed with tea leaves on top. Three Sahrawi men were in the car. They parked the car around thirty metres away, looking over at me from afar without approaching. Of course I understood why they might be suspicious of strangers in this wilderness. I hurried over to them just as they were getting out of the car. They should be able to see our predicament, as it wasn’t completely dark yet.

  I was out of breath by the time I reached them. ‘Help, my husband fell into the quagmire,’ I begged, full of hope. ‘Please help pull him out.’

  They ignored me and began discussing in their own language. ‘It’s a woman,’ I heard them say.

  ‘Hurry, please help!’ I continued gasping for air. ‘He’s going to freeze to death!’

  ‘We do not have rope,’ said one of them.

  I was stunned silent because the rejection in his voice was hard and unmistakable. ‘You have turbans,’ I tried to suggest. ‘Three of them tied together should be long enough.’ There were clearly thick ropes of hemp tying the trunks to the top of the car.

  ‘How do you know we will rescue him? Strange.’

  ‘I…’ I wanted to persuade them, but I saw the glint in their eyes. They were looking me over with no good intentions. So I changed course. ‘Fine. I can’t force you if you won’t help. Forget it.’

  I was about to turn around and go, leaving behind these lunatics in the wilderness. In a split second, one of the Sahrawi gave a signal with his head and another jumped behind me, grabbing my waist with his right arm, touching my chest with the other. I almost fainted from the shock. Instinctively I began screaming. I struggled like a wild beast in the clutches of this maniac, whose arm kept me in a steel grip. But it was absolutely no use. He pulled my body in and turned me around to face him, pressing his awful face closer to mine.

  José could see everything that was happening from his vantage point. ‘I’ll kill you,’ he cried with a stifled sob. He let go of the rock and tried to fight his way through the mud.

  I grew anxious when I saw this and forgot about my own situation. ‘José,’ I called. ‘Don’t! Don’t, I beg you…’ Tears came to my eyes. Once I started crying, the three Sahrawi shifted their attention entirely to José. I faced the lunatic that held me. Mustering up all the force in my body, I raised my feet and kicked him in the abdomen. He was caught off guard and doubled over, howling in pain, setting me free in the process.

  I turned and ran. Another one chased after me with long strides. I bent down, grabbed two handfuls of sand and flung them at his eyes. He covered his face with both hands. In the space afforded by these few seconds, I kicked off my flip-flops and bolted barefoot towards the car in mad desperation.

  The three of them didn’t run after me. They got into their Jeep and drove slowly towards where I was. It dawned on me that they had miscalculated one thing. They assumed only José knew how to drive and I wouldn’t be able to get away no matter how much I ran. That’s why they were pursuing me so leisurely.

  I jumped into our car and started the engine, glancing at José, who was back next to the rock. I felt a throbbing pain in my heart as though someone had struck it with a whip.

  ‘Go, Sanmao!’ José screamed at me. ‘Get out of here!’

  I had no time to say anything to him. I stepped on the gas. The car shuddered to life. Before the Jeep could reach me, I sped up the hill and gunned it. The Jeep tried to block my passage. But when I drove my car straight at them like a kamikaze pilot, they immediately moved aside.

  The accelerator was to the floor now, but I still couldn’t escape the lights of the Jeep behind me. They had latched on to my car and wouldn’t let me go. My heart almost leapt out of my chest. I was breathing so rapidly I thought I might suffocate. As I drove, I locked all four doors and reached down with my left hand to feel behind the car seat. I grabbed hold of the flick knife that José had hidden there.

  The mountain maze was before me. Without a thought, I zoomed in. I swerved around one pile of sand. The Jeep followed. I darted in and out between the sandpiles like mad. Sometimes the Jeep would drop behind a bit. Other times it would be right up on top of me. No matter how erratically I drove, I couldn’t escape them.

  At this point I realised that if I didn’t turn off my headlights, the Jeep would keep following me around and around. And if I ran out of gas, I would be dead meat.

  With this in mind, I floored it with angry determination. Halfway around a hill, before the Jeep could catch up with me, I turned off the lights without slowing at all. I gripped the steering wheel firmly in my hands and made a sharp turn to the left. I veered off in a different direction, circling around to a hill that was behind the path of p
ursuit.

  The curve of the hill cast a large shadow at night. I edged my car as close to the sandpile as possible, opened the passenger door and climbed out and moved a short distance away. I clutched the flick knife in my hand. How I wished our car were black, or even coffee brown or dark green. But it happened to be white.

  I could see that the Jeep had lost me. They were ahead now, circling and looking all around for me. It hadn’t occurred to them that I could be hiding. After circling a few times, they pressed on, picking up speed. I ran a few steps along the sand. Even though the Jeep was definitely gone, I worried they might still turn around. I climbed onto the hill to get a better view. At long last, the lights of the Jeep disappeared into the distance.

  I slid down the hill and got back into the car. I realised I was covered in a cold sweat. Black circles bubbled up in my eyes. I thought I might vomit. Climbing back out of the car, I lay on the ground so the cold would wake me. I couldn’t stay paralysed like this. José was still in that swamp.

  A few minutes later, I managed to collect myself. Ursa Major shone brightly in the sky, a water dipper in the heavens. Below was Ursa Minor, its stars like guiding diamonds. It was easier to determine direction in the mountain maze at night than by day. If I headed west, I thought, I could get out of the maze. Then if I went north about 120 kilometres, I could reach the checkpoint. I could find help and bring people back here. But no matter how fast I could go, there was no way I would make it back tonight. And in that case, José. . . He would. . .

  I covered my face with my hands, unable to think any further. I stood for a spell. There was nothing I could use to mark my path but sand. But I had to mark the route somehow so I could return early in the morning. My body was in severe pain from the cold; I had to get back in the vehicle. Then, almost by accident, I noticed the backseat of the car. It was entirely detachable. I immediately opened up the toolbox and took out the screwdriver so I could start dismantling the seat. With great effort I was able to pull out the whole thing using both hands. I dragged it out and threw it onto the sand. This way it would be easier to spot tomorrow.

  I got back into the car, turned on the headlights and prepared to head to the checkpoint. I steeled my nerves and told myself not to get too emotional. That it would be more useful to find help than to drive back to see José. I wasn’t abandoning him.

  The headlights shone on the large, black car seat that I’d tossed to the side. The car engine was already running. But all of a sudden I jumped as though a needle had pricked me. This car seat was not only large, but flat, too – it probably wouldn’t sink. I got so excited that my whole body shook. I went down to pick up the seat again, stuffing it into the back of the car. Then I did a U-turn and drove back to the quagmire.

  I drove slowly, following my own tyre tracks for fear of losing the way. It still ended up taking me on a roundabout path. Sometimes I couldn’t spot the tyre prints at all. By the time I reached the quagmire, I didn’t dare drive too near. I just shone the headlights onto it.

  Just as before, the quagmire lay silent in the darkness. The mud was completely still except for the occasional bubble rising to the surface. I couldn’t see José or the rock that jutted out.

  ‘José, José…’ I pushed the car door open and ran along the edge of the swamp, crying his name. But José really was nowhere to be found. My whole body trembled. I screamed as I ran back and forth along the edges of the quagmire like a maniac.

  José was dead. He must be dead. Terror reverberated through my heart. I was near-certain that the quagmire had swallowed him up. This sort of dread was enough to make a person go insane. I fled back into the car, supporting myself with the steering wheel, shaking like a fallen leaf in the wind.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually I heard a very feeble voice calling out: ‘Sanmao… Sanmao…’ Bewildered, I raised my head to look. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Turning the headlights back on, I edged the car forwards a little bit. There was the voice again. It was José calling me. I drove the car around for almost a minute until the headlights picked him out. He was still hanging on to that same rock. I’d parked in the wrong place and scared myself to death for nothing.

  ‘José, hold on a moment. I’m coming to pull you up.’

  He had both arms around the rock, his head resting on his wrists. He was completely still in the headlights.

  I pulled the car seat out, half dragging and half carrying it down to the quagmire. When the mud reached my ankles, I hurled the big car seat in. It floated on the surface without sinking. ‘The spare tyre!’ I said to myself. I went and fetched the spare tyre from the boot of the car. At the edge of the quagmire, with one foot on the car seat, I tossed the spare tyre into the mud. I was one step closer to José.

  Cold was prickling me like hundreds of tiny knives. The temperature probably wasn’t at freezing yet, but I still felt like collapsing from the strain. No stopping now. There were too many things I had to do right away. No time to huddle inside the car. I used the jack to raise the right-hand side of the car and began removing the front wheel. Faster, faster, I kept urging myself. I had to get José out while I could still move my arms and legs.

  Once I had dismantled the front wheel, I moved on to the back wheel. Under normal circumstances, it was hard enough for me to do these things quickly. But this time I got it all done within minutes.

  I looked over at José. He had been completely still this entire time, stiffened in place. ‘José, José.’ I threw a palm-sized rock at him to wake him. He was already in a bad way. I grabbed one of the tyres I’d taken off and ran down towards him, jumping onto the floating car seat and then the spare tyre. I threw the tyre from my arms into the mud. Then I went back and did it again, so there were three tyres and a car seat floating in the quagmire.

  I planted my feet widely on the last tyre. There was still a sizeable distance between me and José. He looked at me with great sorrow in his eyes.

  ‘My clothes!’ I suddenly remembered the long cloth dress that hung to my feet with its circle skirt. I hurried back to the car, took off all my clothes and used the flick knife to cut the dress into four wide strips. I knotted all the strips all together, then wrapped a pair of pliers in the material at the front. With this pile in my arms, I raced back along the tyres in the quagmire.

  ‘José! Hey!’ I called. ‘I’m throwing something down. Catch it and hold on to it.’ I wound the long strip of cloth around my hand and let it reach farther and farther. José grabbed on to it before it got all the way down to him. When his hand caught hold, I let out a breath. I crumpled on the tyre and began crying. I became aware of the cold again. I also became aware of hunger, now that my panic had subsided. After a few sobs, my attention returned to José and I started reeling him in. Once you let yourself go, though, it’s difficult to regain your strength. No matter how hard I pulled, I couldn’t budge José from the mud.

  ‘Sanmao, tie the cloth to the tyre,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll pull myself up.’

  I sat on the car tyre. José pulled himself forwards along the cloth strip, inch by inch. When I saw that he was near, I let go and tied it to the next closest tyre. From the looks of it, José was too weak to actually climb on to the tyres. He had been freezing for too long.

  José collapsed to the ground as soon as he got out. I could still run, so I immediately went back to the car to get the flask of wine. This was a matter of life and death. I forced a few gulps of wine down his throat. As anxious as I was to get him inside, I had no choice but to leave him and go back to the mud to retrieve the tyres and the car seat.

  ‘José, move your hands and feet,’ I said while putting the tyres back on. ‘José, you have to keep moving. Keep moving…’ I kept looking back at him. He was crawling along the ground now, his face white as plaster and looking absolutely terrible.

  ‘Let me help.’ By the time he reached the car, I was securing the nut on the back tyre.

  ‘Hurry up and get in the
car!’ I threw the spanner aside and climbed in myself.

  I gave José another mouthful of wine and turned the heat in the car to high. I cut off his wet trousers with the flick knife and vigorously wiped his feet with the scraps of my clothing. Then I poured some wine on his chest and helped him get clean. It felt like a century had passed by the time the colour started coming back to his face. He opened his eyes for a moment and closed them again.

  ‘José,’ I called, patting him lightly on the face. ‘José.’

  Half an hour later, he was fully awake. He stared at me, eyes widened as if he’d seen a ghost. ‘Y-you,’ he stuttered. ‘You…’

  ‘Me? What about me?’ His expression scared me out of my wits.

  ‘You’ve suffered.’ He locked me in a tearful embrace.

  ‘What are you talking about? I haven’t suffered!’ Baffled, I wriggled my way out of his grip.

  ‘Did those three guys get you?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ I said proudly. ‘I got away. I got away a long time ago.’

  ‘Then… How come you’re naked? What happened to your clothes?’

  Only then did I realise that I was in my underwear, covered in mud. José had obviously been frozen into a daze, too, as it took him this long to notice I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

  José lay next to me on the drive home. We would have to see a doctor for his legs right away. It looked like frostbite to me. Night had deepened. The mountain maze fell behind us like a bad dream. I was following Ursa Minor to the north.

  ‘Sanmao, do you still want fossils?’ José asked in a voice like a groan.

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘And you?’

  ‘Even more than you.’

  ‘When are we coming back?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon.’