Stories of the Sahara

by Sanmao

  I looked at José again and he suddenly shook before my eyes, like an image in a movie turning sideways. Then the walls around me and the ceiling began to spin. I lunged and grabbed hold of José. ‘Is it an earthquake?’ I yelled. ‘I’m dizzy—’

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘Quickly, lie down.’ He came and held me.

  I wasn’t scared but confused, rather, about how I’d got into such a state in the span of half an hour. José dragged me to the bedroom. Everything was spinning around me. If I shut my eyes, I became dizzy as though the world had been turned upside down. After lying down for just a few minutes, my stomach began to feel strange. I struggled over to the bathroom, where I began to vomit loudly.

  In the past, I used to throw up quite often, but not like this. It wasn’t just my stomach churning, but an insane torture that felt like I was going to throw up all the organs in my body. After throwing up everything I’d eaten for lunch, I began vomiting clear liquid. After the clear liquid came yellow bile. After the bitter bile, there was nothing left to vomit. But I still couldn’t keep myself from dry heaving loudly.

  José grabbed me tightly from behind. I kept on retching, sneezing and bleeding from the nose until my strength was completely sapped and I could do nothing more but sit on the ground. He dragged me back to bed and wiped my face with a towel. ‘Did you eat something unsanitary?’ he asked worriedly. ‘Is it food poisoning?’

  ‘I don’t have diarrhoea,’ I answered him feebly. ‘It’s not from something I ate.’ I shut my eyes to rest. Once I lay down for a bit, the symptoms seemed to go away, strangely enough. The force that had tossed my insides about like a wave had all but disappeared. I felt completely enervated and broke out into a cold sweat. But the room had stopped spinning. I was no longer sneezing, and the discomfort in my stomach had eased. ‘I want to drink tea,’ I said to José.

  José jumped up to get some tea. I drank a mouthful and, within a few minutes, felt completely fine again. I sat up with my eyes wide open.

  José felt my pulse, then pushed down hard on my stomach. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked.

  ‘It doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m alright. How bizarre.’ I made to get out of bed.

  He looked at me, speechless. I really was better. ‘You should still lie down,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you a hot water bottle.’

  ‘I’m fine, really,’ I said. ‘No need to do that.’

  Suddenly José touched my face and said, ‘Hey, when did your eye get so swollen?’

  I reached a hand up to feel. My right eye was indeed very puffy. ‘Let me look in the mirror!’ I said. After just a few steps, I felt a spasm of pain in my stomach as though somebody had lashed me with a whip. I groaned and fell to the ground. I quickly returned to bed. Pain grabbed hold of me like a flash of lightning. My stomach felt as though somebody was twisting and wringing it from the inside. I shrank into myself and tried my hardest to fight it, but I couldn’t help but start to moan. I endured it as best as I could. The pain kept growing worse. I began to lose control of myself, rolling back and forth in bed and crying out. Soon I was in such pain that my eyes clouded over and I could only hear myself screaming like a wild animal. José placed a hand on me to massage my stomach. I pushed him aside violently. ‘Don’t touch me!’ I shrieked.

  I sat up, then fell down again. Pain convulsed my abdomen without ceasing. Once I’d screamed myself hoarse, my chest and lungs began to hurt as well. My lungs were shuddering with every breath. By this point, I was like a rag doll being torn to pieces by some horrifying invisible force. The room had gone dark around me. I couldn’t see anything. My mental faculties were all there, but my body was struggling ineffectively, a slave to the excruciating pain. I didn’t have the energy to cry out any more and started to bite down on the pillows, clawing at the sheets, my whole body soaked in sweat.

  José knelt by the bed, incredibly alarmed and close to tears. He kept on calling me by the Chinese nickname that my parents and sister had given me when I was young. ‘Meimei! Meimei! Meimei. . .’

  When I heard his voice, I froze. Everything around me was dark. There was the sound of something like a low explosion in my ears, or thunder rumbling closer and closer. The intense pain wouldn’t let go of me for even a moment. I started screaming again. I heard myself crying out in Chinese, ‘Mama! Papa! I’m going to die! Oh, it hurts. . .’

  I couldn’t think of anything else at that moment. All I could do was screech. All I could feel was the maddening pain of my organs being wrung out and ripped apart.

  José picked me up in his arms and carried me out. He opened the front door and set me down. Then he ran over to open the car door and then put me inside. I knew I was outside, so I bit my lip to keep myself from crying out in pain. Bright light streamed in. I closed my eyes, discovering that I was terrified of it. ‘Light, I don’t want light,’ I said to José, covering my eyes with my hands. ‘Come shield me, quick.’ When he ignored me, I screamed, ‘José, the light is too bright.’ He grabbed a towel from the backseat and threw it to me. I didn’t know what was happening, but I was so scared that I immediately covered myself with the towel and hunched over on my knees.

  There were certainly no doctors in the desert hospital on a Sunday. José couldn’t find anyone to help. Without a word, he turned the car around and drove towards the barracks of the desert corps. When we got close and the guard saw what shape I was in, he immediately came to help. The two of them half-dragged, half-held me, carrying me into the medical room. The guard called for somebody to find the medical officer. I lay on the examination table, feeling like I was slowly getting better again. There was no more pounding in my ears, darkness in my eyes or pain in my stomach. When the medical officer charged in half an hour later, I was already sitting up. Besides feeling a bit weak, I was pretty much back to normal.

  José described to the doctor the sickness that had so overwhelmed me in the afternoon. He listened to my heartbeat, felt my pulse, then looked at my tongue and knocked on my stomach. None of it hurt any more. My heart was just beating a little fast. He sighed, puzzled. ‘She’s fine,’ he reassured José. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her.’

  José seemed very discouraged and embarrassed, as though we’d played a trick on the medical officer. ‘Look at her eye,’ he said.

  The medical officer pulled up my eyelid. ‘There’s pus,’ he said. ‘It’s been inflamed for days, right?’

  We strongly asserted otherwise, telling him it had become swollen within an hour. After further examination, the medical officer gave me an injection to reduce the swelling. He looked me over again and saw I wasn’t joking.

  ‘Maybe it’s food poisoning,’ he said finally.

  ‘It’s not,’ I said. ‘I don’t have diarrhoea.’

  ‘Maybe it’s an allergy,’ he tried again. ‘You ate something that didn’t agree with you.’

  ‘I didn’t break out in hives,’ I countered. ‘It wasn’t a food allergy.’

  The medical officer looked at me with great patience. ‘Why don’t you lie down,’ he said. ‘Call for me immediately if you vomit again or the pain comes back.’ With that, he left the room.

  It was a strange situation. An hour ago, I had come down with an illness like a woman possessed. But there were absolutely no symptoms when I was in the treatment room. Half an hour passed. José and the guard supported me all the way back to the car. ‘If anything happens again, come back right away,’ the guard said gently.

  Sitting in the car, I felt very tired. ‘Lean against me,’ José told me. So I leaned on his shoulders and closed my eyes, the tablet around my neck dangling to his thigh.

  The road home from the desert corps was a steep downward slope. José started the engine and slowly eased our way down. After only a few metres, I thought the car felt unexpectedly light. José wasn’t even stepping on the gas, but the car felt as though there was somebody pushing it from behind, making us go faster and faster. José stamped hard on the brakes, but they didn’t work. I saw h
im quickly pull the handbrake and shift into first gear. ‘Sanmao, hold tight!’ he said nervously. The car stalled and started careening down the slope. He stepped on the brakes again, but they were completely jammed.

  The steep hill wasn’t very high. Rationally speaking, there was no reason the car should be going so fast. But in the blink of an eye, we were speeding downhill as though we were afloat. ‘Hold on to me tightly,’ José said to me loudly. ‘Don’t be scared.’ My eyes widened, seeing the road in front of José rush towards us. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t because it felt like there was something blocking my throat. There was a ten-wheeler military truck coming straight at us. It seemed like we were going to crash right into it. It was only then that I let out a scream. With a great effort, José spun the steering wheel. Our car dived onto the side of the road, then continued to coast for a long time without stopping. José saw there was a mound of sand in front of us and steered us right into it. The car finally stopped. The two of us sat there amid a cloud of dust in the sand pile, our arms and legs ice cold, paralysed from the shock.

  The people in the military truck got out right away and ran towards us. ‘Are you OK? Everything OK?’ they asked. We could only nod, totally speechless. By the time they were digging us out with shovels, we were still sitting there limply as if hypnotised.

  After a long time, José managed to say just one thing. ‘It was the brakes,’ he told the military officers.

  A soldier told José to get out of the car so he could test it. He started the engine and tried out the brakes over and over again. Frighteningly enough, they were fine. José didn’t believe it and tried it out himself. Turned out there was no issue. The thing that had just happened to us over the course of a few seconds felt like a bad dream, which vanished without a trace upon waking. Tongue-tied, we looked at the car, afraid to believe our own eyes.

  When we thought back to it afterwards, we could never remember how the two of us managed to get back in the car and drive slowly home. That stretch of time disappeared from our memories, as though we were under a spell.

  José helped me out of the car once we were home. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Completely worn out,’ I said. ‘But I’m not in pain any more.’

  So José propped up my torso while my left hand held on to the car door. My body leaned against his. That little piece of copper bumped into him again. This was something I remembered later when I thought back on it. At the time, of course, I didn’t notice something so small.

  Because he was holding me up, José used his feet to kick the car door closed. I felt a dizzying pain. Four of my fingers had been slammed in the door. José hadn’t noticed and was still trying to drag me towards our home. ‘My h-hand,’ I said. ‘José, ah—’

  He gave a yelp of surprise when he turned and saw what had happened. He let go of me and went to open the door. My hand was freed, but my index finger and middle finger had been flattened. After a few seconds, warm blood began to flow, slowly soaking my palm.

  ‘Dios mío! Did we commit some sin…’ José quavered, taking my hand. He stood there trembling.

  For some reason, I felt like I was about to use up the last ounce of strength I had left in my body. It wasn’t that my hand hurt; I was just weak beyond belief. I desperately wanted to be left alone to sleep.

  ‘My hand’s fine,’ I said to José. ‘I want to lie down. Quick. . .’

  Just then a neighbouring Sahrawi woman called out quietly from behind me. She hurried over and put a hand on my lower abdomen. José was still looking at my mangled hand when she said to him, ‘She. . . Baby… is going to fall out.’ I felt very far away, her voice reaching me from a distant place. I lifted my head and gazed weakly at José. His face was drifting this way and that like a reflection in rippling water.

  José knelt down and held me tight. ‘Go and get someone,’ he said to the woman.

  Hearing this, I used all my strength to utter just a few words. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re bleeding a lot.’ José’s gentle voice wafted down to me.

  I lowered my gaze. A river of blood was running down my legs and pooling thickly on the ground beneath. My skirt was already soaked. Blood continued to flow silently from my lower body.

  ‘We have to find a doctor quickly.’ José was shaking terribly.

  I was very clear-headed at that moment, but felt like I could float away. I remember saying to José, ‘We can’t use our car. We have to get someone else.’ José scooped me up in his arms and carried me inside, kicking open the door. He put me on the bed. As soon as I lay down, I felt like my lower half had been split open. Blood poured out of me like a fountain.

  I didn’t feel any pain. A feathery sensation was slowly overtaking me; I wanted to fly out of my body.

  Hamdi’s wife Tebrak rushed into the room, followed by Hamdi in flowing trousers. ‘Do not panic,’ Hamdi said to José. ‘She is having a miscarriage. My wife has experience.’

  ‘It can’t be a miscarriage,’ José said. ‘My wife is not pre­gnant.’

  Hamdi reproached him angrily. ‘Perhaps you did not know, or she did not tell you.’

  ‘Whatever you say. I need your car to take her to the hospital. I’m positive she wasn’t pregnant.’

  The sound of their arguing came to me in waves, like iron chains slamming loudly against my weakened spirit. Life, at that moment, had no meaning to me. My only desire was for them to stop talking, to give me eternal peace. Even death would be less painful than the harm that their voices were inflicting on my flesh.

  I heard Hamdi’s wife talking loudly again. These sound waves were plucking and fiddling with me like I was a flimsy string. It was absolutely awful. I unconsciously raised my hands, wanting to cover my ears.

  When my hands reached my messy long hair, Hamdi’s wife cried out in alarm and immediately retreated to the door. She pointed at me and spoke sharply to Hamdi in their native language. Hamdi also took a few steps back. He said to José in a grave voice, ‘The tablet around her neck. Who put it on her?’

  ‘Let’s get her to the hospital fast,’ José said. ‘We can talk about the tablet or whatever later.’

  ‘Take it off,’ Hamdi thundered. ‘Take that thing off imme­diately.’ José hesitated a moment.

  ‘Hurry!’ Hamdi yelled anxiously. ‘Get it off. She will die, you ignorant fools.’

  With a shove from Hamdi, José came over and pulled on the tablet. The silk ribbon broke; the tablet was in his hands. Hamdi took off his shoe and smacked José’s hand forcefully with it. The tablet fell down next to the bed where I lay. His wife kept talking rapidly.

  ‘Think fast, who else did this tablet touch?’ Hamdi asked José, seemingly hysterical. ‘What things? Quick. We do not have time.’

  José started stammering, frightened by Hamdi and his wife. ‘It touched me,’ he said. ‘And the tape player. Besides that – nothing else, I think.’

  ‘Think harder!’ Hamdi implored. ‘Quick!’

  ‘Really,’ José said. ‘There was nothing else.’

  ‘May Allah preserve us,’ Hamdi said in Arabic. ‘It’s fine now,’ he continued. ‘Let’s go out to talk.’

  ‘She’s bleeding…’ José said worriedly. But he still followed Hamdi out of the room.

  I heard them close the door in the hallway and enter the living room.

  Strangely, my spirit seemed to revive. Buckets of cold sweat were pouring out of me. I was breathing slowly and heavily. My eyes felt very heavy and I couldn’t open them. But my body no longer felt adrift.

  Everything around me felt amazingly peaceful and clear. There was no sound whatsoever. All I felt was a comfortable fatigue that was gradually submerging me. I was about to sink into a deep slumber.

  In a few short seconds, my highly sensitive spirit felt there was something, a shapeless force, seeping into this little room. I even thought I heard it making an almost imperceptibly slight hissing sound. Struggling to
open my eyes, I saw only the ceiling. I shut my eyes again. But my sixth sense was telling me that a little river, a little snake, or something else long and thin had already crept in. It was flowing ceaselessly towards the tablet on the floor, entering calmly, slowly rising up and filling the entire room. An inexplicable sensation of cold and fear came over me. I opened my eyes again, but could not see what I felt.

  After another ten seconds or so, a memory flashed in my mind like a sparked flame. Frozen in shock, I heard myself screaming. ‘José. . . José. . . Ah, help. . .’

  The door was closed. I thought I was screaming, but my voice was so hoarse. I yelled and yelled some more. I tried to move my body, but I had no energy. I saw the cup of tea on the nightstand by the bed and used all of my strength to grab hold of it, raise it and throw it down on the cement floor. The cup shattered loudly. I heard the door open. José rushed in.

  I grabbed José. ‘The coffee pot,’ I said to him frantically. ‘The coffee pot. When I was cleaning the tablet, I used the same cleansing powder to clean the coffee pot—’

  José froze, then pushed me back into bed. Hamdi came in, sniffing left and right. José also smelled something. ‘The gas. . .’ they said at the same time.

  We were off as soon as José got me out of bed. He and Hamdi dragged me all the way outside. José hurried back in to turn off the gas canister, then ran out. Hamdi dashed across the street to grab a handful of small stones. ‘Hurry, use these rocks to seal the tablet,’ he said, giving José a shove. ‘Make them into a circle.’

  José baulked. At Hamdi’s urging, he ran back inside with the rocks.

  That night we slept at a friend’s house. We left the windows wide open at home to let the gas dissipate. We stared at each other, not knowing what to say, fear filling our hearts and minds completely.

  Yesterday, around sunset, I lay on the couch in the living room, calmly listening to the sound of cars passing. I longed for José to be let off work early and come home. Not even the neighbours’ children were gawking at the window like they usually did. I had been left in utter isolation.