Stories of the Sahara

by Sanmao

  I drove all the way to the front door of the office building. Of course nobody asked to see my licence. There probably aren’t many stupidly brazen people in the world who would have done what I was doing.

  I had just entered the office when somebody called out, ‘Sanmao!’

  I froze. ‘How did you know my name?’ I asked the man who had spoken.

  ‘Your registration picture, look here! You’re taking the test on Monday!’

  ‘That’s exactly why I’m here,’ I said quickly. ‘I want to meet the invigilator for the written test.’

  ‘What’s the matter? The invigilator is our colonel.’

  ‘May I ask you to convey something to him?’

  He noticed the odd look on my face and disappeared inside straight away. A short while later, he came out and said, ‘Please come this way.’

  The captain inside the office was a military officer with salt and pepper hair and an elegant bearing. After living in the desert for so long, encountering someone of such grace and style suddenly made me think of my father. It threw me off balance for a second.

  He came over from his desk to shake my hand, then pulled out a chair and invited me to sit down. He also asked someone to bring us coffee.

  ‘May I ask what’s the matter? And you are…?’

  ‘I’m Señora Quero…’ I started to make my request. I was relying on him to resolve all the questions that had plagued me throughout that sleepless night.

  ‘I see. So you want to take an oral exam on the traffic rules and recite the answers to me. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. That’s exactly it.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, but we have no precedent for doing this. Moreover, I see that your Spanish is excellent. You shouldn’t have any problems.’

  ‘I can’t. I have problems. Let me set the precedent.’

  He looked at me without saying anything.

  ‘I heard that the Sahrawi are allowed to test orally. Why can’t I?’

  ‘If you want a licence just for driving in the Sahara Desert, then you can take an oral exam.’

  ‘I want one that’s good for anywhere.’

  ‘Then you must take the written exam. No exceptions. The test is multiple choice. You don’t have to write anything, just tick a box.’

  ‘The multiple-choice questions are all ambiguous. I can’t read clearly when I get nervous. I’m a foreigner.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry, we have to archive your exam,’ he continued. ‘There are no papers to file if you take an oral test. We wouldn’t be able to account for it. I can’t help you.’

  ‘What do you mean you can’t help me? I can make an audio recording for the archive. Señor Colonel, please use your brain. . .’ My argumentative nature flared up.

  He looked at me kindly. ‘I say you relax and take the written test on Monday,’ he said to me. ‘I’m sure you’ll pass. No need to be nervous.’

  Seeing that he wouldn’t budge, I decided not to force the matter. I thanked him and exited, cool and calm. When I got to the door, the colonel called out to me. ‘Please wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask two of my boys to take you home. This place is too out of the way.’ I guess he called his subordinates his ‘boys’.

  I thanked him again and walked out. Two of his ‘boys’ were standing ramrod straight next to my car. When we saw each other, we all had quite a shock. They happened to be the police officers who had wanted to nab me for driving without a licence the other day. ‘I really don’t want to trouble you,’ I said politely. ‘If you could be so generous as to let me off this time, I’ll go home myself.’

  I was confident they wouldn’t try to get me at that very moment.

  So that’s how I ended up driving home. José was still asleep when I got in.

  All Sunday, I worked ceaselessly to memorise the manual. We ate nothing but bread with butter and sugar.

  José refused to go to work on Monday morning. He said his time off was already approved and he could make up his hours the following Saturday. He wanted to accompany me to the test, which I didn’t want at all.

  We got to the testing site to find a dense mass of people crowded outside. There must have been a few hundred, including many Sahrawi. The written test and road test were all administered in the same place, directly across from the desert prison. The people in the prison weren’t repeat offenders; those guys were all locked up with the police.

  Most of these prisoners were doing time because they’d assaulted someone in a jealous spat over some bar hostess, or else they were labourers from the Canary Islands who’d got into drunken brawls with the Sahrawi. There weren’t any real thugs or hooligans in the desert, probably because this place was too desolate. Even if gangsters were to come, they probably wouldn’t manage to stir up much trouble.

  As we waited to enter the test site, the convicts across the way watched us from the rooftop. Whenever a single Spanish woman went in, the boors would clap and yell, ‘Hey! Baby, belleza, you damn well better do good on your test! Don’t be afraid. Us old boys’re here to support you, ya know… Que sexy, buenorra! ’

  Hearing these crude fellows call out so passionately, I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘And you wanted to come here alone,’ José said. ‘If it weren’t for me, they’d be calling you “baby”, too.’

  Actually, I quite enjoyed these crazies on the rooftop. At least, I’d never seen so many cheerful convicts before. Another one for the annals of spectacles past and present. There were more than two hundred people testing that day, both first-timers and repeats.

  When the colonel and another gentleman opened up the doors to the test site, my heart started beating fast and unevenly. I also grew dizzy and felt like I wanted to vomit. My fingers were so cold I couldn’t even bend them.

  José gripped my hand tight so I couldn’t chicken out and flee.

  The people whose names were called all shuffled along, like lambs to the slaughter, and entered that frightening hole of a room. José gave me a gentle shove when the colonel called my name. I had to stand up and go.

  ‘Good morning!’ I whimpered, waving to the colonel.

  He contemplated me for a moment. ‘Please sit in the first row on the far right,’ he said to me.

  He wasn’t telling anyone else where to sit, I thought. Why was he singling me out to crucify? It must have been because he didn’t trust me.

  It was dead quiet in the testing room. Each person’s exam paper had already been distributed below their seat. Every exam was different, so it was no use sneaking a glance at your neighbour’s test.

  ‘Alright, let’s begin. You have fifteen minutes.’

  I pulled up the exam paper from beneath my chair. The writing on the paper looked like a swarm of ants. I couldn’t read a single thing. I desperately tried to calm down, cool down, but it didn’t work. The ants were all speaking languages I couldn’t understand.

  So I set down my pencil and paper and crossed my arms. José saw me sitting upright in my Zen pose from outside the window. He got so worked up, he looked like he was about to burst into the room and knock me awake with a big stick.

  After sitting still for a bit, I looked at the paper again. Now I could read it.

  I finally understood why I’d been chosen to be crucified. The questions on this exam paper were as follows:

  You come to a red light while driving. You should:

  a) Speed up and pass through.

  b) Stop driving.

  c) Honk your horn a lot.

  You see pedestrians on a zebra crossing. You should:

  a) Wave your hands to tell the pedestrians to walk faster.

  b) Run over the crowd.

  c) Stop driving.

  There were two full pages of this, all the same, each a ridiculous joke of a test question. Reading through the exam, I nearly choked trying to stifle my laughter. I breezed through in a flash.

  The last question read:

  While driving, you run into a group of Cath
olics parading the Virgin Mary around on the street. You should:

  a) Applaud.

  b) Stop driving.

  c) Kneel down.

  I chose ‘Stop driving’. But then I realised the exam was issued by a Catholic country. They’d probably be happier if I answered ‘Kneel down’.

  With that I turned in my test after only eight minutes.

  As I handed in the paper, the colonel gave me a small knowing smile. ‘Thank you!’ I said softly. ‘Have a nice day!’

  I wove my way through a large crowd of test takers who had their heads buried, working furiously, gnawing on pencils, erasing, trembling, knitting their brows. I quietly opened the door and slipped out.

  José was still comforting me when the Sahrawi were up for their oral exams. ‘Don’t worry. This isn’t such a big deal. If you don’t pass, you can take the test again next weekend. Relax.’

  I said nothing, keeping him in suspense.

  At ten o’clock sharp, a gentleman took out a list to call the names of everyone who passed. He was calling out one name after another, but not mine. José instinctively put his hand on my shoulders.

  I paid no heed at all.

  Finally, when ‘Sanmao’ was called out, I shot a mischievous glance at José.

  Even though I hadn’t kept up my deception for long, José was unexpectedly delighted about this and gathered me up in his arms. He was a little too forceful and almost broke my ribs. The convicts on the roof began cheering and applauding at the sight of us. I gave them a peace sign and feigned an expression like Richard Nixon, who was in office at the time. That exam paper was my Watergate, for real. Next, I immediately went to take the on-site driving test.

  All of the driving school’s huge trucks and tiny compact cars were lined up in a row. The whole place was buzzing with excitement. The prisoners were roaring more vigorously than people at the horse races.

  Out of more than two hundred people who had taken the written exam, there were only eighty-something left. The crowd of people who were there for the festivities alone was still pretty big. My militaristic instructor didn’t go bare-chested this time. He was dressed very properly. ‘Make sure you’re not one of the first three to go,’ he told me. ‘Wait until others warm up the engines, then take your turn. That way you won’t stall as easily.’

  I nodded. I was confident about this whole thing. Nothing to feel nervous about.

  ‘I’m not waiting any more,’ I said after the second person finished. ‘I’ll take the test now.’

  As soon as the light turned green in the test site, my car rattled and sped off like a wild horse. I shifted gears again and again, came to a stop, started up the engine, made a turn, reversed on a diagonal, reversed on another hard angle, drove up a ramp, then reversed in between two parked cars, sandwiching myself in the middle. Driving uphill, braking, starting up, going downhill, switching gears… I did everything even-handedly and methodically, impeccable in my execution. The end was in sight.

  I heard the audience applauding me. Even the Sahrawi were yelling, ‘The Chinese girl is really good!’

  I was so absurdly happy, I lost it for a bit and quickly turned to glance at the main examiner in the tower. While doing this, I drove off the road and ploughed right into the sparkling waves of sand. I got agitated and my car stalled, coming to a halt right there.

  The sound of applause turned into exclamations, then uproarious laughter. José was laughing the hardest of all. I couldn’t help but start laughing myself. I jumped out of the car with half a mind to laugh myself to death, right then and there, so I could die like one of the Greek gods.

  I’d been struggling for this all week, learning a lot in the process and reflecting honestly on myself. Now I had failed due to my own negligence; I would have to be more careful next time.

  The next Monday, I went to take the test by myself. I wasn’t in a hurry this time, waiting patiently until forty or fifty people had gone before I got into the car. All the manoeuvres they’d allotted four minutes to complete, I finished in two minutes and thirty-five seconds. I didn’t make any mistakes.

  When they were calling out the names of those who had passed, only sixteen were called out. I was the only woman among them.

  ‘Sanmao drives as fast as a bullet,’ the colonel teased. ‘You’d be an excellent addition to the traffic police team.’

  I was just about to walk home when I saw José coming to pick me up, his face beaming. He worked quite some distance away, but he’d come over in his lunch break.

  ‘Congratulations!’ he said as he approached.

  ‘Hey, are you clairvoyant or something?’

  ‘The convicts on the rooftop just told me.’

  I really think that people in prison might not be worse than those who walk free. The truly bad seeds in this world are like the dragons that we Chinese like to talk about: they might be small or large, hidden or in plain sight. But you can’t catch them, nor can you imprison them.

  As I prepared lunch for José, I asked him to make another trip by himself to give the prisoners two cases of Coke and two cartons of cigarettes. They had been like a marching band cheering me on during my test. I didn’t look down on them. It’s not like my personal integrity is much greater than theirs.

  I drove José back to work at noon, then returned to town. I parked surreptitiously before walking over to wait for my final road test. This ladder was getting more and more interesting, the higher I got. I was beginning to enjoy the whole process.

  With midday temperatures at fifty degrees centigrade, the streets were deserted save for the short shadows of rows of buildings under the sun. The whole town felt dead; time here had frozen over. I was struck by how much this scenery looked like a print of a Surrealist painting. If only there had been a girl rolling a metal hoop, it would have been even more vivid.

  The ‘road test’ began here, a place with absolutely no traffic.

  Even though I knew that there was no way I’d run over a dog or crash into a tree, I still didn’t want to be too imprudent.

  Before starting the test, put on your indicator and look behind you. Keep to the right after starting. Don’t drive on the yellow lines. Stop at intersections. Slow down for zebra crossings. Since there are no traffic lights in town, that was one less thing to worry about.

  All sixteen of us finished testing pretty quickly. The colonel invited everyone to the driving test centre’s canteen for some soda water. Among us there were eight Spaniards, seven Sahrawi and then me. The colonel immediately distributed temporary licences to those who had passed the test. The official licences would be mailed eventually from Spain.

  Last week, I kept on telling myself that I had to climb to the top of this ladder before King Hassan II of Morocco came to the Spanish Sahara to drink tea. Now I’d climbed all the way, and the king still wasn’t here.

  The colonel gave out seven licences, including one for me.

  Now that I had a licence, my mood and comportment while driving were totally different from before. It was like night and day.

  One afternoon, I’d just parked my car and was about to walk off when those two police officers from before leapt in front of me. ‘Ha!’ they cried. ‘We got you this time.’ I took out my licence leisurely and raised it in the air in front of their faces.

  They didn’t even glance at it and started writing me a ticket.

  ‘We’re fining you two hundred and fifty pesetas.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe my ears.

  ‘You’re parked in front of a bus stop. That’s a fine!’

  ‘There are no buses in town,’ I cried. ‘There have never been any.’

  ‘There will be. The signs are already up.’

  ‘You can’t fine me on this basis. I won’t take it. I refuse to pay.’

  ‘No parking if there’s a bus stop sign. Who cares if there’s a bus?’

  My mind becomes very clear whenever I get angry. Traffic rules flitted through my head, one by one. I pushe
d aside the officers, jumped in the car, and zipped forward a few metres away from the stop. I stopped the car, got out and shoved the ticket back at them. ‘The traffic rules say that if you leave a spot within two minutes, it doesn’t count as parking. I stopped for less than two minutes and then moved, so this isn’t a violation.’

  In this game of Cops and Robbers, those two had lost again. Let them throw the ticket out for a goat to chew on. I laughed victoriously and set out with my vegetable basket to the canteen at the desert corps. I wanted to see if I would have any luck today in buying fresh fruits and vegetables.

  Day after day, a black sheep like myself, who never even grew up in the desert, strives to dispel the misery of these long, leisurely years with artfulness and pleasure.

  O how fair though chilly this autumn!2

  Hearth and Home

  I was the one who originally insisted on coming to the Sahara Desert, not José. But we then stayed here long-term because of José, not me. I’ve wandered through many countries in my lifetime. I’ve lived in highly developed societies. I’d seen through them, had enough of them. It’s not that I wasn’t inspired; my lifestyle had absorbed their influences in big and small ways. But I never had a place to settle down, a city where I could also leave my heart.

  I don’t remember when it was exactly, but one day I found myself absentmindedly flipping through an issue of National Geographic. It just so happened there was a feature on the Sahara. I only read it through once. I couldn’t understand the feeling of homesickness that I had, inexplicable and yet so decisive, towards that vast and unfamiliar land, as if echoing from a past life.

  After I returned to live in Spain, I realised there were 280,000 square metres of the Sahara that were Spanish territory. My desire to go only deepened, torturing me with nostalgia and longing.