Amazir

by Tom Gamble

When he awoke the next morning, Badr had gone. What was he, this young man—captor, saviour, traitor, philosopher, friend? Difficult to say. When Summerfield’s mind returned to Jeanne—something he had painfully though deliberately exiled from his thoughts over the last ten days or so—he was filled with an anger that infiltrated his lungs with an acid air of longing. It was Badr who had commanded the kidnapping; Badr who had tied his hands and pinned him to the floor of the lorry. And yet, despite this, despite the violence of the act, Summerfield couldn’t help feeling that deep down, Badr was good, that the young man had acted against his true nature.

  Rising from his bed of straw and linen, he noticed that his hands were free, the rope cut in the night. He imagined the wry smile on Badr’s face—on the one hand showing trust, on the other, knowing that Summerfield was bound to want to escape.

  It felt odd to be free—his limited movements had set the boundaries of his universe and created a comfortably known world that included three rooms and as many people. For an hour or so Summerfield remained in his quarters, listening, wondering if anyone would come to check. And what about breakfast? Would Abdul, the driver’s brother, arrive as usual and serve him tea with bread and honey? The sky grew clear and no one came and Summerfield realised that it was he who would have to move.

  Treading softly, he made his way down the confines of the corridor that led from his sleeping quarters. He followed his nose more than anything else, the faint waft of mint and saffron brewing in tea pots. He got lost. The Kasbah was such a labyrinth of corridors and chaotic floors. He stepped out into open air—or a least a ledge—some fifteen feet above the ground in the Kasbah walls and let out a gasp. He felt himself toppling forwards and clutched at the earthen walls to stop his fall. A fattened goat—maybe a pregnant female—was looking up at him from the rocky slope directly below. It bleated, defecating in the instant that followed as if to accentuate the insult. Standing in the opening, having found his equilibrium now, Summerfield surveyed the hillside below, empty on this western flank but for several low-walled and scattered shepherds’ shelters. A brief, exhilarating sensation of freedom suddenly overcame him. If he wanted, he could run—now. Run and join Jeanne in Marrakesh. And then it disappeared—the feeling—snuffed like a candle with only the acrid bitterness of the smouldering wick remaining. He suddenly felt a desperate emptiness—an emptiness that overcomes a man who suddenly realises he is completely alone. He found himself about to cry and angrily swore at himself, pushing back abruptly to walk back the way he’d come.

  Finally, Summerfield came upon a group of tribesmen in a wide, low-beamed room and sat down near them, his back turned. They seemed to have been expecting him and a low exchange of jokes at his expense followed before one of them threw a spoon to grab his attention. They beckoned him to take what he desired to eat and drink and then rose to wander off.

  Summerfield’s days passed in such a way. He was no longer a prisoner tied to his cell, but although free to wander and observe, was met with such mistrust and hostility that he didn’t dare go further than fifteen yards from the Kasbah walls. A couple of times, he was spat upon. On several occasions he was insulted—or at least they looked and sounded like insults. They were the lowliest of peasants he’d met so far—grossly impolite, dirty and showing an extreme lack of intelligence in their incapacity to overcome their perception of him. It was he who had spent time in a French colonial prison, not they. It was he who’d been beaten by the gendarmes. It was he who’d been forcibly abducted. He felt angry—anger against the whole bloody lot of them, the French and these people alike.

  Nostalgia of England and the company of Englishman overcame him and he suddenly saw them as the most trustful, straightforward and honest people; maybe sometimes hypocritical with their dislike of anything vaguely intellectual, snobbish in their inherent understanding that they were quite naturally superior to the rest of the world, obsequiously over-polite, sneeringly class-bound and annoyingly always bloody right. But what clarity, what sincerity and what empathy—an Englishman would not hesitate, not for the slightest second, to help anyone in need. An Englishman would not hesitate, not even for the time it took to say Jack Robinson, to see the difference between what was right and what was wrong and gauge his actions accordingly. God, how he missed them. Them and the greenness of the hills and fields, the drizzle and changing skies; them and the morning paper over breakfast and the genteel civility of daily existence. Two thousand miles away, a completely different planet away. Summerfield looked wretchedly up from his sitting position, his mind slowly focusing, channelling his thoughts into grim determination, one single aim: to escape, to be free. While winter swept icily up the valley and froze the earth and the tribes hibernated, Summerfield waited and planned his escape.

  38

  He had been gone for almost a whole day and understood he was running in circles. The bastards knew it. He was trapped. And they didn’t even bother to come after him.

  On one side an impossible climb up a sheer face of scree. On the other, a system of fortified shelters—shepherds’ huts with guards—spread out at intervals just below the crest of the first valley. Going south, keeping to the riverbed, there were always villagers about. Whenever someone spotted him—women or children—they pointed, letting out a whoop and breaking into laughter as if playing a game of hide and seek. And if Summerfield knew that they would not dare come closer, he also knew that not far behind them, on the valley slopes, there would be men training their rifles at him, playing with his silhouette in their sights. And to the north, the coomb where the valley found its source—a huge horseshoe of a cliff face scarred with ravines, where hundreds and thousands of years ago the glaciers had formed a wedge to gouge out the valley. Only the night would help him. And this night he would try.

  In preparation, he hadn’t eaten for two days. He had tucked his food away under his clothes in anticipation of the flight through the mountains. He stole a gourd left on a stone wall and a knife from an empty kitchen. He gathered together his clothes, made a bag from his cover that he could easily sling over his shoulder and found string, a shred of matchbox and a dozen matches. And then he waited, a whole day in his room, his mind an inner rehearsal of how he would slip through the line of sentinels and head towards the west.

  He planned to keep on going until he dropped, as far ahead of the valley tribesmen as possible so that he could rest a couple of hours and gather his strength. With luck he would retrace the rough track the lorry had climbed and use it as a guide towards the plains, the first village and a telephone. From there, a call to the British embassy in Casablanca. They would surely alert the authorities and hopefully send someone out to fetch him.

  He was so determined and the itinerary etched so deeply in his mind, that the thought he could fail was as frail and distant as the thought of ever seeing Jeanne again. She was making preparations for France and her studies, no doubt. Perhaps engaged to some rich civil servant’s son? And what about the war? It seemed he had been in the valley for years and nobody here had even mentioned Europe, the news. A faint hope that perhaps it had all been called off came to him and he looked out from the small window of his room to the dying sun over the mountain crests and smiled: wouldn’t that be perfect!

  Night came. He went to the inner courtyard at around nineish, complaining of tiredness and took his food back to his room. This time he ate it—a hot meal of cooked wheat, olives, potatoes and a few shreds of tough chicken meat. After that, an apple, which he slipped into his pocket.

  The silence of the mountains fell and the voices grew low and calm. The odd dog barked in the distance, a final territorial gesture, and then grew silent. A baby howled from somewhere in the village—hunger or fright—and then nothing. The voices disappeared. A faint snoring from somewhere along the corridor. Summerfield, tensed like a bow for the last few hours, rose silently and gathered his things.

  He found his way to the yawning hole in the Kasbah walls—a path he had memorised over th
e last week, even following it with his eyes shut to test himself. The cold night air surprised him, sharp and defiant. He swore under his breath and carefully slipped down into the darkness, trembling from a slight attack of vertigo. Once on the ground, he crouched among the rocks for several minutes, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. High above him, to his right, the moon was a thin blade in the sky, a million stars for company. And then he set off.

  For several hundred yards he followed a shallow ravine towards the valley floor and then struck off left, up a gentle slope littered with low bushes and boulders of quite considerable size. To his right he spotted a shelter, a glimmer of a flame sending shadows dancing around the walls inside. He sank lower, on all fours and the odd thought that perhaps he might be mistaken for a marauding animal—did they have bears here?—crossed his mind. Summerfield—the trophy adorning the Kaïd’s chimney breast, the Englishman they managed to bag one night in September! He began to laugh, his nerves brittle and checked himself. He continued from boulder to boulder, the slope growing steeper. He was sweating now despite the cold and he smelt himself in the clear nip of the air, something like the odour of tea in a tin. And then he stopped dead. Directly in front him, barely thirty feet from the shadow of the boulder was another shelter, a squat stone edifice. From the window protruded a rifle—the guard had obviously laid it there on the ledge. Summerfield could hear the low murmur of voices—two of them. One rising high and almost woman-like while the other, deep and mocking, repeated the same word—incomprehensible to Summerfield—as the other spoke. The way ahead was blocked, his efforts reduced to nothing. He sank back into the cover of the rock and retraced his steps. Several moments passed until he got his chest to stop heaving. Keep calm. Once again, he took a breath and slipped out onto the mountain slope, away from the guards and horizontally across the flank of the mountain. He judged that he would need a good four hundred yards to be safe before he could begin to climb upwards again.

  This time he felt the certainty that he would find a way through the line of watch posts. His eyes had scrutinised the flanks of the valley for long, concentrated moments and had seen nothing. The way up looked clear and the flicker of hope that perhaps he had found the breach in their defences sparked into a flame and brought strength to his arms and legs.

  The climb was difficult, across open terrain littered with small rocks, scree and the odd ghostly bush. Perhaps that was why they hadn’t bothered to post anyone there—they’d thought it too difficult, too open. He almost crawled up. Every heave towards the top was a slow, deliberate and careful gesture, the danger that of setting a flurry of stone and rock clattering down the slope. His breath was regular and deep and he could see the crest approaching, a black serrated ramp that led to freedom. And after? He wasn’t thinking of after. All that mattered was reaching it. It spelt victory. It spelt rejoining his people and his language and maybe, with it, the chance to find his way to Jeanne. It was almost as if England were just on the other side—a matter of a single step from one side of the valley into another: this one hostile and burned by the fierceness of Morocco, the other green and fertile and mild.

  Up onto the flank, stopping once to roll over and drink and calm his burning throat. Then onwards again, like a cat stalking a prey. He could feel himself grinning—the crest nearly there. Barely ten yards from his goal, he halted, judging it wise to gather his strength for a few moments before the ultimate effort. He felt happy, elated and fought to keep it from sending his heart drumming even faster. More water. Several minutes went by and the concentrated effort that had taken him up the flank of the valley ebbed from his mind and body. It was then that the pain came, like a new priority claiming top of the list. It was his hands and legs and feet. They stung as if he’d been caught in a swarm of wasps. Peering closer, Summerfield could see that they were smeared with a dark, metal smelling liquid—blood. And he hadn’t even noticed. He was immediately reminded of the crest and told himself he would look to his cuts and bruises later, in the daylight of the next morning. One last glance around him, tensed against the mountainside, and then in a semi-crawl, struggling to keep his impatience from breaking into a run, he moved forwards. Ten yards, seven yards, five yards—he began to smile, feel the trickle of relief and victory begin to form a soft and intimate laugh in his throat. Then suddenly, a faceless silhouette stood up in front of him: a sentinel. Summerfield stopped dead, squinted. The guard let out a grunt, no trace of surprise in his deep voice. The crest, said Summerfield to himself, filled with panic. He struck off abruptly to the right, trying to detour the black shape as though he were facing an adversary on a rugby field. The sentinel moved to block him. A laugh. Summerfield twisted again in the opposite direction, breathless, his body inevitably headed for a crash course but the disadvantage of climbing upwards slowing him down to walking pace. It was no more a collision than a bumping into. Another laugh, deep and mocking. Summerfield whined in frustration and heaved with all his strength. The sentinel did not move. He pushed again, weaker and weaker until he was practically leaning on the shape, motionless. Summerfield could see no face, just the black indentation in the man’s headwear where his eyes should have been, just his smell, earthy. An arm moved lifting up an object—a blade—and Summerfield stopped breathing, expecting the arm to slash down upon him, cleaving his head in two. Instead, another laugh and suddenly Summerfield was pushed back. He slipped on the stones, fell some five yards and picked himself up. He advanced and was pushed back again and suddenly realised that they would not kill him. They couldn’t—their orders were to keep him alive. One last time, Summerfield heaved himself forwards, ripping his sack from his shoulders to gain in agility. This time, the silhouette, grunting loudly, gave him an almighty shunt which sent him tumbling chaotically down the slope a full hundred yards. Summerfield knew he was beaten. He got up unsteadily, sobbing in frustration. Glaring into the darkness at the silent sentinel, he turned and began to walk back down to the valley floor swearing every filthy English insult he could think of until the night swallowed him.

  His face was buried in his mountain coat of roughly woven wool. The air was sharp and icy and he was shivering. He’d spent a miserable three hours picking his way across the valley, stumbling and increasingly aware that he was trapped. It was hopeless. The ridges of the mountain valley were laced with guards and sentinels and they had known, from the day they had freed his hands, that he would have no chance of slipping through the defences. For that was what they were—not so much a system implemented to stop him getting out, but a way of warning the valley tribes of anyone wanting to get in.

  He couldn’t remember if he slept. He just remembered a last glance towards the stars above him, millions of silvery pricks in the black of the sky. He saw a shooting star and, as he had done as a child, made a forlorn wish. And when dawn came and his shivering intensified, he knew for certain that such hopeful wishes did not come true. He was still there, a prisoner, far from the woman he had fallen in love with, far from his home, far from a war he was bound to miss. A despair he had never known fell upon him and made him feel hollow—like a single husk of wheat left over after the harvest. He felt so miserably alone and useless. He began to sob, hating himself. Once again he buried his head beneath his woollen coat to black out the reality of the day.

  If time passed, he didn’t notice, but the silence was long and solitary. And then a voice, a girl’s voice, far off and almost unreal. And then something touching his head—a hand, tentative then prodding. He didn’t want to come out—he was so ashamed.

  ‘Sidi?’ came the childish voice, softly. ‘Sidi?’

  Slowly, shyly, Summerfield uncovered his face, squinting into the light. He was met with a smile, fresh, young and impertinent. It was a girl, maybe fifteen—of age to be married. He saw her eyes, large and brown and smeared black with kohl.

  ‘Wake up, Sidi,’ said the girl, noticing his tears. He must have looked awful and for the first time her impish smile wavered with e
mbarrassment.

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ replied Summerfield, helplessly. ‘Who are you? Why have you bothered me? You know who I am.’

  ‘Raja,’ said the young woman. ‘My name is Raja.’

  ‘Raja,’ echoed Summerfield and rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘Hope, for God’s sake—her name is Hope!’

  ‘You are the white man.’

  ‘The Englishman,’ replied Summerfield, ‘the prisoner.’

  She didn’t seem to understand the emphasis upon the word. Instead she held out her hand, small and dirty and the colour of a brown olive. She wanted him to stand. ‘Come she said,’ not letting go. ‘Come, Sidi.’

  ‘I feel like staying here and dying,’ answered Summerfield in English, and the tone of his voice must have touched her, for after a moment’s hesitation she tugged on his unmoving weight. Another tug and Summerfield rose unsteadily, his muscles painfully bearing the strain. ‘All right, Raja—I’m up now. Saved by a girl—I suppose they sent you, but who bloody cares. I’m starving.’ He brought his hand to his mouth and made a gesture for food and she smiled.

  ‘Come, Sidi. Food.’

  She led Summerfield in a zigzag through the rocks and scrub, holding his hand, stopping every now and then for him to get his breath back. He realised something was wrong. His chest was pounding and he had begun to sweat. Breathing was like sucking in flames. He would have liked to ask her how she had come to him—was it the guards or was it indeed God that had sent her? But he didn’t. For by a small brook, twisting down towards the valley river—he remembered the dazzling clarity of the water before he fell—the world went completely black.

  For some time, some days, maybe even a week or more, he passed from the unconscious to moments of consciousness, woken by what he failed to understand as his own smell and the burning inside his body. For these brief seconds and minutes, it was as though every muscle of his body had been tied into ragged knots that on the slightest movement, sent shards of pain through his body. He had never felt anything like it and he shook so violently it made him cry out in fear—he thought he was dying. And then he would lapse once again into a coma, the smell hard on his tracks, into the throes of what he would later learn was dysentery. He would also learn in the weeks to come that he was as close to death as could be and that if it hadn’t been for Raja, her unshakeable and devoted care and the fact that she contacted Badr to come urgently to him, he probably would have been buried in the valley.