Sandstorm

by Asher, Michael

  The afrangi was holding him, tears running down his cheeks. His face, thin and sallow, still stained with blood, showed a shifting storm of emotions. ‘Billy!’ he repeated like a half-death chant. ‘Oh Billy! You’re alive!’

  Taha held Sterling back gently with both hands. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘No Ingilizee ... Ana nasit ... I have forgotten. No Billy ... Ismi Taha Minan Nijum. I am Fell-From-The-Stars.’

  Sterling pressed Taha to him possessively, caressed his hair. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Nothing matters. All that matters is that you are here.’

  Taha was distracted by the faint sound of camel pads on the sand. He made an urgent sign to Sterling and fetched his weapon, crouching among the rocks with the rifle at his shoulder. A moment later the camel swung into the wadi, casting a vast, spiderlike shadow in the light of the new sun. The other afrangi — the big one — was riding it, while Bes the hunter led it, rather disdainfully, by the head-rope.

  ‘Yak la bas?’ the dwarf said to Taha. ‘No evil?’

  He jerked the rope and the camel sat down heavily, squalling. Churchill slid off the animal’s back and looked at Sterling, unsure what to do next. ‘All right, George?’ he said.

  Bes handed Taha the head-rope and went and sat by the fire. ‘The Great God be praised!’ he said, rubbing his hands. He held them up, splaying the big, stubby fingers, his face thoughtful. He clenched the fingers into fists. ‘You knifed two,’ he said, and two fingers popped up. ‘I shot four.’ Six fingers were showing now. ‘By the Great God!’ he said, counting them. ‘That is six! Six Delim for six lemha. The spirit of the lemha is avenged!’

  ‘I killed three,’ Taha said. ‘I killed a sentry and took his weapon.’

  Another finger popped up. ‘Seven!’

  Taha nodded towards Churchill. ‘And the big afrangi here, he killed one too!’

  ‘By heaven!’ Bes growled. ‘That is eight!’

  Taha nodded and led the camel over to where his own was munching grain. He couched it there and examined it critically, observing the Delim brand-mark on its flank — an inverted arrow with a dot. ‘A fine beast,’ he said.

  The creases on the dwarf’s thickly bearded face elongated, and he bared gleaming white teeth. ‘It was easy enough to get,’ he said. ‘They were running about bleating like frightened goats. I could have bagged half a dozen, but achh, they are horrible stinky beasts, their meat is like old boar-skin, and their milk tastes like piss. By the Great God, I don’t know why you hook-noses prize them so. Give me a good hunting-dog any day — now there’s a beautiful animal.’

  ‘I thank you for your help,’ Taha said.

  ‘Achh!’ The little man swept the thanks aside with his hirsute hand. ‘The thanks is to the Great God, who guided us. We are only the instruments of his will.’

  ‘The praise be to God.’

  ‘The Great God is eternal. Man’s life is short, but He endures forever.’

  ‘Amen.’

  After he had fitted a nosebag of grain over the camel’s muzzle, Taha shook hands with Churchill. ‘You saved us,’ the big man said in Arabic. ‘We are in your debt — both of you. But how did you make the fire explode like that?’

  Taha tossed his long hair back and watched Churchill carefully. Living in the desert, one learned to read faces, and while Sterling’s face was entirely open, the big afrangi’s features told him that he had something to hide. He was certainly brave and strong, yet there was something in him that was difficult to fathom. Taha decided to let it ride for now, knowing that there was purpose in this too.

  ‘Flash powder,’ he said. ‘My father makes it.’

  ‘Who were those people?’

  ‘Ulad Delim, our enemies. I have been following their tracks for more than a week. We heard them when they attacked your camp and killed the people with you. We came close, too late to save them, but I heard the Delim talking. They were expecting you. The Delim are good shots and they have new rifles. They could have killed you easily, yet they did not. Why?’

  ‘God knows,’ Churchill said.

  Sterling stared at him enquiringly, but Churchill shook his head. ‘You look on your last legs, George,’ he said. ‘That cut in the head needs treating. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Billy,’ Sterling said, pointing at Taha.

  Churchill’s face went slack with amazement. He took a step backwards, staring automatically at Taha’s left hand. ‘He’s got the right sign,’ he stammered. ‘But this chap’s a wild man. I saw him kill two people myself. You sure you’re not jumping the gun, George? I mean, Billy wasn’t the only boy in the world with a missing joint on that finger.’

  Sterling shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s him. I know my own son.’

  Churchill was visibly shaken. He stared hard at Taha. ‘Hatha sahih?’ he asked. ‘Is it true that you’re Billy Sterling?’

  Taha surveyed him solemnly. ‘Kaan yom min al-ayam walad ismu Billy,’ he replied. ‘There was once a boy called Billy. He came from the world outside, he floated down out of the night. But the boy is dead now. I am not him. I am Fell-From-The-Stars of the Ulad al-Mizna.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Churchill gasped. ‘It is him.’ He pointed at Sterling and said in Arabic, ‘The man you just saved is your father!’

  The little hunter had been watching from the fire, trying to follow what was going on. ‘What does he mean?’ he demanded. ‘How can an afrangi be your father? You are Taha, son of Belhaan.’

  ‘The afrangi is not my father,’ Taha said. ‘At least ... I have two fathers.’

  The dwarf snorted. ‘Are you the first man in all creation to have two fathers, then?’ he said. ‘By the Great God, why did I get mixed up with Christians and hook-noses? Their ways are the ways of madmen.’

  ‘Billy ...?’ Sterling began.

  ‘Who is Billy?’ Taha asked evenly, in Arabic. ‘Billy ma mowjuud. Billy is not here. Billy vanished the day after the iron bird came down. He waited for you but you didn’t come. Grandfather didn’t come. Only Belhaan came. Billy died that day and Taha was born. Hassa’ kaayin Taha utauf. Now there is only Taha.’

  ‘But Billy,’ Sterling said, also speaking Arabic now, ‘I tried. Grandfather and I, we searched every inch of the route. We just didn’t know where the plane came down ...’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Taha said grimly. ‘But it was God’s will that Belhaan found me. Billy is gone.’

  Sterling shook his head in confusion. Of all the possible outcomes of his search, this was one he hadn’t envisaged.

  Churchill saw the expression on Sterling’s face and made a pacifying gesture with his broad hands. ‘All right,’ he said, in Arabic. ‘Now maybe we should calm down a bit. We’ve all been through a lot. Let’s have a glass of tea and think about this. By God, we should be drinking a toast to the reunion!’

  ‘We must move on,’ Taha told them. ‘Now the Delim know you are here they will come after you. They have good trackers and they will be angry that so many died or were injured.’

  Sterling looked at Churchill with new concern. ‘Move on?’ Churchill said. ‘But your father and I came to take you back.’

  Taha stared at him. ‘Back?’ he repeated. ‘Back where?’

  ‘Back to Balad al Ingliz,’ Churchill said. ‘To England, where you belong.’

  ‘England?’ Taha said wonderingly. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t belong there. This is where I belong.’

  ‘But Billy ...!’ Sterling gasped. ‘You can’t mean that. You can’t have forgotten. You are Billy. You are Billy Sterling, my son.’ He grabbed Taha’s left hand gently and held up the mutilated little finger. ‘I remember the day you got this,’ he said. ‘You jumped over a fence and got your hand stuck. The fence was sharp steel and it took the top of your finger off. You came running to me with the end of your finger and wanted me to stick it on. That was you — not Taha. You, Billy! Don’t you remember? You have to come home with me.’

  Taha removed his hand from Sterling’s grip and his e
yes turned cold. ‘We must move on now,’ he said.

  *

  They walked, leading the camels, with the little hunter guiding them. Sterling tramped behind his son dejectedly, not trusting himself to speak. Taha seemed unconcerned, as if the fact of his father’s arrival after seven years was meaningless or simply hadn’t sunk in yet. Or maybe he was also thinking about it deeply, but wouldn’t let it show.

  Sterling was shattered, but wise enough to glimpse a reason for Taha’s behaviour. It was the syndrome that had been reported from the recent war in Korea, he told himself, in which prisoners-of-war had begun to identify with their captors. The boy had been abandoned in the wilderness, and had been obliged to identify with the desert people in order to survive. He couldn’t believe that Billy would choose to live among this filth and hardship and squalor if he had a true choice. Sterling’s head was brimming with questions, but he knew it was too early. Billy was still getting used to the idea that his situation had changed. It would take time.

  Taha’s world seemed very much an exterior one, Sterling noted. His son constantly pointed out features of the landscape that neither Sterling nor Churchill would have picked out without a guide: the track of a ground squirrel, the burrow of a ratel or honey badger, the tail prints of a mushlud, or monitor-lizard. He showed them the dark spikes and granite ridges or guelbs that emerged like great jagged whalebacks from the hammada, reciting their names and the myths surrounding them, and indicated how the sun created lakes, ravines and hills in the emptiness — the mirages that the nomads called Satan’s Mirrors.

  Sterling, listening silently, was astonished at Taha’s knowledge. Glancing at his son from time to time, he got images of Billy as a child, interspersed with images of a stranger. This was a man who had just killed three people with a dagger, who had calmly cast explosive powder into a fire, walked through a horde of enemies and rescued him and Churchill, without even knowing who they were, and probably saved their lives. This was a man who had tracked these bandits alone for a week, who handled camels as if born to it, who had just guided him for a night through trackless desert, who seemed to fit the landscape like a hand fits a glove. Billy had always been stoic and resourceful, yet this was not Billy. Billy had been a boy. This was a man, confident, mature; capable of killing calmly and efficiently. A man Sterling didn’t know.

  After an hour, Bes halted and pointed out a single tree far away on the skyline. Between themselves and the tree was a flat, brown plain, utterly featureless in all directions. ‘That tree is a day’s journey from here,’ he said.

  Sterling gasped. ‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘You’re talking about more than twenty miles.’

  ‘By the Great God, I tell the truth,’ Bes growled.

  He thrust his knobbly hand out in the direction of the tree, fist clenched. ‘The plain between here and the tree looks like any other,’ he said. ‘But it is treacherous. It is the Umm al-Khof, the quicksand, the Mother of Fear.’

  ‘Whole herds of camels have disappeared into it,’ Taha added.

  ‘Aye,’ said Bes darkly. ‘And more than camels, too.’ He lowered his fist a few degrees. ‘See that black dot a little further down from the tree?’

  Sterling strained his eyes, and Churchill pulled out his old field glasses. Sterling could see the black object, but it could have been anything from a tin can to a house. There was nothing around it to judge its size at all. Even Churchill’s binoculars wouldn’t reveal further information. ‘What is it?’ Churchill asked.

  ‘I won’t tell you,’ Bes said. ‘You must observe. We shall be at that spot by noon, but from now on you must be very careful.’

  ‘But the surface looks all the same,’ Sterling said. ‘How can you be sure we won’t blunder into the quicksand?’

  The little man squeezed his bulbous nose, then pointed out a plant growing nearby, with dark green stalks a few inches high. ‘Askaf,’ he said. ‘The askaf shows the way — it grows only where the sand is solid. Where there is no askaf, I look for the tracks of the burrowing skink. It will only burrow into hard sand. There is only one plant that grows in the sands — the jurdul — a grey spiky tree with no leaves. If you see a jurdul, steer clear of it.’

  As they toiled on in the mounting heat, their eyes returned to the black dot with increasing frequency. Apart from the ghostly silver lights that blinked at them out of the quicksand, and the single tree on the skyline, there was simply nowhere else to look.

  The conversation dropped, and finally gave way to silence, but for the flap of the camels’ soft pads on the sand. The sky was a polished sheen of luminescent blue, blurred at the edges by the tremors of heat-haze. Nothing else moved.

  After a while, Churchill halted, and Sterling saw that he was peering ahead through his field glasses again. ‘By God,’ he said excitedly in Arabic. ‘That black thing’s a motor vehicle. How the hell did it get in here?’

  Bes said nothing, but led them on. The black object was still much further away than it seemed. They tramped on doggedly for another hour, and were almost up to it before their naked eyes could make sense of its shape and size. ‘You were right, Eric,’ Sterling said. ‘It is a vehicle. Looks like a Jeep.’

  Taha wanted to stop here to rest the camels, but Bes seemed troubled. ‘This is a place of ill omen,’ he said.

  After a long discussion, though, Taha persuaded him to make camp a little further on. While Taha and the hunter unloaded and fed the animals, Sterling and Churchill trudged back to look at the Jeep. ‘Careful!’ Bes shouted after them. ‘One false step and you’ll be in. Then only the Great God can save you!’

  The Jeep was painted in military colours, and was still more or less intact, although the tyres had perished, and the entire front section was nose down in the soft sand. Churchill examined the back, touching mounts that had obviously once held machine guns. He retracted his hand quickly. ‘Strewth!’ he gasped. ‘You could spit a chicken on that!’

  ‘It’s a military vehicle,’ Sterling said. ‘Maybe Spanish Foreign Legion?’

  ‘Could be anybody,’ Churchill said. ‘Tens of thousands of these were turned out in the war — but not many had weapons-mounts like these. Yank Rangers used them, the British SAS and the Long Range Desert Group. Leclerc’s Free French too.’

  ‘Whoever it belonged to, why try to drive through a quicksand?’ Sterling asked. ‘I mean, it would have been suicide.’

  ‘Unless they had a guide.’

  ‘Yes, but then why ditch it? These things are four-wheel drive, and they could easily have winched it out.’

  There were spiky, leafless trees growing beyond the vehicle, and Sterling began to walk around the Jeep in their direction.

  ‘Stop!’ a voice bellowed. ‘Don’t take another step!’

  Sterling froze and turned to see Bes behind them. The little man had approached in absolute silence and his face was contorted with anger.

  ‘Did I not tell you?’ he demanded. ‘Jurdul trees grow in the quicksand. Those are jurduls. Step back in your own tracks!’

  Sterling let out a gasp and began to retrace his own footsteps until he was back with Bes and Churchill. ‘It’s impossible to tell,’ he said.

  ‘We call the jurdul the Siren of the Quicksand,’ Bes said. ‘Many’s the stranger who has been given a false sense of safety by its presence.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sterling said.

  ‘The thanks is to the Great God.’

  Churchill turned his attention back to the Jeep. ‘You know who left it here?’ he asked.

  ‘Come, sit in the shade,’ Bes said. ‘It is hot at midday and the heat makes you sick without your knowing it. Come, and I will tell you the story.’

  Taha and Bes had rigged up a shelter with blankets tied across lengths of wood stuck in the sand. As they crawled into the few square feet of shade, Taha offered them water in an esparto bowl. Both drank avidly. Taha squatted on the edge of the shade and made a fire with bits of wood he had collected that morning. Bes settled in front of the
m, cross-legged.

  ‘So,’ Churchill asked. ‘Shin-hi al-gissa. What’s the story?’

  Bes took a deep breath. ‘It was some time ago,’ he said. ‘Maybe ...’ He held up the splayed fingers of both hairy hands and folded the thumbs. ‘Eight summers back.’

  Churchill did a quick calculation. ‘1945,’ he said.

  The hunter nodded without comprehension. ‘I did not see it, I only heard from a hunter called Barra who was here tracking oryx alone. He was following the path through the Umm al-Khof one day, when he heard a sound like thunder. He hid himself at once and only just in time, because soon a big caravan of these chariots passed him, the like of which no one had ever seen.’

  He held up all the thick fingers again, folded them, then extended five. ‘Fifteen,’ he said. ‘Some of them were big, big chariots, and others were small like this one. There were men with them — all Christians — one in each chariot. In the first chariot there was a hook-nose. The hunter took him to be the guide. There are a few hook-noses who know the path through the Umm al-Khof. Well, as I say, they were going very slowly, and Barra was able to follow them. They did not see him. When they got here, all the chariots stopped and the men got out. Then they did a very strange thing. They pushed the big chariots one by one into the quicksand.’

  ‘What?’ Churchill gasped. ‘Why?’

  ‘Only the Great God knows. I was not there and I cannot tell you I saw it, but this is what Barra told me. They pushed all the big chariots into the sand until they were completely covered, and only six small chariots like this one remained. Then the strangest thing of all happened. Two of the Christians got up on the back of one of the small chariots, which had some weapons mounted on it, like big heavy rifles with drums on top. It looked as if they were going to make a speech, because the other men gathered around. Then suddenly the two men on the vehicle started firing the guns. Kraaak-kraak-kraak! Like that! The other men weren’t expecting it and most of them were killed at once — the hook-nose guide was amongst them. One of the victims managed to get a pistol out and he shot one of the two on the Jeep in the leg. A moment later, he too was killed. Barra said it was the most evil thing he had ever witnessed. Indeed — excluding your presences, sirs — the Christians are a cruel people, cruel beyond all imagining.’