*
The following days were the greatest trial of Taha’s life, but for Sterling’s sake he forced himself to wear the clownish clothes, to endure the agony of shoes, to sit on chairs, to eat his food with a knife and fork. He never got used to the toilet, but grew cunning and used the garden at night when no one was there to see him. He never mentioned Belhaan or his wife and children to Sterling, but his thoughts were always with them. He was growing increasingly anxious. What was happening in the Seguiet al-Hamra? What had the Delim raiders done after he and the afrang had escaped? Several times the big one, Eric, had tried to talk to him about the iron bird, Corrigan, Craven, and the Sonnenblume map, but when he did so the light of avid interest shone in his eyes, and Taha became wary and pretended to know nothing.
During the morning, Sterling would sometimes accompany him outside, and they would walk through the streets. Taha was disgusted by what he saw, by the putrid smell of the place. Some of the people he encountered were from tribes he recognized, revealed by the way they wore their head-cloths and dara’as, yet these people had given up the desert life for the town, and appeared only half alive. The crowded conditions, the squalor of the town, appalled him after the cleanness of the open ergs and regs. None of the people he met, not even the Blue Men, seemed friendly or hospitable — most looked at him as though he was invisible. The worst thing of all, though, was that there were no tracks here. Out in the sands one could read the comings and goings of people like a book. Here, all was confusion. He remembered Belhaan saying that the city was ‘the place where tracks ran out’.
On the evening of the sixth day, there was a reception in the hotel, to which Sterling and Churchill were invited. Sterling insisted that Taha went with them. Apart from the Spanish colonial officials, there were high-ranking local Arabs present in clean blue robes and head-cloths. Taha longed to be able to dress like them. The reception was held in the dining room, but the tables had been pushed back so that the guests could wander about. Sterling seemed cheerful, but Taha felt more out of place than usual. At least ordinary mealtimes had a certain ritual quality that he had managed to adapt to, but this was quite another thing and Taha did not know how to comport himself. There was discordant music and people danced to it in a strangely rigid manner that was particularly ugly. Several people seemed drunk. Women giggled stupidly. Churchill tried to press a glass of wine on him, but he found the taste revolting and thrust it away.
Sterling introduced him to a Spanish official, whose name Taha had no interest in catching. He was fat, as most of them were, with a red face and grinning, pugnacious features that made Taha want to hit him. He had had too much wine and leered at the youth. ‘So,’ he said in Arabic, ‘you are the boy who has been running round with the savages out there in the Seguiet al-Hamra, eh?’
‘My people are not savages,’ Taha said.
The man giggled stupidly. ‘Oh, my people, is it? Well, let me tell you, my boy, those primitives won’t be running about there with their camels much longer. No, the mineral rights and mining rights have all been handed out. There’s phosphate out there, a lot of it. In a few months the mining companies will be starting their operations. We can’t afford to have a lot of idiots with guns taking pot shots at them. It’s all been decided. The nomads will be rounded up and settled — it will be better for them — with schools, hospitals and police to see that they observe the law. It’s high time it happened — you’d think we were living in the dark ages. Oh yes, things are going to change.’
‘But the land belongs to God,’ Taha said, stunned, thinking the man was making fun of him.
The Spaniard winked and glugged red wine. ‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘Soon your people will all be living in towns like this one.’
Taha staggered backwards as if he had been struck. Seeing the expression on his face, the Spaniard began to laugh. Taha felt instinctively for his dagger, remembered it wasn’t there, then turned and ran out of the room, out of the hotel and into the street.
He paused only to kick off his shoes and socks, rip off his jacket and tie and fling them into the dust. Then he ran blindly along the road that skirted the sea, not knowing where he was going, only that he had to get away from the vile atmosphere of the hotel with its hypocrisy, its elaborate and meaningless rituals, its lousy, stinking toilets.
He ran in the direction of the Arab quarter, the shanty-town he had skirted once with Sterling, thinking that he might find someone from his tribe — someone who could understand his talk, a friendly face. He ran through the empty marketplace and a moment later he was in the labyrinth of the shanties. The European Quarter had been deserted, but the streets here were at least full of people — a confused mixture of slaves, Znaga and Arabs, men and women. Some of the women were unveiled and called to him, the men stared, taking him for a white man, and some pointed and jeered. ‘Nasrani! — Christian!’ Children threw stones and ran away shrieking. Taha looked around him desperately for some sort of refuge, but there was none. Crowds hemmed him in on all sides, eyeing him curiously. Taha’s head whirled, confused by the utter profusion of hostile faces. His senses began to swim, his ears throbbing, his heart pounding. ‘Why don’t you listen?’ he bawled at them. ‘I am Taha Minan Nijum!’
Suddenly a man stepped out of the crowd, his dark eyes fixed on Taha’s. He was wearing a robe so dark it was almost purple, and an elaborate head-cloth that half shrouded his face. His eyes were deep and hooded and he had a long nose, turned sharply down at the end like a fishing-hook. He was holding a dagger in his hand.
‘Taha Minan Nijum,’ he repeated, ‘the son of Belhaan. So, God brings you into my hands to destroy you before you destroy me!’
The crowd, thinking this was part of the game, cheered. Taha’s blood ran cold. He recognized the man. It was Agayl ould Selim, who had killed Belhaan’s small son, Asil, during a raid.
Taha came to his senses quickly. He was unarmed and Agayl was only a couple of paces away from him. He remembered how he and Fahal had tracked him to his cave in Jebel Zemmour, just missing him on two occasions. They had discovered from some itinerant smiths that Agayl had fled to Layoune to evade the retribution that would inevitably fall on his head, even should it be forty years in coming. By killing Taha, Agayl would be ridding himself of a sworn blood enemy.
Agayl slashed with the dagger, catching Taha on the arm. Taha gasped as the blade stung him, but moved at the same time. Agayl tried to retreat but he was too slow — he had been too long in the city, Taha thought. He grabbed the hand that held the dagger, snapped it back until Agayl squealed out, and wrenched the dagger out of it.
The crowd had begun to widen the circle around them, no longer cheering. Taha skipped a step nearer, feeling all the pent-up frustrations and hatred of the past week driving him forward as he plunged the dagger into Agayl’s guts. The Delim belched blood and staggered, doubling up. Taha brought the knife out and plunged it into the yielding flesh again and again and again, shrieking, ‘Die, you filth! You murdered my brother! Die in agony, you pig!’
He was still stabbing long after Agayl was dead, his clothes saturated with the man’s blood. He let the ravaged corpse fall to the ground, looked at the silent, staring faces of the crowd and at the knife in his hand. He let it fall onto the hard, salt-caked mud. He did not hear the shouts of ‘Police! Police!’, nor see the crowd scatter. He did not see the four big Spanish colonial policemen closing in on him until his arms were forced behind his back, and iron shackles snapped painfully upon his wrists.
*
Jose Fernandez, the police commandant, was dark and handsome, his hair slicked with oil, his white uniform immaculate. He wore black, highly polished knee-length cavalry boots. He had one eye on the gilt-framed mirror as he politely offered Sterling a cigar from a rosewood box. The room was small and functional, decorated only with the mirror and a collection of framed photos of Fernandez at leisure, horse-riding and fishing.
Sterling declined the cigar. Fernandez took one with
a flourish and sat down in his chair behind the bare desk. He scratched his dark moustache with it but did not light it. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sterling,’ he said in adequate English. ‘But the charge against this person — whom you say is your son — is very serious. He murdered a man in cold blood in the street, in front of witnesses.’
Sterling gulped. He had been stunned by the news of Taha’s arrest and his crime. The youth had seemed to be readapting slowly to civilized ways again, and now he was to be snatched away from him once more, and this time to face what was for Sterling the unimaginable cruelty of capital punishment.
‘He could be shot,’ Fernandez said abruptly, then he seemed to regret the outburst. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘it depends on the Municipal Court.’
‘But he’s my son,’ Sterling said. ‘He’s a British citizen.’
Fernandez frowned and put the cigar down on the desk. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You say he is a British citizen, but where’s the proof? What I see is a savage, a wild nomad from one of the desert tribes. He’s a shade lighter of skin, but then the tribes do not all have the same features, some are lighter, some darker. You admit this person has no passport. You show me a paper purporting to be his birth certificate, but the man himself speaks no English and insists that he is Taha Minan Nijum of the Reguibat. You and your companion entered Spanish territory without visas, and are here only with the indulgence of the Immigration Authorities. You insist he is your long-lost son, and it is a touching story, but how do I know you haven’t simply — how shall I put it? — taken a fancy to him? The English have a penchant for young Arab boys, no?’
‘That’s preposterous,’ Sterling said, fighting to control his temper.
The commandant picked up his cigar and stuck it rakishly in his mouth. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But even if you could, prove he is your son, and British, this does not make him innocent. Spanish law is impartial.’
He beamed, struck a match and lit his cigar, then stood up with a scraping of chair-legs and a cloud of blue smoke.
Sterling stood too. ‘Can I at least talk to him?’ he asked.
Fernandez glanced at the mirror. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But you must obtain official permission from the authorities. It will take time.’
*
At first, Taha had tried to smash his way out of the stinking cell, but the big afrang policemen had soon stopped that by clapping him in shackles again, and then knocking him down repeatedly with their fists. They hit him in the stomach, careful not to leave marks.
The policemen had gone, but the cell remained the same, hot as an oven in the day, with only one tiny window up in the corner of the room, too high to see through. The hotel room had been bad enough, but the cell was torment to one used to the freedom of the desert. Taha had heard the stories of desert men who’d been locked up by the Christians, pining to death. Only his vague memories of another life prevented him from going insane. His childhood had been like this, he remembered, stuck in a small room in that place, that school, shut up in the dark when he had committed some petty breach of school rules. To Taha, all his life before the Blue Men had found him seemed now to have been a dark prison cell like this one. And now he was back, even though all he had done was what honour demanded of him. To avenge the death of Asil’s murderer had been a sacred duty, which would have been celebrated by his tribe. Instead, he was locked and shackled in this filthy place.
The jailer was a slave called Shamsu whose belly protruded from the filthy white uniform that had lost many of its brass buttons. He was surly, ashamed of his lowly origins and determined to prove his newly acquired authority by shouting and laying about with his club. At first Taha had tried to reason with him to remove the shackles, but the jailer had just grunted, and beaten smartly on the cell door with his stick. ‘You will be shot like a dog,’ he’d said, grinning through ravaged teeth. ‘Where are your People of the Clouds now?’
On the morning of the third day, though, Shamsu disappeared and was replaced by a tall, spare man, as dark-skinned and raggedly dressed as the other, but with a reserved graciousness that told Taha he belonged to the haratin.
As soon as they were alone, the hartani let himself into Taha’s cell. ‘I know you,’ he whispered. ‘At least, I have heard of you. Your father is Belhaan bin Hamed. My name is Abboud and my family tends the palms of the Ulad al-Mizna in the Seguiet al-Hamra. We are sworn to be loyal to your people, just as you are our sworn protectors. By God the Great, I am sorry to see a warrior reduced to this. Your crime was no crime according to desert law, but the Christians think differently. I cannot set you free — then I should be shot by the Christians — and I have only a short time with you.’
‘Unlock my shackles,’ Taha said.
‘I cannot, as God is my witness. I am here only because I bribed Shamsu.’
‘God will requite you a thousandfold,’ Taha said. ‘Unlock me. Let me out.’
Abboud glanced over his shoulder furtively. ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘And now you must listen, for I have terrible news for you. Your brother Fahal is here, hiding in the brush outside the town.’
‘Fahal is here!’ Taha exclaimed. ‘But how did he find me?’
‘Listen,’ Abboud said urgently. ‘Your brother has a message for you. A week ago raiders of the Ulad Delim struck at the camp of your people. It was a surprise attack by night.’
‘By night! That is against all’
‘Quiet!’ Abboud hissed. ‘I have only a short time. The fat one will return. Your camp was attacked by night and your clan were taken by surprise. One of the men was killed. All the women and children and the other men were taken prisoner by the Delim, and the camels and goats stolen. Your brother, Fahal, was the only one who escaped, because he was out with the herd at the time. He was alone and didn’t know what to do. Then he met with a Nemadi, who told him you’d been taken to Layoune with some afrang in an iron bird. He rode straight here on his camel and made enquiries about you. He discovered that you were in jail for killing Agayl and ...’
There were footsteps in the corridor outside and Abboud rose quickly. ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Your brother is hidden in the Wadi of Lizards to the north of the town ...’
Taha held out his shackled hands to the hartani. ‘Unlock me!’ he said desperately. But Abboud was already letting himself out of the cell. ‘God’s peace be upon you!’ he said.
A moment later Shamsu’s double-chinned face was pressed through the barred part of the door. ‘Good news?’ he tittered.
Something in Taha exploded then. He leapt up, roaring with anger, and smashed at the door with his manacled hands. The smile was wiped off the slave’s face and he backed away. Taha hurled himself at the door, roaring like a beast, clashing the irons against it again and again and again, until his wrists and arms ran with blood.
*
When Sterling was shown in, Taha was sitting ashen-faced, staring at the wall. He was exhausted, his manacled hands hanging limply, streaked with blood. He turned to look at Sterling as he entered, his eyes blank and lifeless.
‘Why?’ Sterling asked.
Taha looked away. ‘You brought me here against my will,’ he said, his voice distant, strained to near breaking point. ‘You asked me to try your way of life, and I did so and it is not a way of life. It is death in life — just one prison after another. I spent much of my life before the desert in such a prison as this — at least that is how it seems to me now. I was lost in the desert and you did not come for me. Belhaan found me and became my father, and his family became my family. Now I am here and your people have locked me up again for an act that was entirely honourable, while my wife and sons, and my father and cousins lie in the hands of Delim raiders. Better that I died in their defence than rotting here.’
Sterling gasped. He tried to speak but words would not form. He felt himself flush, and suddenly tears were streaming down his face. ‘My God,’ he whispered, ‘what the hell have I done? I just didn’t know ... I didn’t know you had
a wife and children. It ... never even occurred to me. You never told me ...’
He took a deep breath, and wiped tears off his face with a hand. ‘I didn’t know,’ he said again. ‘I told myself you couldn’t really want to stay with those people. I thought you were a kind of prisoner. I never guessed ... I’ve been stupid. Selfish. Even when you were small and I could have spent more time with you, I just sent you off to that awful school. Then you vanished and it was too late. You see, I wanted to make up for the way things were before, but I’ve been lying to myself. You can never go back, and you don’t get a second chance. Children grow up and become strangers ... you have to love them for what they are.’
He put his arms round Taha.
‘Father,’ the youth whispered. ‘Get me out.’
*
It was dark when Churchill pulled up in the yard of the hotel in the newly acquired Jeep. The quays reeked of algae and rotten fish, but there was a dry breeze rasping out of the desert that seemed to sterilize the place.
Sterling was waiting for Churchill when he arrived. The big man made his bulldog face. ‘What do you think?’ he bubbled. ‘Cost a packet, but it’s your money after all, and I’m going to enjoy driving back through Morocco with you and Taha. For me it’ll be just like old times.’
He jumped out, and pointed to the rows of jerry cans strapped in the back. ‘Enough petrol there to get us to Casablanca,’ he said. ‘It’s got everything: four spares, water, an awning for the sun. It’s ex-military — it’s even got weapons-brackets on the bar in the back. I managed to get some compo rations off the army as you suggested and ...’ He picked up an elongated leather case and held it up. ‘Maybe you won’t approve. This is my own addition — a hunting rifle. Taha would like to eat fresh meat. Got plenty of ammunition, too.’
He caught sight of Sterling’s grim face and stopped suddenly. ‘When does he get out of jail?’ he enquired.
‘When we get him out,’ Sterling said.
‘What?’
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