by Peter Tonkin
‘There is, say, sixty kilometres between the oasis at El Tor, where your friend believes his sister to have come ashore, and the oasis at Abu Zenima, which is the next one north along the coast. Sixty kilometres – a journey of little more than an hour in a car. Nothing. However, consider this. The oasis of Feiran is about the same distance from El Tor. Sixty kilometres or so. But it is in the mountains to the north-east, in behind Gebel Serbal, whose peak is more than two thousand metres high. This sixty-kilometre trek cannot so easily be made by car. The last ten kilometres, at least, must be made on foot. So a journey of little more than an hour becomes a trek of at least six hours. And the next oasis north of Feiran, Ain Akhbar, is a mere thirty kilometres further but that pathway is all in the mountains. On foot, that is a long day’s march. Not that anyone would travel right through the day, but still, thirty kilometres on foot, in a place where three can be the difference between life and death.
‘There is one road through the southern mountains. Only one – though it has sidetracks every now and then. It links El Tor on the west coast to Ras Abu Galum, just north of Dahab on the east coast. It follows Wadi Feiran for the most part. It is there – at least partly – because it passes close by two of the most holy sites on earth: the Monastery of Saint Catherine where Musa, peace be upon him, saw the burning bush and was directed to return to Egypt. And Mount Sinai itself, where the Ten Commandments were delivered to him.
‘In fact, there are really only three roads across the Sinai. The first is the one I have just mentioned. The second is the one that joins Suez to Taba, and passes through Nekhel. Nekhel is in the heart of the Sinai and the roadway is the border between the South Sinai and the North Sinai – between the Amber Zone and the Red Zone. Then there is the coast road joining Quantara Sharq on the canal with Rafa on the border of Palestine.’
‘You mean there are no roads running north/south?’ asked Richard.
‘None that go the length of the Sinai through the interior. There is a coast road linking Sharm with Dahab, Neweiba and Taba in the east, then running north along the Israeli border to Rafa. And there is another linking Sharm with Suez and Port Said in the west. But no roads run northwards though the mountains in the south or northward across the great desert plateau or the Gebel Al Tib mountain ranges in the centre. There is one road north from Nekhel to El Arish on the Mediterranean coast, but that crosses the great desert which is like the Great Sand Sea of the Sahara, and the dunes often sweep across and bury it.’
‘Dunes,’ said Richard, to whom this was something of a revelation, even though he had captained ships passing through the Suez Canal which ran alongside it.
‘Dunes twenty to thirty metres high that drift with the wind like waves on the ocean.’ Saiid nodded.
‘So, anyone smuggling – or being smuggled – across the Sinai from south-west to north-east – from El Tur, say, to Taba and the Israeli border, faces a flat coastal desert backed by all but impenetrable mountains more than two thousand metres high, followed by another trackless desert plateau that has only one road running east–west across it and another range of mountains sitting behind it also reaching more than a thousand metres in height, then they get faced with your own equivalent of the Great Sand Sea with dunes that can reach thirty metres or a hundred feet. With what, a dozen recorded oases, which smugglers would want to avoid in any case. All this in temperatures that regularly top fifty degrees Celsius in the shade. And, once you get across the road past Nekhel, it’s not just the Gebel Al Tib and the dunes, it’s being trapped between Hezbollah or al-Qaeda and the Egyptian army as you sneak up towards Gaza and a warm welcome in all sorts of ways from either the Israelis or the Palestinians, depending on which tunnels you are hoping to sneak through.
‘And, what with one thing and another, you’ll probably have to do most of this five hundred kilometre journey on foot because there are no roads or any access even for four-by-fours. Furthermore, there are no obvious pathways, while the only people who really know their way around are the Bedouin, and especially those Bedouin who refuse to cave in to economic, social and political pressure and settle in the cities. Those Bedouin who have been forced to turn to smuggling, in fact, or watch their families starve.’
‘That’s about it,’ said Saiid. His face crinkled into another wide smile. ‘I’m pleased to see you were paying attention. I was afraid the food might have distracted you.’
‘But there are ways through,’ said Richard, the rising inflection of his tone making it clear that this was a question rather than a statement. ‘Daunting and deadly as it sounds, even before we start to include the resident fauna like scorpions and half a dozen sorts of venomous snakes such as the one that bit Nahom; there must be ways through, otherwise there would be no smuggling or trafficking. That stands to reason.’
‘You are right, Mister Richard, there are ways through.’ Saiid nodded in reply. ‘Though I have to observe that you are a little naive. The market is always there – people who are starving in Africa will always want to try for a better life, no matter what the risks. I suspect that smugglers could take hundreds, perhaps thousands, into the interior and just dump them there – and still get more hopeful men and women to come. Certainly, all you need to do is look at the death toll in the Mediterranean of people desperate to get from Africa to Europe through Italy. Two hundred more were drowned last week; thousands drown every year – and yet they still come in their thousands, paying upwards of ten thousand American dollars each. And I am sure they would still come here to the Sinai even if no one ever got through …’
‘Because the traffickers have people on the ground, in Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, selling the hope of a better life like confidence tricksters,’ said Robin quietly, her tone flattened by the horror of what they were discussing.
‘That is so,’ agreed Saiid. ‘Like your banks in Britain selling Payment Protection Insurance that they knew to be worthless, perhaps. It is making a profit that is important.’
‘But they do get through,’ said Richard, his inflection rising again. ‘People do get through to Israel, Saudi and the Emirates.’
‘They do. Because the smugglers and traffickers can make more profit that way. You can’t sell on a corpse, not even for spare part surgery, though I am sure they would try. While their victims are still alive there is more money to be made, as your desperate friend Nahom would seem to prove.’
‘But if there are ways through, then why don’t the authorities find them and close them?’ asked Robin.
‘In some countries that would be because the authorities too can make a handsome profit from the trade. But here it is more complex than that. The ways through the Sinai are known only to those who use them regularly and repeatedly. Nature and even history conspire to outwit the authorities. The pathways are at once ancient and yet ever-changing. They can vary depending on who has gone before and what decisions they have made along the way. They can move, appear or vanish with the passing of each of the seasons, within the seasons, and even with a change in the weather. Not even our weather here in the Sinai – indeed, a change in the weather nearby can be enough. You will have noticed, for example, that the great north wind, the shamaal, has been blowing in Saudi during the last few days. The result here in Sharm has been extremely hot winds day and night. This will mean that several of the more popular routes will have been closed – those that rely on the smaller pools of water, which are fatally transient. Puddles that form from dew when the nights are much colder than the days and collect in depressions in the rocks. Streams that come and go mere inches below the beds of wadis that are apparently dry. Water that can be found within the plump leaves of some varieties of desert plants. Little groves of watermelon that ripen or wither depending on the height of the sun. If Nahom’s sister is with a group following such a route, they will have gone to ground, literally, in caves and caverns such as this.’ Saiid gestured to the low-ceilinged cavern they were sitting in. ‘Our word in Arabic for cavern is magaara. Such
places are cool and provide shelter. They will not move until the nights cool down again, and the temporary water supplies are restored.’
Intrigued, Richard said, ‘Have you any idea where on earth they might be?’
‘You have heard, perhaps, of The Wilderness of Sin?’
Richard regularly acted as a church warden when he was at home in England, so he knew his Bible well. ‘That’s mentioned in the Book of Exodus,’ he said. ‘The Wilderness of Sin is one of the locations that Moses – sorry, Musa – led the Children of Israel through on his way to Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments.’
‘It’s where God sent manna to rain from the sky, isn’t it?’ added Robin.
‘Like many places mentioned in the early books of the Bible, the Wilderness of Sin is real,’ explained Saiid. ‘Though I’m not sure whether you can still get manna there. It is an area in the mountains inland from the oasis of Abu Zenima that we have already mentioned.’
‘Sixty kilometres north of El Tor and the secret cove where Tsibekti and Bisrat came ashore,’ said Richard, his memory as sharp as ever. ‘It’s taken them ten days to cover, what, a hundred and fifty kilometres?’ he added incredulously.
‘Travelling at night, in secret, on foot.’ Saiid shrugged. ‘It is not so inconceivable, but I would suspect that they will have reached the wilderness within four or five days of setting out. It is a place where water can be both found and carried – the Oasis of Ain Akhdar is not too far, so if the transient water supplies dry up, a little ingenuity and some plastic jerrycans will keep everyone hydrated. And more. Although this trade is almost timelessly ancient – does not the Bible once again talk of Joseph being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers? – it is also modern and adaptable. In the township near Ain Akhdar there are facilities the smugglers find useful. Internet access. Wi-Fi. ATM machines. You do realize, don’t you, that Nahom could simply have come carrying his phone and a credit card, and that would have been sufficient? But the main strength of the Wilderness of Sin, from the smugglers’ point of view, remains the fact that the mountains there are full of caverns or magaarat, so concealment is easy as well. I have even heard talk of gold and copper mines in the area. And, I believe, a ruined fort. The whole place is a maze. And is, therefore, supposed to be a popular resting place.’
‘So why don’t the authorities …’ Robin began.
‘The Wilderness of Sin has an area of nearly a thousand square kilometres.’
‘That makes it half the size of West Sussex, back home,’ observed Richard. ‘Remember the Sinai as a whole is bigger than Belgium; in fact, it’s damn near the size of Belgium and Holland combined.’
‘And, as we have already said,’ emphasized Saiid, ‘this area half the size of your West Sussex is a three-dimensional maze of mountains two thousand metres high, wadis that wind crazily all over the place, thousands of magaarat, half of which have never been fully explored, mine workings and ruins which were probably ancient when the prophet Musa, peace be upon him, led the Israelites through.’
‘Why would Tsibekti still be there?’ wondered Robin. ‘Wouldn’t they want to move on? Especially if there is a shortage of water because of the shamaal?’
‘Look at it from the smugglers’ point of view,’ suggested Saiid. ‘The moment they got Tsibekti to call home, they had to stop and wait. There is no point in getting Nahom – or whoever – to come rushing to her rescue laden with yet more money if they’ve moved on so far that he can’t catch up with them. So they want to stay somewhere close to the coast. They’re not in any rush. They have water – and probably food. As long as their merchandise stays alive and fairly healthy their investment is secure. And consider, Tsibekti came in through El Tur. As far as I know – which is what you have told me – Nahom was coming in through the same way. The Wilderness of Sin is the closest safe place to that particular section of the coast – therefore it is the logical place to wait. Nahom believes they were going to guide him to his sister using the phone. That is a standard ploy, but of course it is yet another lie. Actually, I am sure at least one of the others on that boat was working for the smugglers and would have found a way to guide him into the wilderness.’
‘He didn’t have a guide last time he tried,’ Robin observed.
‘And he was starting a hundred kilometres too far south,’ agreed Saiid.
‘You think they’ll try to come and get him?’ asked Richard. ‘I didn’t count the money in his money belt but it looked like a fair amount. Well worth putting a little effort into.’
‘But only if they know he’s got it,’ inserted Husan, who had been sitting silently all this time.
‘They must know he’s got something,’ observed Richard thoughtfully. ‘If they had people on the boat, and I agree they must have, then they’d have signalled ahead, surely? It would just have needed a quick phone call. Because what would be the point of him coming if he didn’t have the ransom with him?’
‘There are several things to consider, then,’ said Saiid. ‘Whether the smugglers’ associate on the boat made sure he stayed with Nahom if Nahom was the main target. Whether that person or people are still with him, or rather with Major Ibrahim in custody and waiting for him to come up from hospital. Whether they can arrange to get him out of jail and as far as the Wilderness of Sin, if that’s where Tsibekti and the others are. And, indeed, whether Nahom was the only person aboard who was bringing ransom money.’
‘If there were others,’ said Richard thoughtfully, ‘then they’re either in prison in Hurgada or in prison in Sharm – and whatever they were carrying is in the hands of the authorities, like Nahom’s money belt.’
‘But where does that leave poor Tsibekti – and anyone else who’s with her and in the same boat as she is?’ asked Robin.
‘Up the wadi without a paddle,’ answered Richard with unintentional brutality.
Richard’s plans to parlay the fact that Robin was no longer angry with him and the thoughts prompted by the barrel full of oysters into a night of romance all came to nothing. Even in the face of a low, romantic moon just a night or two past its fullest, of a sky scattered with stars like candle flames flickering in the lingering heat haze, neither of them could rouse themselves from the depression that the conclusion of their talk with Saiid had engendered. Instead of doing what he had planned, they lay side by side in the silvery, air-conditioned darkness, each wakeful, wrapped in their individual thoughts until Robin exploded, ‘Dammit, Richard! We must be able to do something!’
‘I don’t see what. We have no power or influence here. Major Ibrahim and Sergeant Sabet seem capable, and I’m sure they’re doing their best. Anything we’re likely to do will simply get in their way and be more of a hindrance than a help. And, of course, I gave my word to Husan that we wouldn’t go off after Tsibekti and her kidnappers as a condition of him introducing us to cousin Saiid in the first place. So I’m afraid that, one way or another, we’re painted right into a corner. As far as I can see, all we can do is keep paying Nahom’s hospital bills and hope he recovers quickly.’
‘So that’s it?’ she answered, frustration making her sound even angrier than she was. ‘We just sit here and let those dreadful men do what they want to that poor girl, then chop off her fingers, cut her throat and leave her dead in a ditch?’
‘A wadi.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Richard! Ditch, wadi, gebel, cave or magaara, the poor girl will still be raped, tortured, mutilated and bloody well left for dead, won’t she?’
That was where the conversation ended. Sleep did not come swiftly or easily for either of them, but it came eventually, and it lasted through the night.
So when Sergeant Sabet led a raid on the Villa Shahrazad just after dawn the next morning, it came as a complete surprise. The first thing Richard knew about it was when a distraught Sasha knocked on the bedroom door with unaccustomed forcefulness. He jumped awake, heart thumping, surfacing from a dream that would have shocked the bloodthirsty Macbeth. ‘Come in,’ he
called, having glanced across at Robin, who had not stirred. The bedsheet covered her almost as completely as the robes favoured by the most conservative of Muslims. Sasha came in. ‘Mister Richard,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘It is the police. They believe the illegal alien Nahom Selassie is hiding here. They have paperwork.’
Search warrants, or their Egyptian equivalent, thought Richard, glancing down at Robin once again. He considered shaking her awake, but decided at once that he could not even consider doing that in front of either Sasha or Sergeant Sabet and her men.
‘They wish to search the entire villa, and of course they want to speak to you and Mistress Robin.’
‘Right. Thanks for the warning, Sasha. We’ll get dressed and be down as soon as possible.’
Sasha left the room and closed the door almost silently.
At this point Richard did shake Robin awake, almost as brutally as he had dismissed Tsibekti up her wadi without a paddle. And he was right to do so, for under normal circumstances she would not actually surface fully until she had been presented with at least one cup of tea. At the third shake, she sat up in just the same way that she did yesterday when he’d soaked her. But providentially in a better mood.
‘What?’ she asked, less confrontationally than twenty-four-hours earlier.
‘Nahom’s gone again,’ he said.
‘So?’ Reading between the lines, he understood she was wondering what in heaven’s name has that got to do with me?
‘They think he’s here. There’s a whole bunch of policemen wanting to search the villa and cross-examine us.’
‘Now?’ Her gaze darted round the room, looking for an outfit suitable for a cross examination which she could get dressed in within the next few minutes.
‘’Fraid so,’ he rumbled and rolled out of bed. The decision was easy for him – slacks and a shirt, both readied before he tucked down last night. Sandals and he was off.
Under normal circumstances, he would have stayed with Robin as she orientated and clothed herself. But his interest had been piqued by the intellectual leap he had made – not that it was a large one. If Sabet was looking for Nahom then Nahom had vanished again. Now that was something he wanted a lot more information about. Especially after the dinner conversation with Saiid last night.