Miss Webster and Chérif

by Patricia Duncker

  ‘This is perfectly true.’

  Elizabeth wondered how to ask for the lavatory without appearing to lose interest in the family descriptions.

  ‘I too have a son. I have four daughters and one son. My son is called Mohammed. My sister’s son is called Chérif. They have grown up here together. I shout for them and still expect to see two dirty children come running out of the dust. But no, they are young men now. They are both more than twenty. Mohammed is just as brilliant as his cousin. But we cannot offer him the things that Saïda can offer to her son. Saïda has a good job and no other children. She can save money. Our lives here are more precarious. We depend on desert people, who are often poor, and passing trade. We would like our son to study. Mais nous, nous n’avons pas les moyens.’

  Elizabeth listened to this speech carefully. She understood at once that she had been chosen, picked out as the recipient of a careful, subtle sales pitch, an obscure discourse of demand and expectation. A market in clever young Arab men was being proposed to her, but she was not interested. It would have been easier to sell her shares in the Hôtel des Voyageurs or a Bedouin carpet which she didn’t like and didn’t need. She went on to the offensive.

  ‘What do you want from me, Madame?’

  Fatima looked startled and not a little shocked. The question could not be answered because the manner in which it had been posed was too ungraciously direct.

  ‘My sister would like you to meet her son.’

  ‘Then I should be delighted to meet him. Send for him at once.’

  She had been settling the hash of other people’s sons for many years, ever since the convent ceased to be Girls Only. She settled deeper and more comfortably into the recycled seat of a defunct Renault and attacked the dates. Elizabeth Webster had decided, unbeknown to herself, for this process had taken place deep in her unconscious mind, to live at risk. Safety does not come first. All her life she had been wary, suspicious and cold. She had spent sixty years frozen into a posture of refusal and denial. Now she decided to open the doors and allow herself the entertainment of unsolicited adventures. Why not? I’ve saved up so much money that I actually count as rich. I may be retired, but I still pay tax. There are no tricky situations which money can’t solve. Let me see your sons. And then I shall be able to work out what it is that you have brought me here to witness and to do. And then, only then, can I decide.

  ‘Massoud!’

  Fatima clapped her hands and her husband answered from the dark shop behind them. Elizabeth shifted her feet and discovered an outline of sand had appeared around each stout white walking shoe, into which her soles had melted. A rapid exchange between husband and wife in the local dialect concluded the business: someone was despatched to find Mohammed and Chérif.

  But this proved to be no simple task. In an oasis village containing thirty dwellings they were nowhere to be found. They had been seen cleaning buckets in a neighbour’s house. No, they had been looking at a camel one of them wanted to purchase. They had been sent out into the desert by the garagiste with his mechanic to help with a lorry that was leaking brake fluid. They were asleep in a nearby grove of date palms. They were digging a new irrigation channel in their cousin’s herb garden. They were watching CNN in the saloon bar of the Hôtel des Voyageurs with two German tourists. They were teasing their sisters behind a grain store. They were working in the Frenchman’s lotissement for a disgracefully low wage. They were far away from the oasis tending goats that were all perched in trees. They were sought in every house along the street. Their names rebounded in the sand. Mohammed! Chérif! But they could not be traced. Search parties were sent out, the children were enlisted. Then others were sent to find the ambassadors that had already gone and also vanished. Every doubtful trail and false lead was followed up. They had been seen playing dice, or updating the website’s weather map at the hotel. They were sweeping sand from the window sills at their uncle’s residence. Wherever they had been seen they were not there now. They were certainly together, but nowhere to be found.

  Abdou grew impatient.

  ‘If we don’t leave now it will be by moonlight that I drive that road.’

  Elizabeth Webster began to think about dinner at the hotel and a long foaming bath. Fatima erupted, distraught at the failure to locate these errant sons, and proceeded to suspect a conspiracy. Her paranoid anxiety overflowed in an unintelligible dialect and ended in a desperate prayer. Elizabeth paid no attention to the chaos. She did not belong here and refused to feel responsible. The lost boys remained irretrievable. They were gone. Abdou finally hustled her back into the taxi just as the light changed to evening. Rested and refreshed, she promised to view both missing sons should they reappear within a fortnight and could make it into town. The taxi and its occupants were waved off like royalty by the massed search parties in the excited street. Abdou’s dusty Citroën banged away into the desert with the crackling radio switched to maximum.

  The desert appeared to change shape and volume in the sharpening shadows. The dunes rose up, humpbacked, like gigantic dolphins negotiating an unearthly element, their backs flexed and supple, rippling with shadows. The hamada opened out like a nomad’s veil, huge, spreading, indigo. She saw the half moon unfold, yellow and vast, lightening their road. The void increased dramatically in size as the darkness above and below stretched out into infinity, like an immense black hand. The temperature plunged. She retrieved her shawl from her basket and peered out into the fabulous, luminous dark. The shadows darkened. Each rock nurtured an eerie double, which lurked beneath, mirroring its shape. The world before her, now completely alien, to which she had neither maps nor compass, proclaimed itself a savage place, without paths, landmarks or hope of rescue. She was in the hands of her guide, who was himself unknown, a figure from fairy tale. But the risks now represented no terrors for her. She sat back in the chariot seat of her dark taxi and gazed out, content, at this miraculous and inexplicable world. Abdou drove the dark horses faster, faster. She asked no more questions. She had learned how to trust him.

  They saw the lights up ahead from a great distance. Abdou immediately slowed down.

  ‘Something’s happening. There’s nothing to be seen on this side of town.’

  She leaned forward and they both peered out at the unintelligible leaping shapes far ahead. As they approached they saw several trucks lined up along the road like wrecked hulks washed ashore. Several men standing on the roadside were gesticulating at one another. They heard shouting.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The taxi crawled forwards and was suddenly in the midst of a mass of uniformed police and armed soldiers swarming over the vehicles. A battered car was being emptied out under torchlights, the driver protesting with excessive gestures. Two soldiers, one with his machine gun trained directly upon them, stopped the taxi. Abdou put his hands in the air and surrendered at once. Elizabeth was unable to follow the exchange, but she did not like the warm smell of oil that exuded from the sleek black barrel.

  ‘Do they want us to get out, Abdou?’

  ‘Yes. Quick. Leave the basket.’

  A slight wind, now cooling fast, tugged at her shawl. Her knees felt stiff and she was unable to stand up easily, but neither of the two armed men bent to help her. Abdou and Elizabeth Webster stood together, silent and bewildered, beside the black Citroën. Elizabeth realised that Abdou was trembling. She stood up straight at last, unafraid but very puzzled.

  ‘Vos papiers, Madame.’

  ‘What is going on? Please explain.’

  ‘Vos papiers.’

  ‘I don’t have them in the taxi. My passport is at my hotel. The Hôtel du Désert.’

  This caused some confusion and irritation. They concentrated upon Abdou instead and began to ransack his boxes of papers and tapes. The taxi’s documents were spread out all over the bonnet and examined with a large square beam, powerful as a searchlight. The soldier shone the beam directly into Abdou’s face whenever h
e came across a document with an official photograph. Elizabeth Webster tried to wander up the line of trucks with the intention of finding out why a roadblock was there in the first place. There were no ambulances or recovery vehicles, no carts overturned or groaning squashed camels, no signs of an accident and no cars or trucks coming from the direction of the town. All the traffic had been stopped. She was unable to see very far into the dark, as the headlights were confusing; then she was briskly dragged back to the taxi by one of the soldiers.

  ‘Is this how you treat tourists?’ She raised her voice in indignation. A uniformed policeman approached. He rose to the challenge.

  ‘It is for your own protection, Madame.’ He spoke English.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to tell me what is going on?’ She drew herself up in the dark and wrapped her shawl around her with a contemptuous flick. The policeman looked a little dusty, but had been well ironed that morning. He sported an excessively neat, clipped beard, a natty piece of facial architecture which appeared scrupulous and vain. She could not see his eyes, so she lowered her veil and made sure that he was unable to see hers.

  He hesitated for a second, then he said in English, ‘There has been a terrorist attack on the main marketplace. A car bomb. Four people have been killed and many more injured. The death toll will certainly rise. And there has been a warning, or at least a rumour, that another bomb is timed to explode somewhere else. We have no idea where. So the town is sealed off.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘About three hours ago.’

  ‘We have been visiting the desert all day, officer. We therefore cannot possibly have been involved in this bomb. And as you well know, the Hôtel du Désert is outside the town walls. I beg you to allow my driver to return me to my hotel.’

  Elizabeth Webster presented this as a formal request, but her manner was both fearsome and severe. The delivery suggested a command. The officer hesitated. She pounced.

  ‘We have no need to cross the town. We can go round by the desert tracks. Please call off these soldiers and allow us to depart. I will vouch for Monsieur Abdou. I am his employer.’

  For a terrible moment the outcome was in doubt. Abdou watched her without appearing to do so. He had not understood her words, but he had grasped the method. Make them think that you are more important than you are, and that if they don’t look sharp there’ll be consequences. Then the officer stood aside and roared at the soldiers.

  ‘Quick, Abdou!’ said Miss Webster. ‘We’re off!’

  She climbed into the back seat unaided and then realised that she had been walking without her sticks. Abdou pulled the taxi out of line. There was now a queue of drivers behind them being bullied and menaced, their vehicles threatened with immediate dismemberment if any irregularities were discovered in their papers.

  ‘I assume that you can find a back route that is passable.’

  ‘With my eyes shut. Thank you, Miss Webster. Accrochez-vous! We will escape!’

  And off they went, shuddering across undulating gravel at crawler speeds. A row of sitting camels loomed up in the headlights. Abdou passed so close that Elizabeth could smell them and heard one belch. A small brick shack with a paraffin lantern hung outside the doorway materialised from hulks of darkness. They saw three sepulchral faces, gaunt and fixed like images on tombstones, peering fearfully at the approaching lights. Abdou turned on the radio, but the dance music didn’t come on line. Instead he picked up explosions of static and thin muttered voices.

  ‘I can get the police channels.’

  Everything was in Arabic, or as Abdou explained, approximately Arabic. Elizabeth clutched the front seat and bent over, straining to decipher a language she would never understand. Abdou translated the essentials.

  ‘They are still searching all the public buildings. The death toll has risen. My cousins were in the market today. No one has claimed responsibility. There is a news blackout. But the news has got out anyway.’

  The torpor of the day vanished; they both sizzled with adrenaline and muffled terror.

  ‘Abdou! Are you sure we’re going the right way?’

  It occurred to Elizabeth that they might be heading straight for another roadblock, or that they would be taken for escaping terrorists and liquidated by mistake. She imagined bullets, fine as sand, peppering the taxi. The unruly desert juddered beneath her as the taxi bucked and swung.

  ‘Mais non. Je suis bien sûr. I know where we have to go. Sit back, Madame Webster. It is very rough underfoot.’

  The headlights rose and dipped, like a ship at sea. Suddenly the car wallowed and slumped. They were stuck in a patch of soft sand. Abdou cursed and leaped out. He scrabbled around the back wheels, which had the effect of burying the taxi ever deeper. Miss Webster became aware of a decided list to port. Abdou abandoned the futile attempt to dig the taxi out with his bare hands and grappled with the ropes on the roof rack. Elizabeth Webster finally glimpsed what the surfboards were actually for. She climbed out and helped Abdou lay the boards under the tyres. As she grovelled in the dirt she noticed that the deeper sand was still warm. They could hear someone crying and a chorus of yells and howls, far, far away. As their eyes became used to the moonlight they managed to wedge the ends of the surfboards on a solid gravel surface.

  ‘Get in. Drive. I’ll push.’

  ‘Madame Webster! You are a lady. You cannot push.’ Abdou looked desperately around at the all-encompassing dark and the distant fiery lights above the town. If she didn’t push no one else was going to.

  ‘In my country, ladies push. Get behind that wheel and drive. Go on, get in,’ she snapped, and he did.

  And so Elizabeth Webster, who a month before had barely been able to walk one hundred yards to the village shop, sank up to her ankles in warm sand, heaving an old black Citroën on to the surface of the tôles, whose purpose she had at last understood. Our situation is not desperate and we will soon be home. The radio hissed and crackled as the taxi crept along the barely visible trails in the dark. It was midnight before they saw the seven palms outlined by the security lights. The gate was guarded by two uniformed men who raised their guns as Abdou drew up in front of the hotel. The children had vanished. There were very few lights on in the main buildings and no music floated out on to the terrace of the Desert Rendezvous. Everyone was inside, clustered into the salon, watching alarmingly local horror on CNN.

  ‘Abdou! Miss Webster! Thank God!’

  Saïda rushed down the steps, her high-heeled sandals, an evening speciality, clattering beneath her. In the security lights her jewels winked and glittered, sinister as the eye of a toad.

  ‘How did you get through the town? There are roadblocks everywhere. Oh Miss Webster, thank God you have returned safely. Four of my Dutch guests are missing. They were out in the town. We have no idea where they are or what has happened to them. The bomb went off in the main square – where there are all the restaurants and clubs ...’

  ‘Really? They said it was in the market.’ Miss Webster liked to get things right. Abdou was unpacking all her equipment. She ignored the soldiers and the guns and accepted her basket from his hands. ‘Thank you, Abdou. Please don’t worry about me, Saïda. The English are quite used to bombs. The IRA has been blowing us up for decades. I have been in good hands, quite safe and very comfortable. We had the pleasure of meeting your family.’

  Everyone clustered around them, anxious to hear the whole story, as if they were shipwreck survivors. But she spoke only to her guide. They kissed each other on both cheeks in the French style and then shook hands warmly as if they had served in the same company and survived the assault together. The little taxi man no longer looked cheeky and confident; his white djellaba was crumpled and soiled, his turban had been destabilised by the episode in the sandbank and his teeth now looked like an unfortunate dental disaster, rather than a special effect. The old English lady stood up straight in the glossy night. She carefully balanced her sticks, basket, shawl, veils and hat, and reac
hed into her jacket pocket. No one could see how much money she gave him as it was carefully folded into a roll. The transaction remained private.

  ‘Thank you, Abdou, for a wonderful day. Here is a little extra recompense for all your trouble, and thank you for bringing me safely home.’

  3

  The Visitor

  Why had anyone bothered to bomb a public square in a small desert town on the remote edge of the Atlas Mountains? The square contained a mosque with an elegant minaret, a daily market, a donkey park, two cafés, a small hotel, three restaurants, one of which was in every known guide to the country and much photographed on account of the green, ceramic tiles around the dining room and its old French colonial décor. What was there to bomb? Terrorists went for capitals, for spectacular atrocities, which would kill thousands at a stroke. The masterclass had been given by the 9/11 bombers. But even the Al-Qaida experts were forced to make two assaults on the World Trade Center before they got it down. Practising, that’s what my local terrorists were doing. That was a practice run. And a great success it turned out to be – I don’t think. Two dozen dead and scores of wounded, some of them maimed and crippled for the rest of their lives. Four Dutch tourists and all the rest their own people. Inefficient, that’s my view. Far better to pick off the white Western tourists with crack snipers. After all, they’re easy enough to spot, wandering round the market nearly naked in skintight shorts and off-the-shoulder T-shirts. But maybe they are after their own government. Maybe it’ll be the king’s palace in Rabat next time. Or the police headquarters. A bomb left inside the lift. Or maybe a guided missile attack on the British fleet nestled in the lee of Gibraltar? Theatre is the language of terrorism. They need an audience to witness the event; otherwise the performance is worthless. If they could hire Jean Michel Jarre to do the fireworks, or that fat madman who filmed all the Tolkein, and get them to design the special effects on the tie-in computer game, they would. Maybe even terrorism has to be commercially viable. Late September, and time to get on with clearing up my garden before the winter. Oh my God, just look at my rhubarb, wolfed by slugs.