The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

“Hmmm. I didn’t want to travel there and back over the same ground …,” Anselm said.

  While we were immersed in these logistics and wondering whether Alkoye had lied to Anselm about this, too, Sali suddenly sprang forward, grunted, and smashed the ground with his camel stick. To me, it looked like he was making a particularly emphatic point to Walid, but when he lifted his stick it was draped with the limp form of a lifeless serpent. It was clearly a horned viper—the deadly nocturnal Saharan sidewinder. Though it couldn’t harm us now, my body surged with adrenaline. How many more might we encounter? Sali casually flung his kill to the side and we kept walking, I, for one, glad to have this human Riki Tiki Tavi on my team.

  When we stopped an hour or so later and laid out our blankets, I scouted the area for firewood, which was scarce. Gathering a few dead twigs here and there, I realized I still had some energy left in me. My back hardly hurt and my sores had scabbed over. My body seemed to be adjusting to the rigors of desert travel after all.

  In the daylight, I got my first good look at Sali. He wore a gray djellaba over a blue boubou, cinched around the waist with a rope into which was tucked a long, sheathed knife. His chestnut-colored face was lean and angular, his ears pointy, his smile sharp. His hair was cropped nearly to the scalp; a goatee shot from his chin like an arrow, completing his devilish appearance.

  We came upon the well at Harseini after less than an hour of walking. There were only three other people there—an old man, a teenage boy, and his younger sister—and their two camels, two donkeys, and handful of goats. While Douaya had felt like the Saharan equivalent of a truck stop along an interstate, Harseini was more like a mom and pop service station on a rural two-lane road. The well wasn’t quite as deep, but still plummeted far into the terrestrial abyss. The troughs were shallow cement basins. The surrounding area was a broad sandy waste; dust whipped through the air, flung by a vigorous breeze.

  Since we’d arrived at Douaya while others were watering, I hadn’t realized that the ropes, dowels, and goatskin buckets weren’t fixtures of the wells, but were carried by travelers. Walid and I didn’t have any of those things, but Sali did. He rigged the system, tied a thick grass rope to one of his camels, and, once the bucket had hit bottom and filled with water, led the camel away. The taut rope rode smoothly over the dowel, creaking with a sound that reminded me of the scene in The Little Prince when the pilot and the prince find the well; the little prince pulls the rope over a squeaky pulley, raising a bucket, and says, “We have wakened the well, and it is singing.”

  Our dowel sang sweetly until it suddenly fell silent as the rope went slack. Walid called out to Sali, who ran back to the well. We peered over the edge and saw the broken end of the rope swaying in the void below. Anselm and I glanced at each other, saying, “Oh, shit,” with our eyes, then looked at Walid and Sali. They looked at each other, saying, “Oh shit,” with their eyes. Then they looked around for the boy.

  He was sitting on a blanket about twenty yards away with his sister and the old man. Sali called him to us and explained the situation, pointing down into the well. The boy pulled his beige djellaba off over his head; underneath, he wore lapis-blue nylon shorts and a navy T-shirt. Being the smallest one present except for the girl, he was the logical choice to send down after the bucket.

  The end of the rope that just broke was tied around one of the boy’s skinny thighs. Another rope that looked just as unreliable was tied around his other thigh and set over a second dowel, provided by the old man. A strip of cloth was tied around his chest, over the ropes, to keep him from flipping upside down. The boy pushed off the edge of the well as the ropes tightened in Walid’s and Sali’s hands. He hovered over the gaping hole, then was slowly lowered into it as Walid and Sali let the ropes out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Kneeling, I pressed my palms down on the rough lip of the well and watched the boy disappear into the darkness. Gripped with dread, I waited for the scream, followed by the splash, that I knew was coming. For anyone to trust their life to these ropes of twisted grass that had been spliced and respliced up and down their length was totally insane. If the boy fell, how would they get him out? Send someone else down on the very same ropes to rescue him? It was like The Three Stooges meets Touching the Void.

  After a couple of very long minutes, a shout echoed up from the depths. Sali tied his rope to his camel and led it out; Walid took up the slack in his rope with his hands. At last, the top of the boy’s head emerged from the shadows into the light. I exhaled for what felt like the first time since he’d entered the well. A few seconds later, he was sitting on the edge of the well, his lips parted in a smile of relief. But he was empty-handed. The leather bucket, weighted with water, had sunk beyond his reach.

  The old man, who had been watching nervously, offered to lend us his bucket. Sali tied it to the rope, then dropped it into the well. He led the camel away, and this time the bucket rose to the top, full. Walid and I grabbed it, then, with water sloshing over our legs, heaved it over to the trough, from which the three camels drank. Though they could have gone many more days without touching water, Walid was being conservative, looking out for their best interests and ours. By keeping them well watered now, Lachmar and L’beyya would stay stronger and have an easier time later on when they’d have to go without it. When the trough was empty, the camel on the rope was switched out so he could drink as Lachmar hoisted the bucket.

  With the camels taken care of, we filled our tubes. Sali carried a traditional leather water sack, which looked like the skinned goat it was—its legs were tied closed at the feet; the places where the tail, penis, and anus would have been were sewn shut; water was poured through its headless neck, which was lashed closed when not in use. Goatskins keep the water inside cooler than do rubber tubes, since as the water slowly seeps into the leather, evaporative cooling takes effect. The disadvantage of the leather is that it needs to be oiled, which makes the water taste a little queer. These days, many nomads use goatskins in the summer and inner tubes in the winter. Both are known as guerbas.

  As Sali, Anselm, and I began walking north again, Walid stopped to talk with the old man; it was clear they were having a disagreement, but we were too far ahead for me to tell what it was about. Walid caught up to us quickly and continued on as though nothing had happened; within a minute, we heard a shout from behind, and turned to see the boy running to catch us, dragging a goat on a rope behind him. We paused, and when he reached us he and Walid exchanged a few words, then he handed Walid the goat’s lead and Walid gave him some money.

  As though it knew what was in store, the goat struggled against the rope. As Walid tugged it forward, it bleated like a baby in distress. Finally, Walid asked me to smack the animal with my camel stick to keep it moving. Putting aside my notions of animal ethics, which seemed utterly bourgeois in this setting, I struck it firmly on its hindquarters. It scampered along so Walid no longer had to yank on it, then it resisted again. I struck it again, and it moved again. This routine went on for about half an hour, until we came to a thorn tree that cast a wide web of shade.

  The goat was small, its head just higher than my knees. It was short-haired and white with light gray freckles, brown ears, black eyes. The tip of its tail was frayed like a wornout paintbrush. It had no horns. Walid tied it to the tree while we unloaded and hobbled the camels. It bleated incessantly, as though pleading for its life.

  Walid led the doomed goat a few yards away, took off the rope, and held the animal down in the sand, tilting its head backward. Sali unsheathed his steel knife and drew it across the goat’s throat, hard and fast, with neither mercy nor malice. Blood shot in an arc from the severed jugular, splattering and pooling on the sand. Walid held the head back for a few moments, then left the goat lying on its side to bleed out. The four of us scavenged fallen branches from underneath the tree; Walid built a fire three times as big as any we’d had yet and, once a sufficient base of coals was established, put a pot of water on to boil.

/>   Sali went back to the goat, cut its head clean off, then began skinning it. He tore the hide as little as possible, essentially peeling it downward, separating it from the flesh with short, precise strokes of his knife. The legs gave him the most trouble, so, while sitting on the ground, Walid held the goat’s fleshy body while Sali grasped the skin, and both of them leaned back, pulling against each other until each leg was stripped bare. Though the raw meat would dehydrate and keep well for a long time, the organs wouldn’t, and had to be cooked immediately. The heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver were tossed into the pot of water. The intestines were cut into finger-length pieces, then the stomach was sliced open, revealing a huge blob of putrid, partially digested grass. The lining was rinsed off and sliced up, then it and the intestines were added to the stew. Half of a leg was hacked off and placed directly on the hot coals. The rest of the carcass was rinsed, halved lengthwise, and stuck on the tree’s spikes to dry, along with the hide.

  Walid, and Sali much more so, were so enthusiastic about everything involved in cooking this goat, it seemed like they’d caught meat fever. They didn’t seem to notice the blood and other fluids that splashed on their clothing and covered their hands. They rebuffed Anselm’s and my offers to help, so we hovered around, watching with interest and taking pictures.

  While we sat in the shade waiting for the organs to cook, Sali took the goat’s milk sac and kneaded it with his hands. After a few minutes, he opened it and offered the contents around; the milk inside had congealed to the consistency of yogurt. I tasted it tentatively, expecting something sour and foul, but it proved to be delicious, refreshing and clean, an appetizer better than the course that followed.

  Walid stuck his knife into the pot, chopped up the larger organs, scooped a heaping pile of steaming offal onto a plate, and passed it to Anselm and I. We looked at each other with an expression similar to the one we shared when the bucket got lost at the bottom of the well. Neither of us really wanted to eat it, but we felt we couldn’t refuse. In the past, when I’d been confronted by similar culinary situations, there was always other food served as well, so I could nibble a little at the organs, eat other things, then claim to be full without having to experiment with the parts that struck me as most disgusting. This, however, was the all-entrails special.

  Using our fingers, Anselm and I picked at the plate like we were eating from a box of mixed chocolates, searching for the pieces we liked best—or disliked least—while Walid and Sali hungrily devoured what was left in the pot. In the end, we were left mostly with intestines and stomach lining. Fortunately, Anselm preferred the stomach—which was like a rubbery tongue with outsized taste buds—and I preferred the intestines—which required very little chewing before swallowing.

  While Sali and Walid were cracking the roasted leg bones with their knives and greedily sucking out the marrow, I reminded myself that billions of people in the world regularly eat offal; that dead animal parts are dead animal parts and there’s nothing objectively gross about eating any of them. But aside from their off-putting taste, texture, and appearance, I couldn’t quite shake the prejudices of my first-world upbringing, which were decidedly anti-guts. I resorted to slurping down the intestines, pretending they were made of Jell-O, but it only helped a little. When the plate was clean, Anselm and I shared a moment of silent relief, then cleansed our palates with succulent roasted leg meat.

  Before we knew it, noon was upon us. Rather than strike out into the heat on full (and in my case semi-nauseated) stomachs, we opted to rest and digest for a few hours. I read, dozed, and wrote, appreciating every moment of this day that, while gastronomically challenging, was turning into something of a holiday.

  Once on the move again, we soon left the grassy, pastoral-feeling flats behind us and entered a land of sand. Orange dunes rose like whales breaking the surface of the sea, which we maneuvered around like sailors in tiny skiffs. Serpentine ridges of sand cut sharp profiles against the bleached-out sky. The landscape was far more barren, yet far more captivating, than any we had yet traversed. Before, the unchanging terrain numbed my eyes; here, the sensuality of the dunes entranced me, satisfying a hunger for beauty that I hadn’t realized I was craving.

  For the first time, we traveled with our camels unhitched, meaning that I was in full control of driving Lachmar. Holding his lead in one hand as I sat atop his hump, I could finally picture myself as a true desert traveler rather than a tourist on a tether. Lachmar proved to be a willful beast, and riding him was akin to driving a car with poor alignment, no power steering, and minor transmission problems. Disinclined to follow along with the others, he forced me to actively goad him with my camel stick while clucking and slurping until my mouth went dry. I felt some initial pangs of guilt when slapping his hide, until my frustrations at him for forcing me to do it absolved me of any remorse. He occasionally veered to the sides, aiming for anything that looked edible instead of staying on course, requiring me to redirect him by pulling his lead to one side or another. I had the distinct sense he knew that I was a less-than-confident driver and was trying to take advantage of my uncertainties. Over the next few hours, my technique improved as I learned to handle him more firmly, and we rode into the night under a clear sky ashimmer with stars.

  Inspired by attaining the next level of camel mastery, when we stopped a few hours after dark, I dismounted from Lachmar while he was still standing, sliding awkwardly off the front of his hump and dropping to the ground. It was another threshold clumsily crossed, and I never again couched Lachmar before getting down.

  Walid said we would cook a small dinner, sleep for just a few hours, then get up and leave. He asked me to set the alarm on my watch for 1 AM.

  Sleeping was one thing I never had trouble doing. Between the effort of riding and walking for hours, and simply enduring the pummeling heat, sleep was more precious to me than food or even water. Every night, as soon as I laid down on my blanket, I passed out, wearing the same clothes I had worn all day, day after day.

  The alarm jarred me awake at one. I called Walid’s name a few times before he stirred. When he did, he mumbled to reset it for five, then rolled over and went back to sleep. I was grateful for the reprieve.

  In the morning, we soon left the dunes behind us and entered a world as flat as a pane of glass. The landscape looked exactly the same in every direction: a level floor of sand stretching to the horizon line, which was perfectly horizontal. Clumps of tall yellowed grasses sprouted here and there, as did the rare thorn tree. Because all sense of depth was devoured by the extreme flatness, the trees up ahead, which were scattered quite far apart, appeared to form a thick forest; like the stars in the night sky, it was impossible to tell that they were situated at varying distances from us. As we traveled, passing trees one by one, the edge of the illusory forest never neared, because it didn’t exist.

  Anselm and I talked while we walked. He was mildly obsessing over the fact that he wasn’t traveling through Bou J’beha, and needed to voice the frustrations that had been running amok in his mind during the many silent hours we spent on camelback. Alkoye had clearly offered Anselm what he’d wanted with little concern for whether or not it would be delivered. It made me wonder if I might be the rube in an even bigger con job; I began to fear that Walid and I would arrive at the good grazing grounds only to find ourselves without a caravan to join, meaning I’d have traveled to the middle of the Sahara for nothing. I kept these concerns to myself, however, and focused instead on Anselm’s situation. We discussed his options at length, and he finally decided that if it turned out to be impossible to travel back from Araouane to Timbuktu with a caravan (another promise of Alkoye’s that he’d all but lost faith in), he’d offer to pay Sali more money to return through Bou J’beha, and deduct that amount from the remainder that he owed Alkoye.

  Once we had thoroughly pulverized the subject from every angle, I figured it’d be a good idea to get his mind off it—and mine off my own doubts—so I enlisted his help in developing
an idea I’d had the day before: writing a cookbook of authentic Saharan recipes. It would be a slim volume, to match the paltry variety of dishes on the nomad menu, and would be titled Cooking with Sand, since that was the one common ingredient in everything we ate.

  For a versatile snack or easy-to-prepare appetizer, we had Lightly Sanded Peanuts and Dates, and the less exotic Dry Sandy Biscuits. We naturally included the ubiquitous Saharan Rice (made with slivers of goat meat, sun-aged goat butter, and anywhere from a tablespoon to half a cup of sand), and featured a few other specialties: Offal (Awful) Stew with Sand, Gritty Millet Gruel, and Soft Noodles Al Dente. Not to leave out the drinks, our book would teach people how to brew Sweet Green Tea (Served in a Sandy Glass); to complete the genuine dining experience, we’d recommend Warm Water Mixed with Camel Spit.

  When it was time to ride, I decided to try mounting Lachmar while he was still standing. While Walid and Sali looked on with amused expressions, I stood by Lachmar’s head and paused to gather myself. I grasped his ear lightly with one hand, then reached up and took hold of one of the cargo ropes with the other. When Lachmar lowered his neck, I leapt up onto it and nearly toppled over the other side. Walid and Sali hooted with laughter, and I quickly flung myself to my right and grabbed the cargo pad with both hands to steady myself. While I balanced precariously on his neck, Lachmar let out a frightening, leonine roar and started to walk. Fighting the swaying of his body, I scrambled in a panic up the front of his hump and more or less dove onto my blanket, landing on my stomach. Gingerly, my heart pounding, I righted myself and faced forward. Walid still had a grin on his face, but he nodded with approval. Sali raised a fist and gave a celebratory shout. I felt like a kid being praised by his father for learning to ride a bike without training wheels.

  We rode on through the parched wasteland for a couple of hours, then stopped. Walid hobbled the camels while I untied Lachmar from L’beyya’s tail, but this time we left them loaded. We weren’t staying here long, Walid said, and, by way of an explanation, said that this was the last of the trees. Sali set to making a pot of tea while Walid, Anselm, and I gathered branches to carry with us for fuel. Half an hour later, with the tea finished and the wood secure on the camels, we left.