The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

  After a couple of hours, we mounted up and rode into the morning. At dawn, by silent agreement, everyone slid from their animals and took to their feet once again. It was time to pray. Walid handed me our camels’ rope and, to my astonishment, Baba asked me to lead his caravan as well. While the three nomads knelt in the sand, I marched on with a grass rope over each of my shoulders, pulling twenty-eight camels behind me.

  Now that it was light out, I was able to get my first glimpse of my new companions. With a patchy beard over his sunken cheeks, eyes bulging from deep sockets, and a nearly shaved scalp, Baba looked like a well-tanned Hare Krishna on a hunger strike. A shredded blue sweater covered his ragged blue boubou. I guessed he was in his mid-fifties, but later learned he was thirty-three, the same age as me. Ali, on the other hand, was fifteen but looked no older than eight. His face was full, his ears stuck out to the side, and his gleaming, squarish teeth were a little too big for his mouth. Over his boubou, he wore a navy-blue hooded sweatshirt with a zipper in the front. It was his second season working on a salt caravan. Walid teased that he was the littlest azalai in the Sahara, and Ali scowled silently at the gibe. He could be playful and credulous—like the child he resembled—but turned touchy and spiteful when his inferiority complex got the best of him.

  With the night behind us and prayers out of the way, it was teatime. Baba untied the portable brazier that was lashed to his camel; Walid leapt atop L’beyya, fished the teapot out of his bag, and filled it with water and tea leaves. I traded Baba the caravan for the brazier, which Ali and I packed with camel dung we picked up on the trail. The two of us worked as a team, heating the water, brewing the tea, mixing the sugar, and passing glasses to everyone else, careful not to spill a drop while we strode over the sand. Though of course the azalai could have managed just fine without me, I was already feeling more useful than I had at virtually any point on the trip to Taoudenni. Having led the caravan during prayer and contributed to our morning’s caffeine fix, I was making their lives just a little bit easier and was glad to prove myself an asset—however small—so early in our journey south. Traveling with twenty-eight camels lacked some of the majesty of traveling with seventy-five, but the large caravan had an impersonal, almost corporate feel to it. This was like a family-run operation and gave me a chance to have a more hands-on experience. I was happy with the trade. And, soon enough, I’d have the best of both.

  Traversing a plain of red sand, we followed a trail trampled by countless camels, crisscrossed by the textured ruts left by truck tires. Before, I might have seen this juxtaposition as symbolic of the coming death of the caravans; with what I now knew, it seemed like an apt metaphor for the harmonious coexistence of camels and trucks, and the system that worked for their mutual survival. Up ahead, another caravan came into view, snaking up a rounded ridge, the slabs of salt slung over the camels’ backs reflecting the light of the rising sun like pieces of moon. Seeing us, the caravan slowed, allowing us to catch up to it.

  It was a little smaller than ours—twenty camels led by two azalai. One of them was dressed in a dark blue bathrobe that hung below his knees, as though he’d just stepped outside to grab the morning paper. It was cinched around his waist with a wide leather ammunition belt, like an empty bandolier. His name was Hamid. His cousin, Dah, dressed more traditionally, wearing a dark sweater over his boubou. Both were twenty-one years old, and each had just a faint trace of a mustache with no beard to speak of. After the greetings finally came to an end, Dah pulled out a bag of peanuts and offered everyone a handful. To reciprocate, I passed some biscuits around. The food sealed a tacit agreement that we’d stick together from here on.

  As the morning wore on and we neared our tenth hour on the trail, a heavy languor settled over the caravan. Unlike the trip north when the sun was often at our backs, it now blazed directly into our faces, persuading me to close my eyes. We rode in weary silence, smothered by heat, swayed into semi-consciousness by the hypnotic motion of the camels, until a sudden burst of chaos jarred us to attention.

  With no warning or cause, two camels went berserk, jerking their leads away from the camels in front of them, breaking the ranks, bucking and rearing like broncos stung by bees. Cargo pads, bags, and bars of salt flew from their backs and crashed to the ground. In an instant the five azalai and I were off our mounts. Walid ordered me to the front of the caravan and told me to hold the ropes of all the lead camels to prevent a general mutiny, while he and the others surrounded the renegades. Walid darted in front of the bigger of the two beasts, reaching for the rope that was still attached to its mouth. The camel leapt and flailed, kicked and roared—towering tall on its hind legs, its front feet thrashing the air, it was terrifying and ridiculous, looking like some bizarre creature out of a fairy tale that might shoot flames from its mouth. With its strength and clumsiness it could surely do some serious damage to a man whether or not it intended to.

  Walid, however, was unflapped. Once he seized the camel’s rope, he didn’t let go. Trying not to spook it further, he waited patiently for his moment, then pulled its head toward the ground. The others then rushed in like wolves and forced the camel to its knees while Walid pressed its head pressed against the sand. He held it there until the camel calmed down, while the others went to wrestle with the second animal. Seeing its cohort subdued, it lost heart for the struggle and offered little resistance. I continued to hold the caravan in place while the azalai loaded the fallen goods back atop the camels that had flung them off. A couple of the salt bars had split upon impact, and had to be bound together with rope before they could be carried.

  While watching the azalai quell the camel rebellion, I’d desperately wanted to take photographs of these cool headed nomads—one of them in a bathrobe—wrangling with crazed camels like they were in some kind of Saharan rodeo. But I’d been given a job, and couldn’t do it and take pictures at the same time. Torn between my roles as an observer of the caravan and a participant in it, the temptation to leave my post and pick up my camera was tremendous. In my gut, however, I knew my duty to the caravan had to come first; aside from enhancing our overall welfare, it was the only way I could hope to be accepted as anything more than a total outsider.

  Before starting out again, Baba took the big camel, the one that started all the trouble, and moved it to the front of the line, tying it to the tail of his own camel on a very short lead, like the caravan version of sending a kid to the principal’s office. Though there were occasional outbursts among the ranks in the days that followed, they were very rare and very minor. Contrary to their reputations for nastiness and obstinance, for spitting and other forms of rudeness, the camels were generally compliant and well behaved, especially considering what was demanded of them day after day.

  We continued on across the sand, now orange in the full glare of the sun. Mirages flowed like cool, sparkling streams. I realized that this was the last time in my life I’d ever see this place; I had no illusions about returning someday in the future.

  We reached camp—a flat hollow among low, sharply cut dunes of rose-colored sand flecked with black—a little after 3 PM. The azalai couched their camels and began unloading salt immediately. When Walid and I had our bags off Lachmar and L’beyya, we went over to help. If I’d been expecting Walid to patiently demonstrate the proper technique for taking salt off a camel’s back, I’d have been disappointed. There was simply no time for instruction. The azalai worked as though unloading the camels quickly was a matter of saving lives, so I just jumped in and lent a hand, observing, learning, and doing simultaneously, hoping I didn’t screw anything up. At first the others tried to shoo me away, afraid I’d break the precious bars, and I understood. After all, this was their income, and they’d risked their lives for it. But unloading salt was definitely not rocket science, or even cooking. With the camels prone, one man took hold of a bar on one side of a camel while another man grabbed its sister bar; they were lifted off simultaneously and carried a few feet behind the camel, wh
ere they were propped against each other at an angle, so they stood up forming an A-frame. The same was done with the second set of bars, which were rested up against the first set. It had to be done with care, especially since each weighed more than eighty pounds, but it was pretty simple. I knew that if I stayed on the sidelines, it’d only create the perception that I was useless and establish a routine in which I was left out. Walid, remembering his promise to include me in all things azalai, worked with me. By the time the last camel had been freed from its burden, the azalai conceded that I was fit to help, and even congratulated me on doing a good job. The camels were set to graze upon the fodder cached here days earlier.

  Shortly before sunset, I wandered off to take some pictures of the dunes. After about ten minutes of meandering around the sand, it occurred to me that even though I spent much of my days in silence, this was the longest I’d been alone since leaving Timbuktu. It was profoundly liberating; for the first time in weeks, I could fly around that internal space that only expands when no one else is around; a place where I need to spend time regularly in order to stay sane. Loath to leave it before I had to, I stayed out until it was nearly dark.

  By the time I returned, Walid had started dinner. Another caravan had arrived during my absence, with thirty-four camels and three azalai. Though I didn’t meet them then, we would all depart and travel together from then on.

  After eating, Walid told me to set my alarm for 2 AM. I lay down at 7:30 PM and fell asleep quickly. The next thing I knew, I was being shaken awake and told to get moving. It was 9:30 PM. As usual, Walid’s estimates of time were a little less than precise.

  Due to the time it took to load all the camels, it was nearly two hours before we actually left camp. When we did, we made a number of false starts. Baba and the leader of the new caravan, named Sidali, struggled in the total darkness to find the channel that would take us through the dunes in the right direction. The camels were led one way, then the opposite way, so the camel train doubled back on itself in a U. Baba swept the weak beam of his flashlight across the sand, with inconclusive results. At last Walid, who had kept his counsel to himself until this point, strode to the head of the line and kept on going, with a clipped, confident pace. I was right behind him and, even though the others had the benefit of the light, I trusted Walid’s instincts more than anyone else’s eyes. Apparently they did, too, for they followed along behind us. Aside from not needing a light, I believed it would be beneath Walid to use one.

  Just as I finished that thought, as though to deliberately shatter my idealization of him, he asked Baba if he could borrow the flashlight. But he only needed to see in order to fix his flip-flop; the piece that ran between his toes had broken. Once he assessed the damage, he clicked the light off and put it in his pocket, took a handful of grass, lit it on fire, then melted the severed plastic back together.

  About five minutes later, Baba questioned Walid’s route, pointing to Sidali, who was beginning to set out on a different angle. “Look,” Walid said, snapping the light on and pointing it at the ground for a few seconds, just long enough to prove his point. We were walking directly atop a trail of camel prints left by the last caravan to pass this way.

  Emerging from the dunes onto the open flats, we were met with a blast of frigid wind. Walking kept me just warm enough, but when I mounted Lachmar and sat motionless and high, the breeze drilled through my clothes and my body. My bones felt brittle, my flesh frozen. For a few moments, I weighed the merits of putting on my sweater, which I’d been using as extra saddle padding, but there was little to debate—only whether or not I’d gone nuts, since I couldn’t believe it could be this cold in the Sahara. Even the sweater wasn’t enough. Reluctantly accepting whatever price my ass would pay, I unfolded the blanket I was sitting on and wrapped it around myself, as the other azalai had done. My legs, however, unlike theirs, were too long to tuck under the folds of the blanket. My bare feet dangled, fully exposed, going numb. I pressed them into the soft fur on Lachmar’s chest and neck, trying to warm them. I periodically checked my watch—after weeks of praying for the moment the sun would go down, I couldn’t believe I was desperate to see it rise! By the time it did, my water bottle had iced over.

  Confronted with a new form of suffering, my thoughts turned to death. I no longer feared it as I had when embarking on the caravan, not because I was any more confident I’d make it back alive, but because I felt that if I did die, I’d have no regrets. My experiences at the mines had made everything I’d endured thus far, and almost anything I could endure, worth it. Since there were few ways in which I’d die instantly, I imagined that if I became injured or ill I’d have at least a few hours in which to bring some closure to my life. I would first write a letter to my parents, then I’d write about Taoudenni, so others could glimpse what I had seen there. I’d leave instructions for it to be read at my funeral as my last farewell, as the last thing I had brought back from the world to family and friends. Thinking about this scenario, which was admittedly a little grandiose, I saw that greater than my fear of death was my fear of dying for something stupid—now that I didn’t have to worry about that, I could accept a hypothetical demise more readily.

  I slipped off Lachmar about an hour before sunrise to get the blood moving in my feet. As on the previous morning, the others paused to pray when light began to fill the sky, and I became captain of the caravan—only this time, with our additional companions having hitched their animals to ours, I single-handedly led a train of eighty-two camels into the dawn. I looked at myself as if from above, and starting laughing, touched by the image, as beautiful as it was absurd, of a man living out his farthest-fetched dreams.

  When the azalai caught up to me, the morning tea was started and I met the members of the new caravan. Sidali, its leader, was forty-two, with a shock of wild black hair, a heavy black beard and mustache, a prominent nose, and creased mahogany skin. Over a soiled tan djellaba, he wore a long, dark plaid trench coat that might have been from London Fog’s mid-1970s line. His twenty-year-old son, Bakar, was equally fashionable, sporting a gray wool suit jacket over a brown, blue, and beige djellaba, plus yellow pants and a teal turban. Omar, the third member of their team, was Sidali’s twenty-one-year-old nephew; judging by his outfit, he was like their poor relation—his standard blue boubou was torn and frayed around the edges. While Sidali and Bakar welcomed me with warmth and respect, Omar immediately demanded that I give him my lighter, which Ali had used to start the tea. When I laughed at his brashness and said no, he asked me to give him some food.

  Since it was teatime, I conceded, passing some biscuits around to everyone, and setting a problematic precedent. Aside from millet and rice, which were only eaten at camp, the azalai carried virtually no other food (though Dah had some peanuts, he didn’t have many), meaning they had nothing to eat during the long hours on the trail. Walid and I, of course, had biscuits, peanuts, and dates, but just enough for us to indulge a little bit every day; if we regularly shared with seven other people, our supplies would’ve been quickly exhausted.

  As Walid had promised, we only had time to eat one plate of rice a day. It felt like one plate too many. Since the camel meat we’d bought at the mines had to be carried in a bag, it hadn’t dried thoroughly and had gone foul, though it was hard to tell when doused with our rancid, sunaged goat butter—now going on four weeks old. And as always, the rice was sprinkled with generous helpings of sand. It reminded me of the joke Woody Allen recounts in Annie Hall, the one in which two women complain about a restaurant: “This food is terrible.” “And such small portions!” Though I’d force myself to eat my entire serving purely to keep up my strength, it only sated my hunger for a short time; I relied on our snack food to quell the gnawing in my belly during the long nights and days on the march and didn’t want to give it all away.

  My instincts for self-preservation conflicted with my ethical ideals, especially in a Muslim context, where food is treated as communal property. After all, I wa
s traveling with these people and felt like there was a moral imperative to share what I had. But driven by hunger and the fear of future hunger, I tried to rationalize my way around it. These men, I told myself, were accustomed to their Spartan ways, and if I wasn’t there they’d be fine surviving on their meager diet with no extras. Moreover, by sharing with everyone, the food would be spread so thinly among us that no one would ever get enough to even dent his hunger. Still, a part of me was unconvinced, so that evening I asked Walid what he thought about this dilemma. His answer was unequivocal.

  “It’s your food,” he said, “and you need it. They know it, but will ask for it anyway. You don’t have to give them anything.”

  Even with Walid’s blessing, I felt uncomfortable about eating in front of the others and not offering to share. At night this was no problem, thanks to the darkness; when I got hungry during the day, I’d hide a small bag of peanuts and dates in my lap and shuttle them to my mouth a few at a time, as discreetly as possible. Every so often I’d share with everyone else.

  For the most part the others obeyed an unwritten code: Since I didn’t flaunt it, they didn’t ask for it. Baba and Omar, however, were the exceptions, and they didn’t limit their requests to food. Over the next week, they demanded everything from peanuts to my sunglasses to my shirt. Sometimes they cajoled, other times they pouted. At camp each afternoon, when Walid dished up a couple handfuls of peanuts and dates to eat along with our dorno, Baba inevitably appeared, knowing he wouldn’t be turned away; finally Walid, of his own volition, pretended we had eaten the last of them—fooling even me into believing him—so Baba would stop expecting to be fed. But he still expected me to supply him with black tea. Every afternoon, without fail, he’d approach, imploring, “Michael, Lipton? Lipton?” Since I had plenty, I gave it to him freely, and it turned into a joke; I’d pull out a tea bag and hand it to him before he even said a word. Omar so persistently asked me for my lighter that I finally gave it to him, just to shut him up. I had a spare one anyway.