The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

  Despite all the sleep I’d had, I struggled to find the groove I’d perpetually been in, as though relaxing a little had thrown me out of it. Without the driving urgency of the caravan, I felt lazy, like my transmission was stuck in neutral and I couldn’t get into gear. Lachmar, too, seemed to be working harder than usual; I had to constantly goad him into moving fast enough so L’beyya wasn’t pulling him forward by his lower jaw, as foam oozed from his mouth and covered his lips before being peeled off by the breeze.

  By noon, the terrain had flattened out into familiar monotony. Then, around three, I spotted the white peaks of three tents in the distance.

  We rode along a sandy wash, a slight crease in the otherwise level ground. As we neared the tents, two young men came running from their direction, shouting and leaping in a jubilant welcome. Chattering excitedly, they ran alongside us until Walid and Lamana dismounted and I copied them. Still in the wash, Walid couched our camels and Lamana couched his, and they started unloading. We were about a hundred yards from the tents.

  Maybe this wasn’t Walid’s in-laws’ camp, I thought. Maybe these young men were friends of theirs, with whom we were going to stop and rest for an hour or so, before traveling on to our destination. The four nomads were talking without pause and I didn’t feel like interrupting, so it wasn’t until our blankets were spread in the sand and a tea fire was smoldering that I had the chance to ask Lamana, “What’s going on?”

  “We’re here,” Lamana said.

  “How come we stopped so far away from the tents?” I asked, for this was clearly where we were camping.

  “This is the way we do things,” Lamana said. “It’s a sign of respect. None of us, not even Walid, is allowed to approach the tents until after night falls. We have to wait here until it’s dark before we can say hello.”

  “You mean Walid can’t even see his wife now?”

  “No, and she can’t come to see us. The same goes for her parents. Only his brothers-in-law and young children are allowed to visit with us now.”

  I couldn’t believe that after weeks of absence, Walid would have to wait for hours, sitting out in the sand, before he could say hello to his wife or visit her family at their tents. In fact, everything about our arrival flew in the face of my prior experiences with nomadic peoples. Anytime I neared an encampment when I’d walked through Bedouin territory in Jordan, barefoot children scampered out into the desert to take my hands and lead me back to their tents, where tea had already been started for the arrival of a stranger. While trekking in Mongolia, there were days when I had to deliberately swing wide of the tents I encountered if I intended to cover any ground at all, since every time I approached one, its owners urged me to come in and rest, share saltymilky tea with them, and eat the many kinds of snacks they were always ready to serve. Here, however, not only was I close to a nomad tent but was with a member of the family, and protocol demanded that we keep our distance.

  While we drank our tea, one of Walid’s brothers-in-law, who had run back to the camp, now returned carrying a small child. Walid beamed as he took the boy in his arms and smothered his cheeks with gentle kisses. It was his youngest son, fifteen-month-old Ali. The little one smiled sweetly, soaking up his father’s affection. His face was smooth and pudgy. Gobs of snot dribbled from his nostrils. The corners of his eyes were crusted with dried mucus. He wore a filthy green T-shirt and was bare-bottomed; a sensible alternative, it seemed, to putting him in diapers, when that would have simply created more work and it didn’t really matter where he relieved himself. Ali’s skin was a sickly-looking blue-gray color, making me wonder if something was wrong with him until I realized that it had simply absorbed some of the dark indigo dye from the robes his mother wore. The right half of his head was shaved down to the scalp, while the other half was lightly covered in wisps of brown hair. All of the little boys I’d meet at the camp had similarly bizarre hairstyles—one even had a Mohawk. Such haircuts are meant to fend off the evil eye, based on the reasoning that since the evil eye is drawn toward ruining things that are perfect, it would take one look at these kids’ heads, decide they were already marred, and leave them alone. Parents hoped that this would keep their children healthy, and some continued to shave parts of their kids’ heads until the age of twelve. Though it could, of course, be written off as primitive superstition, I understood why they did it; aside from having a grandmother from Romania who is always on alert against the evil eye, I could plainly see that there were no medical facilities for these nomads and I knew that the infant mortality rate was staggeringly high. They would try anything, even a haircut, to give their children an edge over death. More than I’d ever felt with the caravan, I sensed that I’d just slipped into a world of ritualized manners and mystical superstition, ruled by invisible forces.

  Walid put Ali down on the ground, then dug around in his bag and pulled out a present that he’d carried all the way from Timbuktu. (I’m not sure why he didn’t give it to Ali when he stopped at the camp for a night on the way north.) It was a new T-shirt and a pair of shorts, bright yellow with green trim. Walid stripped off Ali’s dirty old shirt and pulled the new one over his head.

  “Ah, Ronaldo!” Lamana exclaimed, recognizing the trademark colors of the Brazilian national soccer team.

  “No, no, it’s not Ronaldo,” I said, pointing at the front of the shirt. What Lamana had failed to recognize was the patch that said THE HERO—SPIDERMAN, below an image of the friendly neighborhood webslinger swinging into action.

  I tried to explain who Spiderman was; remembering the conversation I had with Walid on one of our first days on the trail, I said he was a djinn, a good djinn, who had the powers of a spider and helped protect people from evil.

  “That is good!” said Lamana. “Maybe he will protect Ali.” Walid, too, was glad to hear it when Lamana translated what I’d told him.

  Distressed over Ali’s oozing eyes and knowing that I had eyedrops, Walid asked if he could borrow them. Since they were the kind that are supposed to be like natural tears, I figured they wouldn’t hurt the kid, so I gave Walid the bottle. He rubbed the crust from his son’s eyes, held the baby’s head back, and squeezed in some drops. Ali, surprised, writhed and screamed. Walid comforted him for a minute, then passed him to his brother-in-law, who took the boy back to the camp.

  The tea box that Lamana took from his bag was printed with a cartoon-like picture of three turbaned Arabs sitting happily around a fire in the desert, with two camels standing behind them. I picked it up and pointed at it, saying, “This one’s Lamana, this is Walid, this is me, and here’s Lachmar and L’beyya!” My friends laughed, and we spent the rest of the afternoon just like the guys on the box, brewing pot after pot of tea, simply enjoying being with each other. I felt completely at home.

  Lamana told me that Walid wanted to stay here one more day, and asked how I felt about it. I remembered the regrets I’d had about my adventure in Mongolia, how I felt in hindsight that I’d hurried too quickly out of the Altai Mountains when I could’ve spent more time with its nomads. I didn’t want to make the same mistake again, and realized I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere. There was nothing to gain by racing to Timbuktu, and there could be much to gain by spending another day here. I told him that I’d gladly stay.

  We didn’t have to cook dinner; a large pot of food was brought to us from the tents. It was filled with plain rice, without even the morsels of meat Walid and I usually ate on the trail, but I didn’t mind. It was no worse than usual. Walid, however, seemed a little embarrassed by the humble offerings and said he thought that the next day we would eat like we were at Barka’s house. His prediction was overly optimistic.

  When darkness fell, Walid left to visit his family, his turban wound meticulously around his head and pulled high over his mouth and nose as a sign of respect. He returned in about half an hour and asked if I wanted to go with him up to the tents.

  “Of course,” I said, and asked if I, too, needed to cover my face.
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  “No,” he said, “it’s not so important,” and, since his face was now exposed, I simply tied my turban over my head and under my chin, so I could pull it up over my mouth if it proved necessary.

  I walked beside Walid, filled with curiosity and a touch of anxiety. Lamana had said that this family wasn’t used to seeing foreigners, and I wondered how I’d be received.

  The walls of the tent, each about twenty feet long, were pulled to the ground on three sides. The fourth was propped up with two sticks that were placed about a third of the way in from either of the corners, creating an opening about a yard high, like a gaping mouth. A heap of camel dung burned in a giant brazier just outside the tent. Its glow cast the only light by which to see; inside the tent it was almost completely dark, impossible to discern anything more than shadows.

  As I ducked beneath the lip of the tent and offered a “Salaam w’aleikum,” the five women who were sitting inside instantly scattered toward the wall to my right, like a school of spooked fish darting for cover. Walid ushered me to the middle of the tent, and I sat down on a small mat that was laid over the sand. There was silence, pregnant with tension. Walid and I were the only men under the tent. I hoped he hadn’t transgressed any taboos by inviting me in. Then one of the women started giggling. The others joined in, barely visible in their dark robes and head scarves in the darkness of the tent; it was like being laughed at by a chorus of tittering ghosts. I breathed with relief. Rather than making me uncomfortable, it helped me relax, for laughter is often the first sign of acceptance when stepping into the lives of very foreign people. And I’d been laughed at plenty of times before.

  Gradually the women migrated back toward the center of the tent. After we exchanged the ritual greeting, they talked among themselves, and I listened, enjoying their soft, rolling phrases without trying to understand what they were saying, as though their voices were musical instruments. One of the women came over and sat right beside Walid. The two of them talked in intimate tones, and the woman’s voice was beautiful. Obviously, I thought, this had to be his wife. I strained to see what she looked like, but it was futile, until one of the other women dumped more dung on the fire, causing it to flare up for a minute. Gazing upon her in the dancing orange light, I could hardly believe my eyes. Her skin was shriveled like a raisin, her nose was long and hooked, her teeth were a jumble—the front two hung down over her lower lip even when her mouth was closed. Knowing that Walid’s wife was in her early twenties, I thought she’d perhaps been stricken with some kind of premature aging disease. Though I knew it was unkind, I couldn’t help feeling a bit horrified that Walid—young, strong, and good looking—was married to such a hag. Maybe the light was playing tricks on my eyes, I allowed, or maybe he was so kindhearted that he loved her despite her looks. It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned this was actually his mother-in-law, and not his wife at all.

  After we drank tea, Walid rose and said it was time for us to return to our camp. We said good night and walked back to the sandy wash. Though I hadn’t really interacted much with the women, they’d become accustomed to my presence, which was accomplishment enough for one evening.

  By the time Lamana, Walid, and I had finished our morning tea and wandered over to the tents, a goat had been slaughtered. It was lying, skinned and beheaded, on a pile of long dried grasses that had been spread in a modest attempt to keep the meat off the sand, which would stick to it the way the diamonds stuck to the carcasses thrown into the Valley of Serpents in the Sindbad story. The older of Walid’s two brothers-in-law, named Mohammed, had the sleeves of his green boubou rolled up to his elbows as he deftly gutted the animal, slicing out the organs and placing them neatly to the side. A big metal cauldron filled with water was sitting atop a mountain of smoldering dung.

  I said hello to everyone and was quickly put at ease by the casual manner in which I was welcomed. The women met my eyes with no trace of timidity, and Mohammed happily let me take pictures of him butchering the goat. Aside from Lamana, Walid, and myself, there were fifteen people at the camp: Walid’s two brothers-in-law, his two sons and four nephews, his mother-in-law and father-in-law, his wife, and her four sisters. Only one of Walid’s little nephews, who was about a year and a half old, seemed unduly perplexed by me. He’d been crawling around in the sand in just a red-and-white-striped T-shirt and a necklace strung with three protective amulets slung across his chest, when he first noticed me. He froze and stared, his mouth agape, unsure whether I was friend or foe. He had never seen a foreigner before. Trying to assuage his confusion and convince him I was a normal human being, I knelt down a few feet from him, said hi, and smiled. He screamed and started crying, scrambling toward his mother who knelt ten yards away, where she’d begun to pray. He grabbed at her arms, pulling little fistfuls of cloth, then threw himself down beside her, wailing. She would not be distracted from her devotions, however, and continued to pray, her eyes fixed to an invisible point in the distance as her child writhed in the sand and clutched at her robe. When she was finished she picked him up and, not the least bit perturbed, sat him on her lap and held him. He quieted quickly and she gave me an amused smile, wordlessly communicating that kids would be kids.

  Looking at pictures of myself that were taken that day, I could see why—aside from just being a Stranger—I might have scared him. My beard was overgrown and unkempt, my forehead and cheeks were browned from sun and dirt, while the area around my eyes—which my sunglasses normally covered—was starkly white in contrast. My lips were chapped, my fingers, and especially my toes, were riddled with cracks and calluses. I looked like the human expression of the wilderness in which I’d been immersed for a solid month.

  Walid introduced me to his wife, whose name was Feti. Her intense eyes were as black as ravens, her demeanor friendly but meek. The resemblance she bore to all the women in her family resided in her mouth—well-defined lips and large, widely spaced teeth. Like her sisters and her mother, Feti’s indigo head scarf covered her hair, but none of her face. By her side was Walid’s other son, Karim, who was nearly three. He was a beautiful child with bronze skin, long eyelashes, and a habit of pursing his lips into an angelic little smile.

  In the light, I was able to get my first good look at the tent. The fabric was composed of many long, narrow strips of heavy, woven cotton cloth, stitched together. Patches of the same material were sewn over numerous holes. The peaked center was propped up by two long wooden poles, pitched at steep opposing angles, sheathed in metal sleeves, and held in place by the pressure of the roof. Along one side was stacked a wall of rice sacks, oil jugs, pots, bowls, gourds, and a battered metal tool box. These were partially covered by a wool blanket and a sky-blue sheet embroidered with pink and yellow flowers. The corners and sides of the tent were staked out with handmade grass ropes tied to wooden rods that had been pounded into the sand. There was no floor, just a few mats, rugs, and pillows.

  When it was time to move to a new pasture, I learned, a couple of the men would take off into the desert and scout out a camp, then return to get the rest of the family. The tents would be broken down and all the family’s belongings would be loaded onto camels and taken to the new site. They might stay in one place for as little as a week or for longer than a month, depending on the amount of grass in the area. I asked Lamana if there were ever any disputes between families, if one felt that another had camped too close and encroached upon their territory.

  “Not really,” he said. “Everyone knows that the herds need a certain amount of space to graze, so no one wants to camp too close to anyone else. It’s like an unwritten law enforced by the desert, because only so much grass grows in one place. If it turns out that a family mistakenly camps too near to another one, the problem is resolved peacefully and the newer family moves on.”

  “Do families go to the same places year after year?” I asked.

  “It depends on the year. You travel as little as you have to, but some years that’s farther than others.
And you never camp in exactly the same place twice.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the djinn know that you have been there, and will wait for you to come back.”

  I remembered that the Tuareg call certain evil spirits the Kel Essuf, one meaning of which is “the people of nostalgia,” and I thought I understood why they wouldn’t camp in the same place twice.

  The goat’s organs were rinsed and dumped into the pot of boiling water, and the carcass was dismembered. Some of the meat was added to the pot, some would be roasted over the fire, and some was hung up to dry. The head was thrown directly into the coals, where it started smoking as the hair began to singe.

  Though the sky was overcast, the air chilly, it felt like a lazy Sunday morning, with the whole family hanging around, waiting for the goat to cook. The morning’s work was finished: The women had already led the goats out to pasture, the men had taken out the camels. Nothing else had to be done until the afternoon.

  When the stew was nearly finished, Lamana and Walid told me we should go back to our own camp. Walid’s younger brother-in-law, Hasan, who was eighteen, with short curly brown hair and faint traces of a mustache, came with us. When we were settled on our blankets, we were joined by Walid’s father-in-law, whom I hadn’t yet met. He appeared to be a few years older than Lamana, and carried himself with the distinction befitting a patriarch.

  He took a seat beside me and pulled his antelope-horn pipe from within the folds of his boubou. Walid passed over the knotted cloth in which he carried his tobacco, his father-in-law packed the pipe and asked for a lighter. I handed him mine; he sparked up and moved to pass it back, but I told him he could keep it. He thanked me, and examined the lighter, asking where the opening was to refill it.

  “There is none,” I said. “When it’s finished you throw it away.”

  He looked at me like this was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard of.