The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

  “It’s American,” I said, as though this would exonerate the lighter’s deficiency. He shook his head. If he’d been under the illusion that American culture was something to aspire to, the lighter gave him second thoughts.

  He asked me about the trip to Taoudenni, which he said he’d made many times as a young man. I felt like he accepted me easily, and though he thought it was a little crazy that I rode with a caravan when I didn’t have to, he respected the fact that I did.

  Mohammed walked over to us, a large, steaming bowl of offal in his hands. My companions perked up, poised to pounce upon the parts. Once a plate was dished out for me, they plunged their hands into the bowl. I’d been given a smattering of everything—some heart, some lung, a healthy portion of intestine, and a few pieces of the dreaded stomach lining. I was also given what was either the prize or the joke of the meal—I couldn’t tell—but as I chewed it, no amount of pretending it was something else could erase the knowledge that I was eating boiled goat’s penis. For propriety’s sake, I acted like I enjoyed it and felt compelled to clean my plate.

  While we drank tea afterward, I asked Lamana why we were eating separately from the women.

  “Oh, they have something that they need to do,” he said. “What?” I asked.

  Lamana cracked a smile.

  “Do you know why they killed this goat today?” he asked.

  “Well, I figured it was to celebrate Walid’s safe return from the mines, or maybe because I’m here.”

  “No, no, it’s neither of those things,” Lamana said. “Feti is pregnant, and is almost ready to have the baby. Eating the goat will make her give birth. When we do something like this, the women eat alone.”

  “Oh,” was all I could say. I never would have guessed that Feti was pregnant, though it was hard to tell how big she really was under her loose-fitting gown. I wondered how eating fresh goat could possibly induce the birth of a child. Though I felt certain it was an old wives’ tale, I wanted to believe it and wondered if maybe, just maybe, it would work.

  Once the meal was done, we were all free to mingle together again, and Walid and I went back over to the tents. Lamana saddled up one of his camels and left to visit a relative who was camped about an hour away. Mohammed and Walid’s father-in-law slung some empty guerbas over one of their camels, and led it and a few others off to a well a few miles distant. They’d asked if I wanted to join them but, figuring I’d get enough riding in over the next few days, I opted to stay at the camp.

  A midday lull fell over those of us who remained. Walid and I lay down in the tent. He fell asleep instantly, while I watched Hasan fiddle around with a broken cassette player, trying to fix it with the same knife that had been used to eviscerate the goat. The faint bleating of goats floated in from the distance, sounding remarkably like a nursery of crying babies. One white goat with a black spot over its left eye foraged around the inside of the tent, nibbling on its walls. It seemed like the family pet, at least temporarily. I asked myself how I’d like to live as this family did, and surprised myself with my answer. When I’d spent time in Bedouin tents around Wadi Rumm, where Lawrence of Arabia had trod some eighty years earlier, I was tempted to move there and adopt their ways as my own, certain I’d find contentment in herding goats and camels, traveling from watering hole to watering hole, fathering a tentful of rambunctious children. A simple existence, lived outdoors, on the move. Though there were many similarities between their lifestyles, I felt no attraction to the vision of living like a Saharan nomad. Something about their situation seemed harder, sparser than that of the Bedouin of Rumm. Maybe, I thought, I had this perspective because I’d already spent a month in the sand, in the wind, eating terrible food, and moving daily with no comforts but tea. Maybe the Bedouin life would’ve looked the same had I been among them longer. But the truth, I thought, lay somewhere else. Wadi Rumm was one of the most spectacular places I’d ever been—a sandstone wonderland of massive multicolored cliffs, delicately carved by the wind, bursting skyward from salmon-colored dunes. I wandered through it agasp, in a mind-altered state of awe. Every vista inspired feelings nothing short of religious, seemingly confirming the existence not just of a God, but of God as an artist. The tent in which I reflected upon this, in contrast, was pitched in an aesthetic black hole, surrounded by nothingness. I think it was the absence of beauty that made life here appear so much harder than life in Rumm.

  Walid’s mother-in-law was a model of nomad hospitality, gracious and kind, yet tough, and easily able to hold her own against any matriarch in the world when it came to making sure you ate your fill. Moments after I awoke from my nap, she brought me a bowl of camel’s milk and urged me to drink it “for strength.” When I finished it, she served me a bowl of bread soaked in milk and sprinkled with sugar. Its soggy sweetness reminded me a little bit of the matzah brai—essentially French toast made with matzah—that my grandmother used to make during Passover, but I refrained from mentioning this, figuring the reference would be lost and still not daring to reveal to anyone that I was Jewish. While with the caravan, it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine that Omar might have spouted some anti-Semitic invective in the moments when he tried to make me uncomfortable, but I had little fear of that happening among Walid’s family. I just didn’t want to take any chances. In hindsight, I realize I may have missed an opportunity to bridge a perceived cultural gap, and I regret it, but in the moment it felt wiser not to invite the risk, however small.

  I admired the small goatskin pouch that the sugar was kept in. Softened from years of use, it was shaped like the bottom half of an hourglass and decorated with leather fringes and a faded geometric design. Walid saw me looking at it and, with a nod to his mother-in-law, said, “She made it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I told her.

  “It’s yours,” she said.

  I protested weakly, mostly to let her know that I hadn’t been asking for it and certainly didn’t expect her to give it to me. With a dismissive wave of her gnarled hand, she said it was nothing, that I should take it. I thanked her and felt lucky. Along with the salt Abdi had given me, the little bag would be another prized memento from a place where there were no souvenirs to buy.

  By late afternoon, the men had returned from the well. The clouds began to fray and sunlight rushed between them as though being released from a dam. Tea was brewed, and everyone sat together by the tent’s opening. Men and women joked and argued with each other as intensely as only family can. Walid’s older son, Karim, busied himself mashing buttons on the broken tape player. One of the other kids toddled over with the charred goat’s head in his hands and plopped down in the sand to play with it. His younger cousin—my friend in the red and white shirt—wanted to get in on the action. They batted the blackened head around, pulled on its nose and ears, and rolled it back and forth between them like a ball. When the little one decided he’d had enough of sharing, he tried to claim it for himself. The older one protested loudly and the two tussled over their toy, shoving each other while the head lay between them in the sand. The adults watched and laughed. I laughed, too, but only partly at the kids; I couldn’t help imagining the expressions on the faces of people I knew back home who had young children, had they seen these two babies playing with a severed goat’s head. Somehow I doubted this toy would make its way into the Fisher-Price catalog anytime soon.

  As the sun began to set, everyone rose. The women, except for one of Feti’s sisters, who stayed with the children, walked into the desert to round up the goats they’d set out to pasture that morning. The men went out to bring in the camels. Walid and I went back to our camp, where we stayed for the rest of the night. On our way back, I watched Feti seemingly glide over the sand in a long flowing robe that billowed in the breeze. I wondered how long it would take for the goat meat to do its job, or if it would at all.

  Feti gave birth to a baby girl that very night. When I heard the news the next morning, I could hardly believe it. I began to imagine hospitals ba
ck home offering plates of goat guts as a natural alternative to labor inducing drugs. Though I would have liked to see how babies were delivered by these desert people, not even Walid was invited into the tent. It was strictly a women’s affair, which was the way Walid liked it. When I told him that American husbands were often with their wives when they gave birth, his face cringed in disgust. He couldn’t believe that any man would want to witness such an event, or that any woman would want a man around.

  “Today I’m glad I’m not American!” he exclaimed, and he was only half joking.

  Nearly as astonishing to me as the fact that the goat meat had worked was what I saw while we prepared the morning tea, just before sunrise. Walking across the sand, leading her goats out to pasture, was Feti. It was no more than four hours after she’d given birth.

  CHAPTER 10

  Imagining that any father would be reluctant to leave a newborn daughter and the mother who’d just birthed her, I told Walid it was okay with me if he stayed with them. I could go back to Timbuktu with Lamana. Walid, however, dismissed my offer without hesitation, saying he wanted to go with us. Lamana explained that, according to custom, Walid wasn’t permitted to hold the baby for two weeks, until the naming ceremony took place. Newborns, he said, weren’t thought of as real people until they’d survived their tenuous first days, and prohibiting fathers from holding them made an early death easier for them to accept. What’s more, though Walid could talk to Feti during the day, he couldn’t sleep in the same tent as her for forty days after the birth. By going to Timbuktu, Lamana continued, Walid wouldn’t be missing much, and it would give him a chance to pick up a few things in town.

  After tea, we packed up and moseyed through the camp on our way south. Our good-byes with the family were brief and casual, little more than a handshake and a “thank you,” as though we’d be returning in a few hours. For nomads, saying good-bye was too commonplace an event to make a fuss over.

  I felt rested and somehow more complete, as though getting an unexpected glimpse into the life of a nomadic family filled a gap in my experience that I didn’t realize existed until after I’d done so. I was recharged and ready to take on the last leg to Timbuktu, which seemed like it’d be a quick jaunt across the sand, not counting on the illness and injury that awaited me.

  The morning was cloudy once again. A brisk wind swept across the desert. Before long, the sparse pasturelands dotted with clumps of grass gave way to bare, lifeless sand. As we traversed the open flats, I asked Lamana and Walid more questions about Saharan life. Since it seemed that families spent so much time isolated with their herds, I wondered how men and women met, and marriages were formed. There obviously wasn’t much of a Saharan singles scene.

  Though they usually lived far apart, Lamana said, nomadic families often knew one another, if not personally then at least by reputation. It was unusual, he said, to run into a complete stranger—if you didn’t know them, then you knew someone who knew them. In this part of the Sahara, there were far fewer than six degrees of separation. Matches were made through these family connections, with parents negotiating on behalf of their children. As often as not, future husbands and wives became engaged before they’d ever met each other in person.

  The parents of the eligible bachelor, who is often a teenager at the time, suggest a bride to him, touting her beauty, her ability to cook, or the number of livestock her family owns. If he agrees to the match, his parents then make a marriage offer to the girl’s parents, explaining why the union of their children would benefit the couple as well as the families. If her parents approve, they present the choice to their daughter, who has ultimate veto power over the whole affair—and, if she lived in the United States, would most likely be in elementary school.

  Assuming the girl consents, Lamana continued, an engagement contract is drawn up setting the wedding for sometime after the girl turns thirteen. The boy’s father seals the deal by giving a token offering of about two dollars to the girl’s father. The betrothed children might not see each other until the wedding day.

  When the time comes, the groom’s family goes to the camp of the bride’s family for the wedding feast, where people sing, drum, dance, and eat. The groom presents the bride with an even number of blankets, scarves, dresses, and the like; for example, depending on his wealth, he might give her two or four or ten blankets. At the end of the evening, the newlyweds retire to a tent to consummate the marriage. In the morning, their bedsheet is checked for bloodstains, though, Lamana said, a couple will sometimes take a cup of goat’s blood to their tent to ensure they pass the ritual test. For the first month of their married life, the couple stays at the wife’s family’s camp; she sleeps in the husband’s tent at night, then returns to her parents in the morning. When the month is over, the couple heads to the husband’s family’s camp, where they spend the next four weeks. When they get there, the husband sends a young female camel—or, if he’s poor, a goat—back to his wife’s father. In the days before the Great Drought of 1973–74, Lamana said, many more camels and goats were exchanged, but when families lost their herds, expectations were lowered.

  When the second month of marriage is over, there are no hard-and fast rules; often the couple returns to the wife’s family, though sometimes they remain with the husband’s. The wife is given a dowry of goats, sheep, and a tent—her share of her inheritance—by her father, which becomes her property.

  Little of what Lamana told me—except the part about the cup of goat’s blood—surprised me, since it was similar to what I’d learned about marriage in other parts of the Muslim world. Unlike other places I’d been, however, the Saharan system survives uncomplicated by some of the dilemmas that arise when traditional customs conflict with contemporary conventions.

  One of the brothers in the family I had lived with in Cairo, named Yehieh, was engaged to a woman he had met only once. He was excited about his upcoming wedding, but before the day arrived, problems arose. Yehieh, though no Islamic extremist, was a man of traditional sensibilities, best illustrated by the startling fact that, though he was in his early thirties, attractive, and successful, he had never kissed a woman in his life, so strongly did he feel about staying sexually pure for marriage. His fiancée, while no radical secularist, was a student at a university. As the wedding approached, Yehieh urged his fiancée to drop out of school—for, he argued, how could she tend to her wifely duties if she was in school, and what purpose would graduating serve if she was going to get married? It’s not like she would ever put her education to use. To his dismay, his fiancée insisted on completing her degree.

  The families negotiated, and Yehieh finally agreed to allow his fiancée to attend classes twice a week. She wanted to continue her studies full time, however, and refused to compromise. Finally, the engagement was annulled, and the ten-thousand-Egyptian-pound bride price (about three thousand dollars at that time) that Yehieh had paid to his fiancée’s father was refunded—because she was to blame.

  Initially, I judged Yehieh to be a small-minded chauvinist, but I came to see the wisdom of his decision. He was a traditional guy who wanted a traditional wife. A union with his ex-fiancée would have produced unhappiness for both. Yehieh didn’t condemn her as being immoral, just as a poor fit for himself. Better, he thought, to begin a new search for a more suitable partner.

  Such dilemmas, which are becoming ever more common in the modern Muslim world, have hardly touched the nomads of the Sahara, since there are so few alternatives to life as it’s always been lived. The closest comparison I could imagine would be if Abdi’s sister Hannah, who so desperately wanted out of Araouane, insisted on only marrying a man who would whisk her away to the good life in Timbuktu.

  Walid and Lamana wanted to know what marriage was like in America, so I explained some of the biggest differences, such as how men and women in the States usually get to know each other very well, often living together for a long period of time, before deciding to wed. I told them that most people had quit
e a few boyfriends and girlfriends before settling on the one with whom they’d spend the rest of their lives, which usually didn’t happen until people were well into their twenties, thirties, or later. And, of course, we could only have one spouse at a time.

  “So you can have many girlfriends, but we can have up to four wives,” Lamana said, his tone implying that he thought they had the better of the deals. Having been married and divorced while in my twenties, I respectfully disagreed. One wife at one time, lovely as she was, had been plenty.

  Walid and Lamana absorbed what I told them about American courtship habits without passing judgment, even when we talked about the potentially touchy subject of premarital sex. Though at other times, in other Islamic places, I’d been scolded about the immorality of our more liberal ways (even while I sensed a touch of envy behind it), Walid and Lamana were curious without being critical.

  When it was time to mount up, I was urged to ride Lamana’s spare camel instead of Lachmar, who was visibly tired. I hesitated. I’d bonded deeply with Lachmar, at least in my own mind, if not in his. We’d been through a lot together; I trusted him and knew his idiosyncracies. But, despite any fantasies I might have had about us being like the Lone Ranger and Silver, I knew that Lachmar himself would be more grateful than insulted if I got off his back for a while. I put my exaggerated sense of attachment aside and went over to Lamana’s extra camel.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Mabrouk.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Something like ‘good journey.’”

  Mabrouk was taller and stockier than Lachmar, though somewhat less attractive, with cruder features and a grayish coat. He was powerful and sure-footed, and his larger hump made a roomier seat. I could tell the difference between the two camels after only a few steps; it was like trading in an old VW bus for a brand-new SUV.