Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

  He stood very still, listening, and then, "No, Missy— run!"

  I froze, not understanding. The sun was shining, there were no clouds in the sky, I could see the village in the distance and our two water buckets waiting for us next to the well, yet the thunder continued. Bakuli had dropped down into the riverbed to run across it, but away from the village, which seemed stupid to me. Seeing me still rooted there he stopped and screamed at me, "RUN!" but only when he started back to get me did I come to life. Still not understanding I followed him down into the oued and in a panic he pulled me up the bank.

  "See!" he gasped, and pointed behind me to the hills of sand and thornbush that had been hiding what was nearly upon us.

  I turned and looked. A tidal wave of furious brown water was racing toward us, carrying with it everything that it met. It leveled the low hills of thornbush in an instant and on the crest of its wave before it broke I saw the body of a man, a drowned sheep and a tree.

  I ran for my life. The rain that had fallen miles away in the mountains yesterday was reaching us after all; I had never seen a flash flood before and it was terrifying. I scrambled up the hill behind Bakuli but seconds later the roaring water had filled this riverbed, too, and was churning below us threatening the hill on which we stood. Far away I saw the water lapping at the gates of the village and this was alarming because Amina had explained to me how carefully the village was distanced from the oueds so that in all its history it had never been touched by floods—but it was being touched now.

  I thought. When the flood has finished with us at least the earth in the riverbeds will be fertile for planting. Aloud I said, "The village will be safe, it has to be, it's stood there for years and years and years."

  "Yes, Missy," Bakuli said uneasily and hurried me eastward toward a low rocky mesa that promised more security from the rampaging waters and just in time, too, for when we looked back the sand hill on which we'd stood had disappeared.

  For several hours we waited in the shade of the mesa, watching the sun and a thirsty earth begin to drink up the water that had followed us. When the sun neared setting time we waded back across the plain to measure our prospects for returning. The floodwaters were retreating from the land but there was no possible way to cross, for the oueds were in full spate and boiling with debris. This was depressing, but when I lifted my eyes to look for the village I gasped in horror because it was gone; I couldn't believe it. Where it had stood I could see only a hill of sodden thatch and the acacia tree under which I had sat for two days and a night.

  "Oh, Bakuli," I whispered, pointing.

  He nodded, his young face grim.

  "They would have run away," I insisted. "They would surely have seen the water spreading out and they would have left in time, wouldn't they, Bakuli?"

  "Bakuli see no peoples, Missy. Where be sheep, goats, peoples?"

  Amina, Shehu, Funtua, Halma, Isa, Kadiri .., an agonizing sense of loss overwhelmed me and I sat down on the sodden earth and cried. If they had fled, as they must have, I told myself, they would be far away now, as hungry as we were and without shelter. They would have lost their spirit shrines, the seeds carefully preserved for planting, their silos for grain, above all their history and their huts. And we had lost them.

  Then I realized a worse possibility and looking up at Bakuli I cried out, "Oh Bakuli, what if we'd not left the village together!"

  His smile was singularly sweet. "Yes, Missy, Jesus-God look after Jesus-boy."

  Darkness fell swiftly, mercifully blotting out the lone acacia tree standing over what had once been a village of happy people. When I dried my eyes and stood up, Bakuli touched me on the shoulder. "Look, Missy," he said, pointing south beyond the mesa where we'd sheltered earlier.

  Far away in the darkness a light shone softly in the night. It had the look of a campfire, a caravan, perhaps, taken out of its way by the floods. "What do you think, Bakuli?" I asked.

  "Where there be fire there be peoples. Missy."

  I had been foolish even to ask, for we had no choice: there was no way to cross the flooded oueds and there was no village to return to. We set out in the darkness to find the light.

  13

  On the night of the flood when we reached the distant campfire it was our poverty that spared us rejection or robbery. The men bedding down among their camels saw only two ragged boys, one small and black, the taller one presumably of mixed or Targui blood. There was no thought of turning us away or robbing us; they didn't notice the weight of the pockets I'd long ago sewn in my barracan, and this was fortunate for among my small treasures I carried the Hand of Fatima, and Bakuli, who had worn our remaining Maria Theresa thalers in a pouch around his neck, had given them over to me for safekeeping on the way. These men were Arabs heading south to Agadez, but they spoke Hausa and in this language Bakuli explained to them that I was a mute, incapable of speaking, and that we'd lost our way in the flood. They gave us a handful of sandy dates and when they broke camp several hours later we were allowed to walk behind their camels and share their food and water.

  Four sunsets later, having eaten much dust on the way, we halted outside the walls of Agadez. Here it was made known to Bakuli that we had been given the hospitality of the desert, and peace go with us but they would feed us no more. It was here, too, that we learned that Agadez was a French military outpost, captained by one Frenchman and a troop of black soldiers called tirailleurs.

  "So there be be mweni here. Missy," Bakuli said, scowling. "Foreign peoples?"

  I was stunned at hearing this. I had dreamed for months—years—of finding rescue, and here in this oasis in the middle of the desert there was actually a French soldier, we had heard the Arabs say so.

  With studied indifference Bakuli said, "You go to foreign peoples, Missy?" He took great care to avoid looking at me, picking up a handful of pebbles and frowning over them while he waited for my reply.

  He had a long wait because I was picturing myself meeting this French captain of the military. I imagined his skepticism, his doubts and then his shock as he understood at last that I was neither Arab nor Tuareg but actually an American, and what a thrilling moment that would be! And yet .., and yet ... There was something troubling to me about this picture taking shape in my mind, for I wondered: if I made myself known to this French captain in the hope of being sent home would he see to it that Bakuli was sent home too? I wondered if the fate of one black boy among so many would be of interest to a European. Nor could Bakuli say precisely where his home might be, having been torn from it at such an early age that he remembered only that it lay near a great river called the Zambezi.

  It seemed there was no decision to make after all.

  "Bakuli," I said, "what is the name in your language for brother?"

  Puzzled he said, "Ndume."

  I nodded. "I do not go to the be mweni" I told him in his vernacular, "for thou be my ndume, Bakuli. We stay together."

  He glowed with pleasure, quickly concealing it by kicking at the sand with his bare foot. "Where then. Missy?"

  I now abandoned all thought of going south to find the Niger River, for if Bakuli's home lay to the east, near another great river, then we must head east until we met people who had heard of the Zambezi. "We will go east," I said firmly. "The Arabs spoke of a caravan leaving soon, I heard them. Let's see what our silver can buy for us in this town, and ask about the caravan."

  And so we entered Agadez, a town spread out across the slopes of a foothill of the distant Tarouadji Mountains. What captured the eye approaching it was the minaret that rose above its crumbling walls, with a tower that resembled a great brown cactus plant bristling with thorns, but as we drew nearer the thorns turned out to be wooden beams protruding like toothpicks from the tower that gracefully tapered to a blunt point on its way to the sky. Once inside the town walls we strolled through its outer dusty lanes looking at houses of dried mud, finding many of them no more than empty shells—we would shelter in one of them when night ca
me—and from this I concluded that Agadez had known kinder days.

  As we made our way toward the town's center, however, we met with the marketplace, the heart of the town and obviously its soul, for it was as lively as a carnival. Here were crowds of native blacks in colorful cotton gandouras, groups of Tuareg looking haughty and splendid in their indigo robes and veils and Arabs dusty from travel and prepared to trade and bargain. After the austerity and silence of the desert it was glorious to see so many people and there was certainly a richness of color and noise: a constant chatter of voices, the smell of charcoal smoke and roasting meat, scents, perfumes and spices, heat, dung and dust.

  There were stalls selling needles and palm ropes, kola nuts, baskets, leather goods and bolts of bright cloth, daggers, knives, guerbas, but most of all there was food to buy, cooked deliciously over charcoal fires. Out came one of our thalers and we gorged ourselves on couscous and chunks of tender mutton swimming in gravy. We ate with such gusto that when we'd scooped out the bowl with slabs of bread there was not so much as a single pearl of couscous to be seen. Following this we bought a sack of dates, a handful of kola nuts and two loaves of flat round bread for the next day, all of which reduced our resources considerably.

  Looking at our purchases Bakuli said, "These not take us east, Missy."

  "No," I sighed, and agreed that it was time to learn when the caravan going east would leave, and how many days remained for us to beg or steal money for travel. Obviously I must pick some pockets here in Agadez, but it would be dangerous: the Tuareg wore their wealth in purses that hung around their necks and were tucked securely inside their robes; as for the Arabs 1 knew they must conceal their coins in pockets, as I did, but their clothes were many-layered and voluminous. We were in brigand country now, where thieves were anticipated, and any failure might cost me my life. Nevertheless it had to be done if we were to leave Agadez or we would soon become beggars and there looked to be enough of them already.

  We left the marketplace and found our way to the camel market at the edge of town where we judged that news of the caravan would be the more reliable. "Am I still a mute, Bakuli?"

  "Oh yes, Missy," he said earnestly. "You not talk Hausa good, you be foreigner to it, a baubawawa."

  I accepted this meekly for it was true enough, but it was certainly frustrating to be silent.

  The camel market was a noisy place, full of Tuareg minutely examining camels who snarled and spit and in every manner protested their humps being squeezed and their teeth probed. We walked in among the traders, taking care to keep clear of the rebellious animals, and I soon noticed one man in particular who stood out from the others. For one thing he was not a Targui—we hoped to avoid the Tuareg—but an Arab who looked quite grand. He wore a clean white burnous and a cultivated look enhanced by a black beard neatly trimmed to a point. Two black men stood beside him, Sudanese servants by the look of them. When Bakuli hesitated I pushed him forward, and approaching this man he asked with a timid smile when the great caravan for the east would be leaving.

  The man turned his full glance on Bakuli, studying him with penetrating eyes set into a thin stern face. In Arabic he said curtly the caravan would leave at the full of the moon, and he watched the two of us as we walked away.

  We would need money very quickly, I was thinking, for we had walked the night before under a nearly full moon that had drenched the desert with light. We had four Maria Theresa dollars left, the equal of forty thousand cowries, but a good donkey cost nearly thirty thousand cowries and we would probably need two of them to carry guerbas and food for the trip, neither of which we possessed at the moment either. Aimlessly we wandered back to the marketplace, Bakuli no longer smiling while I wondered at our prospects and found them depressing.

  As we reached the edge of the market I heard a man call out in Hausa, "Gàtanan, gâtanan, ta je, ta komo! "

  How many times I'd heard these words in Amina's village! We had found a storyteller calling out, "A story, a story, let it go, let it come."

  Except that no one had come. He sat on the ground cross-legged, a small black man wrapped in voluminous shabby robes. We stopped to look at him and to listen as he tried again, calling, "Wanan tâtsunïar dugan daji che, da shi da Namijin-Mijin-maza, " and again, "Gâtanan, gata-nan! "

  "Namijin-Mijin-maza, " I repeated. "Bakuli, that's the story of A-Man-Among-Men, isn't it? The one where you explained all the hard words? It's a good story, why doesn't anyone stop to listen?"

  Bakuli shrugged. "Peoples with full pockets have empty heads, not want talk. He beggarman, I think."

  I considered this, stirred by the thought that we too would be beggars soon if we couldn't summon some resources, and here at last was a resource if I applied a little showmanship from a long-ago different world. We needed money and the Storyteller needed money, he had a good story to tell and I had not grown up in a carnival for nothing. I wondered how much skill had been lost during my sojourn among the Hausa and decided that nothing ventured nothing gained, and in any case it should be safer to join him than to attempt robbing a Targui. "Bakuli," I said, "give me three of our silver dollars."

  "Missy—"

  "And your head kerchief," I added, for Amina had given one to me and one to Bakuli, and they matched. Withdrawing to a deserted comer, I tossed a silver dollar into the air, then a second and then a third, keeping them in motion with such success that it seemed I'd not lost the knack of juggling, and this pleased me very much until one of the dollars crashed to the earth. Nevertheless Bakuli's wide-eyed astonishment had reassured me. "I need something bigger, I need three round stones," I told him. "While I search, you go and bargain with the Storyteller. Ask him if he'll share half of what's given him if we bring many people to hear his story."

  The Storyteller's name was Damau, and if he was skeptical at such a boast he must have felt that he had nothing to lose, having nothing anyway. Thus it came about that we put on a show after the muezzin's afternoon call to prayer, and after much practice of old skills on my part. With great enthusiasm Bakuli played the role of carny barker, shouting and beating a piece of discarded tin with a stick. After a few people had gathered out of curiosity I stood up next to the Storyteller and began to juggle my three stones, keeping them smoothly in motion and sending them higher and higher; soon a bigger crowd stopped to watch in amazement, never having seen juggling before. Following this I held up one silver dollar, caused it to disappear, and extracted it with a flourish from the Storyteller's ear—there were gasps of awe at this—and then I palmed my red headscarf in the left sleeve of my barracan and drew out Bakuli's matching headscarf from the right sleeve. With a full audience watching now I bowed and pointed to Damau, and the Storyteller rose with dignity to call out, "Gátanan, gâtanan, ta je, ta kômô!"

  This time the crowd called back the ritual, "Ta je, ta komo! Let it go, let it come."

  And he was good, this Daman, he had a melodious voice that rose and fell and paused dramatically. One by one his listeners squatted down in a circle around us and then settled on the earth without stirring as they grew immersed in the tale—and it is a long one—of how the braggert who called himself A-Man-Among-Men meets the Giant of the Forest. After many humbling experiences the man's wife sums up its moral at the end, saying, "Whatever you do, make little of it, for whether you excel in strength, or in power, or in riches, it is all the same—someone is better than you!"

  I liked that ending. When I'd first heard the story, understanding only two words out of five, with Bakuli explaining those I'd missed, it was the only taste of philosophy that had come my way since Marcus Aurelius, and it had satisfied a hunger in me. The story pleased me now, too. At its conclusion the three of us bowed as we might have done at Laski's Carnival, and as the crowds wandered away my eyes feasted on Damau's calabash overflowing now with cowrie shells. When we came to divide its contents we found not only cowries but slivers of sugar, shavings of salt, a bronze French centime, two copper 5-para coins and some tradin
g beads. We were not rich but we would have food for another day.

  And it was a beginning. Damau grasped our hands, his eyes bright now, and nodding vigorously he repeated over and over his wish that Allah might give us good health, that Allah would give us life and protection, and would we come back tomorrow?

  Solemnly we agreed to return.

  The passing hours of the day had been punctuated by the muezzin's calls to prayer, the el Duhr at noon, the Asr in midafternoon, at sunset the el Mogh'reb. Night overtook an apricot sky, softly blurring shapes until the darkness turned those walking home into phantoms. Lanterns flickered like fireflies in the narrow lanes until a pale nearly full moon rose, and gradually the village stilled.

  Bakuli and I had foraged among the ruins for a hut with a roof, and we had found one by dusk. It was surrounded by rubble, half of one wall had collapsed but there was a roof to hide us. Here we cleared away chunks of fallen banco, made pillows out of the sand that had drifted inside, and after the last Allah Akhbar of the el Aschïa we lay down to sleep.

  It was now that we heard someone stealthily approaching our snug hidingplace, his footsteps inadvertently turning over fallen stones. Bakuli warningly reached out to touch my arm; I sat up and fumbled in the dark for a weapon, a stick or a stone, but found nothing so that we could only make ourselves small and silent and wait. Abruptly the silhouette of a man stood outlined in the doorway, black against the lighter night sky.

  He said, "Salaam aleikum, " and then, "Bemba wâled? "

  Bemba boy ... By the sound of the voice I knew it was not Damau but somewhere it had been heard before. Confused and frightened we huddled together, still silent. The man stooped under the doorframe to enter and once inside he set down a lantern. In the first flicker of light I saw long slender fingers adjusting the flame and recognized the face: we were being visited by the tall bearded Arab from the camel market, except that he had exchanged his white burnous for a dark and shabby one such as his servants had worn. This in itself was strange but so was his presence here.