Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Bemba wáled, " he repeated, nodding to us.

  "Naam?" said Bakuli in a small voice.

  Shadows leaped up the half-walls around us, the man squatted near the lantern appraising us, and in turn I stared at him, seeing eyes that burned with an intensity brighter than the flame in his lantern. An uncomfortable man, I thought, and as he moved slightly I caught a glimpse of striped silk under the worn burnous. A rich one, too, I decided, but I wondered how on earth he'd found us—it went hard for me to be a mute in Agadez—and as if Bakuli heard my unspoken question he asked him this.

  The man gestured impatiently. "My servants followed you all day." He looked from Bakuli to me. "Inta! You!" he said.

  "Missy hear, Missy no speak," Bakuli told him in Hausa and pointed to my lips, shrugging.

  "All the better then," said the man.

  He was not one to linger over words as Arabs usually do, caressing them and tasting their flavor, or perhaps, considering what later occurred, his life no longer had space for the formalities. His words were needle-sharp and brief: we wished to go east with the caravan leaving in two days? If we would carry a message and deliver it for him in Bilma he would see to it that we had two camels and a donkey, and food and water for travel.

  Here was a miracle indeed. I glanced at Bakuli and saw that his mouth had dropped open in astonishment at this. He stammered, "Thou mean—you speak of the caravan leaving at the full of moon?"

  The man nodded. "Naam, " and in Hausa demanded, "i or a 'a—yes or no?"

  Bakuli gave me a sidelong glance and smiled, "i, " he said.

  "It is a bargain then." Reaching inside his burnous he brought out a slip of parchment and rolled it into a thin tube. "I will not speak with you again," he said sternly, "nor will you speak to me. We have never met. Two sunsets from now, after the el Mogh'reb, my servant will bring all that you need—camels and donkey, fodder, guerbas and food—and take you to the hills where the caravan gathers."

  He held out the scrap of paper. "Hide it well and see that in Bilma it is given to Abu Abd el Wahat."

  "Abu Abd el Wahat," repeated Bakuli. "From what person, Sidi?"

  He said carelessly, "Muraiche." As if to atone from his harsh manner he handed Bakuli several coins—I heard them clink and my heart lifted at the sound—and with courtesy he added, "Bismallah—in the name of god .. . Emshi beselema. " He then extinguished his lantern and left us.

  It was in this strange manner that we met Muraichc, except that I would wonder many times if this was his true name. I had no knowledge then of what was happening in other parts of Africa, I knew nothing of the intrigues, assassinations, treaties and betrayals, battles, rivalries and ultimatums among the French, Turks, Italians, British and Belgians as each of them raced to swallow up as much of the continent as possible. I didn't know that in Tripoli the Turks had been struggling to extend their power into the Sahara, or had been sending secret expeditions into the Sudan, or that Italy was plotting to invade Tripoli. After all, I had been traveling for a very long time in the only part of Africa that nobody wanted—the desert.

  Long after Muraiche left us, Bakuli and I talked in whispers about our mysterious visitor and the miracle of his singling us out, and yet we wondered, over and over again, why us? When it grew light I unrolled the tiny slip of paper to see what it contained but the message was written in Arabic with all of its incomprehensible curls and flourishes. I brought out Mr. Jappy and inserted it into the hole drilled for my finger; it fitted neatly there, well hidden.

  As to who Muraiche might be, Bakuli dared ask only one person and that was Damau, who said that at the camel market he was called a brave man but a reckless one because he had arrived from the west three sunrises ago, riding through dangerous country with little baggage and only his two servants, and at such a pace that six of his camels had died of exhaustion upon reaching Agadez. It was rumored that he might be a Senussi, but since neither Bakuli nor 1 knew what a Senussi was this didn't enlighten us, and Bakuli dared not ask too many questions lest Muraiche hear of them.

  Whoever Muraiche was, he was a man who kept his word, for two nights later, after the el Mogh'reb at sundown, his servant came for us as promised, leading two loaded camels and a donkey. We were guided out of Agadez and up into the hills where hundreds of campfires burned in the night, waiting for departure at dawn.

  But in the morning the mystery of Muraiche was only compounded, for when the first rays of sun reached the hills and the muezzin's cry sent hundreds of men to their knees, who should we see among our neighbors but Muraiche and his two servants. It seemed that he too was traveling in the caravan to the place called Bilma. A rich madman, I thought, much like Jacob in his way, or so I believed until the third dawn of the march destroyed such innocence.

  It was a wondrous sight to see the caravan begin its march eastward that morning, the camels fanning out across the plains to come together later, at night, for safety. The name of its elected leader was Saad el Riffi, or so Bakuli told me after flitting eagerly among our neighbors to glean information, and under his protection were dozens of small caravans from all over the Sahara, carrying cloth, rugs, hides, leather goods, kola nuts, grain and jewelry to sell in the east or trade for precious salt from the mines of Bilma. There were hundreds of camels, as well as donkeys, sheep and goats, and the humans accompanying them were an exotic sight: veiled Kel Air Tuareg with magnificent pale camels, Bedouin in checkered headdresses, black Sudanese in tarboosh and white gandouras, Arabs well-wrapped in hooded cloaks of goat or camel's hair—to which had been added one small Bemba boy and a reluctant mute from a far country disguised as a boy.

  The triumph of our departure was somewhat tempered, however, by what I began overhearing about this desert we were to cross. Its name was the Tenere, which had been meaningless to me when I learned of it in Agadez but now I was among men who had crossed it before and I did not like what I heard of it: the Tenere had killed many men, they said, and was far cruder than the Sahara for there were no wells at all in its eastern half .., the nearest oasis was over 300 miles away and Bilma lay another three or four days march beyond it .., there were dunes in the Tenere that stood four and five times higher than the minaret in Agadez, and when the wind blew one could hear the djinns calling, and the cries of dead men who had gone mad from thirst or sandstorms. All these words I regarded with caution, aware that men enjoyed their tall tales, but later when we had left behind the sharp silhouette of the Alzuager and had seen the last of the trees and rocks I was to share the dread with which these men approached the Tenere.

  As for Muraiche, I noted that he traveled with only sixteen baggage camels, he rode a donkey and wore a shabby burnous, giving no sign of wealth at all. We walked not far from him, our two camels and the donkey roped together in single line behind us, and although he never so much as glanced at us I acquired the habit of looking for him each day and each time we halted. He was, after all, our benefactor, our sponsor, and it was his food that we ate. Which is how I happened to see what took place just before moon-set on that third day, never daring to speak of it even to Bakuli but keeping it secret out of fear.

  It had been a bitterly cold night and I woke up shivering and full of regrets about heading east without learning first the nature of this desert. Already 1 was feeling a lassitude new to me; I was also tired of being a mute and never speaking, and tired of taking care to answer the calls of nature alone lest someone know I was not a boy, and so I lifted my head that night, but wearily, to look at the sleeping camp. The moon was still bright, the only shadows being those cast by the walls of piled-up saddles and bales of fodder that circled us for protection. In this light the sleeping men were so blanketed they looked like bundles of old clothes rolled up and left in the sand. Beyond the wall the camels moved restlessly, their shapes blurred in a creeping ground mist. I glanced toward the place where Muraiche had lain down, having marked his black-and-white striped blanket in the firelight before it died.

  Out among the c
amels something moved and my glance shifted. A shadow emerged and I saw a man climb over the saddles and quietly make his way past the sleeping forms. I thought it the caravan's watchman; he paused beside Muraiche's striped blanket and leaned over it, his burnous falling around him in folds. He was there only a minute but as he straightened he looked in my direction, his face clear in the moonlight, and we exchanged interested glances across the sleeping men. Then he was gone, vanishing over the wall and among the camels again. It seemed of no consequence to me, my eyes closed and I slept until the cameleers stirred, when a fire was lit, coffee brewed and Muraiche did not rise to shake off his blanket. Instead there came a sobbing cry from one of his Sudanese servants and then a wail from the other; a man bid them be quiet, walked over to strike them silent, stiffened and called out, "Andak! Andak! The shaykh has been killed!"

  I was incredulous and hurried to look, but Muraiche was truly dead, he lay still as a rock in his striped blanket and already his skin had taken on the blue pallor that creeps over the flesh once it no longer breathes. What had killed him was there too: a dagger that protruded obscenely from his chest. The men made way for El Riffi, who came to examine the dead man; there were uneasy murmurings of "Masch' Allah!" and "Bismallah!" The caravan leader ordered a grave to be dug and began to question the two Sudanese.

  "Walldhi," interrupted a man, pointing. "Look! That Sudanese wears the brand of Allah—only a Senussi brands his slaves!"

  "Malesh, but he has not been robbed?"

  "What brings a Senussi to the West, so far from Kufra or the Sudan?"

  'To spy?"

  "Revenge—niqmah—is more likely. Someone has displeased them."

  "Or betrayed them," muttered another man.

  "The Senussi are fierce, it is truth, but all in the name of Allah."

  "Pious, yes. They live by The Book."

  The man next to me shrugged. "But they would have us drink no palm-wine and it is said they cut off the hand of any man who touches tobacco. They arc fanatics."

  "But they hate the French, there's that in their favor."

  "Yes and still trade in slaves—one must admire them for that when the Christian infidels forbid it."

  "Bismallah, they kill infidels too," a man said dryly, "but we will be late starting today, I think."

  I turned away, troubled not only by Muraiche's death but by the words these men had spoken, for I had understood too much and too suddenly. I saw now the reasons for Muraiche's appearance in Agadez with exhausted camels and no guards, I understood his stealth, his secrecy and his choice of Bakuli and me to carry his message; he must have guessed that he was traveling with Death behind him. I felt pity for him because 1 too had known fear and the taste of it, but if the Senussi killed infidels then I must certainly be careful never to relax my guard lest I meet one again without knowing it.

  We left Muraiche behind that morning in his lonely grave, consigned to the vast silence of the desert, to its sun and its stars, and to his all-merciful, all-compassionate God—and who knew which of us would be next, for this was harsh country. Day after day we plodded along in silence except for the soft swish of padded camels' feet or the occasional groan of a camel too exhausted to go on. We were like ghosts wrapped in shrouds, white with dust, our minds rendered equally as vacant. Behind us the camels were strung out in an endless line, their shapes melting and reforming like watery mirages in the heat-glitter, while ahead lay an unattainable horizon bleached white by a murderous sun. Our donkey had collapsed and died four days after the last well. There was the cruelty again of scorched eyelids and blistering hands and feet, and always the obsessive dream of water, clean or brackish it scarcely mattered so long as it was liquid to wet a parched throat and thin the dust: one lived for it, doling it out at sunset and dawn and watching the once-fat guerbas shrink in size.

  This was the Tenere, lifeless, waterless, merciless, its only trail signs the bones of camels and men who had died here.

  There was no thought of riding now, men walked to preserve the camels. Sometimes, stumbling along over the glazed sands 1 would remember that one among us in the caravan was Muraiche's murderer and when we halted, which was not often, I would think to study the shapes of the men, wondering if this one or that one had the look of him; I would wonder, too, how clearly he'd seen me and I kept my face well-wrapped to prevent recognition. Perhaps he did too. Mostly I counted the days, taking care at each sunset to be accurate and teaching Bakuli the numbers to help me remember.

  We had been two weeks and three days on the march when it was said that—Inch'Allah—we would see the walls of Fachi the next day. Bakuli, licking his blistered lips, said Hoarsely, "Water, Missy!"

  I could only nod weakly. Sometime after passing the Tree of Tenere—that solitary beautiful tree growing like a miracle out of the sands—a fever had overtaken me that brought a wild thirst and an aching head. Now I was having stomach cramps, too, which seemed very unfair, because Id drunk foul water many times since Tripoli but only now was it choosing to exact a toll. I lived in fear of becoming delirious and of being left behind in the desert but almost as alarming was the knowledge that after watering the camels and resting briefly at Fachi—if I made it there—we must travel three or four more days to reach Bilma.

  On the following day I would dimly remember a shape appearing on what had been for days an empty horizon, and most glorious of all it was a shape that cast a shadow across the sands, a lovely cool blue shadow. I remember shouts from the cameleers, and as we drew nearer I saw what a fortress this town of Fachi looked in spite of the fringe of green palm leaves above its walls.

  After this there was only a darkness in which I could hear Bakuli crying in a panic, "Missy! Missy!" and later a man questioning him in Arabic. I was vaguely aware of being picked up and carried, and then of other voices speaking, arguing. Meaningless words penetrated my nightmares .. . Salaam aleikum .., i, Sidi . . , harara . . , but Laski's Carnival was on fire and I couldn't speak, I was struggling to escape the flames and finding myself held down by Sharkey Bill. "No," I shouted. "No!"

  Suddenly there was water. "Ruwa, " a woman's voice said and a man repeated in Arabic, "Mayya, " and then I heard the blessed voice of Bakuli saying, "Shâ, Missy. Drink."

  I opened my eyes. I was lying on the floor in a small, dark fetid room lit by a lantern, and Bakuli was holding a cup of water for me to drink. It was beautiful clean water such as I'd not tasted in what felt a century, and I drank it down. The second cup Bakuli poured over my forehead, cooling it. In the shadows behind him I saw a tiny, strange-looking black woman, with hair tied in long beaded strings, and beyond her a man whom I couldn't see distinctly except that he wore a burnous. I heard the sound of coins that he pressed into the hand of the woman and he seemed to be giving her instructions, I heard the word shabb, meaning young man, and the woman tittered. "Shabb?" Vastly amused she repeated, "Shabb?" and burst into a peal of laughter. "Ha Bàhaushiyà ce!"

  The secret was out: I was not a boy but a Hausa woman.

  "Masch' Allah!" exclaimed the man, stung by her words.

  He moved closer, bending low to peer at me; I looked at him and he looked at me, a long glance such as we had exchanged in the moonlight not so many nights ago when he'd risen after bending over Muraiche and killing him. I knew his face well, just as he'd known mine, but I'd made it easy for him to find me. As I slipped into unconsciousness again, angrily and against my will, I wondered if he would kill me now or wait, and whether in my nightmares—there would be fresh ones, 1 knew—I would feel the coldness of his dagger against my flesh.

  14

  As Iwandered through the turbulent dreams of fever I would hear voices occasionally, but I recognized only two, that of Bakuli and of the man who had killed Muraiche. Once there was another voice, a new one that kept saying "Gedash?" and "Bismallah, gedash?" I thought I heard Bakuli say in a stricken voice, "O Yesu, " and he didn't sound as if he was praying. I was aware of being poked and prodded once, too, but then the lo
ud voices receded, and when I opened my eyes Bakuli sat on the floor beside my straw mat, his eyes troubled.

  I was still alive and this surprised me. "Bakuli!" I exclaimed, and smiled.

  I remembered that we were in Fachi, but I couldn't understand the airless and cavelike room in which I lay, or the strange texture of the wall when I touched it. "It be gishiri. Missy," Bakuli said when I asked.

  "But—gishiri means 'salt,' " I protested. "You can't mean salt?"

  Bakuli nodded. "All Fachi made of salt. Missy, just like mud bricks. Walls, houses yes."

  The next time I woke he was still there. My stomach had quieted and I was weak, but my head was clear at last. "The caravan," I said.

  "It be gone, Missy. To Bilma."

  "Will there be another caravan soon?" I asked anxiously. "There's that message of Muraiche's to deliver."

  "There be no big ones. Missy, but caravans yes."

  "How long have I been here like this?"

  He smiled. "One sunset, two days. Not long."

  "And that man," I persisted. "There was a man here, Bakuli?"

  His eyes dropped. "Yes, Missy."

  "Has he gone, too?"

  When he nodded I felt a deep sense of relief. I'd not told Bakuli of what I'd seen in the moonlight that night; perhaps my fears had only been symptoms of my fever, because if he was gone— Frowning, I said, "He was kind, then? It was he who carried me here?"

  Bakuli glanced away, not answering, but actually I needed no reply because if the man had gone that was enough for me, I was out of harm's way. Soon the woman with beaded hair bustled in with bowls of mush for us— what Amina had called tuwô, made of grains—and I sat up and ate with appetite. Following this she produced goat's milk and after this fresh dates. The man must have paid her well, I thought, for I had not expected charity here. I decided that my collapse must have had its roots in foul water and the heat, not typhoid or malaria as I'd feared, because after drinking from the wells of Fachi and lying in a dark room I was ready to get up.