Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

  "You too?" he said gently, reading my thoughts, and as he rose and came to me I knew that it was going to happen again, and the anticipation of it erupted in me like wildfire, so that I was trembling. Obviously I would never be a lady.

  Hours later, lying together, we talked a little, two human beings unalterably tied to each other by the flesh and in search of what lay beyond it now.

  "So you're American," he said. "News travels fast in Africa. I heard of that massacre south of Ghadames but no one knew there was a survivor. It was a long time ago."

  "Yes," I said.

  He shook his head. "You have to be the first white woman to reach this part of the country, and the first American. Were you with the Tuareg long?"

  "Until I escaped."

  "And have been trying to get home ever since, I suppose."

  "Yes, " I said fervently, except there abruptly slid into my mind the thought, Home to what, Caressa, and this was not something that my homing instincts had remotely considered. "Yes," I said doubtfully.

  "And then?"

  I did not care to talk any more. "Mu tafi?" I asked, slipping into Hausa.

  He nodded. "You're right, it's time to go but—" His smile was a surprise, completely changing his guarded face. "But you've not told me your name, am I to call you nothing but 'you'?"

  "My name's Caressa," I told him. "Caressa Horvath Bowman."

  "I'll call you Caressa," he said, "but 1 suspect you're really an 'aljan, a djinn of the desert. Or an houri."

  I ignored this. "And what do I call you?"

  "Jared's my name. Jared MacKay."

  I nodded. There seemed no point—and I could certainly find none—in nursing hostility any longer, in spite of the shocks I'd sustained during the past few hours, and I had to ruefully admit that I'd sustained them shockingly well for I felt alive again in every pore of my body. When we'd lain together in the sun he'd been gentle, and afterward we had talked; a woman appreciates talk. There would be more of it but not yet, because the silence of the desert was a part of each of us, but I knew that something was being established, something important; it had the feel of kinship and it was as free and as spacious as the desert—and as dangerous too, I thought, but I was content.

  16

  He had started backward, this Jared who had assumed I was a Targuia, and he made no apologies for his actions but in a subtle manner he began to court me. This struck me as funny because it was so difficult to do, each of us engaged as we were each day in lugging guerbas, feeding, loading and reloading four camels, traveling ten or eleven hours only to unload the camels, feed them, build a fire, make a meal, chase after any camels that wandered away and finally collapse into sleep, only to begin again after several hours of rest.

  "Where are we?" I asked on the third evening, which I thought intelligent of me, for it seemed time to know. "And where are you going?" He traveled well, this man, his camels carrying sheepskins, salt wrapped in hay, a loaf of sugar, wheat for unleavened bread, and coffee such as I'd not tasted since Tripoli. Besides this there were three rifles and the tent—but it had not been used again—the kit of medicine with its canteen of brandy, several sacks of fresh and dried dates, wooden utensils and a leather bucket with long ropes for lowering it into a well. There was even a leather sack of twigs and dried camel's dung for fires, a bag of trading beads and a book, and his guerbas were well-cured. I could only think of how little Bakuli and I had traveled with, and wish that he might be here to see such largesse.

  It was night and he was nursing a fire and I huddled as close to it as I dared, warming my hands on a cup of coffee. The sun had retreated in a burst of color—a blaze of crimson striped with shades of purple and mauve, and the moon was frosting the sands with silver; we had descended into desert again and it was cold.

  He said with a frown, "I think we're in French Equatorial Africa, which not so long ago was the French Congo."

  "French, then."

  He nodded. "Roughly speaking, yes—by one of those treaties they keep making, or so I heard when I was in Djanet but I doubt there are any French here." He waved a hand at the empty landscape around us. "This would be called the Chad Military Territory, I think. As for tomorrow, we should reach Zouar, climbing all the way."

  "And then?"

  He sighed. "That's what I'm trying to puzzle out." He glanced up and smiled that quick magic smile that warmed his face and was already beginning to reach my heart. "Abyssinia's out for the moment, I was lucky to get away with my skin. The consul at Addis Abeba sent a messenger warning me, but still I made my getaway with a horde of natives in pursuit." He hesitated and then, "There's Egypt and the Eastern desert where I've a friend among the Bedouin .., we could camp safely there for a while."

  We .., this word had an unexpectedly pleasing ring to it, for I had begun to appreciate all the dimensions of this man: 1 liked the way he talked, with an odd twist to his words that I guessed to be Scottish, and if he was sparing in speech what he did say had meat to it. He was also a man who worked hard, and he was competent. Of all this I had become increasingly aware and it helped steady the new emotions that he roused in me. "Where's Egypt?" I asked, draining my cup of coffee.

  He left the fire to sit beside me. "A long way from us. Here, I'll show you." Drawing a pencil from his pocket he leaned over and sketched a map in the sand. "Egypt's up here in the corner, next to Tripolitania where you entered Africa. Just below Egypt is the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a huge country, and squeezed in next to it on the right—the farthest east you can go in Africa without running into the Red Sea—is Abyssinia, some of which is below Egypt, too, but only its tip."

  "Abyssinia, where you hunted ivory...."

  "Yes." With his pencil he drew a straight line from Abyssinia across the Sudan. "And this is how I traveled, the shortest and most direct route—but avoiding El Fasher where a rather nasty Sultan named Ali Dinar cuts people's heads off—to eventually pass through Zouar and Sequedinc on my way west."

  "But why did you risk nasty sultans who cut people's heads off to come so far?" I asked.

  He smiled. "Because I wanted to see the Tibesti Mountains and cross them, then head into the Sahara and up to the oasis of Djanet and see the Tassili n' Ajjer, which you visited by accident and not willingly." He hesitated. "Except that once in Djanet—once there I felt, no I knew I had to turn and come back. It's like that sometimes."

  "Like what sometimes?"

  "I feel things," he said with a shrug, but he didn't explain.

  I said naively, "Do you write papers for a Geographical Society?"

  For the first time he laughed, a roar of laughter that subsided into a chuckle. "No, my sweet, but I have it in the back of my mind—a secret I'll confess to you—that one day when I'm through adventuring I'd like to write a book or two about this land. It's been home to me for over a decade and it never stops fascinating me."

  "A whole ten years?" I said in surprise.

  "A whole ten years," he said. "I'm twice your age, I imagine. How old are you?"

  "I don't know," I told him. "I was still sixteen, although nearly seventeen, when we left Tripoli but there's no time in the desert, is there? I don't know whether I'm nineteen or twenty now. Are you really twice my age?"

  "Not quite, being thirty-one."

  I said shyly, "I saw you writing words in your notebook, is that why?"

  He nodded. "Much of Abyssinia I know well, but this is new to me, so yes, I write things down from time to time."

  "And will put them in a book one day .., you must read lots of them, too, then?"

  He shrugged. "Not now, but I grew up bookish. My father taught school in a village not far from Edinburgh, a poor village and he was a poor man, but books we always had. My mother died first and my father when I was eighteen. They'd set aside money to send me to University but with them both gone I took stock of myself and my future and decided to set out for Africa instead, thinking to be another Bruce." Seeing my blank look he said, "James Bruce, a fellow
Scotsman who went exploring in Africa back in the 1700s."

  I said politely, "I've never heard of him, what did he explore?"

  "Abyssinia, of course!" He rose and walked over to one of his saddlebags, and digging deep he extracted the small book I'd noticed when he unpacked; he handed it to me. It looked quite old, its page edges ragged, and I opened it carefully. On its title page I read:

  TRAVELS Between the Years ¡768 & 1773

  Into ABYSSINIA To Discover the Source of The Nile

  Being the substance of the Original Book

  by

  JAMES BRUCE, Esq. Printed Glasgow 1818

  "Shortened version," he said. "Very efficient for travel." I opened the book to the middle and read. Between the two rivers Geshen and Samba is a low unwholesome, though fertile, province called Wallaka and southward of that is Upper Shoa. This province was famous for the retreat it gave to the only remaining prince of the house of Solomon, who fled from the massacre of his brethren by Judith about the year 900.

  "It sounds a violent country," I told him, handing back the book.

  "Oh it is, definitely. They have a saying in Abyssinia that all kings wade in blood to the throne."

  "And because of Mr. Bruce you came to Africa and headed for Abyssinia!"

  His eyes rested on me with humor. "Yes, but it wasn't that simple. 1 first spent a year in Alexandria learning Arabic and Swahili. That's where Saalih and 1 became friends—it's he whose family and roots are in Egypt's East-em Desert, and later I spent a few weeks there hunting ibex with him and his brothers and father. Alexandria's also where I swallowed my penchant for avoiding Authority and became downright cozy with British officials, knowing I'd need their influence to get me into Abyssinia. Any more questions?"

  I laughed. "Yes, did you make your fortune there?"

  He nodded. "Enough. I couldn't risk traveling with it but it's well-hidden in Abyssinia."

  Puzzled I said, "There? But if the country's—"

  "It's safe in the bank all the natives use: the earth," he explained. "In my case I buried my gold under a cairn of rocks just before I crossed the border into the Sudan, before heading for Sennar and El Obeid—and having paid four gold sovereigns for a desert djinn I'm left now with only two gold rings and a sack of Maria Theresa thalers." His smile deepened the network of sun lines around his eyes, making his smile important because it was rare. "I like looking at you," he added. "Your Tuareg have a saying, 'A man and his woman friend are for the heart and the eyes, not just for the bed,' and yours is a face to feast the eyes on."

  I put down my empty cup of coffee and smiled back at him. "When you look at me like that—"

  "Yes," he said, and we lay down on the still-warm sand, wrapped together in a sheepskin, and made love under the moon and slept deeply with no sounds in the night except the stirring of the camels, and in the morning set out again for Zouar.

  Zouar was set among towering pinnacles of rock, a mountain village of circular mud-and-stone houses slowly crumbling under the harsh sun. Almost at once Jared decided that we mustn't linger: a caravan was expected soon and this was to be avoided as well as any French patrols who might be in the neighborhood; Zouar, it seemed, was also a stopping place for caravans on the way to Murzuk, but these came from the southeast, from Borku and the Wadai. After we had worked hard filling the guerbas Jared said, "Stay and look meek while I have more words with the elder and learn what news the caravans have brought." He smiled faintly. "You're an Arab now, and while it's true I've never met an Arab woman who wasn't as strong-willed as her man, the women play at meekness. Be meek." He extracted a small leather bag from the others, pocketed it and turned to go. "Guard the camels, another day I'll teach you to use a rifle."

  From these words I understood, not happily, that a man traveling with well-loaded camels, a woman and no guards, could be of great interest even here. I should not have been startled by this, having known the Tuareg, but these people were Tibbu, or Teda, and looked friendly. Yes, Jared said, but once they'd been famous raiders, and clever enough to raid even the Tuareg, and so I sat quietly, surrounded by curious grinning children and tried to look both meek and intimidating, but I was relieved when Jared returned. He was carrying a pile of goat hides and he looked troubled.

  "There's news," he said. "Italy has invaded Tripoli— there's fighting there."

  "Tripoli?" I gasped, remembering its sun-drenched calm, and remembering Mohammed, too, and the Hand of Fatima that had gone south with Bakuli.

  "Even worse, it's spilled over into the deserts," he said. "The desert tribes—led by the Senussi—have rallied to support the Tripoli natives. It seems they despise the Italians more than the Turks in Tripoli, because the Italians are infidels while the Turks are at least fellow Muslims. All hell's broken loose."

  "Does it mean trouble for us too?"

  "It certainly limits us," he said dryly, "because there's only one direction we can go now—east." The logical way out of the mountains, he explained, was the known caravan route heading south out of Zouar, down through Borku and across to the Sudan, but this would lead us through Senussi territory, and if by chance it was discovered we weren't Arabs we could be killed. He had ruled this out, but now there was no hope of veering north at some point to cut across the desert to Egypt.

  He said grimly, "We'll have to go the way I came, at least until we're out of the mountains. I had a guide for the trip so I know the route, but it's brutal." We would head up into Bardai, he said, which lay in a valley high in the Tibesti—there would be water there—and after that drop down into the foothills to Yebbi Bou and risk there being a decent trail east across the plains to Egypt's Western Desert. "Inch'Allah," he added with the twist of a smile and handed me one of the leather hides. "I traded for these, the Teda called this a farto. It'll be cold, very cold in the mountains and we'll have to race both winter and the winds." As I grasped the bundle he added wryly, "And then there will be desert and heat."

  I found the farto to be a leather tunic made out of skins sewn together in a primitive manner with a hole for the head and each arm. It certainly looked unappealing, and I suspected lice, but I conceded that it would be warmer than my ragged barracan.

  "Let's go," said Jared, and we began wrestling the camels to their feet and loading them again, and within the hour we had left the village.

  After Zouar we followed tracks upward through a wilderness of rocks, heading into the high—really high—Tibesti Mountains. If it was hard for us, it was harder on the camels, just as crossing the Tassili n' Ajjer had been. We led them up and down steep trails, through forests of stone lined by high cliffs and then down into a gorge and up again. Pausing on one cliff we saw a marvelous sight below us: the crater of a volcano filled with a pale jade-green substance, and after this we descended through narrow gorges to a dried-up oued, or wadi, and once in the canyon's bottom we made camp because there were thornbushes on which the camels could graze....

  That afternoon Jared explained the workings of a rifle to me, taking it apart and putting it together again, showing me how to clean and load il, how to hold it and how to aim it. "That's lesson number one," he told me. "We can't afford many bullets for practice, so that'll be for another day. Now take it apart again."

  I grew bloody sick of taking it apart and putting it together again, at least until I'd mastered it, and then I felt a glow of pride. "You'll do," he said, and built a fire before the sun set in a sky the color of plum and damask, and that night we finished the sour goat's milk bought from the Teda in Zouar.

  'Tell me about the Senussi," I said, washing my hands in the sand.

  His brows lifted. "You've met them?"

  "One," I told him, and spoke of Muraiche, murdered in the night by the man who later sold me.

  Jared nodded. "He could have been on an errand of revenge, for it's unusual to find a Senussi in that part of the country, but they travel everywhere, their mission being to spread the faith. In the Fezzan desert the Bedouin are ardent follower
s. But they can't abide Christians or foreigners."

  "Us," I said, nodding.

  "And of course," he added almost casually, "they still involve themselves in the slave trade."

  My head jerked up to stare at him. "It's true then?"

  He nodded. "Senussi himself—Mohammed ben Ali es Senussi—has his headquarters in Kufra, in the far west of the Fezzan. With the blessings of the sultan of Wadai, far to the south, slaves are still brought from Lake Chad and the Sudan up through the Wadai and to Kufra and then to the coast. In the Koran, you see, the words were spoken by Allah through Mohammed to the desert people, and there's nothing in The Book forbidding slavery."

  "I'm a slave," I reminded him sourly.

  "You know you're not," he said, but seeing how seriously I spoke, and how sad I looked at this moment, he reached into his pocket for his pencil and held it over my head. "Thou, Caressa Horvath Bowman, are now a freed woman, no longer a bâwâ." Very softly he added, "And if you're determined to go to America I'll help you get there but 1 warn you, Caressa, I'll do my best to make you never want to go."

  "Oh," I said stupidly, and then, being a woman I must add, "Never?"

  "Never," he said in a harsh voice, "because you know damn well we belong together."

  That was when he spoke of how he had turned back from Djanet to retrace his steps to Seguedine. "It happens sometimes, it's something I was born with, perhaps because my mother was Irish and the Irish are known often to have a third eye."

  "Third eye?" I repeated, puzzled.

  "An awareness of the future, of what's to happen."

  "Oh, the sixth sense," I said. "Do you mean you have it?"

  "I don't enjoy talking about it," he said, scowling, "but ever since I was a child I could sense when something was going to happen. My mother's death, my father's .., warnings, you might say. At Djanet I felt pulled back almost physically—against my will, a strange feeling—aware that I had to return to Sequedine, that I'd left someone there who was important to me. It's hard to explain," he said uneasily, "and even harder for others to understand, but I'm trying. I reached Sequedine and there was nobody and nothing, and I swore at myself heartily, and then an hour later el Kazza's caravan began straggling in, and when I saw you I knew—I simply knew." He added ruefully, "But 1 had to spend three long and damnably boring hours with el Kazza before he'd let me see the girl he called a Tar-guia."