by Luis Leante
Days passed in anxious uncertainty. They all asked the legionnaire what he was waiting for, and although his precautions were justified they would not understand why he did not honour his word. On the 10th of December, one of the rumours circulating in the city was confirmed. The news was broadcast loud and clear on Mauritanian radio: the Army of Mauritania was invading the Spanish province from the south. El Aaiún, from that moment, was like a mouse-hole. As soon as Santiago learned this, he opened the bonnet of the Land Rover and started talking to the engine as he would to a person. He checked and double-checked the hoses. He cleaned the terminals of the battery. He made sure the oil and the water in the radiator were at the right levels. He let some air out of the tyres. Then he took a walk around the city. Before midnight he was back. He went into the house, nervous, and told everyone now was the moment to leave. No one had gone to sleep. It seemed that the Saharawis had guessed what was about to happen.
‘Quick. Everyone in the car. We’re leaving.’
‘And the guards?’
‘There aren’t any. It’s an open city. Something serious is going on.’
When Santiago saw how they all squeezed into the vehicle, he could hardly believe it. The three women and the two little girls climbed in the front. In the back were Andía and her three sisters. Every bit of free space was filled with bags and supplies, so that the girls were squashed against the windows. The six lads clambered onto the roof with the rest of the luggage and held on to the baggage rack. The eldest one positioned himself at the front to stop the little ones from flying off if the breaks were slammed, and the second eldest did the same at the back. The legionnaire didn’t say anything, although he knew it was madness to travel in those conditions. He climbed in and, just before turning the ignition, felt something at his feet. He almost screamed. It was two chickens. At the women’s feet he saw a shape that looked like a dog. He recognised the goat. Lazaar’s mother smiled to him with a calm that seemed wholly inappropriate in the circumstances.
‘We cannot leave the city without any food,’ she said.
Santiago did not raise any objections. The vehicle moved with difficulty. The legionnaire thought it would grind to a halt before they reached the end of the street, but it didn’t. Then they took an earthen road strewn with rocks and drove across the neighbourhood. There was not a trace of the Spanish troops. The Land Rover struggled on, spewing out black smoke. Santiago took the Smara road out of the city, with the headlights off. They advanced almost as slowly as a man on foot.
San Román remembered Lazaar’s warning never to follow the road. As soon as the terrain levelled off he started driving across the desert. The rocks under the tyres were like sharpened knives, but the vehicle kept on going. Santiago knew the way, at least up to the crossroads where the road to the phosphate mines of Bu Craa started. Although the path was lost from view, Santiago oriented himself by the hillocks. He’d done the journey several times, and was familiar with the sparse bushes and the line of the horizon. It took over three hours to reach the crossroads where the Smara road forked in two. In normal circumstances he would cover the same distance in half an hour, but the vehicle barely crawled forward. Judging by the tracks in the desert it was obvious that many Saharawis had decided to stay off the road. Even though they were driving at a snail’s pace, Santiago could not afford to take his eyes off the terrain. A patch of soft ground might turn into a soft pit, and when he drove onto sand to avoid the sharp rocks the vehicle started to sink and skid. The boys would then jump off and push, or clear the sand with their hands from under the wheels. No one said a word. Everyone looked into the horizon as if they could speed up the journey with their gaze. At the Edchera junction, on the way to Gaada, Santiago decided to leave behind the stony ground and take the road, otherwise it would have been easy to get lost. He had the impression that, across the desert, they moved in a tortuous zigzag. And if they continued that way they wouldn’t have enough diesel to cover the four hundred kilometres to Tifariti. Miraculously, the Land Rover lurched on in spite of its heavy load.
The road looked like a car cemetery. Every few kilometres they came across an abandoned car or truck, all going towards Smara. Santiago, well aware of the need for spare parts, stopped every time. Yet the vehicles had been taken apart by their owners or by other drivers who’d had the same idea. If there was a tyre left it was because it had burst. The tanks had no fuel. Batteries, carburettors, headlights, even steering wheels, had been plundered. When a vehicle broke down, its owners took it apart and continued on foot. Small groups of people camped by the road to recover their strength before journeying on. One could see entire families with their belongings loaded onto a donkey and a goat in tow. Every now and again a truck or a van overtook the Land Rover, but none kept to the road. San Román, however, did not dare leave it. Every hour he stopped and opened the bonnet to let the engine cool off.
In ten hours they did barely fifty kilometres. By midday Santiago knew they couldn’t go on like that.
‘We have to leave some stuff behind. The Land Rover is about to burst.’
Sid-Ahmed’s wife shook her head. Santiago found the family’s stubbornness exasperating. He tried to fill the radiator of the vehicle with water, but one of the boys dissuaded him.
‘If you pour water into the car, we’ll die of thirst. Better for the car to die.’
‘But if the car dies, we’ll die too.’
After arguing with each and everyone of them, he was allowed to pour in half a litre. Eventually he decided that for that morning they could not go any further. It was too hot. The bodywork was on fire and the tyres were going soft, even though it was only December. The cars abandoned by the side of the road were a compelling argument for stopping. They drove a kilometre off the road and settled at the bottom of a hillock. While Santiago checked the tyres, the family improvised a tent. Everyone appeared to know what to do. Santiago sweated more than anyone else. When he realised how quickly the water left his body, he decided that he would not fill up the radiator without making sure that there was a well nearby.
He soon understood that the goat was a lifeline. Its milk and some dates provided a meal for the whole group. Afterwards everyone lay in the shade, trying not to move or waste energy. Not even the sound of the wind disturbed their peaceful rest. Santiago fell sound asleep.
A light breeze started blowing which relieved them of the heat but also carried a disconcerting noise. The Saharawis alerted Santiago to it. He listened intently.
‘Trucks,’ said San Román.
He climbed to the top of the hillock and lay flat on the ground, trying to find out what it was.
A column of military vehicles was coming down from Gaada. As soon as he saw them he guessed the reason.
‘They’re headed for El Aaiún. Coming from the north. They can only be Moroccan.’
‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Andía, who had come to lie down beside him.
‘We can’t move. If they see us they’ll make us turn around.
Either that or they’ll take us prisoner.’
They waited without moving until well into the night. Then they broke camp and resumed their journey. From then on they could only travel across the desert. The road was too dangerous.
It took them six days to cover the two hundred kilometres to the sacred city of Smara. Miraculously, the vehicle only once got a puncture. When the city came into view, Santiago breathed out in relief. But his worries were not over. He had to press on further south-east, to the border with Mauritania. And he feared coming across the invading Mauritanian vehicles. Every now and again, a vehicle would overtake them, or they would see whole families fleeing on foot. Some had left El Aaiún more than a month previously. At every encounter they would stop, pitch camp, prepare tea and catch up on the rumours that travelled from one corner of the Sahara to the other. Meanwhile, Santiago would pace up and down, nervous, hesitant, worried. He felt very guilty of the fact he had not honoured his word. He’d promi
sed Lazaar to take his family to Tifariti within three days, but at the pace they were going there wouldn’t be anyone left at the military camp by the time they got there.
But the worst was still to come. In the middle of the night, battling against a sandstorm, Santiago lost sight of the tracks. Suddenly he found himself in front of an impassable hill. He went back the way he’d come from and again got lost. Now he couldn’t even find his own tracks, and the terrain became steeper. When he realised he should stop it was too late. His heart sunk on hearing a peculiar noise coming from the engine. He heard it over the wind. The radiator was running out of water. He got out, but the sand blinded him. At first he couldn’t lift the bonnet, and when he finally managed it the sand covered everything. He fell on his knees and started repeating a prayer in Arabic that he’d picked up having heard it said so often.
The storm didn’t blow over until mid-morning. At least it wasn’t too hot. The Land Rover was by then almost buried in the sand. The women once more set about pitching camp, while the young men gathered dry branches to make a fire for tea. They’d been living on dates and goat’s milk for over two weeks. Lazaar’s eldest brother stayed with the legionnaire to help him with the vehicle.
‘We can’t fill up the radiator,’ said Santiago.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s got a crack somewhere. Even if we poured in all the water we’ve got left, it would leak out again.’
‘No car, no water. We can’t go on my friend.’
Santiago slumped onto the floor, defeated. Andía, who never left his side, wiped his brow. She was sure the legionnaire would get them out of there. Judging by her smile, she didn’t doubt it for a moment.
The first thing Santiago did, after getting his strength back, was try to find his bearings. The boys started walking, and he followed them with some difficulty. Although it took time, they eventually came across the tracks left by other vehicles. They had strayed four or five kilometres off course. San Román tried to remain calm. It would still take a few days to get to Tifariti. He thought they should all rest for a while and then set off, leaving the baggage behind. By now he knew the goat was their only means of survival. On foot they might reach Tifariti in a week. As he was wondering how to broach the subject with the family, he had a brainwave. On getting back to the camp he took one of the empty fuel cans and urinated into it. Lazaar’s mother grew very serious, but the children burst out laughing, as if the legionnaire had gone crazy. He then asked everyone to urinate into the can. It seemed like a stupid idea, but soon everyone accepted that the Spaniard must know what he was doing. In an hour, Santiago collected the urine of fourteen people and, with a funnel, filled up the radiator. Fortunately it hadn’t emptied completely, and so Santiago was able to calculate where the crack was. The children, as in a game, looked under the chassis until they found the exact point. It was easy. A puddle formed on the floor right under the leak. Santiago took out a bar of soap and crawled under the vehicle. He’d never thought he would use this crazy trick he’d learned among the Nomad Troops, but he rubbed the soap on the radiator until it formed a paste.
For nearly two hours he rubbed the soap over and over, the caustic soda chafing his fingers. Then he squashed it onto the metal with the palm of his hand. He came out from under the car and lay down, exhausted. The Saharawis watched him uncomprehending, as if he was putting on a bizarre show.
‘Now we’ll wait a few hours for it to dry. And after that, everyone will need to pee again.’
It took them two days to fill up the radiator: as they didn’t drink much water, they didn’t urinate much. Eventually Santiago turned the ignition and the engine rumbled into life. He waited to make sure the leak had stopped. Andía kept laughing and shouting things to him in Hassaniya. In under an hour they took down the tent and loaded the vehicle once again.
Five days later the landscape began to change. The number of vehicles and people on foot indicated that Tifariti wasn’t far. They arrived on the 24th of December, thirteen days later. It had been the hardest journey that Santiago had ever undertaken, and they were almost a month behind schedule. Several kilometres before Tifariti, the Polisario Front tried to impose some order in the reigning chaos. Their trucks picked up those who arrived on foot, they removed broken-down vehicles from the road, handed water to those who didn’t have any left, and indicated where they should go from there. Santiago San Román let Andía’s mother deal with the soldiers. He was convinced that his cropped hair, and the fact that he was a legionnaire, would not go down well with the people from the Polisario.
The Spanish Army had abandoned the Tifariti square. The soldiers’ barracks and the souk had been captured by the Saharawis. Around these, in an area of several square kilometres, the new arrivals were settling down. The nomads who already lived in the area offered their jaimas to others. Each family tried to organise themselves as best they could. Corrals for the animals were cobbled together. They even built a precarious hospital for small children. Trucks and vehicles of all kinds kept arriving. Although the newcomers spread encouraging news, some Saharawis had been there for two months. Little by little they were beginning to move east, in search of security on the other side of the border, in the not very hospitable Algerian hammada.
On the evening Santiago reached Tifariti a sandstorm broke out such as he had never seen in the whole year he’d been in the Sahara. The whirlwinds pulled out the jaimas and whipped up clouds of dust. Their camp came apart in barely a few minutes. The women dug holes in the sand, put the children in and lay on top, trying to protect themselves with their melfas. One couldn’t see further away than two metres. Santiago and Andía stayed inside the Land Rover. Wind and sand came in through every tiny aperture. The lack of water vapour was so pronounced that he felt his eyeballs were drying out – a very unpleasant sensation. He told Andía, worriedly, and the girl licked his eyelids, but a moment later they were dry again. For a while he thought he was going blind. The dryness was unbearable. Andía tried to calm him down. At daybreak, when the wind had finally abated, Santiago couldn’t open his eyes. He lay still, and very afraid, under the tent the boys had promptly put up, while Andía stayed, caressing his arm.
The girl’s brothers looked for Lazaar everywhere, but he was nowhere to be found. They asked around for him for three days. It was almost impossible to find a single person in the camp. The number of Saharawis living there increased daily. Although no official estimates existed, there must have been about fifty thousand refugees. In the daytime the sun blazed on the sand, and in the hours before dawn the dry cold would creep into the bones of those forced to sleep more or less in the open air. The army got water from those oases which had not been poisoned, but food was scarce. Under the circumstances, everything they had managed to transport on the Land Rover was considered a treasure. The few eggs laid by the chickens and the goat’s milk continued to feed the family. The tea was also much appreciated – until it ran out, as did the sugar.
Santiago’s eyes got better, but he was very weak. The water from the wells gave him terrible diarrhoea. Andía did not leave his side. His body did not adjust to the rigours of the desert until mid-January. By then he was pretty sure he would never see Lazaar again. But one cold morning the Saharawi turned up accompanied by one of his brothers, with an old Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He kissed his mother and a moment later hugged his close fried Santiago.
‘They tell me you’ve been ill.’
‘No, no. It’s the water from the wells and the wind, I’m not used to them.’
Lazaar looked at his sister, who was, as always, smiling.
‘Does Andía look after you properly?’
Santiago was overcome with emotion. His eyes filled with scalding tears.
‘Better than anyone…’ he trailed off. ‘I didn’t keep my promise. The roads in your country are not as good as you think.’
Lazaar hugged him again.
‘Look who’s here.’
Only with diffic
ulty did Santiago recognise Sid-Ahmed. His eyes were not as good as they used to be. The former shopkeeper now had a camera hanging from his neck.
‘Are you going to take a picture of me, Sid-Ahmed?’
‘Right now if you like.’
‘Sid-Ahmed works for the Polisario now. He’s in charge of documenting what’s happening, for the world to see.’
‘Stand over there, in front of the car.’
The friends did as they were told. Behind them the Bedouins’ tents flapped in the wind. Santiago adjusted his blue derraha and undid his turban, letting it down over his shoulders. He smoothed down the moustache he’d grown in the last month. Then he took Lazaar’s Kalashnikov and held it up in his left hand. The Saharawi, in turn, lifted his hand and made the ‘V’ sign. They both threw an arm around the other’s shoulder and, beaming at the camera, held their heads together, as though they feared they wouldn’t fit into the picture.
That evening, sheltered under the awning that served as a jaima, they related their difficult exodus to Lazaar and Sid-Ahmed. Lazaar filled them in on the current situation. The Saharawi population was fleeing towards the Algerian desert, many of them on foot. News of those who’d stayed in the cities was in short supply, but no one envied them, in spite of the suffering experienced on the journey.
Once the wind died down, a deadening silence seized the camp. Neither the goats nor the dogs made a noise. Someone said, a long time later, that that silence seemed like an omen of what was to come. But on that night no one could imagine what the new day had in store.