“We need to get back into Turkey,” Carter said clearly and in English. Sure enough, the reaction was unfortunately as expected. He heard small gasps from a couple of the nomads, and the eyes of the man who had asked the question widened in surprise. Several of the gypsies began talking to one another at once, no doubt now openly speculating as to who exactly these travelers were. Carter was still thinking of how to play this, of what he should say or do next, when two or three of them began pointing to one of the smaller tents off to the side of the makeshift camp. A child ran to the tent and ducked inside, emerging a few seconds later with a middle-aged woman in tow, who carried with her some fabric in the process of being hand woven.
She looked confused until she followed the little girl’s point over to the gathering of people surrounding the two newcomers. She stood still for a second, as if assessing a possible threat, and then walked over to the group. She ignored Carter and Jayden, who nodded to her, and instead looked to the elderly man who had escorted them into the camp. This person walked up to her and spoke softly to her for a few seconds, until she nodded her head and stepped forward to the newcomers.
“Hello, English?”
Carter and Jayden turned to one another in surprise. “Let me go first,” Carter said.
“What, you think I’m gonna tell her my dirty jokes or something?” Jayden said in a soft voice.
“Just let me do the talking at first, okay?”
“Fine. You’ve gotten us this far.” Jayden smiled as he looked up at the woman. Her age was hard to guess since she was draped in robes and scarves, with only part of her face visible, but she did not appear to be elderly; she moved well and the skin that was visible around her eyes and mouth was taut and smooth.
“Yes, we speak English,” Carter said, making eye contact with the woman, whose role it was now clear was to serve as the group’s translator.
“You come from Turkey?” she asked, pointing toward the bordering country. Carter and Jayden nodded, and she continued her questioning. “You lose way?”
It was clear that her English was not fluent, but it was more than enough to get the point across, and Carter knew full well that it was far better than any middle-eastern language he or Jayden could speak. “Yes, we are lost,” Carter answered. “Need to get back to Turkey.” He pointed in the same direction as had the woman.
“You no from Turkey? No speak Turk?” the translator asked, her gaze alternating between Carter and Jayden. At this the elder men asked her something in their native language — presumably what she had just asked them — and she translated the question for them.
“No,” Carter said, while Jayden also shook his head. “Canadians. From Canada.” He thought that maybe Canada would inspire slightly less animosity than the United States, if these people even cared about such matters. He hoped that they were so divorced from everyday news cycles that they had no idea conflicts with their country (if they even thought of Iran as being theirs) and the western nations existed. He considered that perhaps they were truly a nomadic desert tribe who plied the remote sands of multiple middle east countries without even knowing which nation they were in, just as Carter and Jayden hadn’t realized they were no longer in Turkey.
Yet the reactions of the translator and the two men who had initially met them and guided them here told Carter otherwise. We have Westerners in our midst, they seemed to be saying. Complete outsiders, so foreign as to be exotic and dangerous at the same time.
Not good.
The translator addressed Carter once again. “You climb Ararat?”
Carter and Jayden nodded vigorously.
“Only with that?” she pointed to his single damaged backpack.
Carter explained, “We had more gear but lost some of it on the way down.”
The woman translated this for the old man, whose reaction was unreadable to Carter. Then the woman said, “We help you. You have trade for us?” She eyed the backpack. The hair on Carter’s arms stood on end beneath the long sleeves of his thermal underwear, the last layer he had to peel down to in the desert heat, one which also shielded him from the blistering UV rays.
“Trade what?” Jayden said softly to Carter, who shrugged off the pack. “I’m sure we have something they can use that we can live without in return for their services.”
“Not my Swiss Army Knife, okay? If we can help it. It’s from my Granddad.”
“How about these?” Carter said, pulling out the case for the binoculars.
“Sure.”
He removed the binoculars from his neck, held them up to the nomads, then put the binoculars in the case, closed and opened it to show how it worked. Then he handed the binoculars to the old man, who took them without breaking eye contact with Carter.
“Binoculars, let you see things far away,” he said to the translator, who repeated what he said to the old man in their language. The old man took them and, after removing them from the case, held them up to his eyes, aiming them at some faraway spot on the desert floor. He nodded and handed them off to one of the other men who were eager to try them out. It was clear to Carter that they had seen binoculars before, but that owning a pair was not normal for them, hence a good offering. Carter only hoped he and Jayden wouldn’t need them again on this trip themselves. Time to seal the deal, he told himself. He cleared his throat and looked at the translator while smiling.
“You like them?” he asked, nodding to one of the nomadic tribesman now looking the wrong way through the binoculars.
To Carter and Jayden’s relief, she nodded right away.
“You stay here for night.”
Jayden glanced at Carter. “And then?”
“Tomorrow we take you Turkey.” She pointed toward the border. “Tomorrow.”
At this, Carter held up a finger and said, “Hold on, please.” Then he huddled with Jayden in conference. Jayden looked up at the sky. “Stay the night? We still have two or maybe three hours of daylight left. Now that we know for sure which direction it’s in, all we really need is some water, maybe a bite to eat before we leave.”
Carter nodded. “I agree.” He turned back to the translator. “We go tonight for Turkey.” He pointed to the country before continuing while Jayden nodded his agreement. “You keep those.” He pointed to the binoculars, still being ogled by different members of the tribe. “Give us more water?” He simulated drinking from the bladder.
At this the translator’s expression remained unchanged as she turned and spoke to the old man, who seemed to be the leader of the group. He put an arm around her shoulder, spun her away from Carter and Jayden, and said something else to her before walking away toward the tents and the gathering of others. The woman addressed Carter and Jayden.
“He say sandstorm coming. No good you leave now. Tomorrow.”
Carter and Jayden eyed the atmosphere, where all seemed blue and calm. Even the wind had died completely down. Jayden said to Carter, “Look, this is ridiculous, let’s just ask them for a sip of water now and we’ll go. In this weather we can make it, it’s only a few miles. I’d rather do that than risk sleeping overnight in Iran with no visa, no ID, nothing. We’d be really screwed, Carter. It’s best to get out of here.”
Carter nodded and spoke again to the translator. “I’m sorry, but we really must get going. May we trouble you for some water first?” Again he mimicked using the hydration bladder, and again she looked back to the old man, who now was nowhere to be seen. One of the side tents opened, though, and from it emerged a corpulent male, late teens or early twenties, who Carter would not have guessed could fit in that tent. His bulk was not the thing that caught his attention. Jayden saw it, too.