“I’ll see what I can do,” Isobel said, and left.
But in spite of the administrative load on her shoulders she had found time to wonder about Major Ryan and his contingent of mercenaries. Possibly it was woman’s intuition that caused her to feel a twinge of apprehension about the twenty-four whites and one green bereted black who had come out of the desert supposedly seeking employment as bodyguards.
This morning she had arisen at dawn and checked over some odds and ends before the others of the rapidly growing administrative staff had turned up.
When she returned to her quarters, it was to find Megan McDaid, in negligee, at the table in the dining room, enjoying coffee and the local native sweet bread. Isobel wondered wearily how long it had been since she, herself, had been robed in a negligee. She couldn’t remember.
Meg smiled as she looked up at her. “Good morning,” she said. “As a doctor, I prescribe that you get some rest.”
Isobel looked rueful and got a cup and saucer from the side board. She sat down opposite the Irish girl and poured some of the thick coffee for herself, adding sugar liberally in the North African tradition.
She said, “I can see myself in this part of the world, Doctor…”
“Meg,” the other said.
“All right. I’m Isobel. I can see myself here but I wonder why you would ever leave green Ireland for the end of the Earth.”
Meg made a face and said, “Women aren’t popular in the medical field on the Emerald Isle. Bryan and I were hoping to accumulate enough of a nest egg to immigrate to Canada or the United States, where women aren’t ashamed to take off their brassieres in front of another woman, or a man doesn’t give a damn who removes his appendix, just so it’s removed.”
Isobel laughed sympathetically.
Meg said, out of a clear sky, “Isobel, you’re obviously opposed to our coming. Why?” Even as she spoke, inwardly she disliked herself for the position she occupied. But she had already rationalized and now felt she might pick up something, informally, that might be of use to Bryan and Sean, to be used against this brute El Hassan, when he finally appeared on the scene.
Isobel sipped her coffee and looked at the other young woman over the top of her cup. “You’re white and have no place in the new Ifriqiyah,” she said.
Meg frowned. “But there are thousands of whites helping develop North Africa. Mining engineers, oil technicians…”
Isobel was nodding. “But they have no place in North Africa, really, beyond a temporary one. In fact, they all hate it. I wonder if you have ever seen one of these oil camps. They consist of rows of boxlike houses, each with its air-conditioning unit, toilet, shower, bed, armchair, and desk. European food is provided in the mess hall. European news-papers, paperback books and magazines are flown in by the company aircraft. European music and shows are on the radio and TV sets. The only luxuries missing are European women. A week’s vacation every month takes care of that. They are flown back to the Mediterranean cities, or even as far as Paris, and taken to luxury hotels which cater almost exclusively to them. They are engaged, these engineers, mechanics, clerks, administrators and executives, in making their living. They’re not living in the desert from religious, idealistic, or patriotic motives. Isolated within their air-conditioned huts, waiting for the company plane with their fresh supply of orange juice and canned beer, they have no more feeling for the desert around them than the submariner has for the ocean outside the hull of his craft. They can’t wait to get back to their homes, families, and to their civilization. They have no interest in bringing civilization to Ifriqiyah.”
Meg frowned at her thoughtfully.
Isobel shrugged and said, “It’s not the only unloved place to which the white man goes in search of his god, money. The same applies to the far north. The area around Point Barrow, in most northern Alaska, is similar. It is Esquimo country, and the Esquimo would live nowhere else happily. The white man’s camps there are the equivalent of those in the Sahara with cold and snow rather than heat and sand. And none can wait to leave the north behind and return with his fantastically high pay to his own land.”
Meg shook her head, trying to assimilate it. “But how long do you intend to remain… Isobel? You yourself are an American, aren’t you? And used to the comforts of… civilization.”
Isobel sighed, finished her coffee and readied herself to come to her feet. She said, “I imagine I’ll be here for the rest of my life. The job is a big one. I was born in America, but racially I am an African. I have the El Hassan dream, to bring my people out of the Dark Ages. We can’t expect others to do it. The white man comes to North Africa solely to exploit it, in one way or the other.”
She stood and looked down at the attractive Irish girl and wound it up by saying, “I understand that Ireland, in her day, also had to fight to gain her independence.”
Meg looked at her emptily. Both of her grandfathers had died in the Black and Tan fighting with the British.
For some reason, unbeknownst even to herself, Isobel had forbidden the white soldiers of fortune to leave the limits of Fort Laperrine but had given Lon Charles freedom to go where he would in Tamanrasset. Her excuse was that he was a black and in no danger, but that she was unable to guarantee the safety of whites. Which wasn’t true. There were quite a number of European and American journalists, diplomatic representatives, and trade delegations in the area now and more coming in weekly. Most of these refrained from going into the the native areas and remained in their little ghetto on the outskirts of town of western tents, trailers and campers, contemptuous of what they considered the filth of the Saharan center. But the brave, usually accompanied by some of Guémama’s men as guards, occasionally roamed the streets, bringing no more reaction than curiosity and not much of that since whites, including traders, missionaries and even tourists had still sometimes come to Tamanrasset even after the evacuation of the French.
Now, on her way back from town to check out a matter with one of the local bashaws, she ran into the green bereted American. He had obviously been in one of the two or three cafés Tamanrasset supported and where beer and even the atrocious tasting date wine was available. Alcoholic drink was forbidden the good Moslem, but all Moslems are not good ones, and, besides, in this part of the Sahara, all did not follow Islam. Some tribesmen were pagans, and a few even Christians, converted by the missionaries who had plowed millions of dollars, francs and pounds into this area, for the sake of a handful of converts.
The call on the pasha had been routine. Word had come to her that he was shaking down the peddlers of kif in the souk. While she, as well as Homer and the others of the inner El Hassan group, had no brief for what the Americans called marijuana; they took no stand against it. Cannabis sativa had been used as an escape from reality since it had wended its way to this part of the world from far China, so remote in history as to be unrecorded.
The bashaw had been aghast. He assured the Sitt Izubahil that for as long as the memory of man his family had leveled a tax on all local sale of kif.
No more, she had told him coldly and hoped that it would not be necessary to bring the matter to the attention of El Hassan whose love for the people was such that he could not condone their being exploited.
Sooner or later, she thought sourly, as she left him, they would have to have a showdown with these racketeers. It should add immeasurably to the prestige of El Hassan in the eyes of the people, their victims.
Lon Charles had removed his beret and said, “Top of the afternoon, Miss Cunningham.” He looked back over his shoulder at the town and grinned. “It’s a long way from Newark.”