She laughed and said, “How did you know? But it was Teaneck, not Newark.”
He grinned again and put his battered beret back on his head, in protection from the sun. She herself wore a sun helmet.
“Jersey is Jersey,” he said. “You can tell.”
She said, “Are you heading back for the fort? Why don’t you walk along with me?”
He fell into step beside her.
She said, “You’re as far away from home as I am. Have you ever returned…” she indicated his green beret “… since Vietnam?”
He shook his head. “No. No, there’s nothing for an uneducated black in the States.” He thought about it. “And nowhere else for that matter. I was seventeen when I took up soldiering, and I’m still at it.”
She said, “It’s possible for even a black to get an education, Lon. You’ve got an inferiority complex.”
He chuckled and said, “It’s not an inferiority complex. I am inferior. Look at that Megan McDaid. She’s not half my age and she’s a doctor.”
Isobel shot a look at him from the side of her eyes as they walked along. She said, “So is Jimmy Peters and so is Doctor Smythe. For that matter, so is El Hassan. I’ve got a master’s degree. The fact that you’re black hasn’t anything to do with your intelligence.”
He shook his head again. “You’re only partly right. Sure some of us can fight our way up to where we’ve got as good an education as whitey. But, face it, on an average the black can’t compete with a white, or even a Jap or Chink, for that matter.”
She scoffed. “Lon, you’re believing the other guy’s propaganda. When our Nordic friends and other whites were running around in animal skins and squatting round campfires gnawing on half cooked bones, civilization was beginning here in Africa. Most of the fundamentals originated right here on this continent.”
He stared at her. “Man, you have flipped. Civilization started in Babylonia, in Greece, and later Rome.”
It was her turn to shake her head. “Have you ever heard of Egypt? The ancient Egyptians came down the Nile from Nubia, from Ethiopia. They were blacks. Whitey’s been trying to explain it away ever since; he simply can’t bear the idea. The Greeks were johnnies-come-lately, not to speak of the Romans, and they inherited most of their civilization from the Egyptians. The sciences, the arts, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, so forth and so on, all went through their infancy in Egypt. Even the Tigris-Euphrates civilizations were later. Practically all of the big breakthroughs in man’s development were made either in Africa or in Asia. From all the anthropologists can tell us, man himself originated somewhere to the southeast of here.”
Lon Charles was scowling. “The Egyptians weren’t blacks,” he said.
“No? What were they, then? Where did they come from? The very first signs of their culture were found in the upper reaches of the Nile. Take a look at their statues, with their thick lips, their flattish noses. They were blacks then and are still predominately blacks in spite of all the whites that have mixed with them after the various conquests. Their civilization lasted for thousands of years before it fell to white armies. Admittedly, the white race has produced the best soldiers, the greatest inventors of new weapons, up to and including nuclear ones. The Egyptians were never much for the military. But it wasn’t just Egypt. During the Dark Ages of Europe, Timbuktu, only a few hundred miles from here, surpassed the Rome, London or Paris of the time. Its universities and libraries were preserving the classics of Greece and Rome while the religious fanatics of Europe were erasing such works so they could use the parchment for inscribing crackpot supposedly holy books.”
“I never looked at it that way,”Lon said grudgingly.
“That’s what El Hassan is all about,” Isobel told him. “We’re trying to bring the blacks up to their rightful place in the world, a place the other races have usurped from us. We weren’t born to be the slaves of others, they shot us into that position with their superior weapons and their dedication to conquest.”
The sergeant said slowly, “They kind of like this El Hassan cat around here, don’t they?”
Isobel said, “Yes. The El Hassan movement is the dream.”
They had reached the fort.
Lon said, “I’d like to talk to you some more about this some time, Miss Cunningham.”
She grinned at him. “Isobel,” she said. “We Jerseyites have to stick together, Lon.” Then she looked at him and said, “You’re not as uneducated as you put on. How did you have any ideas on the origins of civilization? Whether or not I agree with them.”
“You get a lot of time to read, layin’ around in hospitals, or prison camps, or even barracks, between scraps,” he told her.
They separated at the gate and Isobel headed for the administration building, dreading whatever new crises might have accumulated in the hour she had been away.
She wished, all over again, that Homer, Kenny, Bey and Cliff would get back—and Elmer Allen with them. They’d been gone a couple of weeks now. As prearranged, there had been no communication. They were equipped with fairly efficient transceivers, but in the world of espionage-counter-espionage that prevailed today, you could never know whether or not your messages were being intercepted. And Homer wanted no word to go ahead that he was on his way to Elmer’s rescue. Surprise meant everything. North Africa was awash these days with rumors about El Hassan and all that pertained to him but in the last forty-eight hours in Tamanrasset they had received some broadcasts that they’d had difficulty in interpreting. The religious movement of the mahdi had been in the ascendency only a few days ago, now it seemed to be in collapse. Why?
A voice said, “Ah, good afternoon, Mademoiselle Cunningham.”
She turned to find Captain Raul Bazaine. He smiled his gallant Frenchman’s smile and touched the duckbill of his desert cap in an easy salute, making a slight bow.
“Good afternoon, Captain,” Isobel said, turning and continuing on her way toward the administration building, knowing that he would fall in step beside her.
When he did, she said, “Are your quarters adequate—considering the circumstances?”
He smiled ruefully. “I am a soldier, Mademoiselle. Even a roof is sometimes a luxury.”
Isobel said, “If you would rather, we can speak French.”
“Ah, no. I consider English a most beautiful language.”
In spite of his tendency toward what Meg McDaid would probably call blarney, Isobel didn’t mind the other’s company. It was something of a relief to speak to an educated person outside the El Hassan circle, for a change.
She said, in an easy mockery, “I thought that you French considered your language the only cultivated and beautiful one extant.”
He held his right hand over his heart as though in dismay. “Oh, no… Isobel. English had the most beautiful phrase any language in the world.”
She looked at him. “It has? What?”
“Cellar door.”
She laughed and said, “You fool.”
He laughed too and said, “How long do you think it will be before it will be possible to have an audience with El Hassan?”
She shook her head and made a moue. “We have no idea of just when he might return.”
He eyed her and cocked his head a little. “Return? Then he is away?”
She covered quickly, and perhaps too quickly, since there was a questioning look in his eye. “As I’ve already told you, El Hassan has withdrawn into the erg to a secluded spot where he and his closest aides can confer without hindrance.”
He dropped the subject and looked about the enclosed parade ground and the building which surrounded it. “It must be a dreary place for such a beautiful, vivacious young lady. What do you do for entertainment?”