‘Where are you going?’
‘South.’
He left his camel sprawled out, his belly full to bursting with water, satisfied and bloated, and started collecting wood with which to make himself a small fire.
‘You can eat with the soldiers,’ he told him.
Gazel pulled back a piece of cloth revealing the still succulent antelope, covered in dry blood.
‘You can eat with me if you want. In exchange for your water.’
Sergeant Malik’s stomach cried out. It had been more than fifteen days since the hunters had caught any prey. Over the years the animals had moved away from the surrounding area and there was not one true Bedouin among them, so their knowledge of the desert and its inhabitants was very limited.
‘The water is for everyone,’ he replied. ‘But I would very much like to take you up on your offer. Where did you catch it?’
Gazel laughed inwardly at the clumsiness of his deception.
‘In the north,’ he replied.
He had gathered all the wood he now needed and taking a seat on the saddle blanket, he took out some flint and a wick, but Malik offered him some matches.
‘Use these,’ he said. ‘They’re easier.’
Once the fire was lit, he refused to take them back.
‘Keep them. We’ve got lots more in the store.’
He sat down opposite him and watched as he hooked the antelope’s legs over the ramrod of his rifle and prepared it for a slow roast over a gentle fire.
‘Are you looking for work in the south?’
‘I’m looking for a caravan.’
‘Caravans don’t pass by here much at this time of year. The last one came through about a month ago.’
‘Mine awaits me,’ came his enigmatic reply. The sergeant stared at him blankly.
‘It has been waiting for me for over fifty years,’ he added.
‘The “great caravan?”’ he finally exclaimed. ‘You’re in search of the legendary “great caravan?” Are you mad?’
‘It’s not a legend. My uncle was in it and I am not mad. But my cousin Suleiman, who spends his miserable days lugging bricks back and forth, he is, however, mad.’
‘Nobody comes back alive when they go off in search of that caravan.’
Gazel gestured with his head to the stone graves that could just be made out between a few palm trees at the end of the oasis.
‘They are no more dead than they are over there. And if they’d found it they’d be rich forever.’
‘But these “lost lands” are unforgiving: there’s no water or vegetation for your camel to eat, shade for shelter or any point of reference to help guide you. It’s hell!’
‘I know,’ the Targui conceded. ‘I’ve crossed one twice’
‘You’ve crossed a “lost land?”’ he repeated, aghast.
‘Twice.’
Sergeant Malik did not need to see his face to realise that he was telling the truth and this piece of news suddenly roused his interest. He had spent long enough in the Sahara to know the value of a man who had been to a “lost land” and returned. He could count on his hands how many he had met, from Morocco to Egypt, and even Mubarrak-ben-Sad, the outpost’s official guide, whom he regarded as one of the greatest masters of the desert and the stony plains, had once admitted that he would not dare to go there.
‘But I do know of one man. I met him during a long expedition we went on to explore the Huaila. An inmouchar of the Kel-Talgimus, who crossed one and returned. How do you feel when you are in there?’
Gazel looked at him for some time then shrugged his shoulders:
‘You feel nothing. You have to leave sentiment behind you. You have to rid yourself of all ideas and live like a stone, careful not to make any movement that uses up water. Even at night you have to move slowly, like a chameleon and then, once you have become desensitized to the heat and thirst and above all once you have overcome panic and found calm, only then do you have the remotest chance of survival.’
‘Why did you do it? Were you in search of the “great caravan?”’
‘No. I was looking to find something of my ancestors within me. They conquered the “lost lands.”’
The other man shook his head in disbelief.
‘Nobody has conquered the “lost lands,”’ he said, shaking his head emphatically. ‘Proof of which lies in the fact that all of your descendents are dead and those areas remains as hostile as when Allah first created them.’ He paused and shook his head again and then asked, more to himself than to his listener: ‘Why would you do that? Why did He, who was so capable of creating such wonderful things, also create the desert?’
His reply was not arrogant, even though it might have been interpreted that way.
‘In order to create the Imohag.’
Malik smiled in amusement.
‘Is that right,’ he said.
He pointed to the antelope’s leg.
‘I don’t like my meat too well cooked,’ he said. ‘It’s fine like that.’
Moving the ramrod away, Gazel took two pieces of meat, offered him a piece and then, using his very sharp dagger, began to shave thick slices of meat off of the other piece.
‘If ever you are in difficulty,’ he pointed out, ‘don’t cook the meat. Eat it raw. Eat any animal you can find and drink its blood. But don’t move, above all don’t ever move.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind but pray to Allah that I never find myself in that predicament.’
They finished their meal in silence then drank some fresh water from the well. Malik got up and stretched satisfactorily.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to take over from the captain and check that everything’s in order. How long will you be staying for?’
Gazel shrugged his shoulders.
‘I understand. Stay as long as you like, but don’t come anywhere near the huts. The guards are under instruction to shoot to kill.’
‘Why?’
Sergeant Malik-el-Haideri smiled enigmatically and nodded his head towards the wooden shack that was furthest away.
‘The captain does not have many friends,’ he said matter-offactly. ‘Neither of us do, but I know how to look out for myself.’
He got up and left just as the night began to descend on the oasis, slowly enveloping the palm grove. He could hear the sound of the soldiers’ voices as they returned. The came straggling in with their spades over their shoulders, tired, sweaty and desperate for food and a straw bed that would carry them away for a few hours to a world of dreams and away from the living hell that was Adoras.
Twilight made a brief appearance as the sky turned seamlessly from red to black and the carbide lights in the cabins started to flicker in the darkness.
Only the captain’s living quarters had shutters on the windows to stop anyone from seeing inside and as darkness descended, a sentry turned up to stand guard, some twenty metres from his door, gun at the ready.
Half an hour later the door opened and he could make out the silhouette of a tall, strong man. Gazel did not need to see the stars on his uniform to know that he was the man who had killed his guest. He watched him as he stood there for a few minutes, breathing in the night air deeply and then as he lit a cigarette. The match lit up the man’s features and Gazel was reminded of the steely, contemptuous look he had given him, whilst insisting that he represented the law. He was tempted to finish him off with just one shot, there and then. From such a short distance, so clearly silhouetted against the light coming from the shack, he could have put a bullet in his head and put out the cigarette at the same time, but he decided not to. He just remained there watching him, some one hundred meters away, trying to imagine what the man would do if he knew that the Targui, whom he had offended and spurned, was sitting there in front of him. That he was there, leaning against a palm tree next to the dying embers of a fire, contemplating whether to kill him there and then, or at a later date.