“The great caravan” was out there somewhere towards the south, everyone was agreed on that and it could not have just disappeared completely. The most valuable part of the merchandise was also sure to be intact still, despite the years gone by, or centuries even. With just a tiny piece of that cargo, Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi could leave Adoras for good and move back to France, to Cannes and to the ‘Hotel Majestic’ where he had spent some of the best times of his life. A place where he had enjoyed the company of a beautiful shop assistant who worked in a boutique on Rue Antibes and who he had promised to return to one day, although that was many years ago now.
In the afternoons they would open up the huge windows that overlooked the swimming pool at La Croisette and the beach and make love facing the sea until it got dark. Then they would amble down to have supper at Le Moulin de Mougens, El Oasis, or Chez Félix, ending up in the casino to risk everything they had on a number eight.
He was paying a high price now for those days, too high, he thought. It was not the desert that really got to him, or the heat and the monotony, but the memories that haunted him and the painful knowledge that if one day he did get out of Adoras, he would be too old to enjoy all those things again — the hotels, the restaurants or the girls in Cannes.
He stayed there for a while lost in his memories, letting the sweat run off his body as the intense heat turned the camp into a raging inferno. He was waiting for his batman to arrive with the tray of greasy and repulsive couscous that he ate every day without ever feeling hungry. This was his daily diet, along with a few gulps of warm, slightly salty, cloudy water that still gave him diarrhoea, despite the fact he had been drinking it for many years.
Then, when the sun’s rays started to pound down relentlessly and became so suffocating that not even a mosquito dared take to the air, he crossed the empty palm grove slowly and sought refuge once again in his hut, leaving the doors and windows wide open to ensure that he did not miss out on even the slightest whisper of a breeze outside.
It was the gaila hour, the sacred siesta hour in the desert, when for four hours during the day’s most intense heat, man and beast alike would lie still in the shade so as not to become dehydrated or knocked out by sunstroke.
The soldiers were already asleep in their huts and only the sentry remained standing upright, protected by the shade of a lean-to. He struggled, as he squinted into the glaring light, often unsuccessfully, to keep his eyes open just enough to stop him from falling asleep.
An hour later and the Adoras military post was deadly quiet, as if it had been deserted. The hand on the thermometer in the shade (since it would have probably exploded in the sun), was dangerously close to fifty degrees centigrade and the plumes at the top of the palm trees were so still in the absence of any wind that you might not think they were real at all, but paintings, pencilled into the sky.
Their mouths wide open and their faces covered in sweat, exhausted and broken, like lifeless dolls, the men snored in their beds, crushed by the heat, incapable of even brushing off the mosquitoes that landed on their tongues in search of moisture. Somebody shouted in his sleep, or rather cried out as if in pain. One of the corporals woke up with a start, his eyes dilated with fear, having dreamt that he was suffocating.
A skeletal black man who was wide awake in the corner of the room watched him until he calmed down and went back to sleep again. His mind was racing with thoughts, as it had done since the moment the sergeant had told him in confidence that they would be setting off, in a few days time, on a crazy adventure to the most inhospitable place on earth in search of a lost caravan.
They would probably not come back alive, but that was surely better than shovelling sand day in and day out, until eventually they were shovelling sand over his dead body.
Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi was also asleep and snoring gently in his hut, dreaming of the lost caravan and its treasures. So deep was his sleep that he did not stir when a tall shadow crossed the threshold. A man slipped into the room without a sound, went over to his bed, leaned an old, heavy rifle up against the wall — a souvenir from when the Senussi had risen up against the French and the Italians — and placed a long, sharp dagger very carefully just under his chin.
Gazel Sayah sat down on the edge of the straw mattress and pressing the weapon against him, clapped his hand firmly across the mouth of the sleeping man.
The captain’s right hand shot out automatically towards the revolver that he always kept on the floor next to the bed head, but the Targui pushed it gently away with his foot, whilst leaning still closer into him.
He whispered hoarsely:
‘You make a sound and I’ll slit your throat.’
He waited until he could tell from the man’s eyes that he had understood and then very slowly he allowed him some air, without taking any pressure off the knife. A trickle of blood ran down the terrified captain’s neck, mixing with the sweat that was dripping off his chest.
‘Do you know who I am?’
He nodded.
‘Why did you kill my guest?’
He swallowed, finally managing to whisper an answer:
‘They were orders. Very strict orders. The young boy had to die. But not the other one.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
He pushed the tip of the knife in further.
‘Why?’ the Targui asked again.
‘I don’t know, I promise you,’ he almost sobbed. ‘I get an order and I have to obey. I have no choice.’
‘Who gave you that order?’
‘The governor of the province.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Hassan-ben-Koufra.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘In El-Akab.’
‘And the other one… the older man? Where is he?’
‘How should I know? They took him away, that’s all I know.’
‘Why?’
Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi did not answer. Maybe he realised that he had already said too much; maybe he was tired of the game; maybe he really did not know the answer. He was also desperately trying to work out how he could get away from the intruder, who clearly meant business and what the hell, he wondered, were his men doing and why were they not coming to his rescue.
The Targui was getting impatient. He pressed down harder on the knife and with his left hand he gripped his throat tightly, stopping a cry of pain that was trying to escape.
‘Who is that old man?’ he insisted. ‘Why did they take him away?’
‘He is Abdul-el-Kebir,’
he said in a tone of voice that insinuated that was all he should need to know. Then he realised that the name meant nothing to the intruder, who was still waiting for further clarification.
‘You don’t know who Abdul-el-Kebir is?’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘He’s a murderer. A filthy murderer and you’re risking your life for him.’
‘He was my guest.’
‘That doesn’t stop him from being a murderer.’
‘Him being a murderer does not stop him from being my guest. Only I had the right to judge that.’