Stories of the Sahara

by Sanmao

  Once I wiped the soap from my body with a towel, I went with José to the camel race.

  That afternoon, all our boisterous Spanish friends were riding on the backs of camels, galloping their way through the race and looking magnificent. Only I stood beneath the sun watching others. ‘Cobarde! ’ the riders would taunt as they passed near me. ‘Gallina! ’

  There was no way I could tell them the reason I wasn’t riding a camel was because I’d itch all over if I were to sweat too much. My skin would make soap bubbles.

  Among our neighbours, the person I’m closest to is Gueiga. She’s a warm, intelligent girl with a sharp mind. But Gueiga has a problem. Her way of thinking can be entirely different from ours, which is to say her conceptions of right and wrong often leave me stunned.

  There was a night when José and I wanted to attend a cocktail party at the Hotel Nacional here. I ironed the black evening dress that I hadn’t worn in a long time. I also put on a few slightly more expensive necklaces that I don’t usually wear.

  ‘What time is the cocktail party?’ José asked.

  ‘Eight.’ I looked at the clock and saw that it was already quarter to.

  It was only after I was dressed, had my earrings in and went to put on my shoes that I noticed my leather high heels were missing from the rack. I asked José and he said he hadn’t moved them.

  ‘Why don’t you just wear whatever?’ José hates waiting more than anything else. I looked at all the shoes lined up on the rack – tennis shoes, wooden slippers, flat sandals, cloth shoes, high boots – but not a single pair that would go with my long black gown. I was beginning to get really agitated. I looked again and… What the hell was this thing? How did it get here? What was it?

  A pair of dirty black desert boots with pointed toes was resting on the rack. One glance and I knew they belonged to Gueiga. If her shoes were on my rack, then where could my shoes have gone?

  I huffed over to Gueiga’s house and grabbed her in my arms. ‘Where are my shoes?’ I asked angrily. ‘Where are my shoes? Why did you steal them? Find them and give them back to me, you jerk!’ I cried.

  Gueiga leisurely went to look in the kitchen, beneath the mats, in the goat pen, behind a door. She looked everywhere but didn’t find anything.

  ‘My sister wore them out to play,’ she answered me calmly. ‘I do not have them now.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this tomorrow.’ I gritted my teeth and walked home.

  For the cocktail party that night, my only option was to change into a white cotton outfit and a pair of sandals. As I mingled with the bejewelled wives of José’s superiors, the contrast was startling. One of José’s co-workers even had the nerve to compliment me. ‘You look great tonight, like a shepherdess. You’re just missing a wooden stick.’

  The next morning, Gueiga returned my high heels to me, already destroyed beyond recognition. I stared at her, then snatched the shoes.

  ‘Hmph! You are mad, so mad, so I will get mad.’ Gueiga’s face was turning red with anger. ‘Your shoes are in my home,’ she continued. ‘Aren’t my shoes also in your home? I should be more mad than you.’

  When I heard this absolutely absurd explanation, I couldn’t help but guffaw. ‘Gueiga, you should go to a mental hospital.’ I pointed to her temple.

  ‘What hospital?’ She didn’t understand.

  ‘Forget it. Gueiga, let me ask you. Can you go around to all the neighbouring women and ask what, besides my toothbrush and husband, you’re not interested in borrowing?’

  She seemed to wake from a dream, hearing this. ‘What does your toothbrush look like?’ she asked immediately.

  ‘Get out,’ I cried in agitation. ‘Get out.’

  Gueiga kept speaking as she stepped backwards. ‘I just want to look at your toothbrush. I do not want your husband. Really—’

  After I shut the door, I could still hear Gueiga on the street talking loudly to another girl. ‘See that? She hurt my pride.’

  Thanks to these neighbours, my life in the desert was an unfailingly colourful experience. No longer did I know the taste of solitude.

  Dilettante Fishermen

  One Sunday, José had to work an extra shift and was gone all day. To kill time, I carefully counted up the money he had made since March. I wrote the sum on a clean white piece of paper and waited for him to return. When he got home that night, I put the paper in front of him and said, ‘Look how much money we’ve made in half a year.’

  He seemed very pleased when he glanced at my calculations. ‘I didn’t think it would be this much,’ he said. ‘Looks like it’s worth suffering through this desert life after all!’ In high spirits, he suggested we eat out since we weren’t hurting for cash. I knew he wanted to take me to dine at the Hotel Nacional. We stepped out as soon as I changed my clothes. This was a rare occasion indeed.

  ‘Let’s start with sopa de mariscos and red wine, the good kind,’ José told the waiter. ‘I would like a steak, and the lady will have four orders of large prawns. For dessert, make it ice-cream cake. Four orders of that as well. Thanks!’

  ‘Good thing I didn’t eat today,’ I whispered to José. ‘Now we can have a real feast.’

  The Hotel Nacional is run by the Spanish government. Its restaurant, decorated to look like an Arabic palace, has a nice local ambience and romantic lighting. There are never too many patrons. The air is fresh and fragrant, without a whiff of dust. Forks and knives are polished to a brilliant shine. All the tablecloths are immaculately ironed. Faint music streams in the background like a babbling brook. Whenever I’m there, I forget we’re in the desert. It feels like returning to the good old days in Madrid.

  Soon the dishes arrived on beautiful silver plates. A lush green salad complemented the row of fried prawns. Dark red wine filled our cups. ‘The bird of happiness is with us!’ I sighed with contentment, looking at our food.

  ‘If you like, we can come here regularly in the future.’ José was behaving very generously that night, as though he were a wealthy tycoon. After months of hard living, we had discovered there was one good thing about being in the desert: mundane pleasures were now sublime, filling our spirits with immense satisfaction. In other words, we valued our stomachs over our heads. Once dinner was over, we paid with two crisp green bills and strolled home happily. I felt truly blessed.

  We ate at home the next night, of course. A round potato cake, a roll of white bread and a bottle of water sat on the table before us. ‘Let me slice this up. You can eat two thirds of the potato and I’ll take the rest.’ While I was dividing our portions, I moved the bread roll to José’s plate so it would look more full. ‘It’s really good. I put onions in it. Eat up!’ I took a bite myself.

  José wolfed down the potato cake in no time, then rose to go into the kitchen.

  ‘There’s no more,’ I said quickly. ‘That’s all we have for tonight.’

  ‘What’s the deal?’ he asked, looking at me with confusion.

  ‘Take a look at this!’ I handed him another paper with new calculations. ‘This is how much money we’ve spent in half a year,’ I said, slinging myself over his shoulder to explain. ‘Yesterday I figured out how much we earned, and today I straightened out our expenses.’

  ‘This much? We’ve spent this much?’ he barked. ‘We’re broke!’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘See, I wrote it very clearly here.’

  José snatched up the paper and began to read aloud my accounts. ‘Tomatoes, sixty pesetas a kilo. Watermelon, two hundred and twenty. Pork, half a kilo for three hundred. . . Why did you buy such expensive groceries?’ he grumbled, muttering to himself. ‘We should be saving…’ He stood as he read, voice growing louder and louder. ‘Car maintenance, fifteen thousand. Petrol, twenty-four thousand—’

  ‘Don’t freak out! We’ve driven sixteen thousand kilometres in half a year. It all adds up.’

  ‘So, we spent all the money we made,’ José said. ‘What a waste.’ He looked so upset, his face was almost theatrical with despair.


  ‘Look, it’s not like we wasted anything. We haven’t spent a single peseta on clothing in six months. Our money just disappeared from having friends over, taking photos, going on road trips, those sort of things.’

  ‘Fine. From this day forward, no more hungry bachelors allowed over for dinner,’ José announced with determination. ‘Only black and white photography. And no more trips. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve criss-crossed this desert.’

  In this sad little town, there’s only one dirty and decrepit cinema. As for the streets, they are a far cry from what you might call festive. Most of our magazines and newspapers are totally out of date. We’re able to get television two or three times a month on average. The people on screen look so ghostly, I don’t dare watch it when I’m home alone. Water and power outages are commonplace. And when you want to go for a walk, there are the endless sandstorms to reckon with.

  Life around here might be comfortable for the Sahrawi, but it often drives the Europeans to alcoholism, husbands and wives to conflict and single men to suicide. These are all tragedies that the desert forces out; only José and I seem to understand the art of living here. We manage to toil through hard days without too much trouble.

  I listened calmly to José’s plan to save money. ‘Aren’t you afraid we’ll go nuts or kill ourselves after three months of such thrifty living?’

  José laughed bitterly. ‘True. If we don’t get out of here for a holiday, we’ll suffocate.’

  ‘How about this? Instead of going inland to Algeria, let’s go to the coast. Why don’t we take advantage of that long stretch of shoreline?’

  ‘We’d still need a ridiculous amount of petrol to drive to the sea and back.’

  ‘Let’s catch some fish then. We can dry and salt them. That would save on groceries and we’d make up for some of the petrol money, too.’ I’ve always had a lot of energy when it comes to having fun. I wasn’t about to get discouraged.

  The next weekend, we packed our tent and went to explore the rocky coast. By night, we camped out on the cliffs. There were many advantages to a coastline without beaches. It was easier to rappel down the cliffs. When the tide receded, abalone stuck to the rocks and crabs in the crevices were revealed. There were octopuses in pools of water, spotted eels resembling snakes, disc-like electric fish and thousands of black shellfish growing directly on the rocks, which I recognised as mussels. There were also thick bands of kelp that we could dry and use to make soup. The scattered pieces of driftwood looked like modernist sculptures. I thought about taking home some speckled stones. I could stick them on cardboard to make art. This stretch of coast, preserved from human encroachment, was still primitive and abundant.

  ‘These are the treasures of King Solomon!’ I cried, hopping all over the slippery rocks. ‘We hit the jackpot!’ I was over­whelmed with glee.

  ‘This pile of rocks is for you. Grab them quickly while the tide is still out.’ José tossed me a bucket, a pair of work gloves and a knife. He was in his wetsuit, about to dive under to spear big fish.

  Less than an hour later, my bucket was filled with mussels and abalone that we’d dug out, as well as sixteen big red crabs, each the size of a small washbasin. There was no room left in the bucket so I made a little prison with rocks, temporarily sealing them all in. I tied up an enormous bunch of kelp.

  José came ashore with around ten pink fish strung around his waist.

  ‘See, there are so many we can’t even keep up.’ This was the first time I discovered what it felt like to be a greedy person.

  Seeing my large crabs, José went to grab almost another twenty grey and black little crabs. ‘The little ones are called nécoras,’ he said. ‘They’re tastier than the big ones.’

  The tide was gradually coming in again. We retreated cliffside to scale and clean the fish. They filled up an entire bag. I took off my trousers, tied the legs into a knot and threw the crabs in there. We lashed the bucket to the rope and climbed up the cliff. That weekend was our first adventure, and we had plenty to show for it indeed.

  On the way home, I kept urging José to speed up. ‘Drive faster! Faster! Let’s invite your co-workers from the bachelor quarters over for dinner.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to salt the fish?’ José asked.

  ‘Forget about it this first time. We’ll treat everyone. They usually don’t get to eat well.’ José was very happy to hear this. Before we got home, we also picked up a case of beer and six bottles of wine for our guests.

  The next few weekends in a row, all of José’s co-workers wanted to come fishing with us. On our high of happiness, we thought we might as well make a dozen or so quiches and buy five cabbages and ten pounds of beef. We also added a mini fridge, a charcoal grill, five large buckets and six pairs of gloves, as well as a case of Coke and one of milk. With great strength and vigour, we set forth in multiple cars and ran wildly along the shore. By night we set up camp and had a barbecue, talking up a storm and having all the fun in the world. Unwittingly, the whole matter of saving money had been clean forgotten.

  In our household, nobody manages the money. We keep cash inside a pocket of my Chinese down jacket. Whenever we need any, we just reach in and grab a bill. As for accounting, if we remember, we’ll write it down on the nearest little piece of paper and toss it into a large sugar jar. After only a few trips to the sea, the pocket was empty, the jar full of little slips.

  ‘All gone again, so quickly!’ I muttered to myself, holding the jacket in my arms.

  ‘Didn’t we go to the sea in the first place to make salted fish and save on our groceries? But then there ended up being so many more expenses.’ José scratched his head, befuddled.

  ‘Friendship is priceless,’ I said by way of comfort.

  ‘Might as well sell the fish we catch next week.’ José had made up his mind again.

  ‘That’s right! If you can eat fish, you can sell them! You’re so smart.’ I jumped up and patted José on the head. ‘I hadn’t even thought of that!’

  ‘As long as we break even, I’m fine.’ José wasn’t a greedy person. I, on the other hand, had big ambitions and hoped to make a killing.

  That Saturday at four in the morning, we got into our car and hit the road, teeth chattering from the cold. We drove headstrong through the dark of the desert, relying on our skilfulness, bravado and familiarity with the roads.

  By eight, the sun had barely risen, but we’d already reached the high cliffs. We got out of the car. Behind us was the endless desert in all its mystery and tranquillity; before our eyes were the swashing waves of the sea beating on a stony shore. Not a thread of cloud hung in the azure sky. Flocks of seabirds flew around and around, sometimes letting out cries that underscored the desolation of the scene.

  Flipping up my jacket collar, I raised my arms and craned my head into the wind, holding this posture without moving.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked José.

  ‘You first,’ I parried.

  ‘I’m thinking about the world in Jonathan Livingston Seagull.’ José is a clear-headed, open-hearted person. The fact that he would be thinking about that book at this time, under these circumstances, was no surprise at all.

  ‘And you?’ he asked me again.

  ‘I was thinking I’m madly in love with a handsome, lame-footed military officer. I’m currently walking with him through a beautiful glen, one bursting with heather. The wind is whipping my messy hair. He’s gazing passionately at me – what romance, what suffering!’ I sighed mournfully. I closed my eyes, hugged my arms and exhaled with satisfaction.

  ‘Are you playing the lead in Ryan’s Daughter today?’ José asked.

  ‘You guessed right. OK, time to get to work.’

  I clapped my hands together and went to pull out the rope in preparation for rappelling down the cliffs. Everything seemed more interesting and lively after indulging in such crazy fantasies; this was my way of adjusting to a dull life.

  ‘Sanmao, le
t’s focus,’ José said solemnly. ‘You have to help me out.’

  We stood by the rocks. José dived under the waves. Every time he speared a fish, he’d throw it into shallow water. I would hurry over to grab, scale and clean it, all while kneeling on the rocks. Once each one was clean, I would put it into a plastic bag. My hands were soon cut up and bleeding after scaling a few large ones. Soaking them in sea water was pretty painful.

  José was bobbing in and out of the water, continuously throwing fish out. I worked furiously, laying out the cleaned fish in neat rows in the bag.

  ‘Making money isn’t that easy!’ I said to myself, shaking my head, my knees growing swollen.

  After a long time, José finally came ashore and I quickly gave him some milk to drink. He closed his eyes and lay back on the rocks, his face pale.

  ‘How many?’ he asked.

  ‘Over thirty. They’re so big. I’m sure we have sixty or seventy kilos.’

  ‘No more, I’m exhausted.’ He closed his eyes again.

  ‘People like us should be called “dilettante fishermen”,’ I said, pouring more milk for José. ‘In Paris back in the day, there were people who’d go to work during the week and then paint on Sundays. They called themselves dilettante painters. We’re catching fish on the weekend, so we’re dilettante fishermen. How about it?’

  ‘So many tricks up your sleeve,’ José said in spite of his uninterest. ‘Coming up with a new name just for catching fish.’

  After we were well rested, we transported the pile of fish up the cliff in three rounds. We put them in the car boot and covered them with a layer of crushed ice from the small fridge. Driving back through the desert beneath the glare of the sun was more labour on our part. Strangely, this time didn’t feel as much fun as before. We were worn out and on our last legs. ‘Please let me sleep for a bit before we sell fish,’ I implored José as we approached town. ‘Please! I’m exhausted!’