But why was she speaking to me in Arabic?
‘Salaam, salaam . . . es-hy, es-hy . . .’
Hello, hello.
And I knew what ‘es-hy’ meant because one of the cleaners in Essaouira used it when trying to rouse the man always asleep behind the hotel front desk.
Wake up, wake up.
But I couldn’t do anything beyond half-open that one eye. And wish myself back in the darkness again.
Suddenly I felt liquid against my lips.
The little voice intoned:
‘Ma’a . . . ma’a . . . shreb.’
More liquid against my lips. I opened my mouth wide and let her pour in . . .
‘Ma’a . . . ma’a.’
Water.
Within moments my throat opened again.
Water.
With it came the knowledge that I was still here. Prostrated in the Sahara. Alive, albeit barely. But still here. With water flowing into my mouth. And the little voice then saying:
‘Bellati . . . bellati.’
Then I felt a cloth being put over my face.
And I was alone again.
Within moments, the darkness enveloped me once more.
Until I heard the little voice yet again. Accompanied by two other voices. Older. Male. Shouting to each other. Then to me.
‘Shreb . . . shreb.’
Now someone pulled the cloth off my face and was holding up my head, while someone else was filling my mouth with water. At first I gagged it up. The man supporting my head gripped me tightly as I heaved, used something to clean my mouth, then gently pushed the bottle back between my lips. This time I could hold it down. And drank and drank and drank, the water surging through me. At another point I started choking on it again. The man cleaned me off, then made me drink more. He was not going to stop feeding me water until he was certain I was somewhat hydrated again. I have no idea how long this process took. What I do know is that the water brought back enough consciousness for me to see two men – both with hard, wizened faces – engaged in the act of saving my life. I also heard the one who seemed to be doing all the talking shouting orders. Then I was lifted and put on a mattress. The smell of animal dung nearby. Then someone climbing in beside me. Opening one eye I saw the young girl who had found me now seated beside me, smiling shyly before covering my head again with a cloth, then taking my hand and holding it. I felt some movement in front of us, and the slope on which I had been placed righting itself, and heard the crack of a whip and the bray of a donkey, and I passed out again as the cart upon which I was travelling began its slow trudge along the desert track.
I have no idea how long I descended back into the darkness. When I awoke I was in a very different place. As my eyes opened, I saw candles and two gas lanterns lighting what seemed to be the walls of a tent. The fact that I could open both eyes was surprising. So too was the fact that there was an elderly woman – her face like a bas-relief, with only four or five teeth – gazing down at me, and exclaiming as I stared up at her:
‘Allahu akbar!’
I tried to sit up. I was too weak to do so. The elderly woman spoke quietly to me, gently pressing my head down on what seemed to be a cot of some sort. Another woman came over: much younger, pretty, all smiles.
‘Hamdilli-la!’
She touched my face with her fingers. I flinched. Even the light pressure she’d placed on my cheek set off wild nerve endings of pain. She was immediately contrite, especially as the elderly woman shouted at her to do something. Moments later, some sort of balming oil was being lightly rubbed into my face. It was at this juncture that I realised I was virtually naked from the waist down. Lain out on this bier-like cot, my legs and thighs covered with assorted cloths; my crotch encased in a white bandage that was covered in dried blood.
As soon as I saw the blood I was back in that truck, my assailant thrusting into me, tearing me apart.
I began to shudder. Immediately the young woman was holding me, whispering to me in Arabic, calming me, once even gesticulating to the bloodied bandage, then spouting out a long array of reassuring words, as if to say: I know what happened, and it is terrible. But you will be better.
Meanwhile the elderly woman approached us holding a mug of something steaming and strangely aromatic. She motioned for the young woman to help me up, and then encouraged me to drink this highly herbal, bittersweet brew. It had an immediate soporific effect. Within moments I was elsewhere again.
When I woke it was daylight. I still felt desperately weak, concussed, with a ringing in my ears that wouldn’t go away. I also urgently needed to pee. But as soon as I tried to sit up I lost my equilibrium, and fell back against the cot. At which point I saw the young girl who’d found me scramble up from a mattress in the corner of the tent and hurry over. Though still half-awake she smiled broadly at me. I managed a fogged smile back.
‘Parlez-vous français?’ I asked.
She shook her head, then raised her finger telling me to wait and ran outside. I could hear her shouting to someone. Within a few minutes she returned with the very pretty young woman whom I’d seen – when? – was it yesterday? How much time had evaporated around me from the moment I had found myself dying in the desert to the place and moment I found myself now? I only knew it was that same young woman when she removed her burqa.
‘Salaam alaikum,’ she said to me. The little girl was by her side, holding onto her djellaba.
‘Mema,’ she said.
‘Your mother?’ I asked. A baffled look from them both. I tried a more phonetic word: ‘Mama?’
That worked. They both smiled and nodded.
I asked the young woman if she spoke French. She seemed a little embarrassed by this and shook her head.
‘No problem,’ I said, trying to smile back, but suddenly feeling woozy. The young woman told her daughter to run outside. My need to pee was now immense. From my French lessons with Soraya I remembered that she would occasionally drop Arabic words into our conversation to help me negotiate the Essaouira streets. She taught me a few phrases. Such as:
‘Aynal hammam?’
Where is the toilet?
The fact that I had asked this question in Arabic had her beaming. She answered back in a stream of words, none of which I managed to follow. But she did indicate to me that I should wait a moment as she raced over to the far side of the tent and returned with a long black djellaba. As she started helping me into it the elderly woman returned, shouting orders to the young woman, who in turn explained that I needed the toilet (or, at least, I heard the word al-hammam in her onslaught of words).
With the elderly woman in charge of things, I was helped into the djellaba. The weakness I’d felt lying down on the cot was exacerbated when I tried to stand up. But the elderly woman had hands as rough and reinforced as a vice. She forced me up vertically. When I attempted to look down at the condition of my crotch and legs she held her hand under my chin and moved my gaze, while the young woman and her daughter removed all the bandages and dressings. Then they helped me slowly into the djellaba, keeping me upright throughout. The elderly woman held up a burqa and started explaining – with a lot of hand gestures – that I needed to put it on, as she pointed to the flap in the tent, letting me know that the al-hammam was outside. I nodded agreement. With the help of the young woman, she organised the burqa around my face. Within moments I felt like a blinkered horse. All peripheral vision had been cut off and I was looking at the world from a narrow horizontal slit. I was very conscious that my legs felt raw. Just as my face seemed somewhat out of place. Walking was an arduous business. All three women had to support me as I took my first tentative steps forward.
Once outside the tent the heat and the harshness of the light made me snap my eyes shut. From what I could take in, we were in some sort of encampment – several tents, shaded by a few sparse trees. Was this an oasis? The burqa cut off any view to either side. All I could see were the meagre trees, the tents, the sand beyond.
The wom
en led me to a small tent. As the little girl opened the flap, the elderly woman told the others to halt for a moment. Disappearing inside she returned moments later, tucking a mirror into the folds of her djellaba. That got my attention and heightened my sense of fear. She didn’t want me to see myself.
When I motioned to the mirror the elderly woman became very maternal, shaking her finger vehemently at me as if I was a child who had been caught seeing something she shouldn’t. Then she motioned for the mother and daughter to bring me inside, giving instructions along the way.
The toilet was a bucket, with a pail of water nearby. The young girl pulled up my djellaba. But when I attempted to inspect what I suspected was severe sun damage to my legs, her mother repeated the same procedure as the elderly woman. She placed her hand under my chin to keep my gaze upwards.
They settled me on the bucket, and I let go. The stinging that accompanied the urination was frightful. The young woman gripped my shoulder, helping me through the pain. When I was finished the little girl went over to the pail, dipped a rag into the water, and handed it to me. When I touched myself it was agony. The mother saw this and gripped my shoulder again, her hand gestures indicating that I needed to be patient, not to be afraid, to give it time.
They got me back to the tent. The elderly woman helped me off with the burqa and the djellaba. Once I was naked they lay me down again on the cot, the little girl keeping my gaze upwards by standing over me and touching my chin with her index finger any time I looked away. I felt oils being rubbed into my legs; then some sort of balm was applied to my cheekbones and the areas around my eyes. I smelled that strange herbal beverage being brewed again – one which ensured that I fell into a deep slumber. They were knocking me out again. The elderly woman raised my head, putting the mug between my lips. I drank down the scalding brew in several gulps. Moments later, as the darkness recaptured me, I wondered: Will I ever leave this place . . . and do I even care?
Twenty-one
I SLOWLY BECAME aware of minutes, hours, days – whenever I was awake. Which wasn’t very often, as my rehabilitation involved drinking that herbal concoction twice a day and sleeping almost nine hours each time.
The curious thing about this ‘tisane’ was that it was ferociously potent, but also left me feeling peculiarly clear-headed when I re-emerged into the world.
Not that I was in any way clear-headed. On the contrary, the battering that my head and eardrum had received meant that I was suffering from some sort of serious concussion and inner-ear damage. Only some time later did I realise why the elderly woman who took charge of my recovery had insisted on having me knocked out. This was her way of keeping me sedated and allowing the brain to heal.
The elderly woman was named Maika. Her daughter – the beautiful young woman who had been at my side throughout – was called Titrit. And the little girl who came upon me and saved my life was Naima.
I discovered their names on the day that Maika decided I was ready to come off the eighteen-hour sleep cure. Before then the herbal medicine had kept me so drugged that only the basic sort of information seeped through. But on the morning when Maika did not give me another dose of the tisane, a certain fog had lifted by the early afternoon. Gesturing to myself I explained that my name was Robin.
‘And your names?’
It was Naima who understood immediately and pointed to her grandmother and mother, informing me of their names before pointing to herself and saying, in a wonderfully bold and forthright voice: ‘Naima!’
Her grandmother rolled her eyes, as if to indicate that such exuberance would be tolerated only for a certain number of years. But when I gave Naima the thumbs-up she mimicked the gesture, delighting in it, showing her mother and grandmother with amused pride how well she could do it. Though Titrit encouraged her, clapping and laughing as her daughter marched around, Maika called time on this little escapade when she gestured for me to stand up, indicating that I should walk towards her unaided. For the first time since Naima had found me in the desert I was being permitted to take steps without the three women to help me. I was uncertain at first, wondering if I could actually make it across the floor of the tent – which wasn’t more than six feet – without stumbling. When I tried to rush it at first Maika held up her hands and indicated that slowness was key here. I followed her advice, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, testing my balance, acutely conscious of my fragile state. But I did actually make it over to the far side of the tent, and was rewarded with applause from Titrit and Naima and a curt nod from Maika.
The tent. There was the cot on which I had spent so much time sleeping. There was a dirt floor. There was a gas lamp. Two buckets: one for washing, one for drinking water. There were two stools for guests to sit on, and a single mattress on the floor. That had been my world for at least a week, maybe ten days, perhaps longer.
When I reached the other side I had to sit down on one of the little stools for a few moments, as I had started to feel woozy. Maika touched my head, made a flapping gesture with one hand, then held both up. I took this to mean: You are still not completely well in there. The head injury is going to leave you rather shaky, and we will take things slowly. Then she got me to stand up and ordered Titrit and Naima to help me out of the simple white nightgown which Titrit had brought several nights before and in which I had recently been sleeping. My legs and thighs were still wrapped in white cloths, prepared with oils that gave off a herbal, medicinal aroma. The bloodied bandage wrapped between my legs had been changed daily, but though the bleeding had long since stopped, Maika had insisted on using what seemed to be a salve on the lips of my vulva and deep inside, administering this on a twice-daily basis in a matter-of-fact way.
Maika had now decided the moment had arrived for me to inspect the damage done to me . . . or perhaps to see how its recovery was progressing. As they began to undress me, and to remove the cloths from my legs, I instinctively looked away. Whereas earlier on I had wanted to see how bad it all was, now that I was finding my way back to some sort of skewed norm the last thing I wanted to contemplate was how badly disfigured I might be. That would begin to raise the question of my life beyond this tent – and whether I could ever get back to it. Or, if the injuries were so severe, whether I would ever want to.
Maika – shrewd old bird that she was – worked out my fear on the spot. Being someone who clearly did not believe in the art of mollycoddling, she disappeared outside for a moment as Titrit and Naima undressed me, returning with a mirror in hand. Now that I was naked she started to remove all the cloth bandages around my legs. As I had been left for dead, half-naked in the sun, my lower extremities had been exposed unprotected for several hours. So too my face. When the bandages were finally off – and I refused to look – she gently but firmly forced my head downwards. My thighs had long red welts on them, some truly virulent, others already starting to fade. My lower legs also displayed several nasty burnt blotches. But what was most alarming were the clusters of tiny off-white and red welts everywhere, up and down both legs and concentrated around my right thigh.
‘What are these?’ I said, pointing to these dozens of micro-blisters, very alarmed.
Maika began to lecture me in a reassuring way, explaining (by tapping her thumb rapidly against her middle finger and then diving with it against my thigh) that while unconscious I had been attacked by some sort of insect. She even tried out a word of French:
‘Des puces.’
Fleas. Sand fleas. Which I had read about in one of the many Moroccan guides I’d devoured prior to my trip. They were prevalent in the desert. They came out at sunrise, merciless whenever any sort of human or animal flesh was in their immediate vicinity. The density of bites was shocking. Maika saw my distress. Through the usual elaborate pantomime of hand gestures, she indicated that, in time, they would diminish.
‘And the burns,’ I said, pointing to the deep red welts, some still blistering. Maika motioned downwards with her hands, as if to say: They wi
ll lessen. Then she touched my shoulder in a firm but comforting way, and said one word:
‘Shaja’a.’
When I looked baffled as to its meaning she tapped my heart, my head, and then forced my chin up with her index finger. The penny dropped.
‘Courage?’ I asked, trying to give it a French pronunciation. Titrit immediately nodded her head several times, saying something to Maika who concurred. Waving her finger in my face like a corrective Mother Superior, she repeated that word again:
‘Shaja’a.’
Immediately Naima was imitating her grandmother, wagging her finger at me, saying several times over: ‘Shaja’a, shaja’a, shaja’a,’ even causing her usually grim-faced grandmother to smile for a moment or so.
Maika now moved the mirror directly in front of my vulva, making me see that the lips were largely healed. She asked Titrit to bring over the tin of homemade salve with which she had been treating my ripped insides. Then, indicating that I should spread my legs a bit, she dipped her fingers into the salve and began to explore within me. Again I wasn’t just struck by the matter-of-fact way she examined me, but also the fact that Naima wasn’t shooed away as this internal inspection took place. On the contrary she came close up to her grandmother, fascinated. The way these women treated what is euphemistically called ‘female matters’ in such a utilitarian, non-prudish way was both surprising and necessary for my still-fragile state of mind. The fact that they were involving the young girl in all this – without, I’m certain, going into the reasons why I had been injured – struck me as canny and demystifying. Here, Naima watched while her grandmother prodded and probed within me. That I wasn’t frantic with pain – just a small amount of discomfort – I took to be a positive sign. Withdrawing her fingers Maika put her thumb up (she too had adopted this gesture after seeing me show Naima how to do it). She made assorted hand movements to indicate that, in her expert opinion, all was repaired within.
Now it was time for the revelation I was most dreading: the state of my face. What’s that old line about it being the mirror of the soul? If that was the truth then my soul was a still-battered and scarred one. As Maika presented me with the mirror I could see her daughter looking distinctly uneasy, as if expecting me to fall apart at first glimpse of the lingering impairments. I closed my eyes, took a deep steadying breath, and opened them.
The Heat of Betrayal Page 24
