The Count of the Sahara

by Wayne Turmel

  “Easy for you to say, I have to share a back seat with you,” the older man added, then blew a low flatulent sounding note on his Hohner.

  Ahead in Sandy, Byron watched as they approached the village. Cresting a small dune, the walls of the Foreign Legion fort glared white and blinding in the afternoon sun. As they drew nearer, it was obvious only a skeleton crew remained. The rest of the force had taken the fight out of the rebel tribes and moved on to battle better armed, more serious problems like insurgent Arabs and Communists in the cities to the north.

  He sent up a quiet plea to the gods or the djinns or whoever would listen that the provisioners remembered to leave water and gasoline as instructed. A few cans of something other than bully beef would probably be too much to ask as well, but if they were granting small favors, he’d take it.

  For once things were precisely as expected. Fuel and food were stacked in a shaded corner of the bordj when they pulled up. The proprietor, a wiry Arab with a shoe brush moustache excitedly pointed it out. His manner suggested both a deep pride in his own integrity and an even deeper desire that honesty be remembered to the appropriate authorities. Byron happily assured him he wouldn’t be forgotten.

  By three in the afternoon, everything was counted, stacked and stored. Everyone but de Prorok seemed perfectly happy to have themselves a rinse and a siesta. Byron walked around the bordj, needlessly re-inspecting everything, gratified that for once all was in order, but bored. And, he knew, inaction was seldom his friend.

  Trying to settle his thoughts, he pulled out the list he’d compiled of all the shots he wanted for his new lecture tour. He wanted to build the sense of mystery and tension up to the inevitable triumphant discovery of the tomb.

  When people thought of the Sahara, they conjured images of blowing sand, S-shaped line after line of drifting particles burying, uncovering and reburying anything foolish enough to challenge its will. Men clawing across the dunes to their death, that’s what people expected—practically needed—to hear from desert travelers. Unfortunately, they’d been met with all that blasted rain and mud. Reality could really muck up a good tale.

  But now that sun was out in full force, and things were returning to normal. He thought about the dunes they passed on the way into town. If he, well Barth, pointed the camera correctly, it could create that lonely arid visual he needed to create the man-against-the-elements tableau he was looking for. He jumped up. “Barth. Henri? I have an idea…”

  “But it’s so late in the day, maybe tomorrow… the morning light would be better,” he protested meekly.

  “Nonsense. Late afternoon, long shadows on barren sands. It’ll be perfect, and you know it.”

  “But Chapuis isn’t here…”

  “God’s sake man, we don’t need Chapuis for a glorified walk in the park do we?” Henri Barth mopped his brow with a grimy handkerchief. There were no decent fans in the boarding house, and he was a wet mess. He couldn’t imagine how close to boiling his Swiss blood would be out on the dunes.

  “An hour. Two at the most. Come on, man, daylight’s wasting. Please?” Twenty minutes later the Count and Barth, along with a still camera, a handheld movie camera and several rolls of film bounced along in Sandy, Escande at the wheel.

  “Here you go, perfect, right here.” Sandy pulled to the side of the road by a marker proclaiming two miles to Sin Ifel. A large dune petered out right at the road’s edge. De Prorok leapt out and ran as best he could up the steep slope to the top. From there he could see the road, of course, but turning his back to the trail, he faced what looked like hell’s waiting room… a sea of sand, broken only by jagged islands of rock and one bare, thorny tree. Low dune after dune led to an infinite horizon. He looked and saw his shadow spreading yards ahead of him to the east. That meant the sun was directly behind him, an impossible landmark to miss. This would be easy.

  “Henri, come up here, you have to see this!”

  With a shrug of defeat, the Swiss photographer followed the already fading footprints up the sand bank to the crest. He didn’t bring any equipment with him, harboring the faint hope he’d be able to talk to the Count out of this madness.

  When he got to the crest, de Prorok could tell he’d won. The view was perfect, Barth’s protests be damned. Barth might—indeed did—complain a lot, but in his more honest moments he’d tell you that the Count had a good eye for what worked on film. The films they’d done in Carthage made both their reputations. They were by far the best anyone had gotten from there and the audiences, especially American audiences, loved them.

  A light breeze moved sand around, but it was hard packed and easy to walk on. He barely left a print. It would be easy walking once the equipment got here. He turned to Barth, who was already mentally framing shots.

  “Where’s your gear, man?” Byron snapped at him.

  “I didn’t want to haul it all the way up here if we weren’t…” His head dropped in defeat, and he yelled down the dune, “Escande, can you bring my gear up here please?”

  From the road, Byron could hear the driver. “Come get it yourself, you lazy Swiss pig.” That was hardly going to raise the esprit de corps.

  “Come on, Henri, I’ll help you. We’ll get a good days work in, eh?” He gave the photographer a slap on the shoulder hard enough to spin him around. Then he skittered down the dune to the car and was already half way up with a load when he passed Barth, still making his way gingerly down the hill.

  Several minutes later, Barth emerged over the lip of the dune soaked with perspiration, red-faced and puffing. He put his hands to his knees for a moment, then stretched and weakly took up his tripod. The Count was already a hundred yards ahead of him and widening the distance.

  “Allons-y, Henri. Just over that next dune will be perfect.” Then he strode off, still looking through his binoculars.

  “What’s wrong with right here? It looks good to me.”

  “Trust me, Henri. I know what I’m doing.”

  By the time Barth caught up to him over the next dune, Byron had the shot he wanted. He looked north through his fingers, forming an imaginary camera lens. Then he made a quarter turn west and framed that shot, too. It was perfect.

  Pacing off three steps, he turned. “I’ll stand here, you shoot me this way, with me looking into the sun like it’s morning, see?” He turned. His face changed ever so slightly, taking on a dreamy appearance. His voice changed, becoming the voice of the lecturer, the narrator of the adventure film. His extended arms and flat palms helped paint an entrancing, exotic picture.

  “As sun rises over the Sahara, you see the miles of trackless desert before you… and this is where you pan all the way around, Henri, three hundred and sixty degrees you see. That sense of loneliness. Wouldn’t do to have the road behind you like there’s an easy way out… And at the end of the day…” He spun slowly clockwise until he faced away from the late afternoon sun. The shadows stretched far ahead of him, “…still nothing but sand, rock and fear.”

  Barth gave an involuntary chuckle and Byron knew he had him. Sand, rock and fear was a good line. They’ll eat it up. Damn, he was good at this. Maybe he should direct films.

  De Prorok helped Barth set up the tripod and mount the camera, more from a desire to get things going than to be of assistance but either way in ten minutes they were snapping the first stills. Tall and tanned, his teeth gleaming in the sun, hair dark and only slightly moist from perspiration under his pith helmet covered in a brand new white cloth, he felt for all the world like the Hollywood version of the dashing young archaeologist. Henri dutifully snapped the pictures as the Count suggested, acknowledging they were, indeed, perfect.

  Byron stood, hands on his hips, completely satisfied with the way the afternoon had gone. It wasn’t a waste after all, and he knew with what he’d get at Tamanrasset he’d have enough to satisfy him until they reached Hoggar and Tin Hinan.

  In the fading afternoon sun, he noticed—about 300 yards to the southwest—a lone tree and th
e darker half-moon of what looked to be a cave. Without waiting for his companion, he strode off to investigate.

  “Byron, where the hell are you going?”

  “Henri, where’s your sense of adventure? There’s something up there.” Byron sometimes regretted his lack of consideration towards Barth at times, and he knew there was no arguing with him when he got like this, like a hound with the scent of a rabbit in his snout. With another helpless shrug, the photographer followed, lugging his equipment as best he could.

  By the time Barth caught up with the Count, the younger man was on his stomach, frantically clawing at the sand and throwing it behind him like a tall, thin badger. “What are you doing?”

  “Come here, you won’t believe it. Honestly, I had no idea…” Barth bent close enough to see inside the aperture, curious as to what his employer was babbling about. He saw a black patch on the floor, sharp rock fragments all over the floor, and white scratches contrasting with the darker rock of the cave. If the sun weren’t so low in the sky and shining right in, he’s not sure he would have seen them at all.

  He set down his equipment and came in for a better look. Two long fingers held out a flat, pointed black rock. “Look at this, a campsite, I’m sure of it. Pond will absolutely lose his mind.” De Prorok put the projectile in his pocket and continued sweeping the floor of the cave with his fingers. “Get some pictures of this, Henri. Oh I wish Denny were here to get it all first-hand…”

  Barth took some stills, and a few feet of film with Byron’s feet sticking out of the half-buried niche, his head lost inside the hole. He had to stop, though, because there was no longer enough light. Sundown had snuck up on them.

  “Byron, what time is it?”

  De Prorok was slithering backwards out of the cave as he answered. “I don’t know, why… Oh, it’s later than I thought.”

  “We’d better get back, Escande will be looking for us.”

  Byron nodded. “Right you are. Got a bit carried away there, but what a stroke of luck.”

  Barth wasn’t listening, though. He was looking around in what dim light remained, gathering all his equipment. “Which way?”

  Byron paused for a moment, turned back to the cave and held his arm out at forty-five degrees. “We came at it from that direction. Sun was low over the dunes there, so that’s west. We had the sun to our backs, remember those shadows?” Barth nodded, pretending to remember any of that. “So that way.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Henri, have I ever steered you wrong?” After thirty minutes or so, Byron regretted asking the question. They were no closer to the road that he could tell, and it was now pitch black.

  In fact, he’d steered them very wrong. Damned if he’d let Barth know that, though. Damned man was such a worry wart.

  “What if they don’t find us? We didn’t bring any water with us?”

  “You didn’t? I did.” Byron held out a canteen to his partner, who untwisted the top and took a deep swig of lukewarm water. That stopped the whining for a moment. Byron used the time to think. The packed sand that made walking so easy also didn’t form deep prints, so even if they could see where they were going, there wouldn’t be much of a trail to follow.

  “Let’s just stop for a moment and get our bearings. Have a seat, Barth.” Byron was worried about his friend. Henri wouldn’t stop pacing back and forth, and from the sniffling Barth was close to panic, if not actual tears.

  “You said this would be an easy run, Monsieur. You said it would be a few weeks of easy work, and now look what you’ve done. I don’t want to die out here.”

  “And you won’t, my friend. Chapuis and Belaid won’t take kindly to losing us. They probably have a party out looking for us already. Remember, I have the checkbook.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Yes it is. You know it is. Why do people always lose their sense of humor when things get tight? That’s when you need it most.” Those were the last words between them for a while. Byron let Henri stew and sniffle while he looked up into the night sky looking for some kind of giant arrow pointing them home. The full expanse of the Milky Way trailed off in either direction. One thing about being in the middle of nowhere. It was a hell of a view.

  “Do you see that?” It was Barth who saw the beacon first. He grabbed Byron by the sleeve and pointed to two pillars of light shining into the sky. He wiped his face on his sleeve to clear the tears and snot.

  De Prorok was about to ask what he was talking about when he saw the lights as well. “Ah, bravo, Henri. See, we’ll be fine.” He gave his panicky companion three comforting pats on the shoulder and headed towards safety, lugging most of the equipment.

  The Count carried most of the gear because in his panic Barth threatened to ditch it in order to conserve his strength. Tearfully, the photographer worried they were surely lost and would have to survive in the wild for days until rescue came or he was forced to kill the Count for food. Besides, those damned pictures were the reason they were in this mess.

  Calmly, Byron tried to explain what a shame it would be if they’d gone to all this trouble for nothing. Sure enough, they’d be fine. Wasn’t he always lucky?

  “Lucky I don’t kill you,” was the sobbing reply.

  “Hallllooooooo there,” de Prorok shouted towards the light. No response. “Halllllooooooo… ahoy there.”

  They heard a faint, “Thank God… over here. Escande, they’re here.” He picked up the pace, stepping quickly towards the voice, then slowed down again so Henri could stay in sight. The poor man had been through a lot today.

  Greetings and hugs were exchanged all around. Belaid and the driver took all the gear and a softly weeping photographer down the dune to the car. Louis and Byron stood at the top of the dune.

  “Are you okay, Monsieur?”

  “Perfect, yes. Oh Louis, you should see what we found… a cave... Even you didn’t know about it. Not my thing of course, but Reygasse and Pond will have a whale of a fight over it.” He dug into his pocket and proudly displayed one of the arrowheads.

  Chapuis stared at him, dumbfounded. “You could have died out there, Monsieur, two miles from your bed. For a god damned piece of rock.” Byron braced himself to answer, but counted to five instead and simply nodded his assent.

  “You’re right, Louis. Bloody stupid of me.” He looked down towards the road. In order to create a beacon, Escande had driven Sandy up the steep hill so the headlights shone to the heavens. Now they had to get him back on the road. They heard tires spinning in the sand with a plaintive whine before they grabbed the road bed, and Escande had Sandy back where she belonged, pointed to In Salah and bed. “Still, we got some great pictures, absolutely grand. And a site even you didn’t know about. I do have the damnedest luck.”

  Chapuis shook his head and bit back several possible harsh responses. That was certainly one way to look at it.

  The next day, after a short and blessedly uneventful drive, they found themselves at an oasis called Oued Aoulguy. While Pond and Reygasse engaged in a race to see who could find anything worthwhile near the dried river bed, Prorok squinted up at the surrounding rocks. There were stories about these hills, but he couldn’t remember exactly what they were.

  He spotted discoloration high up in the rocks, but he wasn’t sure. He grabbed a hold of two projecting stones and pulled himself up. It wasn’t a shadow. “I wonder what this is. Writing, maybe?” he shouted back, ascending rapidly.

  A moment later, de Prorok called for Chapuis, then Belaid, and finally even Reygasse and Pond surrendered the field of battle to see what was causing all the ruckus. Now they all stood on a flat hilltop, with caves and taller rocks behind.

  De Prorok stood, hands on his hips, examining the rock wall. On the wide mesa in front of it, all around and up as far as they could see were inscriptions, symbols, and scratches clearly made by human hands.

  “Well? What is it?”

  Belaid ran his finger over the scratches in the rock and gri
nned. “I’ll be damned. You see this big one here? It’s a sandal. And the little sandal next to it, they’re connected, no?” Everyone nodded impatiently. “That means they’re tied together forever. They’re to be married—fiancées, see?”

  “What about this writing here?” Pond pointed to a fainter set of marks.

  “It’s the same thing: so and so loves so and so, this person and that person together forever…”

  “But they’re in different languages.”

  Belaid nodded, pulling thick moustache hairs off his tongue as he excitedly explained. “Yes, see here, it’s Arabic, obviously. That’s fairly recent. Down here is Tifinar, and these are much, much, older than that.”

  This was news. Arabic they expected to find. Even Tifinar, the written language of the Tuaregs going back to the fourth century Berbers, before the Muslim invasions a hundred years later. Belaid patiently pointed out the sheer number of inscriptions of all ages. Scratched into rock, written over, and gradually covering the whole face of the mountain.

  He squinted momentarily, then snorted as he read one strange set of scratches. “This here, it’s a billboard. A woman claims she has the best love spells of all. Can make any man fall in love, any woman desirable.”

  “How come this one only has one shoe?” Pond was on his belly, studying a lone shoe with lines of script encircling it. Belaid looked carefully, then took a look over the steep drop-off. “This one is sort of sad. It says his beloved betrayed him, and he came here to throw himself off the cliff.”

  An embarrassed silence descended on them for a moment. They all looked over the precipice, imagining what that drop would do to a badly lovelorn young man.

  “So all of this is basically…”

  “Damn it Byron,” laughed Tyrrell, “You’ve found the only Lover’s Lane in the whole Sahara Desert.”

  De Prorok beamed. He stood and looked out over the desert floor below. His voice took on the story-teller tone. “For thousands of years, young Tuareg and Libyan lovers have come to… What do we call this? Love Mountain, Belaid, what is that in Arabic?”