Churchill took the revolver, made an apologetic sound in his throat, and flapped a hand. His tanned face was bright red where the tea had scalded it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s fair.’
Sterling turned to Taha. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know what Eric here was going to do — he “took my spirit” too. But I am your father: you know that. I came to look for you, for me, for your grandfather who blames himself for what happened, and for your mother, who is dead now. I know it’s terribly difficult for you, but please give it a try, for her sake. She loved you.’
Hearing the past tense, Taha looked shocked for a moment, and Sterling suddenly remembered he’d never got round to telling him that Margaret was dead. ‘How did she die?’ he asked.
Sterling sighed. He conjured Margaret up in his mind, trying to will back the warmth of her, the feel of her body. ‘She was beautiful,’ he said, finding the Arabic words difficult. ‘But she was, well ... she used to get depressed sometimes, and I couldn’t talk to her. It was as if she’d gone into a different world and no longer knew us. Then, when I went to prison, it got worse, and of course as soon as they let me out I was sent off to France as an ambulance driver. She found it hard to cope on her own. Later, when you didn’t come back, it was too much for her. She always kept your room exactly as it was, as if you were expected back any time, and kept on writing letters to you in Morocco, once a week. Arnold and I spent months — years — searching for you, but never found any trace. After a while Margaret just gave up. One day I came home to find her dead. She had taken her own life.’
‘God have mercy on her,’ Taha said. He opened his mouth as if to ask another question, then stopped and glanced about him like a trapped animal. He looked like a beggar in these ill-fitting clothes, Sterling thought, with his chopped-about hair and calloused feet and hands. In the desert he had looked like a king, had moved with the grace and confidence of an antelope, had seemed equal to any situation. Surrounded by these four walls he looked pathetic and out of place, ill at ease, diminished and disempowered.
Sterling glanced at Churchill. ‘Would you mind leaving us for a moment?’ he asked. Churchill nodded, picked up his kitbag and went out.
Taha watched him go. ‘I don’t trust that man,’ he said. He sat down, cross-legged on the floor, and for a moment he was Billy as a small boy again. Sterling sat in the armchair. ‘He’s only doing what I asked him to do,’ he said in Arabic. ‘Even the wireless — it was just extra insurance, and it paid off, because he was able to use it to call the aircraft that brought us here.’
‘I still don’t trust him.’
‘All right, you don’t have to. But do you trust me?’
‘I don’t know. I think so.’
‘That’s good, Taha. Now, I want you to do one thing for me, for the sake of your mother. I want you to stay with me here in the town for a week, and see if you can get used to it ... to the things you learned as a child. If, after that, you still want to go back to the desert, then we’ll have to reconsider. But promise me you’ll give it a try, that you won’t run away for seven days.’
Taha gave him a long, deep look. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I give my word. But if anyone tries to touch me ... If that Eric tries to pull a weapon on me again, then the deal is off.’
*
When Wohrmann woke him, Von Neumann sat up shuddering. For a moment he had been back there, in that deep well with water up to his chest, looking up at a circle of hazy greyness, feeling dust drifting down and touching his face like ghostly fingers. The two days he’d been stuck down there had been the most terrifying of his life: he’d been constantly aware that if he fell asleep even for a few moments he would drown. He was in a hundred-foot hole in the middle of one of the most desolate places on earth, and there was no guarantee that anyone would come by and find him before he succumbed. He’d doubted that he could last a third night. It had been the stuff of nightmares — he could not believe afterwards that he’d kept his head, though he’d never been quite the same since.
Just jumping into the well in the first place had taken nerves of steel — he wouldn’t have been able to do it at all without his airborne training. A hundred-foot plunge into the darkness of a shaft could easily have been fatal, but to stay in the open with all that shooting going on would have been worse, and his calculation had been correct, because he had turned out to be the Sonnenblume mission’s sole survivor. He remembered hearing the voices on the second day, over the roar of the storm, infinitely far away, perhaps in his imagination only, then realizing that there were darker shadows at the lip of the well above him. How he had implored, begged, pleaded with them to pull him out! The Arabs had been terrified — they believed wells were inhabited by evil spirits and for a long time he’d thought they were actually going to go away and leave him.
But in the end the desert people were a practical folk, and they’d put a rope down and hauled him up using a camel. Sitting there at the wellhead, he’d felt the wind lashing him through his wet clothes, adding a new, even more surreal dimension to the scene. The father and son who’d saved him had looked like Old Testament figures, their head-cloths and ragged robes flying in the wind. They had pointed their rifles at him and debated shooting him — he’d been saved only because of the Maria Teresa silver dollars he kept for emergencies, and because he spoke Arabic. The sandstorm had hidden from his view any relics of the battle with the British commandos. And when the storm had subsided after a week, and Skorzeny had picked him up in the light aircraft, all trace of the convoy had disappeared off the face of the earth. The Sonnenblume mission that had started off so confidently from Vichy-French Morocco had simply vanished into thin air. None of the drivers or guards was ever seen again.
He shivered again, and Wohrmann stepped back, startled by the look on his face. Von Neumann saw that the wireless operator was wearing a long Arab shirt, and had a signals form in his hand. Sunlight was coming through the window of the room in a single thick shaft, suspended by dust. His nose wrinkled, remembering the smell of the storm, the accursed irifi that had allowed the British commandos to escape. ‘What is it?’ Von Neumann snapped.
‘Sir,’ Wohrmann said, ‘a signal from London. Steppenwolf is on his way. His ETA is one week.’ He thrust the form at Von Neumann, who took it and read the signaller’s crabbed decryption.
At last, he thought proudly. He and Otto Skorzeny would meet again, and the humiliating memory of his failure would be redeemed.
‘There is another thing, sir,’ the chunky Swabian added. ‘An Arab runner arrived at first light. Amir and his party encountered the boy Taha Minan Nijum, but he escaped.’ Wohrmann paused, expecting a cascade of vitriol that never came.
‘How?’ Von Neumann asked quietly.
‘They don’t know exactly, but apparently two Europeans were with him.’
Von Neumann smirked. ‘Then he’s safe. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ Wohrmann said. ‘Amir’s party found out which clan the boy’s been living with and where they are located. They are proceeding there to put pressure on them, but are worried about reprisals from other Reguibat clans.’
Von Neumann stepped out of his sleeping bag, yawned and ran a hand through his blond stubble. ‘Send the runner back to Amir,’ he said. ‘Tell him no killing. We want the boy’s people as hostages. And tell him not to worry about reprisals. The Reguibat will not come to help the boy’s folk: a five-hundred-strong raiding party of the Delim is already attacking them in the rear.’
*
For Taha it was more difficult to keep his promise than Sterling could ever have imagined. Taha had grown to manhood in the wide panoramas of the desert — even his people’s tents were open to the elements — and to confine himself voluntarily to living within walls was a torture. Although George’s arrival had opened up the floodgates of his memory, his life in England was still dim and unreal, like a tale of the Time Before Time. Although he found he could understand English, the wrong words came
out when he tried to speak it. He had to admit to himself that he no longer wanted to speak it — the tongue of his childhood had become foreign to him.
The bed he had woken up in felt strange and cloyingly soft, and he quickly moved his sheets to the hard floor. Sterling came to show him the use of the flush-toilet, but to Taha who had learned to squat when relieving himself, and to use stones to clean himself afterwards, it now seemed an abomination. He could not believe that good water was wasted in such a fashion. The first morning, Taha had found a way out into the garden behind the hotel, where ladies and men were sitting sedately at tables under umbrellas. He squatted down in the flowerbeds to relieve himself, feeling the awkwardness and immodesty of his new clothes. He had hardly started when the ladies began to scream and point, and several waiters in dark uniforms and red sashes at their waists came sweating up to him, apparently horrified. He held them off with a stick pulled out of the hedge until Sterling arrived.
That evening he went to dinner in his ill-fitting European clothes, barefoot because no shoes would fit him after going unshod for seven years. The dining room was large and carpeted, with enormous chandeliers and bay windows overlooking the sea, its round tables with white tablecloths and accessories, set with silver cutlery and crystal glassware. Taha gazed around him in bewilderment at the tables, touched the cutlery and glasses wonderingly. So much was wasted here, he thought. These city people had so many things — objects, possessions — that they were weighed down by them. The men wore white colonial dinner jackets and bow ties, the ladies low-cut dresses: clothes that seemed tight and as uncomfortable as his own. Their faces were cold masks of arrogance that Taha sensed covered doubt and insecurity. Their bodies were water-fat and fleshy and they moved with a ponderous clumsiness. They sweated and covered themselves in sickening perfume that did not disguise their disgusting smell. They talked a great deal in loud voices, but they seemed miserably unhappy.
Though everything here was easy, he thought — water came through a tube in his room at the movement of a hand, blinding light at the touch of a button. Outside in the street he had seen the iron chariots he remembered from boyhood, but now they seemed different — ugly, noisy, smelly contraptions. Here there was food in plenty — more than anyone could eat — and no apparent threat from enemy tribes; at least, none of the men carried weapons. Yet far from being contented, the people seemed grey and lifeless. Taha saw almost at once why this was — they were trapped in buildings like prisons, cut off by their machines and possessions from the spirits of the earth.
As they moved through the great dining room, Sterling and Churchill nodded and shook hands with people. Many had heard the strange story of the Englishman whose son had been lost in the desert and found after seven years. They seemed interested and shook hands with him, but Taha read amusement in their faces. Some of the ladies were the ones who had screamed at him in the garden earlier. The dark-clad waiters who strutted among the tables glanced at him with obvious derision, deliberately staring at his bare feet and unkempt hair. This made Taha seethe. Many of them, he could tell from their features, belonged to inferior tribes or were haratin — freed slaves whose families worked the palm groves for their warrior-masters. Outside this place, they would have paid for such expressions with their lives.
Sitting on a chair at a table was agony for Taha. His muscles had grown accustomed to sitting on the ground, and he was used to eating from a communal dish with his hand. He remembered knives, forks and spoons from his childhood, but they seemed clumsy and unnecessary. It was said in the desert that only the Ajam — the despised Tuareg nomads from the east — ate with utensils from their own dishes. This was not the Arab way. On that first night he sat, shifting uncomfortably on his chair, while the waiters served food from silver dishes, standing at his shoulder in a way he found threatening. He looked at the food on his plate — a mess of white flesh — and wrinkled his nose. ‘What is this?’ he demanded. ‘Shin-hu hatha?’
‘It’s very good,’ Sterling said, ‘try it.’
Taha took a handful of the white flesh and put it in his mouth. Then he spat it out on his plate. ‘It is fish!’ he said.
‘It’s freshly caught today,’ Churchill said.
Taha stood up. ‘The People of the Clouds do not eat creatures from the sea,’ he shouted. ‘It is forbidden!’
There was silence in the dining room as people turned enquiring faces towards him. Someone snickered. Taha threw down the useless white cloth Sterling had told him to cover his clothes with. He tore off the tight white jacket and slapped it down on the floor. Then he turned on his bare heel and marched out.
*
Sterling found him later, sitting on the roof under a dense carpet of stars. It was a hot night, and Taha had removed all his clothes but his trousers. Sterling sat down beside him quietly. ‘What’s the attraction up here?’ he asked softly.
Taha pointed east with a closed fist. ‘Can’t you smell it?’ he asked, still speaking Arabic. ‘It is the wind off the desert, the free wind unfettered by walls. It blows on and on from as far away as the land of the Nile, and nothing stands in its way. It tells me that my people will be leaving their spring camp soon and moving closer to the water-sources in the inner desert.’
He looked at Sterling. ‘Have you ever seen the People of the Clouds on the move? They are called the People of the Clouds because they move vast distances in search of grazing, following the rain-clouds. They move further than any other tribe. Everything they own is carried on the backs of their camels — women and children ride in litters, the warriors of the tribe ride ahead as scouts seeking out the pastures and watching for raiders. By God, it is a fine sight!’ He sighed. ‘Better than a thousand iron chariots.’
George took a deep breath. ‘Taha,’ he began. ‘I came here to take you home, to the country you grew up in. Whatever you may think, you do belong there. I can understand that when you were lost in the desert you thought you’d been abandoned, and you had no choice but to become one of the ... Blue Men. You had to survive. But you aren’t really one of them — you’re English. Their lives are hard. I saw that even in the short time I was in the desert. In England we live a peaceful life. It’s a place where you don’t have to worry about the basics all the time — where to find food and water and shelter. You don’t have to be looking over your shoulder constantly in case there are raiders about. You don’t have to carry weapons. There, every child can read and write, everyone can go to hospital when they’re sick.’
‘You make it sound like heaven. But I remember when men came to take you away because you wouldn’t fight. They locked you in a room. The other boys at school made fun of me because of it. It is just as dishonourable to be a coward there as it is among us, except that in our world no one can force you to do anything. You are free to make your own choices.’
Sterling swallowed. This was proving more difficult than he’d anticipated, especially speaking a foreign language.
‘Look,’ he said, lapsing into English. ‘There are many problems there, I don’t say there aren’t — it’s not heaven, but it is civilization. In nomad society everyone has to do exactly what their parents did. There is no innovation, no invention, no improvement — nothing new, not even a new song. It’s a society living in the past. In England there is progress: things move forward and get better. Cures are found for terrible diseases; every day we find new and better ways of doing things; we can travel all over the world. You don’t have to stay in your own little bit of the earth — you can see new and wonderful things, find out just how varied and fascinating the world really is. You think you are free, Taha, but really you are bound by a set of rigid codes of conduct much harsher than anything we have back home. You are hemmed in by superstitions — spirits, ghosts and nonsensical beliefs about the earth and the stars. In fact, you are not free at all. You can never develop your own potential; never really fulfil yourself in such a life. You can’t be anything but a herder of animals, a shepherd. You are bo
und to live just as men have lived for generations in the desert, a life that is nasty, brutish and short.’
He paused for breath, squinting at Taha’s passive face in exasperation. ‘Don’t you have any happy memories of England, Billy? Don’t you remember how we used to go and stay in that cottage at Woolcott, near the sea? You used to love it there. We used to play football on the lawn — you, me and Mummy. We used to go swimming in the sea, even though it was so cold.’
Taha smiled. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘We used to dig holes in the sand. You used to say we were digging to Australia. When the sea was rough we used to watch them putting out the lifeboat. I remember the men in their funny yellow coats and hats.’
‘That’s it!’ George said, encouraged now. ‘When it rained we used to go to the cinema and watch Charlie Chaplin. How you laughed! And do you remember when we went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? You were so frightened when the queen turned into a witch that you hid under the seat and wouldn’t come out until Mummy offered you a box of popcorn!’
Taha chuckled. The cinema. It was something he hadn’t thought about in years. He suddenly remembered the taste of popcorn and ice cream. He remembered riding a bicycle, playing pirates, going to the circus, rides at funfairs, hide and seek. The magic of those days came back to him so suddenly and powerfully that he gasped.
‘Come back with me, Billy,’ George implored him. ‘You’re all I have now that Mum’s gone. I need you.’
Taha looked at Sterling more closely and placed his hand on his father’s arm. ‘I know you are a good man, Father,’ he said. Sterling realized suddenly that it was the first time Taha had called him that. ‘I know you love me. I know you feel you are doing the right thing in bringing me here. But it is too late. I feel no desire to go back. I long only for the desert. It is the one thing that does not change.’
Sandstorm Page 19
