'Ever been back to the States?'
'No; I've been here thirty-five years and like to die here,' he said peacefully.
Mokhtar was away a long time, nearly five hours, and when he came back he had the gutted carcass of a gazelle slung across his shoulders. Byrne helped him butcher it, talking the while.
Presently he came over to me and squinted into the sun. 'Getting late,' he said. 'I reckon we'll stay here the night. Billson is either between here and Assekrem or he ain't. If he is, we'll find him tomorrow. If he ain't, a few hours won't make no difference.'
'All right.'
'And we've got fresh meat. Mokhtar tells me he stalked that gazelle for twenty kilometres and downed it in one shot.'
'You mean he walked twenty kilometres!'
'More. He had to come back. But he circled a bit, so say under thirty. That's nothing for a Targui. Anyway, Mokhtar's one of the old school; he learned to shoot with a muzzle-loader. With one of those you have to kill with one shot because the gazelle spooks and gets clear away before you can reload. But he likes a breech-action repeater better.'
And so we stayed u nder the shadow of Ilamen that night. I lay in the open, wrapped in a djellaba provided by Byrne, and looked up at those fantastic stars. A sickle moon arose but did little to dim the splendour of those faraway lights.
I thought of Byrne. Hesther Raulier had compared him with Billson, calling him, 'another crazy man'. But the madness of Byrne was quite different from the neurotic obsession of Billson; his was the madness that had struck many white men — not many Americans, mostly Europeans — Doughty, Burton, Lawrence, Thesiger — the lure of the desert. There was a peacefulness and a sanity about Byrne's manner which was very comforting.
I thought in wonder of the sea-shells to be picked up from the desert a thousand miles from the sea but had no foreshadowing that I would be picking them myself. The night was calm and still. I suddenly became aware of the startling incongruity of Max Stafford, hot-shot businessman from the City of London, lying in a place improbably called Atakor beneath the Finger of God which was not far from the End of the World.
Suddenly London ceased to matter. Lord Brinton and Andrew McGovern ceased to matter; Charlie Malleson and Jack Ellis ceased to matter; Gloria and Alix Aarvik ceased to matter. All the pettifogging business of our so-called civilization seemed to slough away like an outworn skin and I felt incredibly happy. I slept.
I woke in the thin light of dawn conscious of movement and sound. When I lifted my head I saw Byrne filling the petrol tank from a jerrican — it was that metallic noise that had roused me. I leaned up on one elbow and saw Mokhtar in the desert mosque; he was making obeisances to the east in the dawn ritual of Islam. I waited until he had finished because I did not want to disturb his devotions, then I arose.
Thirty minutes later after a breakfast of cold roast venison, bread and hot mint tea we were on our way again, a long plume of dust stretching away behind us. Slowly the majestic peak of Ilamen receded and new vistas of tortured rock came into view. According to Byrne, we were on a well-travelled road but to a man more accustomed to city streets and motorway driving that seemed improbable. The so-called road was vestigial, distinguishable only by boulders a shade smaller than those elsewhere, and the truck was taking a beating. As for it being well-travelled I did not see a single person moving on it all the time I was in Atakor.
Nearly three hours later Byrne pointed ahead. 'Assekrem!'
There was a large hill or a small mountain, depending on how you looked at it, on the top of which appeared to be a building. 'Is that a house?' I asked, wondering who would build on a mountain top in the middle of a wilderness.
'It's the Hermitage. Tell you about it later.'
We drove on and, at last, Byrne stopped at the foot of the mountain. There seemed to be traces of long-gone cultivation about; the outlines of fields and now dry irrigation ditches. Byrne said, 'Now we climb to the top.'
'For God's sake, why?'
'To see what's on the other side,' he said sardonically. 'Come on.'
And so we climbed Assekrem. It was by no means a mountaineering feat; a track zig-zagged up the mountain, steep but not unbearably so, and yet I felt out of breath and panted for air. Half-way up Byrne obligingly stopped for a breather, although he did not seem in discomfort.
I leaned against the rock wall. 'I thought I was fitter than this.'
'Altitude. When you get to the top you'll be nine thousand feet high.'
I looked down to the plain below where I saw the truck with Mokhtar sitting in its shade. 'This hill isn't nine thousand feet high.'
'Above sea level,' said Byrne. 'At Tarn we were four and a half thousand high, and we've been climbing ever since.' He rearranged his veil as he was always doing.
'What's this about a Hermitage?'
'Ever hear of Charles de Foucauld?'
'No.'
'Frenchman, a Trappist monk. In his youth, so I hear, he was a hellion, but he caught religion bad in Morocco. He took his vows and came out here to help the Tuareg. I suppose he did help them in his way. Anyway, most of what the outside world knows —. about the Tuareg came from de Foucauld.'
'When was this?'
'About 1905. He lived in Tarn then, but it wasn't much of a place in those days. In 1911 he moved here and built the Hermitage with his own hands. He was a mystic, you see, and wanted a place for contemplation.'
I looked at the barren landscape. 'Some place I'
'You'll see why when we get to the top. He didn't stay long — it damn near killed him; so he went back to Tarn and that did kill him.'
''How so?'
'In 1916 the Germans bribed the Libyan Sennousi to stir up trouble with the desert tribes against the French. The Tuareg of the Tassili n' Ajjer joined with the Sennousi and sent a raiding party against Tarn. De Foucauld was caught and shot with his hands bound — and it was an accident. An excitable kid of fifteen let a gun go off. I don't think they meant to kill him. Everyone knew he was a marabout — a holy man.' He shrugged. 'Either way he was just as dead.'
I looked at Byrne closely. 'How do you know all this?'
He leaned forward and said gently, 'I can read, Stafford.' I felt myself redden under the implied rebuke, but he laughed suddenly. 'And I talked to some old guys over in the Tassili who had been on the raid against Tarn in 1916. Some of the books I read sure are wrong.' He half-turned as if about to set off again, but stopped. 'And there was someone else in Tarn not long ago like de Foucauld — but a woman. English, she was; name of Daisy Wakefield. Said she was related to some English lord — something to do with oil. Is there a Lord Wakefield?'
There is.
'Then that must be the guy.'
'Did you know her?'
'Sure, Daisy and I got on fine. That's how I caught up with the news; she subscribed to the London Times. A mite out-of-date by the time it got here but that didn't matter.'
'What happened to her?'
'She got old,' he said simply. 'She went north to El Golea and died there, God rest her soul,' He turned. 'Come on.'
'Byrne,' I said. 'Why are we climbing this mountain?'
'To see a guy at the top,' he said without turning.
I trudged after him and thought: My God! Wakefield oil! This damned desert seemed littered with improbable people. In fact, I was following one of them. Maybe two, counting Paul Billson.
The building at the top of Assekrem was simple enough. Three small rooms built of stone. There were two men there who ushered us inside. They were dark-skinned men with Negroid features. Byrne said casually, 'Don't handle any of the stuff here; it's de Foucauld's stuff — holy relics.'
I looked about with interest as he talked with the men. There was a simple wooden table on which were some books, a couple of old-fashioned steel pens and a dried-out ink-well. In one corner was a wooden cot with an inch-thick mattress which looked about as comfortable as concrete. On a wall was a picture of the Virgin.
Byrne came over
to me. 'Billson went through three days ago, I think. Or it could have been two days because another truck went through the day after, and I'm not sure which was Billson. But that truck came out again yesterday.'
'We didn't see it.'
'Might have gone out the other way — through Akar-Akar.' He rubbed his jaw reflectively and looked at me. I noticed he hadn't bothered to keep up his veil in the presence of these men. He said abruptly, 'I want to show you something frightening — and why de Foucauld built here.'
He turned and went outside and I followed. He walked across the natural rock floor of a sort of patio to a low stone parapet, and then pointed north. 'That's where your boy is.'
I caught my breath. Assekrem was a pimple on the edge of a plateau. Below the parapet were vertiginous cliffs, and spread wide was the most awe-inspiring landscape I had ever seen. Range after range after range of mountains receded into the blue distance, but these were none of your tame mountains of the Scottish Highlands or even the half-tamed Swiss Alps. Some time in the past there had been a fearsome convulsion of the earth here; raw rock had ripped open the earth's belly with fangs of stone — and the fangs were still there. There was no regularity, just a jumble of lava fields and the protruding cores of volcanoes for as far as the eye could see, festering under a brassy sun. It was killer country.
'That's Koudia,' said Byrne. 'The land beyond the end of the world.'
I didn't say anything then, but I wondered about de Foucauld. If he chose to meditate here — did he worship God or the Devil?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Byrne was still talking to the dark-skinned men who had come out to join us. There was much gesticulating and pointing until, at last, Byrne got something settled to his satisfaction. These guys say they saw something burning out there two days ago.'
'Christ!' I said. 'What is there to burn?'
'Don't know.' He fumbled in the leather pouch which depended from a cord around his neck and took out a prismatic compass. He looked at me and said with a grin, 'I'm not against all scientific advance. Mokhtar, down there, thinks I'm a genius the way I find my way around.' He put the compass to his eye to take a sight 'How far away?'
'Don't know that, either. They say it was a column of smoke — black smoke.'
'In the daytime?'
There was astonishment in Byrne's eyes as he looked at me. 'Sure; how the hell else could they see smoke?'
'I was thinking about the Bible,' I said. 'The Israelites in the wilderness, guided by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night'
'I don't think you've got that right,' he said mildly. 'I read it as a pillar of cloud.' He turned back to take another sight 'But I guess we'd better take a look. I make it just about due north of here, on a compass bearing. I don't bothe r none about magnetic variation, not on a short run.'
'What do you call short?'
'Anything up to fifty kilometres. Magnetic deviation is another thing. These goddamn hills are full of iron and you've got to check your compass bearing by the sun all the time.'
He put the compass away, and from another bag he took a couple of small packages which he gave to the two men. There was a ceremonial leave-taking, and he said, 'Salt and tobacco. In these parts you pay for what you get.'
As we set off down the steep path I said, 'There is something that's been puzzling me.'
Byrne grunted. 'Hell of a lot of things puzzle me, too, from time to time. What's your problem?'
'That veil of yours. I know it's Tuareg dress, but sometimes you muffle yourself up to the bloody eyebrows and other times you don't bother. For instance, you didn't bother up there; you let them see your face. I don't understand the rationale.'
Byrne stopped. 'Still on your anthropological kick, huh? Okay, I'll tell you. It's the politeness of the country. If you're in a place and you don't do as everybody does in that place, you could get yourself very dead. Take a Targui and set him in the middle of London. If he didn't know he had to cross the street in a special place, and only when the light is green, he could get killed. Right?'
'I suppose so.'
Byrne touched his head cloth. This thing is a check; it's a substitute for the real thing, which is a tagelmoust, but you don't see many of those around except on high days and holidays. They're very precious. Now, nobody knows why the Tuareg wear the veil. I don't know; the anthropologists don't know; the Tuareg don't know. I wear mine because it's handy for. keeping the dust out of my throat and keeps a high humidity in the sinuses on a dry day. It also cuts down water loss from the body.'
He sat down on a convenient rock and pointed downwards. 'You've seen Mokhtar's face?'
'Yes. He doesn't seem to bother about me seeing it.'
'He wouldn't — he's a noble of the Kel Rela,' said Byrne cryptically. 'Society here is highly class-structured and a ceremonial has grown up around the veil. It's polite to hide your face from your superiors and, to a lesser extent, from your equals. If Mokhtar met the Amenokal you'd see nothing of him except his eyelashes.'
He jerked his thumb upwards. 'Now, those guys up there are Haratin, and the Haratin were here thousands of years ago, long before the Tuareg moved in. But the Tuareg conquered them and made slaves of them, so they're definitely not my superior, so the veil don't matter.'
'But you're not a Tuareg.'
'The male singular is Targui,' said Byrne. 'And I've been a Targui ten years longer than I was an American.' He jabbed his finger at me. 'Now, you'll see lots of Tuareg faces, because you're a no-account European and don't matter. Got it?'
I nodded. 'I feel properly put in my place.'
Then let's get the hell out of here.'
If I had thought Atakor was bad it was hard to make a comparison with Koudia; I suppose the only comparison could be between Purgatory and Hell. I soon came to realize that the high road I had anathematized in Atakor was a super highway when compared to anything in Koudia.
I put it to Byrne and he explained. 'It's simple. People make roads when they want to go places, and who in God's name would want to come here?'
'But why would anyone want to be in Atakor except a mystic like de Foucauld?'
'The Hermitage is a place of pilgrimage. People go there, Moslem and Christian alike. So the going is easy back there.'
After leaving Assekrem and plunging into the wilderness of Koudia I don't suppose we made more than seven miles in the first two hours — walking pace in any reasonable country. Koudia was anything but reasonable; I don't think there was a single horizontal bit of land more than five paces across. If we weren't going up we were going down, and if we weren't doing either we were going around.
The place was a litter of boulders — anything from head size to as big as St Paul's Cathedral, and the springing of the Toyota was suffering. So was I. We bounced around from rock to rock and I rattled around the cab until I was bruised and sore. Byrne, at least, had the wheel to hold on to, but I don't think that made it any better for him because it twisted in his hands as though it was alive. As for Mokhtar, he spent 'more of his time out of the truck than in.
Apart from the boulders there were the mountains themselves, and no one could drive up those vertical cliffs so that was when we went around, Byrne keeping his eyes on his compass so as not to lose direction in all the twisting and turning we had to do. He stopped often to take a reciprocal sighting on Assekrem to make sure we were on the right line.
As I say, Mokhtar spent more time on the ground than in the truck, and it wasn't too hard for him to keep up. He had a sharp eye for signs of passage, and once he stopped us to indicate tyre marks on a patch of sand. He and Byrne squatted down to examine them while I investigated my bruises. When we were about to start again Byrne said, 'Superimposed tracks. One vehicle going in and another, later, coming out.'
I had casually inspected those tracks myself but I couldn't have trusted myself to tell which way the vehicles were going. As a Saharan intelligence officer I was a dead loss.
About seven miles in
two hours, then we stopped for a rest and food. There was no vegetation in Koudia at all but Mokhtar had thoughtfully gathered a bundle of acacia twigs while waiting for us at Assekrem and soon had a fire going to boil water for the inevitable mint tea. I said to Byrne, 'Don't you ever drink coffee?'
'Sure, but this is better for you in the desert. You can have coffee when we get back to Tarn. Expensive, though.'
The sun was past its height and sinking towards the west as we sat in the shade of the Toyota. This was the hottest part of the day and, in Koudia, that meant really hot. The bare rocks were hot enough to fry eggs and the landscape danced in a constant heat shimmer.
I remarked on this to Byrne, and he grinned. 'This is winter — would you like to be here in summer?'
'Christ, no!'
This is why they wouldn't give Billson a permis. And come nightfall the temperature will drop like a rock. You leave water exposed out here and you'll have half an inch of ice on it by three in the morning. If Billson is lost he'll either have burned to death or frozen to death.'
'I like a cheerful man,' I said acidly.
Mokhtar had disappeared about his private business but suddenly he appeared on top of a boulder about two hundred yards away. He gave a shrill whistle which attracted our attention, and waved both his arms. 'He's found something,' said Byrne, scrambling to his feet We went over to Mokhtar and that took us more than ten minutes in that ankle-breaking terrain. When we were fifty yards away Mokhtar shouted something, and Byrne said, 'He's found a truck. Let's see if it's a Land-Rover.'
As we scrambled on top of the boulder, which was as big as a moderate-sized stately home, Mokhtar pointed downwards, behind him. We walked over and stared to where his finger was pointing. There was a vehicle down there behind the boulder, and it was a Land-Rover. Or, at least, it had been — it was totally burnt-out. There was no sign of Billson or anyone else, and I suddenly realized that 1 wouldn't know Billson if I saw him. I was a damn fool for not having a photograph.
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