Impossible Journey

by Michael Asher

  Two hours later, we were still waiting for the superitendant to finish his breakfast. Then he called us into his office and said, “You will go from here to Ati by truck. Then you will sell your camels and go to the Sudan by lorry.”

  My head reeled. I shut my eyes for a second. Marinetta was looking at him with her mouth open. I gripped the superitenant’s desk and tried to master my emotions. ‘We will not go by truck,’ I told him, as calmly as I could. ‘We have been given permission to go by camel. We will go only by camel.’

  The superitendant looked at me in genuine surprise. Then he stood up and rushed out of the office. We sat there waiting, too confused and miserable even to speak. I cannot recall how long we waited, only that it was the most tense and agonising wait of the entire journey.

  Then the superitendant came bustling back. We waited with bated breath as he sat down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There has been a mistake. You will proceed to Ati by truck. From there, you will proceed to the Sudanese border by camel.’ Half an hour later, he pressed a brown envelope into my hand. Marinetta and I looked at each other. Then we both clenched our fists in a spontaneous victory sign. That letter was our passport to the Sudan.

  We watered at Umm Hajar in a slick of pea-green liquied left over from the rains. Naked children were splashing about in the murky water, and others were trawling for fish with square nets. An Arab called Yasin escoreted us through the village. He was an educated man from the Baggara and was helping to run an OXFAM nomad project in Umm Hajar, which was a watering centre for the cattle Arabs.

  Yasin said that there were three grades among the Baggara: those who had both cattle and camels, those who had cattle and cultivation, and those who had just cattle. All the cattle were the shorthorn kudu type, which, he told us, were more resistant to drought than the longhorn cows we had seen in Niger. But many nomads were changing to camels as the Sahara marched inexorably closer each year. ‘The rains haven’t been bad this year,’ Yasin said, ‘but half of the millet crop has been lost to plagues of mice and locusts.’ The locust plague had been the worst for decades, and the grasshoppers had blackened the streets with their presence.

  A Belgian aid worker called Pierre told us that he’d seen a locust swarm so thick that he’d had to use his windscreen wipers. They breed near Lake Chad,’ he said. ‘The eggs can lie fertile in the sand for three years. The drought killed the locusts’ natural enemies, like rats and birds. When the rains came, the hoppers emerged from the eggs with plenty of food and no predators. Then you’ve got a plague!’

  Pierre was half Flemish and looked like a nineteenth-century French cavalry officer with his short hair and neat moustache. Ironically, he had come to Africa to avoid military service. ‘It’s all above-board,’ he said. ‘If you find yourself a job and keep it for twenty-two months, you’re no longer liable for the military.’ After he had finished his spell in Chad, he intended to settle down with his Cameroonian wife in Yaounde. His wife was a master brewer who worked for Brasseries Cameroon.

  We left Umm Hajar in blistering heat and made camp before sunset among some fields of yellow stubble. In the grass, we noticed two large burrows where the sand had been cast out and piled up by some powerful animals. ‘What are those?’ Marinetta asked.

  ‘Ah, probably ant-eaters,’ I replied.

  Just after we had set up our camp, in the last grey shadows before total night, we were frozen by the terrifying screeching and chuckling of three or four hyenas. The animals sounded very near, their cackling and crowing almost like the gloating of some very evil human beings. Then the sound faded and there was silence. The camels, a few yards away, had stopped grazing and were Iooking around nervously. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ Marinetta exclaimed. ‘We’ve camped right on top of a hyena’s nest!’

  She began telling me about a film she had once seen. There had been an exclusive gambling club in which rich clients played roulette for huge stakes. Those who were unable to pay their debts disappeared mysteriously. There was a certain debtor who tried to escape after welshing on a debt. You heard the hollow sound of his footsteps on the deserted street at night. Then a big, black limousine pulled up and a gang of thugs seized him. The next thing you saw was a dark cellar and the yellow, glowing eyes of starving hyenas. The man was dropped, screaming, through a trapdoor, and the hyenas pounced on him. The last thing you heard was his cries of agony as the animals crunched his bones.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told Marinetta. ‘Hyenas don’t attack people. They’re scavengers.’

  I didn’t feel as confident as I tried to sound. The belief that hyenas were purely scavengers was a myth. Since they were afraid of the light and hunted’ only at night, few people ever saw them making a kill until infra-red photography was developed. Then a woman zoologist had made a chilling film showing hyenas attacking and killing wildebeest in Tanzania. It was a film that I had never forgotten. Then there was the instance of the British biologist who had been travelling by Land Rover in the Serengeti Park at night. The vehicle had run out of petrol, and the man had decided to walk back to his camp. He knew that there would be hyenas about, but they were said never to attack humans. As he walked, a pack of hyenas began following him. The biologist had begun to feel uneasy and had walked faster. The hyenas had come closer and closer, and finally one of them had sprung at him. Terrified, the man had made a superhuman leap into a tree, and the hyena had grasped only the seat of his shorts. The beasts had pawed around the tree until sunrise, then disappeared. When the length of his leap was measured the following day, it was a new Olympic high-jump record.

  At exactly one in the morning, we were woken up by a bloodcurdling screech. A dark shape lurked in a thorn tree not five yards away. Behind us, in the middle distance, my torch caught the glow of golden-yellow eyes. I grasped the machete, and Marinetta grabbed her stick. Our camels had stopped chewing; one of them, Pepper, had crawled away from the camp in search of more grazing. We shouted and banged on plates and pots. The dark shadow disappeared from the thorn tree. While Marinetta fixed the torch on the pairs of gleaming eyes, I built up a fire quickly. The eyes withdrew into the darkness. When the fire was blazing, I went out to fetch Pepper nearer to the camp. The eyes did not reappear, but we kept the fire going until dawn.

  All the next day, we were troubled by thoughts of hyenas. ‘I haven’t come all this way to be eaten by a hyena,’ Marinetta said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘The old explorers thought nothing of hyenas.’

  ‘The old explorers had armies of servants and guns that would have knocked down an elephant,’ she said. ‘Here, it’s just you and me and a machete.’

  ‘And our emergency flares,’ I answered.

  ‘Bah!’ she said.

  At noon, we halted in the shade of some thorn scrub as usual. A few minutes after we had stopped, a Hilux pick-up came along the track, loaded with soldiers in combat gear. As soon as they saw us, the driver pulled up and the soldiers leapt out. They ran towards us with their rifles. Their faces were grim and unfriendly, their combats soiled and ragged. I hoped that they were government men and not rebels. Marinetta and I took up a defensive position in front of our camels. The men circled us threateningly.

  I felt nervous but also annoyed that they should find it necessary to threaten people who were obviously helpless. ‘Do you want to see our passports or what?’ I asked, a shade too abruptly.

  A youth with the face of a street-corner delinquent examined our papers. ‘What is your nationality?’ he inquired.

  ‘British and Italian.’

  ‘The British and the Italians are our friends,’ he said and handed the documents back.

  ‘With friends like you, who needs enemies?’ I said, but not until the truck had safely pulled away.

  There were no sounds of crying hyenas when we made camp at sunset. ‘Thank God!’ Marinetta commented. After we had eaten, I went to collect the camels and returned to find her clutching the machete in one hand and her torch in the other.
/>   ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘There!’ she gasped. There’s something in that bush, moving!’

  ‘Rubbish!’ I said, and just then there was an ominous grunting sound—ugh! ugh! ugh! —and a heavy creature shifted out of the bush ten yards away. At once, there was a shout, and the curtain of darkness was sliced open by a piercing beam of light. A dog yapped and belted past our camp into the trees. The powerful beam came straight towards us, blinding us. ‘I took the machete from Marinetta. Who is it?’ I yelled.

  Behind the flashlight were two Arab boys. One held the torch and a club and the other a huge spear. ‘Did you see the hyena?’ one of them asked. ‘We were looking for the hyena.’ The boy told me that they had come from a Baggara camp nearby and that every night, they were plagued by hyenas, which took lambs, kids, or even calves. ‘Don’t you hear the barking?’ he asked. ‘That’s the herdsmen and their dogs. They never sleep in this place. It’s well known for hyenas, big ones. They are the worst hyenas in Wadai.’

  ‘Do they attack humans?’

  ‘Yes. It has happened several times. They aren’t afraid of anything but light and fire. But you shouldn’t stay out in the open like this. Stay in a camp or a village. The hyenas attack camels, too.’

  That night, for the second time, the fire was burning until morning.

  The next day, we crossed a sandy plain almost devoid of trees. Humpbacks of rock appeared on the horizon. Quite suddenly, military vehicles began to pass us. First, there were two jeeps with high radio antennas, then 3-ton lorries, then heavy trucks. The drivers were Frenchmen, bare-chested and insect-eyed behind their black sand goggles. Some of them stared at us in surprise. Others drove past without looking. There were military cranes and excavators and jeeps equipped with mounted machine guns for desert fighting. I guessed that it was a French column bound for the Abeche region, where they had recently installed an early-warning device. The column was passing us for ninety minutes.

  Their effluence was scattered all over the plain. There were book matches, empty tins, and scores of plastic mineral-water bottles. I stopped to examine them. The mineral water was ‘Made in France’. How incredible, I thought, that they should bring their own water with them all that way. Just then, Marinetta pounced on something and giggled in glee. It was an economy-size roll of military toilet paper, still sealed in its wrapping. ‘That will last me till the Nile!’ she said.

  The hills came nearer in the afternoon. They were gnarled carbuncles of granite, pink, and grey with smears of white, rising in terraces over a plain of stunted grass, red sand, and a few trees. We made camp early, tired from stoking the fire all night. Later, I brought the camels in close. The fire was dying, and I was about to light my pipe when Marinetta hissed, ‘The camels have stopped chewing!’ She was right. They were still and were staring upwind at something that neither of us could see. ‘What’s that sound?’ Marinetta gasped, catching her breath. There was a distinct rhythmic wail coming towards us, a mournful sound.

  ‘It sounds like a goat being slaughtered,’ I said.

  ‘Goat, my foot!’ yelled Marinetta, getting up. That’s a hyena, and it’s coming straight here!’

  I flashed my torch into the night and immediately caught the glow of almond-shaped eyes, smouldering gold, a stone’s throw beyond the camels. Ugh! uuugh! uugh! came the chilling call out of the shadows. ‘It’s coming!’ Marinetta whispered. I seized the machete. She followed the animal with the beam of her torch as it passed around us warily, close enough for us to see its bulk and to hear its heavy footfalls. It had a bloated belly and an enormous black head. ‘My God!’ Marinetta wheezed. It was the biggest hyena either of us had seen.

  The hyena turned to face us downwind, sniffing the air appraisingly. I looked straight into the hellish eyes, and for a second I was certain it would attack. I was looking down a tunnel into the remote caveman past, grasped by the same instinctive fear felt by my distant ancestors: dark night, open bush, wild animal. ‘Get the flares!’ I yelled.

  Marinetta rummaged feverishly in the saddle bag. They’re not here!’ she wailed.

  ‘They damn well are!’ I swore, holding up my machete behind our barricade of luggage. At last, she handed me the flare pencil and I fitted a cartridge. I pulled the trigger and released it. There was a sickening dry click. Nothing happened.

  ‘He’s coming, Maik!’ Marinetta wailed again. I pulled the trigger a second time. Again there was a click. ‘Quick!’ Marinetta was urging me. The third time there was a gratifying bang! and the night was drawn back by a brilliant corona of crimson fire. The dark bulk of the hyena dissolved into the shadows.

  For minutes, we surveyed the battle area for any signs of movement.

  Then Marinetta hugged me tightly. I could feel her body trembling. ‘What if it comes back?’ she asked. ‘There might be more of them!’

  ‘We’ll build’ a fence,’ I said, ‘a defensive position. You get that fire going!’

  For two hours, I sallied forth into the darkness with the machete and hacked at any bushes within range. Marinetta built up the fire and raked the surroundings with her torch. I cut wood until my hands were blistered and bleeding, hurrying back to the camp with thick branches for the fire and long, thorny boughs, which we twisted into a stockade around our tiny position. There were few trees, and each time I had to venture farther afield. Once, I saw a tempting piece of wood lying in front of a gaping hole in the sand. I backed away, expecting a bloated creature to appear at any moment. At last, we had enough wood to keep the fire going. We sat down, dog-tired, inside our barrier.

  Marinetta asked, ‘You’re not going to sleep, are you?’

  ‘No, no!’ I answered. ‘We’ll take turns to stay awake. Two-hour stags. Sentry duty, just like the army. My stag first.’

  Ten minutes later, I was slumped across the luggage, probably snoring. Marinetta woke me. ‘So much for your sentry duty!’ she said. ‘You’d have been shot by now.’

  We passed through Abeche in the late afternoon and received another stamp from the commissar there. We led the caravan out of the town into pitch-darkness. Jeeps passed us with blaring headlights, forcing the camels off the track. Twice, we had to stop to adjust loads. Suddenly, a sharp voice shouted, ‘Alt!’, and there was the awful metallic ring of a rifle being cocked.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Marinetta choked. ‘Now they’re going to shoot us!’

  I shouted out that we were tourists, and a minute later, we almost barged into two young Chadian soldiers, nervously pointing their rifles. They advised us to remain near the guard post that night. There were bandits on the road, they said, and hyenas. At the guard post, there was nothing for the camels to eat, but at least there were no hyenas.

  On 27th February, we arrived at the rainwater pool at Adré, where some tribesmen were watering their camels. The tribesmen had familiar faces, and I was certain I had seen one of them before. Then I remembered: I had seen him often in the market of Gineina when I was a teacher there years ago. He obviously didn’t recognise me. He examined our strange saddlery and the nose rings of our camels. ‘These camels are very tired,’ he observed. I said nothing. Agadez would have meant nothing to him, I knew. That was how far these camels had come, I reminded myself;’ we had left Agadez almost two and a half months before. Tombouctou and Chinguetti were lost in the mists of time somewhere beyond.

  We crossed a wadi full of low arak trees. On the far side, we met a bent, old woman collecting firewood. She had a friendly face. ‘Is this Chad or Sudan?’ I asked her.

  ‘Eh! This is Sudan!’ She beamed at us.

  When she had gone, we dropped the headropes and embraced, squeezing each other’s emaciated bodies. ‘Thank God!’ Marinetta whispered.

  ‘We made it!’ I gasped, kissing her. Three thousand miles of desert lay behind us. We were in the Sudan. The nightmare was over.

  Bandit Country

  When I first went to live in Gineina, I was given a colonial-style house at the border post. It was
one of a long rectangle of buildings, mostly concerned with immigration, that stood 2 miles outside the town. On the Chadian side, the rectangle was closed by a thick acacia hedge, in the centre of which was a gate and a sentry box. The gate had a barrier, which was always left open. On the far side was a track of loose sand that led across the plain towards Chad. Over the two years I lived there, making my first clumsy experiments with camels and writing my first book, that gateway took on an almost mystical significance. For me it was no less than the gateway to the Sahara. One day, I dreamed, I should emerge through that gate from the Chadian side, having crossed the entire distance from the Atlantic by camel.

  The gateway was symbolic in other ways, too. It was the place where Francophone North Africa ended and Anglophone Africa began. Gone were the lands of CFA francs, préfets, and gendarmes. Here, there were pounds, district commissioners, and good old-fashioned constabulary. I had always found it irritating that the French, in their arrogance, had considered that the Sahara ended at their borders, whereas the British, in their arrogance, had called the parts of it within their sphere by a different name. It was all the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Nile, and the gateway to Gineina now reflected no more than colonial history.

  Still it was with some excitement that we approached the border post with our small retinue of exhausted camels on the morning of 28th February, coming up the sandy track along which my imagination had wandered so many years ago. The first shock was that the thorny hedge had gone, leaving only the stumps of trees. The gate was still there, its masonry cracked and crumbled, and the old barrier was still stiffly erect, rusted in the upright position. But the track no longer passed through it. Instead, a new track curved away to the left, to some gleaming new warehouses for aid supplies that had been built there. The ‘Gateway to the Sahara’ was left stranded like a monument in the middle of land scorched and withered by drought. I led the caravan off the new track and passed through the gate anyway.