by Ray Cluley
“Everything okay?” Johnny asked.
Bachir squinted at the ruins below, finally standing up in the back of The Toyota. To Johnny and Pete it was simply the truck, but to these Tuareg soldiers it was always The Toyota. Even with their accent you could hear the capital letters.
“That way, right?” Johnny said, pointing away from the ruins as if Bachir had forgotten where they were going.
Bachir made the tongue clucking sound the Tuareg had for agreement but also shook his head. He said something to the others and they jumped down from the truck with him. Then he turned his attention back to Johnny and made a sweeping gesture in the direction he had pointed. “Mines,” he explained. “The Toyota.” He mimed a blast with his hands and made an explosion sound. One of the other men laughed.
“Are you shittin’ me?”
Pete offered Johnny his canteen. Johnny shook his head but Pete continued to offer – thrust the water at him, in fact. As if to say stop talking, man. Johnny took the canteen and drank.
“We walk the sand,” said Bachir. “Mines maybe too deep. Maybe okay for walking. The road…” He shook his head.
Road was a bit of a euphemism, it was all just sand, but it was the ‘maybe’ Johnny didn’t like. Maybe okay for walking.
“Stand where I stand,” Bachir said.
“Right,” Johnny said. He wiped his mouth. “Stand where you stand. Okay. But if you turn into a bright flash of light and a loud noise, I’m reserving the right to change my mind.”
Pete laughed, but Bachir was already walking. The others followed, Kalashnikovs held at their waists. They didn’t take the precaution of stepping into each of the translator’s footprints.
“It is a school,” Bachir called back to Johnny and Pete, pointing to what was left of the building. “We read.” He offered it like an explanation, but Johnny didn’t understand the relevance. Maybe they’d been educated here and Bachir was proud of that.
“What do you think?” Pete said.
Johnny shrugged. He pulled at the sweaty collar of his t-shirt and wiped at his neck. He plucked the damp material away from his armpits. “I see shade at least. What do you think?”
Even with his sunglasses on, Pete was shielding his eyes to look into the ruined school. “They’re soldiers, right?”
Johnny nodded.
“We’ll be okay.”
Johnny rubbed his eyes, gritty with sand and exhaustion, and sighed. “So long as they take us where we need to go.”
As they neared the ruined school, Johnny saw where bullet holes spotted the mud-brick walls. Spent rifle cartridges glittered and winked where the sand hadn’t buried them, sending out golden dazzles of light like tiny ghosts of whatever fire-fight had put them there. Scorch marks darkened the ground.
Nodding at the blackened sand, Johnny asked, “Mines?”
The nearest soldier shook his head. Bachir said, “Mortar shells.”
“I thought this was a school?”
“Yes.”
The Tuareg translator indicated a fallen blackboard. A language that was all curves and curlicues to Johnny was scrawled across its surface. He couldn’t tell if it was a lesson or graffiti. A corner section had been blasted away. “Beautiful,” Johnny said.
One of the Tuareg said something that brought the others around him. Even Johnny and Pete, knowing nothing of their language, could tell it was some matter of urgency: the voice had been sharp, with a tone you’d use to reprimand or curse.
“Let’s see,” said Pete.
Johnny nodded.
The Tuareg were gathered in a line at one of the walls. They looked like men in a firing squad waiting to turn and fire. Johnny did not share the thought with Pete. One of them, a man whose name Johnny had forgotten, was addressing the others with hurried words. He was of mixed descent, Johnny remembered that much; Tuareg and Arab. Moussa, that was his name. He wore his turban coiled on top of his head instead of wrapped around his face, which meant that despite the sunglasses Johnny could see some of the man’s expression. He was anxious. Not quite scared, but serious and certainly concerned. The others were making the tongue clucking sounds of agreement.
“What’s going on?” Pete asked them.
Bachir turned and held up his hand. He said something to his companions and they agreed, nodding and clucking. The Tuareg Arab rubbed at his wiry beard and mouth with one hand as if feeling the same thirst Johnny felt, though he couldn’t be, then nodded to Bachir and said something more.
“We leave now,” Bachir said. “Back to The Toyota. We take you back.”
“We’re not going back,” Pete said. “We haven’t been to the site yet.”
“We will take you there, but we leave now. Back to The Toyota. We will find a different way for you.”
Pete looked at Johnny. The soldiers were already making their way back to the truck. “What the hell?”
But Johnny was looking at the wall. It had been graffitied with a language he couldn’t read but the illustrations were clear enough. In one of the drawings a man copulated with a camel, his face contorted in cartoonish glee while the camel was wide-eyed with surprise, but this was not the picture that had distressed the men. The picture responsible for that was of a man in robes. The cloth of his turban was drawn falling away to reveal the teeth of a skull beneath. Protruding from the sleeves of his robes were arms little more than bones, fleshless hands open and empty. It was a simple drawing of a dead man. It reminded Johnny of the symbol for poison, only wearing clothes.
“We’ll find a different way,” Johnny agreed.
Louisa waits as Johnny sits suddenly quiet. She’s about to ask if he’s okay when he speaks again.
“Hard to imagine anyone finding their way around out there, isn’t it?” he says.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Such an unforgiving landscape.” Johnny moves his glass from one hand to the other, sliding it back and forth across the bar. “The Tuareg have managed it for generations, though. Their caravan routes follow trails only they know are there.” Here he leaves his glass still and puts his hands flat on either side. “To them, borders are merely lines drawn on maps they don’t need. Algeria, Niger, Libya, Mali: it’s all just part of the same land.”
“It’s not though, is it,” Louisa says. “Borders are real. People die because of these lines on maps. It’s the difference between life and death to some people.”
Johnny laughs. It sounds like a dry throat trying to cough itself clear of sand. “Not for the tenere medden,” he says. “There’s no such difference to them.” He chuckles some more. “Life and death.”
It’s the second time he’s used the phrase tenere medden and Louisa waits for it to be explained but nothing comes. Johnny simply contemplates his drink some more, fidgeting it between his hands. Finally he pushes it away and declares, “Algeria is a beautiful part of Africa, don’t you think?”
Louisa hasn’t seen any of it yet, apart from the city, and she’s surprised by the sudden shift in conversation, but she nods. “What I’ve seen.”
“The rise and fall of shifting sands. It reminds you of the sea the Sahara used to be, the way it moves sometimes. The shapes it makes.” He smiles. “The Tuareg, they find their way across it by using the stars, like sailors used to. Their map is spread across the sky.”
“Poetic.”
He seems reluctant, now, to tell his story. That, or he’s drawing it out, making the most of having an audience.
“Yeah,” he says. “Poetic.”
Johnny admired the stars as he and Pete settled down for the evening. There were so many. Even in the violet light of dusk the sky seemed filled with them, and the murmuring of the Tuareg kneeling towards Mecca in prayer added a poignant beauty Johnny would never be able to describe, even if he were to try. A poet might manage it, he thought, but even they would probably struggle.
Their group was camped among monoliths of rock rising column-like from the sand. It reminded him of Tassili-n-Ajjer where
beautifully elaborate rock formations rose from the sand, an area often used for films (he always imagined wild westerns set on alien planets). It gave them a little shelter. Heaps of the desert had swept itself into wonderful curves and slopes among the formations, collecting around each column of rock like the thick roots of ancient trees.
“We lost a lot of time today,” Pete said to Johnny. They were sitting on straw mats beside the truck, distant enough that their conversation would not disturb the Tuareg’s prayers. Distant enough for privacy.
Johnny watched the men bowing on their knees, muttering to their god. A gust of desert wind, cool now, scattered sand against the side of the truck with a sound like thrown rice. “Yeah, that’s what we want now,” he said. “A sandstorm.”
What Johnny wanted was a drink, a proper drink, but there would only be sweet tea. Maybe coffee. How the Tuareg could drink anything hot, even in the evening, amazed him. There’d be cigarettes as well but he’d have one of those. By day it was like sucking fire into your throat, exhaling to give the desert more heat, but by night, with the purpling sky and the sparkle of a thousand stars, they tasted fine. Not as fine as a shot of something – that was a heat he’d welcome any time – but it would do.
“You okay, Johnny? Holding up?”
“Jesus, is it written on me somewhere?”
Pete smiled. “Little bit.” He pointed at Johnny’s hat. “Bud.”
Johnny smiled and checked his watch.
“Thirty two days,” Pete said for him.
“And seventeen hours something.”
“But who’s counting, right?”
Johnny raised the middle finger of one hand but made a ‘bring it on’ gesture with the other. Pete humoured him with, “Come on, you don’t know the minutes?”
“No,” Johnny lied, “I don’t know the minutes.”
Pete had been there for the last drink. He’d been there for the last drink a few times: he’d know Johnny had lied.
“I’m doing all right,” Johnny said. Another lie.
Pete sighed heavily and fanned his face. “Well I could do with a beer,” he said. “Sorry man.”
“No you’re not.”
They grinned at each other in the dark. One of the Tuareg would get a fire started after prayers but for now they sat in a deep dark blue as cool as water and he was glad.
“So, what do you think that picture was?” Pete asked. “The one in the school.”
Johnny shook his head. “No idea.”
“A warning?”
“Maybe,” Johnny thought. “Terrorists?”
“Then why not give the guy a gun or something? The skull wasn’t even grinning or anything, it was just a line of straight teeth.”
“Some Tuareg are involved with al-Qaeda,” Johnny reminded him. “You’re the one told me that.”
“Yeah,” Pete admitted. “Some.”
“And what about those Brits executed in Niger? The charity group. That wasn’t so long ago, and not a million miles from here.”
“No, but then neither are the drug runners.”
The region had more than a few of those, taking advantage of the chaos created by a government in turmoil, a nation in poverty.
“So it’s a drop point?”
“Could be.”
“Think our guys are involved?”
“I wouldn’t want to ask.” Pete’s smile wavered a little. “The Tuareg do have a pretty bad reputation.” He glanced over at where they prayed. “It’s an old reputation, though. Betrayal and brutality, all of that. Attacking merchants they’d just traded with. Robbing caravans they’d previously protected. That kind of thing. Now they ally themselves with whoever pays. Or whoever offers them some form of rebellion.”
Johnny looked over at the soldiers again.
“They’ve got a lot to rebel against,” Pete explained. “Their old ways are dying and they have to do what they can to survive.” He brushed sand from his lap and thighs. “They have a proverb that goes ‘Kiss the hand you cannot sever’. It’s something they live by, even now.”
The Tuareg rolled up their prayer mats before unwinding their turbans in the cover of full dark. They seemed to unwind themselves with the action, Johnny thought, as if their tension was bound up in the cloth. The Tuareg had once been called ‘the blue men’ because of their turbans and Johnny had noticed earlier that even with their dark skin the coloured dye stained their cheeks and brows. Bachir in particular seemed to carry indigo in his pores.
Bachir saw Johnny watching and beckoned. “Come,” he said. “We have food now.”
“Yum,” Johnny said to Pete, “more dry sheep’s cheese and salty macaroni.”
“Hey, this is our hand kissing part,” Pete replied, getting up. He helped Johnny to his feet.
Johnny gave a casual salute in thanks, then looked at his hand as if wondering how it would feel to lose it.
Louisa’s phone vibrates in her pocket. Just once. “Excuse me,” she says to Johnny.
The message is from Dean: If you want to eat, we don’t have long. She turns around to see him trying to persuade someone that yes, the opposite seat is taken.
She quickly taps back another message: Sorry, what do you want to eat? I’ll order.
“My friend,” Louisa explains to Johnny. “We’re thinking of eating here, if you’d like to join us?”
Johnny smiles at the offer but politely declines, just as another message from Dean comes in. It has his food order and two questions: Who’s the boyfriend? Do you need rescuing?
Her knight in sweaty armour.
Louisa types her reply (Not yet, with a smiley face) and says, “Okay, I’m done. Sorry.” She pockets her phone. “You were telling me about the tenere medden.”
Johnny grunts. He seems offended by the phrase or by her bold use of it. Perhaps by her attempt to control the story.
“Who are they, Johnny?”
“Men of the desert,” he says.
“Like the Tuareg?”
“No,” he says. “Not like them. Not like anyone.”
Moussa saw it first. He yelled, bringing his rifle up. Johnny cried out and Pete blurted, “Hey!” raising his hands, but Moussa was aiming past them, pointing his rifle into the dark. He continued yelling as the others scrambled to their feet, Johnny and Pete as well. The Tuareg were now yelling together. Clipped phrases. Anxious. Another raised his weapon.
The monolithic twists of stone surrounding their camp looked like the gnarly fingers of some sand-buried giant in the dusky light but by the flickering of their fire they could see a lone man moving between them. Tuareg, maybe. Robed, certainly. Staggering. His turban, partially unravelled, fluttered in the same gusts of wind that caught his robes. He walked slowly, adjusting his path to each of their yells, heading towards them with clumsy speed.
“What’s wrong?” Johnny asked. “What is it?”
Bachir was saying something to Moussa, pushing down on the barrel of his weapon and gesturing for the others to lower theirs as well. Someone rushed to the truck.
“He’s not leaving us, is he?” Johnny said.
“Don’t even joke.”
Moussa lowered his gun, shouting at the approaching stranger, but in each pause for breath he raised it again. Bachir, too, shouted.
The stranger made no attempt to answer. He simply adjusted his course, directed by their voices.
“His eyes,” said Johnny. “Jesus, Pete, look at his eyes.”
It was a stupid thing to say because the man had no eyes. He was close enough now that the fire showed dark sockets where his eyes used to be. What Johnny had supposed were sunglasses were in fact dark holes in the man’s face. Shadows. And he was grinning. Some strange nomadic joke perhaps, Johnny thought, before realising that the man’s lips, too, were gone. He was showing them rows of teeth because he had no choice; there was nothing to cover them with.
The Tuareg who’d gone to the truck was rushing back, waddling with one of the plastic butts of water in his arms.
“What’s he doing?” Johnny asked. Pete had no answer. Johnny called the same question to Bachir. He asked anyone who would answer. None of them did.
The Tuareg with the water put the container down, leaning away from the approaching stranger as if within arm’s reach of a leper, though he was still twenty feet away. He struggled with the container’s cap – his leaning, his panic – and Johnny wanted to help but Pete held him back.
“He’s got it.”
The Tuareg fumbled the lid free and left it dangling on its plastic tie, retreating quickly because the grinning blind man was very close now. His robes hung in tattered rags. His turban trailed at such a length that occasionally he was treading on it as he approached, the wind blowing it underfoot.
The Tuareg watched in a line. With most of them ready to shoot, they looked like a firing squad again.
The stranger approached despite the guns. He couldn’t see them, of course. Nor could he see the water. The moment he passed the container the others began pointing, yelling louder. He couldn’t see them pointing, either, and the yelling only seemed to draw him closer. Faster.
Somebody fired.
“Christ!”
The shot was too low: a puff of sand erupted at the man’s naked feet. A warning? The man ignored it, though. He kept coming, his path taking him through the camp. He trod upon sleeping mats, stumbled over a backpack, and kicked a tin cup which spilled hot tea over his foot and onto the sand. That he noticed. He made no sound of pain, only a dry sigh as he fell to his knees. He wiped his foot with one withered hand and brought the fingers to his mouth to suck them. With his other hand he patted around for the cup, finding the wet sand where tea had spilled and scooping a handful of that to his mouth. He bent down to the ground and licked at the desert floor, sweeping the area with both arms. When he found the cup he brought it to his mouth so quickly Johnny heard it hit teeth.
