She wakes Slimen before dawn, brings him his horse and stands quietly while he wraps his things. When he is mounted she goes to his side.
"I will come to Batna as soon as I return. I must go now to Nefta with Sidi Lachmi–you understand."
He bends to touch her lips, they each touch their hands to their hearts, and he rides off alone.
When he is gone from sight she mounts Souf and rides to the Kadrya monastery. The morning light is dazzling, the air still. She finds Sidi Lachmi preparing to leave with a small retinue of aides. They begin the ride to Nefta.
They stop for food at Behima, a small oasis on the road to the Tunisian frontier. Sidi Lachmi is greeted by an enthusiastic delegation, and they are taken to the house of a man named Si Brahim Ben Larbi where they are served a sumptuous tagine of camel meat and dates. There is much talk of desert politics at the meal, and Isabelle, fascinated by the intrigues, forgets her sorrows for a while.
After the feast the sheik retires with a few men to another room, to smoke and continue discussions which she is not trusted to hear. She waits in the banquet room with the local notables while a curious crowd mills about outside. Then, when the muezzin calls for the afternoon prayer, she kneels with the rest.
Afterward the host introduces her to a merchant who begs her to translate a commercial telegram from Algiers. She is bent over, trying hard to make out the faded words, when she hears a sound and glances up.
Something dark is rushing at her out of a doorway filled with sun. She cannot make it out, then sees a flash of metal, hears something cleave the air.
Instinctively she raises her arm and turns her head aside. Suddenly she is stunned by an enormous blow that falls upon her shoulder and knocks her to the floor.
Writhing there she sees a man with wild eyes slashing a saber down from above his head.
She cries out and rolls, then is cut again. This time it is her elbow, and watching it gush out blood, she begins to murmur frantic prayers.
Loud sounds now. Frantic curses. A struggle.
The man with the saber is being held by one of Sidi Lachmi's bodyguards, while another chops at his arms until he drops the knife.
Screams from the crowd outside. Shrieks. Cries she cannot understand.
A terrible dizziness comes to her. She rolls her head from side to side, sees her assailant break loose and start toward her on the floor. She thrashes frantically with her good arm, searching for a weapon, a stick, anything to defend herself. But the wild man halts and she catches a glimpse of bloodshot eyes.
"I'll get a rifle and finish you off!" he screams, spittle shooting from his mouth. Then he rushes into the mob that throngs against the door.
Sidi Lachmi runs into the room. Chaos now as people push forward through the door, and others come from all corners of the house, attracted by the screams and noise. Isabelle, trying to stand, slips, falls, slides back into a warm thick liquid she knows is blood.
"There is no God but God..."
She gasps, turns imploring eyes upon the sheik who kneels beside her, fondling the instrument that has split her shoulder, sliced her arm.
"The pain," she whimpers. Her head falls back to the bloody floor. She repeats the Kadrya prayer.
"'Who did this? Where is he?" Sidi Lachmi, furious, bellows at his aides.
"Abdullah ben Mohammed ben Lakhdar!"
"Yes. It was Abdullah!"
Others, crowded against the windows, repeat the name.
"Find this man! Bring him here!" Sidi Lachmi turns to the caid of Behima, but the old bearded man shakes his head.
"Abdullah is a sherif," he says. "We cannot touch him."
"I am a great sherif, idiot! He's a Tidjani dog. And so are you!"
The caid is silent. Isabelle, from the floor, sees Sidi Lachmi's face turn threatening.
"If you don't want a religious war, bring him to me fast. I'll denounce you to the French. If Si Mahmoud dies, you are the accomplice!"
Isabelle is fascinated by the struggle of wills, at the same time aware of her enormous pain.
For a moment it looks as though the caid will stare Sidi Lachmi down. But there is sweat on his forehead and his hands tremble. Suddenly he leaves the room. The sheik returns to Isabelle.
"I feel weak," she tells him.
"You will live, my daughter," he whispers in French. "Lie back. Rest. Your wounds are not serious, but the pain will soon be great. Pay no attention to the blood." And then to the others: "Stand back. Let Si Mahmoud breathe. Bring him water. Bring a pillow and a blanket..."
This time she closes her eyes. She feels no fear; rather, a great confidence she will survive. She cannot understand why her body has begun to shake.
She dozes for a few minutes, calm, courageous in the face of mounting pain. Passionate men crowd around, try to make her comfortable and mop the blood from her cheeks. She wakes to a chorus of exclamations as the man who attacked her is brought into the room, tied to an iron bed. He twists against his bonds, speaks nonsense, rolls his eyes.
Someone cries: "You are faking, Abdullah!"
"He is pretending to be a madman," says the caid, "but we know him well. He was never like this before. Yesterday he sent his wife and children back to his father's house. He knew what he was going to do."
"You do not fool us, Abdullah!"
Others agree his exhibition is a fake. Abdullah listens, then lies still. When he speaks again his voice is normal.
"It was God who told me to do this," he raves. "I am not responsible."
Isabelle looks at him. The bed has been set down near her. Their faces are but a meter apart.
"Do I know you?" she asks, searching her memory. And then, wincing with pain: "I can't remember seeing you before."
"You have not," he says, "nor have I seen you." Abdullah meets her gaze.
"Why did you try to kill me?"
"God instructed me."
"No!"
"If they untie me, I will try to kill you again."
"Why? Tell me why? What have I ever done to you?"
"I have nothing against you," he says, struggling against the ropes. "You have never done anything to me. I don't know you at all. But I know I must kill you and that is true."
Helpless, weak, she looks around.
"Si Mahmoud is Moslem. Do you know that?" Sidi Lachmi has crouched between them. Others press forward to listen. Isabelle feels the strangeness of the scene–they talk as though discussing a rational event. Calmly, methodically, they search for a motive, and in the meantime she bleeds to death.
"Yes, I know."
"God would not tell you to kill a Moslem."
Silence.
"Si Mahmoud is a Kadrya. You know that, too."
Abdullah turns his face.
"He is Tidjani!" Sidi Lachmi shakes his head. "And he is lying about everything. This man is a political assassin. He attacked you because I was not in the room. He could not know you would come here, but yesterday, when he moved his family, everyone in Behima knew I would be here today!" Then to Abdullah, lying submissive in his bonds, face clear of all feeling, all sense of remorse: "Tell the truth, my son. You wanted to kill me. Tell us who paid you to do this."
"It was God's will."
Again he turns away, and though they ask him the question many times, he refuses to reply.
For a long while Isabelle stares at his mute profile.
"I pity you, Abdullah," she whispers finally in Arabic. "May God forgive you for your crime."
She faints.
Hours later French officers arrive. A lieutenant takes depositions from witnesses, orders Abdullah taken off in chains. A doctor examines Isabelle, sets her shoulder, cleans the wound on her elbow, comforts her as he warns of greater pain to come.
"You are lucky," he tells her. "The saber hit a beam on the first slash. That slowed it enough to save your life."
She turns to the ceiling, sees a portion of woodwork deeply gouged.
"Yes," says the doctor. "If it weren'
t for that piece of wood you would now be split in two."
She smiles. She knows it was God, not the beam, that deflected the blade. Already she has heard murmurs in the room. People are saying she has barraka–holy luck, a sign she is blessed. Someone is telling the French lieutenant that when Abdullah attacked, a fog surrounded her, a sparkling haze that confounded him, shielded her from sight.
That night she cannot be moved, is too weak, has lost too much blood. In the front room of the house of Si Brahim Ben Larbi, on the same iron bed where Abdullah was tied, she drifts in and out of sleep, awakened often by new stabs of pain.
In the morning she is loaded onto a stretcher, drawn by mule cart to the military hospital at El Oued. Here, in a narrow white room, she is placed on a high bed and left alone. Souf, at her request, is tied outside the window. He stares at her sadly from the shade. She hears nothing for hours but the interminable silence of the desert, and then, late in the afternoon, the steps of soldiers, a perfect mechanical beat, the thud of rifle butts against the earth, a cold command. The guards at the gates are being changed. And then again–silence.
She needs Slimen desperately. If she is to die–and the thought obsesses her–then she must see him now, must be allowed to die in his arms. To die alone in this cold narrow room, attended by medics who look upon her as a freak, to die without love–the thought makes her shiver with fear.
All night she is torn by pain, and, at dawn, hurting even more, she asks herself what this awful wounding means. She wants, more than anything, to find purpose in the event. Impossible for her to accept Abdullah's crime as a gratuitous act. For if there is no reason, if she can be struck suddenly by a man without cause, then existence is pointless, pain and death hold no grandeur, and the value of her life is diminished.
Days pass, boring days, broken only by the sound of the changing guards, the sorrowful stares of Souf, an occasional visit by a nurse. The nights are filled with fever, unexpected pain, fear that she will move too suddenly in her sleep and reopen the stitching that binds her up. Often she thinks of Abdullah, his somber declaration that his hand was guided by God. Why? She is tormented by the question. She broods and ponders, becomes flushed as new, strange motives flow into her brain.
It is possible that he meant to kill Sidi Lachmi, and not finding him, struck at me instead.
But she has learned from Sidi Lachmi that in the Sahara things are never as they seem.
Perhaps the French were behind it and paid this man to strike me down.
They have always suspected her as a spy.
Then, thinking back over the past six months, she remembers Morès. Everyone in the Souf knew she was sent to find his killers. Perhaps they've been tracking her all the while, mysterious, silent men, assassins, waiting for Slimen to go away, then sending Abdullah to finish her off.
The most terrible thing, she thinks, confused by so many possibilities, is that Abdullah will somehow be let off.
If he goes unpunished then I am condemned. It will be a signal to all the Tidjani, to every madman, every fanatic, every discontent in Algeria: "Si Mahmoud is fair game. Kill Si Mahmoud! Succeed or fail, you have nothing to lose!"
She dreams of a life of a thousand attacks, mad cloaked creatures rushing at her out of mosques; smiling strangers with daggers hidden in their sleeves; killers disguised as beggars; headhunters converging on horseback to cut her down. She dreams of storerooms of weapons all destined for her flesh: knives, rusty sabers, gleaming daggers, bayonets. She dreams of fights and close escapes, evasions and dangers, sees herself growing old, her body carved so many times that not a portion remains unscarred. And then, finally, resignation, submission to her fate–a long walk through a dark overgrown oasis, the sky bruised purple and gray, giant black cobras slinking among the palms, each step possibly her last. She walks on, waiting, and then, finally, release: her killers appear in silence from behind the thwarted trunks, surround her, raise arms, plunge knives, stab. Sinking, she looks up, sees the same countenance on them all–Abdullah Ben Mohammed, raving, angry, staring at her with fanatic's eyes.
On her twenty-fourth birthday, regaining her spirit and her strength, she emerges from her fevers with a new view of her predicament, which she considers with gloom. Slimen writes that his commander has refused permission for a visit. Sidi Lachmi sends word that he is still in Tunisia, and will be there for several weeks more. Newspapers from the north–Algiers, Constantine, Bône and Oran–carry extravagant accounts of the incident in Behima, which are so distorted she must devote a day to writing letters to set them straight. Eugène Letord telegraphs his concern, and the captain in charge of the Arab Bureau at El Oued visits her in her hospital room, tells her there will be a trial in Constantine and takes her deposition with a clerk.
She lies back. A sense of mystery envelops her. She feels a bond with Abdullah, some mysterious connection between their fates. Assailant and victim–both their lives have been changed by a few seconds of contact she cannot explain.
Behima, 3:00 P.M., January 29, 1901.
If only she could unravel the lines that intersect.
FRENCH JUSTICE
Toward the middle of June 1901, people begin to gather for the trial of the year. The better hotels in Constantine are filled with officers and their wives, curiosity-seekers from all corners of the colony and journalists from as far as Marseilles. The cheaper rooming houses are host to an assemblage of stern bronze-faced men who flaunt brilliant robes and speak in the strange dialect of the south.
Isabelle and Slimen arrive on the evening of the fifteenth. Since leaving the hospital she's spent the months in Batna being interrogated by officers and trying, with infrequent success, to meet with Slimen. His request to live outside the garrison has been denied, so cohabitation must wait until his enlistment expires. In the meantime she's become convinced that certain officers in the Arab Bureau will use the Behima Affair as a pretext for forcing her out of the south.
As soon as they are off their train, relaxing with absinthes in the Ksouma Café, they become aware, for the first time, of the notoriety now attached to her name. A young French couple seated at another table–good-looking, exuberant girl, and stiff blond boy whom Isabelle takes for a junior officer and his visiting fiancée–are loudly discussing her case.
"But, my dear, she's disgusting." The boy looks like a young De Susbielle. "She lives like a tramp, and then, you see, it turns out she's one of those Russian millionaires."
"Everyone knows the Russians are eccentric."
"And we certainly don't need them here!"
"But I don't understand. Why is everyone against her?" The boy squints, shows small contemptuous eyes.
"She's damaged European prestige. Naturally we want to see this criminal put to death, but one can't help but think she got what she deserved."
"What's she like?"
"No bosoms at all, and at least fifty years old."
"Fascinating!"
"...sleeps with anything in a robe..."
"My dear!"
"...licentious as a strumpet–the most utter trash..."
"How absolutely marvelous!"
A beggar approaches the table. The boy waves him away. But when the beggar comes at him again, muttering in a droning Arabic, the boy flies into a rage.
"Get away you filthy pig!"
He throws some coins on the table, yanks the girl up by her arm.
"Beggars! Vermin! This is what you get when you sit in a native café."
Sidi Lachmi arrives the next day with a retinue of aides. Seeing him step off the train in his magnificent robes, Isabelle's heart is warmed by his crooked face, deep liquid eyes and subtle smile. She rushes to him, offers a firm embrace, but feels he is distant, somehow distracted, as if they were playing chess. There is trouble, then, at the Hotel Metropole–the management is not pleased by this invasion of a sheik's entourage. Sidi Lachmi and his men find rooms at the Ben Chimou, and Isabelle and Slimen, disgusted by the quarrel in the lobby, go off
to dinner alone.
That evening they wander the medina, find a café, settle back to smoke a mixture of chira-enriched kif. Musicians wander the narrow streets of the quarter, playing for the patrons. Isabelle is thrilled by the high-pitched singing in the night, the delirious beat of tambourines.
They retire late but she does not sleep well. The months in Batna have worn her down. She is haunted by the past year–her double life, the strange way she has stirred up so much admiration and hate. She looks at Slimen, asleep beside her, finds him beautiful, lays her fingers upon his dark furry chest and wonders what will become of their lives. So many changes have come so fast. They have fallen from ecstatic heights to penury and despair. It will be eight months before his enlistment expires, before they will be free to live their dreams. But perhaps, she thinks, the trial will clear the air, open up something new and great.
Before dawn a messenger brings her a telegram from Oran: "All my love and hopes with you today. Eugène."
She will get through the trial, she knows, if only because of friends: Slimen, Sidi Lachmi, the men of the Kadrya and the warm encouragement of Letord.
On the morning of the eighteenth she dresses, for the first time in her life, in Arab women's clothes. She senses the trial will be a spectacle and chooses to play an unexpected role. At 6:00 A.M. she presents herself at the door of the Conseil de Guerre, is shown to the witnesses' room and served coffee from a steaming pot. Awhile later she hears noises in the hall, peers out and sees Abdullah, hands chained in front, marching between guards. People in the corridor see her and stare. She ignores them, returns to her seat, waits while the room fills slowly with faces from the past.
All the horrors of Behima come rushing back as the other witnesses appear: Abdullah's father, who glares at her with pain; the caid who claimed Abdullah was a sherif and because of that could not be touched; Brahim ben Larbi whose house has been sullied with her blood; the men who held Abdullah; the one who took the saber from his hand. Finally Sidi Lachmi arrives, guided in by the prosecutor, Captain Martin. He nods to her and sits apart. Then Martin crosses over to shake her hand.
Visions of Isabelle Page 19
