Caravan

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Show me Fachi," I said to Bakuli. "I have to grow strong again, I need to walk."

  Bakuli went from the room into another to speak to the woman with beaded hair; he returned, nodding. We could go, he said, but her little boy must go with us to show us the way back. I would see why, he said, when I saw Fachi, and helping me to my feet I took my first steps. My weakness nearly overpowered me but I steadied myself, hoping Bakuli wouldn't notice and thinking fresh air would surely revive me, as well as the sun, however fierce.

  The child's name was Elfali and I guessed him to be five or six years old, but he had the face of an old man. We walked from this dark airless room into another one and then squeezed through a narrow passage to a small door built of palm trunks. When the boy opened this it was not to sunshine but to a street so narrow that no sun could possibly find it; this curved into another that twisted like a snake past other windowless houses with doors like barricades. "Is there no sun?" I complained.

  Bakuli spoke to Elfali, and leading us down another passage we arrived at stairs, and as we mounted them I saw sky and sunshine above, and with each step felt the weight of darkness grow lighter. We emerged on a flat rooftop curbed by a shoulder-high wall, but there were holes carved in the wall to look through and a section facing west had eroded and fallen away. We moved to this space and from here we could look down on Fachi's palm trees and gardens, while beyond lay a cream-colored desert under a blazing white sun. I turned to see what lay behind us: set into a level just below the rooftop were long serried lines of huge clay jars. I said, "What on earth! Look, Bakuli."

  He nodded. "This be fortress, Missy. Once many Tuareg raids. Arab, too. Everybody come, everybody take."

  "So they live in darkness but they're safe," I said, and wondered if to be this safe was to always live in darkness, a strange thought for one who had known so little of either. But whether I understood it then or not, the desert had greatly changed me, I had lived in it now for a very long time and in the desert there was no safety. But there was light.

  I gave up counting the jars, they would have food stored in them for a siege, I supposed, and returned to the scene below me. I saw a man walk to a wooden door in the outer wall that circled the village, open the door, disappear for a moment and then reappear. I saw that he was carrying a sack on his back to a caravan that was camped outside, a small one, with no more than a dozen baggage camels and a few riding camels. "Look—a caravan, Bakuli!"

  "Yes, Missy. For Bilma in morning."

  I frowned, thinking it was good to know of that small hidden door. I would have moved closer to the edge of the roof to mark it better but I was suddenly overwhelmed with dizziness and sat down.

  "Missy, mené ne, what is it?"

  "I have no iko" I told him, catching my breath. "All gone." For a moment I wondered if I was going to faint as both sky and Bakuli whirled dizzyingly, but it passed, leaving me light-headed.

  "Thou huta—rest," Bakuli said firmly, and spoke to the boy who led us back down the stairs. My body might be weak but my head was clearing, and I carefully counted the turnings that we took through the serpentine passages, attempting to memorize them for the future in case of necessity: to the left, then right—right again—left, right ... Once back in the room I took a piece of charcoal out of the brazier and wrote down what I remembered of the route on the wall.

  There was more tuwô waiting for me, and a cup of milk. "What is this, Bakuli?" I asked. "This is more food than— Bakuli, speak," I said, seeing his troubled face. "Something is wrong, ko?"

  He nodded and said miserably, "1 speak. While thou sleep, Missy, we be sold."

  "That's ridiculous," I gasped. "That's crazy—it's bushilu. What do you mean, 'sold'?"

  "Thou be bawa now—slave. Missy."

  I stared at him incredulously. He said the man who had taken pity on my illness, or so Bakuli had thought, this man who had carried me to this room and paid the Beri-Beri woman to feed and give medicine, he was no âbôkï—no friend. Not at all.

  "There be baud—bitterness in Bakuli," he said. "This man be devil, a jackal."

  "But he's gone," I faltered. "You said he'd gone, Bakuli, how could he do such evil?"

  "While thou sleep," he repeated, "he sell thee and me to a bako, I think an Arab. He say, 'Gedash?' and then in Hausa, 'nawa'—how much?—and other man speak Hausa and say make offer. Oh Missy, thou be sleeping."

  "Oh how dare he," I cried in a fury.

  Bakuli said miserably, "It happen, Missy. Bad, bad."

  The man had not stuck a dagger in me while I slept, nor suffocated me with his headscarf, he had been cleverer than this, he had sold me? I couldn't believe it but I saw the cunning behind it; he had murdered a man of importance, a shaykh and a rich Senussi, and I had seen his face in the moonlight. Oh how adroitly he had arranged that I never bear witness to his act, and as I saw this I felt a chill as cold as death. My first thought was. We must escape quickly—get away at once, but I was too weak to go anywhere, the climb to the rooftop had left me trembling and drained and I remembered that I had come near to fainting there.

  Bakuli put a finger to his lips, bidding me be silent and just in time, for the tiny woman with beaded hair entered the room, and with her came two men. One was rough-looking, his burnous shabby, his eyes shrewd, and Bakuli, nodding toward him, whispered, "He be man who buy us, Missy." The man who followed him into the room wore a silk turban and gandoura, and there were gold rings on his fingers.

  "Salaam aleikum, " said the rich one politely, and to the other in Hausa, "This is the yârinyâ—the girl?"

  "Naam, Sidi."

  He gestured to me to stand up, which I did, shakily and against my will, and in anger. Indifferent to my anger he forced open my mouth and examined my teeth and then pinched each of my breasts. I could scarcely claim undue modesty at this, having lived among bare-breasted Hausa women, but I was furious at such impertinence. He unwrapped my headscarf to see my hair, which had grown to a length of an inch or two, having not been shaved recently. Looking into my face and studying it he nodded. "Naam, " he said. "Gedash?"

  I was incredulous; there was to be a second transaction and we were to be sold again?

  "The boy too?" asked the other man.

  He shrugged. "He's young, he has good teeth, why not? The girl is thin as a plucked chicken but fattened up she'll bring a good price in Murzuk." A faint smile stirred his lips. "I may even send her to Constantinople if she fattens up enough, the Sultan should find her pleasing as a gift for his harem." To me he said, "Dogum yeriniz nedir?"

  This had the sound of Turkish heard at the Consulate in Tripoli; he thought me Turkish, perhaps.

  When I was silent he said in Arabic, "Inta mineyu— where do you come from?"

  Meeting only a blank face he said in a Hausa worse than my own, "Kai, wânë ne?"

  When I did not respond he shrugged, spoke to his companion, bid the woman feed me well, and they left.

  I sat down on the straw mat, glancing only once at Bakuli's sad face. Fragile as I was at that moment, I knew what had to be done, and quickly. I said, "Help me to the roof again, Bakuli. This time just you and me—I marked the turnings as you saw me do. See if the woman's gone."

  "Why, Missy? Thou need huta—rest!"

  "Just see," I told him.

  He returned, nodding. "No peoples."

  "Help me," I begged, and leaning heavily on him I whispered to myself: Left, right, right again, then left, right ... He unbarred the door, giving me a furtive anxious glance and slowly, clumsily we made our way down the narrow winding passage, withdrawing into deeper shadows when we heard footsteps.

  We found the stairs and I nearly wept with relief that we'd not lost the way. We reached the rooftop and I pointed to the break in the wall through which we'd looked at the desert. "Bakuli," I said, "you must go."

  He looked at me in horror. "Missy, no.r

  "You can jump—it's not that far," I told him, "and you saw the door in the wall below. If it
was unlocked half an hour ago it will still be unlocked, and there's the caravan beyond it, ready to leave for Bilma."

  "Missy, not without you!" he cried.

  "You must," I said. "I'm still too weak, too sick, but you can go. Look," I told him, drawing Mr. Jappy from the pocket of my barracan. "Take Muraiche's message to Bilma, the man you deliver it to may help you, the message is inside, as you know. They say the Zambezi is south—go there even if you have to beg or sell dung to find your river. Take this, too." I brought out the Hand of Fatima and reached for his hand, placing it firmly in his palm. "Do this for me, Bakuli. Go before it's too late."

  "But you be slave, Missy," he sobbed, the tears running down his cheeks.

  I said, "I have the red poison seeds, Bakuli."

  He recoiled in shock. "Missy, NOT

  'To give to the man who bought me," I lied. "There will be time for me to escape later and—you heard him, Bakuli, I will be fed. Do this for me—for me, your sister, your mukalamba."

  "Oh Missy," he whispered.

  "Before it's too late, GO" I pleaded. "You remember the name of the man in Bilma?"

  He nodded miserably. "Abu Abd el Wahat. Missy, Bakuli not even know thy true name."

  "Caressa Bowman," I told him.

  "Rcssa Boman," he repeated.

  "And yours?"

  "Bakuli Mumbulaka."

  "My ndumé" I said, smiling, but afraid now that I might faint before I saw him safe. "Jump now—jump, Bakuli."

  He jumped. Leaning over the parapet 1 saw him stumble to his feet and run to the wooden door. Mercifully it opened for him, I watched him pass through it and the door close behind him. It was a terrible moment for me; his escape was the only gift I could give to him but the loss wrenched at my heart.

  They found me there moments later, only half-conscious, and carried me back to the dark little room.

  Book 3

  15

  The stranger who came to my door some weeks ago here in London has written a letter formally requesting an interview. He identifies himself as an anthropologist, a very grand one, with many initials after his name to prove his erudition. He writes that he has been in London giving a series of lectures but must leave in a few days and he hopes that I am no longer "indisposed" so that he may call on me. He explains that until a year ago—and it has taken him this long to trace me, he adds—he spent eighteen months in a village in northeastern Zambia studying the customs, language and religion of the Bemba. The chief of the village, the mfumu, told him many marvelous stories, he writes, but strangest of all was a story, very strange indeed, about a white girl, Ressa Boman, with whom he traveled many years ago in the Sahara and how they stayed one night on a hill of rocks near Abalessa, a hill surrounded by tombs and full of ghosts, and here his companion found a carved stone figure with green glass in it. The anthropologist describes how the name Abalessa tugged at his memory until eventually he recalled it being the site of Queen Tin Hinan's tomb, discovered in 1925. Writing to friends he secured news clippings and photos of the excavation and these he showed to the Bemba chief, who said yes, this was the place, and "full of spirits."

  So Bakuli still lives and is the chief of his village, but "Oh, Bakuli," I tell him silently, "thou mukwakwa, thou tale-bearer, thou has spoken too much." I will remain indisposed to this man, for I've no interest in becoming a footnote in a book, but I'm grateful to him for his news of Bakuli, it's wonderful indeed to know that he reached home safely at last and that his God gave him many more chapters to live. I see him dispensing wisdom to his people and I wonder if he still smiles that radiant white smile and if he has many sons. He must be a happy man, for to find one's place in the world is no small thing, and it is because of him—because Bakuli and I were both of us slaves once, bought and sold like so much merchandise—that I contribute all that I can now to the Anti-Slavery Society here in London (they will never know why, of course) and receive reports that wring the heart, for there are still slaves living nightmare lives in Asia, the Middle East and in Africa .., babies sold at birth, children sold into prostitution or as apprentices to labor night and day, literally chained to their work.

  There but for the Grace of God ...

  In my desk I have the same newspaper clippings this anthropologist writes to me about, yellow with age now, of course, but I bring them out to look at again. My eyes go at once to a photo inset of the great rock mound they excavated near the oasis of Abalessa, and how astonishing it is to see that hill again, to remember how the drums beat so ominously in the distance that even now, decades later, I am not immune to the panic they brought. Throughout the report of the tomb's discovery—and it occupied much of the front page of the Times—there is a sense of astonishment that what had once been a Tuareg legend and myth was proving to be true.

  Here too are photographs of the jewels found in the tomb of Queen Tin Hinan, but enlarged and given prominence is a photograph of the object that most excited the archaeologists, and startled me as well: a carved stone figure no different from my muffin man, except that it has womanly protuberances where mine suggested a male figure and there is no green stone in the hole carved out near its center.

  They have named it the Venus Libya, and the reporter describes it as "almost unique in archaeological research. The mystery," he writes, "is how this statuette came to be in a tomb that is ancient, but many thousand years more recent than the Venus Libya, which is guessed to be Stone Age. Perhaps," he speculates, "it was a sacred object handed down for countless generations.... It is probably as old a piece of art as exists in the world; it resembles the Venus of Lausanne in southern France, which is attributed to Paleolithic times; it is also much like the Venus of Willendorf in Germany, which is dated not far from Neanderthal. ... It may date as far back as 100,000 years before Christ."

  But there is also a fourth Venus, I tell him silently; it has lain here on my desk for many years: Deborah played with it as a child and so did Sara after she was born and when she came to visit.

  The Times report concludes: "Queen Tin Hinan was obviously buried with much honor, for her skeleton, when found, had been placed on a leather couch and with her was interred a wealth of jewelry: massive gold bracelets, necklaces of bronze, ivory, garnet and glass, carnelian and turquoise, and the remains of her crumbling garments are fringed with leather painted red and yellow...."

  Yes, I think, nodding, / saw that fringe and this is true, it was red and yellow.

  Jared was more interested in the muffin man, thinking the limestone figure so primitive it might be prehistoric, and in this he was right. As for the green stone he thought it of little value, a tourmaline or green garnet—and in this he was wrong. He was sure that it didn't belong to the figure, and knocking it sharply against a rock—I gasped at such recklessness—he proved it when the green stone dropped out and fell to the earth. "See?" he said. "Someone placed it there—playfully, I imagine—because it fitted perfectly and was lovely."

  If only we'd known it was an emerald! Instead I remember saying that even tourmalines must have barter value, and could buy us food—we were very hungry that day— but he shook his head, saying no.

  "Why?"

  "Because we could be even hungrier next week," he said with a flash of that smile that breaks my heart to remember still. "And because for so long as you have something, my sweet, you walk tall. When you've nothing at all it shows, and the jackals gather."

  "And what do you keep?" I asked.

  "You," he said.

  "You'd never sell or barter me, then?" I teased.

  He gave me a long deep glance. "Don't flirt, Caressa, you know very well that no matter what happens—if ever the desert separates us—I'll find you somehow, wherever you are."

  "Nothing will separate us."

  But Jared was a man who saw things; he'd lived among Africans long enough to know their spirit worlds and to respect what Bakuli called be wa ngulu, the soothsayers. He was familiar with a magic I couldn't know; he'd acquired a sixth sen
se.

  Sometimes I wonder how many people have been truly loved, which is not given many to know because what is called love is so often barter and trade. I would guess that Grams loved me in her way but I'm not sure about Mum, who thought it was love that pushed me out into a world she really wanted for herself and that I was ill-prepared for. What I do know is that it was Bakuli who taught me the patience and the generosity that love truly is, and from him I learned it was possible for me to love, too, and for this I have been forever beholden to him.

  All this I understood as never before when I opened my eyes again in that airless room in Fachi and knew that Bakuli was gone. If the human spirit is like candle flame then mine had too often dimmed, but in Bakuli it burned bright and constant, sustained by faith in a God I could neither understand nor feel, being still affronted by the tricks fate had played on me. Now life was playing new tricks. What I felt at this moment was black despair—but no, this was wrong because the color black has vitality, the night is black and has stars and a moon, and mysterious and important events can happen in darkness. Despair, I decided, was gray: endless, bottomless, without night or day, time, sun or stars. Bakuli was gone and I had been sold, but I couldn't grasp what it meant to be sold. A person bought food and clothes—but human beings? I was myself, a body, face, two arms, two legs, a mind and a heart—all mine and surely not to be purchased like a loaf of bread, yet this had happened; I did not like the sound of Constantinople or harems or of Murzuk either.

  As I recovered my strength some of the fatalism of the desert I'd lived in for so long began to assert itself. Among the Tuareg it was said that unless a man was killed he lived forever; there was Marcus Aurelius, too, who had written "whatever may happen to you, it was prepared for you from all eternity," and of course there was Mum's counsel on rolling with the punches. Mektoub, the Arabs say—it is written—and Inch'Allah, if God wills it, and so, knowing I had to regain strength quickly for whatever lay ahead I applied myself diligently to this, and in the five days before leaving Fachi I climbed the stairs often to the roof to sit in the sun, glad to be removed from the dank and oppressive labyrinths below me and to breathe desert air.