and chattering teeth, he cooked barley on the primus – the most delicious Christmas dinner I had ever enjoyed.
“It’s going to be a dry Christmas,” I realised, as the captain in the Mauritanian army stopped our bus and pulled us over. I meant it literally as well as figuratively, for in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania alcohol is forbidden. We got out and the sifting Sahara sand filtered through our desert headdresses.
“Your cholera injection has lapsed,” said the man, as he looked through my papers. I knew he wanted a bribe, for inoculation against cholera was no longer mandatory. Surreptitiously I pressed a few wads into his hand. Not every person can buy his freedom on Christmas Eve . . .
And then? As life went on, and what used to be adventurous and different became tedious, and loved ones who had been away returned . . . you got the team together. “Tonight it’s going to be only us on Christmas Eve, the way my mother taught me.”
And Nanna roasted a leg of lamb and my son, Marc, built the fire and Cara, my daughter, sang. And one more time Mary explained to Joseph why they had to sleep in the stable tonight and men arrived with scented stuff and knick-knacks and even the farmhands left their sheep somewhere in the Ceres Bo-Karoo and Herod was out to kill. And you sat back contentedly and thought: What a different kind of Christmas!
And then Marc walked through the glass door.
The apricot lady of Nouadhibou
Nouadhibou is like an octopus, with tentacles that pull you in time and again.
Ferdi and I once again found ourselves in the dusty streets of this godforsaken place, swaddled in cloths to keep out the Saharan sand and grit that penetrated everywhere. We looked at each other dejectedly. Where to now? A beer would be nice, but where would we find one in this hellhole on the northern border of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania?
A sand-bitten signboard caught our eye: Hotel Magareb.
We looked at each other again and wordlessly began to push against the Harmattan wind . . .
We opened the door of the hotel, and a cool, dark reception area welcomed us. In the dim light I saw a black man behind the counter. Slavery had been officially abolished in these parts only fifteen years earlier, but black people still remained slaves.
Our French was limited to “Bonjour, monsieur . . . bière?”
The man looked up, surprised, and smiled. He motioned to the left and led the way. At a small bar with a few tables he stepped behind the counter, though the liquor cabinet did not contain any bottles.
The barman introduced himself as Yaccob from the Ivory Coast and miraculously produced two cold Dutch beers. We ripped off our Touareg headdresses and gulped down the beer hastily without asking the price. A second round appeared on the counter and Yaccob pushed a cassette into a dilapidated tape recorder – the most beautiful music from his part of the world. On the corner of the counter lay a tattered magazine with Ché Guevara on the cover. It was French, and when I paged through it, I saw an article with illustrations of different sexual positions from the Kamasutra.
We have been “in country” for a long time, I thought . . . We had been trying to cross the border to Morocco for ten days – a dream of travelling through Africa from south to north using public road transport had landed us here. The Polisario Front wanted Western Sahara, but Morocco would not give in.
The desert was full of landmines and the Mauritanians had closed their border posts, we heard on our arrival. After a thirteen-hour journey from hell through Southern Sahara in a packed Mauritanian four-by-four this news was not received well. But a Boer makes a plan, even if he finds himself to hell ’n gone at the back of beyond.
Enquiries about alternative methods of crossing the border put us in contact with the Nouadhibou underworld. “Yes, at a price we’ll smuggle you across the Mauritanian border and past the military posts and take you through the landmines to the Moroccan gun emplacements and army posts.”
Money changed hands. For days we heard nothing from our would-be guides. Then one night they arrived at the place where we were staying and took us to a windowless hovel somewhere deep in a residential area with houses built of mud. We were certain it was the last we would ever see of our money. For forty-eight hours we lay in the dark, sombre house, waiting for further news. We could not go out, for the moment we stuck our heads through the door a horde of Islamic kids pelted the white infidels with stones.
Late one night we were picked up in an open “garrie”. Our guide and driver was Mohammed and with him was a lieutenant of the Polisario Front’s military wing, disguised as an ordinary Mauritanian. We sat in the back. The desert wind was cold when at last we shook off the dust of Nouadhibou. At border and police posts whispered negotiations took place and we were allowed through. The dream was coming to life! Now only the military posts and the landmines remained. Somewhere in the deep Sahara we covered ourselves with our desert cloths and slept, sand heaping up against us.
When the sun came out, the Land Rover was making a dash for the border at high speed. We were hoping the Mauritanian soldiers would still be asleep. When at last we stopped behind a high dune and Mohammed surveyed our surroundings, I realised we were in no-man’s-land and landmine territory. It was obvious from the exploded wreckage lying all around us. Then we saw them on a dune in the distance: the Moroccan gun emplacements. The vehicle got stuck, and we had to push and throw out sand ladders. Our own war had taught us that in landmine country you stick to old tracks. Where we had to push, we were careful not to step outside the tracks of the vehicle.
At last the military boom. We had made it.
Just to be told: “Gentlemen, except for Mauritanians, no African passport holders are allowed to pass through – this is a war zone.”
Ferdi and I moved to a table with more beer, the magazine forgotten on the counter. Yaccob disappeared and we sat enjoying the music.
Suddenly she appeared in the doorway. With finely chiselled features and neatly dressed in an apricot-coloured outfit. Gracefully she walked to the counter. I saw a glimpse of a white undergarment beneath the silky blouse and I caught a whiff of apricot blossoms. She greeted sedately and sat down. While having a quiet conversation with Yaccob, who had put in an appearance again, she paged distractedly through the magazine. I immediately caught on to the game – the coincidence of Yaccob having left the room only to reappear immediately after her entrance . . . the provocative contents of the magazine . . .
Nature called and I excused myself. On my return, the lady was deep in conversation with my friend Ferdi – the choice had been made. I joined them. She spoke English and I detected breeding and education. She was from Ghana and life had washed her ashore here with her ten-year-old daughter. Her greatest wish was to escape from this barren, godforsaken desert region. Mine too, I thought to myself. In her eyes I recognised longing for the jungles of her home country.
With an entreating gesture she turned to Ferdi. Suddenly he understood and began to speak about a wife and children in the distant south. As he rambled on, the woman in front of me became visibly weary. Her shoulders slumped. The hand she had extended to him went slack as he hammered in one nail after another. In an attempt to soften the blow, I gently promised to look after her if ever she arrived on my doorstep in South Africa.
We got up and paid. She stopped me at the door and thrust a piece of paper into my hand. The blinding desert sun nearly knocked us off our feet and I could scarcely make out the words: I am Helen and thank
