were from the border.
Gazel looked at him in surprise:
‘Border?’ he repeated. ‘What border? The desert does not have borders… at least not as far as I know.’
‘There must be a border,’ the other insisted. ‘It has got to be near here somewhere.’
‘The French do not need borders,’ he pointed out. ‘They rule the Sahara from one end of it to the other.’
The stranger lifted himself up slowly on to his elbow and looked at him in surprise.
‘The French?’ he repeated. ‘The French left years ago. We are now independent,’ he added. ‘The desert is made up of free and independent states. Did you not know that?’
Gazel meditated for a few minutes. Someone at some time had told him of a war that was being fought in the north, one where the Arabs were trying to shake off the yoke of the Rumis, but he had not taken much notice since it was a war that had been going on for as long as his forefathers could remember.
Independence to him meant wandering alone and undisturbed throughout his territory and nobody had bothered to come and tell him that he now belonged to a new country.
He shook his head.
‘No. I didn’t know that,’ he admitted, confused. ‘Nor did I know that there was a border. Who could possibly create a border in the desert? Who could stop the wind from blowing sand over it back and forth? Who could stop men from crossing it?’
‘Soldiers.’
He looked at him in surprise.
‘Soldiers? Not even all the soldiers in the world would be capable of protecting a border in the desert and besides, the soldiers are scared of it.’ He smiled gently underneath the veil that hid his face and which he always kept on in the company of strangers.
‘Only the Imohag are not afraid of the desert. Soldiers are like spilled water here, the sand just swallows them up.’
The young boy tried to say something but the Targui reminded him that he was tired and told him to lie back down on the cushions.
‘Don’t push yourself too hard,’ he begged. ‘You are weak. Tomorrow we will speak and maybe your friend will also feel better.’ He turned round to look at the old man, and for the first time realised that he was not as old as he had initially thought, despite his thin, white hair and deeply lined face. ‘Who is he?’ he asked.
The boy hesitated for a moment, then closed his eyes and muttered quietly:
‘A scholar. He is researching our most distant ancestors. We were on our way to Dajbadel when our lorry broke down.’
‘Dajbadel is very far away…’ Gazel remarked, but the boy had already fallen back into a deep sleep. ‘Very, very far south. I’ve never been that far.’
He left the tent quietly and once out in the fresh air he felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach; like a warning that he had never before experienced. There was something about those two, seemingly harmless men that unsettled him. They were not armed nor did they look at all frightening in appearance, but a whiff of fear hung in the air around them and it was this fear that he too felt.
‘He is researching our ancestors…’ the young boy had said. But the other man’s face, with its deep lines of suffering, told a different story and they were certainly not the scars caused from just one week of wandering hungry and thirsty through the desert.
He looked into the descending darkness in search of an answer. His Targui spirit and a thousand ancient desert traditions told him that he had done the right thing by putting a roof over the head of the two travellers, because the notion of hospitality was the first of all the Imohag’s unwritten rules. His instinct, however, as a man that was used to being guided by a sixth sense that had saved him from death on many an occasion, told him that he was running a huge risk and that the new arrivals would jeopardise the peace that had cost him so much to achieve.
Laila appeared at his side and his eyes warmed as he felt her sweet presence and beheld the startling beauty of this dark-skinned, adolescent girl-woman. He had made her his wife, against the wishes of the old men, who believed it was wrong for an inmouchar of such noble heritage to make a union with someone from the lowly Akli slave caste.
She sat down beside him and turned to face him with her huge black eyes that were always full of light and hidden reflections and gently said:
‘These men bother you don’t they?’
‘Not them…’ he replied thoughtfully.
‘But something that hangs around, them like a shadow or a smell.’
‘They’ve come from far away. Anything that comes from far away unsettles you, because my grandmother predicted that you would not die in the desert.’ She put out her hand timidly, until it touched his. ‘My grandmother is often wrong,’ she added.
‘When I was born they predicted me a gloomy future and instead I married a noble, almost a prince.’
He smiled gently.
‘I remember when you were born. It can’t be more than fifteen years ago… Your future had not even begun…’
He was sorry that he had made her feel sad, because he loved her and even though an Imohag was never supposed to express too much affection to a woman, she was the mother of the last of his sons, so he opened up his hand and took hers in it.
‘Maybe you are right and the old Khaltoum is wrong,’ he mused. ‘No one will force me to abandon the desert or die somewhere far away from it.’
They remained in contemplation of the silent night for some time and he felt at peace once again.
It was true that the black lady Khaltoum had predicted the death of her father due to an illness, one year before he contracted it and that she had also predicted the great drought that had dried up the wells and left the desert devoid of shrubs, killing hundreds of animals that had, from time immemorial been accustomed to drought and thirst. It was also true that the slave woman often ranted for the sake of ranting and her visions often seemed more the result of senile dementia, than true visions of the future.
‘What is there on the other side of the desert?’ Laila asked, breaking their silence. ‘I’ve never been further than the Huaila Mountains.’
‘People,’ came his reply. ‘A lot of people.’ Gazel meditated, remembering his experience in El-Akab, the oasis in the north, and he shook his head gloomily. ‘They like to settle in crowded and small spaces, in narrow, stinking houses. They shout and remonstrate loudly to each other for no reason, and rob and cheat on each other like animals that only know how to live as a herd.’
‘Why…?’
He wanted to be able to explain to Laila why, because her admiration for him filled him with pride, but he was unable to give her an answer. He was an Imohag who had been born and bred in the solitude of the wide, open spaces, so, as hard as he might try, he simply could not understand the herd-like instincts that these men and woman from the other tribes possessed.
Gazel embraced visitors whole heartedly
