37

Into the SaHraa

It took them five days—from sunrise to well past sundown each day—to go one hundred miles through the mountains. It was cold during the day at that altitude and freezing at night, and Wake struggled to continue, his stamina drained and his previous confidence in the expedition waning rapidly. The horses were exhausted, the lowland soldiers jumpy in the claustrophobic ravines and passes, and the foreigners worried, including Woodgerd, who had never been this far from the coast and was by this point was completely reliant upon Sohkoor for all decisions.

Only the scholar seemed tranquil, periodically reminding them all that Allah was in control and they were merely executing his will. That mantra was wearing thin on Wake, who was tired of religion and mysticism being the center of everything around them.

At Ouaoumana they came down to the southwest out of the upper elevations of the Atlas, following the valley of the Oued er Rbia, a seasonal stream that was flowing with the spring rains onto an undulating plain that Rork said reverently was as green as Ireland. Pastoral scenes were everywhere they looked, with flocks of sheep and solitary shepherds on the broad fields and little hamlets tucked into clefts of hills. Women could be seen washing clothes in streams. It got warmer and sunnier. The air smelled of flowers and hay and animals, and the horses seemed almost happy as they walked without effort on the nearly level track. The change in scenery from the stunted alpine forests to the cedar and oak groves and wheat fields improved all the men’s outlooks too—until Woodgerd, looking at a hamlet set into the short cliff, thought aloud.

“Damned good defensive positions, not that you squids would notice,” he opined to Wake, then wondered aloud where the local warriors were. Faber offered that perhaps this was a pacific area, with no need of warriors. Rork repressed a retort when Wake eyed him.

Sohkoor shook his head. “No, there are warriors. These are all Berbers, some of the finest warriors of all northern Africa. They knew we were coming and are out there, all around us, watching us. As long as we keep moving through their area they will never approach. Or even be seen by your unaccustomed eyes.”

“Do you see them, Sohkoor?” asked Wake, swiveling in his saddle and examining the hills. “I don’t see anything.”

“Sometimes, Peter, a rock is not a rock. Look there, at the top of that far away hill. That is an old faded goat skin, gray like a rock, but with the flesh of a man under it, watching us.”

Wake scanned the hill, but couldn’t see which rock Sohkoor was talking about—there were hundreds of outcroppings. They all looked like natural rocks to him. “All right, if you say so.”

Sohkoor smiled. “You have a sailor’s legs and stomach for the sea, my friend, necessary things to survive. But here, it takes the eyes of saqr, a falcon, to see what is around you. To see danger. Falcons are very important to us in this land and the Berbers are renowned for being the best of the best falconers. The sultan has several on retainer for hunting at each of his various palaces.”

“You never cease to amaze me, Sohkoor.”

“Oh no, Peter Wake, my Christian friend, it is you who are the amazing one. Your American eyes are wide open to new things, not blind as some from other continents have sadly been.”

Wake took the compliment with a smile and said thank you in Arabic, “Shukran,” which caused Sohkoor to look aloft as he rode ahead and cry, “Shukran bezzef, lhamdoo Llaah, haadha MaseeHeyy hasan!”

Wake turned to Woodgerd. “What was that all about?”

Woodgerd harrumphed. “Well, I’ll be damned. He never said that about me. Sohkoor just talked to God and thanked him for you, a good Christian.”

“You’ve only been here about three months and you already speak the lingo pretty good, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, that’s one of the few things I can do well in life. Got a good ear for picking up sounds. I’m not fluent, mind you, but I can understand the gist of a lot of what they say here, as long as it’s in Arabic. Berber’s pretty much lost on me. Arabic is an absolute necessity in this land. Already saved my life once, when I first arrived. But that tale’s for another time.”

Wake was thinking that over when Woodgerd offered some advice before he too rode forward. “Wake, you can be an open and nice American all you want with these people, just be ready to gut ’em like a fish when the time comes. ’Cause I can assure you—it will.” The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “And when I’m needing help in gutting you damn well better not turn naïve on me.”

As Woodgerd trotted ahead, Faber regarded the colonel’s back. “He is a realist, not an idealist like you, Peter. I know that kind very well, for I am one too. He survives danger, but he does not sleep well at night.”

“Well, I’d fancy doin’ both!” interrupted Rork, attempting to lighten the moment. “But no’s the worry, sir. With a bit o’ the Sainted Isle’s luck, a month from now we’ll be in a tavern tellin’ o’ this little adventure.”

Just then Wake saw a rock near the crest of a nearby hill move its position ten feet uphill.

“Sean, I’m not sure the Sainted Isle’s luck works here.”

***

The green plain gradually sloped down, the men shedding layers of garments as the temperatures went up, until one afternoon a soldier pointed to the southern horizon, a brown line stretching across in front of them. “SaHraa!”

Sohkoor cantered up from the rear of the line. “The western edge of the great desert is ahead,” he announced. “What you call the Sahara. We are getting close. Now the difficulties come. Be very aware of our surroundings and notify me instantly if you see something unusual.”

Sohkoor continued up to Woodgerd at the front and Wake muttered to Rork, “This whole damn place is unusual. I’m pretty tired of this.”

“Aye, me too, sir. Been nigh on three weeks an’ no end in sight. Worse’n bein’ stranded in Liverpool! Now there’s a hell o’ a place for a sailorman. Did ya ever hear me tell o’ the one-armed Liverpoodlian girl I fancied? No? Well, this is no dung, I tell ya. There I was, mindin’ me own self late one evenin’ in a pub . . .”

Rork’s tale went on for an hour, during which Faber and Wake were joined by Woodgerd and Sohkoor in laughing uproariously at the bosun’s calamities and highjinks in one of the roughest seaports in the world. Wake suspected that a least half of the story was fiction, but loved the bosun for telling it. Their minds were kept off that brown stain on the horizon that was growing larger.

They stopped at a pathetic hamlet of wattle huts squatting along the river where it turned from southerly to due west. It was inhabited by scarecrowlike people on the verge of starvation, whose haunting sunken eyes watched their every move as the men made camp. Sohkoor went into one of the huts and spoke with the elder, the al-akbar, then emerged and told the men to rest for the night. They would depart before dawn. From that point on they would be moving south through the lands of the desert Arabs—the Tauregs.

Wake noticed that for the first time Sohkoor seemed more than merely alert, he was nervous, and that the soldiers’ evening prayers were much longer, more plaintive, than before. And he heard in Sohkoor’s prayers the same beseeching tone—begging really. Wailing filled the dusk, and a feeling of dread swept through Wake, chilling him far more than the onset of the evening cold. He looked over at Woodgerd. The colonel, with a lopsided sneer on his face, meticulously cleaned and oiled his revolver. Wake pulled his Navy Colt out and did the same.

***

The occasional stunted bush was the only break from the shale rock and sand for the next two days except when a caravan of overloaded swaying camels heading north from Marrakech came over a low hill. Sohkoor spoke with the leader while the soldiers inspected the cargo unenthusiastically for contraband, but found none.

“They don’t want to find any,” said Woodgerd with a sigh. “Don’t want the locals upset. These soldiers are as tough as you can find on the coast, but out here they’re as scared as any white man.”

Sohkoor watched the caravan head off, glanced grimly at Woodgerd and said, “Talaab ShayTaan. Ams,” at which the colonel grumbled a foul expletive.

Seeing Wake’s expression the colonel explained, “ShayTaan is the Devil and the talaab are his students, his disciples. It’s a fanatical separatist sect that’s far apart from true Islam. Renegade criminals who use the name to scare people and justify their banditry. They were seen by the caravan yesterday.”

Wake glanced south over the featureless desert. “Down that way, where we’re heading?”

Sohkoor came over, followed by Faber. “Yes. Toward Marrakech. They may well be the band that has the hostages.”

Everyone glanced at Faber but no one spoke. A moment later Sohkoor said, “Yalla” and they mounted their horses and silently plodded southwest again. The mountains they had left behind days ago were now a distant smudge, shimmering in the heat.

***

They saw the palm groves first. Scattered strands of palm oasis—Sohkoor explained they were called waaha—were strung in scraggly patches along wadis that had a thin mush of watery mud like a stream in the early spring. Their palms’ thin fronds looked anemic to Wake, who remembered the lush coconut palms of the Caribbean. But compared to the incessant brown of the desert anything remotely green was a welcome sight to him.

Then they saw caravans in the distance drifting northeast toward the coast, two weeks distant. Finally, with Woodgerd’s binoculars, far away on the horizon they saw tan minarets and low walls against the powder-blue sky, with beckoning palms wisping up here and there. Woodgerd muttered an oath, then sighed as he handed the binoculars to Wake.

“Marrakech. Fabled crossroads of the caravans from Timbuktoo, Senegal, and Fés. Where anything—and anyone—is sold.”

Focusing the lens, Wake saw a tall minaret, much larger than the others. When asked, Sohkoor said that the one–hundred-fifty-foot-high minaret of Marrakech’s famous Koutoubia Mosque was built six hundred years earlier as a sister to the Giralda minaret at Sevilla in Spain. The largest in Africa, it was a source of pride for the kingdom of Morocco. Wake looked again, realizing with a shudder that even though he was a thousand miles from the Alcázar, he was looking at a duplicate of the cathedral of Sevilla’s tower, built by the same people at the same time.