Friday, October 18, Tigilit

I remember seeing Isabelle two years earlier, as she entered a desolate hostel in the French garrison town of Batna, dressed as a young European woman. She emerged a few hours later as one of her other selves, Si Mahmoud Saadi, a young Tunisian traveling from village to village, seeking, in the ancient manner, knowledge of the Koran. She was so young — she was always so young — and thin and agile that she passed easily for a boy-man, though the Arabs certainly knew her to be a woman in disguise even if she believed, at least for a time, that her disguise was wholly convincing. Used to dressing as a boy from birth thanks to Trophimowsky’s radical belief in the equality of the sexes and the right of girls and women to go where boys and men go and to do the things that boys and men do (but not in the right of a girl to be acknowledged by her father), she became a wanderer, journeying deeper and deeper into the desert, deeper and deeper into Islam, and into randomness. She moved fitfully, sometimes proceeding with fluent ease, sometimes with stumbling confusion. In all, since he had taught her Arabic, she blended in better than most Europeans.

…she became a wanderer, journeying deeper and deeper into the desert, deeper and deeper into Islam, and into randomness.

As Mahmoud, he wore a turban or a fez, and always a burnous and scarf, a vest, riding trousers, a man’s boots, and thin as he was, he barely had hips or breasts, the layers of garments all but insuring him the shape and lines of a boy.

Like Trophimowsky, he smoked incessantly, furiously, when he could get cigarettes, and he always preferred pants to skirts, and learned to ride horses while his friends were still playing with their dolls. Like the sailors or caravaniers with whom he so often sojourned, and among whom, when he abandoned Arab garb for European, he sometimes called himself Pierre Mouchet, he could curse and drink with abandon and preferred ports and waterfronts or crumbling, remote villes and oases to cafés in Geneva or salons in Paris. He preferred rougher sorts of entertainment.

The Arabs, believers (if sometimes ironically) in discretion, allowed him the pretense of his disguise and treated him as he wished, even going so far as to allow him, after he had been among them for years, to become part of the Qadryas, a sect of Sufi mystics. Despite the smoking of cigarettes and hashish, the drinking of alcohol, and the nocturnal wrestling matches with sailors or traders of all nations in the dark backrooms of seafront bars in Marseille or Algiers or Bône or in the gloomy corners of kef-dens in Constantine, Biskra, or Nefta, he was a true believer, I know. One only had to listen to him for a few hours to discover how much he knew about the Koran and the history of the Qadryas, to sense the depth and intensity of his spiritual yearnings.

In her way, she was fearless, a seeker, a disordered seer, and though we never spoke, I was not surprised, years and years later, to receive her letter.

I saw her first in Batna, and then a few years later in El Oued, the village of a thousand domes, to the south of the Aurès mountains. By then, she was living with Slimène, a ridiculous, penniless, évolué Arab demi-officer in the spahis, the hapless Gallic Ghurkas. In imitation of his French masters, he wore a quaintly-trimmed mustache without the dagger Arab beard, and he had the long, narrow face and independent, star-gazing eyes of a desert chameleon. He was constantly licking his lower lip, as if it were as dry as the sand at noon, and one half-expected the bulbous pink flesh all at once to unfurl and snatch a fly from the air. His father had risen through the ranks to become the Commissioner of Police in Bône, but he could do no better than sergeant, and his commanders, finding him useless, shuffled him from post to post, no one able to find anything he could do well. He was often on half-pay, or no-pay, and except that the French believed Si Mahmoud Saadi to be a Russian spy, or a spy of some sort, possibly connected to the Russians or perhaps the Germans via Switzerland or to the English who knew how, he would have been discharged years before and sent off with a cuff to the back of the head:

— Toh!

She called him her Rouh, her soul.

She loved him — perhaps she loved others as well — even when they were all but starving, living in a squalid mud hut outside the graceful walls of El Oued. At the time, he was on sporadic half-pay, and they subsisted on arrack and kef and were in debt to every money-lender in the village. The sergeant could not or would not find other work, and while Isabelle tried to write, tried to earn a few francs or dinars, their gums began to go spongy, their teeth to float about in the mush, their needful lips to ooze and crust with sores. They could hardly sink lower when the news came of Slimène’s transfer to wretched Batna and the French garrison there. Once more, his commanders were not interested in him — he could barely sit a horse, let alone lead a squad of men — but wanted Mahmoud out of the district and away from the Qadyras (who might or might not be fanatical Muslims); perhaps they wanted to step upon the tentacles squirming from Moscow, or perhaps from Berlin or London, they could not be sure. They could not be sure, in fact, that there were any tentacles squirming their way across the steppes (or alps or downs) and over the sea (or seas) and burning sands. At any rate, he made them uncomfortable and they wanted him gone, perhaps all the way back to France or someplace where he would not be a bother, source of rumor and speculation, or temptation.

Both stinking, hungry, covered with lice and fleas, and somewhat encrusted with the various happy or unhappy emissions of the flesh, they were moved more by the possibility of separation than by the specter of starvation, and they determined, after a night of alcoholized molasses and hashish, all the time entwining and entwining until they could not tell apart their limbs or skins, teeth or tongues, they determined to do what they were understandably reluctant to do — though each had a long history of it — and that was to beg. They decided to call upon the three sheiks, the naïbs of the Qadryas, bound as they were by Sufi law to give aid to those of their order in need.

Slimène, of course, developed the first stirrings of tuberculosis just before they set out to see El Hachemi, the eldest of the three brothers who was preparing to lead a group of Qadrya pilgrims to Nefta. He went along, anyway, to be a hindrance, a burden to Mahmoud.

Surrounded as the sheik was by anxious, excited pilgrims, they could not — I learned later from one of the household’s groomsmen — get him alone, even for a few moments, until late in the evening. When at last they sat down together on some rugs in a vaulted room in his lodge, a crescent moon and a few candles providing the only light, the effervescent, charming Slimène could not speak, but sat slumped, almost unconscious, perchance drooling. Mahmoud, reduced to tears, could only beg with his eyes, intent as he was upon preventing his Rouh from tumbling completely to the floor. The sheik, seeing how impoverished they were, and knowing of their troubles anyway, passed them a handful of francs, enough for food and a little more to put toward their debts or toward a place to live in Batna, saying,

— God will find more.

The Rouh, burning with fever, hunger, and delirium, mad with the futility and powerlessness of his life, all at once laughed hysterically, half-crying, half-screaming, able to make no words, just a jagged, piercing howl.

…they wanted him gone, perhaps all the way back to France or someplace where he would not be a bother, source of rumor and speculation, or temptation.

The sheik, no doubt in disgust and anxious to be away from the failed soldier’s uselessness and stink (he seems to have lost control, in his delirious outcry, of his bowels), left the room at once. As best he could, Mahmoud half-carried his raving, shitting soul to their horses — the sheik’s men had fed them — and led them away, back to the house which was no longer their home.

Two days later, having cleaned up Slimène as well as they could, they went to see El Hussein, El Hachemi’s brother, to discover if they could not, in the same manner, increase their fortune and thereby pay more of their debts, buy food for themselves and their horses, and set aside a little more for Batna. The sheik, observing the walking skeleton that Slimène had become, and remembering fondly the long, all-night discussions he and Mahmoud had had about the Sufi mysteries and about the murder of the marquis de Morès et de Montemaggiore and the sentencing of Dreyfus to Devil’s Island, wept at the sight of his friends — or perhaps his eyes watered from the odor of corruption and death about the man with one eye fixed on the sun, the other tracking an ant marching across the floor. Perhaps he also wept at their imminent departure and, like his older brother, passed them a handful of francs, saying,

— May the peace and mercy and blessings of God be upon you,
but in such a manner that suggested he was willing, if Mahmoud so desired, to cut her soul’s rotten head from its dying body and throw it over the wall to the village’s feral dogs.

Evidently, he declined the offer, but did accept the money.

All this I learned third-hand from the same groomsman of El Hachemi who heard it from a cousin in the employ of El Hussein. Both were men of good reputation (though possibly the groomsman’s cousin was a woman; I did not quite catch the name when he said it), and I did not doubt the account.

Part of the journey toward the last naïb I witnessed myself.

A week after his visit to the second brother’s home, Mahmoud, in the company of El Hachemi and his pilgrims, went to see the third sheik, Si Eliman, who then lived in Nafta, across the Tunisian border. Along the way, they stopped at the house of Si Brahim ben Larbi in the village of Béhima, some twenty kilometers to the north and east of El Oued. While El Hachemi accepted their host’s kind invitation to join him in prayers in his home, Mahmoud joined a half-dozen Arabs lazing in the courtyard that admitted, through an arched gate, onto the town’s central square and market place.

The courtyard was small and elegant, enclosed with high, rust-colored stone and mud walls. The walls were lined with small flower gardens shaded by well-watered palms, and in the center of the yard was a flowing fountain. Around the fountain were trunks and carpets for sitting, and the men — myself included — had arranged them comfortably in the shade of the south wall and two ample fig trees. The fountain bubbled gently, soothingly, and the men discussed the weather and business and, as always, the matter of the French; one of the men, a young trader from Touggourt, complained that he was having a difficult time making the colonials see a particular matter his way, and asked if Mahmoud, so obviously a young scholar, could translate three letters for him that he had received from an ancillary to the Governor-General. Of course, Mahmoud agreed, and took the first letter in hand, pulling his burnous a little tighter around his head and neck to keep out the sand borne over the walls by the wind from the desert.

Even now I see him so clearly: the soft face gone gaunt from want of regular food and the labors of trying to keep two alive, yet smiling, enjoying the conversation and glad to be of help to a fellow traveler.

I watched him as he puzzled through the letter, and as the others returned to their analysis of French ambitions, none of us noted the beggar in tattered, filthy robes who stepped into the courtyard through the arch from the market. The dark shape approached us from the far side of the fountain and drew, from among the trailing rags, an iron saber. Without a word, he raised it high over his head, using both hands, lunged forward and swung down at Mahmoud’s head with all his strength. The sword clipped a wire overhead, turning it from true, and the blade glanced off the side Mahmoud’s skull and cut viciously into his shoulder. Before we could react, before Mahmoud could do more than begin to turn toward his assailant, the blade went up and slashed down again, cutting into bicep and bone. Attempting to stand, Mahmoud took the third strike in the same spot as the second, the hissing blade all but severing, we learned later, his arm. Blood poured from the sleeve of his sliced-open burnous, yet he managed to stagger to the nearest wall and draw a sword from a heraldic display in order to defend himself. The rest of us, meanwhile, had managed to overcome our initial bewilderment, and had knocked the assailant to the ground.

In less than a minute, the attack was over, and Mahmoud, losing blood rapidly, collapsed. Around me, I could hear the others whispering:

— Al-da’wa al-jad_da!

— Hasashiyyin!

Saturday, October 19, Tigilit

No sign, sadly, of the magnificent washerwoman. In fact, save for the many guards posted on the walls, the household seems, at least from my imperfect vantage point, unusually still, even vacant. Lhassen, the sheik of Tigilit, has seemingly organized a counter-strike against the baroud and the men have departed to battle in the desert. In that case, with the house on a war footing, no doubt many of its members have been moved to more secure positions deeper in the village or dispatched, in supporting roles, to the vast, ever-shifting frontline.

Or perhaps it’s some sort of holiday, and everybody is off visiting family and friends.

I have not see El Mahboul since our return to Tigilit, and after saving my life — or at least helping me to save my own — Larbi has not been around for a couple of days. Nevertheless, he has left me with a generous supply of bread, cooked meats with lentils, and water, and though I am not very hungry or thirsty, my health and strength have been returning by degrees. My guts no longer feel like a nest of squirming, inter-knotted snakes, and my temperature has almost returned to normal.

…what I saw drew me up short: it was not completely closed, and clearly was not bolted and locked from the outside. I stared at it for a few moments and then stepped to the lattice, bent over, and watched the guards on the ramparts.

My face and head, I see in my little pocket mirror, continues to show the lumps, bruises, gouges, abrasions, and dents I suffered when I fell, and if my nose has begun to feel a little better — over the last couple of days I have tried, when I could tolerate the pain and the peculiar creaking noises, to reshape and shift it back into something like the right position — my neck and throat continue to ache unbearably, and my head still seems as if it’s on crooked. I would like to lift it off completely, and then reset it. I keep trying to turn it this way and that to see if it will snap back into place by itself, but without much success. When I square up my shoulders and let my head and neck find their most natural and comfortable positions, I find that I am still looking off to the right and have difficulty turning my head in the other direction. If I keep working at it, perhaps in a few days more it will loosen up and straighten.

(Jean: you could be standing slightly behind me and to my left and I would never know you were there unless you spoke!)

After sipping water and gazing out at the still courtyard, I decided to stand and walk about my cell in order to continue the process of rebuilding my strength. When I had completed half a loop, I passed by the door and what I saw drew me up short: it was not completely closed, and clearly was not bolted and locked from the outside. I stared at it for a few moments and then stepped to the lattice, bent over, and watched the guards on the ramparts. They appeared, from my inverted perspective, to be almost upside down. With their backs to the courtyard, they gazed fixedly out over the village or desert and they did not march back and forth or call out in jest to one another. Clearly, they had their orders and were following them with the strictest discipline. The stakes were high, and with Lhassen away, the protection of the town and the sheik’s compound fell to these few blue-cloaked and black-haik’d soldiers.

In a moment, I had made up my mind.

I stuffed my journal, gear, and the food and water skin into my traveling bag and donned my robes.

As the soldiers did not turn periodically to look over the courtyard — the house must indeed be empty or all but empty; there was no one to wave to or watch — but maintained their fierce out-looking vigil, I thought I might be able to make my escape. With my heart thumping like an engine about to break away from its mounts, I eased the door open. The hinges did not creak. When the gap was wide enough for me to fit through, I poked my head out. The way was clear; there were no guards patrolling the yard. In a moment, I had descended the stairs and crossed the few meters of ground to the wall. I put my back against the warm stone.

If one of the guards on the far wall should turn around, I was wholly exposed, a clear and easy target for even the worst of riflemen.

As quietly and slowly as I could, I worked my wall along the wall toward the front gates. After what seemed many minutes, yet was perhaps only one or two, I reached the edge of the immense, recessed arch that led through the thick walls to the main gates. I listened as closely as possible, but could detect no sounds or movements from the archway. Holding my breath, I peeked around the edge and into the darkness beneath the ramparts.

No one.

I slipped into shadows. The main gates were secured with a heavy wooden beam laid across several reinforced braces, and the door within the gates was covered over with several boards and nailed shut. I hid in the shadows of the archway for several moments, collecting myself; I was half-way to my destination.

My plan, albeit hastily conceived, was to make my way to the stables opposite the courtyard from my cell. If possible, I would hide in the stables until darkness and then steal a horse or ass and attempt once more to reach the Dra, this time on my own, traveling at night. I had enough food and water for three days, four or five if I was careful, and there were towns beyond the Dra where I might be able — would be able — to acquire more supplies.

My scheme, I’ll admit, was imperfect: my chances of getting caught by Lhassen’s men were high, while the odds of my reaching the Dra, let alone Smara, were abysmally low, but what choice did I have? Given the disaster of our previous sortie I was not sure the sheiks or El Mahboul and Larbi would be willing to try again; more, if they knew I was determined at all costs to reach my goal, Dhul Fiqar would undoubtedly be ordered to toss me, with considerable prejudice, back into my cell — double-checking the bolt and lock this time — and then be entrusted to put me in restraints and escort me back to Tiznet, far to the north. From there, another escort, no doubt, to Jean in Mogador, and I would no longer be their responsibility or problem. In all likelihood, my adventure would be over, and my dream a failure; we didn’t have enough money to arrange a second expedition.

I had to act.

After gathering my wits (which were attempting to fly off in all directions like ducks sent into a panic by a shot) and taking several deep breaths to calm myself as best I could, I emerged from the shadows and began to make my way once more along the front wall. That they did not see or hear me — I was sure anybody within fifty kilometers could hear the pounding of my heart or the rasping of my panicked breaths — seemed miraculous and, at last, I reached the archway to the stables. Torn between pausing to listen and wanting to be once more in the shadows where the soldiers overhead could not see me, I hesitated for a moment and then darted around the corner. Once more, I encountered no one, and I ran down the long, cool passageway to the immense, covered stables.

There were no animals in the stalls. None of the magnificent Arabians or lesser, trudge horses. No asses. No goats. No chickens in the coops. No stablemen. Neither people nor beasts. I worked my way from stall to stall to make sure, and finally reached the back wall and climbed up on an elevated walkway to reach the narrow, defensive slots that looked out over the yard where they had kept our meharis the night of our departure.

Empty.

I climbed back down and decided to hide. After fashioning a nest in the straw at the back of a remote stall, I stored my gear, covered myself over, and tried to settle in to wait for darkness. If I could not steal a horse or ass from Lhassen, I would nevertheless wait until night to make my escape — hopefully none of the guards would be sent to check on me in my cell; they never were — and then try to steal another mount in the village or somewhere along the way: without transportation, I could not make the journey; the distances were too vast and my supplies too meager for me to make it on foot.

Compared to the warm, mostly level stone of my cell, my refuge in the straw was miserably uncomfortable. Individual stalks kept poking at my ears, nose, mouth, eyes, and neck; I was soon itchy all over. Moreover, the hay was old, and teeming with insects, and they had either not shoveled the stall for months or else kept some sort of massive draft horse in it, for the straw was clumped with immense turds in various states of decomposition. Some were dry and as large and round as serving platters; some were still reasonably fresh and clammy and stunk as if they had been feeding the horse a combination of oats and rotten flesh. There were dozens of the royal-eyed rats scurrying everywhere, and their turds were like a million grains of black rice sprinkled in the hay.

…since I had not heard anyone moving through the stables, I felt reasonably secure and made my way back toward the compound to see if there was any more activity in the yard or house.

After an hour I could not stand it any longer.

Insects had crawled into my robes and were biting me all over. The rats, cousins to the ones who had occupied the cell, either stared at me or ran back and forth across me as a convenient bridge from one place to another.

I stood and shook off the rats and then proceeded to delouse. So much for hiding. Yet since I had not heard anyone moving through the stables, I felt reasonably secure and made my way back toward the compound to see if there was any more activity in the yard or house. When I reached the archway, I peered cautiously out at the guards atop the walls.

After staring at them for a long time, I realized that they did not move. At all. Their robes trembled by times in the breeze, but they did not shift from foot to foot, as all soldiers on prolonged guard duty will do, or move their arms to adjust their robes or rifles or turn their heads in the slightest. After studying them for a time more, I stepped out into the light of the courtyard. None of them turned. I scuffed my feet.

Nothing. Waved my arms. Nothing. Coughed. Still nothing.

Finally, I climbed the stairs in the corner that led up to the ramparts and cautiously approached the nearest guard. He did not turn to face me, even when I tapped him on the shoulder.

He and his companions, I soon discovered, were as mannequins, reinforced straw men. Their faces were covered with the usual desert face-wrap, but their eyes and eyebrows showed clearly. They were incredibly lifelike: the parts of their faces that I could see were expertly molded and covered with some sort of gauzy, yet sturdy fabric. Their eyes and features were as if painted into and not merely on the material. Their bodies were firm-to-the touch beneath their robes, and the attention to detail extended to their arms and hands which were expertly proportionate, also firm, and wrapped in the same fabric. Their fingers were perfectly shaped, individual, and whole as if real. I could feel ears beneath their turbans and hood.

From the ramparts, I made my way to the house, and walked through the front doors into a cool whitewashed elaborately tiled greeting area. To the left and right were long, many-door’d hallways; directly ahead were tall, elegant portals that opened onto an interior courtyard. A magnificent reflecting pool ran the entire length of the inner yard, and beyond it were a running fountain and canopied lounging areas.

There were figures deep in the shade upon luxurious chaises and rugs. More stood nearby, holding trays as if of food and tea. None moved. Not at all. After watching them for many moments, I passed through the tall doorway, strolled along the pool, and joined Lhassen and his entourage beneath the billowing canopy.

Not Lhassen, but an exact strawman replica. Not the young Reguibat, but the young Reguibat in perfect effigy.

In one of the upstairs rooms, I found El Mahboul and his family, but not El Mahboul and his family. In the kitchen, among the numerous staff, I found a peerless reproduction of the astonishing washerwoman. I thought for a moment to grab her around the waist and carry her off with me, but couldn’t quite bring myself to commit such an act of — what? — trespass? theft? abduction? pillage?

The not-earth had no ground, the not-water no fluidity, the not-sky no brightness. Nothing had its shape…

Once more beneath the gently sighing canopy, I took a cup of steaming mint tea from a tray held by one of the statue servants, and sat on an empty chaise next to Lhassen. As he did not object to my presence, I made myself comfortable, gazing at the rippling surface of the reflecting pool. The day was magnificent — warm but not hot, cloudless, a mild breeze, no sounds of strife or commotion, no shouts, brays, or bellows.

As I sipped the crisp, fresh tea, the sun and light air on my face, I was reminded, yet again, that there was once no sun to bring such sweet light, no moon ever-filling its crescent, no earth enveloped by gentle airs, no seas running to remote shores. The not-earth had no ground, the not-water no fluidity, the not-sky no brightness. Nothing had its shape, and everything was in everything’s way.

After I finished my tea, I left the sheik’s compound and explored the village. As at Lhassen’s the people everywhere were not people but rather figures not of straw, and there were no animals anywhere — not even a cat lazing in the sun — no horses to borrow, no asses to liberate, no camels to otherwise employ.

I returned a few hours later to my cell and, closing the door securely behind me, settled in my usual corner beside the latticework. From among my few things, I picked up my journal with one hand and tapped the stone wall beside me with the knuckles of the other.

On the ramparts, the turban of the fellow on whose ear I tugged has come undone, and it flutters in the breeze like a banner, its end occasionally snapping in his face, his eyes.