Tuareg

‘It was here, on this very bed that you’re sitting on now and round about this time of day, that your husband slit the throat of the captain and things started to get a little more complicated for him.’

Laila instinctively made as if to get up from the bed, but Sergeant Malik-el-Haideri pressed down firmly on her shoulder, forcing her to stay put.

‘I did not give you permission to move,’ he snapped. ‘And you need to get used to the fact that at Adoras, until they send in another officer, you don’t move unless I say so.’

He crossed the room and sat down on the old rocking chair that the recently deceased Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi used to sit on, reading for hours at a time and he pulled it towards her.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ he said a little hoarsely. ‘The most beautiful Targui I’ve ever seen. How old are you?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not a Targui, I’m an Akli.’

‘An Akli, the daughter of a slave!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well I never. You do like you’d be very good in bed. Are you good in bed?’

He did not get a reply and neither had he expected one. He looked for a cigarette in the breast pocket of his shirt, lit it with the lighter that used to belong to the captain and smoked it slowly, watching the girl through a swirl of smoke, who in turn watched him, her look proud and defiant.

‘Do you know how long it’s been since I saw a girl naked?’ he asked, smiling creepily. ‘No, you wouldn’t know, because even I don’t know the answer to that, it’s been so long.’

He nodded towards an old calendar that was hanging above his bed. ‘That fat bitch, who must be about one hundred years old by now, is all I’ve had to look at all this time and I’ve spent hours looking at her, jerking off and dreaming of the day I would have someone in the flesh again.’ He found a dirty handkerchief and started to dab at the sweat that was running down his neck. ‘But now you’re here, as if my prayers had been answered; more beautiful and younger than I could ever have imagined…’ He paused and finally, without raising the tone of his voice, said softly, but firmly: ‘Undress.’

Laila did not move, as if she had not heard him and only a trace of fear flickered across her huge black eyes as she dug her fingers into the thick, dirty mattress.

Malik-el-Haideri waited for a few seconds, finished his cigarette, put it carefully on the floor under the rocking chair, rocked forward onto it then lifted his face to look at her straight on.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘We can do this in two ways: in a pleasant way or an unpleasant one. I would prefer the first personally because it’s more fun for both of us. You collaborate, we have a nice time and I’ll make your stay here a bit more comfortable. If you resist then I’ll have to do it by force and I won’t bother to look after you or your people.’ He smiled cruelly. ‘Your husband’s two sons are very pretty. Lovely adolescents! Have you seen how some of my men look at them? They’ve also been imprisoned here for years and there are at least eight of them who’d be very happy, were I to give them the go ahead, to get their dirty hands on those kids, while everyone’s asleep.’

‘You dirty pig.’

‘No more than any other man who’s spent as long as I have in this accursed desert.’ He stopped rocking and leant back, looking at the high dunes that enclosed the oasis, through the small window. ‘Things are different when you’re out here because as the years go by you lose hope that you’re ever going to get out of it. As soon as you realise that nobody will ever give a damn about you again or care a jot for you, you start to lose any caring instinct you might have once had and stop giving a damn about anyone else.’ He turned to look at her again. ‘They’re not going to give me anything. What I don’t take, nobody will offer me and I can assure you that as soon as the others see you, they’ll try on the same. Undress!’ he repeated and this time it was an order.

Laila hesitated.

She was still trying to hold off, as every bone in her body cried out against his request, but she had known from the minute she had set eyes on Sergeant Major Malik-el-Haideri, that he was capable of anything, which included letting his men enjoy themselves with her husband’s sons, who he had taught her to love as if they were her own.

Finally and very slowly she got up, crossed her arms, lifted up the edges of her simple dress, pulled it over her head and threw it into a corner.

Her body was firm, young and dark, with small breasts and strong buttocks. Sergeant Malik looked at her, standing naked before him, for some time, as he rocked back and forth, prolonging the moment for as long as possible as he entertained himself with lurid thoughts, before finally getting undressed himself.

The sun was very high and the smell of rotting corpses had become unbearable. The vultures were gathered in the sky like a dark cloud and he was powerless to anything about it.

He saw the first column of dust rising up from the west and approaching fast and as he got into the jeep to try and work out how the machine-gun worked, he saw the grey outline of another slower, heavier vehicle coming from the south. This second one had a light, rapid-firing canon raised on top of a small turret.

He knew that it would be hopeless to try and put up any resistance, when he was up against that type of a weapon. He tried to console himself with the fact that he had managed to cross Tikdabra, the desert of all deserts and had only been caught because he had remained loyal to his guest.

He picked up his rifle and walked to the edge of the hamada, without seeking protection from the rocks or bushes, leaving Abdul-el-Kebir behind him and out of range of the bullets.

He got his gun ready and then waited, trying to work out how far away the jeep would be from him, when it came into range. But just as the soldiers came into view and he lifted his gun to take aim, unsure whether to shoot the driver first or the one manning the machine gun, there was a loud crack as a mortar bomb flew through the air and hit the vehicle. The jeep stopped dead, as if it had struck an invisible wall and simultaneously exploded into tiny pieces.

One mangled corpse flew for almost forty meters, the other disintegrated as if it had never even existed and a few seconds later there was nothing left of the jeep other than a pile of smoking scrap metal.

Gazel Sayah, inmouchar of the Kel-Talgimus people, also known as “the Hunter,” stood rooted to the spot, surprised and perhaps, for the first time in his life, unsure of what do to next.

Finally and very slowly, he turned round to face the second vehicle, the caterpillar tank that was still approaching him steadfastly. It stopped about twenty metres away at the exact point where the hamada and the “lost land” met.

A tall man with a well-groomed moustache, a sandy coloured uniform and stars on his cuff got out quickly and walked resolutely over to the Targui.

‘Abdul-el-Kebir?’ He enquired.

Gazel pointed behind him.

The officer smiled as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

‘In my own name and in the name of my government I would like to welcome you to our country. It will be an honour for me to escort you to the military post and to personally accompany President Kebir to the capital.’

They started to walk slowly over to the vehicle and as they did so Gazel could not help looking over his shoulder at the remains of the jeep that was still smoking in the distance. The new arrival noticed and shook his head.

‘We are a small, poor and passive country, but we don’t like people invading our borders.’

When they reached the body of Abdul-el-Kebir, who was still unconscious, he examined him carefully, checked that he was breathing regularly and then, once he seemed certain that the man was out of danger, lifted his face and turned to look at the infinite plain that opened up before them.

‘I would never have believed that anyone, at least anyone from this world, was capable of crossing that accursed place!’

Gazel smiled.

‘A piece of advice,’ he said. ‘Stay away from Tikdabra.’