Jerusalem Commands

TWENTY-TWO

IN THE DESERT God came to me again and I no longer feared Him. We had suffered together, He said. Now He brought me comfort. I had not realised how thoroughly I had learned the habit of prayer, of giving myself up to my creator, of keeping faith in His plans for me. I was convinced that I was lost, that we must die in those endless dunes, but we trudged up one after another, losing our footing in the soft sand. God straightened my shoulders and cleared my eyes. He gave me back the dignity which that other abomination, that quintessence of falsehood, had stolen from me.

The back window of my flat looks out upon a great pollarded elm, protected by city isolation from the Dutch disease which destroyed his rural relatives. He stands like a triumphant giant, his head lowered, the bark of his oddly muscular arms gleaming in the misty sunshine, knotted fists of gnarled wood lifted like a champion’s while another thick branch juts from below like a petrified prick. This benign monster stood there, much as he does now, a hundred years ago, before the speculators thought to evict the gypsies and pig-farmers, to get rid of the tanneries and race-track, to clear the way for respectable middle-class London expanding into confident new comforts and sentimentality, begging a suburban tree or two be spared for old times’ sake.

Now the enduring elm is for me God’s most immediate symbol and evidence of my own belief in our ultimate redemption. In the desert, as one dies, it is easy to understand how one might worship the Sun, coming to believe it the manifestation of God, beginning that profound progress towards the conception of God as a unity. Nowadays it is not difficult to sympathise with the ancient Slavs, those Franks and Goths who worshipped God in the form of a tree. What is better? To worship God in the form of a Bank? Or even to worship Him in the form of a Temple? I speak, I suppose, as a kind of devil’s advocate. But I have never hidden my pantheistic sympathies.

In the city, sometimes, there is only the church or the public building in which to find peace to pray, but the Bedouin can create a tranquil sanctuary virtually from nothing. I have warned Christendom for many years of how Islam carries the barbarous blood of Carthage into the very veins of Europe and America. Yet I am no hater of the desert Arab. In his desert, the Bedouin is a prince, a model of gentlemanly dignity and manly humility. However, in the deadly element of some oil-founded sheikhdom, the traditions of absolute certainty by which he has survived (prospering only through blind luck) will make him everyone’s enemy. The noble Bedouin becomes a paranoid aristocrat. The great traditions of the Senussi, which brought law to the Libyan Desert, bring only bloodshed and chaos to Cairo. Jews and Arabs both are never entirely comfortable with political power. It is what makes them such dangerous enemies. Today it is fashionable to sneer at the philosophy of apartheid, as if it were a simple matter of black and white. For years the Arab practised it successfully. He had no problems until he himself began to break his own rules. The young today use those words like blunted weapons. They have no idea of the convictions lying behind them.

Until I arrived here I had not known that the British urban peasant is as stuffed with superstition, misinformation, prejudice, raw bigotry, self-deluding self-importance and low cunning as any inhabitant of a Port Said souk; he can also be quite as good-hearted, sociable, ferocious in word and kindly in deed as his Arab counterpart.

In Aristotelian terms, as I told the older Cornelius boy, about the only thing distinguishing the Briton from the Berber is that the Berber washes more frequently. But he is unteachable. Last week he admitted he had never heard of G. H. Teed, who knew more about the British Empire than Kipling! The boy despises his own heritage. Such shame, I told him, is useless. Britain could be a great imperial power again. He laughed at me. He guffawed in the face of his country’s finest traditions. Only in a truly decadent country would such irreverence go unchallenged. He says he does not hate me, only what I represent. Myself I represent I say, and God I represent. Is that what you hate? It is a mystery what he finds amusing. Mrs Cornelius has hinted more than once that his father was insane. It seems extraordinary that I was only forty when he was born. Two lifetimes.

Mrs Cornelius insists I was just as obnoxious at their age. I somehow cannot see that.

Saa’atak muta qadima, as they say in Marrakech. She is very defensive of those children and yet they are a tremendous disappointment to her. They showed a few seconds from Ace Among Aces on the television a few weeks ago. There we were in the same scene, Max Peters, Gloria Cornish and Lon Chaney - a moment of exquisite camaraderie, of poignant memory. I telephoned Granada to ask if they would let me watch the whole film. They said it came from America. I got the name, something like When Hollywood Was King, but I never heard.

There are many people in Hollywood now who suppress the truth about silent pictures. If they did not the public would soon begin to question their talent, their creativity! We are allowed only to laugh at the past or to forget it. This is how they control us. They put joke music in place of dramatic music. I know their strategies and obfuscations. They respect no one. The silent film was a rare art form. The talkers encouraged lazy directors, second-rate actors, just as big budgets were to ruin television. There is something to be said for the discipline of limitation. It was disgusting what they did to Griffith and the rest of us.

The reason I never continued my movie career was because I left Hollywood a silent star but returned to a world where American English had become the only language permitted an actor. And the Zionists say they care nothing for Imperialism. They took control of everything. Their ambitions are reflected in their films. Look at Hollywood’s devotion to Kipling. Kipling’s books are loved second to the Bible by Texans. The Jew is the arch-chameleon. The Arabs will tell you the same. One only has to look at the BBC. It is controlled by Jews.

I was talking only the other day to Desmond Reid, the scriptwriter, in Henneky’s. He works there. He agrees with me. ‘Lefty faggot yids, mate!’ His words, not mine. He writes the thrillers. I think he was with Dick Barton, Special Agent. He says I help him with his ideas. Reid was the first professional writer to suggest I order my memoirs for publication. Although he did all the Sexton Blakes in the 50s he never knew G.H. Teed personally. Apparently Teed died in hospital suddenly of a tropical disease before I arrived in England. Teed, I told Reid, was my soul’s ease during some of my most trying years. Teed knew a thing or two about world politics. Unlike ‘King Kong’ Wallace, who wrote against Jews and Anarchists but was probably a secret Zionist and a Mason, George Hamilton Teed possessed the world traveller’s sophisticated understanding of English values and of the Englishman’s responsibility always to exemplify those values.

Reid says it is no longer permitted to voice such honest, common-sense opinions nowadays.

His own television work suffers, he says, from that kind of censorship. The belief that we have a free press is a nonsense, he says. In many aspects Nazi Germany had a freer press than contemporary Britain.

Our picture was in the Film Fun. They said it was Richard Dix and Elizabeth Allen, but that was the remake. Dix never could grow a moustache. It is typical - they care nothing for their history. I have the clipping. I showed it to them. It’s the fine photography and crashes that provide the thrills - Variety. Peters and Cornish are never less than adequate. ‘Oh, let the past bury the past!’ Sammy, that fat fryshop Romeo, hangs around Mrs Cornelius and claims to be an old friend from Whitechapel. (This is what the British call ‘tolerance’ and the rest of us call moral torpor. Through such somnambulism are empires thrown away.) Why does she let him come round? The man has no mind, no soul. Morality must change, I am the first to agree, to suit our conditions. The morality of the Bedouin Arab is as valid to him in his deserts and watering-holes as the morality of the Japanese samurai or the Russian Cossack in his native sphere. Morality, I say, is specific. Virtue is general. To speak for a New Morality is not to speak for Chaos but to recognise Change. I am over seventy and even I understand that. Perhaps experience has taught us what these spoon-fed hippies can never learn.

This is certainly not the British Empire I was brought up to admire.

In caverns deep beneath the dunes and sarira a hundred empires might have come and gone leaving behind no more than a mystery, a few scraps of language, perhaps the trace of a legend, a crumbling pillar. It grew vividly clear how frail were human aspirations and I was sure that very shortly our mummified corpses would add a further numinous stratum to that shifty geology.

Since rescue was unlikely I became doggedly fatalistic, reconciled, like the Bedouin, to my end. This is how some of us survive. Others, when there is little water and they are lost with the nearest human settlement weeks away, retreat, as a saving state of mind, into raving madness: the very alternative Kolya had taken. He now assured me we were on course for Zazara but refused to let me see the compass. ‘There’s no point in your confusing the issues, Dimka dear.’ Anyway, he said, we had passed beyond the material state and would soon enter the golden limbo which lay before the gates of Heaven. We had nothing to fear. He forced more of his excellent cocaine on me. He had at least a kilo.

Soon the only sane company I had was my grumbling camel, Uncle Tom. Kolya continued to develop his obsessions with the theory that not only was Wagner heavily influenced by Arab music but that the composer had been at least a quarter Bedouin. ‘We know he experienced his own spiritual struggle in the desert.’ He hummed a snatch of Parsifal. It is always depressing when a good friend is gripped by such paranoid banalities.

Although we were still not quite out of water, Kolya was drinking and splashing with complete abandon. He claimed that the cocaine which sustained us improved in direct proportion to the amount of liquid consumed. I was only glad that he was at least equally generous with the camels, who were now considerably fitter than either of us.

By now, Kolya, constantly sniffing cocaine and putting himself to sleep with morphine, was red-eyed and pale under his tan. He no longer shaved, or cleaned himself. He defecated quite cheerfully wherever and whenever the urge came, squat-ling in the sand and humming snatches of Gotterdammerung to prove some lunatic point.

‘Thus he sings of a new order, Dimka dearest. How Love, not Power, shall rule the world! Idealism and music combined. We shall worship not some sectarian Old Man, but a universal, all-embracing, all-loving Being! Would you call that genius Pagan? No! His love of God displayed his Senussi heritage! He returned to his desert homeland and found the truth he sought. But he refused Christian piety and rejected Jewish sentimentality as readily as Arab zealotry. That, Dimka sweetheart, is why he looked back to the great gods of a mutual past. Forces which refuse to be limited by modern theology! Dismiss these elements if you will - but they are what informed Wagner’s astonishing subtleties of technique, his extraordinary use of narrative and Leitmotif that made him the unmatched innovator.

‘In the desert Wagner learned the truths our people were in danger of forgetting. He longed to know who his father really was. He became Parsifal, that most pure and holy of knights. He became Saladin, that most godly of leaders. He was Igor as thoroughly as he was Siegfried, Arthur and Charlemagne and El Cid. Our great common heritage, our Mediterranean inheritance, was reborn through Wagner. And why? Because he returned to the womb of our culture. That place where race met race and created the chain-reaction which has not yet stopped. Al Fakhr, they called Wagner. The Wise One. The Old Gods pass away and it is time for Man to rule. But is he ready for the responsibility? Can’t you hear the echo of the Bedouin drum, the Moorish guitar, in Wotan’s final aria? And he knew his Jew. Like his ancestors, Dimka, he knew his Jew. But this did not make him a bigot.’

I refused to argue with him. My friend was obsessed. A more superstitious person might have thought a djinn had taken possession of Prince Nikolai Petroff, but I could recall no moment when this would have been possible.

It was now my turn to weep for my mad friend. Indeed, in that infinity of uncaring sand, with only the pulsing globe of the sun or the cold light of the stars for company, I moaned for him. I shrieked for him. I implored Heaven to bring him back to his senses. I sobbed and I wailed. I begged whatever deity that heard me to answer my prayers. But my imploring wails were addressed to the vast, unhearing heavens. At times like these I envy the atheist. They deny God’s existence. Yet sometimes, as then, it occurs to me that while God most certainly exists, He might not in any way comply with the benign image we have made of Him. We are forbidden to make God in our image - for God is most definitely not Man. God is God. Yet, all the same, God might take no more interest in us, His creation, than a cat who grows bored with her kittens. That God cares for us is our presumption. That is what we call Faith. That is the hope we cling to. Such thoughts did little to relieve my sadness, my anxiety, and my wails grew louder.

One morning Kolya was gone, leaving his camel and all his goods behind. He had, as the Bedouin say, ‘walked into the desert’. I called to him. I knew the folly of leaving this spot where he could at least follow his own footprints back. I waited a day, calling out his name until my own parched throat could summon little more than a croak, even with the kindly sustenance that cocaine, in moderation, can bring. He did not return. Once I thought I heard a snatch of The Flying Dutchman but it was doubtless a trick of the desert. I mourned for him as I stared around at an horizon consisting only of glinting brown dunes, unchanging blue sky and merciless sun. I had never felt so lonely and yet I remained free from fear. Although I was concerned for my friend, who had, after all, saved my life, I was at that moment deeply glad to be free of the Bedouin Wagner.

I had enough water for three days, but Kolya had taken the compass with him. All I could do was arrange my camels so that one followed another, take note of where the sun rose, and head west in the hope that I would stumble at least upon a bi’r, a place in the sand where I could dig for water. I took one of the Lee-Enfields from its oiled paper and fitted in a clip of ammunition. I had always been a good shot, but had little experience of single-handedly fighting off, say, a horde of attacking Gora. As long as I goaded Uncle Tom, using the long camel-whip Kolya had left behind with everything else, the other camels, lacking a dominant male, would follow their herd instinct and fall in behind her. I had little difficulty leading them over the dunes, nor was it difficult to hobble them at night. They seemed as thoroughly aware as I of our danger and our need to keep together. Uncle Tom I rewarded with her favourite treat - a plug of ‘Redman’ chewing tobacco I had purchased in al-Khufra.

An intelligent camel is one of God’s greatest gifts. She is everything a man needs in the desert. And if she is beautiful, as my Uncle Tom, she is a perpetual reminder to us that we are no more nor less important in the sight of God than any of His creatures. As God’s creatures we always have some kind of kinship to the beasts - and they to us. The symbiosis, the deep friendship, between Man and animal is as beautiful as any human relationship, and as mutually useful. This is another thing one learns on one’s own in the desert. God does not forbid these things. The Bible abounds with examples of this love between Man and his cousins. Noah would have understood.

In the desert nothing stands between Man and God save Man’s own self-deceit. Unless you acknowledge God’s dominion, you are destroyed. There are simple parables to be learned in the desert. One loses Self, but one gains the Universe. I pray for all souls, all innocent souls who are slaughtered in War. I pray they find sweet happiness in the presence of Jesus, our Saviour and God, our Father. Let them be released from the terrors and humiliations of this world and all its unjust torments. Let the forces of evil wage war amongst themselves while the Godly remain powerless to affect the cause of peace. What was Munich but the last hope of a good man in an evil world? In the end the British betrayed him.

Kolya said religion was the last resort of rogues. Of course that can also be true. But what I would sacrifice to live in an age when God was our first resort and the Lord of Peace ruled our hearts and minds!

I have almost given up hope of the New Jerusalem, as the English call it. Eventually, no doubt, Karl Marx will conquer the world, Sigmund Freud will re-interpret it, Albert Einstein will provide it with suitable physics, Stefan Zweig will give us its history, Israel Zangwill will furnish its literature and we shall no longer remember a time when Christian chivalry might have recreated Eden. Carthago delenda est. I think not!

A wind brought up burning sand against which I veiled my mouth and eyes, finding it even more difficult to keep to my chosen direction. Her beautiful long lashes and elegant nostrils closed against the razoring wind, Uncle Tom was led up and down the dunes now furious with activity, as if a thousand wakened devils plagued our way. Every so often, through the sighing air, I thought I heard a ghostly Meistersinger or Kundry. I would pause and call, but I was never answered. My exposed skin was flayed. My camels, refusing to move further, folded themselves down into the sand. They would have perished, half-buried, if I had not wrapped their heads in cloth and yelled at them to rise, slashing at them with my whip, pleading with them to think of their own safety as well as mine. Then, unveiled, supremely self-contained, Uncle Tom rose at last to set an example. Soon the camels were placidly following Uncle Tom through the whirling fury of the storm. I think they now accepted that their fate was in God’s hands. There is a Berber saying: The great follow the ways of God. The would-be great follow the ways of Satan. There is considerable truth in this. I came to understand it on the beach at Margate in 1956 when I was, of course, 56 years old. I had just heard the news that the Allied Defence Force had struck to defend a Suez Canal seized by the warlord Nasser. Nasser now has no great support in the Arab world because the Arab wants a just king, not a democracy. Chief of all he wants a successful king he can worship as a manifestation of God on Earth, just as his Sumerian ancestors worshipped their leaders. Unsuccessful leaders, like Abd el-Krim or Raisauli are simply forgotten.

Krim was first defeated the year I entered the Western Desert. As a result, all the scum who had flocked to his standard were scattered some fifteen hundred miles across the sarira and dunes, surviving by any means they knew. And most of what they knew involved murder and rapine, especially those Kurdish mercenaries who had been the first to flee. Like Trotsky, Krim had found it expedient to murder or betray some of his own lieutenants, to prove his loyalty to the French who sent him to Paris with his loot. But this is Arab politics. It is their culture. Some might say it is our culture, too. But our own half-conscious tribal customs are never entirely clear to us, I suppose.

The English and Americans always amuse me with their denial that they display such unconscious tribalism. Only true citizens of the world like myself are relatively free of unexamined prejudices. Margate, I sometimes think, was my psychic Waterloo, just as Suez was Dunkirk for the British and the French. It was then I was stunned to realise that the English, after letting Persia seize their oil in 1951, had given up their responsibilities in the Middle East while America had failed to take up the burden. It was the fall of Constantinople all over again.

Parched, down to a few sips of water and all that remained of a kilo of cocaine, together with a little morphine and hashish, I refused to crack. I would not let madness overtake me as it had my poor friend.

A day later, as the storm subsided to a few streamers and dust-devils, I thought I heard distant thunder, rolling as it does, through echoing hills. The camels grew alert and joyful. Here was a promise of rain, or at least water. Sayed the Sudanese had told me that thunderstorms often followed sandstorms. Sometimes they coincided. Sometimes rain came. It was unlikely, I reasoned, that it would rain here, in the dunes, but in shaded limestone hills pools sometimes formed. I summoned my energy, sipped the last of my water, touched some cocaine to my raw gums and led my little caravan towards the sound of thunder.

And there at last, just before sunset, I saw the pale blue horizon broken suddenly by a line of low, rocky hills over which a few wisps of cloud hung, as if glad of any company. I began to shake with joy. I even wept a little, yet was so conscious of losing water that I spread my tears over my face and neck before urging my camels down another dune. The hills were lost from sight, but I had taken their position from the setting sun and would know which way to go as the stars came out.

So, with sun, stars and God as my infallible guides, I came at last to the Lost Oasis of Zazara. She was neither mirage nor legend. But I was not to drink her waters for many more hours.

For a second time I heard rattling thunder from the hills but I paused, suddenly suspicious. From the distance I realised I had heard not a storm but a rapid exchange of rifle fire. My heart sank. Ahead of me some tribal conflict was in session. My arrival might, in time-honoured fashion, make both sides decide to satisfy their honour by burying their differences, killing the stranger and dividing up his goods.

For this reason I approached the hills as the Bedouin had taught me, making a wide arc until I could be sure that I could reach the hills without myself being easily seen. Frequently I paused to rest and listen, a bullet in my Lee-Enfield’s breech instantly ready to be fired as a warning to anyone who tried to attack. But obviously the warring parties were busy with their immediate dispute and had not noticed me. Every so often the gunfire would rattle again and then there would be silence, doubtless as the combatants licked their wounds and reconsidered their strategy.

In other circumstances, I would have risked going on, but Zazara was on the Darb al-Haramiya which, all knew, led for thousands of miles back into the Sudan, down into French West Africa, to Chad, to Abyssinia, to Fezzan, Tripolitania, Algeria, Morocco and Rio de Oro. I was at another terminus and could go almost anywhere I wished. My only problem now was how to avoid being robbed and murdered. Once I had taken stock of the terrain I might be able to sneak into the oasis, water my camels, fill my fantasses and get out again while the factions were still occupied with their battle.

By now half-crazy with thirst, my body having no patience with my mind’s disciplines, I yearned to run into those mumbling hills and seek the water the camels were already trying to sniff.

I would not be able to hold my beasts back for long. Only an experienced camelman can do that. Soon they would begin to trot forward. I would lose control. I decided therefore that it was best to lead them, rather than follow. Uncle Tom, dignified as always, was proceeding at her usual unhurried walk. When she glanced back over her shoulder to make sure her herd was following, her lovely eyes were full of concern, her lips drawn away from her great prehistoric teeth in an encouraging smile. How proud I was when I remounted her with all the casual grace of a true Bedouin and, my rifle across my knee, began the jog up the slow-rising foothills until I was forced again to dismount and lead my patient animals foot by painful foot over the hard rock of limestone pavements scattered with pebbles. The gulleys between the pavements were full of recent drifts of soft sand and looked dangerous. The pebbles caught in my camels’ toes, threatening to lame them, and I was forever stopping to check their feet, to make sure they were still unharmed. Concentrating on our slow, careful progress into the hills beneath a pulsing blue-grey sky, I did not notice when the loose sand no longer ran between rocky hillocks. Instead, there were man-made divisions - old walls worn to the same gentle golden brown of surrounding rock and sand. I realised I was leading my camels through the ruins of a good-sized city stretching as far as I could see along the eroded terraces of forgotten Zazara. A city of unguessable age, destroyed by the same forces which no doubt claimed Nineveh and Tyre. As with so many North African ruins, they might have been twenty or two thousand years old. Only an archaeologist could tell. They had been thoroughly abandoned for years. There was no vegetation, which could also mean that there was no water at the Zazara Oasis! Or was it hidden and guarded, as the powerful Senussi Bedouin protected some of their wells?

Renegade Zwayas, driven out of their traditional lands by the ever-expanding Senussi, might even now be disputing control of the oasis. I tethered my camels as they swung restless necks back and forth, tongues curling, nostrils expanding and snuffling for the source of the water. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, I moved forward carefully, keeping to the cover of old walls until I realised I was almost at the highest point of the hill which cut off suddenly and seemed to fall sheer to a valley from where I could hear distant shouts and whistling, voices speaking a dialect I did not recognise. Behind me, my camels began to snort and grumble and, lest they give me away, I ran back to where I had left them, unhobbling them and leading them forward again. I was still careful to keep to cover wherever I found it until the sun began to drop beyond zenith. I stopped close to the brow of the hill and began crawling forward to peer carefully over the edge.

The cliff did not as I had thought fall sheer to the bottom, but was broken just below me by a great limestone spur jutting out over a shaded pool around which grew a few date palms and reeds: Zazara was not dry! From where I lay it was difficult to make out details, but obviously a camp had been made. I saw some tents and one or two figures walking rapidly to and fro. They were not Bedouin at all, but Goras, relatives of the Sudanese, whom I had already met on the caravan from al-Khufra. Tall, handsome black men, they had only a few firearms and still preferred the spear, the sword and the bow. I was surprised that the Gora could have fired with such promiscuous precision. Then, as I craned to see more, I observed, directly below, something I first took to be water and then a mirage. It actually seemed to be a vast green, white and red Italian flag draped across a wide expanse of rock, the crowned crux blanca flanked by the fasces of Mussolini’s New Rome emblazoned onto two yards of rippling silk! As if the Italians had decided quite literally to put the Libyan Desert under their flag.

I realised the fabric was attached to ropes and if I risked raising my head and craning my neck a little further I could see that the ropes ran up to a large wicker basket, big enough to hold at least half-a-dozen people, and it was then that I understood that I was staring down upon a huge collapsed balloon. Doubtless some party of aeronauts, perhaps from the Italian garrison at Tripoli, had become stranded. I hoped that it was a military group. With the rifles and ammunition I had, together with my food, we could almost certainly kill off enough primitive Goras until they fled.

At that moment a burst of fire caused me to duck rapidly but when I looked again I saw that the only shots were coming from the balloon. Repositioning myself behind a rock I made out a narrow track leading down to the spur of limestone where the balloon basket was perched, then continuing on until it reached the water below. The Goras could not be native to this region or they would have known that there was another approach to the position. In the deep afternoon light, with arrows and spears they flung themselves up the steep rocks, only to be driven back by rapid but economical fire from the crashed balloon. Again I marvelled at the precision of the shots and, by shifting a third time, saw that in fact there was only one gun, a large old-fashioned French Gatling, a mitrailleuse, mounted on a brass swivel bracketed to the basket’s rail. At the basket’s centre was what seemed to be a small semi-dormant steam-engine. The bullets went over the heads of the determined Goras. I could see from their expressions that their worst fears were realised. Satan’s agents had descended upon them. It said something for their courage and their religious faith, if not their common sense, that they were attacking rather than fleeing. I decided I could, without much difficulty and with my camels, reach the rocky spur and the stranded balloon. If the Goras could be driven away from the water, we should soon all be able to drink. It seemed the more noise and dust I made in my descent, the more I gave the impression of a large force coming to the aid of the balloonists. With luck this would make them reconsider the wisdom of their present policy. It would be no shame to them to withdraw before a superior enemy.

I returned to my camels. Using what little Italian I had learned in Otranto, when Esmé and I had come ashore after fleeing from Constantinople, I informed the balloon that help was on its way. When I removed her hobble, Uncle Tom looked at me with grateful loving eyes. I let her lead her little tribe up to the cliff and begin the difficult descent down the twisting sandy path, certain that the Italians’ Gatling would deter any would-be archers. ‘E da servire?’ I called, letting my Lee-Enfield off into the air and badly jarring my shoulder. I was not familiar with the rifle’s legendary kick. Someone once told me that the Lee-Enfield .303 was known as the Hun’s Best Friend in the trenches, yet most Tommies swear by them to this day. The smoking gun in my all-but-disabled hand, I waved friendly greeting to the ballooners. The mitrailleuse did not turn in my direction. This was surely a sign that I was accepted as an ally.

It was at this point that Uncle Tom went down with a look of startled disgust, legs sprawling at unlikely angles, neck straining, deeply conscious of her ruined dignity. I lost hold of her halter and, in lunging for it, fell to the ground, rolling towards the basket as my rifle went off a second time, bruising my finger and thumb. In confusion, the other camels began to buck and growl, threatening to shed their own loads. I fought to get Uncle Tom to her feet so that we might both re-order our dignity when from the basket ahead, as I settled at last in its shadow, rose a vision of womanhood so lovely that once again I questioned my own sanity. Was this all part of some complicated hallucination? Was I still out in the desert, raving my last?

She wore a helmet of pale blue silk from which escaped two exquisite red curls on either side of a lovely heart-shaped face. Her gown was fashionably short and matched her cap. Like the cap, it was stitched with scores of pink and blue pearls. I had seen costumes to rival it only in Hollywood. Her fresh complexion, touched lightly by fashion’s demands, her beautiful turquoise eyes, her perfect, boyish figure, were complemented by a self-assured grace as she swung herself over the side crying, in English, ‘How wonderful! Magnificent! My prayers are answered!’ She ran, on low-heeled shoes which matched the rest of her outfit, towards the spot where, with curling mouth, rolling eyes and great melodramatic curses, Uncle Tom was getting to her feet. At last she was steady, to my great relief, but an expression of acute embarrassment now shadowed her sensitive features. ‘Thank you!’ cried the young woman. Then she turned, as if in apology. ‘I’m terribly grateful. I say, would you mind taking over the Gatling and keeping an eye on the natives? They’ve been a nuisance ever since I crashed, but I don’t want to hurt them.’ She began to lug at the bales of fabric on one of our camels. ‘Oh, I say! Silk! I couldn’t ask for more! Silk! Silk!’

With some difficulty I clambered up the rigging and got into what was now very clearly the gondola of an ambitious scientific expedition! There were chests and instrument boxes all around the edges, while at the centre was a small spirit-fired steam-engine, capable, I was sure, of generating the heat necessary to keep the balloon inflated. The basket was oval and had a small propeller which I would guess was next to useless for powering or steering such a large balloon. Gingerly I took the handles of the Gatling in my fingers and peered over the basket’s rail. Down on the other side of the water the dark-skinned Goras were standing about near their tents talking to a young man in a white turban, who would be the son of their sheikh. He was pointing back at the narrow fissure in the rock, evidently the other path into the oasis. I was glad they had lost interest in us for the moment. It gave me time to recover from my surprise that the only occupant of the balloon appeared to be a beautiful young woman whose chief problem was which material to choose for a new costume! I wondered, if I had found her out in the desert dying of thirst, she would not have called delicately for a glass of ice-cold Bollinger’s ‘06. I was a little admiring of such sang-froid in so young a woman and I was reminded of Mrs Cornelius (whom she did not otherwise resemble). In a few minutes she returned dragging a bale of cloth, part of our bogus trading goods. ‘It’s just right.’ She still used English. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I’m being frightfully rude.’ She began to speak in a slow, childish Arabic which became charming on her lips. ‘I am grateful to you, sidhi, for your generosity in aiding one who is neither of your tribe, nor of your religion. God has blessed me.’

Her manners were rather better than her vocabulary. I decided, for the moment, to let her continue to believe me a simple son of the desert, some noble Bedouin Valentino who had arrived to save her in the nick of time. Admittedly, Valentino had saved his young woman from a fate worse than death whereas I, apparently, had merely broken a sartorial impasse. She put her hand to her little breast and introduced herself. ‘I am Lalla von Bek and I am a flyer. I meant no ill in your land. I was shot down by a stray Arab bullet. See.’ And she pointed at a hole now visible just above the bag’s emblazoned crown. ‘I am on official business for the Royal Italian Geological Society.’

For my own amusement I replied in English. ‘My brother was doubtless aiming at the cross. I see from your instruments that you are making maps. Perhaps you are seeking gold in our land?’

She was vehement. ‘Oh, no! It’s oil, anyway, everyone’s looking for. This is a purely scientific expedition. I say, your English is wonderful. Were you educated over there? Or America? Do I detect a trace of Yankee?’

‘The wanderlust of the Bedouin is legendary, even among the Nazrini,’ I said. ‘But I have never seen a hot-air balloon as elaborate as this.’

‘Unfortunately,’ she said, ‘it is rather over-elaborate. It’s very hard to keep height, you know, without throwing everything out. I’d never have been shot down if I’d had the ship I asked for. Still, I must admit, the gun did come in useful. I’m sorry if you hurt yourself. I have a little first-aid experience. If you like . . .’

I refused manfully. It did not suit me at that point to let her see the whiteness of my skin beneath my robes.

Like Kolya, I had been burned dark by the sun and had a full beard. I flattered myself that I looked every inch a Saharan nobleman.

‘Let the silk be my gift to you,’ I said, observing the courtesies of desert meetings. ‘I hope you will look even more beautiful in it.’

She seemed impressed by my manners but baffled - then she smiled. ‘Oh, the silk! It’s for the balloon. We’ll cut a panel, oil it with what you have in that jar and make it airtight. I’m sure I have the other things I need. Those beggars down there got the best of my kit. It rolled out when we landed. We bounced a bit, as you can see.’ Reminiscently she dusted at her dress.

‘Though I am a bit fussy about clothes.’ She became thoughtful. ‘It doesn’t do to lose your standards.’

‘A sentiment you share with the Bedouin,’ I said.

She was flattered by the compliment. ‘This isn’t what I normally wear, but I was beginning to feel a bit down. A change of clothes will often cheer you up. Now you’ve arrived so I was right to look on the bright side. It’s just like a film, isn’t it?’

I was not happy to be reminded, just then, of the moving-picture industry. She took my silence for dignified disagreement. ‘I’m sorry, I suppose you’re not allowed to watch them.’ She was gracious. ‘I haven’t given you a chance to introduce yourself.’

‘I am the Sheikh Mustafa Sakhr-al-Dru’ug,’ I said, borrowing my name from an old script. ‘Like you, madam, I am an explorer. It is a tradition among my people. We are natural travellers.’

Enthusiastically she endorsed my opinion, betraying, I thought, a dangerous Arabismus which has led more than one European woman astray. Yet it did not suit me to puncture her illusion. Something told me she would have more interest joining forces with a Desert Hawk than with a Steppe Eagle. Bedouin or Cossack, we still had more in common than we had differences and it was natural of me to assume the role of benign protector to a young girl stranded in the deep desert. It was my instinct, a natural chivalry.

However, when I asked after ‘dear old Eton’, I was astonished to learn that she was not English at all and had lived there only intermittently. ‘My father was Count Richardt von Bek. My mother was Irish, Lady Maeve Lever of the Dublin Levers. I was finished in England, but I am by birth an Albanian. A second cousin, as it happens, to King Zog. I became an Italian national in 1925.’

‘Evidently you are an admirer of Signor Mussolini.’

‘Rather! My father always said Italy only did well under brilliant individuals. He was a Saxon, of course, and inclined to overstatement. He preferred the free-and-easy atmosphere of Albania. He was employed by the Turks. Engineers could live like princes in those days. We had a simply marvellous childhood. It spoiled us, really. And then, of course, Mother died of consumption, Father was shot as a traitor and that was the end of it. Luckily they’d taught us to stand on our own feet.’

‘You have brothers?’

‘Only sisters. They’re all married but me now. Really, I’m an engineer, but I can’t tell you how hard it is to convince people that I’m as good as a man. That’s why I’m here, really. A sort of publicity stunt, you’d call it. So people will take me seriously.’

‘I am familiar with such stunts,’ I told her. ‘And have an interest in engineering matters myself.’ My blood quickened at this change of luck. In the middle of the Sahara I had met a personable and pretty young woman who also happened to understand engineering. Such girls, who even today are considered odd, were thrown up by the Great War. I have nothing against them. Many have natural aptitudes in that direction, though as yet we have to see a female engineering genius. They will tell you they are above such things, preferring to sew and cook. Perhaps they really do prefer such activities. If so, it rather proves my point. I continued to treat Signorina von Bek with grave courtesy, delighted at last to meet in the desert someone who understood the difference between an internal combustion engine and a magic nut. ‘Not to mention,’ I added for politesse, ‘Albania.’

From where I had hobbled them, my thirsty camels were complaining - roaring and grumbling loud enough to drown parts of our conversation.

‘Sons of the eagle, indeed!’ she said, indicating the collapsed fabric. She referred, I suppose, to the Albanians’ name for themselves, Skayptar. The smaller the country, the bigger its airs. Just as it is with little men. I remember the Lett, Adolf Ved. His country’s self-advertisement was only matched by its vainglory. And all they had in the way of a cultural tradition was a few borrowed folk-songs, a national hero with an unpronounceable name and a Jewish university. Yet I was grace itself, and she brightened. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it will soon be sundown. I must offer you daifa. I’ll get the primus going. Natives don’t like to attack, you know, at night. What would you say to some turtle soup and rusks? We could start with some pâté de foie gras and there’s still an excellent St Emilion in the locker somewhere. The champagne, I’m afraid, exploded. The heat and the altitude, I suppose.’ She led me towards the centre of the gondola where she had erected two parasols for shade above a camp table set with silverware and napkin for one. From a locker she produced a second folding chair and from a chest a set of cutlery. ‘I prepared for visitors, you see. Not quite knowing where I was going to land.’ She hesitated. ‘Oh, I say, you’re not forbidden to eat anything, are you? Apart from pork, I mean.’

I assured her I had the usual traveller’s dispensations and could, with her permission, even join her in a glass of claret. She apologised for her ignorance of my people’s customs. At least, I said, she had an interest in correcting her ignorance and had come to see us for herself and not depend upon the Albanian newspapers to characterise us. She was pleased by this. She said she had been told of the legendary good manners of the Bedouin. ‘I share that quality,’ I told her, ‘with your Don and Kuban Cossacks.’

She seemed surprised by the reference, since few Bedouins are prepared to be compared to anything less than a demigod, but she took my remarks for modesty, warming to me still more. I basked in this angel’s approval! What ordinary man - what man of any kind - could fail to be charmed? I must admit I had no incentive for disabusing her. It had become second nature for me to disguise myself. For all her enchanting qualities I had no reason yet to trust Signorina von Bek.

The Bedouin were respected everywhere in the desert. Even a single traveller was usually left in peace, for he was likely to have blood kin across the whole region. The fundamental point of the blood feud is that it has to remain a credible threat, for it is by this means that men are dissuaded from killing, and Chaos is kept at bay. Dog rarely attacked dog unless desperate or sublimely certain of his superior strength. That was also why, since the Goras were clearly well-fed and watered, I did not expect the conflict to last much beyond another day or two. Now they believed reinforcements had arrived, they would almost certainly choose the better part of valour.

It was with a relatively easy mind that I sat down to tea with the pretty aeronaut while, visible below amongst the palms, the Goras argued over the day’s developments in high, declamatory voices. It was almost impossible to ignore the babble. I was suddenly reminded of taking a sunset supper on the balcony of Kruscheff’s in Kreshchatik, with the busy life of Kiev’s mainstreet going on below. I became nostalgic for my native trams, the colour and warmth of my childhood Ukraine and I would have wept in nostalgia rather than sadness, had it not been necessary to control myself, to remember I was a Bedouin and a gentleman. I still long for that Kiev. But it is a model today, like Nuremberg - an unconvincing Disney lifesize working replica of the great original. In the end, the communists destroyed both cities.

Renis le Juif et tu renieras ton passé.

I no longer worried that I might be hallucinating and lost in the desert. It was clear to me that this was either an elaborate illusion or that I had actually died. I had come, as the Bishop always puts it, to my reward. Yet, although Signorina von Bek’s scent was as subtle as her physical aura, and I was ready to enter any fantasy, I was not sexually aroused. Perhaps sensuality had become an over-familiar and rather horrible language to me. I was in a state of perfect platonic bliss, revelling without lust in the essence of her femininity as much as I enjoyed the quick amiability of her mind. I remained a little withdrawn, however, and as a result we kept a certain formality which was not uncomfortable. Indeed, we became quite cheerful as we discussed the accomplishments of fascism and the likely achievements of a reinvigorated Italian state. She knew my friend Fiorello. He was now a bureaucrat, she said. She apologised for the inadequacy of the shelter. ‘We had simply not anticipated needing it. It’s so hard to keep the sun off one’s arms and face. I freckle awfully easily. Of course, your women have the right idea. I can perfectly see the practicality of their clothes. The flies alone are bad enough. I hope I haven’t shocked you, sidhi, with my costume. I wasn’t really expecting a guest. But soon, of course, it will get chilly.’ She reached for her powder-blue cardigan.

I assured her that I was at ease with the ways of the West and she could rely upon my understanding. It was important, I told her, that mutual respect be established between human beings. The desert made brutes of some - I waved my soup-spoon at the shadowy quarrelling Gora - but it also demanded that, for survival’s sake, we maintain civilised discourse and behaviour.

Signorina von Bek agreed with considerable vigour. Standards were the key to everything. I was increasingly impressed by her quick wits. This woman was a true kindred spirit! We shared a fundamental political philosophy! In everything but appearance, she was a man! Myself! A perfect pal, especially under the present circumstances. As we sipped the claret and studied the agitated congress in the sun’s last rays, it seemed to me that she had adopted a certain coquettish air.

I was flattered by her interest but remained unaroused. The very thought of another’s flesh next to mine was almost sickening. Only Kolya or Uncle Tom had known how to soothe me. Sensing my reserve, she of course took even more of an interest in me. She was lady enough, however, to make only the subtlest hint by word or gesture and I enjoyed a growing sense of well-being. It was a timeless moment. I have never quite experienced the same combination of sensations and circumstance. I knew then that this was reality.

We finished our third cup of the arabien, the delicious scent of mint augmenting the more exotic odours, and I thought I heard again the faint sounds of singing. I strained my ears and peered into the gloom, wondering if it were only the breeze, but I was fairly sure I had caught a few notes of Tristan und Isolde. Even as my hostess chatted on, I cocked the other drum to discover the direction of the song, but the arguing of the Goras in the torchlight drowned everything. They were all looking towards the fissure, the oasis entrance, as if wondering whether to leave or perhaps to attack from another direction. They could see little of our ledge from their own position and could have no idea how many reinforcements I had brought.

She was speaking suddenly of Tokyo, which she had visited a year or two earlier with a League of Nations party. ‘There’s no doubt that intellectually the Japanese are at the head of the Mongol races. And, of course, racial purity is as important to them as it is to white people. Pure blood, as they say, will always triumph over mixed.’

Although only a year or two younger than myself, she was wiser than I. Women often attain maturity earlier. I have regretted not listening at the time more carefully to her ideas. It would have saved me a great deal of inconvenience and danger in later years. But then I was wondering if she had not provided herself with some kind of protective logic: an antidote, as it were, against her sexual attraction to me. For my own part I was almost incapable of innocent conversation. I had become responsive to nuance. I had developed the profound alertness of the hunted animal. I listened to her; I listened to the Gora; I listened to all the sounds of the desert, constantly interpreting yet, relative to earlier states, thoroughly relaxed. I had learned another migrant animal’s trick and took advantage of every secure moment, every chance to rest.

Again I thought I detected a tune on the wind, an aria from Tannhäuser, perhaps. This time I politely signalled to her, listening carefully. I began to suspect I was haunted by no more than a painful memory.

She asked what I heard, but I shook my head. ‘I was listening, I suppose, to the desert,’ I said.

She was impressed by this and for a while said nothing. It was not yet nine o’clock and the Goras had still failed to reach a decision. I was considering firing a burst from the mitrailleuse, to encourage them, when I saw that some of the blacks were coming back into their firelit camp pushing a prisoner, a bearded, wild-eyed creature, barefooted and in the torn burnoose of a Bedouin. His arms were bound behind him and a stick had been wedged in his teeth, tied with thongs to gag him. It was a moment before I recognised Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff. He would, as he had promised, be the first white man to taste the waters of the Lost Oasis!

Now I understood the complexities of the Gora debate.

They were wondering if Kolya could be of any value to us. If so, with a hostage they might be able to barter, save face and regain their dignity before moving on. All that remained was for me to put down my teacup, walk to the edge of the basket, raise a large hurricane lamp and sign a greeting to the white-turbanned chief. ‘I believe,’ I said in my best Arabic, ‘that there has been a misunderstanding.’

Signorina von Bek joined me at the rail. ‘Is that a comrade of yours, Sheikh Mustafa?’

‘A servant,’ I explained. ‘A simple-minded fellow. He wandered off some days ago. He is the son of a Caucasian woman and has a smattering of Russian. Do you speak Russian, Signorina von Bek?’

She admitted to only a few words. This meant I could address Kolya directly.

‘My dear friend, I intend to rescue you,’ I called. ‘But you must play your part.’

I was pleased to see Kolya nod vigorously, proving he still had some control of his sanity.

Then began the long negotiation with the tribesmen as they attempted, through shouted questions, to get some measure of Kolya’s value to me. I understood they were offering this slave for sale. I was in need, I said, of a strong fellow, but this one looked rather weak. Had he been exposed to the desert? And why was he gagged?

They assured me he was muscular and fit, a veritable work-camel of a creature. True, at present he was a trifle touched by the sun, but this made no difference to his value. He would recover.

By this time negotiations were settling into a rhythm and I felt my friend’s cause would best be served by my pretending a lack of interest. ‘A strong dog is of no use to me if he is mad. Look - he is foaming!’

They responded with shrill denials. That was merely saliva caused by the tightness of the gag. If I was not interested, they would take him to Khufra and sell him there. I remarked that I had come from Khufra and was not aware people were buying crazed outcasts to work their fields. The slave must be possessed, I added, by a djinn. Why else would he be bound and gagged in that way? Better allow the poor creature to wander into the desert where God would look after him.

No, they insisted, he would work. By torchlight they removed Kolya’s ropes. They took the stick from his mouth. He mumbled something incomprehensible. Then, with their spear-tips, they pushed him towards the water and watched as he drank. Next he was forced to fetch skins to the oasis and fill them, which he did with some speed, aware of the importance of playing this game to the full. He hurried back and forth through the firelight. He carried a dozen skins at a time. I began to fear that he would work so hard he would put his price beyond my means.

Signorina von Bek was admiring of my bargaining skills, although I had not as yet made any kind of offer for Kolya. We were still at the stage of agreeing whether he was worth selling or not. As the moon emerged and silver light spread to the horizon, either side had yet to name a price. At length I told them I would say in the morning if I wished to make an offer for their captive. We would all sleep on the question. Kolya did not seem too pleased by this, but I spoke briefly in Russian again, as if calling back to someone in my own party. ‘Be patient, old friend. I will have your release by noon tomorrow.’

That night, after I had bedded down and watered my camels using Signorina von Bek’s reserves of ballast, I wearily wrapped myself in my jerd and prepared myself to sleep on the ground. On the other side of the wickerwork, Signorina von Bek remained awake for some while, reading by the light of the hurricane lamp while out of the darkness came the muffled rendering of some of the more familiar passages from Lohengrin sung against the monotonous rhythms of a Gora drum with which, I think, they were trying to drown him out. Eventually his voice cut off suddenly and I shared the relief of silence.

In the morning I was awakened by the pretty aeronaut in her loose, hooded djellabah offering me a cup which, from its smell, could only hold Columbian coffee. I shook my head in surprised delight and sat up.

‘I hope your poor servant survived the night.’ She offered me the china sugar-basin. ‘He seemed very upset. Is it a kind of Bedouin blues? His singing sounded almost Wagnerian at times. Are you familiar with the composer’s work?’

I explained how the poor creature had for some time been in the employ of a Beiruti gramophone-seller and had picked up snatches of German music from the records he had heard. Like certain other idiots, he had a gift for musical mimicry. He would calm down, I assured her, as soon as he was returned to us. It would be best, however, to avoid the subject of the Master of Bayreuth.

‘He seems quite good-looking,’ she said, ‘under all the filth and sunburn. Was his mother beautiful?’

‘She was a Russian aristocrat,’ I told her truthfully, ‘who became his father’s wife.’

She nodded. ‘The genes sometimes do not withstand the shock. I myself have some of that dangerous old blood. Even mixed with its own kind it can produce mental deficients. My sister for instance is quite raving. It is the same with horses, of course. Would you care for a rusk and a little confiture? It’s all I have to offer for breakfast. The butter went off.’

I agreed to join her as soon as I had said my prayers. It did no harm to show devotion, especially to the Gora, who would expect it from me. Indeed, they would become suspicious if I ignored the morning prayer.

She was peering through a binocular when I came to the table. ‘He seems better rested, your fellow.’ She handed me the glasses. Kolya, a trifle less red-eyed than he had been, was staring up at us in baffled agitation. Then we watched as again he was put to work to display his stamina.

It was probably better that he was occupied. It diverted him from Wagner who, after all, had contributed to his predicament. I think he had begun to realise this and his sense of humour returned. Once he glanced over his shoulder and called in Russian, quite cheerfully, ‘You see, Dimka dear - I promised you we’d find slavers here.’

The problem, as I remarked drily, stroking my Bedouin beard, was not how to find the slavers, but how to lose them. I would guess that the only reason they had attacked the balloon in the first place was because they thought it undefended. Now honour had been restored and decent intercourse begun, they would almost certainly drift back towards the Sudan or whatever god-forsaken wasteland they recognised as home.

‘See!’ said the only Gora who spoke much Arabic. ‘He is good and strong and when he works he does not sing.’

‘But where will I keep him? He cannot work all the time.’

‘Work him hard, then he will be too tired to sing.’

I considered this reasonable logic for a while. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he seems strong enough. We could perhaps use another ammunition-carrier.’ I took a step or two back, out of their view. When I returned I said that we did not all agree that we required another slave. We broke for coffee. Meanwhile Kolya staggered to and from the oasis with his waterskins.

‘He is very strong,’ said Signorina von Bek, munching a rather inexpertly pickled cucumber, ‘it seems wrong that you should have to bargain to buy your own slave back.’

‘Sadly,’ I said, ‘there are very few circuit judges in the desert. The law of possession carries considerable authority here.’

She took my meaning and smiled. ‘It’s your job to keep what’s yours, eh? That’s the kind of individualism the New Order is encouraging in Europe. They could learn from you.’

‘Oh, I think my people have taught them much already,’ I quipped, almost chiding. She responded to this with a blush. I put out my hand to touch hers, to reassure her that I meant no ill-will. At which she smiled, and I was doubly entranced, yet still in that same delicious, platonically spiritual state where my ordinary senses seemed to quiver delicately on the brink of ecstasy, yet required no physical expression.

After lunch, as Kolya lay panting in the shade of a small palm, I returned to the lip of the rocky spur, Lee-Enfield crooked in my arm, and said that I had been elected to inspect the slave. I began the courtesies of approach and they responded. Carefully I climbed down the path towards where they waited on the far side of the dark water. The heavy limestone overhang, which protected the place from the sun’s rays and had allowed the pool to form, was reflected in the oasis, together with the few clumps of date palms planted here, no doubt, by the civilisation which had abandoned Zazara. Beyond the gathered Gora were their somewhat threadbare woollen tents, some skinny goats and a few tethered camels. These people looked like outlaws, irregular and amateur slavers at best. I had seen the powerful Bedouin slave-masters. They were grandly dressed and heavily armed, with tents, servants, wives and beasts of burden befitting their station. They would only have taken pity on Kolya as their code demanded, and helped him to his destination. Pride would not have allowed them to spend a minute of their time considering his sale. By deigning to bargain I was myself risking losing face, but I must also give these black rogues enough face so that to trade would suffice. They could then leave with all honour. I was certain they had not instructed scouts to come round on us and did not know how few our numbers were. Perhaps they did not want to know a truth they suspected. Ignorant, they would not feel called upon to take violent action, especially since our Gatling remained our chief argument.

I reached the level rock and approached them, pausing to lay my rifle and my knife on the ground. The Arabic-speaking princeling in his white turban stepped forward and put down his own bow and spears. We had now established an understanding which would pertain no matter how heated our argument became. I was welcomed into their camp. They led me to where Kolya, grinning and still half-mad, said to me in French, ‘Damn you, Dimka, if you don’t like the look of me let them sell me to someone who does!’

I shook my head at this and said to the chief, ‘See, it is true. Allah’s mercy on him. He is possessed. A djinn speaks through him. What is that monkey jabbering?’

‘It is Frank. Perhaps we should take his tongue off,’ proposed the chief thoughtfully, looking around for a blade. ‘That would make no difference to his work.’

I agreed that this might be the short-term remedy but he might as well stay intact for the moment. Suppose the djinn were driven out, then the poor creature would have been maimed for nothing and so rendered less valuable. Kolya seemed relieved by what he could overhear of this.

I next explained how we travelled with little to spare, all we had were a few small measures of good-quality cloth. Perhaps they would accept a foot or two for the madman. The chief smiled appreciatively at this gambit and invited me to squat down on the ground with him. So the serious bargaining began. We made jokes, exchanged insults, acted out a range of emotions from incredulity to despair, shared several cups of bitter tea, reflected on the state of the world, agreed that faith was the only road out of our dilemma and that the Jews and also the Christians were the cause of our troubles (any other analysis tended to shift the blame to God, which was of course a blasphemy). From time to time we brought the conversation back to the issue at hand and began another enjoyable round of bargaining. Sometimes trade is all the desert-dweller has in common with others of his kind and bartering becomes as elaborate a means of social intercourse as it is of arriving at a fair price. Eventually, just after three o’clock on the second day at the Zazara Oasis, I declared that my friends would curse me for a headstrong fool but I would throw in an ornamental dagger with the bale of tartan cloth they coveted. They agreed suddenly and so my friend was returned to me. I believe the tension of the moment had sobered him. He no longer spoke of Wagner but thanked me with his old civility. ‘You are a natural diplomat, Dimka dear. Do you still have all our camels?’

I assured him that I had kept our little caravan together. Although weary, he was cheerful. The water and food offered him by the Gora so that he should be a better purchase had given him the strength to take hold of his senses again. ‘What happened, Dimka?’ He paused for breath as we climbed back towards the ledge. ‘Did the Italian army find you? Are we in need of identities?’

I assured him he was in no further danger. He stopped again to get his breath and stared down at the net and the silk which draped the surrounding rocks. ‘If it isn’t the army, who is it? The Italian air force?’

But I would tell him no more until I had helped him ascend, pretending to curse him and goad him, until he reached the top of the ridge and stood staring in astonishment at the basket and its charming occupant.

Signorina von Bek now wore a pale green frock with dark-blue fringes, a dark-blue cloche and matching stockings. Her shoes were the colour of her dress. ‘How is the poor fellow?’ she asked me over his head.

‘Praising Allah for His mercy, Signorina von Bek, as are we all.’

Their business done, the Gora were already striking camp. I guessed that they were on their way to another outlaws’ rendezvous where they hoped to pick up work. But they would also speak of us.

As Kolya approached, Signorina von Bek wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, dear! He’d better have a bath, don’t you think?’

I agreed with her. I would also bathe, I said. Meanwhile, she decided, as soon as the slave was rested perhaps he could bring her up some water for her own ablutions. Gladly, I said, but first I must see to my camels. Our poor patient beasts had suffered too long. Leaving the loads near the balloon’s basket, Kolya and I led the eager animals at last to stretch their elegant necks over the oasis. The water was good but had a peculiar taste to it from an old palm which had fallen in at the far side and rotted. The camels sniffed the pool carefully before they drank.

‘I trust you do not seriously expect me to take that girl’s bathwater up to her,’ murmured my friend as we stripped off and waded into the shadowy pond where we could not easily be seen from above.

I smiled at his dismay and said we would carry some up in a fantasse on the camel. ‘Since, dear Kolya, you were not in your senses I had no choice but to fall back on the familiar excuse of congenital idiocy.’

‘It is not a rôle to which I’m much suited,’ he admitted, but he understood my point. ‘The girl I take it is here on government business?’

‘Only in a manner of speaking. Hers is the first one-woman flight for the Italian Geographical Society. I gather Mussolini’s giving a lot of backing to such enterprises at the moment.’ It was only at that second that the inspiration came to me that Italy was the country I should offer my talents to. I could help build the power-plants and machines needed to make that country truly the nation of the future, the New Rome in every sense. They also possessed, I understood, a thriving film industry. Perhaps my meeting with Signorina von Bek had been opportune in more ways than one.

Already Kolya was discussing the next stage of our route across the desert. Now we had found Zazara and the Thieves’ Road, all we had to do was head west on it. Eventually, ‘in less than a thousand miles,’ we should reach Morocco.

By now, of course, I saw my future following a rather different course, but I said nothing. ‘First we must help Signorina von Bek reflate her balloon.’ I stretched in the water. I floated. ‘And then we can be on our way. It is the least we can do, Kolya, since she, effectively, saved our bacon.’

‘By crashing in the desert?’ (I had sketched the story for him.)

‘By trusting us,’ I reminded him. ‘We could be a pair of rogues for all she knows.’

He was offended at this. Surely I had seen how she had already taken note of the man beneath the rags? When he was properly dressed again, he would thank her himself for her timely arrival, though she had not, after all, deliberately helped us. It was merely good fortune that she happened to be there. I protested this was a parsimonious compliment to her aerial navigation, especially since Kolya’s own sense of direction was unremarkable. He was being churlish. He apologised at once. His privations, his nerves, the exhausting fetching of water, had all taken their toll.

By now it was sunset and the Gora had filed out of the gorge, doubtless on their way across the desert and as glad to be free of conflict as ourselves. Leaving Kolya sleeping at the water’s side, I filled the metal fantasse myself, loaded it onto Uncle Tom and led her back up the steep path to where the aviatrix waited. Signorina von Bek had been reading to pass the time. I had already noticed the little bundle of brightly-coloured paper-covered books and magazines she kept. They were all English and seemed to be tales of adventure. She had developed a taste for blood-and-thunder, she said, at Cheltenham. ‘It was so uneventful, you know, otherwise.’

Carefully marking her place, she put the book on her table and drew from another fitted locker a collapsible canvas bathtub which she stretched carefully upon its frame. Into this, I emptied the four-gallon fantasse. She clapped her hands. ‘I have longed desperately for this for three days!’ Discreetly I returned to the oasis and saw to Uncle Tom’s grooming. She grumbled and snapped the whole time but could not disguise the pleasure she took in my attention. What was more, the mechanical and familiar actions helped me gather my thoughts. Our best escape from the desert must surely be in the repaired balloon. But what if it also delivered us directly into the hands of the authorities? If we continued on the Thieves’ Road it would be months, perhaps longer, before we reached civilisation. If we took the balloon and kept our disguises we had every chance of slipping away into a town before the Italians or French became over-curious. There was also a good possibility we would again be waylaid and this time murdered for our camels and goods. The Gora were doubtless not the only outlaw band in these parts. They would pass on the news. At best we must expect a fight or two. And we must consider the camels.

‘My dear, your feeling for those camels is positively obscene.’ Kolya had risen and walked over to one of our grazing pack animals to feel for something on the beast’s hump. It was only then I noticed the recently healed scars. ‘I grew concerned that you would decide to trade a couple of our camels for me!’

‘I would have been ashamed if I had bid more than your value,’ I replied. This badinage was usual with us. In my heart I was of course deeply relieved at my friend’s survival. Save for Captain Quelch I do not think I have ever had quite such love for a man. We were Roland and Oliver, fellow adventurers, followers of the Code of Chivalry.

I owed my life to him. Nonetheless, it still seemed to me pure folly to continue with his original plan. It was even possible that we might convince the lady to drop us off at some convenient spot. ‘Please remember to take it easy, Kolya, dear. You are still weak and your sanity remains, I would guess, a trifle fragile.’

He shrugged this off and casually hummed some jazz number, as if to prove to me that his mind was fully restored.

When I mentioned her name my friend was anxious to be introduced to Signorina von Bek. ‘I have heard of the woman. She was Benito Mussolini’s mistress. I remember her from Paris! And she flew with the Spanish Barcelona-to-Rio expedition a couple of years ago.’

I explained that, given his status, it would be both dangerous and unseemly for him to socialise with our hostess. Considering her history there was some small chance she could be an Italian government agent. At all costs we had to preserve our disguises until we knew we could trust her. He understood this but did not relish, he declared, remaining a fool for long. He would be glad when we were on our way. He remained obsessively fixed in his determination to follow the Thieves’ Road.

I dined that evening with my new friend. Below us my old friend cooked himself kus-kus to which he added a hard-boiled egg Signorina von Bek had given him. My female alter ego possessed the same spontaneous generosity which had led me into so many scrapes! Yet I do not regret being this way. Better to follow a virtuous impulse, I have always said, than to think always of self-interest. ‘Yer give ‘em too fuckin’ much, Ivan, and then yer regret it, silly bugger,’ said Mrs Cornelius to me the other day and it is true. But I have few regrets of that sort. I have never quite understood what she and Signorina von Bek had in common, for they were chalk and chips, but it might have been a quality of self-possession. Certainly it was not a similarity of enthusiasms! The last time I described an engineering principle to Mrs Cornelius, she ran from the pub claiming a weak bladder and I had to borrow a pound from Miss B. to pay for the round. With Signorina von Bek, however, I had an uncanny affinity. Together we discussed enormous projects. As soon as Kolya was bedded down I told her a little about my Desert Liner. She, in turn, sketched for me her rocket-powered tube-train. She said the Italian government was about to commission an experimental prototype. Knowing Mussolini’s preference for co-opting famous people to help him, she had agreed to this flight for publicity reasons rather than from genuine scientific curiosity. ‘I was finding it all extremely jolly until I was shot down. It was partly my own fault for dropping too low to ask those Arabs where I was. Still, I suppose even that was providential. What larks, eh, Sheikh Mustafa!’

From dawn until ten o’clock the next morning we worked on repairing the balloon fabric, and gathering material to build a fire which would funnel up air for the initial inflation. With Kolya’s reluctant help, we took the whole apparatus to the top of the hill looking out over the dead city and at Signorina von Bek’s instruction arranged the fabric to funnel heated air into the balloon proper. As I watched the huge egg-shaped canopy begin to fill I could hardly contain myself.

Now the Italian flag swelled across the sky. I imagined Mussolini’s thrusting New Rome, his great African empire which would at last stamp Carthage into non-existence. His firmament would be full of such ships. Architecture grand and graceful as Ancient Rome’s would rise upon the ruins of an honourable past. The balloon was a vision! It was as if an angel had spoken. My manhood was returning. I knew I must make my way to Il Duce’s court as soon as I could and link my destiny with his. It was not idealists like me who gave fascism a bad name. However, I would not be a Christian gentleman if I did not admit to past loyalties. The excesses of Benito Mussolini’s lieutenants are best seen as the excesses, say, of the Spanish Inquisition which followed Ferdinand and Isabella into Moorish Spain. They discovered corruption, dark superstitions, decadence, voluptuous orientalism, academic abstraction and answered the Holy Call to cleanse eight centuries of evil and moral turpitude from their land. They revitalised their people and gave them back a history. Sometimes a man indulging in too many scruples fails to face the evil nature of his enemy. The Italians are a sentimental people. They need a dictator, the disciplines of fascism, to make them great, or their inherent laziness will always win. That they turned their backs on the only leader who could have made them great again is proof of my point. Now what are they? What is their wealth? A few ruins and Renaissance fountains they can hire out as props for the latest Cinerama epic! For all my powers of precognition, I saw, in this case, only a glowing future. I glimpsed perfection.

Soon the canopy was swinging overhead shimmering like a netted whale and Signorina von Bek started the little engine, firing it up until blistering steam whistled through the valves. This kept hot air in the canopy but no longer powered our abandoned propeller. Now, as the basket jerked impatiently at the ropes, the aviatrix jumped expertly to her work, adjusting ballast, checking trim and giving particular attention to the neatly fixed patch of blue silk which obscured part of the national arms and the letters Fert. She moved like a nymph between her engine and her ropes, cheering whenever her ship responded as she should. Excitedly she leaned out of the basket waving to Kolya, who stood open-mouthed, watching the airship come to life. All the tethering ropes were at full stretch with one or two threatening to drag loose their pegs. She called for us to remove the funnelling fabric and she cheered again. ‘Hooray! Wonderful! What a godsend you fellows proved to be! Let’s get the luggage aboard. I say, what are you going to do about your camels?’

Kolya began to blurt something. I spoke in Russian. ‘Are you babbling in tongues again, Kolya, dear? Take her offer! We can be in Tangier within a week!’

‘Or in French Equatorial,’ he said gloomily. ‘You can’t steer a balloon, Dimka. But you can follow a road. At least I’ll know which direction I shall be travelling. Leave her. She’s an attractive and dangerous woman. She lives for thrills. I would have thought you’d had enough of adventures for a while. There are no clear advantages to your suggestion. With our original plan, we know exactly where we’re going.’

‘To Hell, Kolya! The danger’s now unwarranted.’

‘Is he all right?’ asked Signorina von Bek in English.

‘He is afraid to fly in your ship, I think,’ I said in English, then in Russian, ‘There’s nothing for you here, Kolya.’

‘Only a bastard would leave these poor camels,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’ It was the argument which won me. I had, myself, been deeply reluctant to desert my beautiful Uncle Tom. Yet her chances of survival on that lawless road were far better than mine. I was experiencing an agony of guilt and could hardly bear the idea of parting from Kolya. Yet survival, at such moments, demands no sentiment. Uncle Tom might find new owners in the desert, even if they proved to be the returning Gora. Her beauty guaranteed she would be well treated whoever inherited her.

‘Come, Kolya,’ I begged my friend the last time for conscience’s sake. ‘Signorina von Bek says the prevailing wind will take us west. She would prefer to go north, she says, but either way we wind up in Tripoli or Tangier.’

‘Or Timbuktu,’ he said significantly. ‘It is you who face unwarranted danger, not I. Go, if you like. Simply leave me my camels and our few remaining goods.’

‘Everything. Gladly,’ I said. My mind was set upon Italy. I was filled with the urgency of idealism, a sense that my true vocation was returning. Oh, Esmé! You saw me fly. My faith in the power of rational science was coming back. I was filled with the Holy Spirit. My whole body quickened. My senses returned, thanks to Allah’s wisdom. I had walked dead into the desert and out of the desert I arose, to live again. My body began to sing at last.

‘You have your passport?’ Kolya seemed ill-tempered suddenly. I was a little put out by his brusqueness. It was I, after all, who had been rejected!

‘Indeed, I have. I will fetch my kit from Uncle Tom.’

‘You have plenty of water?’ He drew a breath of desert air as if to renew himself. He hummed a strain from Tristan und Isolde.

‘Plenty.’

Kolya insisted on coming with me as I parted from Uncle Tom. He helped me lead my lovely creature back up the steep path to the top of the hill where Signorina von Bek waited in the balloon. A strong breeze now stirred her hair and her chiffon scarf was blown upward to frame her head.

‘You are a fool,’ Kolya muttered. ‘I do not fear to fly in that thing - although it’s folly - but I would fear to go with her. She is dangerous, believe me. Return to the desert and its freedoms. You have never known a woman like her, Dimka. She feeds off power. She plays with power and is fated to an early death, as are all her kind. And she’ll take at least one poor devil with her. She’s volatile, like nitro.’

‘This is nothing but jealousy, Kolya. I beg you reconsider your own decision. Do not sink, in your own anxiety, to besmirching a lady’s honour. Signorina von Bek is clearly a gentlewoman. She also has a fine mind. A man’s mind. But she could never come between us, Kolya. We are brothers. I merely express concern for your well-being. Can our few trade goods sustain you all that way?’

My friend responded with a brave shrug. He took Uncle Tom’s halter from my hand. ‘The camels are my chief asset. I have to sell them before I can do anything else. Uncle Tom I will try to keep, I swear.’

‘If necessary, you should get the best price for Uncle Tom,’ I assured him. ‘As soon as you reach the next large oasis.’

‘I will find you in Tangier,’ he promised, ‘and give you your share. After all, you helped get us this far.’

‘Perhaps.’ I gripped his shoulder. ‘Meanwhile you should be more sparing, old friend, in your use of drugs. You’ll have none left by the time you get to a city.’

‘Oh, I’ll not run out.’ We had reached the balloon and he reverted to mumbling mode, handing my valise and other luggage into the basket as I climbed in to help Signorina von Bek stow the bags into the lockers.

I reached over the side and, defying Bedouin custom, shook Kolya’s hand, then drew him towards me to kiss him. ‘Farewell, good friend,’ I said in Arabic. ‘May Allah continue to protect thee and bring thee safe to thy destination.’

‘Your slave really isn’t coming?’ Signorina von Bek seemed disappointed.

‘I have given him his freedom,’ I said. ‘He chose to take the camels and travel the lonely road of the Darb al-Haramiya. God goes with him. At least the camels will be well kept. He has a knack with the beasts. They are of great value to him. You see, Signorina von Bek, he is like me, a man of the desert. Unlike his master, however, he cannot imagine being happy in any other world. So it is. We are made as we are made. It is God’s will and God will protect him.’

There was nothing else I could add. My friend had chosen his path and it was no longer right for me to question his decision.

I believe there were tears in my eyes, however, when I waved goodbye to him. He released our last tethering ropes and we rose rapidly, crying ‘godspeed’ and ‘farewell’. I watched him with pounding heart as he turned, beginning the trudge down to what remained of his fortune. Poor Kolya! I had hesitated to tell him that I had transferred some of our load to my own bags, for safety’s sake, long before I had arrived at the oasis. I had three pounds of cocaine, a pound of heroin and four pounds of hashish, all removed from their hiding-place in the pack camel’s humps. This had depleted the cargo quite considerably, since Kolya had already consumed a large part of his share between Khufra and Zazara. On the other hand I had certainly saved him from himself and there was now far less danger of his being robbed for the remaining drugs.

I hold no brief for ‘dope-dealing’ and would never willingly be involved with it, but I had come unwillingly to the trade so it seemed fair to me I should take some profit from it. There would be no difference, in the end, to its use.

Signorina von Bek was leaning away from me, studying the outer canopy, relieved to see that the repair was holding. Her lips parted in a wonderful smile as she took stock of the horizon widening as we rose, with no sensation of thrust, high into the wide blue Saharan sky. ‘You are clearly a man,’ she said, ‘who cuts his own road through this life.’

I appreciated her recognition of my individuality but I remained cautious, determined not to flunk my chosen part. I could not afford to be discovered. ‘With Allah’s guidance,’ I said. ‘And as Allah wills.’ I looked down at the oasis. I could still make out my friend, a perfect homunculus, scrambling towards the tiny pool, his miniature animals.

‘Oh, see!’ Signorina von Bek pointed with excitement towards the east. ‘There they are! How jolly! Those are the Arabs who shot me down! Thank goodness we’re on our way. Will your slave be all right?’

I looked across the dunes of the great Sand Sea. Riding with lordly languor towards Zazara, their elaborately-worked long guns cradled casually in their arms, their cruel eyes only visible from within their veils, came the same Tuareg party we had seen weeks ago near al-Jawf. It was inevitable they would discover Kolya before he could get clear. For a moment I looked towards the Gatling, thinking I might scare them off, but they were hardly in range and I had no idea how the basket would behave in concert with the force of a powerful machine-gun.

They had sighted us now. They raised their rifles to their shoulders, their legs curled tightly around their stuffed leather saddles as they took aim. But their salvo either fell short or missed us and while they reloaded we had gained more than enough height and distance to be safe from their primitive firepower.

Unfortunately for Kolya, however, a few hours of freedom were all God would allow him for the moment. He was about to become a hostage again.

‘What was your man’s name?’ she asked me, busying herself with her lines.

‘Yussef,’ I said.

She came to stand beside me at the rail. ‘And you are Mustafa. I do not think we need to be formal any longer.’

Signorina von Bek put her hand firmly into mine. ‘You must call me Rosie,’ she insisted. ‘I’m so relieved to have the protection of a genuine Bedouin prince. As a matter of fact you do look rather like Rudolf Valentino. Though more refined.’

The Tuareg and Zazara and all our troubles were behind us. As our balloon sailed gracefully into the bloody light of the setting sun I embraced my Rose.