Survivor: The Autobiography (48 page)

The hens, having satisfied their keen hunger with the dead sheep’s blood, had gone to rest. A silence more profound than that of the grave prevailed around the tent. As twilight was about to merge into darkness, the bronze bells sounded for the last time. We headed eastward as usual, avoiding the highest ridges. After a few minutes’ walk I turned about, and gave a farewell glance at the death-camp. The tent stood out distinctly in the vanishing daylight that still lingered in the west. It was a relief to get away from this ghastly place. It was soon swallowed up by the night . . .

Thus we walked on through the night and the sand. After two hours of it, we were so exhausted from fatigue and from lack of sleep, that we flung ourselves headlong on the sand, and dozed off. I was wearing thin, white, cotton clothes, and was soon awakened by the cold night air. Then we walked again, till the limit of our endurance was reached. We slept once more on a dune. My stiff-topped boots, reaching to my knees, made progress difficult. I was on the point of throwing them away several times, but fortunately I did not do so.

After another halt we walked on for five hours more, that is, from four to nine in the morning. This was on 2 May. Then one hour’s rest again, and one and a half hour’s slow march. The sun was blazing. All became black before our eyes as we sank down on the sand. Kasim dug out, from a northerly slope, sand which was still cold from the night. I stripped and laid myself down in it, while Kasim shovelled sand over me up to my neck. He did the same for himself. Our heads were quite close to each other, and we shaded ourselves from the sun by hanging our clothes on the spade, which we had stuck in the ground.

All day long we lay like this, speaking not a word, and not getting a wink of sleep. The turquoise-blue sky arched over us, and the yellow sea of the desert extended around us, stretching to the horizon.

When the ball of the sun again rested on the ridge of a dune in the west, we got up, shook off the sand, dressed, and dragged ourselves slowly with innumerable interruptions, towards the east, until one o’clock in the morning.

The sand-bath, although cooling and pleasant during the heat of the day, was also weakening. Our strength was ebbing. We could not cover as much ground as the night before. Thirst did not torment us, as it had done during the first days, for the mouth-cavity had become as dry as the outside skin, and the craving was dulled. An increasing feebleness set in instead. The functioning of all the glands was reduced. Our blood got thicker and flowed through the capillaries with increasing sluggishness. Sooner or later this process of drying-up would reach its climax in death.

From one o’clock until half past four in the morning, on 3 May, we lay inanimate; and not even the cold night air could rouse us to go on. But at dawn we dragged ourselves forwards again. We would take a couple of steps intermittently. We managed to get down the sandy slopes fairly well, but climbing the waves of sand was heavy work.

At sunrise, Kasim caught me by the shoulder, stared, and pointed east, without saying a word.

‘What is it?’ I whispered.

‘A tamarisk,’ he gasped.

A sign of vegetation at last! God be praised! Our hopes, which had been close to extinction, flamed up once more. We walked, dragged ourselves, and staggered for three hours, before we reached that first bush – an olive branch intimating that the sea of the desert had a shore. We thanked God for this blessed gift, as we chewed the bitter green needles of the tamarisk. Like a water lily the bush stood on its wave of sand, basking in the sun. But how far below was the water that nourished its roots?

About ten o’clock, we found another tamarisk; and we saw several more in the east. But our strength was gone. We undressed, buried ourselves in the sand, and hung our clothes on the branches of the tamarisk to make shade.

We lay in silence for nine hours. The hot desert air dried our faces into parchment. At seven o’clock, we dressed and continued onward. We went more slowly than ever. After three hours’ walk in the dark, Kasim stopped short, and whispered: ‘Poplars!’

Between two dunes there appeared three poplars, standing close together. We sank down at their base, exhausted with fatigue. Their roots, too, must derive nourishment from below. We took hold of the spade, intending to dig a well, but the spade slipped from our hands. We had no strength left. We lay down and scratched the ground with our nails, but gave up the attempt as useless.

Instead, we tore off the fresh leaves and rubbed them into our skins. Then we collected dry, fallen twigs, and made a fire on the nearest crest as a signal to Islam, should he prove to be still alive, which I very much doubted. The fire might also, perhaps, attract the attention of a shepherd in the woods along the Khotan-daria. But even if a shepherd should see this fire in an area of deathly silence, he was more likely to become frightened and believe it was the desert spirit who haunted the place and practised witchcraft. For fully two hours we kept the fire going, regarding it as a companion, a friend, and a chance of rescue. Nowadays, those who are shipwrecked at sea have other means of sending out their SOS in moments of extreme danger. We had only this fire, and our eyes were glued to its flames.

The night was coming to an end, and the sun, our worst enemy, would soon rise again above the dunes on the eastern horizon, to torment us anew. At four on the morning of 4 May we started off, stumbling along for five hours. Then our strength gave out. Our hope was again on the decline. In the east there were no more poplars, no more tamarisks, to stimulate our dying vitality with their verdure. Only mounds of sand, as far as the eye could reach.

We collapsed on the slope of a dune. Kasim’s ability to dig out cold sand for me was gone. I had to help myself as best I could. For fully ten hours we lay silent in the sand. It was strange that we were still alive. Would we have strength enough to drag ourselves through one more night – our last one?

I rose at twilight and urged Kasim to come. Hardly audible was his gasp: ‘I can’t go on.’ And so I left the last remnant of the caravan behind and continued on alone. I dragged myself along, and fell. I crawled up slopes, and staggered down the other side. I lay quiet for long periods, listening. Not a sound! The stars shone like electric torches. I wondered whether I was still on earth, or whether this was the valley of the shadow of death. I lit my last cigarette. Kasim had always received the butts, but now I was alone, and so I smoked this one to the end. It afforded me a little relief and distraction.

Six hours had passed since the beginning of my solitary journey, when, totally overcome with feebleness, I sank down by a new tamarisk, and went off into the doze which I feared, for death might come while I was asleep. As a matter of fact, I hardly slept at all. All the time, in the grave-like silence, I heard the beating of my heart and the ticking of the chronometers. And after a couple of hours I heard the swish of steps in the sand, and saw a phantom stagger and struggle to my side.

‘Is that you, Kasim?’ I whispered.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come! We have not far to go!’

Heartened by our reunion, we struggled on. We slid down the dunes; we struggled upwards. We would lie motionless where we fell, in our battle against the insidious desire for sleep. We slackened our pace, and grew more and more indolent. We were like sleep walkers; but still we fought for our lives.

Suddenly Kasim grabbed my arm and pointed downwards at the sand. There were distinct tracks of human beings!

In a twinkling we were wide awake. It was plain that the river
must
be near! It was possible that some shepherds had noticed our fire and had come to investigate. Or maybe a sheep, astray in the desert, had been searched for by these men who had so recently passed over the sand.

Kasim bent down, examined the prints, and gasped:

‘It is our own trail!’

In our listless, somnolent state, we had described a circle without knowing it. That was enough for a while; we could not endure any more. We collapsed on the trail and fell asleep. It was half past two in the morning.

When the new day dawned, on 5 May, we rose heavily, and with difficulty. Kasim looked terrible. His tongue was white and swollen, his lips blue, his cheeks were hollow, and his eyes had a dying glassy lustre. He was tortured by a kind of death-hiccup, which shook his whole frame. When the body is so completely dried up that the joints almost creak, every movement is an effort.

It grew lighter. The sun rose. From the top of a dune, where nothing obstructed the view towards the east, we noticed that the horizon, which for two weeks had revealed a row of yellow sawteeth, now disclosed an absolutely even, dark-green line. We stopped short, as though petrified, and exclaimed simultaneously: ‘The forest!’ And I added: ‘The Khotan-daria! Water!’

Again we collected what little strength we had left and struggled along eastward. The dunes grew lower, we passed a depression in the ground at the bottom of which we tried to dig; but we were still too weak. We went on. The dark-green line grew, the dunes diminished, stopped altogether, and were replaced by level soft ground. We were but a few hundred yards from the forest. At half past five we reached the first poplars, and wearied, sank down in their shade. We enjoyed the fragrance of the forest. We saw flowers growing between the trees, and heard the birds sing and the flies and gadflies hum. At seven o’clock we continued. The forest grew thinner. We came upon a path, showing traces of men, sheep, and horses, and we thought it might lead to the river. After following it for two hours, we collapsed in the shade of a poplar grove.

We were too weak to move. Kasim lay on his back. He looked as if he were going to die. The river
must
be quite near. But we were as if nailed down. A tropical heat surrounded us. Would the day never come to an end? Every hour that passed brought us closer to certain death. We would have to drag ourselves on to the river before it got too late! But the sun did not go down. We breathed heavily and with effort. The will to live was about to desert us.

At seven p.m. I was able to get up . . . Again I urged Kasim to accompany me to the river to drink. He signalled with his hand that he could not rise, and he whispered that he would soon die under the poplars.

Alone I pulled myself along through the forest. Thickets of thorny bushes, and dry fallen branches obstructed my way. I tore my thin clothes and scratched my hands, but gradually I worked my way through. I rested frequently, crawled part of the way on all-fours, and noticed with anxiety how the darkness grew denser in the woods. Finally the new night came – the last one. I could not have survived another day.

The forest ended abruptly, as though burnt by a fire. I found myself on the edge of a six-foot-high terrace, which descended almost perpendicularly to an absolutely even plain, devoid of vegetation. The ground was packed hard. A withered leafless twig was sticking out of it. I saw that it was a piece of driftwood, and that I was in the riverbed of the Khotan-daria. And it was dry, as dry as the sandy desert behind me! Was I to die of thirst in the very bed of the river, after having fought my way so successfully to its bank? No! I was not going to lie down and die without first crossing the Khotan-daria and assuring myself that the whole bed was dry, and that all hope was irretrievably gone . . .

Like the beds of all desert-rivers in Central Asia, that of the Khotan-daria is very wide, flat, and shallow. A light haze floated over the desolate landscape. I had gone about one mile when the outlines of the forest on the eastern shore appeared below the moon. Dense thickets of bushes and reeds grew on the terraced shore. A fallen poplar stretched its dark trunk down towards the riverbed. It looked like the body of a crocodile. The bed still remained as dry as before. It was not far to the shore where I must lie down and die. My life hung on a hair.

Suddenly I started, and stopped short. A water-bird, a wild duck or goose, rose on whirring wings, and I heard a splash. The next moment, I stood on the edge of a pool, seventy feet long and fifteen feet wide! The water looked as black as ink in the moonlight. The overturned poplar-trunk was reflected in its depths.

In the silent night I thanked God for my miraculous deliverance. Had I continued eastward I should have been lost. In fact, if I had touched shore only a hundred yards north or south of the pool, I would have believed the entire riverbed to be dry. I knew that the freshets from melting snowfields and glaciers in northern Tibet flowed down through the Khotan-daria bed only in the beginning of June, to dry up in the late summer and autumn, leaving the bed dry during the winter and spring. I had also heard that in certain places, separated sometimes by a day’s journey or more, the river forms eddies, which scoop the bed into greater depths, and that the water may remain the year round in these hollows near the terraced shore. And now I had come upon one of these extremely rare bodies of water!

I sat down calmly on the bank and felt my pulse. It was so weak that it was hardly noticeable – only forty-nine beats. Then I drank, and drank again. I drank without restraint. The water was cold, clear as crystal, and as sweet as the best spring water. And then I drank again. My dried-up body absorbed the moisture like a sponge. All my joints softened, all my movements became easier. My skin, hard as parchment before, now became softened. My forehead grew moist. The pulse increased in strength; and after a few minutes it was fifty-six. The blood flowed more freely in my veins. I had a feeling of well-being and comfort. I drank again, and sat caressing the water in this blessed pool. Later on, I christened this pool Khoda-verdi-kol, or ‘the Pool of God’s Gift’ . . .

My thoughts now flew to Kasim, who lay faint from thirst on the edge of the wood on the western shore. Of the stately caravan of three weeks ago, I, a European, was the only one that had held out till the moment of rescue. If I did not waste my minutes, perhaps Kasim, too, might be saved. But in what was I to carry the water? Why, in my waterproof boots! There was, in fact, no other receptacle. I filled them to the top, suspended them at either end of the spade handle, and carefully recrossed the riverbed. Though the moon was low, my old track was plainly visible. I reached the forest. The moon went down, and dense darkness descended among the trees. I lost my trail, and went astray among thorny bushes and thickets, which would not give under my stockinged feet. From time to time, I called ‘Kasim!’ at the top of my voice. But the sound died away among the tree trunks; and I got no answer but the ‘clevitt’ of a frightened night owl.