The Prophet's Camel Bell (11 page)

“You've been saying the same thing for weeks,” Jack pointed out. “I could hardly wait around forever.”

We shared the blame. There was no use in thinking about it. We were here, not there – what did it matter why? The rain became denser, and the sound of the thunder grew closer. Then the lightning burst like a gigantic roman candle, and the following thunder was like a cannon fired inside our skulls. The rain was a solid mass of water now, some ocean in the sky tilting and pouring out its contents all at once. The sky was black, illuminated momentarily by the explosive lightning. The deluge beat and battered at the canvas top of the Land-Rover, saturating it. We were chilled and shivering, and we had no idea where we were going. All sense of direction was gone, for around us the desert had been transformed into a sea.

Thud! We hit a pothole. The muddy water splashed up around us. Abdi put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and the engine roared and strained, but it was no use. The Land-Rover was mired up to the axles. We were stuck like a bug in a pool of glue.

As suddenly as it began, the rain stopped. But this was only a breathing space. Soon the downpour would start again. In the meantime, Abdi got out and set to work feverishly. Jack joined him, but not hopefully.

“No stones around here. Nothing to block the wheels with. Well, let's try branches, Abdi.”

We gathered flimsy thorn boughs, but these only snapped off or disappeared in the well of mud. I climbed tiredly back into the car. Jack and Abdi continued their efforts, but without success.

“I don't see how we can get out of here by ourselves,” Jack said finally. “We'll just have to wait until a truck comes along.”

Abdi's old eyes narrowed.

“If we wait, sahib,” he said, “we wait one month. No truck pass this way when rain come.”

Considering the fact that we had no food, this prospect did not seem hopeful. We sat huddled in the car, smoking thoughtfully, racking our brains but not emerging with any useful ideas. Then in the distance we saw a herd moving towards us, the camels looking like dinosaurs as they squelched through the mud, their long necks swaying, bending frequently to drink the water for which they had waited so long. As they drew closer we heard the cry of the herders, their voices guiding the animals and keeping the herd together.

“Ei! Ei! Ei! Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu!”

The tribesmen approached and eyed us warily. Abdi spoke with them, and their faces, as they realized our helplessness, took on a kind of avaricious joy. There were eight of them, tall young men with their spears slung across their shoulders. They were not of Abdi's tribe. In fact, their tribe and Abdi's had been on exceedingly bad terms during the
Jilal
. Slyly, one of them poked his head inside the Land-Rover and stared covetously at the rifle. Abdi immediately launched into a long and impassioned speech, his eyes glinting with menace. The tribesmen looked at me questioningly, shuffled their feet on the slimy ground, and drew away slightly from the vehicle. Over his shoulder Abdi hissed at me in English, not taking his eyes off the herders.

“You never move, memsahib. Stay there with rifle. I tell them we have plenty ammunition, and I say the officer's woman, she know how to shoot very well.”

What presence of mind! Jack and I could not resist grinning at one another as we recalled my one unsuccessful attempt to fire the rifle.

“If they agree to help us,” Jack said, “we'll not only have to give them what money we have – they'll expect the cigarettes as well. While they're busy, see if you can salvage a few, eh?”

The bargain was struck, and the young men set down their spears and began to work. I remained in the Land-Rover while it was being heaved at. The tribesmen shouted and shoved. The mud splattered like thick brown rain. The placid camels drank and gazed. Surreptitiously I managed to conceal a few cigarettes in my pocket. Finally, with a bellow of triumph, the tribesmen got the vehicle unstuck.

We paid them gratefully – it was little enough for what they had done for us. The bulk of our cigarettes, however, we parted with much more reluctantly. The tribesmen retrieved their spears and again regarded the rifle longingly. My hand remained firmly on the gun. I could not really take the situation seriously. I could not imagine our being attacked, perhaps murdered for the sake of a rifle. Abdi was wiser. He kept his eyes fixed on the men and never for an instant turned his back.

They were not all certain that Abdi had spoken truthfully about my excellent marksmanship, but neither were they certain he had not. We were held for an instant, all of us, in a state of suspended animation, no one wanting to be the first to make any kind of move. At last, as though they were able to communicate among themselves without words, they appeared to make the same decision simultaneously. Shrugging, they shouldered their spears, called the camels and went off. Across the plain we could hear their voices for some time, growing thin and reed-like in the wet and silent air.

“Ei! Ei! Ei! Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu!”

Night had come, so we left the car, which was now perched on solid ground, and made a fire. We sat around it on a damp hillock, smoking and looking up at the sky, a rich deep blue now that the moon had come out. Around us we heard the cackle of the hyenas. We were desperately cold, and the small fire did little to warm us, but we were glad of this respite. Then the moon and stars went out, and the rain began again.

“Must be we go on,” Abdi said.

We trusted him absolutely. He was the one who knew what to do. We climbed back into the car and set off again. At last we managed to find our way back to the Wadda Gumerad, but the road had become a river. We were forced to follow the path pointed by this swift torrent of water, for it became impossible for us to see anything. There could be no darkness anywhere to compare with this darkness, unless in caverns under the sea where the light never reaches. The rain was a black wall of water before our eyes. Abdi hunched forward, glaring at the streaming windscreen as though hoping by sheer force of will to penetrate the dark rain. The Wadda Gumerad was full of small waterfalls, where the flood had gouged chunks out of the road and burrowed channels into the clay. The Land-Rover moved slowly, straining against the mud and rain, against the wild wind. It seemed a marvel that we were able to move at all.

Two days before, men and animals were dying of thirst here. Now some of them would drown. Every year, Abdi told us, a few sheep and goats, a few children, were swept away by the
tugs
when they flowed in spate. This must be the ultimate irony, surely – to drown in the desert.

Then we were on a vast plain, no trees or bushes anywhere. Our car was the highest object for miles, and all around us the lightning pierced down in pink shafts, a bright shocking
pink that illuminated the entire plain in its flare, showing us the flat and open land, revealing to us our own faces. It was so close that we could not see how it could avoid striking us.

“You all right?” Jack enquired, not really a question – a reassurance, rather.

Yes, I told him. Quite all right. Probably I would have said so in any case, but as I spoke the words I realized with surprise that they were true. I would not have chosen to be anywhere else. If anything happened, at least it would happen to both of us at the same time. Perhaps some of the Muslim fatalism was rubbing off on me. We could not wish ourselves out of here, so there was no use in worrying about it. We would get out if we could –
In sha' Allah
.

The car bogged down again, and we decided to stay where we were until dawn. After an hour or so, the rain stopped and the lightning mercifully withdrew. The canvas of our roof was sodden and dripping, and all around us we could hear the voice of the
tug
, just as Hersi promised we would. When he spoke of it, however, we did not imagine we would be listening from this vantage point. The moaning of the
tug
was low and ominous, and we could feel the water sweeping and pushing against our uncertain fortress. But we were too tired to wonder whether the car would hold against the flood or not. Abdi crawled into the back, Jack and I settled ourselves in the front, and soon all three of us had fallen into a deep exhausted sleep.

In the morning, the situation had altered. The flood had abated, and we could see stones close by with which we could block the wheels. Externally, things had improved. Internally, they had worsened. We were stiff and cramped, damp, hungry, and without cigarettes. We were also extremely thirsty, for our one bottle of water had long since gone. We would not perish
of thirst with all this rain, but we would have to be thirstier than we were at the moment, before we would drink mud. I glanced at myself in the Land-Rover mirror and immediately looked away again. I was covered with clay and grime, my clothes filthy and dishevelled. I had never felt more demoralized and miserable in my life. Last night we were keyed up, tense, ready for anything, but now that feeling was gone. We were depressed, wondering how long it would take us to get back to Hargeisa, or if we would get back at all. The thought of slogging through the mud again filled us with weariness.

We read these thoughts in each other's faces, but we did not express them. We had developed, all at once, a reluctance to say anything discouraging. It was better not to talk at all. We began to gather stones, and finally got the Land-Rover out of the gumbo and into action once more. We struggled along the Wadda Gumerad, feeling the road slippery and treacherous underneath us. We had only gone without food and water for twenty-four hours. Compared to the tribesmen in the
Jilal
drought, this was nothing. But it was quite enough. My mouth tasted of bile, and I began to feel the nausea of emptiness.

“We try to pass Wadda Beris way,” Abdi said.

“All right.” We were in his hands. We had faith that he would do the best thing possible. We travelled quietly, talking very little, trying to reconcile ourselves to the idea of another day without food, wondering how soon we would have to drink the water from the dank puddles along the road.

But luck was with us. The rain held off, and in the afternoon we sighted Wadda Beris, the brown rain-soaked huts and the clay-and-wattle tea shop of Haji Elmi, the old man who had once shown Jack the tattered letter received twenty years before from the Englishman who had hunted in Somaliland long ago. And here was Haji Elmi himself.

“
Salaam aleikum
–”

He was flustered at the sight of us, so bedraggled, but he did not forget his manners. Because he was old, and given to formalities, he used the Arabic greeting rather than the Somali, for we were foreigners. He was thin and stooped, with a white beard. His frayed green and black robe and ancient khaki jacket hung lankly on his withered body. Abdi explained our plight, and Haji Elmi clucked his tongue like a mother hen and ushered us in to his tea shop.

A small square building, it was, clay plastered over branches, roofed with flattened paraffin tins. Inside, the roof was supported by gnarled
galol
branches, and the floor was earthen. A fire glowed in one corner, and into this fire a slender log was being fed, the bulk of the wood jutting out across the room. The air was heavy and pungent with woodsmoke. A few wooden benches were set around the room, and some coarse straw mats.

Haji Elmi's two boys, grandsons perhaps, bustled around and made sweet spiced tea for us, and soon the old man was handing us plates of dried dates and bowls of steamed rice moistened with
ghee
, clarified butter made from goat's milk. It had been a long drought, and there was not much food in any of the encampments throughout the Haud. But whatever he had, Haji Elmi gave to us. We crammed the rice and dates into our mouths – we had never eaten a meal as good as this one. When we had finished, we saw that the old man was searching through his treasure chest, a large tin box with a brass padlock.

“One still left – yes, I think so –”

Finally he found what he had been looking for. He held it up – a slightly mouldy pack of Player's cigarettes. We could hardly believe it. This man was a wonder.

Next he brought a blanket and pillow, both embroidered in the Somali traditional designs, birds and stiff-petalled flowers in brilliant red and green and yellow. These he placed in an alcove for me, so I could rest before we continued our journey. While I was lying down, Haji Elmi talked with Jack, displaying the ceremonial sword he once received for saving the life of a district commissioner during a riot.

“I take the stones on my own body,” he said, “on my own body.”

In my alcove, I listened and wished he had not spoken in this way, sanctimoniously. But I recognized that the thought was foolish. He was not perfectly designed and lifeless like a cardboard cut-out figure.

We were not surprised when he came to us, many months later, with a flowery petition requesting Jack's help in obtaining government payment for a small
balleh
which Haji Elmi had got his grandsons to dig and from which he had been selling the water at a profit quite handsome enough to have made his enterprise worth while without any attempt at procuring a completely unwarranted subsidy. Haji Elmi was not surprised, either, when Jack said he had no power to help the old man in such a request. He had not really expected Jack to plead the unlikely case with the government. But it might have worked – it was worth a try, anyway. Haji Elmi had a sharp eye for a shilling, and he was addicted to intrigue and oratory. The petition was as much a part of his nature as the proud display of the ceremonial sword or the much-folded letter, and neither aspect of him was in fundamental disagreement with the generosity he showed us in his tea shop the first day of the rains.

That day at Wadda Beris, when we rose to leave, he refused to take from us a chit for money in payment of the
meal and cigarettes. No, he told us – he could not take payment for such a thing. If he met us in Hargeisa or if we came out to Wadda Beris under different circumstances, that would be another matter. But this time we were travellers in need, and a basic tenet of Islam was that the hungry wayfarer must be fed.