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.