Now, for all my loose talk about words, we have been stuffing the poor officers here with nothing but lies. Mag took care of all that; preening herself and ogling the officers during the lunch they gave us in their mess. I think they have decided we are a thankless lot, just odd enough to be harmless and let alone. The border we have to cross without asking their permission is invisible, of course, but it lies just out beyond the outskirts of town, on the far side of the oued bed where we can see camels grazing near a few nomad fires. In the mad Arab scramble of our arrival here at high noon, Ana Lyse caught a ragged little nomad girl trying to pick our pockets as she slunk up to our truck, pretending to beg. Ana Lyse caught the child by the louse-ridden plaits of her hair and was trying to keep the brat from sinking her teeth in her arms as she panted to me: “Here, Olav, quick! Give me a ten thousand franc note: I’ve got to impress this child.”
As I fumbled for the money, Media butted in with: “You’re not going to give that kid all that cash!”
The kid caught on quicker than she did to what this move was about. Any random observer would have thought, of course, that it was just one of those casual tourist attacks on a native child but Ana Lyse knows her Morocco. She twisted the ears of the urchin as she gave her the money and then, without letting go of her pigtails, she gave her a good sound slap as she whispered something fierce in Arabic into her ear. There’s more money than this where this came from; she was saying, of course. We want three camels and a man to guide us south. The big sum of money was to impress someone we haven’t seen yet but hope that we will after we’ve taken our siestas. We hope to meet him walking down by the oued. I hope no lovelorn lieutenant takes it in his head to follow the girls with a jeep.
near Elayoun
Saharan security seems to have been magically suspended for us, as if we were the Three Wise Kings traveling through the night. In the gray-green light of pre-dawn at this halt, we look more like three tourists who have been taken on too long a ride by some rascally guide. Indeed, here he is with us: Mohamed, looking as picturesque and unreliable as anyone could wish. We have never seen anything of him but his shifty, narrow eyes but Mag Media says he is, “cute.” Right now, she is singing snatches of the old “Desert Song,” as she ties up her gray hair with a ribbon and tries to get the guide to let down his veil. She was begging Ana Lyse to help her in this game with a few Arab phrases when the guide said most unexpectedly: “Soy hijo de España.” When I asked what that meant, Mag informed me acidly that everyone in the world speaks Spanish. I understand less Spanish even than Arabic, although what little I picked up last year in Tam was quite another dialect, I am told. At least, our guide now seems a little less sinister than he did, even if he will not unveil for what he says rather alarmingly are “political reasons”!
Later
We are traveling fast and light to avoid meeting anyone on the trail and that means, of course, that we take the long inland route although, because of the mirage, the sea seems never far away. Tonight, Ana Lyse can hardly open her eyes because they are all puffed up by infection. Mag Media says she has become quite deaf, probably from the sound of her own voice. The desert makes people very disagreeable. We are all suffering from thirst, sunburn and bites. I begin to wonder how I let myself be swept away by these two determined females but, of course, Thay is somewhere down here ahead, waiting for me. All this afternoon, we trudged on through mirage which surrounded us like shimmering seawater with the quicksilver habit of suddenly sliding off like some science fiction cloud of intelligence or a huge soluble fish which can slither over land, suddenly deciding to surge up from one depression and slide down into another. We were plodding across an ancient lava flow, porous and crumbling, full of potholes and even giant caves filled with stalagmites over which we passed on sounding stone arches. Some potholes in the black rock were filled with bleached bones, making them look like huge nests blanched with birdlime. We rode sidesaddle on our camels, our backs to the sun, but we are sadly unprepared for such a journey. I wonder how long we can go on like this? The air smells, tastes of ozone, leaving an iodine taste in the back of my throat which reminds me of childhood delirium and intense anxiety. I am almost too tired to sleep or I would try and contact Doktor Aalto.
In the Middle of Nowhere
Ah, this is much better! We are sailing in an air-conditioned Landrover over ground so level that I can write in this hard-backed notebook on my knees. I would never have dreamed Doktor Aalto could be so severe with me. “Olav!” he snapped as soon as he appeared on my dream-screen. “Don’t you even know when you’re in the wrong dream!’ He screamed at me so loud I almost woke up. “Who do you think you are, Olav — Stanley looking for Livingstone? That happened a lot further south and a long time ago. Are you reliving some French adolescent colonial nightmare, or what! Snap out of that dream, Olav, or you are lost! Of course, I cannot imagine why you have insisted on dragging those two females along with you but I can tell you one sure thing from here: Madame Himmer won’t like it a bit! Nevertheless, you must get yourself out of there at once. Haven’t you noticed that your Sahara has been transistorized since you were there last? Haven’t you noticed that your veiled guide is wearing a Rolex? Dying of thirst on three camels, indeed, Olav! Why, the man owns a fleet of brand-new air-conditioned Landrovers. Stop dreaming: get with it!”
Doktor Aalto’s voice came across with an almost feminine cackle at times but I put that down to my own poor reception.
“Malamut” looms in sight, swimming in the air like a castle of mirage which we cannot approach by the heat of day. I am writing this under a tarpaulin I begged from our blue-veiled guide before he drove off and abandoned us here. I think he must have had some trouble with the Himmers because he said: “From here on you walk or you pay me fi’ ten fitteen thousand dollars apiece for the car.” The girls argued and I argued that the Himmers would undoubtedly pay him anything within reason to deliver us at their door but he picked up a whip that leapt into his land like a snake. Even Karl Barx, who is panting in the intolerable heat, here beside us, cringed and slunk out of the Landrover. Mohamed was out of range before Ana Lyse thought to pull out of her corsage a little pearl-handled revolver. It is a mere.22 caliber but I will handle it from now on.