I resolved to look around for water, for I had none with me. I found nothing in the cab. But I did discover some: attached with ropes to the bed of the truck, near the rear, underneath, were four goatskins, two on the left side and two on the right. The hides had been rather poorly cured, then sewn together in such a way that they retained the animal’s shape. One of the goat’s legs served as a drinking spout.
I sighed with relief, but only momentarily. I began to calculate. Without water, you can survive in the desert for twenty-four hours; with great difficulty, forty-eight or so. The math is simple. Under these conditions, you secrete in one day approximately ten liters of sweat, and to survive you must drink a similar amount of water. Deprived of it, you will immediately start to feel thirsty. Genuine, prolonged thirst in a hot and dry climate is an exhausting, ravaging sensation, harder to control than hunger. After a few hours of it you become lethargic and limp, weak and disoriented. Instead of speaking, you babble, ever less cogently. That same evening, or the next day, you get a high fever and quickly die.
If Salim doesn’t share his water with me, I thought, I will die today. Even if he does, we will have only enough left for one more day — which means we will both die tomorrow, the day after at the latest.
Trying to stop these thoughts, I decided to observe him closely. Covered with grease and sweating, Salim was still taking the engine apart, unscrewing screws and removing cables, but with no rhyme or reason, like a child furiously destroying a toy that won’t work. On the fenders, on the bumper, lay countless springs, valves, compression rings, and wires; some had already fallen to the ground. I left him and went around to the other side of the truck, where there was still some shade. I sat down on the ground and leaned my back against the wheel.
Salim.
I knew nothing about the man who held my life in his hands. Or, at least, who held it for this one day. I thought, if Salim chases me away from the truck and the water — after all, he had a hammer in his hand and probably a knife in his pocket, and, on top of that, enjoyed a significant physical advantage — if he orders me to leave and march off into the desert, I won’t last even until nightfall. And it seemed to me that was precisely what he might choose to do. He would thereby extend his life, after all — or, if help arrives in time, he might even save it.
Clearly Salim was not a professional driver, or at any rate, not a driver of a Berliet truck. He also didn’t know the area well. (On the other hand, can one really know the desert, where successive storms and tempests constantly alter the landscape, moving mountains of sand to ever different sites and transposing features of the landscape with impunity?) It is common practice in these parts for someone with even a small financial windfall to immediately hire another with less money to carry out his tasks for him. Maybe the rightful driver of this truck had hired Salim to take it in his stead to one of the oases. And hereabouts no one will ever admit to not knowing or not being capable of something. If you approach a taxi driver in a city, show him an address, and ask him if he knows where it is, he will say yes without a second’s hesitation. And it is only later, when you are driving all over the city, round and round, that you fully realize he has no idea where to go.
The sun was climbing higher and higher. The desert, that motionless, petrified ocean, absorbed its rays, grew hotter, and began to burn. The hour was approaching when everything would become a hell — the earth, the sky, us. The Yoruba are said to believe that if a man’s shadow abandons him, he will die. All the shadows were beginning to shrink, dwindle, fade. The dread afternoon hours were almost upon us, the time of day when people and objects have no shade, exist and yet do not exist, reduced to a glowing, incandescent whiteness.
I thought that this moment had arrived, but suddenly I noticed before me an utterly different sight. The lifeless, still horizon — so crushed by the heat that it seemed nothing could ever issue forth from it — all at once sprang to life and became green. As far as the eye could see stood tall, magnificent palm trees, entire groves of them along the horizon, growing thickly, without interruption. I also saw lakes — yes, enormous blue lakes, with animated, undulating surfaces. Gorgeous shrubs also grew there, with wide-spreading branches of a fresh, intense, succulent, deep green. All this shimmered continuously, sparkled, pulsated, as if it were wreathed in a light mist, soft-edged and elusive. And everywhere — here, around us, and there, on the horizon — a profound, absolute silence reigned: the wind did not blow, and the palm groves had no birds.
“Salim!” I called. “Salim!”
A head emerged from under the hood. He looked at me.
“Salim!” I repeated once more, and pointed.
Salim glanced where I had shown him, unimpressed. In my dirty, sweaty face he must have read wonder, bewilderment, and rapture — but also something else besides, which clearly alarmed him, for he walked up to the side of the truck, untied one of the goatskins, took a few sips, and wordlessly handed me the rest. I grabbed the rough leather sack and began to drink. Suddenly dizzy, I leaned my shoulder against the truck bed so as not to fall. I drank and drank, sucking fiercely on the goat’s leg and still staring at the horizon. But as I felt my thirst subsiding, and the madness within me dying down, the green vista began to vanish. Its colors faded and paled, its contours shrank and blurred. By the time I had emptied the goatskin, the horizon was once again flat, empty, and lifeless. The water, disgusting Saharan water — warm, dirty, thick with sand and sludge — extended my life but took away my vision of paradise. The crucial thing, though, was the fact that Salim himself had given me the water to drink. I stopped being afraid of him. I felt I was safe — at least, until the moment when we would be down to our last sip.
We spent the second half of the day lying underneath the truck, in its faint, bleached shade. In this world circled all about with flaming horizons, Salim and I were the only life. I inspected the ground within my arm’s reach, the nearest stones, searching for some living thing, anything that might twitch, move, slither. I remembered that somewhere on the Sahara there lives a small beetle which the Tuareg call Ngubi. When it is very hot, according to legend, Ngubi is tormented by thirst, desperate to drink. Unfortunately, there is no water anywhere, and only burning sand all around. So the small beetle chooses an incline — this can be a sloping fold of sand — and with determination begins to climb to its summit. It is an enormous effort, a Sisyphean task, because the hot and loose sand constantly gives way, carrying the beetle down with it, right back to where he began his toils. Which is why, before too long, the beetle starts to sweat. A drop of moisture collects at the end of his abdomen and swells. Then Ngubi stops climbing, curls up, and plunges his mouth into that very bead.
He drinks.
Salim has several biscuits in a paper bag. We drink the second goatskin of water. Two remain. I consider writing something. (It occurs to me that this is often done at such moments.) But I don’t have the strength. I’m not really in pain. It’s just that everything is becoming empty. And within this emptiness another one is growing.