“More often not,” I said. But Kamel looked at me seriously.
“Remember that of all the great prophets in history—Moses, Buddha, John the Baptist, Zarathustra, Christ—Muhammed was the only one who actually went to war. He raised an army of forty thousand and, leading it himself on horseback, attacked Mecca. And won it back!”
“How about Joan of Arc?” I asked with a smile.
“She didn’t found a religion,” he replied. “But she had the right spirit. However, the jihad isn’t what you Westerners think. Have you ever read the Koran?” When I shook my head, he said, “I’ll have a good copy sent to you—in English. I think you’d find it interesting. And different than you might imagine.”
Kamel picked up the tab, and we went out to the street. “Now for that tour of Algiers I promised you,” he said. “I’d like to begin by showing you the Poste Centrale.”
We headed down to the big central post office on the waterfront. En route he said, “All the phone lines are run through the Poste Centrale. It’s another of those systems we’ve inherited from the French, where everything runs into the center and nothing can get back out again—just like the streets. The international calls are put through by hand. You’ll enjoy seeing it—especially as you’re going to have to deal with this archaic phone system to design the computer model I’ve just signed for. Much of the data you’ll be collecting will come via phone lines.”
I wasn’t certain how the model he’d described to me would require telecommunications, but we’d agreed not to speak of it in public, so I said only, “Yes, I had some trouble placing a long-distance call last night.”
We went up the steps to the Poste Centrale. Like all the other buildings, it was large and dark with marble floors and high ceilings. Elaborate chandeliers hung from the ceiling like a bank office designed in the 1920s. Everywhere were large framed photos of Houari Boumédienne, the president of Algeria. He had a long face, large sad eyes, and a heavy Victorian mustache.
There was a lot of empty space in all the buildings I’d seen, and the poste was no exception. Though Algiers was a big city, there never seemed to be as many people about as there was space to fill, even on the streets. Coming from New York, this made an impression upon me. As we crossed the poste, the sound of our clicking heels echoed off the walls. People spoke in hushed whispers, as if it were the public library.
At the far corner, in an open space by itself, sat a tiny switchboard no larger than a kitchen table. It looked as if it had been designed by Alexander Graham Bell. Behind it was a small tight-faced woman in her forties, with a concoction of bright hennaed hair piled on top of her head. Her mouth was a slash of blood-red lipstick, a color they hadn’t made since the Second World War, and her flowered voile dress was vintage, too. A large box of chocolates with loose wrappers sat on top of the switchboard.
“If it isn’t the minister!” said the woman, pulling a plug out of her switchboard and standing up to greet him. She put both her hands out, and Kamel took them in his. “I got your chocolates,” she said, motioning to the box. “Swiss! You never do anything second-rate.” She had a low, gravelly voice, like that of a chanteuse in a Montmartre dive. There was some of the roustabout in her personality, and I liked her at once. She spoke French like the Marseilles sailors that Harry’s maid Valerie could imitate so well.
“Therese, I’d like you to meet Mademoiselle Catherine Velis,” Kamel told her. “The mademoiselle is doing some important computer work for the ministry—for OPEC, in fact. I thought you’d be a good person for her to know.”
“Ahhh, OPEC!” said Therese, making big eyes and shaking her fingers. “Very big. Very important. This one must be a clever one!” she said of me. “You know this OPEC, she will make a big splash pretty soon, you listen to me.”
“Therese knows everything.” Kamel laughed. “She listens in on all the transcontinental phone calls. She knows more than the ministry.”
“Oh, of course,” she said. “Who would take care of matters if I were not here?”
“Therese is pied noir,” Kamel told me.
“That means ‘black foot,’” she said in English. Then, lapsing again into French, she explained, “I was born with my feet in Africa, but I am not one of these Arabs. My people come from the Lebanon.”
I seemed destined to remain confused about the genetic distinctions that were made in Algeria. Though it all seemed very important to them.
“Miss Velis had some trouble placing a phone call last night,” Kamel told her.
“What time was it?” she wanted to know.
“About eleven P.M.,” I said. “I tried to call New York from the El Riadh.”
“But I was here!” she exclaimed. Then, shaking her head, she informed me, “These ‘types’ that work in the hotel switchboards are very lazy. They cut off connections. Sometimes you must wait eight hours to put a call through. Next time you let me know, and I will arrange everything. You wish to make a call tonight? Tell me when, and it is done.”
“I want to send a message to a computer in New York,” I told her, “to let someone know I’ve arrived. It’s a voice recorder, you talk the message and it’s digitally recorded.”
“Very modern!” said Therese. “I can do it in English for you, if you’d like.”
We agreed, and I wrote down the message to Nim, telling him I’d arrived safely and would go to the mountains soon. He would know what that meant: that I was going to meet Llewellyn’s antique dealer.
“Excellent,” said Therese, folding the note. “I will send this off at once. Now that we’ve met, your calls will always receive top priority. Come and visit me again sometime.”
As Kamel and I left the poste, he said, “Therese is the most important person in Algeria. She can make or break a political career just by unplugging someone she doesn’t like. I think she likes you. Who knows, she might even make you president!” He laughed.
We were walking along the waterfront back to the ministry, and he commented casually, “I noticed in the message you sent that you planned to go to the mountains. Was there somewhere specific you wanted to go?”
“Only to meet a friend of a friend,” I said noncommittally. “And to see a bit of the country.”
“I ask, because the mountains here are the home of the Kabyle. I grew up there, and I know the area quite well. I could send a car for you or drive you myself, if you’d like.” Though Kamel’s offer was as casual as his offer to show me Algiers, I noted another tone beneath it I couldn’t identify.
“I thought you grew up in England?” I said.
“I went there when I was fifteen to attend public school. Before that, I ran barefoot through the hills of the Kabyle like a wild goat. You should really have a guide. It’s a magnificent region, but easy to get lost. Road maps of Algeria aren’t all they should be.”
He was doing a bit of a sales pitch, and I thought it might be impolitic to decline his offer. “It might be best if I went there with you,” I said. “You know, last night when I came from the airport, I was followed by Sécurité. A fellow named Sharrif. Do you think that means anything?”
Kamel had stopped in his tracks. We were standing at the port, and the giant steamers rocked gently up and down on the slow tide.
“How do you know it was Sharrif?” he said abruptly.
“I met him. He … had me brought to his office at the airport as I was going through Customs. He asked me a few questions, was very charming, then released me. But he had me followed—”
“What sorts of questions?” Kamel interrupted. His face was very gray. I tried to remember everything that had passed, recounting it all to Kamel. I even told him the taxi driver’s commentary.
Kamel was silent when I’d finished. He seemed to be thinking something over. At last he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d mention this to no one else. I’ll look into it, but I shouldn’t be too concerned. It’s probably a case of mistaken identity.”
We walked along the port back tow
ard the ministry. As we reached the ministry entrance, Kamel said, “Should Sharrif contact you again for any reason, tell him you’ve informed me of all this.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “And tell him that I will be taking you into the Kabyle.”
THE SOUND OF THE DESERT
But the Desert hears, though men do not hear, and will one day be transformed into a Desert of sound.
—Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
THE SAHARA
FEBRUARY 1793
Mireille stood on the Erg and surveyed the vast red desert.
South of her lay the dunes of Ez-Zemoul El Akbar, rolling in waves over a hundred feet high. From this distance in the morning light, they looked like blood-red talons rippling the sand.
Behind her rose the Atlas Mountains, still purpled with shadow and shrouded in low-hanging snow clouds. They brooded over this empty desert—a wilderness larger than any on earth—a hundred thousand miles of deep sands the color of crumbled brick, where nothing moved but crystals borne by the breath of God.
“Sahra,” it was called. The South. The Wasteland. Kingdom of the Aroubi—the Arab, Wanderer in the Wilderness.
But the man who’d brought her here was not an Aroubi. Shahin had fair skin with hair and eyes the color of old bronze. His people spoke the tongue of the ancient Berber who’d ruled this barren desert for over five thousand years. They’d come, he said, from the mountains and the Ergs—that stately range of mesas separating the mountains behind her from the sands that spread before her. This chain of mesas they had named “Areg”: the Dune. And they called themselves the Tou-Areg. Those who are bound to the Dune. The Touareg knew a secret as ancient as their lineage, a secret buried in the sands of time. This was the secret Mireille had traveled so many months, so many miles, to find.
It was only a month since the night she’d gone with Letizia to the hidden Corsican cove. There she took a small fishing boat across the raging winter sea to Africa, where her guide Shahin, the Falcon, waited at the docks of Dar-el-Beida to take her into the Maghreb. He was dressed in a long black haik, his face shrouded in the indigo litham, a double veil through which he could see but not be seen. For Shahin was one of the “Blue Men,” those sacred tribes of the Ahaggar where only the men wore veils against the desert winds, tinting their skin an unearthly shade of blue. The nomads called this special sect Maghribi—Magicians—those who could unfurl the secrets of Maghreb, the Sunset-land. They knew where the key to the Montglane Service was to be found.
This was why Letizia and her mother had sent her into Africa, why Mireille had crossed the High Atlas in winter—three hundred miles through blizzards and treacherous terrain. For once she found the secret, she’d be the only living person who’d touched the pieces—and knew the key to their power.
The secret was not hidden beneath a rock in the desert. Nor was it tucked inside a musty library. It lay hidden within the softly whispered tales of these nomadic men. Moving across the sands by night, passing from mouth to mouth, the secret had moved as the sparks of a dying bonfire are scattered across the silent sands and buried in darkness. The secret was hidden in the very sounds of the desert, in the tales of her people—in the mysterious whispers of the rocks and stones themselves.
Shahin lay on his belly in the brush-covered trench they’d dug in the sand. Overhead, the falcon circled in a slow, lazy spiral, scanning the brush for motion. Beside Shahin, Mireille squatted low, scarcely breathing. She watched her companion’s tense profile: the long narrow nose, hooked like the peregrine for which he was named, the pale yellow eyes, grim mouth, and softly wrapped headcloth, with long braided hair tumbling down his back. He’d removed his traditional black haik and wore, like Mireille, only a soft hooded wool djellaba dyed a clear bright russet from the juice of the abal bush, the color of the desert. The falcon that circled above could not distinguish them from the sands and brush that formed their camouflage.
“It is a hurr—a Sakr falcon,” Shahin whispered to Mireille. “Not so swift or aggressive as the peregrine, but smarter and with better vision. He’ll make a good bird for you.”
Mireille must catch and train a falcon, he’d told her, before they crossed the Ez-Zemoul El Akbar at the lip of the Great Eastern Erg—the broadest, highest range of dunes on earth. This was not only the test of worth customary among the Touareg—whose women both hunted and ruled—it was also a necessity for survival.
For ahead of them lay fifteen days, perhaps twenty, in the dunes, blazing by day and freezing by night. They could only press their camels at one mile per hour as the dark red sands slipped away beneath them. At Khardaia they’d bought provisions: coffee and flour, honey and dates—and bags of stinking dried sardines to feed the camels. But now that they’d left the salt marshes and stony Hammada with its last trickle of dying springs, they’d have no other food, unless they could hunt. And no species on earth possessed the endurance, eyesight, tenacity, and predatory spirit to hunt this wild and barren land—except the falcon.
Mireille watched as the falcon seemed to hover effortlessly above them on the hot desert breeze. Shahin reached inside his pack and withdrew the tame pigeon they’d brought. He bound a thin string to its leg; the other end he wrapped about a stone. Then he released the bird into the air. The pigeon beat upward into the sky. In an instant the falcon had spotted it and seemed to stop in midair, gathering itself. It plummeted swiftly as a bullet and struck. Feathers flew out in all directions as the two birds tumbled to earth.
Mireille began to move forward, but Shahin restrained her with a hand.
“Let him taste the blood,” he whispered. “The blood erases memory and caution.”
The falcon was on the ground tearing at the pigeon when Shahin began to tug at the string. The falcon fluttered up a bit but settled back in the sand, confused. Shahin tugged the string again—so it appeared that the pigeon, crippled, was flapping across the sand. As he’d predicted, the falcon quickly returned to gorge on the warm flesh.
“Move up as close as possible,” Shahin whispered to Mireille. “When he’s at one meter, catch him by the leg.”
Mireille looked at him as if he were mad but moved as close as she could to the edge of the brush, still squatting for the spring. Her heart was beating as Shahin tugged the pigeon closer and closer. The falcon was within feet of her, still worrying its prey, when Shahin tapped her on the arm. Without a beat, she dove through the brush and grasped the falcon’s leg. It wheeled, beating its wings against her, and with a cry drove its sharp-toothed beak into her wrist.
Shahin was out of the brush beside her in an instant, catching the bird, hooding it with expert motions, and shackling it with a length of silken cord to the leather band he’d already bound to her left wrist.
Mireille sucked at the blood that gushed forth from her other, wounded wrist, splattering her face and hair. Clucking his tongue, Shahin tore loose a strip of muslin and bound up where the falcon had torn the flesh away. The bird’s beak had come precariously close to an artery.
“You caught him so you could eat,” he said with a wry smile, “but he’s nearly eaten you.” Taking her bandaged arm, he placed that hand against the blinded falcon that now clung with its talons to the strap on her other wrist.
“Stroke him,” he counseled her. “Let him know who is master. It requires one moon and three quarters to break a hurr—but if you live with him, eat with him, stroke him, talk to him—even sleep with him—he’ll be yours by the new moon. What name will you give him, so he can learn it?”
Mireille looked proudly at the wild creature that clung trembling to her arm. For a moment she forgot the throbbing in her wounded wrist. “Charlot,” she said. “Little Charles. I’ve captured a little Charlemagne of the skies.”
Shahin looked at her silently with his yellow eyes, then slowly pulled up his indigo veil so it covered the lower half of his face. When he spoke, the veil rippled in the dry desert air.
“Tonight we will place your mark upon him,” he said, “so he knows
he is yours alone.”
“My mark?” said Mireille.
Shahin slipped a ring from his finger and pressed it into her hand. Mireille glanced down at the signet, a block of heavy gold in her palm. Emblazoned on the top was a figure eight.
Silently she followed Shahin down the steep embankment to where their camels waited in the gully of the dune, kneeling on folded legs. She watched as he placed his knee in the camel’s saddle and the beast rose with one movement, lifting him like a feather. Mireille followed suit, holding the falcon aloft on her wrist, and they swept away across the rust-red sands.
The embers glowed low in the fire as Shahin leaned forward to place the ring in the coals. He spoke little and smiled rarely. She’d not learned much about him in the month they’d spent together. They concentrated on survival. She only knew they would reach the Ahaggar—those lava mountains that were home to the Kel Djanet Touareg—before her child was born. Of other topics, Shahin was reticent to speak, responding to all her queries with “Soon you will see.”
She was surprised, therefore, when he removed his veils and spoke, as they watched the golden ring gathering heat amid the coals.
“You are what we call a thayyib,” said Shahin, “a woman who has known a man only once—yet you are with child. Perhaps you noticed how those at Khardaia looked at you when we stopped there. Among my people there is a story. Seven thousand years before the Hegira, a woman came from the east. She traveled thousands of miles alone across the salt desert until she reached the Kel Rela Touareg. She had been cast out by her own people, for she was with child.
“Her hair was the color of the desert, like yours. Her name was Daia, which means ‘the wellspring.’ She sought shelter in a cave. The day her child was born, water sprang forth from the rock of the cave. It flows there even today, at Q’ar Daia—the cave of Daia, goddess of the wells.”
So this Khardaia, where they’d stopped for camels and supplies, was named for the strange goddess Q’ar—just like Carthage, thought Mireille. Was this Daia—or Dido—the same legend? Or the same person?