Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale (14 page)

There were about twenty huts all told in the village, all belonging to the same family. The ‘ancestor’ was a woman so incredibly ancient that she might have represented a statue of old age. She was very tall, and
generally walked nearly bent double, but when she drew herself to her full height, she was terrifying. She did not look at all like a woman, but like a man, a man who resembles a horse. Her immense eyes were further lengthened towards the temples. Strange fires must have burned in those eyes many, many years before. Now they were blurred, the pupils covered with a bluish film, as if they had ceased to look on anything living, or show interest in any human being. Before me I felt I had the spectre of a dead world, with a withered heart incapable of any emotion, a creature older than time, which had lost all its instincts and forgotten all its affections. The others addressed her with great respect, in some unknown tongue in which were mingled a few words of Arabic They explained to her that we wanted water, for this life-giving element belonged to her. The fleshless spectre was the guardian of the treasure.

Without a word she got up, leaning on her two sticks, and we followed her towards a sort of amphitheatre hollowed out in the centre of the island. It looked like a disused quarry, with vertical sides about twenty-five feet high. At the foot of this circular wall, little heaps of stones like tombs were arranged. There were nearly two hundred of these heaps, a few yards apart.

A flock of white goats was drinking from little clay troughs filled by women who drew the water in leather bags from a deep hole. This water was brackish and had a strong magnesia content; it was undrinkable. This, we were told, was only for the cattle; there was much better water. Salah had a smattering of the language of Badhour, for he had lived for a long time in the Sudan. He acted as interpreter and arranged the price. After long palavers, during which the old woman did not move a muscle, it was agreed that I should pay a thaler arid a half for the right to take water from one of the cisterns closed by the heaps of stones. There were different qualities, it appeared, and this price was for one of the best.

The old woman went up to one of the heaps, bent down and with careful gestures removed the stones one by one, while we formed a respectful circle round her. We felt a sort of awe, as if it were a magic ceremony, and she was going to mutter an incantation so that the clear water might gush forth. One has to be in this arid country, burnt by the leaden sun and dried by fiery winds, to understand the emotion we felt at the sight of those rocks which were to give us water. At last all the stones were removed, and a screen of branches appeared. Under it was
the mouth of a hole twenty inches in diameter. This was the cistern. A hollow about seven feet deep stretched in a vault under the rock. In the foot of this hole was a sheet of water, so clear that I had to drop a pebble into it to convince myself that it was really there.

A man lowered himself into the hole and drew some water. It was very good, pure as the water of a mountain spring. We had the right to take all we wanted, until the cistern was empty. It appeared that when these cavities were emptied, they gradually refilled, the water oozing out of the rocky sides. However, at this time of year many were dried up. So it really was water of the previous year we had taken, for the next rains would not fall until September, when they would refill the mysterious reservoirs which fed these miraculous cisterns.

The night of the Friday on which the body of the Prophet (on whom be prayer and peace) was brought to rest in the Kabba in Mecca, the Holy City where he had been born, a miraculous star waved its golden hair across the sky. The constellation of the Lion was completely covered by it. Led by this divine sign, two hundred pilgrims set out for Mecca across thé murderous deserts of Nubia. Two moons had waxed and waned since they had left their villages, when they stopped on the shores of an unknown sea, where blue fishes flew through the air like the birds of heaven. Before this stretch of water with its limitless horizon from under which the sun rose each morning, they gave themselves up to discouragement, and for the first time lost faith in their celestial guide. And that night, the miraculous star failed to appear.

The oldest of them, Cheik Badhour, realized the sin they had committed in letting insidious doubts filter into their hearts and destroy their faith, and he decided they must do penance. Perhaps Allah in his mercy would take pity on them and send them help. He led his companions on to a peninsula in the form of a plateau which jutted like an immense nave into
the sea. There, all swore to await death in unshakable faith in him who had no ancestors and who will have no descendants, in Allah, for there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. In vain the burning heat of the sun and the devils of thirst tortured them; not one, not even the youngest, uttered a single complaint.

When Friday evening came, the sun set in a welter of crimson and, their minds already a little crazed with the approach of death, they thought they saw the orb of day expiring in his blood, like the lamb whose throat is cut on the day of sacrifice. However, they said the prayer of El Acha, just as usual, all lined up behind Cheik Badhour, who conducted the ritual Raka, reciting verses from the Koran. Suddenly, the sky was rent asunder by bands of jagged fire, the earth trembled and the sea lashed itself into tremendous waves. But the faithful remained prostrate, humbly waiting for Allah to work his will.

In the morning, a radiant sun rose over a glassy sea, but the peninsula on which the faithful had been kneeling had broken off from the mainland and was now entirely surrounded by water. They understood that God had pardoned them by saving their bodies from the loathsome beasts that crept, howling, round their retreat every night. So they all forced themselves to a supreme effort, and started to hollow out their tombs. In them they would lie and await death, since such was the will of Allah. Hardly had they scratched the stony soil with their bleeding nails than it became softer, and little pools of clear water formed. This miracle saved their lives. They were able to subsist until a vessel came one day and took them to Djeddah.

And from that day the cisterns have remained, one for each tomb. Down the centuries they have given the water which is life to those who passed through this thirsty land, and never once have they all dried up. Their lesson to men is that faith is precious to believers as the spring in the desert, and that by faith one can move mountains.

One can look to the future with a lighter heart when one knows that the water-barrels are full. The miraculous cisterns of the island of Badhour had taken a weight off my mind, and since our call there we had tacked night and day, with the tenacity of an insect which keeps doggedly climbing up a slope, heedless of the fact that it always falls back to the bottom again. In spite of this, we were all in high spirits. Perhaps the water of Badhour inspired in us some of the faith to which it owed its origin, and we did advance, though with maddening slowness.

I ventured into the Bay of Berenice, which is noted on my chart ‘unhealthy bay’, which in naval terms means strewn with uncharted rocks. Nevertheless, I crossed it without encountering a single obstacle, and reached the end of the bay, where I anchored on the sandy bottom. There were plenty of rocks under the water in the natural harbour where in days of old had stood the town of Berenice, to which came the caravans from Upper Egypt, with merchandise for export to Arabia and Persia.

The solitude was most impressive. The arid plains stretched up to a distant chain of mountains all bristling with sharp peaks and gigantic needles. On the steep slopes of one of these mountains was an enormous rock shaped like the handle of a dagger. For this reason the sailors who prepared the chart of this region had called it the ‘Dagger of Berenice’. Over all was the sand, levelling everything into a monotonous plain. Only a few summits of volcanic hills which seemed to have slipped down into the plain emerged here and there like islets, and the setting sun stretched out their shadows fantastically over the level sand.

The climate here must have changed too in the last few thousand years. No water was now to be found, and that, of course, means death and abandon in these fiery latitudes. This deserted corner of the world might have served as an indication of what our whole planet will perhaps look like one day, when all the water in it has dried up. This shroud of yellow sand stretching illimitably where whole tribes once lived their busy lives in prosperous cities, this silence untroubled even by the hum of an insect, these barren and skeleton-like mountains against the copper
sky without rain or cloud, all these thing so motionless and changeless seemed to be asleep under a magician’s wand. Everything was of the same colour, that ghostly yellow of the Egyptian soil which deepens to golden at the sunset hour, when the sky becomes stained with rose and purple. The blue of the sea, the agitation of the waves, and the dazzling whiteness of the foam which hissed over the sand, made a startling contrast of life in face of all this death. I had seen the volcanic chaos in the south of the Red Sea, and it had made me think of the creation of the world, when the mountains emerging from the generating warmth of the sea had not yet taken form, but this landscape suggested rather a world too old, a world expiring, on which no indication was left that men had once lived there.

The aspect of nature had changed abruptly as soon as we passed the twenty-third line of latitude. The nights were not so hot now, and the air was drier, so that our skins were freed from the constant moisture and eruptions whose itching had made our nights an agony. All this now disappeared as if by magic.

My men had never been so far north, and they were full of astonishment at the lengthening of the days, the lingering twilights, and the fact that the Pole Star climbed ever higher in the sky. As soon as the sun had set and the desert sand had breathed all its heat into the transparent air, a cool breeze came down to the sea and a heavy dew fell over everything. I took advantage of this little land breeze to set sail. I was certainly a little rash to navigate by night in those ill-reputed waters, but the joy of getting on my way, steering straight north with a bellying sail after so many weary days of tacking, this joy that only a sailing-ship can give to a mariner, was too irresistible for me to listen to the voice of prudence. Anyhow, life would be pretty dreary if we always acted reasonably; it does one good to be a little mad at times.

Nothing happened to punish our temerity. Mile after mile the
boutre
moved forward, silent and swift, over the calm waters of the bay towards the north-west, this north-west so jealously guarded by that everlasting contrary wind, and my heart sang with triumph. At noon we were right out at sea. The weather was still very fine, but the wind had shifted round to the north. I held on my route on the starboard tack, all sails set, full and by, running six knots like a steamer. The crew, having no work to do, lay in the shade of the sails, playing games which ashore would be disdained by children of eight.

At such moments the slightest incident, even if it is only the sighting of an old plank floating on the water, creates a passionate interest. But for the marvellous weather and the idle condition of our minds, we should never have bothered to manoeuvre so as to pick up the object which we saw floating a few cables’ lengths away, and which proved to be an empty packing-case. It was in perfect condition; a single spar had been prised off its lid to take out the contents, and it was full of small fishes, which had been overjoyed to find this providential refuge from their enemies. Poor things, they could not have foreseen that they had simply exchanged one danger for another, and that they would be eaten just the same, only fried. In this life it is always the unexpected that happens. I myself had no idea that by picking up this empty box I had changed my destiny, or rather I did not know that Fate had sent it across my path to save me from a terrible danger into which my rashness was to lead me. The cabin-boy was just about to chop up the case to light his oven fire, and I had given him leave to do so, when the idea struck me that we might use the case to hold our sack of biscuits. So I had it put in the hold alongside the eight cases of hashish, which were very similar in size and appearance. In this way, our biscuits would not be broken to fragments as always happened when they were in a sack, for the men kept walking over it.

Towards evening, the breeze hauled to the north-west, and began to blow with its habitual violence. Farewell our pleasant idleness; it was once more the struggle with sea and wind, under reduced canvas and with the hatches fastened down. No fear of our amusing ourselves picking up empty cases now. The farther north we got, the more violent became the wind. There was not a cloud in the sky, only a faint mist which never lifted round the horizon. Probably it is this atmospheric condition which gives North Africa its magnificent sunsets, which are always pointed out to tourists as the classic background for the pyramids at Giza. Out here in the open sea, this dimness prevented me from seeing the outline of the mountains and finding out exactly where I was.

For six days I had not been able to identify a single characteristic peak, and the indications on my chart did not at all coincide with what I could see. For instance I read ‘sharp peak’, ‘haycock’, ‘hummock’, and when I looked, expecting to see them, I saw mountains of an entirely different shape. All the same, my observations were exact and my calculations
correct. We were undoubtedly in latitude 24° 15’. I began to look out for the lighthouse at Sanghaneb, which stands in the middle of the Red Sea on a reef. But in the evening, as the sun set behind them, a chain of mountains stood out against the red sky with sharp peaks, haycocks, hummocks and all the rest of it, such as I had vainly looked for two days before.