Taj and the Great Camel Trek (14 page)

The next morning I was too weak to rise from my blanket. Not only did my head hurt but my teeth ached too. I had bruises all over me, yet I hadn't been beaten. Padar pulled back the blanket to check. ‘What is the matter, beta?' He picked up some of my hair that was on the blanket. When he saw the bruises he said one word: scurvy. He'd had it himself on that expedition with Mr Warburton. He nearly died.

I showed him my sore mouth. Padar frowned. ‘I think you will lose a tooth, beta.'

‘Will I die?'

Padar stared at me; his eyes had become hollowed. ‘Our lives are in Allah's hands, but some water will help.' He went to get me a mugful.

Mr Tietkens awoke and walked around the camping area looking out at the dark sandhills and in front of them a fall in the land. I heard him talking to Mr Giles. ‘Ernest, I think we are in the vicinity of water here.'

Mr Giles wasn't as sure. ‘Are you certain? God knows
we have to find water and soon. We are in a damnable situation – I shouldn't have risked our lives.'

I glanced at Padar as he took his prayer mat away from the camp to say prayers before he found the camels. Later, Alec and Tommy did my share of the loading, then Alec helped Padar lift me onto Mustara. Alec was worried when he saw Padar rope me on. ‘Do you think that's necessary, Saleh? Can't he hold on himself?'

‘Perhaps not,' was all Padar said.

Mr Teitkens led the string as it was his turn to steer. This time he started off on foot and gave Tommy Malik to ride. ‘Go to that white sandhill on our left, Tommy, and see if you can find blacks' tracks.'

‘Yes, boss.'

We had travelled about two miles when we heard Tommy shouting. Then he came crashing through the scrub on Malik at full gallop, howling. Or was he screaming?

‘Big gabi! Plenty watta here!'

Mr Giles was hesitant. We all knew what ‘plenty watta' might mean. It was probably a tiny mud hole. ‘What sort of water? A native well? Will we need shovels?'

‘No fear shovel, that fella gabi sit down itself. Camel, he drink it himself.' In his excitement Tommy mixed up his English words.

Mr Giles gave the order and the whole string turned
after Tommy. There was open grassland, half a mile away, falling into a hollow.

‘I see emu track,' Tommy shouted. ‘I follow him.'

Had he truly found water? Mr Giles didn't say a word, just belted Reechy to a gallop. It was the first time I had seen him do that. I kept my eyes on the hollow, for that was where Tommy was headed. Did I see a faint flash of silver? It looked like a mirage on a desert horizon. I squeezed my eyes shut and knew Tommy had been fooled. It was just like my dream.

‘It is. It is!'

I opened my eyes to see Mr Giles throw his hat in the air. He didn't even bother to catch it.

Then I saw the water in the hollow – not a mirage at all. The camels didn't wait to be unloaded.

‘Rocko! Rocko!' Padar shouted at them to stop – they might lose their loads – but they bellowed and flung themselves towards the water. They waded as close as they dared, reached out, and drank. The sound of their guzzling was pure music. They must have swallowed twenty-five gallons each in those first few minutes.

The camels had come 325 miles and seventeen days without a proper drink. Mustara didn't wait for Padar to untie me. He blinked his eyelashes at me and stretched out his neck. He drank for an hour; he must have had fifty gallons. I wished I could drink like Mustara but I knew I mustn't.

What would have happened if Mr Giles hadn't noticed that Jess Young was steering wrongly? We would have missed the water: we would have died in the desert. I felt light-headed as though the water was rising up to wash over me. I hung onto Mustara; I would have fallen but the rope held me.

It was Alec who helped me down from Mustara. ‘How do you feel now, Taj?'

‘Not badly.' It was a lie. I felt happy that we had found water at last; that the camels wouldn't die, not yet, but I couldn't stand upright without Alec supporting me. He sat me under a tree and gave me water in a mug. Then he went to get my blanket from Mustara. Asad had already jumped down and was nosing around the camp. First I washed out my mouth, and when my body felt cooler I drank a small amount even though it was Ramazan.

Later, at the campfire Mr Giles said, ‘Mr Elders' camels are second to none for strength and endurance.'

Padar smiled at me and we took the compliment personally for we were the ones who bred and trained them.

Mr Giles seemed to be the most relieved out of us all, if that was possible. It was the first permanent water we had found. It must have been a strain: everyone's
hollowed eyes on him, expecting him to find water. How difficult it is being a leader. It is good when things go well, but if they don't it is always the leader's fault.

Mr Giles called the place Queen Victoria Springs after the English queen. The desert we travelled through he named Queen Victoria Desert. I wondered if people lived there and what they called it.

God is merciful and I tried to forget my moments of despair. It was good to have a bath, though Padar had to help me. The men swam naked in the waterhole while I lay submerged near the bank. Even Mr Giles and Mr Tietkens joined in the splashing games. It was a Sunday, the twenty-sixth day of September and a hundred degrees in the shade. Padar washed my clothes and helped me put on another shalwar qameez. Alec shaved after the swim and he brought his mug and soap over to me. He lathered some soap on my top lip and carefully scraped it off with his shaving knife. ‘There – you have become a man, Taj. Your first shave.' I touched my lip as Padar walked past us. Would he mind? But Padar smiled at Alec and didn't say a word.

There were many jobs to do, repairing and patching my clothes, for one. Jess Young called anyone a fop if their patches were still in the same material as the original. Alec thought this a great joke. It was hard to
find buttons to replace those lost in the scrub. At least Mr Giles had spare ones in his bag of trinkets.

Mr Young planted seeds – giant bamboo, vegetables and wattles – and Mr Giles decided to stay for a week at least, to let the camels recuperate from their long ordeal. It was good for me and I gradually regained my strength. By the third day I could help Padar and I had a lot of work checking the camels for ulcers from the casks.

My tooth never got better, and it was Peter Nicholls who had the job of pulling it out. ‘Pity we didn't have the brandy,' Jess Young said. ‘The poor chap wouldn't have felt a thing.'

Padar frowned at him and held my arms. Alec sat on my legs. I was determined not to cry out, but if Peter Nicholls' fingers weren't halfway down my throat, the other side of the desert would have heard me. It's no fun having a tooth pulled.

Alec wanted Tommy to tell a story that night.

‘Yes, you found the water here.' Mr Tietkens smiled at him. ‘You have to pay now.' The Englishmen laughed and I was struck by the renewed generosity between them.

Tommy's smile disappeared. ‘I don't tell stories.'

‘Come now,' Mr Giles said. ‘Everybody knows stories. Your people have many interesting stories. What about that giant serpent one?'

Tommy's eyes grew wide and he spoke a long low
word I didn't understand. Then he shook his head. ‘I no tell that one.'

Mr Giles persisted. ‘Didn't he live along the desert here? Doesn't he live in the sea now?'

Talk of a giant serpent that may still live there bothered me, for something was certainly bothering Tommy. Mr Giles was speaking as if it wasn't true, but by the look on Tommy's face he knew it was. It worried me for there was still a long way to travel across Western Australia and no one had done it before. What if it was dangerous as well as waterless?

‘Look at the sky, beta.' Padar had sighted the new moon. It was the end of Ramazan and time for our Eid ul Fitr, a day of special blessings. ‘Allah is sure to listen to prayers on this sacred day,' Padar said.

When I told Alec, he said, ‘Now you are better you should have your birthday as well. Then we can say you are thirteen years old.'

I found Padar repairing a saddle. ‘Alec wants to give me a birthday. What time of year was I born?'

He squinted out past the sandhills. ‘It was around this time. Close enough,' and he smiled at me. We were alone with only the camels to hear and it was a chance to finally ask him a question. ‘Padar – were you happy with my mother?'

He shifted his feet; he wasn't expecting this question. He closed his eyes against the sun. ‘Zarur, certainly. It was a good arrangement.'

The songs the men sang around the campfire spoke of love. Sometimes the English marry for love. It was
an interesting idea to me. ‘Did you love my mother?'

Padar hesitated. ‘It grew to be love. Your mother became a happy girl, and so she made me happy. She loved the camels also and before you were born she travelled with me.' He put aside the saddle and regarded me before he said, ‘So you are ready to talk about your mother now?' But I couldn't ask him what I needed to know: if she was happy why did she leave?

Tommy came to find me. ‘Some blackfellas been here. Seen tracks.' My stomach plummeted with a mixture of emotions: we had already found water, their water no doubt, and I feared what they might do. I went with him to check but we didn't see anyone. ‘Look.' Tommy pointed to a path on the top of the bank above the water. ‘People do dancing there.' I supposed that was their religious feast like our Eid and the English Christmas. Emmeline was very fond of Christmas.

Jess Young bagged four bronze-winged pigeons while we were gone. I didn't have to pluck them for everyone agreed it was my birthday; Alec did it instead. Peter made a very good birthday and Eid dinner. Besides damper we had pigeon stew. ‘We had dates to eat during Eid in Peshawar,' Padar said. Jess Young nodded for he knew what they were. Then he crossed to his bedroll for the concertina. I'm glad he didn't have to leave it at Boundary Dam. They sang ‘Happy Birthday' and, as I feared, they wanted me to say something. Padar had
taught me poems but how would I recite them? I didn't know the English words. Padar recited a verse that a famous Persian poet called Hafiz wrote:

The words sparkled like jewels but they didn't help me. ‘Say your poem in Persian, beta, then the meaning will come.'

I picked up my mug and pretended I was gulping down my tea but really it was my panic. Then I started. ‘This is a poem about a wild deer.' I said the first line in Persian and then I could see it in my mind in the words I was learning with Alec. In the end I didn't have to think about it at all – just a line of Persian and then the line in English.

Mr Giles clapped when I finished and the men joined in. Jess Young was looking at me thoughtfully. Then he said, ‘You are a clever chap, aren't you?'

I couldn't think of words to say and Alec answered
for me. ‘You sound surprised, Jess.' Alec smiled at me as if he had taught me the poem himself. Birthdays were good and I wondered why I didn't remember my mother singing me that birthday song.

The first of October was a very difficult day in two ways. The first was due to a hot tornado that blew from the west all day. We had to stay in our tents. Tommy and Peter were in the tent with Padar and me, and the pups played around our feet. I felt like a pigeon cooking in one of Peter's pots in the coals. The tent was open on the ends and let in all kind of dust and grit. We had to eat with a cloth over the food.

The weather didn't bother Tommy. He was playing a game with Peter. He had small pieces of bark and stone, leaves, a small bone or two. He laid them out for Peter to see for a few seconds and then he swept them from sight. Peter tried to remember what was there. ‘'Tisn't fair, Tommy. It weren't long enough by half – put 'em out longer.' But Tommy wouldn't budge, just laughed, while Peter tried again.

The second difficulty was of a different nature. I was thinking of my mother and, since we were sitting out the storm and I had Padar's attention, I asked him
another question. ‘Why didn't my mother give me a birthday?'

I had no idea those simple words would open a gate wide enough for a herd of camels to stampede through. Padar considered me for a while and then began: ‘Your mother was very young when I married her, not many years older than you. She did things mostly as I had always done. She had very few ways of her own. Perhaps she had never had a birthday herself.'

‘But didn't she come from England, the same place as Mr Giles?'

‘Not truly. Ireland is different from England. A place so poor the people sent their daughters away to a strange land with no male relative to look after them. I wept when I heard how she had been treated. Whatever hardships we had in Afghanistan we never sent our daughters away. If they became orphans, as your mother did, then their uncle cared for them and found them a husband. Your mother, she was working at the mission near Beltana when I heard of her circumstances and I felt it my duty to look after her.'

He smiled. ‘She was beautiful, but more so after some good mutton. They only ate potatoes in her country and they even ran out of those.' Padar shook his head.

‘And so she married you.'

‘She desired the match.'

I could imagine that. Padar was a handsome man and he was kind.

‘She never prayed as we do. She said she could not stop being a Catholic but she promised to allow you to say your prayers with me. She was a good wife, she never talked to other men. She even liked the camels, especially Sher Khan and Khushi.'

We were quiet while I built up the courage to ask the next question. Did I dare ask why she left? But I couldn't for Padar said something that snatched my words away. ‘Two wives I have had and both are gone.'

It took me a moment to comprehend what he had said. ‘Two? What do you mean, Padar?'

He regarded me. ‘In Peshawar I had a wife. We had a son.'

I had a brother?

‘Then I heard my wife had died and my brother adopted Jamil – he would be as old as Alec now.' Padar was quiet and I thought of the way Alec could never do a thing wrong in Padar's eyes.

‘You've never been back.' I didn't mean it to sound accusing but Padar sighed.

‘I sent money to them, there was not enough to save for a passage on a ship.'

‘Will I ever see him, my brother?'

‘Inshallah. Perhaps you will become a successful trader. Perhaps you will return and see your family,
and say salaam from Saleh and bring back an Afghan wife. I was always sorry I wasn't allowed to bring my family when I first came but the opportunity for work was good.'

‘If you had brought them you wouldn't have had me.'

He smiled. ‘Perhaps not and I could not imagine a life without you in it, Taj.' I was still reeling from hearing such news that it took me a moment to register his next comment. ‘Nor could your mother.'

My mother? It wasn't true. I realised I'd shouted it aloud. ‘That's not true!'

Padar pulled up his head in shock: I rarely raised my voice to him in anger.

‘Taj?'

‘My mother left. She didn't love me or she wouldn't have gone.'

Padar's eyebrows grew close. I watched him carefully; I wasn't going to let him tell me nice words to calm me down. Now I wanted an answer. But he was perplexed. ‘What do you mean, beta? You think she had a choice?'

I breathed slower. ‘She didn't?'

‘No one chooses their time.'

A glimmer of understanding came, but I didn't truly want to know. It was what I always didn't want to know. I vaguely remembered Peter listening, but I didn't care. ‘She left to visit friends.'

‘Yes, she did, but–'

‘See? She never came back, never loved me enough to return.'

I couldn't stay there any longer and as I ran out into the storm I saw an inkling of why she didn't return, the knowledge I had always run away from. Not long after my mother had left, a few weeks perhaps, I came into the hut. Padar had been weeping; the tracks were still on his face. ‘Has Mother come back?' I asked, and he shook his head. He was calling my name as I ran out the door.

The wind was wild and I hid behind Mustara. It was what Emmeline and I did in the dust storm in early May. A cold nose pushed into my hand; Asad had followed me. Mustara grunted. His nostrils were closed to the dust; one set of his eyelids were shut but he could still see me. I burrowed in until the wind died a little.

Later, Padar's hand on my head stirred me. ‘Beta, I thought you knew. When you wouldn't talk about it I thought you understood, but perhaps you were too young, after all.' Then Padar wept. He knelt and clutched me to him. He said sorry and I felt the warm shaking of him, giving me a truer memory, for mine was faulty.

When we drew apart Padar said, ‘I am sorry that due to my cowardice you believe your mother did not love you. She did, very much. She would have returned if she could.'

‘What happened?' It was just a whisper but I finally wanted to know even if the listening hurt.

‘Your mother was happy that day – she was visiting friends at the mission. While she was there some Wirangu people came in with the typhoid fever and she helped nurse them. She became ill also. She never recovered. They told me when they could, but it was too late. They had already buried her. When I tried to tell you, you ran off.'

‘It was because I thought she didn't want to come back and I didn't want to hear it.'

‘And I thought you fled because you knew she had died and didn't want the words spoken. I told myself I would leave it until you were ready. It is a very sorry thing.' I hugged him again.

‘Your mother loved you very much – she sang you songs.'

‘Cockles and mussels?'

‘So you did remember – I wondered.' He frowned. ‘It is a difficult song for me, not only because she sang it but because it tells her story, for truly she was a fisherman's daughter and she died of a fever.'

The wind had lost its force though it was still blowing dust around. Tommy emerged from the tent with Dyabun at his heels and stared at us for a while before he went to the kitchen tent to help Peter clean up the dirt.

The wind stopped the next morning and the weather was cooler. Since camels don't drink when you want them to, Alec and Mr Tietkens took three camels loaded with water to leave in canvas troughs covered with tarpaulins twenty-five miles away; the camels could fill up on the way. ‘Can I go too?' I asked Padar.

He looked at me kindly but he shook his head. ‘There is much work to do.' Didn't he know I needed to get away? It was strange to be in a desert and still feel it closing in on me. I comforted myself by finding Mustara.

Mustara and Asad were funny to watch. Mustara brought his long neck down and pretended to bite Asad, but Asad hung onto Mustara's neck until he was lifted up high. Mustara tried to shake him off, but Asad yapped and dug his claws in. It sounded as if he was laughing. When Mustara finally threw Asad off and he landed between Mustara's legs, Mustara didn't step on him. That's how I knew Mustara liked him. Salmah would have crushed him with her feet so I kept Asad away from her, and from Rani and the older bulls too.

Alec said I should try to write more words for myself while he was away. This is what I wrote:

I didn't write anything about my mother, I kept the knowledge close inside me. It made me feel warm in a place I had been cold for too long.