The Blue Hour (32 page)

It took considerable work to reach down and pick up these discarded garments. Trying to put them on was torture. When I finally got the underwear and the pants back on, and also located the pair of sandals pulled off my feet, I then noticed the tire track right by me. A tire track that continued forward for a few feet before turning into a circle and then . . .

He'd driven off. After kicking me in the head, the punk had clearly jumped into the truck and driven off into the dawn. Leaving his accomplice on fire and his victim unconscious in the sand, exposed to the monstrous elements that would kill her in a manner that might have made strangulation preferable. Because as I looked up from the encircling tire track what I saw was . . .

Nothing.

Nothing but sand.

Stretching to infinity. Burned beige in color. Lunar, with craters and fossilized dunes. A boundless, evaporated void on the far side of the moon.

And nothing hinting at human life in any direction.

Nothing but the tire track. When the punk raced off in the truck, he took with him everything that gave me an identity and a means of contacting the outside world. My passport, my credit cards, what cash I had left, my airplane ticket, my laptop. He'd also taken the few clothes I had, including a hat to shield my head. I was alone in the Sahara with nothing. No water. No protection from the fireball above. No papers indicating who I was.

I glanced back at the blackened corpse of my attacker. This would be my fate. I would not last more than a few hours out here. I would fall over somewhere, succumbing to sunstroke, dehydration, ravenous thirst. I would slowly die. If I was ever found—and that was unlikely, given that they had brought me to a place no one dared to venture—my body would be so burned by the sun that . . .

No, no, don't think that. You can't think that. You must somehow try to find help. Or a water hole. Or
 . . .

I scanned all corners of the horizon again. Nothing. Not even a speck in the distance of some outpost of civilization. Nothing but the tire tracks.

That's it! The punk did a U-turn and headed back to civilization. Just follow his tire tracks and you will eventually . . .

Die. For you are miles and miles away from anything resembling life.

I stared down at the tracks. I started following them, my gait hesitant, unstable. My head was throbbing, my vision obscured, the need for water desperate. I could now feel the sun smoldering the top of my head.

But I forced myself to walk, to let the tracks be my guide. I had no choice. To stand still was to accept death.

My sense of balance began to leave me. I must have been walking a good quarter of an hour, each step a small agony, my mouth desiccated with dried vomit, my saliva in increasingly short supply, the back of my throat beginning to tighten. Is this how death by thirst begins? The esophagus slowly contracting due to the lack of hydration, eventually strangling you mercilessly?

My death.

I felt myself beginning to stumble.

My death.

Who would notice my passing? Who would care that I was no longer walking the planet? Would Paul—were he still alive—feel some sort of guilt? Beyond him? A few friends and work colleagues might mourn my absence. Otherwise . . . my forty years on this planet wiped clean. My footprint on life as insubstantial and impermanent as the marks that my sandals were now making in all this Saharan sand.

I stumbled, collapsing onto one knee. The sand singed it. But I didn't have the strength to somehow lift myself up. I so wanted to ask for some sort of celestial help, for God to save me. But how could I call out to an Almighty whose existence I still doubted? How could I cry out,
Don't forsake me . . . show me a way out of this wilderness, this hell
.

My other knee sank into the sand. I tried to swallow. I shut my eyes. My head felt near to implosion. This was it. Endgame. The final moments of my sorry little life. Throwing my head back I reopened my eyes and looked straight up at that fiery object that was about to kill me.

Thy kingdom come.

The sun burned right into me.

Thy will be done.

I pitched forward. Gone from this world.

No white light greeted me. No heavenly way station. No cognizance of anything. Just blackness. I remained there until . . .

Until I felt a hand touching me. And whispering to me in a language foreign to me. The whispering became louder, as if the voice was right up against my ear.

“
Salaam, salaam . . .
”

I opened one eye. Vision was clouded, indistinct.

“
Salaam, salaam . . .
”

I tried to open my mouth. It was seared closed. I had no energy. I had no will to do anything, let alone respond to the hand shoving my shoulder, her little voice louder:

“
Salaam, salaam . . .
”

Her little voice.

What I could discern from my one befogged eye was a small figure, in a robe, her face obscured by a flowing head scarf that covered everything but her eyes and mouth. From the sound of the voice emitting those words, and the lack of force behind the hand trying to rouse me, it was a young girl crouching beside me.

Was she some intermediary figure sent to guide me to the next afterlife passage?

But why was she speaking in Arabic?

“
Salaam, salaam . . .
”

Hello, hello.

And I knew what
es-hy
meant because one of the cleaners in Essaouira used it when trying to rouse the man always asleep behind the hotel front desk.

Wake up, wake up.

But I couldn't do anything beyond halfway open that one eye. And wish myself back into the darkness again.

Suddenly I felt liquid against my lips.

The little voice intoned, “
Ma'a . . . ma'a . . . shreb
.”

More liquid against my lips. I opened my mouth wide and let her pour in . . .

Ma'a
 . . . ma'a
 . . .

Water.

Within moments my throat opened again.

Water.

With it came the knowledge that I was still here. Prostrated in the Sahara. Alive, albeit barely. But still here. With water flowing into my mouth. And the little voice then saying:

“
Bellati . . . bellati . . .
”

Then I felt a cloth being put over my face.

And I was alone again.

Within moments, the darkness enveloped me once more.

Until I heard the little voice again. Accompanied by two other voices. Older. Male. Shouting to each other. Then to me.

“
Shreb . . . shreb
.”

Now someone pulled the cloth off my face and was holding up my head, while someone else was filling my mouth with water. At first I gagged it up. The man holding my head gripped me tightly as I heaved, then used something to clean my mouth, then gently pushed the bottle back between my lips. This time I could hold it down. And drank and drank and drank, the water surging through me. At another point I started choking on it again. The man cleaned me off, then made me drink more. He was not going to stop feeding me water until he was certain I was somewhat hydrated again. I have no idea how long this process took. What I do know is that the water brought back enough consciousness that I could see two men—both with hard, wizened faces—engaged in the act of saving my life. I also heard the one who seemed to be doing all the talking shouting orders. Then I was being lifted and put on a mattress. The smell of animal dung nearby. Then someone climbing in beside me. Opening one eye I saw the young girl who had found me now seated beside me, smiling shyly at me before covering my head again with a cloth, then taking my hand and holding it. I felt some movement in front of us, and the slope on which I had been placed righting itself out, and the crack of a whip and the bray of a donkey.

I have no idea how long I descended back into darkness. When I awoke I was in a very different place. As my eyes opened, I saw candles and two gas lanterns illuminating what seemed to be the walls of a tent. The fact that I could open both eyes was surprising. So too was the fact that there was an elderly woman—her face like a bas-relief, with only four or five teeth—gazing down at me, and exclaiming as I stared up at her:

“
Allahu Akbar!
”

I tried to sit up. I was too weak, too enervated, to do so. The elderly woman spoke quietly to me, gently pressing my head down on what seemed to be a cot of some sort. Another woman came over, far younger, pretty, all smiles.

“Hamdilli-la!”

She touched my face with her fingers. I flinched. Even the light pressure she'd placed on my cheeks touched off wild nerve endings of pain. She was immediately contrite, especially as the elderly woman shouted at her to do something. Moments later, some sort of balm or oil was being lightly rubbed into my face. It was then that I realized I was virtually naked from the waist down. Lain out on this bierdlike cot, my legs and thighs covered with assorted cloths; my crotch encased in a white bandage that was covered in now dried blood.

As soon as I saw the blood I was back in that truck, my assailant thrusting into me, tearing me apart.

I began to shudder. Immediately the young woman was holding me, whispering to me in Arabic, calming me, once even gesticulating to the bloodied bandage, then spouting out a long array of reassuring words, as if to say,
I know what happened, and it is horrible. But you will be better
.

Meanwhile the elderly woman approached us holding a mug of something steaming and strangely aromatic. She motioned for the young woman to help me up, and then encouraged me to drink this highly herbal, bittersweet brew. It had an immediate, soporific effect. Within moments I was asleep again.

When I woke it was daylight. I still felt desperately weak, concussed, with a ringing in my ear that wouldn't go away. I also urgently needed to pee. But as soon as I tried to sit up I lost my equilibrium, and fell back against the cot. At which point I saw the young girl who'd found me, until now asleep on a mattress in a corner of the tent, scramble up and run over to me. Though still half awake she smiled broadly at me. I managed a fogged smile back.

“Parlez-vous français?”
I asked.

She shook her head, then raised her finger, telling me to wait, and ran outside. I could hear her shouting to someone. Within a few minutes she returned with the very pretty young woman whom I'd seen . . . When? . . . Was it yesterday? I only knew it was that same young woman when she removed her niqab once inside the tent.

“Salaam Alaikum,”
the young woman said to me. The little girl was by her side, holding onto her djellaba.

“
Mema
,
” she said.

“Your mother?” I asked. A baffled look from them both. I tried a more phonetic word: “Mama?”

That worked. They both smiled and nodded.

I asked the young woman if she spoke French. She seemed a little embarrassed by this and shook her head.

“No problem,” I said, trying to smile back, but suddenly feeling woozy. The young woman told her daughter to run outside. My need to pee was now immense. From my French lessons with Soraya I remembered that she would occasionally drop an Arabic word into our conversation to help me negotiate the Essaouira streets. She taught me a few phrases.

“Ayn al-hammam?”
Where is the toilet?

The young woman's beautiful face lit up at the sound of Arabic. She answered back in a stream of words, none of which I managed to follow. But she did indicate to me that I should wait a moment then raced over to the far side of the tent and returned with a long black djellaba. As she started helping me into it the elderly woman returned, shouting orders to the young woman, who explained that I needed the toilet (or, at least, I heard the word
al-hammam
in her onslaught of words).

With the elderly woman in charge of things, I was helped into the djellaba. The weakness I'd felt lying down on the cot was exacerbated when I tried to stand up. But the elderly woman had hands as rough and reinforced as a vise. She forced me up vertically. When I attempted to look down at the condition of my crotch and legs she had her hand under my chin and moved my gaze away, while the young woman and her daughter removed all the bandages and dressings. Then they helped me slowly into the djellaba, keeping me upright throughout. The elderly woman then held up a niqab and started explaining—with a lot of hand gestures—that I needed to put it on, as she pointed to the flap in the tent, letting me know that the
hammam
was outside. I nodded understanding. With the help of the young woman, I organized the niqab around my face. Within moments I felt like a horse with blinders. I was looking at the world from a narrow horizontal slit. I was very conscious that my legs felt raw and my face seemed somewhat out of place. Walking was an arduous business. All three women had to support me as I took my first tentative steps forward.

Once outside the tent the heat and the harshness of the light made me snap my eyes shut. From what I could take in, we were in some sort of encampment—several tents, shaded by a few sparse trees. Was this an oasis? All I could see were the meager trees, the tents, the sand beyond.

The women led me to a small tent. As the little girl opened the flap, the elderly woman told the others to halt for a moment. Disappearing inside, she returned moments later, tucking a mirror into the folds of her djellaba. That got my attention and heightened my sense of fear. She didn't want me to see myself.

When I motioned to the mirror the elderly woman became very maternal, shaking her finger at me as if I were a child who had been caught seeing something she shouldn't. Then she motioned for the mother and daughter to bring me inside, giving instructions along the way.