“So?”
“Very well, Monsieur. But they will try and extort money from you. May you be warned!”
Richard ignored him. He heard the word Tafal’aalt . Was it a village somewhere? He asked Hamid if he had ever heard of it; the latter shook his head.
“Where do the Aït Kebbash live?”
Hamid shrugged. “Far, far out.”
And he made a grim gesture with one hand.
“They must have driven all night,” Richard said.
“All day and all night. Many nights.”
“Open the gates, then.”
“They will blackmail you, Monsieur. They are blackmailers.”
It was Richard who slid open the huge bolt.
“Keep the guests away from here. We don’t want them nosing around while this is going on.”
“Do not step out, Richard. Let the other step in. We will see how he is.”
“You mean, enraged?”
WHEN THE GATE OPENED, THE OLD MAN JUST AS SLOWLY stood up. He brushed off his knees and put his cap back on his head, and the men by the car didn’t move as the gates swung open and the staff called out, beckoning him forward. There were summary greetings, exchanges, and Hamid courteously asked where they had driven from. Tafal’aalt was a village of one hundred souls on the far side of the Tafilalet, far out where the edge of the oasis was drying out and the desert plain was advancing. It was beyond the remote fossil town of Alnif. It was on the farthest edge of human habitation, close to the Algerian border and the lonely mountain of Issomour, where fine trilobites and aquifers were quarried. Jbel Issomour was where they made their living, in the quarries that circled the mountain. Nearby, they explained, was Hmor Lagdad, the mountain called the Red-Cheeked One, which could be seen from a great distance off and which they all knew because it could be seen distantly from the quarries just outside Erfoud. Hamid said that he was deeply sorry about his son. What was the boy’s name?
“Driss, my only son.”
“May Allah have mercy.”
“Allah has made it so.”
Hamid was suddenly moved. At last, the corpse had a name and an identity, and he was relieved. To die on the road in the middle of the night was a dog’s death.
“We have kept him here, if it please you,” Hamid said, ushering the old man toward the garage doors. “We have kept vigil every hour.”
He regretted maligning the men from Tafal’aalt as blackmailers, though he knew that they were exactly that. A man can be both a blackmailer by culture and a bereaved father, can he not? Abdellah was frail and stringy, and he must have had a son late in life. His clothes were wretched. Hamid wondered what fossils the Aït Kebbash specialized in. They made no money either way. They were people surviving at a subsistence level, unimaginable even to the poorest peasants in greener parts. They had the Toyota, and probably little else of value. He felt for them. Could anyone really imagine their lives? One look at them was enough to confirm that they made their living as fossil diggers and preppers. That they eked out a miserable existence trading second-rate trilobites in the tourist shops of Erfoud and Rissani. One saw types like that all over the place, shabby desperadoes wandering from table to table at the hotels, offering trays of their wares, quietly hustling Westerners on the side, swearing their trilobites were the rarest of the Sahara but going home empty-handed to their shacks on the edge of the desert. The oases were dying because of a tree infection called Bayoud disease, and all that was left them, it was popularly observed, was a trickling trade in fossilized fish. So he was polite to the Aït Kebbash, good Muslims from the scorched corners of the earth, who had nothing and who gave nothing either.
The desert men came in warily, holding their bodies delicately apart from their surroundings as if they were long used to doing so. They looked around themselves at the Cherokee jeeps with their state-of-the-art CD players, and their eyes went heavy and
“Very well, Monsieur. But they will try and extort money from you. May you be warned!”
Richard ignored him. He heard the word Tafal’aalt . Was it a village somewhere? He asked Hamid if he had ever heard of it; the latter shook his head.
“Where do the Aït Kebbash live?”
Hamid shrugged. “Far, far out.”
And he made a grim gesture with one hand.
“They must have driven all night,” Richard said.
“All day and all night. Many nights.”
“Open the gates, then.”
“They will blackmail you, Monsieur. They are blackmailers.”
It was Richard who slid open the huge bolt.
“Keep the guests away from here. We don’t want them nosing around while this is going on.”
“Do not step out, Richard. Let the other step in. We will see how he is.”
“You mean, enraged?”
WHEN THE GATE OPENED, THE OLD MAN JUST AS SLOWLY stood up. He brushed off his knees and put his cap back on his head, and the men by the car didn’t move as the gates swung open and the staff called out, beckoning him forward. There were summary greetings, exchanges, and Hamid courteously asked where they had driven from. Tafal’aalt was a village of one hundred souls on the far side of the Tafilalet, far out where the edge of the oasis was drying out and the desert plain was advancing. It was beyond the remote fossil town of Alnif. It was on the farthest edge of human habitation, close to the Algerian border and the lonely mountain of Issomour, where fine trilobites and aquifers were quarried. Jbel Issomour was where they made their living, in the quarries that circled the mountain. Nearby, they explained, was Hmor Lagdad, the mountain called the Red-Cheeked One, which could be seen from a great distance off and which they all knew because it could be seen distantly from the quarries just outside Erfoud. Hamid said that he was deeply sorry about his son. What was the boy’s name?
“Driss, my only son.”
“May Allah have mercy.”
“Allah has made it so.”
Hamid was suddenly moved. At last, the corpse had a name and an identity, and he was relieved. To die on the road in the middle of the night was a dog’s death.
“We have kept him here, if it please you,” Hamid said, ushering the old man toward the garage doors. “We have kept vigil every hour.”
He regretted maligning the men from Tafal’aalt as blackmailers, though he knew that they were exactly that. A man can be both a blackmailer by culture and a bereaved father, can he not? Abdellah was frail and stringy, and he must have had a son late in life. His clothes were wretched. Hamid wondered what fossils the Aït Kebbash specialized in. They made no money either way. They were people surviving at a subsistence level, unimaginable even to the poorest peasants in greener parts. They had the Toyota, and probably little else of value. He felt for them. Could anyone really imagine their lives? One look at them was enough to confirm that they made their living as fossil diggers and preppers. That they eked out a miserable existence trading second-rate trilobites in the tourist shops of Erfoud and Rissani. One saw types like that all over the place, shabby desperadoes wandering from table to table at the hotels, offering trays of their wares, quietly hustling Westerners on the side, swearing their trilobites were the rarest of the Sahara but going home empty-handed to their shacks on the edge of the desert. The oases were dying because of a tree infection called Bayoud disease, and all that was left them, it was popularly observed, was a trickling trade in fossilized fish. So he was polite to the Aït Kebbash, good Muslims from the scorched corners of the earth, who had nothing and who gave nothing either.
The desert men came in warily, holding their bodies delicately apart from their surroundings as if they were long used to doing so. They looked around themselves at the Cherokee jeeps with their state-of-the-art CD players, and their eyes went heavy and
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