Blue Damask (16 page)

     “You will see,
fraulein
.  We will certainly know when we have arrived.”

     She did not like the tone of his voice.  It was not threatening, but the amusement was there.  Her ignorance was funny to him.  She set her lips in a line and put her hand on Sonnenby’s file.  She imagined both Marshall and Sonnenby in Deir El Zor greeting her and offering her a cool drink.  That is what she wanted.  They would be surprised to see her.  She would be all business.  She would tap the file and tell them she had been studying.  They would see that she knew what she was doing, and that she could handle herself alone in a strange country.

     Farmadi stopped the car at dusk for his prayers, and then opened the boot to get out more water and some flat bread.  “We sleep a few hours,
fraulein
. Then we can go on some more.”

     She did sleep, but fitfully, and her dreams were full of murderous Turks with sharp knives and British Enfield rifles in the boots of automobiles.  Farmadi started the engine at midnight and the little car motored bravely across the hardpan clay at fifteen miles each hour.

     Elsa resumed reading through the thick files as soon as there was enough sun to see the type.  She went over all the reports, no matter whether they concerned Lord Sonnenby’s condition or not.  Most were standard government memos concerning his postings and regular furloughs.  Some discussed his linguistic skills.  She was surprised to see that he spoke Turkish as well as Arabic and some Kurdish.  He had been very valuable during and after the war, spending most of his time translating at meetings and transcribing documents.

      Perhaps he is needed by his government to translate for a little while longer, until they have the Ottoman Territories settled among the victors.  Perhaps that is all.

     The back of her neck reminded her that she was lying to herself.  Ahead of them on the road, the dust rose in a tall column, twisting as it ascended higher into the clear sky.

     Farmadi pointed at it.  “There,
fraulein
.  That is how we know we have arrived.”

     “What is it?”

     “The real government of El Zor.”

     As the dust cleared, Elsa could see several horsemen in the road ahead of them.  The horses stood still as stone and the only movement was the flapping of their riders’ robes in the wind.

     Elsa wrapped her scarf tighter around her head as Farmadi opened his door and climbed out of the car.  He shut the door with a satisfying thump that rocked the vehicle and made Elsa feel a little more secure.  Just a little.  She crouched behind the seat backs with her hands on the leather and peeked over the top.

     The men on horseback did not seem threatening unless she looked at their eyes.  Then she ducked even lower.  Farmadi was carrying on a spirited conversation with the leader, waving his hands and occasionally gesturing toward the car.  Elsa told herself to remain calm.  She told herself to relax.  She took three deep breaths and flexed and relaxed her hands.

     “I am not in any danger,” she mumbled, as if hearing the words made them more true.  “People travel here every day.”  She squeezed her knees together and relaxed her legs.  She tilted her head to one side and then the other to try to get rid of that feeling on the back of her neck.  Farmadi’s tone of voice had changed.  He sounded a bit more desperate.  His hands waved even more energetically.  She looked at each of the tribesmen through the windscreen.

     They looked back at her.  There were six of them.  All wore the familiar robes of the desert people, though these men wore headdresses different from the men in the village where she had gotten her water.  Their horses’ bridles had large colorful tassels hanging from the straps and headpieces as though the horses were dressed like their riders.  The horses appeared friendly, their riders less so.  She realized she was cringing and took another deep breath.  “I am not afraid.”  She said it again, a little louder.  She dared herself to be brave. She hated that feeling of panic that rolled over her chest and made her heart pound.  She dared herself again.  Open the door and get out.

     She set her teeth and reached for the door handle.  One click and it opened.  The dry wind tried to take her scarf and blew her dress.  She pushed herself out of the back seat and onto her feet on the road.  Farmadi spun around and the look on his face told her she may have acted prematurely.

     “
Fraulein
.  Please get back in the automobile.”

     “Are we in El Zor?  Do these men know Lord Sonnenby?”  She blinked at him, aware that her words did not sound as confident as she had tried to make them sound.

     The leader of the tribesmen cued his horse to move forward.  He wore a black turban instead of the white
keffiyahs
of the other men.  Elsa moved closer to the solid metal of the car.  Farmadi took a step backward, facing the leader.

     Farmadi said something and spread his hands in defeat.  She heard him say “Sonnenby”.  He pressed closer to her as the leader advanced until his back was nearly touching her and they both were pressed against the side of the car.  The small desert horse blew at her as he stepped closer and when the wind whipped the ends of her scarf around her, he tossed his head and took a step back.  His rider jerked the reins and turned the animal sideways.

     He said something that sounded very authoritative.  Farmadi cleared his voice.

     “He asks that you remove your scarf so that he may see you.”

     “I will.”  She pulled the scarf down from her forehead until all of the soft cloth rested on her shoulders.

     The tribesmen murmured and then she saw them make gestures toward her with their hands until the leader raised his to silence them.

     “What are they saying?” she asked.

     Farmadi did not turn around.  “Lady Sonnenby was a fair woman.  They remember her.  Your hair is the same color.  It is bad luck to have fair hair.  They worry about the evil eye, but they are more inclined to believe me now that they have seen you.”

     “Believe you?”

     “Believe that you are Sonnenby’s woman.”

     “I see.  Why wouldn’t they believe you?”

     Farmadi turned to face her.  “Because there have been many lies told to them by foreigners.”  His eyes suggested that many lies had been told to him as well.

     “Yes.  Well.”  Elsa could not refute that. She remembered the old saying, ‘In war the first casualty is truth’.  She glanced up at the leader, whose eyes burned her.  She said to Farmadi, “Do they know the war is over?  Do they know who won?”

     “They have been told.  They do not care.”

     “Will they let us pass?  Is Mr. Sinclair here?”

     “Lord Sonnenby is not here.  Yet.  They will let us pass.  But not the automobile.”

     Elsa did not know what to say to that.  The obvious question, ‘why not?’ was unspoken and understood.  She cleared her throat.  “I see.”

     Farmadi was grim.  “I cannot abandon the automobile.  It belongs to my father.  If I lose it I had better not return, either.”

     Elsa could not tell from his voice if he was serious.  “Are we prisoners?” She asked softly.

     “I am not,” he said, as if there were more to the sentence.

     Elsa swallowed.  “What…what do we do now?”

     “I have been told to leave the car and follow them.  I will not.  We could turn around and go back to Damascus.”

     “Really?”  That sounded like a good idea now.  Elsa shuffled her feet in the leather shoes, thinking of a warm bath and a hot meal.  But she would hate herself forever if she gave up.  “Do they expect Lord Sonnenby soon?”  It may be just as likely that he would turn up in Damascus as well.  Or maybe Mr. Marshall was there right now.  At the hotel.

     “A messenger arrived this morning with news that Lord Sonnenby would be ‘visiting his relatives’.”

     “Excellent.”  She glanced up at the leader of the horsemen.  He was staring at her and not in a nice way.

     “Yet he is not here and may not be here for days.”

     “You said that ‘everyone knew where he was’,” she knew she sounded like a petulant child and regretted it.

     Farmadi could not face her without turning his back on the riders.  Instead he turned his shoulders just enough so she could see his face.  “We know where he is,” he insisted.  “Do you think the foreigners move about this country without a thousand eyes upon them every second?”

     Elsa realized what he meant now.  The problem had been with the word “we”.  She had taken him too literally.  The people of this land knew every movement of the British and the French.  Their network of communication might be different from that of the Europeans, but no less precise.  The “we” was inclusive.  No one person would know anything exactly, but collectively no one travelled through the tribal lands unnoticed.  Not Lord Sonnenby, not Farmadi.  Not her.

     “I see.” And she did.

     Farmadi agreed.  “Yes.  I cannot leave the car, and I cannot leave you alone here.

They say they will take you to their tents and keep you until he comes.  It is logical to them that Sonnenby has a woman.  Every man has a woman.”  As he said that one of the riders dismounted and led his horse closer to the car.

     “They intend to put me on this horse?”

     Farmadi cleared his throat.  “It appears so.”

     “And you?”  Her voice sounded small.  She tried to stand as tall as possible to compensate.  She had never been on a horse.  This one didn’t have a saddle, just blankets and leather strapped around it.  Some kind of looped leather for stirrups.  No place to put her files and papers. She looked around the horizon, which was becoming blurred as the wind picked up the finer grains of sand and seemed to rub the sharp edges of everything and make them dull.  Damascus seemed far away, and Vienna seemed like the other side of the world.

     “They say the road ends here, and the wheels would sink in the sand.  There is uneven rock further along, but no road.  The axles would break, they say.”  Farmadi leaned against the car as a gust of wind unsteadied him.  I promised to bring you to Lord Sonnenby,
fraulein
, and I have failed.”

     “If we return to Damascus?”

     “I will take you back to the hotel.”

     She thought about that and it seemed like the reasonable thing to do.  Except that she could no longer trust that Marshall’s Foreign Office would take care of her travel arrangements, unless it was to take her out into the desert again.  She stood there and the wind blew her veil against her neck until it felt like a noose.  Then sand blew into her eyes and mouth and made her cough.

     No one really expected her to succeed.  Her colleagues in Vienna would welcome her back with relief and ask about her health and if she had seen a camel or not.  Glasses would clink at the table and the women would murmur, “Have another pastry” and “Is the coffee too hot?”  The men would lean back in their chairs and puff on their cigars and nod at each other.  Of course Elsa Schluss had failed.  No one could expect a woman to…

     “I’ll go.”  Elsa ducked back into the car and snatched up the file and the small bundle of things Farmadi had given her.

     “
Fraulein
…”  Farmadi put a hand on the car door.              

     “I’ll go,” she insisted.  She would not return to Vienna until this was done.  “Please tell them that I will go with them.  They say Lord Sonnenby is on his way here?”  She needed as much information as possible.  Once she got on that horse there would be no more talking.  The tribesmen did not look to be multilingual.

     Farmadi frowned, but did not argue with her.  “They say the English have him in a troop transport and will be here tomorrow or the next day.  Out here there is not a real sense of time,
fraulein
.  A ‘day’ might mean a week.  Damascus has sent a man here to get the tribe assembled, so we do know they will come.”

     Ah, someone she could talk to, then.  Good.  She felt better already.  “Thank you Mr. Farmadi.  I am so very grateful for your help.  If there is anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate.”

     Farmadi looked at her, his mouth grim.  “This is my advice: make no promises.  Do not lie.  Do not believe anything they say.”

     She did not know if he meant the Syrians or the British.  It did not matter, as the tribesman with the horse put his hands on her waist and lifted her up.  She had only one hand to grip the waving mane, as she clutched the file and the bundle close to her stomach.  Her legs splayed out over the animal’s rump before she could wiggle into a sitting position.

     The men were grinning at her, showing their white teeth against their dark beards.  Elsa decided she must look very foolish indeed.  She tucked a foot into each leather loop and adjusted her scarf and her skirt.  The horse turned its ears backward to her.  The man on the ground said something before giving the reins a tug and leading the animal toward the north.  She could not turn around to wave goodbye to Farmadi without losing her balance and both hands were occupied, squeezing her papers to her stomach and holding on to the horse.  She heard the engine start, she heard the tires on the rough gravel, she heard the rumbling of the engine fade behind her until she finally heard nothing but the wind.

No one spoke to her.  The man on the ground leapt up gracefully behind one of the other riders and the journey continued with her reins in his hands, led at a slow walk though ravines between the low undulations of sand and rock.  Near dusk she saw spread out before her a wide river valley, as green as the desert had been brown.  The setting sun glinted off the ripples on the river and the sweet smell of water and plants revived her.  The men were glad to see it too.  Their conversation became more lively and louder.  They looked at her now, as they spoke, and she assumed they were discussing what to do with her.

     As they moved closer to the river she could see small mud brick houses with conical roofs and scattered among them some pointed tents.  People came out and stood watching them approach.  Little children running here and there stopped and stared.  Horses raised their heads from the grass and pricked their ears.  Elsa took a deep breath and readied herself for more introductions.  Her back hurt and her bottom did too.  The last few days had made a good sleep impossible.  In a way her exhaustion was welcome, because it took the edge off her anxiety.  After a long adventure, she realized, one is too tired to care much about anything.

     But it seemed the tribesmen were not interested in formal introductions.  In fact, she was pulled down from the horse and ushered into a cool mud brick hut right away.   A heavy rolled rug and a bundle that turned out to be thick wool blankets that smelled of horse were pushed through after her.  Elsa unrolled the rug onto the dirt floor, but was unwilling to sit on it.  She still ached from the horse ride.  Moments later, an oil lamp was pushed through the doorway, which was covered with some kind of hide.

     The little lamp illuminated the interior with a yellow glow.  A welcome water skin was passed through soon after.  Elsa was at the point where water and light was enough.  She needed nothing more, except to sleep, but something else might be pushed through the leather door.  She watched the edges of the flap.  A brown hand pushed a bowl of  flat bread inside.

     Sitting was not an option.  She reclined on one side and stretched her legs out, one and then the other as she chewed the dates carefully around the pits.  Farmadi had told her she might be smothered with hospitality or frozen with hostility.  He didn’t know which, and couldn’t.  There were factions on every side of the issue of power that loomed in this land after the war.  Elsa determined that this reception must be the middle way, which was promising.  Neither a welcome guest, nor an imprisoned enemy.   It meant they were still deciding.  The blankets were soft, and horse is such a comforting smell.