Blue Damask (26 page)

     She put her hand on his shoulder.  Something else had happened.  Something more recent.  Sonnenby didn’t know what it was.  She offered him the water skin.  Not because she thought he might be thirsty, but to refuse the offer of water in the desert was rude and to drink he must relax his jaw.  He was grinding his teeth now.  He would crack a tooth if he didn’t stop.  He took the skin from her hand and held the tied opening before his lips.  But he did not drink.  His eyes were far away.

     “Mr. Sinclair,” she said softly.  “Please take a drink.”

     His hands and arms trembled as he lifted the skin to his mouth.  He had neglected to unwrap the cord that tied the corner shut.  He did not seem to notice that water was not touching his lips.  Elsa took the water skin back and unwrapped the cord and positioned the corner properly to allow him to drink.  He did.  His eyes were vacant now.

     Elsa decided not to press the issue any further at this time.  His medical files were missing the crucial pages from commendation to commitment.  Something happened that even the military did not want put on paper.  She had read the last report, describing a mission deep in the desert to dislodge a Turkish bridge.  Success.  Then a year later there was a report detailing his military discharge and the plans to have him restrained and admitted to Saint Mary’s Bethlehem.

     There, in those lost months, lay the real reason for his troubles.  She wondered if there memory was there inside him, or if it had been erased from his mind.

     This was not the time to probe further.  He was obviously distressed now.   She changed the subject to deflect his thoughts. “You still have not told me what is next.”

     He gave her hand back and searched the moonlit horizon.  “We have crossed the Euphrates.  The British hold this land under Mandate.  The French just the other side, though the lines are fluid right now.  I suspect that is what Mr. Descartes is doing in this area.  He has a Brunton theodolite in his baggage. He is drawing maps. The French want Deir El Zor, and after the last attack the British gave it to them.  Yet the British have been buggering around here for some thirty years and currently have control of that city.  They have yet to draw the map that the Allies agree on.  Turkey is not giving up territory without argument, especially near Mosul.  England will send troops and armored cars and planes.  We do not want to be here when that happens.”

     “When will that happen?”

     “It depends on how close they are, of course.”  He turned his shoulders to face the recumbent Marshall.  “Archie knows.”

     “Have you asked him?”

     “He will not tell me, though he is nervous enough.  I suspect they are closer than we think, and that they have anticipated the local reaction to our little envoy.”  He was grim.  “Marshall wanted me to take him to Aleppo after the attack at Deir El Zor.  I cannot.”

     “You can not, or you will not?”

     He turned to look at her.  “Does it matter in the long run?”

     “Yes.  It does.”

     “We are foolish to think we can control this area like we do India or Africa.  The climate itself is our enemy.  The local tribes are not intimidated by guns or planes.  They do not have the sense of individuality that westerners do.  One man’s life or death is controlled by God’s will.  Their religion is different.  Ours threatens a hell to be avoided upon death, theirs, a complete trust. They are loyal to their religion and suspicious of foreigners.  Bribes work only for as long as it takes to spend the money.  There is no advantage to the Ruwallah in joining with Britain.  They are glad to be free of the Turks and not overeager to be dominated by anyone.”

     “Are you Ruwallah?”

     “My father was.”

     She thought about that.  “Mehmet?”

     “Became Turkified in Istanbul before the war.  He was one of their officers stationed near Ankara. Then after the war returned to the Ruwallah.  Mustafa Kemal is trying to get him to join him in the Nationalist Movement.  Mehmet has to make a decision.  I think he has.”

     “Do the Ruwallah consider him a traitor?”

     “No, they consider him very clever.  He was able to secure concessions for them from Turkey before the defeat.  He married the daughter of a Ruwallah
sheikh
and has given his eldest son to the
sharif
as hostage.  He knows what he is doing.”

     “And what is he doing?”

     Sonnenby rubbed his face and scratched the beard on one cheek.  “He is making it difficult for the British to move in. The war isn’t really over.”

     “As his brother, they expect you to have influence.  Do you?”

     He laughed.  “No.  But they think I do.  Mehmet finds it easy to rally his men against the foreigners.  I find it difficult to convince him otherwise.  It is more than a sense of honor.  I don’t know how to explain it.”

     “I can understand honor,” Elsa said.

     “No.  There is a sense of justice and religious sanctity that does not exist in the west.”

     “What? How can you say that? No honor in the west?”  She puffed up.

     “Like I said.  It is hard to explain.  Your English isn’t good enough and my German certainly is not.  I could tell you in Arabic.”  He started speaking in that language.  He looked her in the eye as though she could understand.  He even made hand gestures as he spoke. His voice was even and confident.  The sounds were foreign to her, though the guttural consonants were familiar.  The full stops and repeated vowels were not.  The sounds were lilting and melodic, and Elsa wished she could understand what he was saying to her.  He seemed very intense, as if explaining the situation in this language made sense, while telling her in English or French or German could not.  He finished, and the sad smile on his lips was not for her, but for something else.

     They sat in silence watching the sky lighten to the east.  Marshall stirred and groaned.  They both turned their heads and Sonnenby said, “I am glad you are here for his sake. He is not used to the bush and this…” he paused, and waved a hand at Marshall before touching his own throat, “
event
has sapped his strength.  When I entered the tent and saw the Ruwallah in there bent over him, knife in his throat…”  He stared at Marshall, remembering.  “By God, that was close.  Seconds, seconds.”

     “He just needs rest, and to keep the wound clean,” she said confidently.

     Sonnenby made a wry mouth.  “No rest unless we want to be caught between two armies.  We are moving back north across the sands because there is a good well far from the travelled routes toward the river, though it takes us closer to Deir El Zor as the crow flies.  We cannot follow this little river.  We will be in the wrong territory.  The other tribes will take this route on their way to El Zor and we will be caught. We are no one’s ally.”

     Elsa was alarmed.  “
Are
we caught between two armies?”

     “It is almost certain.  Marshall cannot tell me exactly where the British mechanized forces are.  Mehmet will come from the south with his tribesmen on camels and horses and carrying single-shot rifles from the turn of the century and whatever they have raided in the last year.  Maybe more of those Enfields.  They aren’t stupid, Elsa.  They will seek out the newer weapons.  I don’t doubt that some of them even know how to use the mounted guns.”  He rubbed his chin.  “I wonder if Mehmet has more of those hidden away.  He would have to drag them with mules or have men push them in carts unless he has some of Kemal’s Turkish armored cars.”

     “
Gott im Himmel
,” Elsa murmured.

     “God hasn’t been in heaven for a long while,” Sonnenby said.  “He left us all in August 1914.”

The next leg of their journey took them toward a rise in the desert.  It was easier to see from horizon to horizon.  It wasn’t the view that warned them, however, but the buzz of a distant engine.  Descartes called for them to stop and circle the camels.  Elsa could see two silver biplanes low on the western horizon flying over the river.

     “Patrol,” Sonnenby said.

     “British,” Descartes said.  “We are flying the Nieuports which are red and blue.”

     They watched.  The two planes broke off from the river and began banking toward them.  Elsa looked around for shelter, but their destination was still some kilometers away.  They were in the center of a great bowl of sand.  They had just taken a break in a
wadi
less than two hours ago.  Too far to retreat.

     “Time to take off your veil,
cherie
,” Descartes said.  He was not laughing.

     Elsa whipped it off and the wind took it to the sand where it blew up and around her camel’s knees.  The animal calmly lifted its feet until it was clear.  Elsa could not take her eyes from the planes which continued to make an easy circle to their west.

     The plane in front began to turn in a graceful arc, and as its profile changed, so did the sound of the engine.  The plane behind followed closely.  Descartes flipped his burnouse down and back over his shoulders to expose his khakis while both Marshall and Sonnenby ran hands over their heads to remove the
keffiyehs
.  The camels grumbled as the engine sounds became louder.

     No one spoke, and the only movement was the waving of their clothing in the wind and the camels’ feet as they fidgeted and swung their tails.  The planes made a turn a half a kilometer from them and circled low.  Elsa could see the pilots as round dark spots beneath the double wings.  The forward plane wagged its wings and then the engine sounds became much louder as the plane climbed higher.  She could not help but gasp.

     Descartes’ camel edged sideways toward her and he said, “No,
cherie
, that wag of his wings means he is friendly.  They will leave us.”

     He was right.  Sonnenby slid from his camel and retrieved her veil from the sand.   He handed it up to her with a smile.  “You are as good as a battalion,” he said.  They will go back and report that they saw a blonde woman in a shining ball gown on a camel.  I can imagine the entry in log book.  On the other hand, they might not report it at all.  Their comrades in arms might think they’ve gone barmy from the heat.”

     Elsa did not answer as she wrapped her head and shoulders with the long cloth.  She had had enough of aeroplanes.

     Soon they were able to prod the camels to continue walking toward the dark outcropping of stone ahead of them.  Elsa watched the planes retreat back toward the river and Deir El Zor.

     Their destination was not a mountain.  It was more like two big rocks the size of a bank building, split in two and fragmented into smaller pylons of stone.  Two long wedges of rock created a sheltered sandy space between them that was always in shade.  It looked as though it had been used as a campsite for millennia.

     A wide deep well was dug and lined with stone close to the entrance to the sheltered area between the rocks.  Elsa had forgotten she was in the company of a geologist. “Those are Mesozoic and tertiary rocks,” Descartes told her when they got closer.  “The sand and wind have been working on this outcropping for eons.  This is all that is left of a volcano,
cherie
, when dinosaurs roamed this land.  Now only the fragments remain and the dinosaurs have become petroleum.”  He smiled, then laughed and slapped his thigh.

     “It is enough to shelter us.”  Sonnenby said.  He tapped his camel and the animal grunted and knelt in the sand beside one of the larger boulders.  “And there is a good well here.”

     Elsa tapped her camel to kneel and Descartes helped get Marshall down from his.  She stood and stretched.  There was a wall of dust to the east.  She quickly looked at Sonnenby.  He and Descartes were exchanging glances that suggested they had both seen it.  She asked, “Is it a storm, or an army?”

     “It is men and animals,” Descartes said.  He raised his arm to point at it.  “A storm has sharp vertical edges that curl in the distance and climb much higher.  An army has a blurred vertical edge on the sides that blow into a wedge depending on the wind.”

     “I see.”

     “They know the well is here, too,” Sonnenby said.  “We will fill up the bags and leave.  No doubt this is where they plan to stay the night.”  He turned to Elsa.  “See what you can do for Marshall.”

     She made her way to Marshall’s camel as Sonnenby and Descartes unpacked the empty water bags and headed toward the rift between the boulders where the well was.  Marshall lay against his couched camel, eyes closed.  He was sunburned and his face seemed sunken and pinched.  The headdress was crooked on his head as the
agal
had slipped to the side.  She straightened it and used the ends of the head cloth
to wipe some of the dust from his eyes.  “Mr. Marshall, let me get you some water.”

     His cheek twitched, but he did not open his eyes.  The heavy sigh that came from his chest sounded like defeat.  She took his water bag from his camel’s saddle and poured a trickle into his mouth.  He drank it gratefully, and after she squeezed the last of the water out he opened his eyes.  “Thank you, Miss Schluss.”

     She put a hand on his shoulder.  “I wish you could be in hospital, Mr. Marshall.  I’m sorry you must recuperate by flopping back and forth on a camel in this heat.  This must be terrible for your neck.”  She put her hand on the back of his neck where he was very hot.  His neck was blue and purple and badly swollen. The narrow bandage across her stitching looked good, however.  There was no more bleeding.