Border, Breed Nor Birth

VI

El Hassan’s Tuaregs were on the move. After half a century and more of relative peace the Apaches of the Sahara, the Sons of Shaitan and the Forgotten of Allah were again disappearing into the ergs to emerge here, there, and ghostlike to disappear again. They faded in and faded away again, and even in their absence dominated all.

El Hassan was on the move, as all men by now knew, and he, who was not for the amalgamation of all North Africa, was judged against him. And who, in the Sahara, could afford to be against El Hassan when his Tuaregs were everywhere?

Refugees poured into Tamanrasset for the security of Arab Legion arms, or into In Salah and Reggan to the north, or Agades and Zinder to the south. Refugees who had already taken their stand with the Arab Union and Pan-Islam. Refugees who were men of property and would know more of this El Hassan before risking their wealth. Refugees who took no stand, but dreaded those who drank the milk of war, no matter what the cause for which they fought. Refugees who fled simply because others fled, for terror is a most contagious disease.

Colonel Midan Ibrahim of the crack motorized units of the Arab Legion which occupied Tamanrasset was fuming. His task was a double one. First, to hold Tamanrasset and its former French stronghold Fort Laperrine; second, to keep open his lines of communication with Ghadmes and Ghat, in Arab Union-dominated Libya. To hold them until further steps were decided upon by his superiors in Cairo and the Near East-whatever these steps might be Colonel Midan Ibrahim was too low in the Arab Union hierarchy to be in on such privy matters.

His original efforts, in pushing across the Sahara from Ghadmes and Ghat, had been no more than desert maneuvers. There had been no force other than nature’s to say him nay. The Reunited Nations was an organization composed possibly of great powers, but in supposedly acting in unison they became a shrieking set of hair-tearing women: the whole being less than any of its individual parts. And El Hassan? No more than a rumor. In fact, an asset, because this supposed mystery man of the desert, bent on uniting all North Africa under his domination, gave the Arab Union its alibi for stepping in with Colonel Ibrahim’s men.

Yes, the original efforts had been but a drill. But now his Arab Legion troopers were beginning to face reality. The supply trucks, coming down under convoy from Ghadmes, reported the water source at Ohanet destroyed. The major well would take a week or more to repair. Who had committed the sabotage? Some said the Tuareg, some said local followers of El Hassan, others, desert tribesmen resentful of both the Arab Union and El Hassan.

One of his routine patrols, feeling out toward Menier to the north, had suddenly dropped radio communication, almost in midsentence. A relieving patrol had thus far found nothing, the armored car’s tracks covered over by the sands.

And rumors, rumors, rumors. Colonel Midan Ibrahim, born of aristocratic Alexandrian blood, though trained to a sharp edge in Near Eastern warfare, was basically city bred. The gloss of desert training might take on him, but the bedouin life itself was not in his experience, and it was hard for him to trace the dividing line between possibility and fantasy.

Rumors, rumors, rumors. They seemed capable of sweeping from one end of the Sahara to the other in a matter of hours. Faster, it would seem, than the information could be dispensed by radio. El Hassan was here. El Hassan was there. El Hassan was marching on Rabat, in Morocco; El Hassan had just signed a treaty with the Soviet Complex; El Hassan had been assassinated by a disgruntled follower. Or El Hassan was a renegade Christian; El Hassan was a Moslem of Sheriffian blood, a direct descendant of the Prophet; El Hassan was a pagan come up from Dahomey and practiced ritual cannibalism; El Hassan was a Jew, a veteran of the Israel debacle.

But this Colonel Ibrahim knew—the Tuareg had gone over to the new movement en masse. Something there was in El Hassan and his dream that had appealed to the Forgotten of Allah. The Tuareg, for the first time since the French Camel Corps had broken their strength, were united—united and on the move.

The Tuareg were everywhere. In most sinister fashion —everywhere. And all were El Hassan’s men.

Colonel Ibrahim fumed and wondered what kept his superiors from sending in additional columns, additional armored elements. And, above all, adequate air cover. Ha! Give the colonel sufficient aircraft and he’d begin snuffing out bedouin life like candles—and bring the Peace of Allah to the Ahaggar.

So Colonel Ibrahim fumed, demanded further orders from mum superiors, and put his legionnaires to work on bigger and better gun emplacements, trenches and pillboxes surrounding Fort Laperinne and Tamanrasset.

El Hassan’s personal entourage numbered exactly twenty persons. Of these, five were his immediate English-speaking, Western-educated supporters, Cliff, Isobel and the new Jack and Jimmy Peters and Dave Moroka. Rex Donaldson had been sent south again to operate in Senegal and Mali, to take over direction of the rapidly spreading movement in such centers as Bamako and Mopti and later, if possible, in Dakar.

The other fifteen were carefully selected Tuareg, picked from among Guémama’s tribesmen, taking care to show no preference to any tribe or clan, and taking particular care to choose men who fought coolly, unexcitedly, and didn’t froth at the mouth when in action: men who were slow to charge wildly into the enemy’s guns—but slower still to retreat when the going was hot. El Hassan was prone to neither hero nor coward in his personal bodyguard.

They kept under movement: in Abelessa one day, almost in range of the mobile artillery of the Arab Legion; in Timassao the next, checking the wells that meant everything to a desert force; the following day as far south as the Tamesna region to rally the less warlike Irreguenaten, a half-breed Tuareg people largely held in scorn by those of the Ahaggar.

Homer Crawford was killing time whilst stirring up as much noise and dust as his handful of followers could manage. Killing time until Elmer Allen from the Chaambra country, Bey-ag-Akhamouk from the Teda, and Kenny Ballalou from the west could show up with their columns. He had no illusions of how things now stood. At best, he could hold together a thousand Tuareg fighting men. No more. The economics of desert life prevented him a larger force, unless he had the resources of the modern world at hand, and he didn’t. Besides that, the Tuareg confederation could provide no larger number of fighting men and at the same time continue their desert economy.

He stood now with Isobel, Cliff and Dave Moroka in one of the Western-type tents which the Peters brothers had brought with them in their hover-lorries, and poured over the half-adequate maps which covered the area.

Dave Moroka traced with a finger. “If we could dominate these wells running to Djanet, our Arab Union friends would have only their one line of supply going through Temassinine to Ghademes. That’s a long haul, Homer.”

Homer Crawford scowled thoughtfully. “That involves only four wells. If Ibrahim’s legionnaires staked out only three armored vehicles at each water hole, they could hold them. Our camelmen could never take armor.”

Moroka frowned, too. “We’ve got to start some sort of action, or the men will start dribbling away.”

Cliff Jackson said, “Bey and Kenny and Elmer should be coming soon. I heard a radio item this morning about a big pro-El Hassan movement starting in the Sudan among the Teda.”

Moroka said, “We need some sort of quick, spectacular victory. The bedouin can lose interest as quickly as they can get steamed up, and thus far we haven’t given them anything but words—promises.”

“You’re right,” Homer growled, “but there’s nothing we can do right now but mark time. Irritate the Arabs a bit. Keep them from spreading out.”

Isobel brought coffee, handing around the small Moroccan cups. She said, “Well, one thing is certain. We get supplies soon or start eating jerked goat and camel milk curds.”

Moroka said in irritation, “It’s not funny.”

Isobel raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t mean it to be. Have you ever been on a camel curd diet?”

“Yes, I have,” Moroka said impatiently. He turned back to Homer Crawford. “How about waylaying an armored car or so, just in the way of giving the men something exciting to do?”

Crawford ran a hand back through his short hair. “Confound it, Dave, can you picture what a Recoilless-Brenn gun would do to a harka of our charging camel-men? We can’t let these people be butchered.”

“I wasn’t thinking of wild charges,” Moroka argued.

They had both turned away from Isobel in their discussion. Now she looked at them, strangely. And especially at Homer Crawford. His brusqueness toward her didn’t seem the old Homer.

There was a bustle from outside and a guardsman stuck his head in the tent entrance and reported in Tamaheq that a small camel patrol approached.

The four of them went out. Coming up were a dozen Tuareg and two motor vehicles.

Cliff said, “Something new.”

Moroka said, “We can use the transport.”

“Let’s see who they are, before we start requisitioning their property,” Homer said dryly.

The two desert trucks had hardly come to a halt before the camouflaged tents and hover-lorries of El Hassan’s small encampment before a heavy-set, gray-haired Negro, whose energy belied his weight, bounced down from the seat adjacent to the driver’s in the lead vehicle and stomped belligerently to the group before the tent.

“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped.

Homer Crawford looked at him. “I’m sure I don’t know as yet, Dr. Smythe. Neither you nor these followers of mine have informed me as to what has transpired. Won’t you enter my quarters here and we’ll go into it under more comfortable conditions?” He glanced upward at the midday Saharan sun.

The other seemed taken aback at Crawford calling him by name. He squinted at the man who was seemingly his captor.

“Crawford!” he snapped. “Dr. Homer Crawford! See here, what is the meaning of this?”

Homer said, “Dr. Warren Harding Smythe, may I present Isobel Cunningham, Clifford Jackson and David Moroka, of my staff?”

“Huuumph. I met Miss Cunningham and, I believe, Mr. Jackson at that ridiculous meeting in Timbuktu a short time ago.” The doctor peered over his glasses at Moroka.

The wiry South African nodded his head. “A pleasure, Doctor.” He held open the tent entrance.

Smythe snorted again and stomped inside to escape the sun’s glare.

In the shade of the tent’s interior, Isobel clucked at him and hurried to get a drink of water from a moist water cooler. Homer Crawford motioned the other to a seat and took one himself. “Now then, Dr. Smythe.”

The indignant medic blurted, “Those confounded bandits out there…”

“Irregular camel cavalry,” Crawford amended gently.

“They’ve kidnaped me and my staff. I demand that you intercede, if you have any influence with them.”

“What were you doing?” Crawford was frowning at the other. Actually, he had no idea of the circumstances under which the probably overenthusiastic Tuareg troopers had rounded up the American medical man.

“Doing? You know perfectly well I represent the American Medical Relief. My team has been in the vicinity of Silet, working with the nomads. The country is rife with everything from rickets to syphilis! Eighty percent of these people suffer from trachoma. My team…”

“Just a moment,” Moroka said. “You mean out in those two trucks you have a complete American medical setup? Assistants and all?”

Smythe said stiffly, “I have two American nurses with me and four Algerians recruited in Oran. This sort of interference with my work is insufferable and…”

The South African was staring at Homer Crawford.

Cliff Jackson cleared his throat. “It seems as though El Hassan has just acquired a Department of Health.”

“El Hassan?” Smythe stuttered. “What, what?”

Isobel said softly, “Dr. Smythe, surely you have heard of El Hassan.”

“Heard of him? I’ve heard of nothing else for the past month! Confounded ignorant barbarian. What this part of the world needs is less intertribal, interracial, international fighting, not more. The man’s a raving lunatic and …”

Isobel said gently, “Doctor … may I introduce you to El Hassan?”

“What … what?” For the briefest of moments, there was an element of timorousness in the sputtering doctor’s voice. Then suddenly he comprehended.

He pointed at Homer Crawford accusingly. “You’re El Hassan!”

Homer nodded, seriously, “That’s correct, Doctor.”

The doctor’s eyes went around the four of them. “You’ve done what you were driving at there at that meeting in Timbuktu. You’re trying to unite these people in spite of themselves and then drag them, willy-nilly, into the twentieth century.”

Homer still nodded.

Smythe shook an indignant finger at him. “I told you then, Crawford, and I tell you now. These natives are not suited for such sudden change. Already they are subject to mass neurosis because they cannot adjust to a world that changes too quickly.”

“I wonder if that doesn’t apply to the rest of us as well,” Cliff said unhappily. “But the changes go on, if we like them or not. Can you think of any way to turn them off?”

The doctor snorted.

Homer Crawford said, “Dr. Smythe, the die is already cast. The question now becomes, will you join us?”

“Join you! Certainly not!”

Crawford said evenly, “Then I might suggest that, first, you will not be allowed to operate in my territory.” He considered for a moment, grinning inwardly, but on the surface his expression was serene. He added, “And second, that you will probably have difficulties procuring an exit visa from my domains.”

“Exit visa! Are you jesting? See here, my good man, you realize I am a citizen of the United States of the Americas and . …”

“A country,” Homer yawned, “with which I have not as yet opened diplomatic relations, and hence has little representation in North Africa.”

The doctor was bug-eyeing him. He began sputtering again. “This isn’t funny. You’re an American citizen yourself. And you, Miss Cunningham and…”

Isobel said sadly, “As a matter of fact, the last we heard, the State Department representative told us our passports were invalid.”

Crawford leaned forward. “Look here, Doctor. You don’t see eye to eye with us on matters socio-economic. However, as a medical man, I submit that joining my group—ah, that is, until you can secure an exit visa from my authorities—will give you an excellent opportunity to practice your science here in the Sahara under the wing of El Hassan. I’ll assign a place for your trucks and tents. Please consider the question and let me have your answer at your leisure. Meanwhile, we will prepare a desert feast suitable to the high esteem in which we hold you.”

They looked after the doctor as he left, and Moroka chuckled. However, Isobel was watching Homer Crawford quizzically.

She said finally, “We rode over him a little in the roughshod manner, didn’t we?”

Homer Crawford growled uncomfortably, “Particularly when we finally have our showdown with the Arab Legion, a medic will be priceless.”

Isobel said softly. “And the end justifies the means.”

Homer shot a quick, impatient look at her. “The good doctor and his people are in the Sahara to work with the Tuareg and the Teda and the rest of the bedouin. Beyond that, he has the same dream we have—of developing this continent of our racial background.”

“But he doesn’t believe in your methods, Homer, and we’re forcing him to follow El Hassan’s road in spite of his beliefs.”

Moroka had been peering at the two of them narrowly. “You don’t make omelets without breaking eggs,” he said, his voice on the overbearing side.

She spun on him. “But the omelets don’t turn out so well if some of the eggs you use are rotten.”

The South African’s voice turned gentle. “Miss Cunningham,” he said, “working in the field, like this, can have its rugged side for a young and delicate woman …”

“Delicate!” she snapped. “I’ll have you know . …”

“Hey, everybody, hold it,” Cliff injected. “What goes on?”

Dave Moroka shrugged. “It just seems to me that Isobel might do better back in Dakar, or in New York with your friend Jake Armstrong. Somewhere where her sensibilities wouldn’t be so bruised, and where her assets”—his eyes went up and down her lithe body—“could be put to better use.”

Isobel’s sepia face had gone a shade or more lighter. She said, very flatly, “My assets, Mr. Moroka, are in my head.”

Homer Crawford said disgustedly, “O.K., O.K., let’s all knock it off.”

His eyes flicked back and forth between them, in definite command. “I don’t want to hear any more in the way of personalities between you two.”

Moroka shrugged again. “Yes sir,” he said without inflection.

Isobel turned away and took up some paperwork without further words. She suppressed her feeling of seething indignation.

Homer Crawford, under his pressures, was changing. Possibly, she had told herself before, it was change for the better. The need was for a strong man, perhaps even a ruthless one.

The Homer Crawford she had first known was an easier-going man than he who had snapped an abrupt order to her a moment ago. The Homer she had first known requested things of his teammates and friends. El Hassan had learned to command.

The Homer she had first known could never have ridden roughshod over the basically gentle Dr. Smythe.

The Homer she had first known, when the El Hassan scheme was still aborning, had thought of himself as a member of a team. He was quick to ask advice of all, and quick to take it if it had validity. Now Homer, as El Hassan, was depending less and less upon the opinions of those surrounding him and more and more upon his own decisions, which he seemed sometimes to reach purely through intuition.

The El Hassan dream was still upon her but, womanlike, she wondered if she liked the would-be tyrant of all North Africa as well as she had once liked the easygoing American idealist, Homer Crawford.

Jack and Jimmy Peters, the brothers from Trinidad, entered, the former carrying a couple of books.

They’d evidently failed to note the raised voices and wore their customary serious expressions. Jack looked at Homer and said, “Ĉu vi scias Esperanton?”

Homer Crawford’s eyebrows went up but he said, “Jes, mi parolas Esperanto tre bona, mi pensas.”

“Bona” Jack said, “Tre bona.”

“Jes, estas bele,” his brother said.

Moroka was scowling back and forth from one of them to the other. “I thought I had a fairly good working knowledge of the world’s more common languages,” he said, “but that goes by me. It sounds like a cross between Italian and pig-Latin.”

Homer said to the Peters brothers, “Let’s drop Esperanto so that Dave, Isobel and Cliff can follow us. We can give it a whirl later, if you’d like, just for the practice.”

Isobel said slowly, “Mi parolas Esperanto, malgranda.” Then in English, “I took it for kicks while I was still in school. Kind of rusty now, though.”

“Esperanto?” Cliff said. “You mean that gobbledygook so-called international language?”

Jack Peters looked at him, serious-faced as always. “What is wrong with an international language, Mr. Jackson?”

Cliff was taken aback. “Search me. But it doesn’t seem to have proved very practical. It didn’t catch on.”

“Well, more than you might think,” Isobel told him. “There are probably hundreds of thousands of persons in one part of the world or another who can get along in Esperanto.”

Moroka said impatiently, “What’re a few hundred thousands of people in a world population like ours? Cliff’s right. It never took hold.”

Homer said, “All right, Jack and Jimmy. You boys evidently have something on your minds. Let everybody sit down and listen to it.”

Even before they got thoroughly settled, Jack Peters was launching into his pitch.

“We need an official language,” he said. “The El Hassan movement has set as a goal the uniting of all North Africa. We might start here in the Sahara, but it’s just a start. Ultimately, the idea is to reach from Morocco to Egypt and from the Mediterranean to … to where? The Congo?”

“Actually, we’ve never set exact limits,” Homer said.

“Ultimately all Africa,” Dave Moroka muttered softly. He ignored the manner in which Isobel contemplated him from the side of her eyes.

“All right,” the West Indian said, “There are more than seven hundred major languages, not counting dialects, in Africa. Sooner or later, we need an official language. What is it going to be?”

“Why one official language? Why not several?” Cliff scowled. “Say Arabic, here in this area. Swahili on the East coast. And, say, Songhoi along the Niger, and Wolof, the Senegalese lingua franca, and …”

“You see,” Peters interrupted. “Already you have half a dozen and you haven’t even got out of this immediate vicinity as yet. Let me develop my point.”

Homer Crawford was becoming interested. “Go on, Jack,” he said.

Jack Peters pointed a finger at him. “To be the hero symbol we have in mind, El Hassan is going to have to be able to communicate with all of his people. He’s not going to be able to speak Arabic to, say, a Masai in Kenya. They hate the Arabs. He’s not going to be able to speak Swahili to a Moroccan, they’ve never heard of the language. He can’t speak Tamaheq to the Imraguen, they’re scared to death of the Tuareg.”

Homer said thoughtfully, “A common language would be fine. It’d solve a lot of problems. But it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Why not adopt as our official language the one in which the most of our people will be able to communicate? Say, Arabic?”

Jack was shaking his head seriously. “And antagonize all the Arab-hating Bantu in Africa? It’s no go, Homer.”

“Well, then, say French—or English.”

“English is the most international language in the world,” Moroka said. But his face was thoughtful, as those of the others were becoming.

The West Indian was beginning to make his points now. “No, any of the European languages are out. The white man has been repudiated. Adopting English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch as our official language would antagonize whole sections of the continent.”

“Why Esperanto?” Cliff scowled. “Why not, say, Nov-Esperanto, or Ido, or Interlingua?”

Jimmy Peters put in a word now. “Actually, any one of them would possibly do, but we have a head start with Esperanto. Some years ago both Jack and I became avid Esperantists, being naive enough in those days to think an international language would ultimately solve all man’s problems. And both Homer and Isobel seem to have a working knowledge of the language.”

Homer said, “So have the other members of my former Reunited Nations team. That’s where those books you found came from. Elmer, Bey, Kenny—and Abe—and I used to play around with it when we were out in the desert, just to kill time. We also used it as sort of a secret language when we wanted to communicate and didn’t know if those around us might understand some English.”

“I still don’t get the picture,” Cliff argued. “If we picked the most common half a dozen languages in the territory we cover, then millions of these people wouldn’t have to study a second language. But if you adapt Esperanto as an official language then everybody is going to have to learn something new. And that’s not going to be easy for our ninety-five percent illiterate followers.”

Isobel said thoughtfully, “Well, it’s a darn sight easier to learn Esperanto than any other language we decided to make official.”

“Why?” Cliff said argumentatively.

Jack Peters took over. “Because it’s almost unbelievably easy to learn. English, by the way, is extremely difficult. For instance, spelling and pronunciation are absolutely phonetic in Esperanto and there are only five vowel sounds, whereas most national languages have twenty or so. And each sound in the alphabet has one sound only and any sound is always rendered by the same letter.”

Dave Moroka said, “Actually, I don’t know anything at all about this Esperanto.”

The West Indian took him in with a dominating glance. “Take grammar and syntax, which can take up volumes in other languages. Esperanto has exactly sixteen short rules. And take vocabularies. For instance, in English we often form the feminine of a noun by adding ess—actor-actress, tiger-tigress. But not always. We don’t say bull-bulless or ghost-ghostess. In Esperanto you simply add the feminine ending to any noun—there’s no exception to any rule.”

Jack Peters was caught up in his subject. “Still comparing it to English, realize that spelling and pronunciation in English are highly irregular and one letter can have several different sounds, and one sound may be represented by different letters. And there are even silent letters which are written but not pronunced like the ugh in though. There are none of these irregularities in Esperanto. And the sounds are all sharp with none of such subtle differences as, say, bed-bad-bard-bawd, that sort of thing.”

Jimmy Peters said, “The big item is that any averagely intelligent person can begin speaking Esperanto within a few hours. Within a week of even moderate study, say three or four hours a day, he’s astonishingly fluent.”

Isobel said thoughtfully, “There’d be international advantages. It’s always been a galling factor in Africans dealing with Europeans that they had to learn the European language involved. You couldn’t expect your white man to learn kitchen kaffir, or Swahili, or whatever, not when you got on the diplomatic level.”

Cliff Jackson was thinking out loud. “So far, El Hassan is an unknown. Rumor has it that he’s everything from a renegade Egyptian, to an escaped Mau-Mau chief, to a Senegalese sergeant formerly in the French West African forces. But when he starts running into the press and they find that Homer and his closest associates all speak English, and most of them with an American accent, there’s going to be some fat in the fire.”

“And El Hassan will have lost some of his mysterious glamor,” Homer added thoughtfully.

Even Moroka, the South African, was beginning to accept the idea. “If El Hassan, himself, refused in the presence of foreigners ever to speak anything but Esperanto, the aura of mystery would continue.”

Jimmy Peters, elaborating and obviously pushing an opinion he and his brother had already discussed, said, “We make it a rule that every school, both locally taught and foreign, must teach Esperanto as a required subject. All El Hassan governmental affairs would be conducted in that language. Anybody at all trying to get anywhere in the new regime would have to learn the official inter-African tongue.”

“Oh, brother,” Cliff groaned, “that means me.” He brightened. “We haven’t any books or anything, as yet.”

Isobel laughed at him. “I’ll take on your studies, Cliff. We have a few books. Those that Homer and his team used to kill time with. And as soon as we’re in a position to make requests for foreign aid of the great powers, Esperanto grammars, dictionaries and so forth can be high on the list.”

With a sharp cry, almost a bark, a figure jumped into the entrance and with a bound into the center of the tent, submachine gun in hand. “All right, everybody. On your feet. The place is raided!”

Dave Moroka leaped to his feet, his hand tearing with blurring speed for his holstered hand gun. “Where’s that bodyguard?” he yelled.