Tom Foran Clark

The city of Ain-Sefra came almost magically to life. The lines of soldiers and caravans of jeeps had departed. The Grand Marché was filled with noise and commotion -- sellers hawking glinting pots and bowls and dishes, also satchels, sandals, shoes, shirts, robes, and gowns. Women wove a sly slalom course through the crush of men, carrying bread loaves in paper wraps wedged under their arms. Harsh ashen faces lined the aisles, scowling and yawning in the shade of tents. Several burnished, towering Nigerians demonstrated their arrays of homemade gem and metal polishes. Shoppers lingered, milling, browsing -- handling things and putting them back, handling things and putting them back, handling things and putting them back. Emery regarded this world as if for the first time -- the strangeness in it. He wheeled over the square filled with a sudden cutting sense of hollow strangeness -- continuing on solo.

Emery left Ain-Sefra on the route north to Saida and, beyond it, to Oran. On first reading Pike’s note instructing him to meet with Ahmed there, Emery's inclination was to head in any other direction than Oran, but then he’d changed his mind.

Under the vast, humbling, almost obliterating sky, Emery pedaled dully, grieving, climbing sheer, forbidding inclines that brimmed and emptied down onto the Hauts Plateaux. The northern winds bore down and pressed him back. Exhausted, he arrived late that afternoon at an abandoned, ravaged military encampment on the barren flatlands -- three burned, gutted stone barn stalls on a small square and a larger fourth rock building, perhaps once officer’s quarters, with a fireplace. At two corners of the courtyard watchtowers still stood, with views over the prairie to distant haze-blue pyramids of mountains. He stood a long while in one, swaying and fretting. Emery was on edge, half expecting an expeditionary force fresh from genocide and massacre would return to the garrison in a caravan of camels, trucks, and jeeps. But for the stir of sands touched by sudden flights of wind, the desert remained empty and silent. An unhindered, brazen sun bore down on all. When night fell, bitter cold, he took shelter in a corner of the humblest burnt-out barn.

In the morning, a gray Renault pick-up truck going Emery's direction stopped on the desolate open road. The talkative Arab driver, a nervous octogenarian or maybe hundred-year-old chain-smoker in checkered western garb with a purple ski-cap, had a shiny Zippo lighter that he clicked open and shut about a thousand times during their journey together, about thirty kilometers. He took Emery as far as Mecheria, another military base of beige and brown striped nomad’s tents amid rock and concrete huts on the flat, redundant plain. Emery rode out of Mecheria on his bike on a road going ahead straight as a ruler. Three exuberant soldiers in a green Land Rover pulled over, offering him a ride. At that point, Emery would not have said no to the president of Algeria pulling up in a gold-plated Mercedes limousine.

Emery and the soldiers crossed a subtle temperate zone into still another world. The flat wastelands turned to rich, rolling spreads of grain -- swaths of fertile green and golden wheat stretching far and wide, yielding to still more verdant fields and farmlands. They passed through valley after expansive valley and emerged onto a splendid valley basin -- and the wrecked, disheveled city of Saida on the basin floor. After crossing a high bridge over a plunging gorge, Emery's happy-go-lucky military benefactors let him out. "Il faut d’abord durer," one said, wishing him endurance. "Merci, Emery said, trembling. He was very unsteady. He walked to the canyon rim and lay his bike down. Then he sat down next to it.

Dense, lichen-matted, rocky woods fell to a tiny, quiet, trickling stream below. A dangerous-looking character in natty contemporary European garb walked up to him from out of nowhere, saying "Bon Jour, Monsieur." He sat down next to Emery, right there on the ridge. Emery could see himself in the guy's sunglasses -- Emery looked sunburned, windswept, exhausted, and scared. This fellow spoke liquid French, with occasional English thrown in, which should have calmed Emery -- but it didn’t. Emery understood him to say he had a friend in the prison just behind them on the hill -- Emery turned to look and, sure enough, there was this prison. He was going to spring his pal and the two would make their way to Cuba, then on to Rio de Janeiro in time for Carnival. He asked Emery if he’d heard about that gang of guerrillas that had come to Saida with guns, knives, axes, and torches just the week before, burning homes, slashing throats, carrying off women and girls. After a long silence, getting no rise out of Emery, the guy stood to go. "Au revoir" is all he said.

Emery walked close along the ridge of the mighty chasm. Far below were tumbled boulders, red-ochre sandstone, green pastures, forest trees, moving streams, and forking rivulets. The sun was going down fast. City sounds – voices, shouts, barking dogs, honking horns -- floated up. City lights blinked on in Saida. Emery made his camp behind a wedge of boulders only twenty feet or so from the gorge rim. Amid the sparkling diamond granules of the stars, the moon shone out, approaching fullness again.

The next day, Emery went down to Saida, situated on a kind of shelf along part of the the valley floor. At the center of the ville was Le Grande Maison, an austere beige-brown train depot with dormer windows and an orange tiled roof. Across the square, in a haze of smoke, stood the smoldering Hotel d’ Orient, its faded yellow facade trimmed in faded green and charcoal. Everywhere about were soldiers, in and out of uniforms, eating dates, smoking cigarettes, laughing out loud, comparing stories. Expressionless old men shuffled by in slippers, wearing soiled white turbans and robes. The women wore also white, keeping their faces covered. The younger women and schoolgirls wore both white robes and colorful European fashions, dresses, but all had their faces covered with scarves.

Going through Saida, Emery felt like a ghost -- as if they couldn’t see him. He returned to the canyons and rode toward the meadows and fields in the north -- olive orchards, cypress trees, goldenrod, and dandelions. He rolled through Sidi-Amar, where there were no special signs of recent war or devastation, and crossed a bridge over a dry riverbed to vast acres of golden grain. Emery passed through the sleepy village of Froha and wound up a steepening route going to Mascara, carved out of the rough gray hills of the Atlas Tellien.

In Masacara, much had transpired. He’d later learn Islamist militants had dressed up as government police and, armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles, swords, and axes, had massacred hundreds of Mascarans, abducting twenty or more girls and women. Smoke still rose from random smoldering fires. Emery pedaled through, rolled across grape vineyards and potato fields, and climbed more mountains.

The route to Oran was clearly marked. Emery rode and rode -- along a valley floor, across seas of grasslands, over hilltop pastures, along canyon ridges -- traveling through Hacine, Oued-Nair, and Sig -- where schoolchildren chased butterflies across green meadows -- to Oued-Tlelat. Fifteen kilometers short of Oran, he arrived in the smoldering, recently pillaged village of El-Kemar. Emery rested under olive trees growing parallel to train tracks, and fell asleep. In the evening, he awoke and walked with his bike further north along the rails.

Trains sped by like rattling jackhammers. Exhausted faces peered at him through smoke-fogged windowpanes. At dusk, as he settled down for the night, in a meadow, a young fellow in elegant European garb -- woolen vest, blue shirt, black slacks -- came up suddenly, greeting Emery profusely. Emery let him know his French was not so good, but the fellow kept on talking anyway. He said he was going to leave Emery for a little while, but he’d be back -- with hot mint tea. Emery said, "Okay. Do that. So nice to meet you," and so on, thinking he’d just very quickly vamoose from that spot so soon as this fellow was gone. Then Emery changed my mind.

Within twenty minutes, the elegant stranger was back, carrying atop his fingertips a silver tray; and on this tray was a silver teapot holding fresh mint tea, a white and blue porcelain bowl holding sugar cubes, a single small silver spoon, and two tea glasses. Alas, while the crickets sawed and the trains roared by, Moustava and Emery sipped mint tea and made awkward small talk for an hour. Then Moustava lifted his tray, teapot, bowl, spoon, and glasses and ever so politely bid Emery adieu -- by the light of the silvery moon. The mystery and beauty of it did not cause Emery a moment’s unrest. In fact, it put him at ease again. Moustava may even have slipped a drug into the tea. Within ten minutes of Moustava's departure, Emery succumbed to deepest sleep.

His hair felt like ocean sponge the next morning. Emery's sleeping bag was soaked in dew. A smog haze veiled the view to Oran and the ocean. He felt at one with the torpid world. Then it occurred to Emery all of a sudden that, not only had Moustava drugged him, he had probably come back in the night and robbed him. Enery quickly searched his sleeping bag, rucksack, other bags, and his shoes to see if all was present and intact. It was all there. If Moustava had intended any mischief, or any harm to Emery, there was no evidence of it. Everything was fine. Emery just sat there, this dull morning, feeling bad. He felt lousy about Pike’s departure, or disappearance, or whatever it was; and he felt lousy for doubting Moustava’s being anything but a mystical embodiment of saving grace -- an angelic visitation.

Then Emery went on. The city of Oran sprang up in ugly stalagmites -- concrete blocks of apartments ten to twenty stories high. Emery plodded sluggishly toward the port. He rode along the seafront boulevard, the balustrade, lined in flourishing palms. Ochre cliffs rose dramatically from the water’s edge. Perched high atop one forefront bay-ridge was the austere, precarious Fort of Santa Cruz.

He turned away from the spacious waterfront, retreating into the adjoining labyrinth, encountering familiar throngs: Arabs in their tattered robes and gowns brushing elbows with men and women in the latest European styles. Beyond the accustomed white, some women wore velvet green, deep maroon, red satin, embroidered gold. Rue by rue, Emery made his way to the twin-towered Cathedral de Sacré Couer, the Cathedral of Oran, converted into a public library, with a courtyard circled sparsely in palms. He had a quick look at his wallet calendar to confirm or dispel a sudden sneaking suspicion he had that this was Easter Sunday. Indeed, it was Easter. Elsewhere. Not at this cathedral -- not in Oran.

Feeling he’d got his general bearings as to what was where in Oran -- who knew when one would need to take sudden flight? -- Emery turned back to the labyrinth to seek the Hotel Charkel Arabi. There the desk clerk told him he had no note, letter, folded origami paper art, or any other kind of communication to convey to Emery. He registered anyway, tucked his bike away in a narrow crevice near the lobby desk, then followed the clerk past a striking sculpted stairway masthead, a Congo-dark negress head wearing mime-face, white, with an ashtray fitted to her head.

His room was on the second floor, facing out to an inner couryard. The room’s ceiling was ten or more feet high. The walls were green -- mint julep. Emery lay back on the bed and was soon asleep.

It was six in the evening when he came to. He ventured out for food. Four of the six boulevards that met at the junction where the Hotel Charkel Arabi stairs emerged (onto café sidewalk tables amid tumbling chaos of shops) were primary arteries of the ville. Here was mayhem. Emery was ably touched twice for my wallet, which he wasn’t carrying with him.

Drumming and chants co-mingled in the fine, warm night. Emery went down to the harbor and watched grim cargo freighters change into elegant candle-boats in the oily black of night. Back in the Casbah, he found squalor -- poorhouse pits, wreckage, ruins. Timid cats tip-toed gingerly over wretched, stinking refuse heaps. Oran began to die right around eight o’clock. At nine, there was a powerful sense of the day’s end -- closure. The place was deathly still by ten.

Emery awoke to the sounds of a washerwoman clanking a metal bucket, striking it with a mop, pouring suds across the couryard decks. He left the hotel and made a day of walking. He walked down the Rue Emir-Abdelkader, went as far as the Boulevard Zabana, then turned and looped around to the Boulevard L’ Independence and a market square filled with fruits, vegetables, meats, bloody bones, foul odors, endless trinkets, wares of all kinds. He walked on from there to the seafront promenade. Back at the Hotel Charkel Arabi in the evening -- back at Six Way Junction, as he called it -- he drank a few bottles of B.A.O. -- Biere Algérienne Oran -- then set back into the blind-alley maze or mess of streets and emerged at the Spanish Port at dusk, then turned back the way he’d come.

The hotel desk man woke him early in the morning -- it was not yet even dawn -- his fist on the door. "Your message arrivé," he was calling to Emery through the door. "M’sieur Emery, your message, c’est arrivé."

Emery went to the door and, filled with the anticipation of glad news, opened it wide. The face of glowering Ahmed met his eyes. He put his two hands on Emery's chest, pushed him to the floor and, as the betraying desk clerk clattered back down the stairs to his post, put a dust-covered black shoe down on Emery's groin.

“Donnez-moi d'argent,” Ahmed demanded. “Give me the money.” He reached through the neck opening of his burnous robe and pulled a knife from within. He knelt down on Emery's chest on one knee and held the knife against his throat. "Votre Ami says you stole his money."

“I don’t have his money,” Emery lied. “What have you done with Pike?”

"He is eager for being a soldier to the liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Sahawari people, making Spanish Sahara free!"

"He’s in the Spanish Sahara?"

"C’est ca. He is asking you meet him -- in Marrakech. He is asking you are bringing him his money and helping in our struggling."

"Like I’d help you,” Emery scoffed.

Ahmed took the knife from Emery's throat and returned it to his cloak. "I am intégriste,” he said, looking hurt. “I would kill you, but you are not good for Algeria being dead. I am loving my country too much. Your friend Pike, he is in Spanish Sahara. He asks you are meeting him at the Hotel Marrakech. Is easy finding , on the Place de la Liberté." Ahmed reached for my hand and helped me up. "He is promising support. He is hiding money in Spain. I am helping him getting it. We are leaving on boat from Marrakech. If you are coming," Ahmed said, "you are also knowing rewards."

“Pike is on his own,” Emery told Ahmed. He was already packing to leave, but not with Ahmed. “Tell Pike I said that.”

Ahmed searched through Emery's things. Satisfied he was not carrying the pesetas Pike had got from Townsend in Assissi, Ahmed said Emery was free to go. "Torturing you is bringing Algeria not coming forward," Ahmed said, sighing resignedly. “We are leaving instructions at the Hotel Marrakech, Ahmed said militarily. “No date is certain, but is being very close. I am hoping you are not disappointing.” With that, he turned and left.

The desk clerk checked Emery out of the Hotel Charkel Arabi and retrieved his bike for him. He took Emery's hand and shook it vigorously, saying, "You will be saying of Algeria, ‘Don’t go there.’ For these, I am sorry."

Emery pushed forward through Oran’s morning multitudes holding onto his bike as to a buoy in a fierce riptide, feeling strongly pulled back. He went to an outlying crossroads where a sign pointed to Ain-Temouchent and Oujda, Morocco. This route climbed to a ridge offering a view across the Grande Sebkra d’ Oran, a flatland chott with shallow saltwater pools -- or were they mirages? -- stretching far and wide before a silver haze of distant mountains.

He rolled down through the silent town of Messerghin, circled by pastures and vineyards bound by high-rising cypress trees, where Islamist insurgents had two days before been dismembered and burned beyond recognition by government security mopping-up forces after guerrillas had entered the ville and done their work with automatic rifles, axes, and swords. Emery entered dark deciduous woods and emerged onto the sunny village of Bou-Tlelis, where a bomb had gone off in a café the previous day, killing seven café dwellers. On one side of Bou-Tlelis were fertile green fields stretching like carpets to the hills, and on the other was the mirror surface of the dry Sebkra chott.

As Emery rolled through the oasis village of El-Amria, a lone young woman in white, walking into the village as he was leaving it, suddenly brought her right hand to her covering scarves and revealed her face -- her dark brown liquid eyes and her lips, on which she’d put translucent lip-gloss or some glittering salve. She puckered up her lips and kissed the air just as Emery passed by. This was bold, Emery knew -- this was unexpected -- this was beautiful.

The green fields stretched from the road to the sable-beige of the Sebkra fringe. A hill of green stood out on the sea of sands like an island. Emery entered Hassi-El-Ghalla on a wide thoroughfare lined in huge elephant-leg palms painted white from their base to a height of seven feet. On the other side of Hassi-El-Ghalla were knolls, verdant valleys, fertile pastures, and a tiny outpost village consisting of seven blistered stucco huts and a charred rock edifice -- once a schoolhouse, Emery guessed. Along the road stood a boy in rags, chameleon-like, looking as charred and blistered as the ruins around him. He was playing a guitar -- something like a guitar anyway, with just three strings. As if to raise funds to rebuild the burned-down schoolhouse. It was pathetic. Emery stopped to listen. The boy plucked a simple melody. When he finished, Emery applauded and handed to him a shining dinar. The boy closed his eyes, dropped his chin to his chest, and bowed gracefully.

More elephantine palm trunks welcomed Emery when he rolled into the oasis village of El-Mellah. A half dozen café idlers cheerily waved him over to join them for a drink. They announced themselves as liberators -- Mujahideen. They’d been working up a list, they explained, and did Emery want to be on it? Well, who was on the list? Emery asked them. People to be executed (one of them drew a finger across his throat). Now they showed off their knives and their guns -- their Walthers and Berettas. Next, displaying and parading wounds, stumps, and scars, they complained bitterly of the government, French interference, and Americans. "All unbelievers will be killed," declared the oily, unnerving character who’d drawn his finger across his throat.

"Forgive Paksha," said Abdul, sitting to Paksha’s right. "We will not be killing you. We are not -- how do you say? -- sauvages."

"We not kill him now," Paksha offered.

"We kill him now!" a third character cried out, leaping to his feet holding a Beretta. His eyes were brown and yellow marbles; his face was leather, etched and burned. He shot the gun -- at Emery's face! He heard the zing or whir of that bullet pass right by his ear. He dove -- dropped to the ground. The shooter’s comrades seized him. Lifting Emery, they meanwhile tried to calm him. "Forgive Hambkeesh," said Abdul. "He is -- how you say? -- gun happy."

Emery's was a hasty departure. He got to a stone wall marking a boundary somewhere outside El-Mellah, and only then stopped to catch his breath. Trembling from this brush with death or out of mere indignity, the injury to pride, Emery was in pain. His heart felt pierced -- harpooned. His head was on fire.

A sagacious, bronze, white-bearded man in white turban, silken blouse, and baggy shining pants strode up brandishing a gnarled tree branch, making jovial clicking greetings in Arabic. When he realized Emery's distress, he just stood next to Emery by the wall, silent. They both stood there for quite a while, maybe ten or twenty minutes, just listening to some whippoorwills singing up on top of the wall. It calmed Emery -- cooled him down. Then the old man strode away, clicking to himself.

Emery rode over big smooth fields of grass to a bleak shanty town -- the recently ransacked village of Ain-Temouchent. He’d piece together later that several villagers had got their throats slit by terrorists only two or three days before. The twin towers of the abandoned, charred cathedral rose to higher than the leaning village minaret. All around this ravaged, bleak outpost shone the gorgeous, smooth green fields. Though still shaking from my near-death episode, Emery sailed across this ocean of green, almost lifted by kind winds. He rode until sundown. The view from where he settled that evening was of gentle folds of farmlands nestling in valleys. Emery could have taken the low road straight to Oujda the next morning, but chose instead to go by way of Tlemcen, famous for its wine.

This route took Emery up the side of a mountain. He had to dismount and walk with his bike to get to the top. Though the sky was hazy, filled with clouds, the sun’s warmth was searing nonetheless. At the top of the mountain, circled in wheat fields, clover, dandelions, goldenrod, and poppies, was the quiet village, Remchi -- also recently all but burned to the ground. From there he kept climbing, heading for Hennaya Bensekrane. The sun bore down. Salty sweat dripped into his eyes and stung. There were lizards, birds, and cats flat-out dead on the boiling road. Emery's mouth was dust.

It occurred to Emery he’d never see Tlemcen. He was giddy, talking to himself, maybe hyperventilating, probably dehydrated. To cheer himself up, he composed a song:

If you make the grueling haul
uphill to Tlemcen on a bicycle
you will sweat bullets, my friends.

Emery pressed on. When Tlemcen finally came into view, he dropped the bike and all his gear and fell on the ground. He was singing to himself:

If you ever do see Tlemcen
make sure you’re not deluded by a mirage
or just hallucinating, my friends.

Tlemcen was spackled across the staggering sheer, broad face of a gray and green mountain. The city stretched across the mountain’s face, barnacled with upward mounting cubicles -- stucco boxes. Emery entered Tlemcen north of its center, panting up the tilt into the maze, leaning into the bike’s handlebars as he walked, his arms straight out in front of him. He may as well have been walking with his bike up the side of the Eifel Tower.

Emery came to a gated park full of lovely shade trees and Belle de Nuit flowers. Here also was a pleasant marketplace. The mosque minaret rose in elegant disrepair. One of several surrounding urchins ceased to ask Emery for money, somehow recognizing he was in dire need of water. The boy ran and fetched a big jug of cold water for Emery. Then this Gunga-Din took Emery's hand and led him to the Centre d’ Ville at the top of the world. Here was a gem among places -- Tlemcen. Emery's Gunga-Din excused himself, and vanished. Emery bought a bottle of good Coteaux de Tlemcen wine and bread and cheese, and walked down a path near the mosque and minaret, slipping along ancient rubble. He passed by Turkish ruins and rolled down out of Tlemcen again, heading for Maghma, and Oujda.

Emery slept in a field. Roosters cawed from farmhouses. Mules brayed. Cows mooed. Dogs barked. Weird tiny flies buzzed around his head like miniature hummingbirds, but Emery paid them no mind. He savored the Coteaux de Tlemcen and slept deeply.

Cool breezes woke him early in the morning. He packed and got going right away. He rode beyond the fertile farmlands into the arid mountains where, as legend has it, a Tlemcen official had long ago insisted pine trees be planted. But the man had blundered, ordering not pine trees, but firs. The mountains circling Tlemcen were covered in Scandinavian Christmas trees!

It began to drizzle rain. The sky turned a grim gray. Gusts of wind rose up. Come in! Take cover! the Christmas trees seemed to call to Emery. He turned in at a footpath and pushed his bike up the slope into the sparse firs.

He heard a car come around the bend, and he heard it swerve roadside and come to a quick halt. A door opened. It was then slammed shut. Emery heard footsteps coming up the path. Overhead, the sky grew darker, blacker, grimmer still.

Suddenly, before him stood Hambkeesh, the gun-happy Mujahideen who’d shot at Emery in El-Mellah. Again, Hambkeesh was pointing his Beretta at Emery's forehead. Hambkeesh was shaking; Emery was not. Hambkeesh demanded Emery turn over his passport and his papers.

"Porquoi?" Emery asked dully.

"Porquoi?" Hambkeesh echoed. Emery could see his astonishment. "Porquoi?" he repeated. The irony was killing him. Anger and frustration filled his face. Hambkeesh was boiling. He was turning crimson.

The two just stood there like that, amid the fir trees on that mountainside under those bleak drizzly skies, staring into one another’s eyes. Emery wondered if he’d say "Porquoi?" a third time, or just do it -- shoot Emery dead. But nothing happened. Emery shrugged his shoulders, waiting. If he was going to do it, he would have to do it now. Suddenly, Emery took his bike by the handlebars and turned and headed back down the mountain. His left arm brushed against Hambkeesh's gun-toting arm as he passed by.

Hambkeesh followed Emery down, mumbling. Back roadside again, he got into his little rattletrap powder blue Renault, and drove away.

Emery didn’t start shaking until he got to the outskirts of Maghnia. There, he crossed a stream and took shelter under the umbrella cover of a huge leaf-filled tree. The sunset arrived in the form of shimmering orange curtains. Emery curled up like an embryo and tried to sleep. Eventually the rain gave out, but not the wind. The big tree groaned and creaked in its duress. In the morning a little bird was clinging to a low branch, despite the near gale force. He woke Emery, shrilly chirping "Chooah-hah-Whee! Chooah-hah-Whee!" To him, Emery called back:

It’s good to be here
in this whirlwind with you
my little friend!

The sun was up. Winds were ripping through the village of Maghnia, sending up dust and grit throughout. Emery beat a retreat back to the outskirts and the plain. It was noon when he arrived at the Moroccan frontier. Outside their charred, roofless customs outpost, four Algerian officials circled around Emery's bike, laughing and kicking the tires. The Inspector General of this customs post was apparently out to lunch. It was two o’clock before he finally got back, limping toward Emery with the help of a cane. He took another hour to inspect Emery's paperwork and bike and gear. It was nearly three when he ceremoniously hobbled with Emery over to a narrow clearing between long stretches of barbed wire. He gestured to the lovely blue Morocco Customs building. Yelling into Emery's ear above the harsh and whistling winds as he launched Emery forward into Moroccan territory, the official assured him, "Algeria is ending."