Tom Foran Clark

Emery's abscessed tooth threw them for a loop. In fact, the two cycled or walked with their bikes through Ksar Hadada to Ghoumrassen on to the no-man’s land around Tataouine and turned north through unmapped territory to Medenine, circling back to Gabes again. Along this ancient route, as Emery sank deeper into delirium, Pike presented him to chanting Islamic fetishers invoking sorcery and Berber healers serving potions mixed from cumin, coriander, ginger, cloves, chili peppers. Pike told Emery afterwards of how two Berbers had laid hands on him; an Arab witch doctor had gasped aloud and backed away, pointing north toward civilization. In a modern clinic in Gabes one Doctor Abdelkader took an X-ray of Emery's face, diagnosed the abscess, and plunged a spike into his gums.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwww-oooo-as-spot," came the chant from the loudpeakers of the mosque.

In pouring rain, Pike led Emery, shaking, to the Gabes youth hostel, then he rode to a pharmacy for an antibiotic Doctor Abdelkader had prescribed -- and a pain killer. In his delirium, Emery complained bitterly of bleeding dinar. But you could have slipped a tarantula or Chenini beetle into his sleeping bag that night and made off with his precious little centimes. Emery would not have noticed, so deep was his sleep. Pike shook him awake in the morning, insisting Emery go with him to a Turkish bath for a thorough cleansing and purging.

The rain had ceased. The sun was out. Musty shafts of light came slanting through the dome windows atop the palatial room. A door on one wall of this enormous chamber led to private stalls with buckets of warm and cold water set around. Pike poured these over himsefl and Emery -- maybe in the right order, maybe not. In any case, it did them both good. Back in the central core of the bath, Pike and Emery lay down on esparto grass mats. Soft cloths were placed over them. Shortly, these cloths were replaced with fresh ones. In one corner of the room a man conducted morning prayers, ablutions, rites -- standing, bowing, kneeling, touching his head to the ground, rising, bowing, kneeling, and so on.

The two left the Turkish bath feeling refreshed -- revived. They went back to the youth hostel, fetched their things, and left Gabes. Heading west, they made slow, grinding progress. In the afternoon, Emery knew he was not so renewed and recuperated as he'd originally thought. He was suddenly exhausted, dizzy, panting for air.

On the desolate plain, in lashing winds, facing the low lying mountains they would soon have to pass through, Pike and Emery pitched their tent. In the morning, under the daunting vault of harshest sun in clearest sky, they did something new: they hitched a ride. A Renault flatbed truck rolled up and stopped. The driver and his colleague, both young Arabs in rumpled shirts, vests, slacks and ski caps, got out and helped them load their bikes in the back. Emery climbed in with the bikes. Pike joined the two in the cab.

Pike and Emery were brought to within fifty kilometers of Gafsa, and suddenly abandoned roadside. Emery was chilled to the bone but Pike insisted his ride had to have been pleasanter than Emery's. He’d been paralyzed, he said. These Arabs had come to Tunisia from Libya. They were now on their way to Algeria. They were going to Algiers, Pike said, to fetch themselves some slaves -- females. They’d said it was a fruit of the war going on there. The Libyan slavers had gleefully told Pike this good news, that the war was making fresh slaves available to Libyans, an opportunity arising from the mayhem, murder, pillage, rape, and widespread kidnapping going on in Algeria. Pike had bluntly told the slavers he didn’t think much of their business plan. That was why they'd stopped so suddenly, dumping out Pike, Emery, and the bikes.

"It’s enough now," Pike said. “I’m going to take a dog-gone taxi back to Tunis and get on a plane and fly to Spain. I’m not kidding, Emery. Why would I waste my time going to a war-zone when there’s a treasure waiting for me -- pearls, gold, rubies, sapphires, diamonds -- who knows? I don’t think Arlen Townsend would be pleased if he knew he’d trusted someone with his secret who didn’t know any better than to get shot dead by warring Algerian madmen. That’s just not going to happen.”

"We’ve been through this," Emery reminded him.

Pike pressed his knuckles into the temples of his head. "You just don’t get it," he said. "Those guys are going into Algeria to help rape and kidnap girls and women. There’s a war there, Emery. What is it about raping, killing, and kidnapping you don’t understand, that you’d enter such territory gladly when we could instead be looking for a treasure chest?"

"I’m not glad," Emery said. "And I’m not afraid."

"Afraid?" Pike yelled at Emery, knocking himself upside the head with the palm of his left hand. "Afraid? What are you, impervious to being reasonable?"

"Oh yeah," Emery shot back. "Look who’s talking."

"I give up, I give up," Pike muttered, and sat down Indian-style, cross-legged, right there where he was. He’d been holding his bike, which he now let crash to the ground. Emery set his bike down gently next to Pike's, and sat down next to him. For a long time, the two said nothing. After a while, it became clear to them that they could not just sit there. They were nowhere. They got back on their bikes and got back on the road. Behind them, coming up the road, was a second truck. Again a Renault. It came to a stop and a Tunisian in a gray and white djelleba got out and helped Pike and Emery load their bikes and gear.

The three of them sat in the front of the truck. Silence prevailed. The driver was not at all talkative, especially after Pike tried to make small talk about the war going on in Algeria. The man just clammed up. He didn’t want to talk about it. He insisted the war in Algeria was between the Moroccans and the Libyans, and that was all he’d say about it. .

They rolled out of the dry, raw, ochre hills to barren plains again. Before them were the mountains of El Guetar. They passed through, driving over oued riverbeds to the oasis palms of Gafsa. Pike and Emery thanked their benefactor profusely, but he was not moved. Emery had hardly got his bike out from the truck bed, when the driver quickly sped away. Emery fell down, and the bike fell on him, and the dust covered all.

It was now late afternoon. Pike and Emery went in search of a cheap hotel. At the Gafsa Maison des Jeunes an unpleasant man in a gray, western style three-piece suit walked with them out of the front office to barracks grounds out back. He led them to a "dormitory" -- a dilapidated wooden shed with a rusted padlock on the door. He opened the door, gestured the two in, and departed. Pike went to one of the six cots in the room and put his pack down and sat next to it. Emery noticed he was crying. He sat down on the bunk across from Pike, but said nothing.

"I am short on images," Pike spoke finally.

"What?"

"I’m running low on images," Pike said. "Symbols. You know -- meanings. Things to carry me through."

"I don’t understand," Emery admitted.

"That’s what I liked about Townsend," Pike said. "He gave me images. Imagine -- a secret treasure! Now that’s an image to motivate -- an image powerful enough to carry me. But the image is fading. Emery, I am weakening."

"What do you mean?"

“You really just don’t get it, do you?” Pike sobbed. Emery waited a couple of minutes, then said they should sleep on it, and see how they felt in the morning. He left it at that.

Leaving the Maison des Jeunes in the morning, the procedure of the previous evening was repeated -- in reverse. The same unsmiling man, in the same wrinkled suit, woke them up. He waited while Pike and Emery dressed and packed. Pike looked like a prisoner --doomed. Padlocking the door of the shed, the grim man led the two back across the barracks yard to the front office and checked them out.

From there, Pike and Emery just followed their noses, seeking out a Medina bakery to get fresh, hot bread loaves. Pike seemed to pick up new energy as they moved through the town. Asking around, they located the Algerian Embassy. It was an austere concrete manor with half a dozen rooms-- all empty. The entire place was manned by a single clerk in the furthest room. Pike tapped the front desk bell for service. The clerk strode up in green military fatigues as if on roller skates, keeping his hands behind him. "Anglais?" he said immediately, when he saw Pike and Emery.

Americaine," Pike set the record straight.

"Can I be of helping you?" the clerk asked politely.

"Visas," Pike said.

"May I be seeing your passeportes, please," the man requested. Taking these in hand, he sat down and began filling out forms longhand. "You are willing to be in Algeria?" he asked, raising his right hand as if to administrate an oath.

"We are willing," Pike and Emery vowed simultaneously.

"Your purpose?"

"Passing through."

"Passing through?" the man echoed, raising one eyebrow intriguingly.

"Riding through. On bicycles. We’re going to Morocco," Pike said.

"Ah," the clerk sighed. "Bicyclette -- Oui. I give you Visa, one week."

"One week?" Emery echoed. "Can Algeria be traversed in a week on a bike?"

"It is dangerous. You cannot be staying longer in Algeria," the clerk apologized. "It is a wonderful country -- but dangerous."

Pike turned around and walked out, mumbling to himself. "Merde," he muttered resignedly. “I’m going back to France.”

"No! No!" the man said. "I am sorry. You go in, go to Morocco. Okay I give you Visa for month."

"Now that’s more like it," Pike said with satisfaction, stepping back up to the desk to sign the forms. The two passports were stamped; the Visa papers were stamped and signed. Handshakes were exchanged.

"Good luck," the Algerian clerk said graciously. "It is a wonderful country -- but dangerous."

Pike and Emery went to the Grand Market and loaded up on oranges, carrots, and lettuce. In the Medina, they got yoghurt. Then they rolled out of Gafsa to outlying Metlaou where the moon, three-fourths full, was chalked in already on the darkening sky.

Over the next couple of days, while the moon waxed, they rode on to Tozeur, which would have been an oasis paradise had not mosquitos taken possession of it, and to Nefta, where store merchants stood in front of their souks and shops like cigar store Indians. Pike was clearly revitalized. "The world is rushing up to greet us," he said, sipping mint tea in a shady café in sun bleached Nefta. "We’re in the middle of it all. We’re exactly where we should be. We didn’t get this dog-gone far for nothing, Emery."

"I’m sure that’s true," Emery affirmed. "We’ll see."

They stocked up on hard-boiled eggs, sardines, and jam. They rode west under the scorching sun, passing along the northern edge of the Chott El-Djerid, a massive, otherworldly, dry, cracked, crust of granulated salt -- sand, sand, and more sand. In the air over this elegant, forbidding emptiness arose a magical, shimmering light. On the Chott were disparate mirages, optical illusions, non-existent lakes that shined as smooth as glass for as far as the eye could see.

The moon that night was full and brilliant white. The stars were out en force. The beauty of the evening followed Pike into his dreams, him muttering in his sleep all that night -- "Stars...." he mumbled. "So many.... Profusion.... Going ahead."

In the morning, Pike and Emery rode to the Tunisian checkpoint at Hazeur. A herd of camels pastured at the frontier outpost on the border’s other side, where Algerian customs officers in crumpled green uniforms who’d been playing checkers reviewed their entry papers.

Were they carrying weapons?

Nope.

"Entrez vous."