Flyaway / Windfall. Desmond Bagley

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       EIGHTEEN

      And so we travelled south.

      At the Algerian border post Mokhtar guided Billson on foot around it while Byrne and I went through. There were more fiches to fill in – in triplicate, but we didn’t get the full treatment we had had at the police post outside Tammanrasset. We went on and waited for Billson in the no-man’s-land between the Algerian post and Fort Flatters in Niger, then it was my turn to walk, and Mokhtar took me on a long and circuitous route around the fort. If the two border posts compared notes, which Byrne doubted they would, then two men would have gone through both.

      When Mokhtar and I rejoined the truck beyond Fort Flatters Byrne seemed considerably more cheerful. I was footsore and leg-stretched and was glad to ease myself down creakily into the seat next to him. As he let out the clutch he said gaily, ‘Nice to be home.’

      We were eighty miles into Niger when we camped that night and the country hadn’t changed enough to justify Byrne’s cheeriness, but thereafter it became better. There was more vegetation – thorn trees, it’s true – but there was also more grass as we penetrated the mountains, and I saw my first running water, a brook about a foot across. According to Byrne, we had left the desert but, as I have said, these things are relative and this was still a wilderness to the untutored eye.

      ‘The Aïr is an intrusion of the Sahel into the desert,’ said Byrne.

      ‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘What’s the Sahel?’

      ‘The savannah land between the desert and the forest in the south. It’s a geographer’s word. Once they called it the Sudan but when the British pulled out they left a state called the Sudan so the geographers had to find another word because they didn’t want to mix geography and politics. They came up with Sahel.’

      ‘Doesn’t look much different from desert.’

      ‘It’s different,’ said Byrne positively. ‘These uplands get as much as six inches of rain a year.’

      ‘That’s a lot?’

      ‘A hell of a lot more than Tam,’ he said. ‘There’ve been periods of up to ten years when it hasn’t rained there at all.’

      We stopped at a small village called Iferouane which must have been important in the Aïr because it had an airstrip. Although the people here were Tuareg there was a more settled look about them. ‘Still nomadic,’ said Byrne. ‘But there’s more feed around here, so they don’t have to move as far or as often.’

      There were more animals to be seen, herds of camels, sheep and goats, with a few hump-backed cattle. The Tuareg seemed to be less formal here than in the north and some of the faces I saw were decidedly Negroid. I mentioned that to Byrne, and he shook his head. ‘Those people are either Haratin or slaves.’

      ‘Slaves!’

      ‘Sure. The Tuareg used to go raiding across the Niger Bend to bring back slaves.’

      ‘Is there still slavery?’

      ‘Theoretically – no. But I wouldn’t bet on it. A few years ago a British novelist bought a slave in Timbouctou just to prove that it could be done. Then he set the man free which was a damnfool thing to do.’ He saw my frown. ‘He had no land, so he couldn’t grow anything; he had no money so he couldn’t buy anything – so what was the poor bastard to do? He went back to his old master.’

      ‘But slavery!’

      ‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ said Byrne. ‘It’s not what you think and they don’t do too badly.’ He smiled. ‘No whips, or anything like that. Here, in the Aïr, they grow millet and cultivate the date palms on a share-cropping basis. Theoretically they get a fifth of the crop but a smart guy can get as much as half.’

      Byrne seemed well-known and popular in Iferouane. He talked gravely with the village elders, chaffed the young women, and distributed sweets and other largesse among the children. We stayed there a day, then pushed on south over rougher country until we arrived at Timia and Byrne’s home.

      Ever since we had left Fort Flatters, Billson had avoided me. He couldn’t help being close in the truck but he didn’t talk and, out of the truck, he kept away from me. I suppose I had not hidden my contempt of him and, naturally enough, he didn’t like it. I had penetrated his thick skin and wounded whatever amour propre he had, so he resented me. I noticed that he talked a lot with Byrne during this time and that Byrne appeared to СКАЧАТЬ