They stopped at a pathetic hamlet of wattle huts squatting along the river where it turned from southerly to due west. It was inhabited by scarecrowlike people on the verge of starvation, whose haunting sunken eyes watched their every move as the men made camp. Sohkoor went into one of the huts and spoke with the elder, the al-akbar, then emerged and told the men to rest for the night. They would depart before dawn. From that point on they would be moving south through the lands of the desert Arabs—the Tauregs.
Wake noticed that for the first time Sohkoor seemed more than merely alert, he was nervous, and that the soldiers’ evening prayers were much longer, more plaintive, than before. And he heard in Sohkoor’s prayers the same beseeching tone—begging really. Wailing filled the dusk, and a feeling of dread swept through Wake, chilling him far more than the onset of the evening cold. He looked over at Woodgerd. The colonel, with a lopsided sneer on his face, meticulously cleaned and oiled his revolver. Wake pulled his Navy Colt out and did the same.
***
The occasional stunted bush was the only break from the shale rock and sand for the next two days except when a caravan of overloaded swaying camels heading north from Marrakech came over a low hill. Sohkoor spoke with the leader while the soldiers inspected the cargo unenthusiastically for contraband, but found none.
“They don’t want to find any,” said Woodgerd with a sigh. “Don’t want the locals upset. These soldiers are as tough as you can find on the coast, but out here they’re as scared as any white man.”
Sohkoor watched the caravan head off, glanced grimly at Woodgerd and said, “Talaab ShayTaan. Ams,” at which the colonel grumbled a foul expletive.
Seeing Wake’s expression the colonel explained, “ShayTaan is the Devil and the talaab are his students, his disciples. It’s a fanatical separatist sect that’s far apart from true Islam. Renegade criminals who use the name to scare people and justify their banditry. They were seen by the caravan yesterday.”
Wake glanced south over the featureless desert. “Down that way, where we’re heading?”
Sohkoor came over, followed by Faber. “Yes. Toward Marrakech. They may well be the band that has the hostages.”
Everyone glanced at Faber but no one spoke. A moment later Sohkoor said, “Yalla” and they mounted their horses and silently plodded southwest again. The mountains they had left behind days ago were now a distant smudge, shimmering in the heat.
***
They saw the palm groves first. Scattered strands of palm oasis—Sohkoor explained they were called waaha—were strung in scraggly patches along wadis that had a thin mush of watery mud like a stream in the early spring. Their palms’ thin fronds looked anemic to Wake, who remembered the lush coconut palms of the Caribbean. But compared to the incessant brown of the desert anything remotely green was a welcome sight to him.
Then they saw caravans in the distance drifting northeast toward the coast, two weeks distant. Finally, with Woodgerd’s binoculars, far away on the horizon they saw tan minarets and low walls against the powder-blue sky, with beckoning palms wisping up here and there. Woodgerd muttered an oath, then sighed as he handed the binoculars to Wake.
“Marrakech. Fabled crossroads of the caravans from Timbuktoo, Senegal, and Fés. Where anything—and anyone—is sold.”
Focusing the lens, Wake saw a tall minaret, much larger than the others. When asked, Sohkoor said that the one–hundred-fifty-foot-high minaret of Marrakech’s famous Koutoubia Mosque was built six hundred years earlier as a sister to the Giralda minaret at Sevilla in Spain. The largest in Africa, it was a source of pride for the kingdom of Morocco. Wake looked again, realizing with a shudder that even though he was a thousand miles from the Alcázar, he was looking at a duplicate of the cathedral of Sevilla’s tower, built by the same people at the same time.
38
Marrakech
It took two saddle-sore and sun-seared days to reach the city’s walls, the Koutoubia Mosque’s minaret growing with each hour. As they arrived under a glaring sun before the battlements, the huge tower inside dominated the scene, reminding all around Marrakech of the dominance of faith in their lives. Marrakech, the scholar explained, was an ancient settlement whose name was originally a local term for “walk fast,” meaning to get inside to the safety of Islam before the pagan tribes outside could get you.
Though its glory days were long gone, Sohkoor said that it was still an imperial city and that their great sultan, Hassan, had chosen it to be his place of coronation the previous year. It was a mystical place, he said, describing it as the burial location of the seven saints of the Moorish people; an oasis of safety for the desert Arabs; one of the imperial cities of antiquity; a crossroads of caravans from east, south and north; and the meeting point of black Africa, Arabia, and Europe.
An officious fat man stopped them before they entered the city. His ugal, the black cord circle worn over his kufiyya headdress, was decorated with gold ornaments that symbolized his status as the taxman of that entrance. All who entered paid tax on man, beast, and cargo. He stood a hundred feet before the walls, exchanged prolonged greetings with Sohkoor, and for all the world appeared jolly and hospitable. Sohkoor walked back to where Woodgerd and the others stood by their horses.
“He does not know of my position or yours, Colonel. Our tale here is that we are a band of caravan guards come to Marrakech to meet up with up employers. Please keep your uniforms covered securely.”
Sohkoor waved to the taxman, then turned back to them. “He wants a
