Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky

She lay quietly, her feet drawn up under her. The sand was soft, but its coldness penetrated her garments. When she felt she could no longer bear to go on shivering, she crawled out from under her protecting tree and set to striding back and forth in front of it in the hope of warming herself. The air was dead; not a breath stirred, and the cold grew by the minute. She began to walk farther afield, munching bread as she went. Each time she returned to the tamarisk tree she was tempted to slide back down under its branches and sleep. However, by the time the first light of dawn appeared, she was wide awake and warm.

The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside’s repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day has fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again—the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time. Kit breathed deeply, looked around at the soft line of the little dunes, at the vast pure light rising up from behind the hammada’s mineral rim, at the forest of palms behind her still immersed in night, and knew that it was not the same day. Even when it grew entirely light, even when the huge sun shot up, and the sand, trees and sky gradually resumed their familiar daytime aspect, she had no doubts whatever about its being a new and wholly separate day.

A caravan comprising two dozen or more camels laden with bulging woolen sacks appeared coming down the oued toward her. There were several men walking beside the beasts. At the rear of the procession were two riders mounted on their high mehara, whose nose rings and reins gave them an even more disdainful expression than that of the ordinary camels ahead. Even as she saw these two men she knew that she would accompany them, and the certainty gave her an unexpected sense of power: instead of feeling the omens, she now would make them, be them herself. But she was only faintly astonished at her discovery of this further possibility in existence. She stepped out into the path of the oncoming procession and called to it, waving her arms in the air. And before the animals had stopped walking, she rushed back to the tree and dragged out her valise. The two riders looked at her and at each other in astonishment. They drew up their respective mehara and leaned forward, staring down at her in fascinated curiosity.

Because each of her gestures was authoritative, an outward expression of utter conviction, betraying no slightest sign of hesitation, it did not occur to the masters of the caravan to interfere as she passed the valise to one of the men on foot and motioned to him to tie it atop the sacks on the nearest pack camel. The man glanced back at his masters, saw no expression on their faces indicating opposition to her command, and made the complaining animal kneel and receive the extra burden. The other camel drivers looked on in silence as she walked back to the riders and stretching her arms up toward the younger of the two, said to him in English: “Is there room for me?”

The rider smiled. Grumbling mightily, his mehari was brought to its knees; she seated herself sideways. a few inches in front of the man. When the animal rose, he was obliged to hold her on by passing one arm around her waist, or she would have fallen off. The two riders laughed a bit, and exchanged a few brief remarks as they started on their way along the oued.

After a certain length of time they left the valley and turned across a wide plantless region strewn with stones. The yellow dunes lay ahead. There was the heat of the sun, the slow climbing to the crests and the gentle going down into the hollows, over and over—and the lively, insistent pressure of his arm about her. She raised no problem for herself; she was content to be relaxed and to see the soft unvaried landscape going by. To be sure, several times it occurred to her that they were not really moving at all, that the dune along whose sharp rim they were now traveling was the same dune they had left behind much earlier, that there was no question of going anywhere since they were nowhere. And when these sensations came to her they started an ever so slight stirring of thought. “Am I dead?” she said to herself, but without anguish, for she knew she was not. As long as she could ask herself the question: “Is there anything?” and answer: “Yes,” she could not be dead. And there were the sky, the sun, the sand, the slow monotonous motion of the mehari’s pace. Even if the moment came, she reflected at last, when she no longer could reply, the unanswered question would still be there before her, and she would know that she lived. The idea comforted her. Then she felt exhilarated; she leaned back against the man and became conscious of her extreme discomfort. Her legs must have been asleep for a long time. Now the rising pain made her embark on a ceaseless series of shiftings. She hitched and wriggled. The rider increased the pressure of his enfolding arm and said a few words to his companion; they both chuckled.

At the hour when the sun shone its hottest, they came within sight of an oasis. The dunes here leveled off to make the terrain nearly flat. In a landscape made gray by too much light, the few hundred palms at first were no more than a line of darker gray at the horizon—a line which varied in thickness as the eye beheld it, moving like a slow-running liquid: a wide band, a long gray cliff, nothing at all, then once more the thin penciled border between the earth and the sky. She watched the phenomenon dispassionately, extracting a piece of bread from the pocket of her coat which lay spread across the ungainly shoulders of the mehari . The bread was completely dry.

“Stenna, stenna. Chouïa, chouïa,” said the man.

Soon a solitary thing detached itself from the undecided mass on the horizon, rising suddenly like a djinn into the air. A moment later it subsided, shortened, was merely a distant palm standing quite still on the edge of the oasis. Quietly they continued another hour or so, and presently they were among the trees. The well was enclosed by a low wall. There were no people, no signs of people. The palms grew sparsely; their branches, still more gray than green, shone with a metallic glister and gave almost no shade. Glad to rest, the camels remained lying down after the packs had been removed. From the bundles the servants took huge striped rugs, a nickel tea service, paper parcels of bread, dates and meat. A black goatskin canteen with a wooden faucet was brought out, and the three drank from it; the well water was considered satisfactory for the camels and drivers. She sat on the edge of the rug, leaning against a palm trunk, and watched the leisurely preparations for the meal. When it was ready she ate heartily and found everything delicious; still she did not down enough to please her two hosts, who continued to force food upon her long after she could eat no more.

“Smitsek? Kuli!” they would say to her, holding small bits of food in front of her face; the younger tried to push dates between her teeth, but she laughed and shook her head, letting them fall onto the rug, whereupon the other quickly seized and ate them. Wood was brought from the packs and a fire was built so the tea could be brewed. When all this was done—the tea drunk, remade and drunk again it was mid-afternoon. The sun still burned in the sky.

Another rug was spread beside the two supine mehara, and the men motioned to her to lie down there with them in the shade cast by the animals. She obeyed, and stretched out in the spot they indicated, which was between them. The younger one promptly seized her and held her in a fierce embrace. She cried out and attempted to sit up, but he would not let her go. The other man spoke to him sharply and pointed to the camel drivers, who were seated leaning against the wall around the well, attempting to hide their mirth.