Perspiration trickled down her sides under her clothes. She wiped her forehead with the end of her cotton headscarf. Tab took out a red handkerchief with white spots and mopped under the collar of his button-down.
‘Half these houses are unoccupied,’ Tab said.
Tamara looked more closely and saw that some of the buildings were decaying. There were holes in the palm-leaf roofs and some of the mud bricks were crumbling away.
‘Huge numbers of people have left the area,’ Tab said. ‘I guess everyone who has somewhere to go has gone. But there are millions left behind. This whole place is a disaster area.’
‘And it’s not just here, is it?’ said Tamara. ‘This process, desertification at the southern edge of the Sahara, is happening all across Africa, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘In French we call that region “le Sahel”。’
‘Same word in English, “the Sahel”。’ She glanced back at the car. Its engine was still turning over. ‘I guess Ali and Pete are going to stay in the air-conditioning.’
‘If they have any sense.’ Tab looked worried. ‘I don’t see our man.’
Tamara was worried, too. He could be dead. But she spoke calmly. ‘Our instructions are that he will find us. Meanwhile, we have to stay in character, so let’s dip and look around.’
‘What?’
‘Let’s go and look around.’
‘But what did you say before? Dip?’
‘Sorry. I guess it’s Chicago slang.’
‘Now I could be the only French person who knows that expression.’ He grinned. ‘But first we should pay a courtesy call on the village elders.’
‘Why don’t you do that? They never take any notice of a woman anyway.’
‘Sure.’
Tab went off and Tamara walked around, trying to remain unflustered, taking pictures and talking to people in Arabic. Most villagers either cultivated a small piece of arid land or had a few sheep or a cow. One woman specialized in mending nets, but there were few fishermen left; a man owned a furnace and made pots, but not many people had any money to buy them. Everyone was more or less desperate.
A ramshackle structure of four posts holding up a network of twigs served as a clothes dryer, and a young woman was pinning up laundry, watched by a boy of about two. Her clothes were the vivid shades of orange and yellow that the people of Chad loved. She hung up her last item, put the child on her hip, then spoke to Tamara in careful schoolgirl French with a strong Arabic accent and invited her into her house.
The woman’s name was Kiah, her son was Naji, and she was a widow, she said. She looked about twenty. She was strikingly beautiful, with black eyebrows and bold cheekbones and a curved nose, and the look in her dark eyes suggested determination and strength. She could be useful, Tamara thought.
She followed Kiah through the low-arched doorway, taking off her shades as she moved from the glare of the sun into deep shadow. The inside of the hut was dim and close and scented. Tamara felt a heavy rug under her feet and smelled cinnamon and turmeric. As her eyes adjusted she saw low tables, a couple of baskets for storage, and cushions on the floor, but nothing she recognized as regular furniture, no chairs or cupboards. To one side were two canvas palliasses for beds and a neat pile of thick wool blankets, brightly striped in red and blue, for the cold desert nights.
Most Americans would see this as a desperately poor home, but Tamara knew that it was not only comfortable but a touch more affluent than the average. Kiah looked proud as she offered a bottle of local beer called Gala that she had cooling in a bowl of water. Tamara thought it would be polite to accept hospitality – and anyway she was thirsty.
A picture of the Virgin Mary in a cheap frame on the wall indicated that Kiah was Christian, as were some 40 per cent of the people of Chad. Tamara said: ‘You went to a school run by nuns, I suppose. That’s how you learned French.’
‘Yes.’
‘You speak it very well.’ This was not really true, but Tamara was being nice.
Kiah invited her to sit on the rug. Before doing so, Tamara went back to the door and glanced out nervously, screwing up her eyes against the sudden brightness. She looked towards the car. The cigarette vendor was bending down by the driver’s-side window with a carton of Cleopatras in his hand. She saw Ali behind the window, his scarf wound around his head, making a contemptuous flicking-away gesture with his fingers, evidently not wanting to buy cheap cigarettes. Then the vendor said something that altered Ali’s attitude dramatically. Ali jumped out of the car, looking apologetic, and opened the rear door. The vendor got into the car and Ali quickly closed the door.