Inland East Africa, Tuesday morning
In patches the pipeline barely cleared the rocky ground. Scrub brush grew around the line, using the scarce shadows to nurse new sprouts until the shoots found ways to get upright and gorge on sun. The scrub was more gray than green, tough enough to win the fight for turf with chunks of basalt littering the ground like popcorn spilled under bleachers.
Inland East Africa, Tuesday morning
In patches the pipeline barely cleared the rocky ground. Scrub brush grew around the line, using the scarce shadows to nurse new sprouts until the shoots found ways to get upright and gorge on sun. The scrub was more gray than green, tough enough to win the fight for turf with chunks of basalt littering the ground like popcorn spilled under bleachers.
This was camel territory, no roads to speak of, just worn paths connecting the wadis. Even a four-wheel drive could have trouble making much speed, and a horse, fine in the sandy desert, would come up lame in hours after picking its way over rocks. Besides, only a camel could quickly cover much distance without needing water. And outside of rainy season - when there could be too much - there was little water anywhere.
Bilal hated camels.
He hated their stench, which he couldn’t describe or compare to anything else in his experience. Wrapping the hood of his caftan over his nose and mouth helped and after awhile his nose clogged with sand and grit and he could lower his guard. But he still despised the smell.
Bilal also hated the sounds camels made, like a badly tuned horn in a town’s brass band. Each town back home had such a band, he thought, even though he’d only seen one in his life. The ubiquitous bands existed only in his mind, one bit of detail in his idealized picture of home. Bilal had no one to share the picture with but he returned to it on rides, in his tent at night or sitting through wasted hours of endless yelling by the leadership, part motivational seminar, part prayer service.
Once Bilal was so deep in his picture of home he floated off completely. When the leadership’s harangue was punctuated by gunfire - a common rhetorical flourish - Bilal covered his head and dove into the lap of the young man squatting next to him. This required a thorough explanation.
More than the smell or the sounds Bilal hated how against his will he became excited grabbing hold of the beast’s hump to haul himself into the saddle and then to get the reins. The hump was different from the rest of the camel, he felt; it was bristling and rigid. Bilal kept himself chaste, and the strange stimulus of the camel’s hump be-deviled him. Sometimes bouncing over the desert it would take half an hour for his excitement to ease, and all that time he was torn by his compulsion to pray, the need to guide his men, and that insistent urge.
In Gorazde a camel would be a sight for wonder. If a camel came to town the brass band would have struck up for certain. A wagon bursting with Romany would have led the procession and there might be a juggler. The women of the village would bake sweet treats so the fragrance of cinnamon and honey would mask the animal’s stench.
Children would run from all corners of the town to see the beast, fathers jogging with sons and daughters on their shoulders. His own little boy would roar with laughter to hear the camel trumpet as if part of the band, and Bilal would have laughed at the boy’s delight and thought well of the camel for the pleasure it brought.
In the picture in Bilal’s mind the boy was always six, with blousy pants and a solemn little vest over his white shirt, his jet black eyes gleaming. Happy, eager, curious, the perfect little boy. Even a camel was welcome if it brought joy to a boy like that.
But now there was no more little boy and Bilal was not in Gorazde any more. In fact there was hardly any Gorazde in which to be. Piles of rubble and piles of dead and the raped who wished to die. In his mind Bilal often left the town with brass band and cheery shops and entered the one with fires in the streets and dogs fighting for whatever scraps they found, a picture of hell only he could see.
So now he was in a land of dirt where camels were not a source of wonder but like giant dogs themselves, filthy, licking, snapping at each other and at him as he led his band among the rocks. Allah made this land for camels, Bilal thought. This was obvious. Rocks, scarce water, nothing to eat. But why? Lost in a meditation of why Allah would bother to create such a world Bilal was startled when a tribesman called out.
Bilal shielded his eyes from the glare of the sunrise but could only see waves of heat undulating across the rocks. He pulled his Steiner binoculars from the pack and put them to his eyes. Praise be to God, he thought. A kilometer in front of them was the pumping station they were sent to find. Somehow from the vaguest possible directions, the apparent absence of landmarks and the instincts of his surly scout they had found it.
Over his shoulder he called to the boy who rode just behind him. “Tell them one jeep,” Bilal said to the boy. “No camels. No men outside. No mounted guns.” The boy turned his camel and faced the group of men arrayed in a vague semi-circle. Against the backdrop of braying the boy relayed the information to the tribesmen in their dialect.
While the boy talked Bilal scanned the distance beyond the station. At first he had been troubled by his affection for the Steiners, the way they auto-focused instantly so he could see practically forever. Then the weapons man explained how the superior optics were a gift from God and now Bilal relished every chance to use the gift.
“No jeeps approaching,” he reported to the boy. “No camels approaching.” Again the boy translated, yelling over a couple of camels snarling at each other and a few men grumbling about back pay. Several other men leaned in with interest and started to add their views on the pay issue.
Now Bilal turned his camel to face the men. He knew they watched him handle the beast and made judgments on his skill. To hell with them, Bilal thought. These beasts are their mothers. They lick themselves and each other, the sons of whores.
He tried to keep this opinion from coloring his tone of voice. Bilal painstakingly reviewed the plan of attack even though it had been explained to the men during their rough breakfast around a fire earlier that morning, and previously at the base camp with diagrams on a blackboard.
Bilal reminded the men of the two teams they would form as soon as they got within rifle range. Using one of the management tools on which he prided himself, Bilal asked the men to raise their hands when he described the team they would join.
A couple of the men raised their hands for both teams and another hesitated both times. Bilal glanced at the boy, hoping to discern whether the men were being obstinate or really didn’t understand. The boy was intently studying the ground under his camel’s head so Bilal assumed obstinate.
“You,” he said, pointing at one of the men who had signaled twice. “Stay with me.” Bilal’s tone was flat, his voice quiet. He might have been reading road signs aloud. The boy translated.
“You and you, go with him.” Now he pointed at the leader of the second squad. Again the boy.
Then Bilal stunned them by standing in his stirrups - legs shaking but upright - and shouting, “Our plan will succeed. It is God’s will.”
Bilal dropped into the saddle, jerked the bit to turn the camel and jammed his heels in the camel’s ribs. The beast took off at speed. The boy hurried to finish the translation before he was overrun by tribesmen rushing to stay up with Bilal.
The camels raced over the rocks, sending up puffs of sand and pebbles that cut at the men’s arms and faces. Near the pipeline the band split in two, Bilal, the boy, and a half-dozen others speeding straight at the station house, yelling at the tops of their lungs and shooting in the air. Their job was to draw defensive fire from the men inside. The rest of the raiders fanned out along the pipeline, pulling gear from their saddle packs as they rode.
In moments rifle fire snapped from slits in the rock wall of the station house. Bilal raised his hand and his team drew up, spreading their camels apart and lowering them to the ground to create tougher targets. Bilal turned to a rider and nodded urgently and jabbed his finger toward the station house. Shots kicked rock at the men and the camels and the beasts snorted and jerked. The rider pulled a rocket launcher from a saddle bag, then with the help of a second man mounted the launcher on his shoulder, loaded a rocket and fired at the station house.
Some of the camels stood up and whinnied at the burst of noise and the smoke trailing from the rocket. Bilal struggled to hold the reins as his camel, more agitated than the others, jumped up and whirled in a circle.
Then the beast practically turned a somersault at the boom of the exploding station house. Bilal was yanked forward and landed face down on the rocks. Pushing himself up he felt for the treasured binoculars still intact around his neck, blinked away the grit in his eyes and peered through the dust. The excitement of the blast had already replaced his hatred of the camel, and now Bilal was near to making joyous noise as he saw the jagged remnants of the station house emerge through the cloud. He stood and raised his hands in the air and grinned at his squad. They fired their weapons overhead and laughed and cheered. As the other part of the raider band set off a series of smaller explosions and crude gushed over the rocky ground and puddled around the rocks and scrub, Bilal’s team rode cautiously toward the rubble in the unlikely event they had work left undone.
Ken Miller was born in Brooklyn, grew up in California and since 1970 has lived in Tacoma WA. His work has included community organizing and corporate public affairs. A political science graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, he's been active in politics for 40 years.
Ken's writing reflects his interest in the intersection of public and private interests. At that intersection, he says, we can see some spectacular crashes. He's driven through more than once.
As public affairs planning director for a Fortune 100 multinational, Ken worked with lobbyists at the local, state and national levels to identify the company's public policy goals and craft strategies to pursue them. Sometimes this pitted one company against another; often it meant reconciling shareholder goals with the larger public interest.