Ambition in the Desert by Albert Cossery (Chapter 1)
Une ambition dans le désert by Albert Cossery
It was while he made love to Gawhara — a girl aged barely fifteen but endowed with a prodigious sensuality — that Samantar judged it opportune to clarify the mystery of these bombings in the city happening for some time, provoking, by their noisy éclats, sarcasm from a populace avid for festivities, even if they are deadly. Initially, these absurd backfires had only middlingly troubled him; in all climates, there were always people to whom peace was repugnant and who nourished meaningless hope for revolt. He had not, therefore, paid any particular attention to them, counting on the lassitude inherent in any form of toil, for that would end this manifestation of violence, as useless as it is derisory. But contrary to this universally accepted logic, the attacks continued rapidly, as if the instigators of this revolutionary parody had an inexhaustible supply of munitions. These homemade explosives had, thus far, zero casualties but only destroyed some properties of minimal importance, and it was evident that their use fit in a tactic of provocation rather than tragedy. Samantar had no precise idea of the type of revolutionaries capable of promoting an insurrection over an exsanguine and desert territory, undisputed global poverty, and where the sharing of wealth would have been a grotesque farce. It seemed to him completely aberrant. His natural indolence and his disgust of busying himself with the affairs of this world would have certainly dissuaded him from opposing this pernicious attempt by some impudent people if these repeated explosions had not risked changing the marvelous harmony enjoyed by the emirate into chaos because of the aridity of its subsoil, devoid of all petroleum resources; that blessed aridity that had driven away the jackals of international societies always on the lookout for global rapine. The reality of this situation cannot escape unnoticed — even to the foolish —insofar as it became apparent that this worthless terrorism was not, by any means, the outrageous expression of a social revendication but a maneuver enshrined in the framework of a strange and nebulous conspiracy.
He brusquely removed himself from his companion and, turning over onto his back, began to search in his memory for certain people he knew who could be victims of an inconsiderate idealism and who could have, either inadvertently or as a distraction, collaborated on this stupid irruption of violence. The young girl, distraught, remained for a moment waiting, her flesh open, since she relaxed her legs and sighed with dissatisfaction that Samantar felt reproached but which he tried to ignore.
Here, in Dofa, the emirate’s capital, it was inconceivable that a subversive movement had formed without its knowledge and without it being informed, at the very least, by some sign. As a lucid observer, enjoying constant leisure, it could record every rumor propagated by an eminently sociable population who was not afraid to display its secrets and quarrels in the cafes and public spaces. Even if surrounded by all the necessary precautions, a criminal organization never had a chance to pass unnoticed in this environment where the slightest incident of appearing slightly shady, the most fugitive apparition of a slightly suspicious figure, was immediately discernible and amplified by the imagination. Although the city would include several individuals allergic to all types of government, Samantar knew that these implacable despisers of the established order had long since (as well as himself) renounced all violent action, considering it inadequate in this oasis, undoubtedly miserable, but where ruled a sovereign peace, owing to this same misery. Because where there is nothing, even the criminals resign themselves to indigence. But if it were easy to foresee the assigned limit to the villainy of men living in an economically anemic country, no one could forget their aptitude to thrive in the abjection when they are supported and counseled by criminals of even greater magnitude from abroad; and it was tempting to attribute the decision to disturb this Edenic calmness to a band of local provocateurs, benefiting from the material aid and connivance of a foreign power. This hasty conclusion hardly pleased Samantar; it evoked a classic scheme too often described, supposing considerable interest, nonexistent in this part of the peninsula. The tremendous imperialist power that extended its political influence over all the Gulf States was no longer interested in the emirate since it was acknowledged that its subsoil did not contain the slightest drop of oil. Then, what is the point of such a provocation? Samantar was convinced that the country’s poverty was its only safeguard against the raptors, armed or unarmed, which were only waiting for a promise of profit to set out on its conquest, distemper it, and rot it; and he thanked heaven for being born in a desert land, destitute of all rare raw materials and rather repulsive enough to discourage mercantile souls.
The most stupefying aspect of this matter was that these attacks were claimed by a soi-disant “Gulf Liberation Force,” totally unknown by reputation, and whose tracts, poorly printed and written, it seemed, by an ignoramus, boasted a revolutionary vocabulary long outdated and obviously feeling the laborious ardor of an overpaid neophyte for this task. There would have been something to laugh at while reading this vengeful prose (and Samantar was only too willing to guffaw in the face of the unfathomable, multifaceted human stupidity) if such inept intrigues did not suggest significant disaster for the emirate. The puerile boastfulness of these tracts denoted in their authors a profound ignorance of the geographic location of their exploits, as if they had, for the occasion, consulted revolutionary manuals of a mythical era and country. Neither the importance of the territory nor the political situation in the region did not lend themselves to such extravagances. This piece of the desert, remaining heretofore outside the brilliant prosperity of the neighboring emirates, could from day to day become hell, and feudal power, however good-humored, transforms into a bloody tyranny by the error of these presumptuous maniacs and, moreover, illiterate. Samantar resented them mainly because they forced him to act against his habits and most noble aspirations. How, then, to be content with making love during a catastrophe of this magnitude organized outside his door? Nevertheless, the elementary, almost trivial intelligence that presided over this bizarre conspiracy comforted him, as it meant that no respectable person in his social circle was likely involved. But this trivial satisfaction, although reassuring on the spiritual level, was quite demoralizing; it condemned him to lead his inquiry from the position of a blind man venturing into an unknown zone riddled with incoherent pitfalls. Samantar reflected bitterly that he would have to squander energy meant solely for pleasure, break the delectable rhythm of peaceful reflection, and submit his clear-sightedness to a harsh trial if he wanted to spare this immaculate plot of the desert from multiple devastations plaguing immense continents. He was, nevertheless, resigned to it because this task fell to him more than anyone else; what he had to save was something extraordinary, a conception of life so simple that it escaped the awareness of the majority of humanity.
He was irritated for a moment because the young girl who had kept her immobility, limbs frozen in the immutable attitude of the carnal ritual; she seemed to calculate pathetic pleasures and wait for his caresses as one waits for death. This precocious adolescent body, extended at his side like a precious gift from providence and he would have wanted to love eternally, prevented him from concentrating on the mysterious ramifications of a drama on which his future tranquility and that of his people depended. They were lying down on a mattress on a tiled floor, and their sweaty naked bodies glistened in the penumbra, similar to castaways discarded by the sea. Sheets of torrid air stagnated in the room with whitewashed walls, creating an exhausting heat that equated the slightest movement with an act of insanity that was not one of love. Taming his torpor and the tearing that caused him to abandon his companion, Samantar got up. With the unpredictable gait of a sleepwalker, he advanced into the room, then, opening the canvas curtain concealing the French window, he went out onto the terrace in the devastating light of the sun. It was a small one-story house — a dilapidated building with exposed stone — located on a hill at the confines of the city and flanked by an old date palm whose long palms cast the only visible shadow over the entire surrounding area. The terrace overlooked a bay where the blue water of the Gulf sparkled under the solar reverberation like an incandescent jewel set in the golden sand of the shore. Motionless on the horizon and resembling in the distance innocent miniatures, giant tankers sailed toward the cruel hemispheres, carrying in their heavy sides the lifeblood of perfect genocide. Fishermen mended in sacred silence, their nets unfolded on the beach, symbolizing the sobriety of their gestures and the preeminence of peace over the vain agitation of men. The entire landscape appeared paralyzed under the fiery afternoon sun, of a static and invulnerable beauty, indifferent to time’s slow, secular march. Samantar rustled under the hardly perceptible breeze which brushed his sweaty skin. Each time he looked at this landscape, he was invaded by an intense bliss, as if a sagacious destiny had given him this privilege to be the sole and insatiable witness. This delicious source of pride had its source in concrete reality; elsewhere, this prestigious clam and immutable softness were but a memory. Elsewhere, industrial despotism had degraded the touching areas of nature, and it was a close call that this landscape itself did not become, in turn, a renewed mephitic zone. All he had to do for proof was turn his head to distinguish across the heat haze — planted in the desert as a statue of derision — the derrick’s metallic frame putrefying in the sun. In the vibrations of overheated air, it undulated like a dancer with lascivious sway, emerging from the sand by a magician’s grace. This vestige of ancient petroleum prospections, which ended in failure, now served as the meeting point for the city’s children, who indulged in passionate and dangerous games. No one thought to remove it, as its presence preserved in high governmental spheres the superstition that black gold would one day gush in force, attracted by this oilfield emblem. Some of these dignitaries, inveterate optimists, sometimes came to contemplate this pagan idol, fervently murmured the appropriate prayers, and then left confident in the future. For his part, Samantar felt only sympathy and gratitude to this phantom derrick, forsaken by its proprietors, because it was the irrefutable, tangible proof of the defeat, without recourse, of the abhorred enemy, in this case, the great imperialist power — bearer of all ignominies. The idea that this mastodon of modern technology, a burdensome cost, no longer used other than to brighten the turpitudes of a ragged gang of brats, filled him with jubilation. It was unexpected revenge of the oppressed against the arrogance of merchants.
Samantar especially abhorred what the Western technocrats called in their baroque jargon: economic expansion. Under this evil spell, the former colonialists tried to perpetuate their rapine by introducing their psychosis of consumption among the healthy people who had no need to own an automobile to confirm their presence on this earth. For a moment, he had been naive enough to believe that these purveyors of the worst instincts and their panoply of adulterated products (just good enough to bait retarded children) were gone forever. It was to misunderstand them; they had returned, this time clothed in new rags, disguised as benefactors of underdeveloped nations and concerned with helping them profit from their soil's wealth. But it was to rob them better and more insidiously.
The disappointment of the oil companies on the territory of the emirate had delighted Samantar beyond what a man could reasonably hope for from fate; however, he remained vigilant because experience had demonstrated to him that this malevolent mob never gave up on prey — even a dead rat — if it had the assurance of benefiting in any way. While savoring his victory, he was not without apprehension and lived in fear that this lull was only temporary. Their engineers’ negative results were not necessarily irrevocable; these engineers could be imbeciles, and their diplomas — any donkey could earn a diploma — worthless parchments. Other attempts, with the help of smarter or luckier engineers, might lead them to discover something, for want of oil. There are these disastrous coincidences. Samantar distrusted everything the earth concealed under his feet, especially since these shameless exploiters were not far away. They had invaded the neighboring emirates, which, to their misfortune, possessed immense and undeniable oil resources. Devoid of all scruples and guided by their sordid interests, they had degraded and transformed a race of lords into deplorable workers covered in grime in the image of their proletariat groaning in the dark industrial cities. For a dishonoring wage, these proud nomads had lost their nobility and liberty and were living confined in shabby dwellings, afflicted with absurd material worries, increasingly prolific, and of which they had no prior awareness. Those who had known eternal horizons, the limpidity of the sky above the verdant oases, and the beneficent awakenings under the tent had become exiles in their own kingdom. Samantar often pitied the fate of these wretches, whom ambitious potentates had reduced to the rank of slaves to a soulless foreign power, the most perfidious and venal of all nations. But while these submissive masses were being corrupted by the norms of a barbaric ethic, here in Dofa, the country’s poverty had allowed life to flow lazily and people to devote themselves without degrading efforts to beneficial occupations, such as fishing, vegetable farming, and craftsmanship shaped by indolence and dignity; they had, above all, resisted decadent fashions, continuing to express themselves in a human language. It was this human language that enchanted Samantar; this language, which had been replaced everywhere in the world by a bastard idiom — picked from the trash of commerce and advertising — which no longer concerned man and from which all notion of emotion and sentiment was excluded.
The delirious agitation of the neighboring emirates and their people, forevermore led astray in the irreversible cycle of consumer economy, rendered even more appreciable the majestic tranquility of the landscape that stretched out before his eyes. This seemingly inviolable tranquility, but insidiously threatened by a monstrous fatality, dispensed an invaluable lesson and carried the security of millennial wisdom within it. Samantar considered any event likely to be annihilated as an affront inflicted on his flesh. He felt invested with a primordial task: determine the motives and the identity of these bombers who extolled the revolution in a melodramatic style before police repression actuated, and the authority, too feeble, appealed to the great imperialist power whose forces, always ready for crime, were mobilized nearby like vile beasts prepared to bite. He had not renounced pursuing university studies and refused — although related to the family of the old reigning emir — to accept a high-ranking post in the administration, to see a horde of brigands, imbued with their false superiority, come to devastate the serenity of this desert by their savage behavior. He had already glimpsed the multiple aspects of this invasion at the time when the emirate succumbed to the oil mirage and when the oil companies and their innumerable servants descended on the territory like flies on a honey plate. All this arrogant riffraff, proud of their technology, had spread their harmful science everywhere, sullying and degrading every last grain of sand. Day and night, their drills were active in every corner, polluting the atmosphere with deleterious miasmas, as mechanical civilizations doomed to desolation emit. For several months, Samantar felt an unbearable anguish; he did not know how to parry this plague more formidable than all the epidemics that decimated people throughout the centuries since antiquity. Then came a glorious moment when the thieves realized they had erred in their calculations and that their superb machinery had proven incapable of performing a miracle. Despite all their sophisticated equipment and the legendary aptitude of their experts, they clashed with the obstinate refusal of a cantankerous nature. They left, bitter and sullen, for places more favorable to their incurable megalomania, leaving behind their filth, like people of poor ancestry and education. After a war of liberation, Samantar invited a few friends to a grand feast to celebrate the ruin of oil monopolies, but at that moment, he was far from foreseeing the birth of a terrorist organization inside the emirate itself nor the ungrateful role he would have to adopt in this circumstance.
He suddenly had the intuition of a gaze fixed on him and turned around quickly, happy to find, after these alarming thoughts, the face of a being he could contemplate without hatred because they were still attached to the most humble of pleasures and for whom love was still the only earthly ambition. Dressed in a light, flamboyant yellow robe, her long black hair spread over her shoulders, Gawhara stood on the threshold of the French window in the moving demeanor of a woman wounded by the fiercest passion, which contrasted singularly with her appearance as a child barely out of infancy. Her grave eyes scrutinized Samantar with the frightening tenacity of a castaway scanning the contours of a hypothetical shoreline as if she were trying to focus on him all the desires and dreams of a triumphant puberty. When she stared at him like that, he had the impression of reaching the summit of all knowledge, penetrating the universe without pride, where all the insane enigmas invented by men dissolved into the sole and unique reality of the flesh. At that very moment, uncontrollable urges pushed him to forget these lousy revolutionaries and their derisory bombs, but the acute sense of danger that threatened the emirate, the rigor and abnegation that this danger demanded of him, forbade him to succumb to temptation. He looked at the young girl for a long time with the bitter illusion of moving away from her for a futile reason unrelated to life.
— You need to leave now. I have to go out this afternoon; I have some business in town.
The sadness that pierced his words alerted the young girl, who was always attentive to the slightest inflections in his voice.
— You seem upset. I sense that something has displeased you, and I would like you to tell me what it is. I want to learn everything from you.
— You have nothing to learn from me, responded Samantar, smiling. When I met you, you already knew everything.
She shook her head and made a childish face, indicating that he was wrong and that she still had a lot to learn from him.
This expression amused Samantar, who motioned her to come closer; he wanted to unite with her, at least through a tender touch, to absorb her freshness like a magical perfume before undertaking the detestable task that awaited him outside. She dashed into the burning light of the terrace, her bare feet skipping on the burning tiles, and came to snuggle against his chest.
Samantar wrapped his arms around her and began to stroke her hair in a protective gesture; she always remained for him, the innocent creature he had to defend against the wickedness of an unforgiving world. But she was far from an innocent creature. It was true that she knew everything, namely, the essentials of human rottenness and its notorious representatives. Samantar had been deprived the pleasure of teaching her certain fundamental truths concerning this humanity, truths that she would have taken years to identify and understand, and it was already too late. Initially, he felt a particular disappointment, as if she had scorned the most essential part of himself, for teaching youth to discern the tortuous mechanisms of universal deceit appeared to him a magnificent gift worth all the gold accumulated by vandal empires over centuries. He was sensitive to a rift in their relationship for a time, but then he became accustomed to this innate knowledge, which established a complicit solidarity between them, free from doubts and disputes that separate generations. What she knew belonged to a domain ignored by teachers and textbooks, and neither school nor university could have taught her. Her father, a court judge and a man of obtuse austerity, would have died of apoplexy if he guessed his daughter’s refectory spirit and incommensurable contempt for his honor and honorable position. This kind of miracle that terrified imbeciles had dazzled Samantar like a flower blooming in the mire. Raised in the suffocating circle of traditions and prejudices, she seemed to have no connection with the members of her family. Samantar remembered the day of their first meeting in the city market where she dawdled in her schoolgirl clothes, looking at the fabrics and jewels displayed on the stalls as objects existing simply in nature, without at any moment the ignoble thought of possessing them from disturbing her idle princess walk. She had the detached behavior of a philosopher strolling down the street lined with magnificent palaces, admiring, without envy, the domes and porticos studded with jewels, then leaving just as poor but potentially rich from all the beauty she had seen. Enthralled, Samantar followed her from a distance, driven by an irresistible impulse to know and love her. And when, after a sinuous walk among the crowd of shoppers, he had found the opportunity to speak to her, she had shocked him by responding with a few phrases spoken with a lucid maturity, entirely simple phrases, but from which it emerged that she was not fooled by this shameless world and its hypocritical morality.
— I do not want to hide anything from you, he said, relaxing his grip a little. I am indeed worried.
— May I know why?
— It concerns the tranquility of the emirate. You know that we have narrowly escaped the curse of oil. We are a small, poor country and the bastards of the world leave us alone because they have nothing to gain here.
— I know; you have already explained this to me. Then what has changed?
— Well, I think certain people are contriving to shatter this tranquility.
— You are talking about these bombings?
— Yes. My opinion is that these bombings are nothing but a crude provocation. I am determined to track down this band of miscreants who want to trigger repression and perhaps worse.
— Do you know who they are?
— I have not the slightest idea. And that’s what worries me the most. I wonder who is manipulating them and for what purpose.
He was silent and caressed the young girl’s breasts through her robe while his eyes fixed on the stagnant landscape under the sun, similar to a magical setting drawn up for love, and he was overcome by horrible despair as if it would be the last time he saw it in its peaceful integrity before it was transformed into decor of murder and blood. His hand tensed unconsciously, and the young girl moaned under the intense pressure of his caress. She murmured, suddenly worried:
— Will this matter keep you very busy?
— I’m afraid so.
— But we will still make love?
— Certainly, little girl! Even in hell I would make love to you. But it is time for you to return home.
— I am in no hurry. I still want to listen to you. When you speak, I seem to be listening to the only language I understand. The others only emit unintelligible sounds in my ear. Their chatter disgusts me.
— Is your father aware of your long absences?
— You forget that I am a little girl and my father is hardly interested in a little girl’s life. He’s not like you.
Samantar was not unaware of this lacuna in the psychology of parents across the globe. He only liked very young girls, first by inclination — women bored him, as they were already impregnated with male stupidity —then because it was easier for them to move around without attracting the attention of pious moralists too stupid to give teenagers the taste for lust. They monitored the adults, forgetting the more perverse schoolgirls less obsessed with scandal. This is how, in an environment hostile to fringe couplings, Samantar enjoyed uneventful love affairs, shamelessly exploiting the blindness of his fellow citizens.
— In a few years, resumed Gawhara, it will be difficult for me to go out as I do now. But it will no longer matter. At that moment, I will not interest you anymore. I will be too old for you.
Samantar was moved by the seriousness with which the young girl foresaw the probable outcome of their relationship.
— You will never be too old for me, he said. You will always remain like this landscape, indestructible. But I must act quickly. For even this landscape risks ugliness and devastation if I can’t thwart the plans of those damned bombers.
— How do you plan to do it?
— I do not know yet. I’m going to go roam the city. Something will undoubtedly happen that will put me on the right track. What saddens me the most is the time that I will lose away from you.
And suddenly, the comical side of the situation appeared to him. Wouldn’t he be arrested and imprisoned as a prime suspect before he could even begin his investigation? He was known throughout the city as a fanatic denouncer of the falsehoods upon which the entire social system was based. Wasn’t that enough to believe he was the instigator of this demolition business? So why hadn’t they arrested him yet or at least interrogated him about these attacks? This was a rather suspicious position on the part of the police, who were habitually eager to distinguish themselves. It reminded him that the time of the torturers was finally near. During the economic dream, certain police officers chosen for their sadism had been trained in torture by instructors from the great imperialist power, in a school specialized in this discipline and located on the soil of that same power. The members of this team, approximately a half-dozen (the emirate’s poverty delaying the promotion of a large number of sadists), had been languishing since their return, reduced to nerve-wracking unemployment. One could sometimes be seen, recognizable by something sinister and dubious that characterizes executioners even in their leisure moments, sitting at a café table, conscientiously disemboweling a fly or cockroach, just to keep in practice. But it was clear that these anodyne divertissements could not satisfy them, and they were burning with the desire to exercise their talent in more challenging elements. Given the way events were unfolding, the suspects would soon become familiar with advanced torture techniques imported from the West.
Translated by Robert Sweet (2024)
Albert Cossery was born in Cairo in 1913. He studied law in Paris before the outbreak of World War II. During the war, Cossery served in the Egyptian merchant Navy. At the age of 27 he published his first book, Men God Forgot. Albert Cossery emigrated to Paris to continue his studies (which he never did) and to devote himself to writing. He settled permanently in the French capital in 1945, where he lived until his death in 2008. In 60 years he wrote eight novels, in accordance with his philosophy of life in which “laziness” is not a vice but a form of contemplation and meditation.