Alysson watched him warily, afraid of what he might do. How had their discussion turned so violent so suddenly? She wished she had never begun this conversation. But he wasn't done chastising her by any means.
"You call us barbaric," Jafar muttered. "Surely even you don't condone the French army's method of 'pacifying' our tribesmen—asphyxiating hundreds of women and children in caves. You heard of that incident, didn't you, mademoiselle?"
"Y-yes," Alysson replied. She had heard of it. Like many, she had been appalled by the actions of one French colonel who had lighted fires at the mouth of a cave in which some five hundred native men, women, and children had taken refuge. The scandal had shocked even the staunchest supporters of French colonization, and had been denounced in France as an abomination.
"The next time fifteen hundred Muslims died," Jafar said almost absently.
"The . . . next time?"
"Two months later another of your French colonels repeated the tactic. You never learned of it because it was kept out of the French newspapers." Jafar shook his head in disgust. "Don't talk to me of barbaric methods."
Irritated by his accusing tone, Alysson lifted her chin, mustering her courage. "That still doesn't excuse the abominable acts carried out by your side. Only a few years ago your Arab troops massacred the French garrison at Biskra."
The look Jafar gave her was hard and angry. "Those were soldiers, men who chose to fight and die in a war the rapacious French government began. Soldiers who never quailed at murdering entire villages of civilians, I might add."
“What then of all the innocent French settlers who have been slaughtered?"
"Innocent settlers who stole our land over the bloody corpses of our people? This is wartime, Miss Vickery. What did you expect us to do, welcome them with open arms?"
Alysson fell silent, thinking of all the senseless carnage that had resulted from the war. No one had been spared, not the innocent, not the women and children. And even they had been guilty of atrocities. Indeed, the women of Barbary were said to be even more fierce and savage than the men.
With a shudder, she remembered a Legion officer discussing with apparent relish the horrible mutilation of captured French soldiers after a particularly bloody battle, how the Arab women enacted unspeakable tortures upon wounded Frenchmen before finally allowing them mercy in death. That was why, the Legionnaire claimed, it was better to die in the first assault than to survive to become hostage to their cruelty.
Alysson might have mentioned that to Jafar, but she saw no point in debating the issue of which side had been more vicious. The humane conventions of war had been ignored on both sides. And, thankfully, at least now the war had ended. If only her Berber captor would come to accept it.
"The war is over," Alysson said finally. "Don't you realize that? You can never win."
Jafar's fingers fisted around the cloth in his hand. "Perhaps. But we will never cease trying to drive back the invaders who conqu
ered our shores."
"But more killing won't solve a thing. Don't you see? It is so pointless!"
Hearing the note of anguish in her voice, he turned and met her troubled gray eyes. "Fighting tyranny is never pointless, mademoiselle.''
She stared at him, her expression one of frustrated incomprehension. Seeing her despair, Jafar suddenly wanted her to understand. He wanted her to know what drove him to defy the conquering French against impossible odds, what made him hate this particular enemy so much that it was a festering wound within him.
"Consider for a moment, if you will," he said in a rough whisper, "why we have such a hatred of the French. They swarmed over our country, burning with a love of conquest, and wrought destruction on everything they touched. They polluted our wells, burned our crops, raped and killed our women, orphaned our children, profaned our mosques and graves . . . They surpassed in barbarity the barbarians they came to civilize."
He paused, his burning gaze holding hers. "Not satisfied with the pace of acquisition, then, they violated their own treaties of peace and seized private properties without compensation. Then they taxed and exploited our impoverished population to the point of starvation, and forced the weakest of us into servitude. The despoilment is unending. The French are filled with an insatiable greed. They want our
plains, our mountains, our inland cities. They covet our horses, tents, camels, women. At the same time they hold in disdain our laws and customs, our religion, and expect us to endure the contempt of their white race, their arrogant sentiments of racial superiority."
Jafar muttered a word in his language that Alysson knew was a curse, but his gaze never left her. "Do you honestly expect me and my people to bow our necks to a foreign yoke without a struggle? To surrender to French domination without a fight?"
The question, soft and savage, echoed in the silence.
"You say the war is over," Jafar declared softly. "I say it will never be over. Not as long there is a single Frenchman residing on African soil. The French will be our enemy, always and forever."
Alysson slowly shook her head, understanding his bitter hostility for the French, but not his particular hatred for Gervase. The French might be his enemy, but it was Gervase he had singled out. "But . . . you don't just plan to make war on the French army, do you? There is more to it. You've planned some sort of revenge against Gervase. That's why you've abducted me."
His golden eyes locked with hers without flinching. "Yes."
The single word was curt, adamant, unrelenting.
The sick dread in Alysson stomach intensified. "And when Gervase does come for me?" Her voice was a hoarse whisper. "What do you intend to do to him then?"
Abruptly Jafar's features became impassive, his gaze unfathomable. Breaking the contact of their gazes, he turned away. "The colonel will get precisely what he deserves."