Tuareg Read online

  ‘It’s suicide…’ the lieutenant muttered to himself. ‘I never thought a Targui would be capable of suicide. He will be condemned for eternity.’

  There was never a longer day.

  Nor a hotter one.

  The salt reflected back the sun’s rays, multiplying its strength, making his small shelter virtually useless, rendering both him and his mehari speechless. The camel was unable to move as he had tied his legs together once he had got the animal to kneel down. He could not bear to hurt him, it was the last thing this beast, who had carried him so loyally across the sands for so many years, deserved.

  He said his prayers between dreams and when he was not asleep he remained stock still. He would not even have moved to brush off a fly, had there been any that is, since the insufferable heat meant that there was not one to be seen. He struggled to become a stone, to forget about his body and its needs, aware that there was not even a drop of water left in his gerba. He felt his skin dry up and the strange sensation of his blood thickening in his veins as it began to move more slowly through them.

  After midday he lost consciousness and remained there, supported only by the body of the beast, his mouth open, unable to breathe in the air which had become so dense that it almost refused to go down into his lungs.

  He was delirious, but made no sound because his mouth and purple tongue were so dry. Then, a movement made by his mehari and a cry that came from the very depths of his being brought him back to the living and he opened his eyes, only to close them immediately as they were dazzled by the brilliant, white light of the saltpan.

  Never had a day seemed so long to him, not even when compared with the day that his firstborn had started spitting blood, throwing it up from his lungs as he was devoured by tuberculosis.

  Nor one so hot.

  Night fell and the earth started to get colder gradually. Finally he began to breathe more easily and was able to open his eyes without feeling as if his retinas were being drilled through. His mehari also emerged out of his stupor and shuffled about anxiously, moaning quietly.

  He loved that beast and he lamented its inevitable death. He had seen him born and known from that very first moment that he would be a lively, noble and resilient animal. He had looked after him carefully and taught him to obey his voice and the contact of his heel with his neck — a language that only the two of them understood. He had never, not in all those years, had to hit him. The animal had never tried to attack him or bite him, not even during the rutting season in spring, when the other males would become hysterical and unmanageable, rebelling against their masters, throwing off their loads and the riders from their backs, time and time again. That beast was truly a blessing from Allah, but his time had come and he knew it.

  He waited until the moon had appeared on the horizon and its light, reflected on the saltpan turned the night almost back into day, then he took out his sharp dagger and with one strong and deep slash, slit the animal’s white throat.

  He said the ritual prayers and collected the blood that was gushing out into his gerba. When they were full, he drank the still warm, almost palpitating liquid slowly and felt himself gradually coming back to life. He waited a few minutes, regained his composure, then gently felt the stomach of the animal, who, having been tied up, had not moved at all when he had died, apart from its head that had flopped down to one side. Once he was sure that he had found the right spot, he cleaned his dagger on the striped rug that hung from his saddle then dug it in hard, deeply, twisting it around again and again in an attempt to make the wound as wide as possible. When he withdrew the weapon, a small spurt of blood escaped, followed by a gush of green, smelly water, which he filled his second gerba with. Then, pinching his nose with one hand and closing his eyes, he put his lips around the wound and drank the repulsive liquid from it directly, knowing that his life depended on it.

  He continued drinking until there was nothing left, even though his thirst had long been satisfied and his stomach was full to bursting.

  He started to wretch but forced himself to think of something else and forget the smell and the taste of water that had been in the camel’s stomach for five days and it took all his will as a Targui fighting for his life to manage it.

  Finally, he fell asleep.

  ‘He’s dead,’ muttered Lieutenant Razman. ‘He’s got to be dead. He hasn’t moved for four days now, he must have just turned into a pillar of salt.’

  ‘Do you want me to go and check,’ one of the soldiers offered, thinking that he might be given stripes for such an act.

  The heat was starting to ease off.

  He shook his head over and over again as he lit his pipe with a sailor’s lighter — the only lighter that really worked out there in the sand and wind.

  ‘I don’t trust that Targui…’ he said. ‘I don’t want him to kill us at night.’

  ‘But we can’t spend the rest of our lives here,’ the other one pointed out. ‘We’ve only got enough water for four days.’

  ‘I know…’ he admitted. ‘Tomorrow I’ll send in a man from each point. I’m not going to take any stupid risks.’

  Once he was alone, however, he wondered if the greatest risk of all might be just that: waiting there for him and playing the Targui’s game. He was unable to work out what his plans were and still did not believe that he would have let himself die of heat and thirst without having first put up a fight. From what he knew of Gazel Sayah, he was one of the last, truly free Tuareg, a noble inmouchar, almost a prince among his people, capable of crossing the “lost land” and taking on an army in order to avenge a wrongdoing. It just did not make sense that a man like that would let himself die as soon as he felt trapped. Suicide did not figure in the minds of the Tuareg, nor did it in the minds of Muslims, who knew that if they tried to kill themselves they would be barred from eternal paradise. Maybe the fugitive, like many of his people, was not in reality a fervent believer, but preferred to follow their more ancient traditions. But still, he could not bring himself to believe that he would shoot himself, cut his wrists or allow himself to be consumed by the sun and thirst.

  He had a plan, of that he was sure. The plan would be Machiavellian but simple. There was also no doubt that the elements around them would play a key role in that plan — a landscape that the Targui had learned, even before he was born, to use to his advantage. But try as he may, the lieutenant could not work out what that plan might be.

  The Targui seemed to be gambling on his men’s fatigue and indeed his own and on the fact that no one would believe that a man could survive for so long without water in that raging furnace. He was trying to get them to believe, almost subconsciously, that they were actually keeping watch over a dead body so that without even realising it, they would drop their guard, at which point he would just slip away into the immense desert.

  It was a reasonable assumption, but every time he remembered the insufferable heat that he had endured down there in the saltpan and calculated how much water a human being would need to survive in there, Targui or not, he changed his mind and became convinced that there was no way on earth that the fugitive could still be alive.

  ‘He’s dead…’ he repeated once again, furious with himself and his impotence. ‘The son of a bitch has to be dead.’

  But Gazel Sayah was not dead.

  He was there, as still as he had been for the last four days and almost four nights, watching the sun sink below the horizon, heralding the arrival of the darkness that would fall without warning and he knew that on this night he would finally have to act.

  It was as if his mind had emerged from a strange kind of stupor that he had consciously forced himself into in order to convert himself into an inanimate object. He had managed to transform himself into a desert shrub, a rock from the erg, or one of the millions of grains of salt in the sebkha, overcoming his need to drink, sweat or even urinate.

  It was as if the very pores of his skin had closed up and like his bladder was no longer connecte
d with his exterior. His blood had seemed to thicken into a soupy mass, pushed around his body by his heart that had slowed to a minimum of beats per minute.

  He had to rid himself of every thought and every memory and close down his imagination, because he knew that the body and mind were inexorably linked. Even a simple memory of Laila, the idea of a well, full of clear water, or a dream that he had escaped from that inferno, would make his heart beat faster, undermining his efforts to become a “man of stone.”

  But he had managed it and now he awoke from his long trance to contemplate the remains of the day. He worked to get his mind out of its stupor and awaken his body, to get the blood flowing and his muscles moving in order to recover the strength and flexibility that would soon be required of them.

  Then, in the shadows, once he was totally sure that nobody could see him, he started to move. First an arm, then the other, then finally his legs and his head as he eased himself out of his refuge and stood up, still using the camel’s body, which had started to rot, to support himself with.

  He looked for his gerba and summoning up all his will and strength once again, he swallowed the greenish, repugnant, thick liquid, which had started to congeal and was now more like egg white mixed with bile, than water.

  He then got out his dagger and moving the saddle off the animal, he cut through the skin of the camel’s hump in order to extract a white fat that was already on the point of turning putrid and began to chew on it immediately, aware that it was the only thing that would give him back his strength.

  Even in death, his faithful mount had given him a final offering: the blood from his veins and water from his stomach in order to fight off his thirst, as well as his precious fat reserves that would bring him back to life.

  An hour later, now in the thick of night, he looked back at the beast thankfully one last time, gathered up his water gerbas, his weapons and started off, unhurriedly, towards the west.

  He had taken off his blue djelabba so that he was even less visible now and was just a white smudge, moving silently across the plain. Even when the moon came out and he cast a faint shadow, he was still invisible to anyone more than twenty meters away from him.

  He saw the bank just as the mosquitoes were starting to emerge, so he wrapped himself up in his turban, covering his eyes with his litham and letting the hems of his robes drag on the ground to stop the insects from biting his ankles.

  They emerged, threateningly, in their millions, not as many as there were at dawn or sunset, but an impressive amount all the same. They were ferocious and forced him to slap them off his arms and neck while some of them even managed to bite him through his clothes.

  He could feel the salt crust thinning under foot as it became more dangerous with each step, but he knew that in the dark all he could do was place his trust in Allah and hope that He would guide his way. Finally and with some relief, he felt the first slab of rock underfoot, a piece that had come away from the top of the bank and he looked for bit of firm ground to step on to, ignoring the danger of scorpion nests this time in his hurry to get out of the sebkha.

  He eventually found a good spot to climb up from, about three hundred meters to his left and when he finally peered over into the immensity of the erg and a light gust of wind hit his face, he pulled himself out and let himself fall onto the sand, exhausted. He gave thanks to his creator that he had been allowed to escape from the salt trap, even though he had reached breaking point out there, his nerves so frayed that at one point he was not even sure he was going to make it through.

  He slept for some time, trying to ignore the noise of the mosquitoes buzzing around him and then he dragged himself, meter by meter, with the patience of a chameleon stalking an insect, for about half a kilometre, away from the edge of the saltpan.

  Not once did he lift his head higher than a hand’s breadth above the level of the rocks, not even moving a muscle when a snake slithered in front of his eyes.

  He turned his face to the sky and looked at the stars to work out how long it would be before dawn arrived. Then he looked around him and found his spot: three square meters of thick gravel, almost completely surrounded by small black rocks. He took out his dagger and started to dig silently, moving the sand away carefully, until he had made a grave the length of his body and two hands deep. It was just getting light as climbed into it and the first of the sun’s rays slid over him. He finished covering himself with gravel, leaving only his eyes, nose and mouth free, which, during the hottest hours of the day would be protected by the shadow from the rocks.

  Somebody could have urinated just three meters away without realising that a man was hiding right there, under his very feet.

  Every morning, as his jeep approached the edge of the sebkha he was overcome with the same two conflicting fears: the fear that the motionless figure would be in the same place still and the fear that it might be gone.

  Every morning Lieutenant Razman would experience first a feeling of fury and then one of impotency. He would start off by cursing the dirty son of the wind who was running rings around him, only to be overcome with a profound sense of satisfaction as he realised that he had not been wrong about the Targui.

  ‘It would take great courage to let yourself die of thirst rather than be put into prison. A lot of courage. He must be dead.’

  The frantic voice of Sergeant Malik came over the radio:

  ‘He’s gone, lieutenant,’ he said furiously. ‘Everything looks the same from here, but I am certain that he’s escaped.’

  ‘Where to?’ he snapped. ‘Where on earth can a man who hasn’t got a camel or water go to? Or is that not a camel?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ the other man replied. ‘And it looks like there’s a man at its side, but it could also be a dummy.’

  He paused. ‘With all due respect, lieutenant sir, I’d like to go in and look for him.’

  ‘Alright…’ he said reluctantly. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Now!’

  ‘Listen sergeant!’ he replied, trying his hardest to sound authoritative. ‘I’m in charge. You will go out as night falls and come back at dawn. Is that clear?’

  ‘Very clear, sir.’

  ‘That goes for you too Ajamuk.’

  ‘Saud…?’

  ‘I’ll send a man in as the sun sets.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ he concluded.

  ‘I want to return to Tidikem tomorrow. I’ve had enough of this Targui and this absurd situation. If he’s not dead I can’t even be bothered to hand him over, you can shoot him dead.’

  He immediately regretted issuing those orders as he knew that Sergeant Malik would take them literally and do everything in his power to finish off the Targui once and for all, but he could not go back on his word.

  Deep down he thought it was probably for the best anyway, since the Targui had given the impression that he would rather die than be shut up in a dirty cell.

  He tried to picture the tall man with his noble gestures and measured speech, who, in his own mind, was simply doing his duty according to the dictates of his ancient traditions and realised there was no way that this man would ever survive amongst the rabbles he would meet in jail.

  Most of his compatriots were wild, primitive people and Razman knew that. For one hundred years they had lived under the rule of the French colonisers who had made sure that these people remained ignorant. Even now that they were free and independent, those years of independence had not actually created a more cultured and educated population. On the contrary, there were many people who had interpreted this newfound freedom as a means to do as they wished, which saw men rising to power through force, adopting only those legacies left behind by the French that suited their situation.

  The result was anarchy, crisis and continued political unrest. Power, it transpired, was a way of getting rich fast, as opposed to a way of guiding a nation forward.

  The prisons were full to overflowing with criminals and politicians from the opposition and there was
certainly not enough room in them for a Targui, born to live in the desert, the land without limits.

  When his face was no longer in the shadow of the rock and the sun had started to beat down directly on to his face and thick drops of sweat ran down his forehead, he opened his eyes and without moving, looked around him.

  He had slept without moving a muscle or even a grain of the sand that covered him, quite indifferent to the heat, the flies and even a lizard that had run across his face. The reptile had then scampered off behind a rock and remained there, watching cautiously, its dark, beady, flitting eyes fixed on the strange creature, with only eyes, a nose and a mouth, that had invaded his territory.

  He listened. He could not hear a trace of any human voice in the wind and the sun, now very high, beat down vertically, which meant that it was the gaila hour, a time when few men were able to resist the drowsiness brought on by the heat and the urge to sleep. He turned his head, without moving his body at all and looked around him beyond the rocks. A little more than a kilometre to the south, on the edge of the saltpan, he could make out a vehicle with a canvas tarpaulin stretched out from it, tied with two long bits of rope to some large stones and big enough to provide shelter for a least a dozen men.

  He could only make out one sentry, from the back, who was watching the sebkha, but he could not work out how many men were taking a siesta under the tarpaulin.

  He knew, having watched them on previous days, that the other vehicles and their crew were far away and he did not have to worry right then about them.

  His prey was there, before him, and he would remain there until the afternoon, when the mosquitoes would force them back once again into the erg.

  He smiled as he tried to imagine how they would react had they known that he had them all there at the end of his rifle; that he could quite easily slip over to them like a reptile between the rocks, approach the sentry from behind and slit his throat and then do the same to the sleeping men inside, with equal ease.