Tuareg Read online

  The relentless winds that blew through the desert had, over millions of years, stripped its summit bare, removing all the earth, sand and vegetation, turning it into an endless stretch of naked, polished rock, scorched by the sun, cracked and broken up by the extreme changes in temperature between night and day. Travellers who had crossed those mountains often spoke of the wailing, moaning voices they had heard at dawn, but which were in fact nothing more than the cracking of the hot stones as the temperature dropped sharply and suddenly.

  It was a truly inhospitable place in the heart of an even more inhospitable land. It was as if the Creator himself had used it as a dumping ground for all the bits and pieces left over from his other fine works, leaving behind a muddle of rocky outcrops, saltpans, sands and “lost lands.”

  But to Gazel, the Sidiel Madia was not some godforsaken hellhole but a labyrinth, inside which an entire army could hide without ever being found.

  ‘How much petrol is there left…?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Enough for two hours, three at the most. At this speed and on this terrain it consumes a lot…’ He paused and then added in a worried tone: ‘I don’t think we’ll make it to the well.’

  Gazel shook his head.

  ‘We’re not going to the well.’

  ‘But you said…!’

  The Targui nodded:

  ‘I know what I said,’ he admitted. ‘You heard it and your men heard it and they will tell the others.’

  There was a pause. ‘During those days I spent alone on the saltpan I asked myself how you could have possibly overtaken me when I had such an advantage on you, but yesterday I saw you speaking on that apparatus and I understood. What’s it called…a radio? Yes that’s what it is. My cousin Suleiman bought one. Two months of shifting bricks from one place to the next just to buy something that screeches out loud at you! That’s how you found me, am I right?’

  Lieutenant Razman nodded silently.

  Gazel reached out, grabbed the earpiece and threw it away. Then with the butt of his gun he destroyed the rest of the apparatus.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘I am alone and you are many. It’s not fair that you are also using French methods.’

  The lieutenant had taken down his trousers and was squatting some three meters away from the jeep.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t think you quite realise what’s happening here,’ he said casually. ‘It’s not about a struggle between you and us. It’s about the fact that you have committed a crime and you have to pay for that. You can’t just murder someone and go unpunished.’

  Gazel had also left the vehicle to do the same thing and was squatting down, still carrying his weapon.

  ‘That’s what I told the captain,’ he replied. ‘He shouldn’t have murdered my guest.’ He paused. ‘But nobody punished him. I had to do it myself.’

  ‘The captain was carrying out his orders.’

  ‘Whose orders? From his superiors I suppose.’

  ‘From the governor.’

  ‘And who is the governor and what right has he to give out these orders? What authority has he over me, my family, my settlement and my guests…?’

  ‘The authority given to him by the regional government.’

  ‘What government?’

  ‘The Government of the Republic.’

  ‘What is a Republic?’

  The lieutenant snorted then looked around for the right kind of stone to clean himself with. He got up and buttoned up his trousers calmly.

  ‘You don’t really want me to explain the ways of the world to you right now do you?’

  The Targui searched for a stone and cleaned himself with it, then threw sand at his bottom several times, remained in the same position for a few seconds and got up.

  ‘Why not…?’ he asked. ‘It’s all very well for you to tell me that I have committed a crime, but then you won’t explain to me why that is. It all seems a bit absurd.’

  Razman had taken the water can and poured some of it into a small saucepan that was hanging on a chain from the back of the vehicle and started to wash out his mouth and hands with it.

  ‘Don’t waste it,’ the Targui snapped. ‘I’m going to need it.’

  He obeyed him then turned around to face him.

  ‘I think maybe you are right,’ he admitted. ‘I should probably explain to you that we are no longer a colony and that just as things changed for the Tuareg people when the French arrived, things have changed again now they have gone.’

  ‘If they have gone it seems logical that we return to our ancient traditions.’

  ‘No. No, it’s not logical. The last one hundred years have not passed by in vain. Many things have happened. The world, the whole world, has been transformed.’

  Gazel took in his surroundings with a sweep of his hands.

  ‘Nothing has changed here. The desert has remained the same and will do for another one hundred years more. Nobody has come to me and said: “Here, take water, food or ammunition and medicine because the French have now left. We can no longer respect your customs, laws and traditions, that your ancestors and their ancestors followed, but we are going to give you some better ones in exchange, in order to make your lives in the Sahara easier, so easy that you will no longer need to follow your ancient traditions…”’

  The lieutenant meditated for a few moments, his head lowered, staring at his boots as if deep down he felt somehow responsible and then shrugging his shoulders and sitting down on the running board, he replied:

  ‘It’s true. You should have been informed, but we are a young country that has just gained independence and it’ll take some years before we adapt to this new situation.’

  ‘In that case…’ Gazel continued, his logical train of thought something quite remarkable, ‘while you are not ready to adapt to that, it would be better to respect what already exists. It is stupid to destroy something before anything has been built to replace it with.’

  Razman realised that there was very little he could say in response. The truth was that he had not found the answer either. He was often overwhelmed with similar questions that raced around his head as he contemplated, with some dismay, the deterioration of the society into which he had been born.

  ‘It’s best we leave this subject now,’ he said. ‘We’ll never agree on it. Would you like something to eat?’

  Gazel nodded and he looked for the large wooden box that had the provisions in it. He opened up a can of meat that they shared, with some biscuits and hard dry, goat’s cheese. The sun came up, heating up the earth and reflecting off the black rocks of the Sidi-el-Madia, which stood out against the horizon more sharply by the minute.

  ‘Where are we going?’ the lieutenant finally asked.

  Gazel pointed over to their right: ‘There’s the well. We’ll head to the other peak over to the left.’

  ‘I drove under it once. You can’t climb it.’

  ‘I can. The Huaila mountains are similar. Even worse perhaps! I used to hunt mufflon there. I killed five once. We had dried meat for a year and my children slept on their skins.’

  ‘Gazel “the Hunter,”’ the lieutenant exclaimed, smiling a little. ‘You feel proud of who you are; of being a Targui, don’t you?’

  ‘If I wasn’t, I would change who I was. Are you not proud of who you are?’ he said, tilting his head to one side.

  ‘Not really…’ he admitted. ‘At the moment I would rather be on your side than the side I’m on. But we cannot build a country by doing that.’

  ‘If things are built too quickly then they will soon go bad,’ the Targui said pointedly.

  ‘We should set off. We’ve been talking too much.’

  They started off again, but a wheel burst and then two hours later the car engine backfired then broke down completely, about five kilometers away from the high, vertical cliff that they were headed for and where the great erg of Tidiken finally came to rest.

  ‘This is as far as we can go,’ Razman said as he looked up at
the smooth, black, gleaming wall, which looked like the walls of a castle belonging to a Cyclops.

  ‘Are you really going up there?’

  Gazel nodded his head silently, jumped out of the car and started putting food and ammunition into the soldiers’ rucksacks. He unloaded the weapons, checked that none of them had any bullets left in them and studied the regulatory guns, choosing the best one and leaving his on the backseat: ‘My father gave me it when I was young,’ he said. ‘I have never used another. But it’s old now and hard to get ammunition for that calibre.’

  ‘I’ll keep it as a museum piece,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘I’ll put a plaque on it: “This belonged to the bandit-hunter Gazel Sayah.”’

  ‘I am not a bandit.’

  He smiled gently:

  ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘Jokes are fine when told at night time, by the light of a fire and amongst friends.’ He paused. ‘Now I must tell you something. Do not follow me, because if I see you again I will kill you.’

  ‘If they order me to find you I will have to try and catch you,’ he reminded him.

  The Targui stopped cleaning out his old gerba with clean water and stared at him incredulously: ‘How can you live like this, always waiting for the next set of orders. How can you feel like a man and free if you are always dependent on the requirements of others? If they told you to catch an innocent man would you go ahead and catch him? If they told you to leave a murderer like the captain in peace, would you leave him in peace? I do not understand…!’

  ‘Life is clearly not as simple as it seems to be here in the desert.’

  ‘Then do not bring that way of life into the desert. The distinction between good and evil, justice and injustice is clear here.’ He finished filling up his gerbas and then checked that the soldiers’ water bottles were also full. The water drum was almost empty and the lieutenant pointed it out: ‘Are you going to leave me without any water?’ he said in a worried tone. ‘At least give me a water bottle.’

  He shook his head resolutely:

  ‘A little thirst will help you to understand how I felt out there in the saltpan,’ he replied. ‘It is a good thing to learn how to cope with thirst in the desert.’

  ‘But I’m not a Targui,’ he protested. ‘I can’t walk back to my settlement. It’s too far and I’d get lost. Please.’ He shook his head again. ‘You must not move from here,’ he advised. ‘Once I’ve reached the mountains you should make a fire with your soldiers’ mats and clothes. They’ll see the smoke and come and get you.’

  He paused. ‘Do you give me your word that you will wait until I have reached the top?’ He nodded silently and watched without moving out of his seat, as the Targui loaded himself with rucksacks, water bottles, the gerba and his weapons. He did not seem to notice their weight as he walked off with a firm, fast and resolute stride, seemingly impervious to the heat.

  He was a little over one hundred meters away when Razman hooted the horn insistently, forcing him to turn around:

  ‘Good luck,’ he shouted.

  The other man lifted his hand in response, turned around and continued on his way.

  There’s an old saying that “palm trees love to have their heads in the fire and their feet in the water,” proof of which lay before his very eyes. More than twenty thousand palm trees stretched out before him and into the distance, their plumes reaching up to the sky, impervious to the scorching heat, with their roots firmly entrenched in the fresh clear water that flowed into the earth from the hundreds of underground springs and innumerable wells in the area.

  It was a truly beautiful spectacle, even though the sun beat down mercilessly, defiantly and unashamedly, because from inside his huge dark office, protected from the outside by thick windows and white net curtains, the air conditioning remained at the same temperature, day in and day out and throughout the seasons, just above freezing and just as the governor, Hassan-ben-Koufra liked to have it.

  Once he was settled in his office, a glass of tea in his hand and a smouldering “DavidoffAmbassatrice” in the other, the desert seemed almost bearable. He would even go as far to say that at sunset, when the sun seemed to stop and rest for a while in the tops of the palm trees, providing the only break to El-Akab’s horizon before disappearing completely behind the mosque’s minaret, it felt surprisingly close to paradise.

  The balconies of the building overlooked a secluded garden that, according to legend had been designed by Colonel Duperey himself, who had ordered the palace to be built. There, the rose and carnation beds wrestled for space and lemon and apple trees stood nestled amongst the tall cypresses from where the coos of a thousand turtledoves could be heard and where, at the end of their long migratory flights, the swifts would settle in huge groups.

  El-Akab was, without doubt a beautiful place; the most beautiful oasis in the Sahara, from Marrakech to the shores of the Nile, which is why it had been chosen as the capital of a province that was, all told, much bigger than many other European countries.

  And from his icy palace office, his Excellency, the governor Hassan-ben-Koufra, ruled over his empire with the absolute power of a viceroy, well known for his firm hand, restrained manner and cutting tongue.

  ‘You are useless, lieutenant,’ he said, turning to look at him with a smile on his face that made it look like he had just congratulated him rather than insulted him. ‘Aren’t a dozen men enough to catch a fugitive armed with an old rifle? What more did you need, an entire division?’

  ‘I didn’t want to risk their lives, your Excellency. I’ve told you that already. He would have shot us down one after the other with that old rifle. He is a great and legendary marksman and our men have not fired more than forty bullets in their entire lives…’

  He paused.

  ‘We are under orders not to waste ammunition.’

  ‘I know,’ the governor admitted, moving away from the balcony and returning to his enormous desk. ‘I gave that order. If there’s no war in sight, I consider it a waste of money to spend time training up a bunch of recruits into first class marksmen, when they’ll only be going home after one year. As long as they know how to pull the trigger, that’ll do.’

  ‘But that’s not enough, your Excellency. Excuse my impertinence, but in the desert a man’s life is often entirely dependent on his marksmanship.’ He swallowed. ‘This was one of those situations.’

  ‘Listen lieutnenant,’ Hassan-ben-Koufra replied, without losing his composure — something it might be said that no-one had ever seen him lose. ‘And bear in mind that I can say this freely since I am not a military man. To respect the life of your soldiers does seem to be a very admirable notion, but there are times and this was one of them,’ he paused intentionally, ‘when the soldiers had to accomplish their mission above all else, because the honour of the army, to which you belong, was at stake. To have allowed a Bedouin to kill a captain and one of our guides, to strip two of our soldiers naked and make a lieutenant drive across the desert constitutes a discredit to you, the armed forces and to me as the highest authority in this province.’

  Lieutenant Razman nodded silently as he tried to stop himself from shivering, his uniform being far too thin for the icy temperature of the office.

  ‘They asked for my help to catch a man who would be brought to trial your Excellency,’ he replied, trying to speak with a tone of calm authority. ‘Not to kill him like a dog.’ He paused. ‘If I was expected to act as a policeman, then I should have received those orders loud and clear. I wanted to help and I realise that the end result was unfortunate, but I sincerely believe that it was better than returning home with five bodies.’

  The governor shook his head and leant back in his chair as if to conclude the conversation.

  ‘That was for me to decide and from the reports that I have received it would have been better if we’d had five corpses. We inherited the respect that the nomads held for the French and now, for the first time and thanks to that Bedouin and your ineptitude,
it’s been shattered. It won’t do…’ he muttered. ‘It just won’t do.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You will be sorry, lieutenant I can assure you. From today you are posted to Adoras where you will replace Kaleb-el-Fasi.’

  Lieutenant Razman immediately broke out into a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the air conditioning and he noticed that his knees were trembling so much they were virtually knocking each other.

  ‘Adoras!’ he repeated incredulously. ‘That is not fair your Excellency. I may have made a mistake but I am not a criminal.’

  ‘Adoras is not a prison,’ the governor replied calmly. ‘It is simply a frontier post. I have the power to send anyone there that I consider good for the job.’

  ‘But everybody knows that only the scum of the earth are sent there…! The very dregs of the army!’ The governor Hassan-ben-Koufra shrugged his shoulders indifferently and turned to look at a report that was lying on the table with exaggerated interest. Then, without looking up he said:

  ‘That is only an opinion, not an officially accepted fact. You have one month to arrange your things and organise the transfer…’

  Lieutenant Razman went to say something, but then realising it was pointless, saluted him stiffly and walked towards the door, praying that his legs would not give way and give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing him collapse.

  When he got outside he leaned his forehead against one of the marble columns and remained there for a few seconds, trying to regain his composure and steady his legs. He certainly did not want to go flying down the majestic, marble staircase and into the flowerbeds below, in front of some twenty or so busy workers.

  One of the workers slipped past his back silently, knocked three times on the office door, went in and closed it behind him.