Tuareg Read online

  The governor who had stopped pretending to study the report and was contemplating the mosque through the windows from his chair, leaned in towards the recent arrival, who was standing respectfully at the edge of the carpet and asked:

  ‘What is it Anuhar?’

  ‘No news of the Targui, your Excellency. He’s disappeared.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he admitted. ‘These sons of the wind can cross a desert from one end to the other in a month. He will have gone back to his own people. Do we know who he is exactly?’

  ‘Gazel Sayah of the Kel-Talgimus. He wanders through a large territory near the Huaila mountains.’

  The governor Hassan-ben-Koufra glanced over at the map of the region hanging on the wall and shook his head pessimistically.

  ‘The Huaila mountains!’ he repeated. ‘They are right on the border.’

  ‘The borders barely exist in that zone, sir. They have yet to be determined exactly.’

  ‘Nothing there is “determined exactly,”’ he said, standing up and pacing the length of his immense office. ‘To go in search of a Targui on the run in those lonely places would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ He turned round to face him. ‘File it Mojkri.’

  Anuhar-el-Mojkri, the governor’s efficient secretary of eight years allowed himself the luxury of a deep frown:

  ‘The military won’t like that, your Excellency. He murdered a captain.’

  ‘They despised Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi,’ he reminded him. ‘He was a nasty piece of work.’ He looked for a “Davidoff” again and lit it slowly. ‘Just like ElHaideri…’

  ‘It’s only those kind of people who can take charge of that rabble at Adoras.’

  ‘Lieutenant Razman will be in charge of that from now on.’

  ‘Razman…?’ El Mojkri said in a tone of astonishment. ‘You’ve posted Razman to Adoras…? He won’t last three months there.’

  He smiled as if something had suddenly amused him. ‘That’s why he was about to faint out there. They’ll rape him before they slit his throat.’

  The governor fell back into a wide, black, leather chair in the corner of the room, exhaled a column of smoke and shook his head:

  ‘Maybe not,’ he said slowly. ‘Maybe he’ll actually get his act together. He’ll have to fight for his life and that’ll wake him up to the fact that he didn’t come here to read ‘Beau Geste’ or follow on from Duperey.’ He paused for a while.

  ‘I was entrusted with a mission to clear out the vestiges of old-fashioned, decadent romanticism and unhealthy paternalism and to get this province and its people working towards a common good. There’s petrol, iron, copper and wood here and a thousand more riches that we need to exploit if we are to become a powerful, progressive and modern nation.’

  He nodded to himself, lost in his own rhetoric. ‘And it’s not with people like Razman that we’ll achieve that, but with the likes of Malik and Captain Kaleb. It’s a sad fact, but the Tuaregs don’t really belong to the twentieth century and neither do the Amazon Indians or the American Redskins. Can you imagine a bunch of Sioux Indians running around the prairies in the mid West, chasing herds of buffalos in between oil wells and nuclear power stations? There are some life forms whose historical cycle reach a natural conclusion and they are condemned to extinction and whether we like it or not, that is the case with our nomads. They have to adapt or be exterminated.’

  ‘That’s a tough line to take.’

  ‘It was also tough getting rid of the French — of the people we’d lived with for a hundred years — many of them were my friends, we’d been at school together, we knew each other’s names and hobbies. But the time had come to finish with all that, without being sentimental and so we did. Some things are above Bourgeois morals and this is one of them.’ He paused again and meditated. ‘The President was very clear when he said to me: “Hassan… The nomads are a minority on their way to a logical extinction. Turn them into useful workers or encourage their

  extinction in order to avoid suffering or complications.”’

  ‘But what about his last speech?’ he ventured timidly.

  ‘Oh, come on Anuhar!’ he said, reprimanding him like a child. ‘Those aren’t things you can say in public, especially while some of those nomads are listening and the world is watching our newly independent country. The North Americans for example, became staunch advocates of human rights issues overnight, but only once they’d completely annihilated all of the Indians’ rights.’

  ‘They were different times.’

  ‘But identical circumstances. A nation that has just gained independence that needs to exploit all its riches and rid itself of the heavy weight of a people that cannot move forward. We will give them the chance to integrate with our people. We won’t annihilate them by shooting them, nor will we herd them up into “reserves”…’

  ‘And what about those ones who don’t want to integrate? Those who believe, just as Gazel does, that their ancient laws should still apply in the desert? What will we do with them? Hunt them down with guns like they did with the Redskins?’

  ‘No, of course not. We will just expel them. You said yourself that the desert’s borders remain undefined and they don’t respect them any way. Let them cross them and join up with their brothers from the other countries.’ He held his hands up in the air. ‘But if they stay, then they must adapt to our way of life or be prepared to pay the consequences.’

  ‘They won’t adapt,’ Anuhar-el-Mojkri replied. ‘I’ve got to know some of them recently and although a few of them might renounce their past, most of them remain quite rigidly attached to the sands and their customs.’ He pointed outside, towards the far away tower as its muezzin called the faithful to prayer.

  ‘Are you going to the mosque?’ The governor nodded silently, went over to the table, stubbed out his cigar in the heavy crystal ashtray and leafed through the document that he had been looking at beforehand.

  ‘We’ll come back here afterwards,’ he said. ‘One secretary must remain here as this has to be sent off to the capital tomorrow.’

  ‘Will you be eating at home?’

  ‘No. Please let my wife know.’

  They left the room. Anuhar stayed behind to give out some instructions and then ran down the stairs to catch up with the governor, who had got into the black limousine that was waiting for him. The chauffeur, who had already put the air conditioning on to maximum strength, drove the men to the mosque in silence, where they prayed side by side, surrounded by the Bedouin, who left a clear space, respectfully around them. As they left, the governor looked around admiringly at the shadows cast by the palm trees in the grove.

  He liked that time of day. It was without doubt the most beautiful time of day in the oasis, just as dawn was the most beautiful time in the desert. He liked to wander slowly through the gardens and wells, watching the hundreds of birds flying in from afar to spend the night in the treetops.

  He used to say that this was the time of day when the smells would come to life, having been crushed by a suffocating sun during the heat-induced lethargy of the day. The governor, Hassanben — Koufra, was in fact quite convinced that there was no where else on earth that could match the strength of the perfume that the roses, the jasmine and the carnations, born out of that rich, warm soil, gave off at that hour of the day.

  He dismissed his chauffeur with a wave of the hand and walked slowly up the path, forgetting for a minute the thousands of problems he, as governor of that desolate region and a handful of semi-savages, had to deal with.

  The ever-faithful Anuhar followed him like a shadow, aware that he liked to spend those precious moments in silence and familiar with all the places he usually stopped; where he would light his cigar and from which flower bed he would pluck a rose to put on Tamat’s bedside table. This routine had become something of a daily ritual and he would only miss it if it was unusually hot, or he had a mountain of paperwork to wade through, since it constituted his only form of exercise and
provided him with a brief respite from the day’s duties.

  Night fell as quickly as it always did in the tropics, as if it liked to place a curfew on the amount of time that man could spend enjoying the beauty and calmness of those sunsets. But they were not bothered by the darkness that would soon descend over the gardens and the palm grove, since they knew every path and every fountain by heart, and the lights from the palace up ahead would soon light their way.

  On this occasion, however, just before darkness had completely descended, a new shadow emerged from one of the palm trees or maybe it just slipped out of the very ground itself. Even before they could make it out clearly, or see for certain that it was holding a heavy revolver, they knew at once who it was and that he had been waiting for them.

  Anuhar wanted to shout, but the black barrel of the canon was already pointing between his eyes.

  ‘Silence. I don’t want to do you any harm.’

  The governor Ben-Koufra did not even bat an eyelid.

  ‘So, what do you want?’

  ‘My guest. Do you know who I am? I’d imagine you do.’ He paused.

  ‘But I don’t have your guest…’

  Gazel Sayah looked at him for long enough to know that he was not lying.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked.

  ‘Far away.’ He paused. ‘It’s no good. You’ll never find him.’ The Targui’s dark eyes glowered above his veil for a few seconds. He pressed down more firmly on his gun: ‘We shall see…’ he said and then he pointed to Anuhar-el-Mojkri. ‘You can go,’ he ordered. ‘If in one week’s time Abdul-el-Kebir is not healthy, free and alone in the guelta, north of the Sidi-el-Madia mountains, I’ll cut your master’s head off. Do you understand?’ Anuharel Mojkri was not able to reply, so Hassan-ben-Koufra answered for him:

  ‘If you’re looking for Abdulel — Kebir, you may as well shoot me now so we can avoid any further bother,’ he said confidently. ‘They will never hand him over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The President would not allow it.’

  ‘What President?’

  ‘Who else, other than the President of the Republic.’

  ‘Not even in exchange for your life?’

  ‘Not even in exchange for my life.’

  Gazel shrugged his shoulders and turned round slowly to face Anuhar-el-Mojkri:

  ‘Just deliver my message.’

  He paused. ‘And tell the President, whoever he is, that if he does not return my guest, I will kill him too.’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘No. I’m a Targui.’ He waved his gun at him.

  ‘Now go and remember: in one week in the guelta, north of the Sidi-el-Mahia mountains.’ He dug the barrel of the gun into the governor’s kidneys and pushed him in the other direction. ‘This way!’ he ordered.

  Anuhar-el-Mojkri took a few steps then turned around, just in time to see them disappearing into the shadows of the palm grove.

  Then he ran towards the lights of the palace.

  ‘Abdul-el-Kebir was the architect of our independence, a national hero, the first president of the nation, as a nation. Do you really mean to say that you have never heard of him?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Where have you been hiding all these years?’

  ‘In the desert. Nobody came to tell me what had happened.’

  ‘Don’t you get travellers passing through your settlements?’

  ‘A few. But we have more important things to talk about. What happened to Abdul-el-Kebir?’

  ‘The current president overthrew him. He removed him from power, but he respected him and didn’t dare to kill him. They rose to power together and were locked up in a French prison for many years together.’ He shook his head. ‘No, he couldn’t kill him… Neither his conscience nor his heart would have let him.’

  ‘But he’s in prison isn’t he?’

  ‘They deported him. To the desert.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the desert. Like I said.’

  ‘The desert is a big place.’

  ‘But not so big that a fanatical supporters didn’t manage to find him and help him to escape. That was why he turned up at your jaima.’

  ‘Who was the young boy?’

  ‘A fanatic.’ He stared into the fire that was burning slowly and seemed momentarily lost in his own thoughts. When he did speak it was half to himself and he did not look at the Targui. ‘A fanatic who wanted to start a civil war. If Abdul had been freed he would have organised the opposition whilst in exile and that would have sparked a blood bath. The French who were actually after his head for some time, now support him.’ He paused. ‘They prefer him to us.’

  He lifted his head slowly, taking in the cave around him and finally resting his gaze on Gazel, who was leaning back against a crop of protruding rocks and said in a sincere tone of voice:

  ‘Do you not understand that you are wasting your time? They will never exchange me for him and I forgive them for that. I’m just a simple governor; a loyal and useful worker, that does his work to the best of his capacity but for whom nobody would risk the possibility of a civil war. Many years will have to pass before Abdul-el-Kebir fades from the people’s memories and his name loses its significance.’

  He picked up his glass of tea with difficulty as his hands were tied together and lifted it to his mouth, testing it to make sure it did not burn him. ‘And things haven’t been going too well lately…’ he continued. ‘Mistakes have been made. The kind of mistakes any newly independent nation or new government might make, but a lot of people don’t understand this and they are unhappy. Abdul was good at promising things. Promises that the people now want to see to fulfilled, but that we have not been able to, because they were Utopian ideals.’

  He was silent again as he put his glass down on to the sand near to the fire, aware of the Targui staring at him; of his eyes glaring at him above his litham, almost piercing right through him.

  ‘You are scared of him,’ he finally said. ‘You and your people are very scared of him. Am I not right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘We swore allegiance to him and even though I didn’t take part in the conspiracy and only got involved after it had happened, I did not dare to protest,’ he smiled sadly. ‘They bought my silence by making me the all-powerful governor of an immense territory and I accepted it thankfully. But you are right, deep down I still fear him. We all fear him because at the end of the day we know that he will be back to call us all to account. Abdul always returns.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the desert again.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘I will never tell you.’

  The Targui stared at him fixedly, his look stern and his voice full of conviction when he said:

  ‘If I ask you to tell me then you will,’ he said. ‘My ancestors were famous for the way they tortured their prisoners and even though we no longer use those methods, the old ways have been passed on by word of mouth, as something of a curiosity.’ He picked up the kettle and filled up the two glasses again. ‘Listen!’ he continued. ‘Maybe you don’t understand because you weren’t born here, but I will not be able to sleep at night until I know that this man is free once again, as free as he was the day he appeared at the door of my jaima. If I have to kill to achieve that, or torture, I will do it, even though I don’t like it. I cannot bring the man that you ordered to be killed back to life, but I can give the other man his freedom back.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  His stare had a strange intensity about it.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Entirely. In El-Akab only I know where he is and as much as you torture me I will still not tell you where he is.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ Gazel said. ‘Somebody else knows.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your wife.’

  He was pleased to see that he had been right, because Hassan-ben-Koufra’s face suddenly changed and for the first time since they had met,
he seemed to lose his composure. He tried to protest feebly but Gazel interrupted him with a swift gesture of his hand.

  ‘Do not try to deceive me,’ he snapped.

  ‘I’ve been watching you for fifteen days and I’ve seen you with her. She is one of those women who men tell all their secrets to in absolute confidence. Or am I mistaken?’

  He looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you are a simple, ignorant Targui, born and bred in the backwater of all deserts, or if you’re hiding someone else behind that veil.’

  The Targui smirked:

  ‘They say that our race even then, in the time of the pharaohs, was an intelligent, cultured and powerful one, back in the days when we inhabited the island of Crete. So intelligent and powerful were they that they tried to invade Egypt, but a woman betrayed them and they lost the great battle. Some of them fled to the east and settled by the sea, to become the so-called Phoenicians that went on to rule the oceans. Others fled west and settled in the sands, becoming rulers of the desert. Thousands of years later you arrived, the barbaric Arabs who Mohammad had just dragged out of the darkest ignorance…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that legend that proclaims you to be descendents of the “garamants.” But I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe what you will, but what is quite certain is that we were here long before you were and we were always more intelligent, just less ambitious. We are happy with our lives and do not aspire to anything else. We would rather leave you to think what you will of us. But when we are provoked we will react.’ He hardened his voice: ‘You will tell me where Abdul-el-Kebir is or I will have to ask your wife?’

  The governor Hassan-ben-Koufra was reminded of the advice the Minister of the Interior had given him on the eve of his departure to El-Akab:

  ‘Do not trust the Tuaregs,’ he had said. ‘Do not be fooled by their appearance, because I can tell you that they have the most analytical and cunning brains on the continent. They are a race apart. They could rule us with ease. A Targui would understand what the sea is without ever having seen it, or resolve a philosophical problem that neither you nor I would understand a word of. Their culture is an ancient one and even though as a social group they are in decline, their environment altered and their warrior spirits more subdued, they are still extremely notable individuals. Be wary of them…!’