Tuareg Read online

  ‘A Targui would never hurt a woman,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t think you are an exception. Respect for women is almost as important for you as your laws of hospitality. Would you break one rule in order to enforce another?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Gazel admitted.

  ‘But I would not do her any harm. If she knows that your life depended on it then she would tell me where to find Abdul-el-Kebir.’

  Hassan-ben-Koufra thought of Tamat and their thirteen years of marriage and their two children and he knew that the Targui was right. He could not blame her, as he knew that he would do the same. At the end of the day even if he told him where Abdul-el-Kebir was, it did not mean that he would automatically be freed.

  ‘He’s in the Gerifies fortress,’ he sighed.

  Gazel felt confident that he was telling the truth and mentally calculated the distance.

  ‘I’ll need three days to get there and one more to get camels and provisions.’ He thought for a while and then started to laugh:

  ‘That means that by the time they’ve set up an ambush for me in the guelta of the Sidi-el-Madia I will already be in Gerifies.’ He drank his tea very slowly, savouring it. ‘They will wait for us for one day; two at most before learning the truth and sending out a message to wait for me there… I have time!’ he said confidently. ‘Yes. I think I have time.’

  ‘What are you going to do with me,’ the governor asked, his voice trembling slightly.

  ‘I should kill you but I will leave you enough water and food for ten days. If you have told me the truth, I will send someone to get you. If you have lied and Abdul-el-Kebir is not there then you will die of hunger and thirst, because you will never be able to break free from these camel skin ties.’

  ‘How do I know for sure that you will send someone to look for me?’

  ‘You don’t, but I will. Do you have any money?’

  The governor Hassan-ben-Koufra pointed with his chin towards his wallet that was in the back pocket of his trousers and the Targui took it out. He removed the biggest notes and split them in half, took one half and left the rest in the wallet, which he put by the fire.’

  ‘I will find a nomad and give him this money, then I will tell him where he might find the rest of it.’ He smiled under his veil. ‘A Bedouin would travel a month on camelback to get hold of that amount of money. Don’t worry,’ he said, trying to reassure him. ‘They will come for you. Now take off your trousers.’

  ‘Why?’ he said in a tone of alarm.

  ‘You’ll be spending ten days in this cave with your feet and hands tied up. If you urinate and then you soil yourself on top, you’ll only get sores.’ He held up his hands. ‘It’s best if you keep your bottom bare.’

  His Excellency, the governor Hassan-ben-Koufra, supreme and undisputed authority of an area that was bigger than France was about to protest but then seemed to think better of it, swallowed his pride and anger and started to undo, with difficulty, the belt of his trousers.

  Gazel helped him take them off, tied him up carefully and then removed his watch and his ring, which had a large shiny stone set into it.

  ‘This will pay for the camels and provisions,’ he pointed out. ‘I am poor and I had to kill my mount. He was a beautiful mehari. I will never find another like him.’

  He gathered together his things, left his water gerba leaning against a wall and a sack of dried fruit and pointing to them said:

  ‘Look after these. Above all, the water. And don’t try to free yourself. It’ll only make you sweat and you’ll need to drink more and then you may not have enough water to last you. Try and sleep…that is the best way of saving your energy.’ He left. Outside it was dark and the sky was black and moonless. The stars seemed closer than ever, almost brushing the tops of the peaks that rose above his head and he stood there thinking, maybe trying to orientate himself or mentally tracing the path he would take from there to the far away fortress. He needed above all, mounts, ample provisions and gerbas into which he could put as much water as possible as he was fairly sure that there were no wells around the Tikdabra erg and further south there was only the great “lost lands”, which seemed to have no limits.

  He walked all night long with a fast and bounding step, at a pace that would have exhausted most people, but that was normal for a Targui. Dawn crept up on him as the sun rose over the crest of a hill that overlooked a valley where once, many years ago, a river would have ran through. The nomads knew that all they had to do there was plunge an atankor half a meter in and they would get enough water for five camels, which made it an obligatory stop-over for the caravans that came from the south that were headed for the great El-Akab oasis.

  He could make out a total of three encampments along the riverbed that, with the first light of day, were starting to revive the fires and gather in their animals from the slopes, as they got ready to set off again.

  He watched them closely without being seen himself and once he was totally sure that there were no soldiers in any of them, he walked down to the biggest of the jaimas and stopped in front of it. Inside, four men were sipping their morning tea.

  ‘Metulem, metulem!’ ‘Aselam aleikum’ they replied in unison. ‘Sit down and have some tea with us. Biscuits?’

  He was pleased with the biscuits, the cheese, which was almost rancid, but strong and tasty and the juicy dates, accompanied by a greasy, sweet and sugary tea that warmed up his body and chased away the cold he felt from having spent a dawn in the desert.

  The one who seemed to be in charge of the group, a Bedouin with a scraggy beard and sharp eyes, was watching him intently and eventually asked, without the slightest alteration in his tone of voice:

  ‘Is it you Gazel? Gazel Sayah of the Kel-Talgimus?’ As he nodded, he added: ‘They’re looking for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you killed the governor?’

  ‘No.’

  They were looking at him intently and had stopped chewing, probably in an attempt to work out whether he was telling the truth or not.

  Finally the Bedouin said casually:

  ‘Do you need anything?’

  ‘Four meharis and some food and water.’

  He took the watch and the ring out of his red leather bag that was hanging round his neck and showed them: ‘I’ll pay with these.’

  A scrawny old man with the long, delicate, hands of a craftsman, took the ring and studied it with the scrutiny of someone who knows what they are doing, while the scraggybearded man looked at the heavy watch.

  The craftsman eventually gave the piece of jewellery to his boss:

  ‘It’s worth at least ten camels,’ he declared. ‘It’s a good stone.’

  The other man nodded, holding out the watch to him.

  ‘Take what you want in exchange for the ring,’ he smiled. ‘You might need this.’

  ‘I don’t know how to use it.’

  ‘Neither do I, but when you need to sell it you’ll get a good price for it. It’s made of gold.’

  ‘They are offering money for your head,’ the craftsman said, almost in passing. ‘A lot of money.’

  ‘Do you know of anybody who would want it?’

  ‘None of us do,’ the youngest of the group, who had been transfixed by the Targui, a look of open admiration on his face, piped up. ‘Do you need some help? I could accompany you.’

  The chief, who was probably also the boy’s father shook his head disapprovingly:

  ‘He doesn’t need any help. Your silence is enough,’ he paused. ‘And neither must we get mixed up in this. The military are furious and we’ve already had enough problems with them.’

  He turned to Gazel. ‘I am sorry, but I must protect my people.’

  Gazel Sayah nodded.

  ‘I understand. You are doing enough by selling me your camels.’

  He looked over at the young boy sympathetically. ‘And you are right, I don’t need help, just silence.’

  The boy lowered his head slightly,
as if enjoying his deference, then got up.

  ‘I will choose the best camels for you and whatever else you need. I will also fill up your gerbas.’

  He went out quickly, followed by the watchful eye of the others and the chief, who was clearly proud of him.

  ‘He is brave and spirited and he admires what you are doing,’ he commented. ‘You’re fast becoming the most famous man in the desert.’

  ‘That is not what I am after,’ he replied, unwaveringly. ‘All I want to do is live in peace with my family.’ He paused. ‘And for them to respect our laws.’

  ‘You will never be able to live in peace with your family now,’ the craftsman warned him. ‘You will have to leave the country.’

  ‘There is a border south of the “lost lands,”’ the chief said. ‘And another to the east, some three days from the Huaila mountains.’ He shook his head. ‘The ones in the west are too far, you would never get there. To the north you’ve got the sea and the cities. I have never been there either.’

  ‘How will I know when I have crossed the border into safety?’ he asked.

  They looked at each other, unable to give him an answer. A black man, an Akli son of slaves, who had until that moment remained silent, spoke up:

  ‘Nobody knows exactly. No one,’ he said confidently.

  ‘Last year I took a caravan down to the Niger, but we were never able to work out when we had crossed it into the other country, either on the way there or on our return.’

  ‘How long did it take you to get to the river?’

  The Akli thought about his answer for a while. Then, finally and not very convincingly he ventured:

  ‘Maybe a month…’ He tutted as if trying to get rid of some bad memories. ‘Almost double, on our return. There was a drought and the wells had dried up so we had to go a long way round to avoid Tikdabra. When I was young you used to pass decent wells and grasslands before arriving at the river. But now the wells have been reclaimed by the sand, the last traces of grass have disappeared and the sand is threatenening the banks of the river itself. These are grasslands where the Peuls used to graze their livestock but that now aren’t fit for the hungriest of camels any more. There’s not a trace left of the wells that were once populated in the area either, so there are no longer any places to rest.’ He tutted again. ‘And I am not that old.’

  He reiterated his words: ‘No, I am not old. The desert is advancing too quickly.’

  ‘I do nor care whether the desert is advancing and swallowing up other lands or not,’ Gazel remarked. ‘I am happy here. I worry more about the desert not being big enough for us to be able to live in it peacefully. The more it grows, the better. Maybe one day they’ll just forget about us.’

  ‘They will never forget,’ the craftsman interjected. ‘They have found oil, which is what the Rumi are most interested in. I know, because I worked in the capital for two years and there, all of the conversations revolved, in one way or another, around oil.’

  Gazel looked at the old man with renewed interest. The craftsman, like all artisans, whether they worked with silver or gold as he did, or with leather or stone, were considered by the Tuaregs as an inferior caste, half way between an Imohag and an ingad or serf and even sometimes between an ingad and an Akli slave. But despite this ranking, they also recognised that within their social system, these craftsmen were probably the most cultured of them all, with many of them able to read and write, while some of them had travelled beyond the desert’s borders.

  ‘I was in a town once.’ he finally said. ‘But it was very small and at that time governed by the French. Have things changed a lot?’

  ‘A lot,’ he conceded. ‘In those times you had the French on one side and us on the other. Now our brothers are fighting each other, with one wanting one thing and the other another.’

  He shook his head sadly. ‘And when the French left, they divided up the territories putting borders in by just drawing a line on the map, which often split up the same tribe or put members of the same family into two different countries. So if the government was communist, they had to be communist; if the government was fascist, they had to be fascist; if the king ruled it was a monarchy…’

  He stopped and looking at him questioningly asked:

  ‘Do you know what it means to be a communist?’

  Gazel shook his head.

  ‘I’ve never heard of them. Are they our sector?’

  ‘More or less. But not religious. Only political.’

  ‘Political?’ he replied, not understanding the term.

  ‘They believe that all men should be equal, with the same rights and tasks and that wealth should be evenly distributed.’

  ‘They believe that the clever man and the stupid man should be equal. That the Imohag and the slave, the worker and the layabout, the warrior and the coward are all the same?’ he cried out in surprise. ‘Are they mad? If Allah made us all different, why on earth should they try and claim that we are all equal?’ he snorted. ‘Being born a Targui would mean nothing then?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well it must be, because that kind of nonsense is not even worth discussion,’ he said, then paused as if bringing the subject to an end, before asking:

  ‘Have you heard of Abdul-el-Kebir?’

  ‘We’ve all heard of him,’ the Bedouin chief said, interrupting the craftsman. ‘He was the one that got rid of the French and governed for the first few years.’

  ‘What kind of a man is he?’

  ‘A fair man,’ the other conceded. ‘Mistaken, but fair.’

  ‘Why mistaken?’

  ‘Whoever places all their trust in others, only to be overthrown by them and imprisoned, has to have been mistaken.’

  Gazel turned round to the old man.

  ‘Is he one of those men that believe that we should all be equal? What are they called?’

  ‘Communists?’ the craftsman said. ‘No. I don’t believe he was exactly a communist. They say he was a socialist.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Something else.’

  ‘Similar?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  He searched the faces of the other men for an answer, but they just shrugged their shoulders, all as ignorant as each other. He sighed and left the subject behind, aware that he was not going to get very far with any more questions of that nature.

  ‘I have to go’ he said as he stood up to leave.

  ‘Aselam aleikum.’

  ‘Aselam aleikum.’

  He walked over to where they were loading up his camels and checked them over with his expert eye, saw that everything was in order, got up onto the fastest of them and after making it stand up, took out a fistful of notes and handed them to the boy.

  ‘You’ll find the other half in the cave of the Tatalet gorge, half a day’s walk from here. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know it,’ he confirmed. ‘Is that where you have hidden the governor?’

  ‘Next to the notes,’ he replied. ‘In one week, on your way back from El-Akab, set him free.’

  ‘You can trust in me.’

  ‘Thank you. And remember: in one week, not before.’

  ‘Take care. May Allah be with you!’ The Targui dug his heels into the mehari’s neck and the animal turned go, followed by the others and they set off together, unhurriedly, disappearing from view behind a cluster of rocks.

  The little boy returned alone and sat down at the door of his jaima. His father smiled gently.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a Targui and there is no-one in the world that is capable of catching a lone Targui in the desert.’

  The light and the silence woke him.

  The sun flooded in through the latticed window in shafts, illuminating the rows of books and reflecting off the brass ashtray that was full of cigarette butts. But even though it was almost midday, there did not seem to be any noise coming from the patio and
he was sure that he had not heard the wake up call that normally went off every morning.

  The silence bothered him. Over the years he had become used to a strict military regime where everything he did was carried out to a rigid timetable. Any disruption to this routine, like not having been woken at six o’clock on the dot with half an hour to wash before breakfast, made him feel strangely uneasy.

  And the silence.

  The suffocating silence from the patio, which at that hour was usually full of the sound of the soldiers chatting away before the great heat descended, made him jump from his bed, pull on his trousers and run over to the window.

  Not a soul to be seen. He could not see anybody next to the well or by the battlements on the west corner, which was the only bit of the wall he could see from his room.

  ‘Hey!’ he called out in a worried voice. ‘What’s happened? Where is everybody?’

  There was no reply. He called out again, but still no response and the silence unnerved him.

  ‘They’ve abandoned me…’ was the first thought that crossed his mind. ‘They’ve left me here to die of hunger and thirst.’

  He ran to the door and was surprised to find it half open. He went out onto the patio and a violent sun scorched his eyes, as it bounced back off the white walls, painted a thousand times over by soldiers who had had nothing better to do for days and months on end.

  But no one appeared. There was no one on guard at the sentry boxes in the corner or next to the gate, through which you could see the desert stretching out to eternity.

  ‘Hey!’ he shouted again. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’

  Only silence again. That accursed silence and not even a light breeze, carrying signs of life with it, blew to alter the quiet of the place. It was if it had been petrified, crushed and destroyed by a sun that was already starting to beat down mercilessly.

  He went down the four steps in two jumps and walked over to the well, still calling out to the mess, the soldiers’ quarters and the orderly room.