Tuareg Read online

  The Tuaregs were famous in the desert for their “lovemaking ceremonies,” or the Ahal, when boys and girls would get together to have supper by the light of the fire, tell stories, play their onestringed anzads and dance in groups until the early hours. Then the women would take the men’s palms and trace patterns on them, patterns that only the Tuaregs knew the meaning of and which told of how the girl desired to make love that night.

  Then every couple would disappear into the darkness, to the dunes and the soft sand, upon which white gandurahs had been laid, to fulfil the desires that the girls had expressed in their patterns.

  For a traditional Arab, who would insist on his future wife’s or daughter’s virginity, such customs were beyond scandalous and Abdul knew of countries like Arabia and Libya, including regions in his own country, where you would be stoned to death or have your head cut off for a similar offense.

  But the Imohag had always defended the right of their women to have sex and to dress as they pleased; to have a voice and to vote on family matters, ever since the old days of Muslim expansion when religious fanaticism was at its most rigid and demanding.

  For as far back as people could remember they had been known as a race that would accept the best of what they were offered, but tended to reject anything that might curtail their liberty or sense of identity. Even though they were ungovernable, Abdul-el-Kebir still knew that he would be proud to be their ruler.

  The Tuaregs would know how to accept and understand what he was trying to offer them and they would never try to betray him or condone the betrayal of him by anyone else, because once they had sworn allegiance to an amenokal then that allegiance lasted well beyond the grave.

  But the men from the coast, who had celebrated his ascent to power almost fanatically once the French had been expelled and to whom he had given a homeland and a reason to feel proud of themselves, had not known how to cope with their sworn allegiance. At the first signs of danger had withdrawn back into the depths of their miserable huts.

  ‘What does it mean to be a socialist?’ Gazel had asked him on the first night, when he had still felt like talking as they lurched around on the backs of the swaying camels.

  ‘It means that justice is the same for everyone.’

  ‘Are you a socialist?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Do you believe that everybody, like the Imohag and the servant, is equal?’

  ‘In the eyes of the law? Yes.’

  ‘I’m not referring to the law. I’m referring to whether servants and sirs are considered equals.’

  ‘In one way…’ he tried to find a way of explaining further, without compromising himself. ‘The Tuaregs are the only people left on earth who still unashamedly have slaves. It is not just.’

  ‘I don’t have slaves, I have servants.’

  ‘Really? And what would you do to them if they escaped or no longer wanted to work for you?’

  ‘I would search for them, flog them and bring them back. He was born in my home, I gave him water, food and protection when he was unable to do so himself. What right does he have to just get up and go when he feels like it?’

  ‘The right to his own freedom. Would you accept that you were a servant to somebody else, just because they fed you when you were a child? How long does it take for one to repay that debt?’

  ‘That is not how it works. I was born an Imohag. And they were born Aklis.’

  ‘And who says that an Imohag is superior to an Akli?’

  ‘Allah. If that wasn’t the case he would not have made them cowards, thieves and servants. He wouldn’t have made us brave, honourable and proud.’

  ‘My word!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are more fanatical than a fascist.’

  ‘What is a fascist?’

  ‘Somebody who claims that his race is superior to the rest.’

  ‘Then I’m a fascist.’

  ‘You really are,’ he said with conviction. ‘Although I’m sure that if you knew what it really meant, then you would renounce that label.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s not something I can explain to you while we’re lolloping around on a camel that seems half drunk. We’ll leave that one for a more suitable occasion.’

  But that occasion had not arisen again and seemed less likely to with each day that passed, as the fatigue, thirst and heat threatened to overwhelm Abdul and the simple task of saying even one word seemed to require a superhuman effort.

  When he finally woke up, Gazel had taken down their camp and was loading up three of the animals once again.

  He gestured to the fourth camel with his head:

  ‘We’ll have to kill it tonight.’

  ‘Surely that will attract the vultures and the vultures will attract the planes. They’ll track our route.’

  ‘The vultures don’t come into the “lost land.”’ He had taken a small ladle and filled it with water. He handed it to Abdul. ‘The air is too hot.’

  He drank urgently and held it out to him for more, but the Targui had already closed the gerba firmly.

  ‘No more.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Abdul in astonishment. ‘That hardly wet my throat.’

  Gazel pointed over to the camel once again.

  ‘Tonight you will drink its blood and eat its meat. Tomorrow is the start of Ramadan.’

  ‘Ramadan?’ he repeated in disbelief. ‘Do you really think we are in a fit state to observe the fasting rules of Ramadan?’

  He could have sworn that the Targui had smiled.

  ‘Isn’t this the perfect place to be in if we our to observe its rules? It’ll be easy for us to respect its laws out here,’ he said.

  The animals had already stood up and he put out his hand to help Abdul up.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘The road is long.’

  ‘How long will this ordeal last?’

  Gazel shook his head: ‘I don’t know. I give you my word that I really don’t know. We must pray that Allah makes it as short as possible, but even he is not capable of making a desert smaller. That is all I know and that is all we have to go by.’

  The sergeant shook his head once again: ‘Nobody is taking water from this well, nor anyone else for five hundred kilometers around, until we find out where Gazel Sayah’s family is hiding.’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders, powerless to help them: ‘They went. They took down their camp and left. How would we know where they went?’

  ‘The Tauregs always know everything that goes on in the desert. They’ll get to hear if a camel dies or a goat is sick. I’ve no idea how, but that’s how it is. You must think I’m stupid if you think I’m going to believe that a whole family, with their jaimas, animals, children and slaves could just move from one end of an area to the other without anyone knowing where they’d gone to.’

  ‘They just left.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to find out, that is if you want more water.’

  ‘My animals will all die. My family too.’

  ‘That is not my problem,’ he said, pointing an accusatory finger at him and poking him in the chest, almost provoking the old man to pull out his dagger. ‘One of your men,’ he continued, ‘a filthy murderer, has killed many soldiers. Soldiers who protected us from bandits; who looked for water and dug wells and kept areas free of sand; men who went in pursuit of caravans when they were lost, risking their lives in the desert.’ He shook his head over and over again. ‘No. You will not have access to this water until Gazel Sayah is found.’

  ‘Gazel is not with his family.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because otherwise you wouldn’t have gone looking for him in the “lost land” of Tikdabra.’

  ‘We could be wrong. And if we don’t find him some time soon he’s sure to go back to his own people.’ His tone of voice suddenly softened as he tried to take a more conciliatory line: ‘We don’t want to hurt his family. We h
ave nothing against his wife and children. We only want him and we will wait for him. Sooner or later he will turn up.’

  The old man shook his head.

  ‘He will never turn up. Not if you are anywhere near, because he knows the desert better than anyone else.’ He paused. ‘And neither is it honourable for warriors or soldiers to mix women and children up in men’s battles. That is a rule of thumb as old as the universe.’

  ‘Listen to me old man!’ he said in a voice that had become clipped and threatening once again. ‘I haven’t come here for a lesson in morality. That bastard murdered a captain under my very nose, kidnapped the governor, slit the throat of a load of sleeping boys and I am quite certain, he thinks he can take our whole country for a merry ride. And that is simply not the case. So you have to choose.’

  The old man got up and walked over to the edge of the well without saying anything. He had not taken more than five steps before Malik shouted: ‘And don’t forget that my men need to eat. We will sacrifice one of your camels every day and you can pass the bill onto our new governor in El-Akab!’

  The old man stopped for a second, but did not turn around and then continued slowly back over to his children and his animals.

  Malik looked over to the black soldier.

  ‘Ali!’

  The man who had been summoned, hurried over:

  ‘Yes, sergeant?’

  ‘You’re black, like his stupid slaves. He won’t tell me anything because he’s a Targui and believes his honour will be stained forever, but the Aklis are more likely to talk. They like to tell you what they know and some of them will be open to a bit of money and that’ll get their master off the hook.’ He paused briefly. ‘Take them some water and food tonight and act like you’re one of them — solidarity between black brothers and all that — then try and get the information we need.’

  ‘If they think I’m acting as a spy, those Tuaregs will slit my throat.’

  ‘But if they don’t, you’ll be promoted to corporal.’ He stuffed a bundle of crumpled notes into his hand. ‘Win them over with these.’

  Sergeant Malik-el-Haideri knew the Tuaregs well and he knew their slaves too. He had only just drifted off to sleep when he heard footsteps outside his tent.

  ‘Sergeant!’

  He poked his head out and was not surprised to see a smiling black face in front of him:

  ‘In the guelta of the Huaila mountains. Next to Ahmed-el-Ainin’s tomb, the marabout.’

  ‘Do you know where that is?’

  ‘Not exactly, but they told me how to get there.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘A day and a half’s journey.’

  ‘Let the corporal know. We’ll leave at dawn.’

  The black man smiled proudly: ‘I am the corporal now,’ he reminded him. ‘Lance corporal.’

  Malik smiled back.

  ‘You’re right. You are now lance corporal. Make sure that everything’s set by the time the sun comes out…and bring me some tea fifteen minutes beforehand.’

  The pilot shook his head again.

  ‘Listen, lieutenant,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve flown over those dunes at less than one hundred metres. We could have made out a rat from that height, if there were any rats in that accursed place. But there was nothing. Nothing!’ he insisted. ‘Do you have any idea the kind of tracks that four camels leave in the sand? If they’d been there we’d have seen them.’

  ‘Not if it’s a Targui leading those camels,’ Razman replied knowingly. ‘Especially this particular Targui. He wouldn’t let them march in single file, otherwise they’d leave a visible path. He’d make sure they walked four abreast so that their feet wouldn’t sink down into the hard sand of the dunes. If the sand was soft, their tracks would be erased by the wind in under an hour.’ He paused, while they all watched him expectantly. ‘The Tuaregs travel at night and stop at dawn. You’re never out before eight in the morning, which means you get there around midday. By that time all of their tracks have already been erased.’

  ‘But what about them? Where could four camels and a man possibly hide?’

  ‘Oh come on captain!’ he exclaimed, gesticulating with open arms. ‘You’ve flown over these dunes every day. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of dunes! Do you not think an entire army could camouflage themselves in that landscape? A small hollow, a clear, coloured piece of fabric covered with a bit of sand and you’re laughing… ’

  ‘Alright,’ the pilot who had spoken first, conceded. ‘You may be right, but what are we going to do now? Go back and carry on wasting time and petrol? We’ll never find him,’ he insisted. ‘We’ll never find him!’

  Lieutenant Razman shook his head and signalled with his hands for them to calm down as he went over to the large map of the region that was pasted on to the wall of the hanger.

  ‘No.’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go back to the erg but to the actual “lost land.” If my calculations are correct they must have reached the plain already. Could you land there?’ The two men looked at each other, clearly horrified with his proposal.

  ‘Do you have any idea what the temperature on the plain is?’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The sand can get as hot as eighty degrees centigrade at midday.’

  ‘So do you know what that means for these old planes that are as badly maintained as ours? Motor cooling problems, turbulence, unseen pockets of uncontrollable air and above all ignition. We could land, of course, but we’d take the risk of not being able to take off again, or the possibility that it might just explode once we managed to make contact.’ He made a gesture with his hand that indicated his decision was final. ‘I won’t do it.’

  It was clear that his companion shared the same point of view. But Razman insisted:

  ‘Even if the order came from higher up?’ He lowered his voice instinctively. ‘Do you know who we’re looking for here?’

  ‘Yes,’ the more talkative of the two said. ‘We’ve heard rumours, but these are political issues, things that we, the military, shouldn’t get mixed up in.’ He paused and pointed to the map with a wide sweep of his hand.

  ‘If I was ordered to land somewhere in the desert because we were at war and the enemy had invaded us, we would land without question. But we won’t do it just to hunt down Abdul-el-Kebir, because he would never have asked us to do the same.’

  Lieutenant Razman stiffened and without being able to help it, looked over at the mechanics that were toiling away to put a plane together on the other side of the wide hanger. Then lowering his voice he warned:

  ‘What you just said is dangerous.’

  ‘I know,’ the pilot replied. ‘But I think that after so many years it’s time we started to say what we really think. If you don’t catch him in Tikdabra, and I can’t imagine that you will, Abdul-el-Kebir will return very soon and the time will come when everyone will be forced to justify their positions.’

  ‘So you’re saying that you’re pleased you didn’t find him.’

  ‘My mission was to look for him and I looked for him as hard as I could. It’s not my fault that we didn’t find him. Deep down it makes me scared to think of what might happen. With Abdul at large the country will be divided, there will be confrontations and maybe civil war. Nobody wants that for their own people.’

  As he left the hanger to go back to his billet, Razman considered the pilot’s words and for the first time realised that the most horrific outcome of all this could indeed be civil war. It would probably lead to a confrontation between two factions of the same people, divided by one man: Abdul-el-Kebir.

  After more than a century of colonialism its people were not divided into very clearly determined social classes: the rich being very rich, the poor very poor. But the nation did not mirror the classic pattern of a developed country either, with capitalists on the one side and the proletariat on the other, both facing death in a hopeless struggle for the supremacy of their ideals. With an illiteracy rate of seventy percent and a long tradition of
being oppressed, it was still only a man’s charisma and his rousing words that would move the people to stand up and take action.

  And on that level, Razman knew, Abdul-el-Kebir would win hands down thanks to his noble, open face that inspired confidence and his eloquent words that would make people follow him to the end of the earth if he told them to. After all, he had fulfilled his initial promise and freed them from colonialism.

  Lying down on his bed, looking at the whirring blades of the old ventilator that did not, despite its grand efforts, manage to cool the air, he asked himself what side he would take when the time of reckoning came.

  He remembered Abdul-el-Kebir from his childhood and when he had been his hero and the walls of his bedroom had been covered with posters of him. Then he thought back to the governor Hassan-ben-Koufra and all the others that made up that group and he realised that he had made a personal decision on that matter long ago.

  Then he thought about the Targui; that strange man who had overcome thirst and death and who had blatantly laughed at him and he tried to imagine where he was now, what he was doing at that precise moment and what he talked about with Abdul, once they had stopped walking and laid down to rest, exhausted by their long journey.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m chasing them,’ he said to himself. ‘If deep down I would rather be on the run with them.’

  They had drunk the camel’s blood and eaten its meat. He felt strong and animated, full of energy and capable of taking on the “lost land” without trepidation. But he was worried about his companion’s fears and how silent he had become. With the light of each new day, as the same landscape stretched out before them, he could read the increasing desperation in his eyes.

  ‘It’s not possible!’ was the last thing he had heard him say. ‘It’s not possible!’

  He had to help him get down from the camel now and carry him into the shade to give him water, whilst cradling his head as if he were a frightened boy. Gazel wondered where his strength had gone and what strange spell the plain had cast on him.

  ‘He’s an old man,’ he repeated over and over again. ‘A man who has aged before his time, having spent so many years imprisoned between four walls so now everything for him, other than thought, requires a superhuman effort.’