Tuareg Read online

  One of Gazel’s distant grandfathers, who was also his namesake, had been in charge of guarding the caravan’s merchandise, and he too, along with all his men had disappeared forever, as if they had never existed, as if it had all been just a dream.

  Many men had since set off on many a mad adventure since, in search of clues and in the vain hope that they might recover some of the immense riches that it had been carrying when it disappeared. According to the unwritten law, the person who managed to outwit the sand and discover its hidden treasures would be their rightful owner. But the sand hides its secrets well. Sand alone is capable of swallowing entire cities, fortresses, oases, men and camels in one swift, unexpected and violent gulp. With the help of its ally, the wind, a storm of sand could be whipped up enough to turn anyone unlucky enough to be travelling upon it, into just another dune, amongst the millions of other dunes that stretched endlessly through the erg territories.

  Nobody knew how many people had lost their lives in search of that lost and legendary caravan and the old men never tired of begging the young not be so foolish as to go in search of it themselves:

  ‘What the desert claims for itself belongs to the desert,’ they would say. ‘May Allah save those that try to claim it back.’

  Gazel only wanted to uncover the mystery that surrounded it and the reason why so many beasts and so many men had just disappeared without trace. It was only when he had found himself in the heart of a “lost land” that he had finally understood. In fact, it had made him realise how easy it would be, not just for seven hundred men, but for seven million human beings to disappear into that flat abyss and how surprising it was that anyone, no matter whom, ever came out alive.

  Gazel came out alive twice. But there were not many Imohags like Gazel and so the veil people respected the solitary man, “the ‘Hunter,” inmouchar, who ruled over territories that no one else would have ever dared to claim dominion over.

  They turned up outside his jaima one morning. The old man was on the brink of death and the young boy, who had carried him on his shoulders for the last two days, only managed to stutter a few words before passing out.

  He gave orders for the best tent to be prepared for them and instructed his slaves and children to look after them day and night in what became, against all logic, a desperate battle to keep the two visitors alive.

  It was a miracle that they had survived at all, not being from any one of the desert tribes and travelling without camels, water or guides. It was especially surprising since they had been caught in the heavy and dense sirocco wind that had whipped across the desert in the days prior to their arrival.

  They had been, from what he could understand, wandering aimlessly for about a week between the dunes and stony plains, but he still did not know where they had come from, who they were, or where they were headed. It was as if they had arrived on one of those shooting stars. Gazel visited them morning and night, intrigued by their appearance, which suggested that they were city men, their clothes being quite inadequate for the desert and the incomprehensible phrases that they uttered in their dreams. Theirs was an Arabic that was so pure and educated that the Targui could barely discern a word of it.

  Finally, on the third day at dusk, he found the young boy awake, who immediately asked him how far they were from the

  border.

  Gazel looked at him in surprise:

  ‘Border?’ he repeated. ‘What border? The desert does not have borders… at least not as far as I know.’

  ‘There must be a border,’ the other insisted. ‘It has got to be near here somewhere.’

  ‘The French do not need borders,’ he pointed out. ‘They rule the Sahara from one end of it to the other.’

  The stranger lifted himself up slowly on to his elbow and looked at him in surprise.

  ‘The French?’ he repeated. ‘The French left years ago. We are now independent,’ he added. ‘The desert is made up of free and independent states. Did you not know that?’

  Gazel meditated for a few minutes. Someone at some time had told him of a war that was being fought in the north, one where the Arabs were trying to shake off the yoke of the Rumis, but he had not taken much notice since it was a war that had been going on for as long as his forefathers could remember.

  Independence to him meant wandering alone and undisturbed throughout his territory and nobody had bothered to come and tell him that he now belonged to a new country.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No. I didn’t know that,’ he admitted, confused. ‘Nor did I know that there was a border. Who could possibly create a border in the desert? Who could stop the wind from blowing sand over it back and forth? Who could stop men from crossing it?’

  ‘Soldiers.’

  He looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Soldiers? Not even all the soldiers in the world would be capable of protecting a border in the desert and besides, the soldiers are scared of it.’ He smiled gently underneath the veil that hid his face and which he always kept on in the company of strangers.

  ‘Only the Imohag are not afraid of the desert. Soldiers are like spilled water here, the sand just swallows them up.’

  The young boy tried to say something but the Targui reminded him that he was tired and told him to lie back down on the cushions.

  ‘Don’t push yourself too hard,’ he begged. ‘You are weak. Tomorrow we will speak and maybe your friend will also feel better.’ He turned round to look at the old man, and for the first time realised that he was not as old as he had initially thought, despite his thin, white hair and deeply lined face. ‘Who is he?’ he asked.

  The boy hesitated for a moment, then closed his eyes and muttered quietly:

  ‘A scholar. He is researching our most distant ancestors. We were on our way to Dajbadel when our lorry broke down.’

  ‘Dajbadel is very far away…’ Gazel remarked, but the boy had already fallen back into a deep sleep. ‘Very, very far south. I’ve never been that far.’

  He left the tent quietly and once out in the fresh air he felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach; like a warning that he had never before experienced. There was something about those two, seemingly harmless men that unsettled him. They were not armed nor did they look at all frightening in appearance, but a whiff of fear hung in the air around them and it was this fear that he too felt.

  ‘He is researching our ancestors…’ the young boy had said. But the other man’s face, with its deep lines of suffering, told a different story and they were certainly not the scars caused from just one week of wandering hungry and thirsty through the desert.

  He looked into the descending darkness in search of an answer. His Targui spirit and a thousand ancient desert traditions told him that he had done the right thing by putting a roof over the head of the two travellers, because the notion of hospitality was the first of all the Imohag’s unwritten rules. His instinct, however, as a man that was used to being guided by a sixth sense that had saved him from death on many an occasion, told him that he was running a huge risk and that the new arrivals would jeopardise the peace that had cost him so much to achieve.

  Laila appeared at his side and his eyes warmed as he felt her sweet presence and beheld the startling beauty of this darkskinned, adolescent girl-woman. He had made her his wife, against the wishes of the old men, who believed it was wrong for an inmouchar of such noble heritage to make a union with someone from the lowly Akli slave caste.

  She sat down beside him and turned to face him with her huge black eyes that were always full of light and hidden reflections and gently said:

  ‘These men bother you don’t they?’

  ‘Not them…’ he replied thoughtfully.

  ‘But something that hangs around, them like a shadow or a smell.’

  ‘They’ve come from far away. Anything that comes from far away unsettles you, because my grandmother predicted that you would not die in the desert.’ She put out her hand timidly, until it touched his. ‘My grandmot
her is often wrong,’ she added.

  ‘When I was born they predicted me a gloomy future and instead I married a noble, almost a prince.’

  He smiled gently.

  ‘I remember when you were born. It can’t be more than fifteen years ago… Your future had not even begun…’

  He was sorry that he had made her feel sad, because he loved her and even though an Imohag was never supposed to express too much affection to a woman, she was the mother of the last of his sons, so he opened up his hand and took hers in it.

  ‘Maybe you are right and the old Khaltoum is wrong,’ he mused. ‘No one will force me to abandon the desert or die somewhere far away from it.’

  They remained in contemplation of the silent night for some time and he felt at peace once again.

  It was true that the black lady Khaltoum had predicted the death of her father due to an illness, one year before he contracted it and that she had also predicted the great drought that had dried up the wells and left the desert devoid of shrubs, killing hundreds of animals that had, from time immemorial been accustomed to drought and thirst. It was also true that the slave woman often ranted for the sake of ranting and her visions often seemed more the result of senile dementia, than true visions of the future.

  ‘What is there on the other side of the desert?’ Laila asked, breaking their silence. ‘I’ve never been further than the Huaila Mountains.’

  ‘People,’ came his reply. ‘A lot of people.’ Gazel meditated, remembering his experience in El-Akab, the oasis in the north, and he shook his head gloomily. ‘They like to settle in crowded and small spaces, in narrow, stinking houses. They shout and remonstrate loudly to each other for no reason, and rob and cheat on each other like animals that only know how to live as a herd.’

  ‘Why…?’

  He wanted to be able to explain to Laila why, because her admiration for him filled him with pride, but he was unable to give her an answer. He was an Imohag who had been born and bred in the solitude of the wide, open spaces, so, as hard as he might try, he simply could not understand the herd-like instincts that these men and woman from the other tribes possessed.

  Gazel embraced visitors whole heartedly and loved to sit round the fire with them, telling old stories and chatting about the idiosyncrasies of daily life. But once the fire had died and the black camel that carried sleep on its back had crossed the encampment, invisible and silent, everybody would retire to their tents and to their own lives, to breath in deeply and absorb the silence.

  Life in the Sahara was peaceful and provided an ideal environment within which to explore the self and the universe. The way of life there lent itself to the slow contemplation of the natural surroundings and the unhurried meditation of the lessons of their sacred scriptures. This kind of peace, of time and space, did not exist in the cities or towns, not even in the tiny Berber villages, which were filled with a general confusion of noise and petty problems. To Gazel, the people in these places who fought and gossiped, seemed strangely more interested in everybody else’s business and behaviour than their own.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admittedly, reluctantly. ‘I have never understood why they like to behave in this way, crowded together, all of them so dependent on each other. I don’t know…’ he repeated. ‘I have never met anyone that could answer that question properly either.’

  The girl looked at him for some time, perhaps surprised that this man who was her life and from whom she had learned the value of knowledge, was not able to answer one of her questions. From the minute she had been able to reason, Gazel had meant everything to her. First and foremost he had been her master, as a child of the Akli slave race this meant he was, in her eyes, an almost divine being, the absolute master of her life and her contemporaries; master of her parents’ lives, their extended families, their animals and whatever else existed on the face of their universe.

  He was also the man that one day, when she had reached puberty and with her first menstruation, had made her into a woman. He had called her into his tent and possessed her, making her cry out in pleasure, like the other slave women before her who she had heard at night when the west wind blew. In the end they became lovers and he had carried her with him, as if on wings, swiftly to paradise and back. He was her master, but more so than ever before, because now not only did he dominate her soul, her thoughts and her desires, but he also owned her most hidden and forgotten instincts.

  It took her a while to reply and just as she was about to, she was cut short by the appearance of one her husband’s eldest sons who had come running over from one the sheribas situated at the other end of the encampment.

  ‘A camel is about to give birth, father,’ he said. ‘And the jackals are prowling around…’

  His fears were confirmed when, on the following day at noon, he saw a long plume of smoke rising up from the horizon, hanging there, motionless, suspended in the sky, despite the fact that he had not felt a breath of wind cross the plains that day.

  The vehicles, which must have been motorized vehicles due to the speed at which they were travelling, cut a trail of dirty smoke and dust through the clean desert air.

  Then came the faint rumbling of their engines, that soon turned into a roar, upsetting the wood pigeons, the fennecs and the snakes, followed by the screech of brakes, loud, impatient voices and harsh orders as they stopped in a cloud of dust and dirt, no more than fifteen meters away from the settlement.

  Every living creature stopped and turned to look at them. The Targui and his wife, his children, his slaves and even his animals all had their eyes fixed on the cloud of dust and the dark brown, monstrous machines, then the children and beasts drew back terrified and the slaves scurried off into their tents, well out of sight of the strangers.

  He approached them slowly, his face covered with the veil that distinguished him as a noble Imohag and that was part of an ancient tradition. He stopped half way between the new arrivals and the largest of his jaimas as if to indicate, without actually saying so, that they were not to advance any further unless they were given permission to do so as his guests.

  The first thing he noticed about them was the dirty grey of their uniforms, covered in sweat and dust and the menacing metallic glint of their rifles and machine guns. The smell of their crude, leather boots and belts filled the air. His gaze fell on to a tall man wearing a blue djellaba and a dishevelled turban. He recognised him as the Imohag, Mubarrak-ben-Sad, who belonged to the spear people and was considered to be one of the most skilful and meticulous trackers in the desert, almost as famous in the region as Gazel “the Hunter” himself.

  ‘Metulem, metulem,’ he greeted.

  ‘Aselum aleikum,’ Mubarrak replied. ‘We are looking for two men. Two foreigners.’

  ‘They are my guests,’ he replied calmly. ‘They are unwell.’

  The official who appeared to be in charge of the group moved forward a few steps, his medals shining on the cuff of his sleeve, then tried to walk around the Targui, who moved again to block his path.

  ‘They are my guests,’ he repeated.

  The other man looked at him in surprise, as if he was unable to understand exactly what he had said and Gazel realised straight away that this man was not from the desert and that his mannerisms and the way he looked belonged to other, distant worlds.

  He turned to face Mubarrak who had understood and then turned to face the official again.

  ‘Hospitality is a sacred thing for us,’ he pointed out. ‘A law that is more ancient than the Koran.’

  The military man adorned with medals hesitated for a moment, as if unable to believe the absurdity of what he had just heard, then continued forward.

  ‘I represent the law,’ he said sharply. ‘There is no other.’

  He had started to walk past him again, but Gazel grabbed him by the forearm brusquely, forcing the man to look him in the eyes.

  ‘It is a tradition that is some one thousand years old and you are barely fifty years of age. You
will leave my guests in peace!’

  Following a signal from of one of the military man, the sound of ten rifle bolts clicking into place suddenly filled the air and the Targui realised that all ten guns were pointing at his chest and that any further resistance would be useless.

  The military man pushed the hand that still held him back away roughly and continued on towards the largest tent.

  He disappeared inside it and a few seconds later a dry, bitter shot rang through the air. He came out and gestured to the two soldiers that were walking behind him to go back into the tent.

  When they reappeared they were holding the old man between them, who was sobbing profusely as if he had been woken up from a long and gentle dream only to be confronted with this harsh reality.

  They walked straight past Gazel and got into their vehicles. From the cabin the official stared at him severely and hesitated for an instant. For one moment Gazel feared that the prophecy of Khaltoum had been wrong and that he would be killed there and then in the heart of the desert plains. But the man just nodded to the driver and the lorries drove off in the same direction that they had come from.

  Mubarrak, Imohag of the spear people, got into the last vehicle, his eyes fixed on the Targui until he disappeared behind a column of dust. In that brief exchange, however, he had seen enough to know what was going through Gazel’s mind and what he had seen in his eyes had scared him.

  It was never advisable to humiliate an inmouchar of the veil people. It was not advisable to humiliate him and leave him alive.

  But nor would it have been right to have killed him there and then, as it would only have unleashed a war between brother tribes and meant the spilling of more blood, just to avenge the blood of someone who had only tried to respect the ancient laws of the desert.

  Gazel remained very still, watching the convoy as it moved further away until the noise and the dust had completely disappeared from view. Then, slowly, he turned away and walked towards the largest jaima, which his children, wife and slaves had all gathered in front of. He did not need to go in, to find out what had happened inside it. The young boy was in the same place that he had left him in after their last exchange, with his eyes shut as if he was still fast asleep, the only difference in his appearance being the small red circle on his forehead. He looked at him sadly and angrily for a long time and then called Suilem over.