Tuareg Read online

  He sat down on the dry sand, out of reach of the waves and remained there, very still, remembering his life and thinking of his wife and his children and his paradise lost. He let the hours wash over him in that way until, with the first light of dawn, a greyish and uncertain light spread through the sky and he was finally able to appreciate the immensity of the great extension of water that stretched out before him.

  He had imagined that the snow, the city and the waves, would have exhausted his capacity to be surprised by anything, ever again. But the spectacle of dawn, unfolding before him, only proved him wrong as the lead-grey, metallic colour of the unsettled, threatening sea, hypnotized him all over again. He entered into a profound trance that rendered him silent and unmoving, like an inanimate statue.

  Then, he watched as the first rays of sunlight broke up the grey, turning the water a luminous blue, mixed with opaque green. The white of the foam became more intense and in the distance he saw a black, menacing storm cloud, approaching from the west. It was like an explosion of shapes and colours that he could never have imagined existed, however hard he might have tried. He would have remained there, rooted to the spot, had not the insistent humming of the vehicles behind him, pulled him sharply out of his revelry.

  The city was waking up.

  What had just been high walls, closed windows and random patches of dark vegetation by night, had, by day turned into a riot of colour. The violent red of the buses clashed with the building’s white facades, as the yellow taxis and bright green, bushy trees all screamed for space against an anarchic background of loud, brightly-coloured posters that covered the walls for miles on end.

  And the people.

  It seemed to him as if all of the Earth’s inhabitants had made an appointment to meet each other on that particular morning, along the wide esplanade. They hurried in and out of the tall buildings, bumping into each other and dodging each other in a kind of bizarre dance. Then, at a certain point on the pavement they would all launch themselves in unison across the wide road, as the buses, taxis and hundreds of different vehicles all screeched to a halt. It was as if an invisible and powerful hand had stopped them dead in their tracks.

  Then, having observed the scene for some time, Gazel realised that this hand belonged to a chubby, apoplectic man, who was moving his arms up and down continuously, in a seemingly random and insane manner. He was also blowing on a large whistle with such insistence and fury, that it made the pedestrians stop dead, as if He himself had ordered them to do so.

  He was an important man, without doubt, despite his reddened face and sweat-stained uniform, as even the biggest lorries stopped when he raised his hand and then only dared to continue once he had given them permission to do so.

  And there behind him, protected by high railings and set behind a small courtyard with bushy trees in it, stood the tall, solid and elaborate grey building with white awnings that the railway worker had described to him.

  The Minister of the Interior, Ali Madani, lived there, or at least he worked there. The man who had seized his family and children.

  He made a snap decision, gathered together his belongings and crossed the road with a resolute step, over to the apoplectic, fat man, who looked at him in surprise but continued to wave his arms around and blow his whistle.

  He stood in front of him:

  ‘Does Madani the minister live there?’ he enquired in his deep and serious voice, which startled the man even more than his strange clothes and veiled face.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Does the minister Madani work there?’

  ‘Yes. He has his office there and in about five minutes, at eight o’clock on the dot, he’ll be there. Now go away!’

  Gazel nodded silently, crossed the street again as the disconcerted policeman, who had momentarily lost his rhythm of work, watched him go, then stopped at the edge of the beach to wait.

  Exactly five minutes later he heard a siren and two men on motorbikes appeared, followed by a long, black Sedan car. All the traffic on the avenue ground to a halt and the procession passed by unhindered, before turning majestically into the small courtyard in front of the grey building.

  From afar, Gazel could make out the tall silhouette of an elegant and proud man. He watched as the figure stepped out of the car and was immediately surrounded by a rabble of porters and workers, all giving him small ceremonial bows. He then made his way slowly up the five marble steps that led into the wide entrance, flanked on both sides by soldiers, armed with submachine guns.

  As soon as Madani had disappeared, Gazel crossed the road again over to the nervous policeman, who had been watching him all the while out of the corner of his eye:

  ‘Was that the minister?’ he asked.

  “Yes it was! And I told you to get out of here! Leave me in peace!’

  ‘No!’ the Targui said in a tone that was dry, resolute and threatening. ‘I want you to pass on some information for me: If, the day after tomorrow my family is not freed, and brought here to this very spot, I will kill the President.’

  The fat, traffic policeman looked at him in astonishment, unable to respond at first and then stuttering stupidly replied:

  ‘What did you say? That you’ll kill the President?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. Then, nodding towards the inside of the building he continued:

  ‘Tell him that I, Gazel Sayah, who freed Abdul-el-Kebir and killed eighteen soldiers, will kill the President, if they don’t return my family to me. Mark my words. The day after tomorrow.’

  He turned on his heel and walked away between the buses and lorries that had come to a standstill, all beeping their horns insistently, as the man in charge of directing the traffic stood there transfixed. It was as if he had turned into a salt statue, as he stared out with the eyes of a dead cow at the tall Bedouin, as he disappeared into the crowds.

  Over the next few minutes the guard tried to regain his composure and get the traffic flowing smoothly again. He also tried to tell himself that what he had just heard made absolutely no sense at all, that it had been either a dumb joke or the hallucinatory effects of a stressful job.

  But there was something in the way that the madman had spoken to him and the determination in his voice that had unsettled him, particularly the fact that he had mentioned Abdul-el-Kebir and his freedom. It was now public knowledge that he had escaped and was in Paris, calling on his supporters to mobilise themselves.

  Half an hour later, no longer capable of concentrating on his work and aware that he was about to cause a total collapse in the city’s traffic flow, or a serious accident, he abandoned his post, crossed the road and went into the ministry’s small courtyard. Then, trembling at the knees, he walked into the wide reception with its tall marble columns.

  ‘I need to speak with the head of security,’ he said to the first porter he came across.

  Fifteen minutes later he was sitting before the Minister of the Interior, Ali Madani himself, who was looking at him with a worried expression, his eyebrows set in an almost comical frown, from the other side of a beautiful, lacquered, mahogany table.

  ‘Tall, thin and his face covered with a veil?’ he repeated, as if to make sure that the man had not been mistaken. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Completely, your Excellency. A real Targui, the likes of which you and I only see in postcards. Years ago they used to hang around the kasbahs and souks, but since they’ve forbidden the use of veils you don’t see them any more.’

  ‘It’s him, there’s no doubt about it.’ the minister concluded, as he lit himself a long, filtered Turkish cigar and appeared to drift off, lost in his thoughts.

  ‘Tell me again, as precisely as you can, what he said,’ he demanded.

  ‘That if you don’t return his family to him the day after tomorrow, leaving them on the corner there, free, then he’ll kill the President.’

  ‘He’s mad.’

  ‘That’s what I said to him, your Excellency. But these madmen can
be dangerous sometimes…’

  Ali Madani turned to face Colonel Turki, director general of state security and his right-hand man and exchanged a look of profound uneasiness with him.

  ‘What the devil is he talking about anyway?’ he asked. ‘As far as I know we haven’t touched his family.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not the same one.’

  ‘Come on Turki, there can’t be many more Tuaregs in the world who know about Abdul-el-Kebir and the death of those soldiers. It has to be him.’ He turned to the policeman and waved him away with his hand. ‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘But not a word of this to anyone.’

  ‘Don’t worry, your Excellency!’ he replied nervously. ‘When it comes to matters of national security, my lips are sealed.’

  ‘You’d better be,’ came his curt reply. ‘If you’re true to your word then you’ll be up for a promotion. Otherwise, you’ll have me to answer to personally. Is that understood?’

  ‘Of course, your Excellency, of course.’

  Once he had left the building, Madani got up, walked over to the large windows and pulled open the lace curtains. He stood there for some time looking over at the sea and the beautiful effects of light and shadow that the rainfall, coming from a large black cloud in the distance, was making on it.

  ‘So, he’s here,’ he said out loud, so that the other man could hear, but mainly to himself. ‘That accursed Targui isn’t happy with the million and one problems he’s already caused us and has the cheek to turn up at our door and provoke us even more. It’s an outrage! Ridiculous and outrageous!’

  ‘I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘Crikey! Me too,’ the other man said enthusiastically. ‘You don’t often meet someone with balls like his.’ He stubbed out his cigar on the glass of the window. ‘What the hell is he looking for anyway?’ he muttered bad-temperedly.

  ‘What’s this about his family?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue, your Excellency.’

  ‘Get in touch with El-Akab,’ he ordered. ‘Find out what’s happened to this madman’s family. Shit!’ he muttered as the butt he had thrown out of the window landed on his car, which was parked at the furthest end of the courtyard. ‘As if Abdul wasn’t enough to be getting on with!’ He turned to look at his accomplice.

  ‘What the hell are your people doing in Paris?’

  ‘They can’t do anything, your Excellency,’ the colonel said apologetically. ‘The French have him completely protected. We haven’t even been able to find out where he’s hiding.’

  The minister walked back over to the table and picked up a handful of documents that he proceeded to wave around accusingly.

  ‘Look at this!’ he said. ‘Reports of generals that are deserting, of people crossing the border to join Abdul, of secret meetings in the garrisons of the interior! All I need now is a mad Targui, trying to hunt down the President. Find him!’ he ordered. ‘You know what he looks like: A tall guy dressed like a ghost with a veil that covers his face, revealing only his eyes. There can’t be too many that match that description in this city.’

  He found what he was looking for behind the façade of an old Rumi temple. They were curious churches that the French had built throughout the country, even though they must have known that they never had a hope in hell of converting one single Muslim into a Christian.

  It had been built on the edge of what had been on the brink of becoming one of the capital’s smarter neighbourhoods, by a luxury development on the edge of the beach, next to a stretch of high cliffs. But it was one of the first things to go when the revolution got underway. One night the building burst into flames and continued to burn until dawn, with no-one, not even the neighbours or the fire brigade, daring to put it out. Everyone knew that in the mists of the neighbouring woods, the nationalist marksmen were waiting to shoot, by the light of the flames, at anyone imprudent enough to go near it.

  Over time it had crumbled into a blackened and dusty skeleton, home only to rats and lizards and a place that even the tramps avoided out of superstition, after one of them turned up dead on the night, coincidentally, of the tenth anniversary of its destruction.

  The central grand nave had lost its roof and the damp wind that came in off of the sea made it an unpleasant place to be in. Right at the end, however, behind what must have the main alter, there was a door that opened into some small, sheltered rooms, two of which, still had most of the glass intact in their windows.

  It was a peaceful and solitary place and what Gazel needed after the nerve wracking few days he had just had. He was confused and sickened by this deafening city and its crowds of people, all of which felt like an assault to his senses and his eardrums, having always been accustomed to peace and silence.

  Exhausted, he stretched out his blanket in one corner and slept, clutching his weapons and consumed by hideous dreams where trains, buses and roaring crowds all seemed to be rushing towards him, bearing down on him until he became nothing more than a bloody and shapeless mass.

  He awoke at dawn, shivering with cold but sweating profusely. He struggled to get enough air inside of him and felt as if a giant hand was bearing down on him and trying to suffocate him. For the first time in his life he had slept underneath a concrete roof and in between four walls.

  He went outside. One hundred metres away the sea was blue and calm, quite different to the foamy, daring, monster it had been the day before with its silvery reflections dancing up and down under a brilliant sun.

  Very carefully, almost ceremoniously, he opened up the packet that he had bought in a shop in the kasbah and emptied its contents out onto the blanket. He propped up a small mirror and gave himself a dry shave, as he had done so since he was old enough to think, using the sharp blade of his dagger. Then he took the scissors and cut his short, black, thick, hair until he no longer recognised himself. Later he went out to the sea and bathed, using a perfumed bar of soap to wash himself with, surprised by the bitter tasting water, how little foam it produced and the salt traces that it left on his skin.

  Once he was back his hideaway he put on some blue, fitted trousers and a white shirt and felt ridiculous.

  He looked sadly at his djellabas, his turban and his veil and was tempted to put them all back on again, but he knew that he could not since his normal clothes were attracting too much attention, even in the kasbah.

  He had issued a threat to the most powerful man in the country and on that basis the police and the army would all be looking for a Targui, dressed in a litham that only revealed his eyes. He had to take advantage of the fact that nobody knew, not even remotely, what he really looked like and he realised that with his new appearance, not even Laila would be able to recognise him.

  He hated the idea that complete strangers would now be able to see his face and he felt embarrassed, as if he was walking out onto the street and into the crowds naked. One day many years ago, when he was no longer a child, his mother had given him his first djellabah and later when he became a warrior, he was given the litham, for having completed the tasks that made him eligible for one. To get rid of both items of clothing was like becoming a child again, or like going back in time, to an era when he had walked around without them and felt no shame or offended anyone.

  He walked through the room and into the wide nave, trying to get used to his new clothes. But his trousers pinched him with each long step and made it impossible for him to squat, a position that he found comfortable and liked to assume, sometimes for hours on end. The shirt rubbed him annoyingly and his skin itched, whether from the fabric or the sea, he was not sure.

  Finally he got undressed again, wrapped himself up in the blanket and spent the rest of the day huddled up in a corner, lost in his thoughts.

  He closed his eyes as soon as the room became dark and opened them with the first light. He got dressed, overcoming the revulsion he felt for his new clothes and found himself standing before the grey ministry building, just as the city was starting to wake up.

  Nobody t
ook any notice of him or looked at him as if he were naked, but he did notice some policemen armed with machine guns who seemed to be positioned at strategic points. The fat man in uniform was in his usual spot, waving his arms around, maybe a little bit more frantically than normal and making regular and furtive glances around him.

  ‘They’re looking for me,’ he said. ‘But they’ll never recognise me in these clothes.’

  A little later, at eight o’clock on the dot, with chronometric precision, the ministry’s committee appeared at the end of the passage and Gazel watched as Ali Madani walked quickly down the staircase and into the building, not stopping to greet anyone this time round.

  He sat down on one of the banks in the boulevard, like any other of the city’s unemployed men, hoping that at any moment Laila and his children would appear from the same door. But he knew, deep down, that he was wasting his time.

  At midday, Madani left the building again, accompanied by his fleet of motorbikes and did not return. As afternoon fell Gazel knew that the minister had probably never had the slightest intention of returning his family to him. So he left the bench and headed off, having reached the painful conclusion, that there, in the midst of all that confusion, in that enormous city, the chances of him being reunited with the people that he loved most, were very remote.

  His threat to the President had fallen on deaf ears and he wondered what on earth they were doing with them anyway, if Abdul-el-Kebir was free and in Paris. They must have been carrying out some kind of stupid and cowardly revenge, because surely they could not take any pleasure in hurting such defenceless beings, who had not done anything wrong in the first place.

  ‘Maybe they didn’t believe me,’ he reasoned. ‘Maybe they thought I was just a poor ignorant Targui that would never dare to go near the President.’