Tuareg Read online

  And maybe they were right because in just a few days, Gazel had realised how little his own knowledge, experience and judgement were worth in the complex world of a capital city and how small he felt in its midst.

  It was a forest of buildings that backed onto an enormous, salty sea; where sweet water gushed forth from every street corner, producing more drinking water in a day than a Bedouin would drink in a lifetime; built on a stony ground that at dawn was inhabited by thousands of rats. It had to be said that even the most cunning, brave, noble and intelligent Imohag of the blessed Kel-Talgimus people, would be as powerless as a humble akli slave in the face of all that chaos.

  ‘Could you tell me the way to the President’s palace?’

  He had to ask five times and then listen very carefully to each answer because the labyrinth of streets all looked the same to him and he was unable to tell one from the other. Finally, after much persistence and just as night was falling, he arrived at a big park and there, surrounded by high railings on all four sides, stood the grandest building he had ever seen.

  A guard of honour in a red tunic and an elaborate feathery helmet was marching up and down, obediently obeying his orders. He was later replaced by some proud sentinels, who stood on each corner rigidly, looking more like statues than men of flesh and blood.

  He studied the majestic park carefully and his gaze fell on a group of tall date palms that rose up and over the main entrance, taking up an area of about two hundred meters.

  In the far away desert, Gazel had once hidden for days in the cups of those palm trees, tied to one of their thick leaves as he had laid in wait for a herd of onix, which, had he been hiding anywhere else, would have immediately smelled his human presence.

  He checked the distance between the railings and the date palms and estimated that if, during the night, he was able to get into one of the trees without being seen, then he had a good chance of being able to shoot the President on his way in or out of the building.

  It was just a question of patience and patience was something a Targui always had plenty of.

  He knew as soon as the telephone rang that it was the President,

  since he was the only one who had a direct line to him.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘General Al Humaid, Ali…’ He was clearly struggling to keep calm and his voice was notably strained. ‘He has just called me, begging me “with all due respect” to call an election as soon as possible and avoid bloodshed.’

  ‘Al Humaid!’ Ali Madani realised that his voice had become equally strained and that he was trying, without much success to maintain a calm that he most certainly did not feel. ‘But Al Humaid owes everything to you. He was just an obscure commandant that never…’

  ‘I know Ali! I know!’ he interrupted him impatiently. ‘But he’s up there now, the military governor of a key province and he has our biggest tank corps under his command.’

  ‘Get rid of him!’

  ‘That’ll just get things going. If he rises up, the provinces will follow. And a rebel province is all the French need to call for a provisional government to be put in place. You know that the mountain cabilenos have never liked us, Ali. You of all people know that.’

  ‘But you cannot possibly accept his demands…’ he pointed out. ‘The country’s not ready for an election.’

  ‘I know,’ came his reply. ‘That’s why I’ve called you. What news of Abdul?’

  ‘I think we’ve located him. They’re keeping him in a small chateau in the St-Germain wood in Maison-Laffitte.’

  ‘I know the place. We hid in that wood for about three days once, as we prepared for an assault. What’s your plan?’

  ‘Colonel Turki went to Paris last night, via Geneva. He’ll be getting in touch with our people as we speak. I’m expecting his call any moment.’

  ‘Don’t do anything until we’re completely sure of success,’ he replied. ‘If we fail this time, the French won’t give us a second opportunity.’

  ‘Alright. Keep me up to date.’

  He hung up. The Minister of the Interior, Ali Madani, put the receiver down slowly and sat quite still for a long time, lost in his own thoughts, mulling over what might happen if Colonel Turki failed and Abdul-el-Kebir continued to rally the nation. General Humaid was the first, but knowing him as he did, he doubted that he would have taken the initiative and challenged the President if he was not certain that there were other garrisons ready to follow suit. Going over the names in his head, he guessed that at least seven provinces, which held a third of the armed forces, would move over to Abdul-el-Kebir. From there, it was just a question of time before civil war broke out, especially if the French wanted it. They had still not recovered from their humiliating defeat some twenty years previously and had held on to the dream that they would one day return to claim back some of the country’s riches, that for a century they had considered their own. He lit one of his lavishly adorned, Turkish cigars, stood up and went over to the window, from where he could see the calm sea, the beach that was empty at that time of year and the wide esplanade before it and wondered to himself whether the time had come for him to abandon the office that he loved so much, for good.

  It had been a long journey to get to where he had done, during which time he had seen the man who he had fundamentally admired, be imprisoned and then found himself entirely subservient to another man, whom he basically despised. A difficult road for sure, but one which had given him more power and strength than anyone else in the country so that no one, except for that damn Targui perhaps, could make a move without first receiving his consent.

  But he was aware that this power was starting to weaken and he could almost feel it, like mud dried by the sun, crumbling through his fingers and the harder he tried to hold on to it, the quicker it disintegrated. He could not believe that this monolithic state they had built from so much sweat and blood could have ended up by being so fragile and that the simple echo of a name — Abdul-el-Kebir — had been enough to see its very foundations collapse. But recent events had shown this to be the reality and it was clear that it was time to face the truth and accept defeat.

  He returned to the table, picked up the telephone and dialled his home number.

  ‘Pack your suitcases darling,’ he said. ‘I want you to take the children to Tunisia for a few days. I’ll tell you when you can come back.’

  ‘Are things that bad?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ he admitted. ‘Everything depends on what Turki manages to get done in Paris.’

  He hung up and sat there lost in thought once again, his eyes fixed on the large portrait of the President that took up most of the back wall. If Turki failed or deflected to the enemy, then all was lost. He had always had great faith in his efficiency and loyalty, but now he was overcome with the uneasy feeling that somewhere along the lines, his faith in him might have been a little misplaced.

  He spent the best part of the next day going back and forth between the presidential palace and the kasbah, until he knew the route like the back of his hand and was able to go there and back to his hiding place with relative ease. He would never get used to the streets in the new town, however, because they were all the same, long and identical, lined with shops and only distinguishable by their names, which he was unable to read.

  Later that afternoon he bought a supply of dates, figs and almonds because he was not sure how long he would have to spend hidden in the top of the date palms and a large water bottle that he filled up at the nearest fountain. Finally, he went back to the church ruins, checked the state of his weapons once again and waited patiently, leaning against the wall, trying not to think of anything else but the route he had to take between his refuge and the palace.

  There was nobody in the kasbah, which was covered in an eerie mist and he crossed it in silence, startling the cats. A clock chimed three times, slowly and he came out onto one of the paved streets. He looked up at the luminous sphere that stared down at him, like the huge
eye of a Cyclops, or a swollen moon floating just above the horizon, the tower behind it no longer visible, as if it had been swallowed up by the night.

  The avenues were deserted. There were no night buses or rubbish trucks and the quiet of the city unsettled him, even though it was very late.

  The silence was suddenly broken by the appearance of a black police car ahead of him with a flashing light on top and then the noise of a siren in the distance, somewhere on the other side of the beach, he guessed.

  He started to walk faster, feeling more anxious by the minute, but had to dive into a doorway as another black car drove by, only about two hundred meters away from him, then stopped at the edge of the pavement and switched off its lights.

  He waited there patiently, but soon realised that the men inside the car had no intention of going anywhere and had stopped to keep guard, probably since it was a strategic point and at the cross section of two streets. He decided to take the first street he came to and try and lose the obstacle, then come back out when he thought the car would be behind him.

  But he had been forced to leave the route that he had spent so long trying to memorise all too quickly and before long, he realised that he was lost. All the streets started to look the same, lit up by the half-light of hundreds of identical, sad, street lamps and he could no longer spot any of the tiny details he had memorised during the day.

  He started to get worried, because the longer he continued, the more lost he became and there was not a breath of wind or a twinkling star to guide his way and give him a sense of direction.

  A police car drove past him with its siren on and he dived under a bench. Once it had gone he came up and sat on it, trying in vain to order his thoughts. He had to work out on what side of that giant, sprawling and filthy city the palace was now on and where the kasbah was and all those places that he had become vaguely familiar with.

  In the end he had to accept that he had lost the battle that night and that he should return to his hideout and try again the next day.

  He tried to retrace his steps, but going back was just as difficult as it had been getting there and he wandered through the city as lost as ever, until finally he heard the sound of the sea and he found the esplanade, which came out right in front of the Ministry of the Interior.

  He sighed with relief. He knew how to get back to his hideout from there, but just as he had started to quicken his step and was about to turn into a windy backstreet that led into the native quarter, a car parked next to the pavement suddenly switched on its front lights, dazzling him. A voice of authority shouted from within:

  ‘Hey, you! Come here!’

  His first instinct was to run away up the street, but he controlled himself and went over to the front window, trying to get out of the glare of the lights.

  From the half light of the car’s interior, three men in uniform looked out at him, a serious expression on their faces.

  ‘What are you doing out in the street at this time of night?’ the man sitting next to the driver and the one who had called him over, said. ‘Did you not know that there is a curfew in place?’

  ‘A what?’ he replied.

  ‘A curfew, you idiot. They announced it on the radio and the television. Where the hell are you from anyway?’

  Gazel gestured to somewhere behind him.

  ‘From the port.’

  ‘And where are you going?’

  He pointed with his chin over to a side street.

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Alright. Show us your papers.’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  The man who had been sitting in the back of the car got out and walked over to the Targui slowly, dangling a submachine gun wearily at his side.

  ‘Lets see now. How come you don’t have your papers? Everybody has an identity card.’

  The strong, tall man with a huge moustache walked over to Gazel with an air of self-assurance, but on reaching him, suddenly doubled over and cried out in pain as the butt of a rifle was shoved painfully into his stomach. Almost simultaneously, Gazel threw his carpets over the windscreen and ran off, turning round the corner and into a backstreet.

  A few seconds later a siren started up, disturbing the quiet of the neighbourhood and just as the fugitive was half way down the street, he saw one of the policemen at the corner, who, without even taking aim, let off a short burst of gunfire.

  The impact of the bullet propelled Gazel forward and he fell head first onto the wide steps, but he rolled over like a cat on to his back, fired a shot and hit the policeman in the chest, knocking him backwards. He loaded his gun up again, hid round a corner and waited, his breathing laboured, but still not feeling any pain at all, despite the fact that the bullet had gone right through him and blood was starting to soak through the front of his shirt.

  A head appeared round the corner and shot without aim. The bullets went ricocheting through the night, bouncing off buildings and smashing glass windows.

  He started to climb back up slowly, hugging the wall all the time. With just one shot he had made his pursuers realise that they were dealing with a superior marksman and they had abandoned the chase, rather than risk getting their heads blown off.

  A few seconds later, as the Targui disappeared off into the darkness and lost himself in the kasbah’s labyrinth of windy, narrow alleys, the two policemen who were still standing, glanced at each other briefly, then without a word, went over to the wounded man, put him in the back seat and headed to hospital.

  They both knew that it would take an army to find a fugitive in the dark, complex world of the native quarter.

  It looked like the old black lady Khaltoum had been right again. He was going to die there, in a dirty corner of a ruined Rumi church, in the heart of an overpopulated city. With the rumbling noise of the waves behind him, he could not have been further from the solitude of the desert, where the only sound was that of the wind as it whistled through the silent plains.

  He tried to dress his wound by covering up the two holes with his long turban, which he tied around his chest. Then, wrapping himself up in a blanket and shivering with cold and fever, he huddled up into a corner and fell into a disturbed half sleep, alone with his memories and only the pain and the gri-gri of death as company.

  He no longer possessed the strength to turn himself into a stone or the will to try and thicken his blood, until it stopped soaking through his turban. He was no longer able to depend on his strength of will or his wholeness of spirit, as his will had been broken by the weight of a heavy bullet and his spirit crushed, by the realisation that he might never see his family again.

  “…See how wars and fighting lead to nothing, because a death on one side will be paid for by the death from another…” The wise words of Suilem came back to him and it was always that same story. The truth of the matter was that, while the centuries moved forward and the landscapes changed, man remained the same. He continued to play the leading role in that same tragic story, over and over again, irrespective of the changes that were happening around him in time and space.

  A war might start because a camel had crushed a sheep, belonging to another tribe. Another war might erupt because somebody had failed to respect an old tradition. It could break out between two families who were equal in strength or, as in his case, between one man and an entire army. But the result would always be the same: the gri-gri of death would take hold of a new victim and carry on pushing him slowly into the abyss. And there he was now, on the edge of this abyss, resigned to the fact that he was about to fall in, but still sad because whoever found his corpse, would see that the bullet had gone into his back, whilst he, Gazel Sayah, had always fought his enemy face on.

  He wondered whether or not his actions would allow him entry into eternal paradise, or whether he would be condemned to wander eternally through the “lost lands.” His heart grew heavy with the thought that his soul might end up alongside the lost souls of the “great caravan.”

  Then he
dreamed that the caravan of mummified camels and skeletons, with bits of tattered fabric hanging off them, had started up on their journey once again, across the silent plain and that later they would cross the station and enter in to the sleeping city. He shook with fear, banging his head against the walls because he was certain that they were coming for him and that very soon they would come marching into the great empty nave where they would wait for him, patiently, to join them.

  He did not want to go back with them to the desert, to wander through the “lost land” of Tikdabra for centuries on end and he called out to them weakly, telling them to go back without him.

  In the end he slept for three long days.

  When he woke up, his blanket was drenched with sweat and blood, but he had stopped bleeding and the bandage had become a hard crust attached to his skin. He tried to move, but the pain was so unbearable that he lay down again for a few hours, before trying again to pull himself up and inspect his wound. Later, he managed to reach over to his water bottle, which he drank from until it was empty and then fell asleep again.

  For how long he had hovered between life and death, between a lucid state and an unconscious one, between dream and reality, nobody, least of all him, could have said. Days, maybe weeks had passed. But finally, one morning he woke up and realised that he was breathing fully again and without pain. He looked around. Everything looked the same, even though he felt that half his life might well have passed him by whilst he had slept between those four walls and that maybe he had been there, in that city, for hundreds of years.

  He ate the nuts, dates and almonds that he had left hungrily and drank the rest of his water. He got up, even though it was very painful and using the wall for support, took a few tentative steps. But he soon became dizzy and had to lie down again. As he lay there, he looked around him, even called out loud, until he felt confident that the gri-gri of death had finally left his side.

  ‘Maybe Khaltoum, the old black lady had been wrong,’ he thought to himself. ‘Maybe in her dreams she only saw me wounded and defeated but did not imagine that I was capable of overcoming death.’