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  ‘Bury him,’ he said. ‘And get my camel ready for me.’

  For the first time in his life Suilem did not do what his master had ordered him to and an hour later he went into his tent and grabbed his feet, trying to kiss his sandals.

  ‘Do not do it!’ he begged. ‘You will achieve nothing by it.’

  Gazel pulled his foot away in disgust.

  ‘You think I will just allow for such an offence to go unchallenged?’ he asked angrily. ‘Do you think that I could go on living at peace with myself, having allowed one of my guests to be assassinated and the other taken away?’

  ‘There was nothing else you could have done,’ he protested. ‘They would have killed you.’

  ‘I know, but now I must avenge the insult.’

  ‘And what will you achieve by doing that?’ the black man asked. ‘Will that bring the dead man back to life?’

  ‘No. But I will remind them that they cannot offend an Imohag so impertinently. That is the difference between your race and mine, Suilem. The Aklis allow themselves to be offended and oppressed and you are satisfied with your role as slaves, you carry it in your blood, from parents to children, from generation to generation and you will always be slaves.’

  He paused and stroked the long saber that he had just taken out of the large chest, where he kept his most precious belongings. ‘But we the Tuaregs are a free, warrior race, who has remained that way because we have never given in to humiliation or insult.’

  He shook his head. ‘And we are not about to change.’

  ‘But there are many of them,’ he warned. ‘And they are powerful.’

  ‘That is true,’ the Targui admitted. ‘And that is how it is. It is only a coward who challenges the weaker side and that kind of a victory will never make a nobleman of you. And only a fool fights with his equal because only luck will decide who wins that battle. The Imohag, the real warriors of my race, will always take on someone who is much more powerful than they are because if victory smiles on them, their efforts will be rewarded a thousand times over and they can be proud of what they have achieved and carry on.’

  ‘And if they kill you? What will become of us?’

  ‘If they kill me, my camel and I will make a straight run for paradise as promised to me by Allah, because it is written that whoever dies in a fair battle can be sure of reaching Eternity.’

  ‘But you have not answered my question,’ the old slave insisted. ‘What will become of us? Of your children, your wife, your livestock and your servants?’

  He shrugged fatalistically.

  ‘Was I able to defend you before?’ he asked. ‘If I could not stop one of my guests from being killed then how can I defend my family against rape and murder?’ He lent over and with a firm gesture forced his slave to stand up. ‘Go and get my camel ready and my weapons,’ he ordered. ‘I will leave at dawn. Then, pack up the settlement and take it and my family far away to the Huaila guelta, where my first wife died.’

  It was always the wind that heralded the arrival of dawn across the plains, as its nocturnal howling became more of a screeching wail, usually about an hour or so before the first ray of light appeared in the sky, some distance away, near the rocky Huaila mountains.

  He listened to it with his eyes wide open, contemplating the familiar striped roof of his jaima and imagined the tumbleweed outside, rolling away across the sand. Those vagrant bushes that were always in a hurry, always looking for somewhere or something to attach themselves to, for a proper home and somewhere that would take them in and free them from their eternal wanderings, from journeys without destiny that took them from one end of Africa to the other.

  In the milky light of dawn that was filtered through millions of tiny suspended dust particles, these bushes would appear out of nowhere, like ghosts waiting to pounce on man and beast. Then they would disappear, as discreetly as they had arrived, back into the infinite emptiness of a desert without borders.

  ‘There must be a border somewhere. I am sure,’ he had said in a voice that was heavy with anxiety and desperation. Now he was dead.

  Nobody had informed Gazel of these borders because there had never been any borders in the Sahara until now.

  ‘How could you stop the sand and wind from crossing a border?’

  He turned his face to the night as if searching for an answer, but found none.

  Those men had not been criminals, but they had killed one of them and where they had taken the older man was anybody’s guess. It was wrong to kill someone in such cold blood, whatever his crime, even worse when that person was under the protection of an inmouchar.

  There was something odd about the whole incident, but Gazel could not quite put his finger on it. One thing, however, remained startlingly clear: that an ancient law of the desert had been broken and that, for an Imohag, was unacceptable.

  He remembered the old lady Khaltoum and the fear he had felt emanate from her icy hand as she placed it on the nape of his neck. Then he turned towards Laila’s huge open eyes, shining widely in the half light, reflecting the dying embers of the fire and he felt sorry for her and the fifteen paltry years she had barely reached and for the emptiness she would feel at night without him. He also felt sorry for himself and for the emptiness he would feel at night without her by his side.

  He stroked her hair and her eyes widened like a startled gazelle in open appreciation of his gesture.

  ‘When will you return?’ she asked, almost pleadingly.

  He shook his head:

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘When justice has been done.’

  ‘What do these men mean to you?’

  ‘They meant nothing,’ he confessed. ‘Until yesterday, that is. But it’s not about them. It’s about me. You would not understand.’

  Laila understood, but did not protest further. She just moved closer to him as if trying to absorb as much of his strength and warmth as was physically possible. Then she stretched out her hand in one last effort to keep him back, as he stood up to leave the tent.

  Outside, the wind was moaning gently. It was cold and he wrapped himself up in his djelabba as a shiver ran down his back. This often happened to him and he never knew if it was a reaction to the cold or to the black space that stretched out before him. Entering into that black space was like immersing yourself into a sea of black ink. Suilem came out of the shadows and passed him the reins of “R’Orab.”

  ‘Good luck, master,’ he said and disappeared back into the shadows.

  He made the beast kneel down, climbed up onto his back and tapped him lightly on the neck with his heel:

  ‘Shiaaaa…!’ he ordered. ‘Lets go!’

  The animal let out a bad-tempered bellow, got up slowly and stood still on his four feet, face to the wind, waiting.

  The Targui pulled him round to face the northeast and tapped his heel, a little more forcefully this time in order to get them on their way.

  At the entrance to the jaima he could just make out a shadow that was darker than all the others around it. It was Laila, her eyes shining once again in the darkness, watching as the wind carried the rider and his mount away like tumbleweed and as they disappeared into the night.

  The wind’s desperate wailings intensified, in the knowledge that the sun would soon be there to calm its anguish.

  Even in that early, milky light, Gazel could only just make out the head of his camel, but he did not need any more guidance than that. He knew that he would not meet with any obstacle for hundreds of kilometers either side of him and that being a man of the desert he was capable of navigating his way through the desert with his eyes closed, even on the darkest of nights.

  This was a skill that only he and others born like him, amongst the sands, possessed. Like pigeon carriers, like migratory birds or whales in the deepest oceans, the Tuareg always knew where they were and where they were going, as if an ancient gland that had expired in the rest of the human race still remained active, intact and efficient only in them.<
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  North, south, east and west; springs, oases, roads, mountains, “lost lands”, rivers of dunes, rocky plains: the whole, huge Saharan universe was embedded in the depths of Gazel’s brain, without him even knowing it, without him ever really being conscious of it.

  The sun rose and started to pound down on the mehari’s back, moving quickly up to its head and getting stronger by the minute. As the wind died down and the tumbleweed came to rest, the sand settled and the earth recoiled. The lizards came out of their hiding places and the birds came to rest on land, not daring to take to the air as the sun approached its zenith.

  The Targui stopped his mount and made him kneel down. He then pushed his long sword and his old rifle into the sand as supports next to the saddle cross and stretched a small piece of thick fabric across them to make a crude shelter from the sun.

  He crawled under it, lay his head on the white back of his mehari and went to sleep.

  He woke up with his nose twitching, as the most yearned for smell in the desert began to fill his nostrils. He opened his eyes but remained there without moving, breathing in the air, without wanting to look up at the sky, scared that it might be just a dream. When he eventually turned to look east, he saw it there, on the horizon, large, dark, promising and full of life. It was different from the other white ones that appeared from time to time, high up in the sky and that blew in from the north, only to disappear as quickly, without even the slightest hint of rain. All the watery treasures of the universe seemed hidden within that splendid, low, grey cloud. Gazel had not seen one quite so beautiful for some fifteen years, not since the great storm that had raged on the eve of Laila’s birth; the storm that had made her grandmother predict a miserable future for her because on that occasion the rain that had been so longed for, fast became a flood that swept up jaimas and animals, destroyed crops and drowned a camel.

  “R’Orab” fussed about restlessly. He stretched his neck and lifted his nose up eagerly towards the curtain of rain that was moving towards them, breaking up the light and transforming the landscape. He snorted gently and then purred happily like an enormous cat.

  Gazel got up slowly, stripped the saddle, took off his clothes and laid them out carefully on some bushes to ensure that they got as much rain on them as possible. He then took off his shoes and stood upright, waiting as the first raindrops began to spot the sand and the land, marking the face of the desert like an attack of small pox. Then it began to fall in sheets and the pitterpatter of drops turned into the crashing sound of water. His senses were intoxicated as the water caressed his warm body and he tasted the fresh, clean water and smelled the sodden, steamy earth underfoot.

  There it was, this marvellous and fertile union and soon, with the afternoon sun, the dormant seed of the acheb plant would burst forth violently, turning the plains green and transforming the arid landscape into one of the most beautiful regions on earth. The plants would flower magnificently, but only for a few days, before sinking back again below the surface into another long sleep, maybe for another fifteen years, until they were woken again by another storm.

  The wild acheb, when freed by the rains, was a beautiful flower, but it was impossible to grow it as a crop, even when nurtured by the gentle hand of a peasant and watered every day. The plant was just like the spirit of the Tuaregs and the only other living thing that survived in those stony, sandy regions, in a place that the rest of the human race had long since given up on.

  The water soaked his hair, washing months, if not years’ worth of dirt off of his body. He scrubbed his nails and found a flat, porous stone to rub himself down with, watching as patches of clean skin started to appear. He stood there as the encrusted earth, sweat and dust washed off him and the water that ran off and over his feet turned blue, almost indigo, as the crude dye from his clothes, that had engrained itself into his skin over time, came off.

  He remained like that for two hours under the rain, happy and shivering, battling with his desire to just turn around and head home in order to enjoy the water, plant barley and wait for the harvest. He longed to be able to return and enjoy with his own people this gift of water that the marvellous Allah had sent them, which may well have been a message to him, a warning that he should have remained with his people and ignored the insult. But for Gazel, not even all the rain from that immense cloud could wash away the gravity of such an offence.

  Gazel was a Targui, unfortunately for him perhaps and the last of the real Tuareg people of the plains, so for that reason alone his honour would never allow him to forget that a defenceless man had been murdered under his roof and another, his guest, been forcefully removed.

  So, once the cloud had moved south and the afternoon sun had dried his body and clothes, he dressed again, mounted his camel and set off on his journey, turning his back on the water and the rain; on life and hope; on something that only a few days ago would have warmed his heart and the hearts of those around him.

  When night fell he found a small dune and made a hole in it by pushing aside the still damp sand, then covered himself up with dry sand in the knowledge that dawn would bring a frost to the plains and that the wind would turn the water pools on the rocks and tumbleweed, to ice.

  The temperature in the desert can vary by as much as fifty degrees, from its maximum at midday to its minimum just before dawn. Gazel knew from experience that the cold could sink into the bones of the unsuspecting traveller, seizing up his joints and making them so painful that they eventually stopped working.

  Three hunters had been found frozen on the stony plains in the Huaila foothills and Gazel could still picture their bodies, pressed close together, joined in death, during that same cold winter when tuberculosis had taken their little Bishra away from them. They had almost appeared to be smiling as the sun had dried their bodies and with the process of dehydration, their skin had taken on a strange, leathery appearance, while their teeth had shone brilliantly.

  This was a cruel land, in which man could die of either heat or cold in the space of only a few hours and where a camel might search for water without luck for days, only to drown, unsuspectingly, in a well one morning.

  A cruel land, without doubt, but Gazel could not imagine living anywhere else. He would never have swapped the thirst, the heat and the cold of his inhospitable land without frontiers, for the comforts and limitations of other worlds without horizons. During his daily prayers, with his face turned east to Mecca, he would always give thanks to Allah for allowing him to live there and for belonging to the blessed race of the veil, spear and sword men.

  As he slept he yearned for Laila and when he awoke the hard body of the woman that had pushed against him in his sleep, became nothing more than the soft sand that now slipped through his fingers.

  The wind cried out at the hunting hour.

  He looked up at the stars to gauge how long it would be before the light erased them from the firmament. He called out to the night and his mehari, who was drinking from the damp bushes, answered him with a soft bellow. He saddled up and set off once again and by mid afternoon he could just make out in the distance, five dark smudges on the stony plains. It was Mubarrak-ben-Sad’s settlement, the Imohag of the spear people, the man who had shown the soldiers the way to his jaima.

  He said his prayers and then sat down on a smooth rock in order to think through the events that had altered his destiny so cruelly. As he sat there, lost in his black thoughts, he realised that this was the last night of his life that he would sleep in peace.

  The following dawn he would be forced to open the lid on the elgebira of wars, on revenge and hate, and no one could say how much violence it would unleash or how many deaths might follow on from this one act of revenge.

  He also tried to understand what on earth had prompted Mubarrak to break with the most sacred of Targui traditions, but he could not. He was a desert guide, a good guide without doubt, but a Targui guide was only supposed to guide caravans, track down prey, or aid the French on their stra
nge expeditions in search of their ancestors’ relics. A Targui never had the right, under any circumstances, to enter another Imohag’s territory without permission and even less so when he was guiding foreigners, who were themselves ignorant of these ancient traditions.

  On that same dawn, when Mubarrak-ben-Sad opened his eyes, a shiver ran down his back as the terror that had consumed him in his sleep now troubled him at the waking hour and he instinctively turned his face towards the entrance of his sheriba, fearful of, but almost resigned to what he would see there.

  His fears were confirmed as standing there, some thirty meters away, gripping the hilt of his long takuba that he had thrust into the ground, was Gazel Sayah, noble inmouchar of the Kel-Talgimus, waiting for him, ready to call him to account for his actions.

  He picked up his sword and moved forward slowly, proud and dignified, stopping some five paces away from Gazel.

  ‘Metulem, metulem,’ he said, using their preferred form greeting.

  He did not receive an answer and neither had he expected one.

  He did, however, expect the to hear the question:

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘The captain of the military outpost at Adoras made me.’

  ‘Nobody can make a Targui do something against his wishes.’

  ‘I’ve been working for them for three years now. I could not say no. I am the government’s official guide.’

  ‘You swore, as I did, never to work for the French.’