Tuareg

He did not stop walking for the entire night, guiding his mount by the reins to the light of a half moon and thousands of stars that meant he could just make out the profile of the dunes and the sinuous contours of the paths that wound between them. He followed the gassis, tracks formed by capricious winds, which often, without warning, would suddenly disappear, forcing them to struggle back up on to the soft sand of a dune. As they climbed back up they would stumble and fall in the loose sand, the mehari snorting and pulling at the reins, in protest of their uncomfortable journey at a time when, by rights, it should have been resting or grazing peacefully on the plains.

They would only rest for a few minutes at a time, until they finally reached the erg, which suddenly opened up before them, infinite and flat, without horizon. The empty terrain was made up of black stones, cracked by the sun and a coarse sand, almost like gravel that the winds did not disturb apart from when they blew furiously during one of the big storms.

Gazel knew that from that point on he would no longer see any bushes, or grara, not even a dried up river bed, all the things you would see so frequently in the hamada. The monotonous terrain would be broken up only by the odd depression in the ground, caused by a salt pan with deep sides, in a landscape where a rider and his mount would stand out like a sore thumb.

But Gazel also knew that no other camel could compete with his mehari on that terrain, with its thousands of pointy, sharp rocks, some of which were as high as half a meter, making it impossible for any type of motorized vehicle to drive through it.

And unless he was very much mistaken, the soldiers, when they came in search of him, would come in jeeps and vans and not being desert people they were neither used to long journeys, nor to swaying from side to side on a camel for days on end.

By dawn he was already far away from the dunes, which were now just a vague and winding line on the horizon and he guessed that the soldiers would just be setting off. It would take them at least two hours on the road that they had opened through the sand before they would reach the plains, some way to the west from his current position and even if one of the vehicles went straight for the erg, it would still not reach the edges of it until late morning, when the sun would already be high in the sky.

This, he calculated, gave him some breathing space, so he got down from the camel, lit a small fire and cooked the scant remains of the antelope that had already started to rot and said his morning prayers, his face to Mecca, towards the east, the direction from which his enemies would arrive. After having eaten heartily, he covered up the remains of the fire and grabbing the reins of his mount, started off on his journey once again, the sun already beating down on his back.

He headed due west, moving further away from Adoras and the land he was familiar with. His destination was El-Akab, which was north, but Gazel was a Targui, a man of the desert, so time, the hours, the days, even the months, were of little importance to him. He knew where El-Akab was and that it had been there for hundreds of years and would still be there long after he and even his grandchildren had been forgotten. He would have time to retrace his steps once the impatient soldiers got tired of looking for him.

‘Right now they are furious,’ he said out loud.

‘But in a month they will have forgotten that I ever even existed.’

As midday approached he stopped and made the mehari kneel down into a small dip. He surrounded it with stones, stuck his rifle and sword into it and stretched a blanket over them to create some shade that was so essential at that time of day. Then he curled up underneath it and a minute later was fast asleep and invisible to anyone that was more than two hundred meters away.

He woke up with the sun hitting his face at an angle as it disappeared beneath the horizon. He peered out between the rocks and saw a small column of dust rising into the sky. It was coming from a vehicle that was making its way slowly to the edges of the plain, crawling along tentatively, as if afraid to lose the protection of the dunes and enter into the inhospitable immensity of the erg.

Sergeant Major Malik stopped the vehicle, switched off his radio and took in the never-ending plain before him slowly. It was as if some giant hand had planted thousands of sharp, black, pointed rocks all over it. Rocks that were capable of ripping a tyre to shreds or even blowing up a crankshaft if one was careless enough.

‘I bet that son of a bitch is out there somewhere,’ he said, lighting a cigarette nonchalantly. He then held out his hand without looking round and Ali, the black man gave him the microphone.

‘Officer!’ he called. ‘Can you hear me?’

A very distant voice answered: ‘I can hear you sergeant. Have you found anything?’

‘Nothing. And you?’

‘Not a trace.’

‘Have you made contact with Almarik?’

‘A while ago sergeant. He hasn’t seen anything either. I’ve sent him in search of Mubarrak. He should hopefully arrive at his settlement tonight. He’s going to call me at seven.’

‘Alright,’ he replied. ‘Call me once you’ve made contact with him. Over and out.’

He put the microphone back, stood up on his seat, picked up his binoculars and searched the stony plains once again. He then jumped out of his car bad-temperedly and urinated with his back to the men, who took the opportunity to do the same.

‘I’d have gone into that hell hole if I were him,’ he muttered out loud. ‘It’s much quicker in there and he can travel through the night as well, while our vehicles would just fall apart.’ He zipped up his fly, picked up his cigarette that he had left on the bonnet of the jeep and dragged hard. ‘If we just had some idea where he was headed…’

‘Maybe he’s headed home,’ Ali suggested. ‘But that’s the opposite direction, towards the southeast.’

‘Home!’ he growled sarcastically. ‘Since when have these bastard sons of the wind ever had a home? The first thing they do at the remotest sign of danger is move their settlement and relocate their families to an even more remote spot, thousands of miles away.’

‘No,’ he shook his head resolutely. ‘This Targui’s home is wherever his camel is, which could be anywhere from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea. That is the advantage he has over us: he doesn’t need anything, or anybody.’

‘What are we going to do then?’

He looked at the sinking sun and the sky that was stained with red and shook his head despondently.

‘We won’t do anything right now,’ he said.

‘Set up camp and make the evening meal. A man on guard at all times and if he falls asleep I’ll shoot him there and then. Is that clear?’

He did not wait for a reply. He took a map out of the glove compartment, spread it out on the car and studied it carefully. He knew he could not trust it. The dunes shifted constantly, paths disappeared underneath the sand, the wells closed up and he also knew, from his own experience, that whoever had drawn up the map had never actually been into the erg itself, but drawn the lines using a bit of guess work and could easily have been a few hundred kilometers out. At the time of reckoning those one hundred kilometers could mean the difference between life and death, especially if your jeep had broken down and you were forced to continue on foot.

For a fleeting moment he was tempted to pack it all in and order a return to the outpost, because at the end of the day the captain had deserved his end. Had he not met the Targui he might have done just that and sent in a report, case closed. But he had been personally offended by the Targui, ridiculed even. He had been used by a shabby son of the wind who had purposefully deceived him and who must have been laughing under his filthy djelabba all the while they had spoken together about that crazy lost caravan and its treasures.

He had even helped him tie up the camel’s load, ensuring he had sufficient water and that he was well set up for a long journey, when in reality all he was planning to do was hide behind a dune for a while and return that very same day. He peered over at the endless plains once again, which had become a grey smudge, stretching out before him. ‘If I catch you,’ he muttered to himself, ‘I’ll skin you alive, I swear.’

He said his afternoon prayers, threw a small leather bag that contained a handful of dates over his shoulder and munching on them slowly, took off once again. He continued to head west, accompanied only by the shadows that emerged as night fell, well aware that if he were to walk all night, at an average speed, he could put a crucial distance in between his pursuers and him.

The camel, having drunk enough water and rested sufficiently, was full and strong, his hump rounded and shiny, which meant that he had enough reserves to keep going for a week at that pace. A beast like that could lose up to one hundred kilos in weight before it would start to feel uncomfortable.

Gazel was used to going out on long hunting treks, so this journey was not unlike any other outing for him, when he would go in search of a wounded animal or a beautiful herd of animals on the move. He liked it out there, alone in the desert, it was the life he truly loved and although he would think of his family from time to time and at night, or when heat of the afternoon pressed down on him and he would miss Laila. He also knew that he could overcome that emotion for as long as it was necessary or for as long as it took to fulfil the task he had set himself, which in this case was to avenge the insult that had been laid upon him.

He was happy when the moon came out later to light the way and at midnight he could make out in the distance the silver reflection of a sebhka, a huge saltpan that, as he got closer, opened up before him like a petrified sea, without end.

He started to head north, edging round it and making sure to keep a certain distance because on the marshy, muddy shores of those lakes, billions of mosquitoes would gather in large clouds during the afternoons or at dawn, blocking out the sun and making it impossible for man or beast to get anywhere near the saltpan. Gazel had seen camels go crazy with pain from the mosquitoes as they attacked their eyes and mouths and he had watched as they ran off, shaking off their load and their riders, never to be seen again.

You could only approach the sebhkas during the day, when the sun was high enough to fry the wings of any mosquito that dared take to the air. At this time of day they just disappeared, as if they had never existed, as if this terrible punishment that Allah had sent down to the desert people, who had already been punished a thousand times over, had simply been a figment of their imagination.

Gazel had not been to that particular salt lake, but he had heard other travellers talk about it and he could see nothing remarkable about it, except perhaps in terms of its size, from all the others that he had come across in his lifetime.

Many, many years ago when the sea, that is now the Sahara, withdrew, it left behind it pools like this one, which later dried up, slowly creating layers of salt, sometimes several meters thick in their centre. When it rained, an underground stream of saltpetrous water would feed into them, turning the banks into damp, spongy, sand mounds that the sun’s harsh rays would dry into a hard crust, like a piece of bread, fresh from the oven. These crusts were treacherous and could cave in at any time underfoot, throwing the victim into a quagmire that looked like half-melted butter, then slowly swallowing him up. They were even more dangerous than the “fesh-hesh” sand, a type of quicksand that rider and camel could fall into and disappear, in a matter of seconds

The unpredictable “fesh-fesh” scared Gazel because there was never any warning, although at least, Gazel reflected, they finished off their victims quickly. By contrast, the moving sand found at the edges of the saltpans would ensnare its prisoners like flies in honey, drowning them slowly, with no means of escape, in the most agonising way imaginable.

Bearing these dangers in mind, he advanced slowly north, circling the white and seemingly edgeless area, conscious that this was another barrier between him and his pursuers that nature had provided them with, as the lake would be sure to swallow up any vehicle that dared to enter it.

‘Mubarrak is dead. That bastard killed him with his sword. Almarik said it was a clean duel and that the Sal would not initiate a tribal war because of it. They consider it a closed chapter.’

‘Unfortunately we cannot do the same. Keep your eyes peeled until you receive further orders.’

‘Roger, sergeant. Over and out.’

Malik turned to the black man.

‘We need to speak with the Tidiken outpost. Get me Lieutenant Razman. Tell me when you get through.’

He walked off into the night, contemplating the stars and the moon and the high dunes that threw out long, golden shadows behind them. He realised that despite the fact that the days ahead of him would be incredibly tough, he was happy to be there, on the edge of the erg, in pursuit of a man who knew the desert intimately and who would play a hard game of cat and mouse with them. But he was on the trail of someone and this alone made him feel alive again. He felt active and young, just as he had been in the days when he would lie in wait at the edges of the Kasbah for French officials to pass by, only to stick a knife in their belly and run away, back into the quarter’s myriad of windy alleyways; or when he had thrown a bomb into a café in the European quarter, on the day that they had declared open warfare, certain that victory was within their grasp.

That had been a wonderful life, full and exciting, so different from the monotony of life in the barracks after independence, and so different to the horror of his exile in Adoras and his useless, eternal struggle against the invading sands.

‘I want to catch that dirty Targui,’ he said. ‘And I want him alive so that I can rip off his veil and see his face and make him realise that I’ll be the one to have the last laugh.’

He had spent a whole night tossing and turning on the hard straw mattress, dreaming about accompanying him to the “Lost Land” in search of the “great caravan,” imagining the adventures they would have together. He had been excited by the prospect of spending time with a Targui and by the things he could have taught a man like him, a Targui who had crossed the “lost land” not once, but twice. In that one night the Targui had become his friend, he had given him hope of a future once again and then in the space of just a few hours, that very same man had dashed his dreams twice over, refusing to take him with him, then slitting the throat of his captain who he had just convinced to let him go.

No. That son of wind was going to pay for it with his life.

‘Sergeant! The lieutenant’s on the line.’

He ran over.

‘Lieutenant Razman?’

‘Yes, sergeant. Have you caught the Targui yet?’

‘Not yet, lieutenant. But I think he’s crossing the erg south of Tidiken… If you send in your men they could cut him short before he gets to the Sidi-el-Madia mountains…”

There was a silence. Then the lieutenant’s voice finally came through, his tone cautious.

‘But that’s about two hundred kilometers from here, sergeant…’

‘I know,’ he admitted. ‘But if he gets into the Sidi-el-Madia then we’ve lost him for sure. Not all the armies in the world could catch him there. It’s a labyrinth.’

Lieutenant Razman thought for a minute before replying. He despised Sergeant Malik as much as he had despised Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi, whose death he had celebrated. In fact he disliked anyone who ended up at Adoras, they were the dregs of an army that he wanted to be an honourable and upstanding unit and that scumbag Malik had no place in it, not even to keep that godforsaken outpost up and running.

If a Targui had been brave enough to go into that hellhole, kill a captain and disappear into thin air, then deep down he was on his side, whatever the reason behind his actions. But he also realised that the honour of the army was at stake and if he refused to help and the Targui escaped, the sergeant would make sure in his report that he was the one that took the blame for it before his superiors.

In two years time he would be promoted to captain making him the highest authority in the region. If he managed to capture the murderer of an official — however much of a scumbag he might have been in real life- his promotion might well be fasttracked. He sighed and nodded his head as if the other man could see him.

‘Alright, sergeant,’ he said finally. ‘We’ll leave at dawn. Over and out.’

He put the microphone down onto the table, switched it off and sat there very still, contemplating the transmitter as if it might provide him with the answer to his questions.

Souad’s voice brought him back to reality.

‘You don’t like this mission do you?’ she asked from the kitchen, barely lifting her head up.

‘No, not really,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t set out to be a policeman, or to pursue a man through the desert just because he did something that, according to his laws, was the right thing to do.’

‘That is no longer the law and you know it,’ she said pointedly, sitting down at the other end of the long table. ‘We are a modern and independent country and we are all now equal. What would become of us if we all went about according to our own rules? The country would be ungovernable. How can you reconcile the customs of the people from the coast or from the mountains with those of the Bedouins or the Tuareg from the desert? You have to start with a clean slate in order for a common legislation to be set down or we go to the dogs. Do you not see that?’

‘Yes, if you’ve studied in a military academy like I did or in a French university as you did.’ He paused to take down a curved pipe from the dozen or so that were hanging from a wooden shelf and started to fill it up calmly. ‘But I doubt that someone who has spent their entire life in the furthest confines of the desert would understand that, unless we’d bothered to go and tell him that the situation had changed. Do we have the right to make him accept, overnight, that his way of life, the lives of his parents and their ancestors for over two thousand years are no longer valid? And why? What have we given them in exchange?’

‘Freedom.’

‘Is freedom the right to force your way into someone’s house, kill their guest and take the other one away?’ he said in a tone of astonishment. ‘You’re talking about the kind of freedom you might hear a student on campus discussing in a bar, not the kind a man who has always considered himself to be free anyway might think about it. He doesn’t care whether it’s the French in government, the fascists or the communists in power… Even Colonel Duperey, who despite being a “colonist” would have had much more respect for the Targui’s traditions than that pig Captain Kaleb has, despite everything he did during the fight for independence.’

‘You can’t use Kaleb as an example. He was a loser.’

‘But it’s these types of wasters that they send in to deal with the purest people of our race, people who we should be protecting as living proof of the best examples of our history and our people. Now it’s the likes of Kaleb and Malik and the governor Ben-Koufra that rule the desert, compared with the French, who always put their best officials in charge here.’

‘Not everyone was like Colonel Duperey and you know that. Have you forgotten the Foreign Legion and its murderers? They also wreaked havoc with the tribes, decimating many of them, stealing their wells and their pastures and pushing them out onto the stony plains.’

Lieutenant Razman lit his pipe, glanced over to the kitchen and remarked:

‘You’re burning the meat. No…’ he said and then added: ‘I haven’t forgotten the brutality of the Legion. But it seems to me that they were only behaving like that because they were locked in a war with the rebel tribes and wouldn’t stop until they dominated them. It was their mission and they achieved it in the same way that tomorrow I will do my job and catch that Targui because he has rebelled against the established authority, whatever that might mean.’ He paused and watched her as she took the meat out of the oven and put it on to two plates, which she brought over to the table. ‘What’s the difference then? During the war we behaved like the colonists, but in peaceful times we are incapable of imitating their behaviour.’

‘You do though,’ Souad said gently, her voice brimming with love. ‘You make an effort to help them and to understand the Bedouins. You worry about their problems, you even give them your own money.’ She shook her head incredulously. ‘How much do they owe you and when will they pay it back? I haven’t seen any of your pay for months, even though we thought we’d be able to save some while we were here.’ He went to say something, but she stopped him short with her hand and continued: ‘No. I’m not complaining. I am happy with what we have. I just want you to realise that it’s not your job to figure out all of these problems. You’re only the lieutenant of an outpost that doesn’t even show up on the map. Relax and when you’re governor of a territory like Colonel Duperey was and an intimate friend of the President of the Republic, then maybe you can do something.’

‘I doubt there’ll be anything left to protect by then,’ he replied, chewing slowly on the meat, which was hard and leathery, having come from an old camel that had been sacrificed before it died naturally. ‘And we will have annihilated, in just one generation of being an independent nation everything that has been around for centuries. How will history judge us then? What will our grandchildren say when they see how we used our freedom?’ He went to say something else, but a discreet knock at the door interrupted him and he turned to face it. ‘Come in!’ he called out. Silhouetted in the doorway was the imposing figure of Sergeant Ajamuk, who stood to attention, his hand on his turban. ‘At your command lieutenant!’ he saluted. ‘Good evening ma’am,’ he added respectfully.

‘Nothing to report from the post. Did you have an order?’

‘Yes, but come in please,’ the lieutenant said.

‘We leave at dawn for the south. Nine men, in three vehicles. I’ll go in front and you remain in charge here. Get everything ready please.’

‘How long will you be away for?’

‘Five days, a week at the most. Sergeant Malik thinks that the Targui is crossing the erg and heading towards Sidi-el-Madia.’ He noticed that the other man’s expression had changed into a grimace. ‘I don’t like it either, but it’s our job.’

Sergeant Ajamuk knew his place but he also knew Lieutenant Razman well and that his opinion would be heard. ‘With all due respect, sir,’ he said. ‘We really shouldn’t get involved with that riffraff from Adoras or for that matter, their problems.’

‘They are part of the army, Ajamuk,’ he pointed out, ‘whether we like it or not. Please sit down! Won’t you have a sweet?’

‘Thank you, but I don’t want to put you out…’

Souad had already gone into the kitchen with the plates, their food only half-finished since the meat had been virtually inedible and returned with a tray of homemade sweetmeats that made the eyes of their guest widen in appreciation.

‘Go for it sergeant!’ she laughed. ‘Try them. They only came out of the oven two hours ago.’

His hand shot out towards them as if they had a life of their own.

‘Please forgive me ma’am,’ Ajamuk said. ‘My wife never manages to get them quite like this, however much she tries.’ He dug his enormous and incredibly white teeth into the almond paste and munched on it, savouring it carefully. With his mouth still full he added: ‘With your permission lieutenant, I think you should let me come with you. I know the area better than anyone else.’

‘Someone’s got to remain in charge here.’

‘Mohamed can be trusted with that. And his wife can work with the radio.’ He paused to swallow. ‘Nothing much is going to happen here.’

The lieutenant thought about it while Souad served them some hot, sweet aromatic tea. He liked the sergeant, he enjoyed his company and he knew that of all his men he was probably the only one who would be able to catch the fugitive. Maybe that was why, almost unconsciously, he had wanted to leave him behind, because deep down he was still on the Targui’s side. They looked at each other over the rims of their teacups and it was as if they had read each other’s thoughts.

‘If anyone has to catch him then it’s much better that it’s us rather than Malik. As soon as he’s got him he’ll shoot him there and then to settle the issue and make sure no one else gets involved.’

‘Do you think so too? That’s what I was afraid of.’

‘Do you think he has a brighter future then if we hand him over to the governor?

He did not receive a reply, so continued: ‘Captain Kaleb would not have dared to kill that man unless he’d had Ben-Koufra’s backing. What I find strange is that orders weren’t given to kill Abdul-el-Kebir as well.’ He turned to his wife who was giving him a stern, worried look from the kitchen and he sighed as if the subject matter suddenly tired him.

‘Ok!’ he muttered. ‘It’s not our problem. Alright…’ he finally said. ‘You come with me. Wake me up at four o’clock.’

Sergeant Ajamuk sprang up from his chair, stood to attention barely managing to hide his glee and walked towards the door. ‘Thank you lieutenant! Goodnight ma’am and thank you for the sweetmeats.’

He went out closing the door behind him. Lieutenant Razman followed him out a few minutes later and sat on the porch staring into the night and the infinite desert that stretched out before him, as far as the eye could see.

Souad came out to see him and they remained there together, in silence, enjoying the clean, fresh air after the insufferable heat of the day.

She spoke finally:

‘I don’t think you should worry. The desert is a big place. It’s quite unlikely that you’ll find him.’

‘If I do find him, maybe they’ll promote me,’ Razman said, without looking at her. ‘Did that cross your mind?’

‘Yes, it crossed my mind,’ she admitted casually.

‘And?’

‘Sooner or later you’ll get a promotion and it’s better that you achieve that for something you’re proud of rather than by playing the police dog. I’m not in a hurry, are you?’

‘I’d like to give you a better life.’

‘What’s the point of an extra star and an increase in salary when you never wear a uniform and you give most of your salary away? You’ll just end up lending more money.’

‘They might send me elsewhere. We could go back to the city. To our world.’

She chuckled as if amused by his comment.

‘Oh come on Razman. Who are you trying to kid. This is your world and you know it. You’d stay here whatever level they promote you to. And I’ll stay here with you.’

He turned round to look at her and smiled.

‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’d like to make love like we did the other day…in the dunes.’

She disappeared into the house and reappeared with a rug in her arms.