Tuareg

The sergeant shook his head once again: ‘Nobody is taking water from this well, nor anyone else for five hundred kilometers around, until we find out where Gazel Sayah’s family is hiding.’

The old man shrugged his shoulders, powerless to help them: ‘They went. They took down their camp and left. How would we know where they went?’

‘The Tauregs always know everything that goes on in the desert. They’ll get to hear if a camel dies or a goat is sick. I’ve no idea how, but that’s how it is. You must think I’m stupid if you think I’m going to believe that a whole family, with their jaimas, animals, children and slaves could just move from one end of an area to the other without anyone knowing where they’d gone to.’

‘They just left.’

‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you’ll just have to find out, that is if you want more water.’

‘My animals will all die. My family too.’

‘That is not my problem,’ he said, pointing an accusatory finger at him and poking him in the chest, almost provoking the old man to pull out his dagger. ‘One of your men,’ he continued, ‘a filthy murderer, has killed many soldiers. Soldiers who protected us from bandits; who looked for water and dug wells and kept areas free of sand; men who went in pursuit of caravans when they were lost, risking their lives in the desert.’ He shook his head over and over again. ‘No. You will not have access to this water until Gazel Sayah is found.’

‘Gazel is not with his family.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because otherwise you wouldn’t have gone looking for him in the “lost land” of Tikdabra.’

‘We could be wrong. And if we don’t find him some time soon he’s sure to go back to his own people.’ His tone of voice suddenly softened as he tried to take a more conciliatory line: ‘We don’t want to hurt his family. We have nothing against his wife and children. We only want him and we will wait for him. Sooner or later he will turn up.’

The old man shook his head.

‘He will never turn up. Not if you are anywhere near, because he knows the desert better than anyone else.’ He paused. ‘And neither is it honourable for warriors or soldiers to mix women and children up in men’s battles. That is a rule of thumb as old as the universe.’

‘Listen to me old man!’ he said in a voice that had become clipped and threatening once again. ‘I haven’t come here for a lesson in morality. That bastard murdered a captain under my very nose, kidnapped the governor, slit the throat of a load of sleeping boys and I am quite certain, he thinks he can take our whole country for a merry ride. And that is simply not the case. So you have to choose.’

The old man got up and walked over to the edge of the well without saying anything. He had not taken more than five steps before Malik shouted: ‘And don’t forget that my men need to eat. We will sacrifice one of your camels every day and you can pass the bill onto our new governor in El-Akab!’

The old man stopped for a second, but did not turn around and then continued slowly back over to his children and his animals.

Malik looked over to the black soldier.

‘Ali!’

The man who had been summoned, hurried over:

‘Yes, sergeant?’

‘You’re black, like his stupid slaves. He won’t tell me anything because he’s a Targui and believes his honour will be stained forever, but the Aklis are more likely to talk. They like to tell you what they know and some of them will be open to a bit of money and that’ll get their master off the hook.’ He paused briefly. ‘Take them some water and food tonight and act like you’re one of them — solidarity between black brothers and all that — then try and get the information we need.’

‘If they think I’m acting as a spy, those Tuaregs will slit my throat.’

‘But if they don’t, you’ll be promoted to corporal.’ He stuffed a bundle of crumpled notes into his hand. ‘Win them over with these.’

Sergeant Malik-el-Haideri knew the Tuaregs well and he knew their slaves too. He had only just drifted off to sleep when he heard footsteps outside his tent.

‘Sergeant!’

He poked his head out and was not surprised to see a smiling black face in front of him:

‘In the guelta of the Huaila mountains. Next to Ahmed-el-Ainin’s tomb, the marabout.’

‘Do you know where that is?’

‘Not exactly, but they told me how to get there.’

‘Is it far?’

‘A day and a half’s journey.’

‘Let the corporal know. We’ll leave at dawn.’

The black man smiled proudly: ‘I am the corporal now,’ he reminded him. ‘Lance corporal.’

Malik smiled back.

‘You’re right. You are now lance corporal. Make sure that everything’s set by the time the sun comes out…and bring me some tea fifteen minutes beforehand.’

The pilot shook his head again.

‘Listen, lieutenant,’ he repeated. ‘We’ve flown over those dunes at less than one hundred metres. We could have made out a rat from that height, if there were any rats in that accursed place. But there was nothing. Nothing!’ he insisted. ‘Do you have any idea the kind of tracks that four camels leave in the sand? If they’d been there we’d have seen them.’

‘Not if it’s a Targui leading those camels,’ Razman replied knowingly. ‘Especially this particular Targui. He wouldn’t let them march in single file, otherwise they’d leave a visible path. He’d make sure they walked four abreast so that their feet wouldn’t sink down into the hard sand of the dunes. If the sand was soft, their tracks would be erased by the wind in under an hour.’ He paused, while they all watched him expectantly. ‘The Tuaregs travel at night and stop at dawn. You’re never out before eight in the morning, which means you get there around midday. By that time all of their tracks have already been erased.’

‘But what about them? Where could four camels and a man possibly hide?’

‘Oh come on captain!’ he exclaimed, gesticulating with open arms. ‘You’ve flown over these dunes every day. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of dunes! Do you not think an entire army could camouflage themselves in that landscape? A small hollow, a clear, coloured piece of fabric covered with a bit of sand and you’re laughing… ’

‘Alright,’ the pilot who had spoken first, conceded. ‘You may be right, but what are we going to do now? Go back and carry on wasting time and petrol? We’ll never find him,’ he insisted. ‘We’ll never find him!’

Lieutenant Razman shook his head and signalled with his hands for them to calm down as he went over to the large map of the region that was pasted on to the wall of the hanger.

‘No.’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go back to the erg but to the actual “lost land.” If my calculations are correct they must have reached the plain already. Could you land there?’ The two men looked at each other, clearly horrified with his proposal.

‘Do you have any idea what the temperature on the plain is?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘The sand can get as hot as eighty degrees centigrade at midday.’

‘So do you know what that means for these old planes that are as badly maintained as ours? Motor cooling problems, turbulence, unseen pockets of uncontrollable air and above all ignition. We could land, of course, but we’d take the risk of not being able to take off again, or the possibility that it might just explode once we managed to make contact.’ He made a gesture with his hand that indicated his decision was final. ‘I won’t do it.’

It was clear that his companion shared the same point of view. But Razman insisted:

‘Even if the order came from higher up?’ He lowered his voice instinctively. ‘Do you know who we’re looking for here?’

‘Yes,’ the more talkative of the two said. ‘We’ve heard rumours, but these are political issues, things that we, the military, shouldn’t get mixed up in.’ He paused and pointed to the map with a wide sweep of his hand.

‘If I was ordered to land somewhere in the desert because we were at war and the enemy had invaded us, we would land without question. But we won’t do it just to hunt down Abdul-el-Kebir, because he would never have asked us to do the same.’

Lieutenant Razman stiffened and without being able to help it, looked over at the mechanics that were toiling away to put a plane together on the other side of the wide hanger. Then lowering his voice he warned:

‘What you just said is dangerous.’

‘I know,’ the pilot replied. ‘But I think that after so many years it’s time we started to say what we really think. If you don’t catch him in Tikdabra, and I can’t imagine that you will, Abdul-el-Kebir will return very soon and the time will come when everyone will be forced to justify their positions.’

‘So you’re saying that you’re pleased you didn’t find him.’

‘My mission was to look for him and I looked for him as hard as I could. It’s not my fault that we didn’t find him. Deep down it makes me scared to think of what might happen. With Abdul at large the country will be divided, there will be confrontations and maybe civil war. Nobody wants that for their own people.’

As he left the hanger to go back to his billet, Razman considered the pilot’s words and for the first time realised that the most horrific outcome of all this could indeed be civil war. It would probably lead to a confrontation between two factions of the same people, divided by one man: Abdul-el-Kebir.

After more than a century of colonialism its people were not divided into very clearly determined social classes: the rich being very rich, the poor very poor. But the nation did not mirror the classic pattern of a developed country either, with capitalists on the one side and the proletariat on the other, both facing death in a hopeless struggle for the supremacy of their ideals. With an illiteracy rate of seventy percent and a long tradition of being oppressed, it was still only a man’s charisma and his rousing words that would move the people to stand up and take action.

And on that level, Razman knew, Abdul-el-Kebir would win hands down thanks to his noble, open face that inspired confidence and his eloquent words that would make people follow him to the end of the earth if he told them to. After all, he had fulfilled his initial promise and freed them from colonialism.

Lying down on his bed, looking at the whirring blades of the old ventilator that did not, despite its grand efforts, manage to cool the air, he asked himself what side he would take when the time of reckoning came.

He remembered Abdul-el-Kebir from his childhood and when he had been his hero and the walls of his bedroom had been covered with posters of him. Then he thought back to the governor Hassan-ben-Koufra and all the others that made up that group and he realised that he had made a personal decision on that matter long ago.

Then he thought about the Targui; that strange man who had overcome thirst and death and who had blatantly laughed at him and he tried to imagine where he was now, what he was doing at that precise moment and what he talked about with Abdul, once they had stopped walking and laid down to rest, exhausted by their long journey.

‘I don’t know why I’m chasing them,’ he said to himself. ‘If deep down I would rather be on the run with them.’