Tuareg

After they had been on the road for about three hours, he tapped

the officer’s arm lightly.

‘Stop,’ he said.

The other man did as he had asked and stopped the jeep, holding up his arm to tell the tank to stop as well.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I’ll get out here.’

‘Here?’ he said in a tone of surprise, as he looked uncertainly around him at the stony, bushy plain. ‘What are you going to do here?’

‘Head home.’ the Targui said. ‘You’re going south. My family is over there, far away, to the northwest in the Huaila mountains. It’s time I went home.’

The army man shook his head, almost as if he were unwilling to believe that he really wanted to get out there.

‘On foot and alone?’

‘Someone will sell me a camel.’

‘It’s a long journey that borders the “lost land” all the way.’

‘That’s why I have to set off as soon as possible.’

The officer turned around and nodded towards the sleeping body of Abdul-el-Kebir.

‘Aren’t you going to wait until he wakes up? He’ll want to thank you personally.’

Gazel shook his head as he got out of the jeep, taking his weapons and water gerba with him.

“He’s got nothing to thank me for.”

He paused briefly. ‘I wanted to cross the border and I’ve done that. He’s your guest now.’ He looked over at him affectionately. ‘Wish him luck from me.’

The other man realised that his decision was final and that nothing was going to persuade him otherwise.

‘Do you need anything?’ he asked.

He shook his head and pointed to the plain: ‘I’m a rich man now and there’s good hunting here. I don’t need anything.’

He stood very still as the vehicles drove passed him, heading south and only once the dust had settled and the noise of the motors had become a distant hum, did he finally take a look around him. He searched for direction, even though there did not appear to be any natural pointers on that wide and empty plain. Then set off, unhurriedly, with the air of somebody who was taking a gentle stroll in the countryside in the soft afternoon sun, taking time to admire his surroundings, to appreciate every bush, every rock, every mosquito and every slithering snake.

He had water, a good rifle and ammunition. This was his world, the heart of the desert that he loved and he was ready to enjoy the long journey ahead that would eventually take him to his wife, children, slaves, goats and camels.

A light breeze blew and as darkness fell the animals on the plain ventured out of their lairs to scamper around the low thicket. He shot a beautiful hare for his supper, which he ate by the light of a fire he had built using wood from the Tamarisk shrubs. He looked up at the stars that were gathering to keep him company and allowed wave after wave of pleasant memories to wash over him. He pictured the face and body of Laila and the smiles and games of his sons. He thought about his friend Abdul-el-Kebir’s meaningful and intelligent words and the beautiful, passionate and unforgettable adventure he had just experienced at the very threshold of his maturity. An adventure that would mark his life forever and that the old men would tell of for years to come, enthralling their listeners with the stories of his heroic deeds and the fact that he was the only man to have ever challenged an army and the “lost land” of Tikdabra, all in one go.

He would tell his nephews how he had felt on the day that he had spent with the spirits of the “great caravan” and how he had spoken to them of his fears and of how scared he was that he might die, as they had, on that plain. He would tell them of how the drowned voices of the mummies with their bony fingers, had showed him the right way and how he had carried on for three days and three nights without stopping once, since he knew that if they stopped during time, then neither himself nor the camel would have been capable of resuming their journey. Thanks to their insuperable will, they had become like automatic, mechanised beings, immune to the heat, to thirst and to fatigue and had made it out of the inferno.

Now, there he was, lying down on the white sand, feeling the sweet contact of his damp gerba filled with water under his hand, the remains of the hare still smoking next to the fire and a bag of gold hanging from his belt. He felt at peace with himself and with the universe that surrounded him, for having proved that nobody, not even the government, could get away with breaking his people’s laws and customs.

He thought about what the future might now hold for him, far away from the grazing grounds and places he had known as a child. The idea of emigrating over the border did not bother him, since the desert was the same for thousands of kilometers all around, whichever country one chose to live in. He did not worry either that someone might come and challenge his authority, or move him on from the sands, rocks and stony plains that he chose to inhabit, because he was quite aware that the number of people who chose the desert as a way of life was diminishing by the day.

He did not want any more wars or struggles and he yearned for the peace of his jaima, the long days of hunting and the beautiful evenings spent by the light of the fire listening, each one of them, to old Suilem’s stories. Those stories that he had heard as a child and that he would continue to listen to and never tire of until his faithful slave was silenced forever.

In the afternoon of the third day, he discovered an encampment of jaimas and sheribas next to a well.

They were Tuaregs, spear people, who were poor, but friendly and hospitable people. They agreed to sell him their best mehari and then sacrificed a lamb in his honour, which they added to one of the best couscous dishes he had tasted for some time and then invited him to a party the following night.

He knew that he would offend them if he turned down their offer and so he took a heavy gold coin out of the red leather bag that hung around his neck and put it down in front of him.

‘I will only attend if you let me pay for the lambs,’ he said. ‘That is my price.’

‘There aren’t many of these left,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s mostly dirty notes now, the value of which changes from day to day.’

‘Who gave that to you?’

‘An old caravan driver,’ he replied without exactly lying, or telling the truth either.

‘Have you got many of them? This is what they used to pay the guides and camel riders with,’ the other man said knowingly. ‘Did you know that?’ he said, adding later with an ironic smile: ‘I signed up with the “great caravan” but ten days later I started spitting blood so they rejected me saying that I wouldn’t make it to Tripoli.’ He shook his head as if he still found it hard to believe how fate had intervened. ‘I’ll be ninety soon,’ he continued. ‘But there’s nothing left of the “great caravan.”’

‘How did you manage to cure yourself of tuberculosis?’ Gazel asked. ‘My eldest son and my first wife both died of it.’

‘I made a pact with a butcher in Timbuctu,’ the old man said.

‘I worked for him for free for one year and in exchange he let me eat the raw humps of every camel he slaughtered,’ he said, laughing.

‘I became as fat as a barrel, but I stopped spitting blood. Almost two hundred camel humps!’ he exclaimed. ‘I haven’t gone any where near one of those damned animals ever since. I’d rather walk for three months than get up on one of those things.’

‘You’re the first Imohag I’ve ever met that’s not keen on camels,’ Gazel remarked.

‘Maybe,’ he added smiling. ‘But I’m probably the first Imohag to have survived tuberculosis.’

The beautiful girl with fine plaits, pert breasts, jewelled hands and red, painted palms, tuned the one string on her violin and plucked at it. The instrument let out a sharp wail, which sounded like both a lament and a high-pitched laugh in one. Then, looking directly at Gazel, the visitor, as if she were dedicating the story to him personally, said:

‘Allah is great. Blessed is He.’

She paused. ‘They say, although this did not happen in the land of the Imohag, or in Tekna, Marrakesh, Tunisia, Argel or Mauritania, but way over there in Arabia, near the saintly city of Mecca — which all believers must make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lifetime that a long time ago in the prosperous and populated city of Mir, the glory of Califas, there lived three cunning merchants. Now these three men had managed after many years of doing business together to amass a sizeable fortune, which, they decided, they should use to start up a new business with.

It turned out, however, that the three merchants did not trust each other and so they put their riches into one bag and gave it to the mistress of the house in which they were living, to look after, with express instructions that she should not give any of it to any one of them, unless all three of them were present.

A few days later they needed to write a business letter to the neighbouring city and were in need of a piece of parchment. So one of them said:

“I will go and ask our good woman for one, she is sure to have some.”

But when he went into the house, he asked instead for the money bag that they had given her and she said: “That I cannot do as your other friends are not present,” and even though the other insisted, she continued to say no until the cunning merchant said:

“Look out the window and you will see my companions there in the street below. I’ll go down and ask them.”

The woman did as she was told and watched as the merchant went outside and whispered to his partners:

“She has some parchment, but she does not want to give it to me unless you ask for it as well.”

Not realising that they were being tricked, they shouted up to the woman to do as he wished and so she gave him the bag and the thief fled the city.

When the men realised that they had been tricked and that the money had gone, they blamed the poor woman and took her before a magistrate in order to seek justice.

It turned out that the judge was a fair and intelligent man, who listened well to both sides of the story and then, after some deliberation said:

“I see that you have reason enough to make these demands and it is only fair that this woman returns the bag to you, or at least the value of its contents. But according to the pact that you all agreed on, it is imperative that all three of you are present when she returns it to you, so I believe that your time right now would be better spent in search of him. When you have found him, bring him here and I will make sure that the agreement is honoured.”

And justice and reason triumphed, thanks to the cunning judgment of an intelligent magistrate.

As Allah would have wished.

Blessed be his name.’

The girl played a note on the violin as if to put a full stop to the story and then, without taking her eyes off Gazel, added:

‘You, who seem to have come from such a long way away. Why don’t you tell us a story?’

Gazel looked at the group of about twenty boys and girls, all gathered around the fire, over which two, big lambs were cooking slowly, emitting a sweet and intense aroma and said:

‘What kind of story would you like to hear?’

‘Yours,’ the girl replied quickly. ‘Why are you here, alone and so far from your home? Why do you pay with these ancient coins? What mystery are you hiding? Even through your veil you can see in your eyes that you are hiding a huge secret.’

‘It is only your eyes that want to see a secret where none other than tiredness exists,’ he assured her. ‘I have made a long journey. Maybe the longest journey that anyone has ever made on this earth. I crossed the “lost land” of Tikdabra.’

The last one to have arrived at the party, a strong boy with a shaven head, a slight squint and a long scar that ran from his cheek to his throat, suddenly asked in a quivering voice:

‘Is it you, Gazel Sayah; inmouchar of the Kel-Talgimus, whose family was settled in the guelta of the Huaila mountains?’ His heart missed a beat.

‘Yes, that is I.’

‘Then I have some bad news for you,’ the boy said with a tone of regret. ‘I’ve come from the north, from tribe to tribe, from jaima to jaima,’ he continued. ‘The soldiers have taken away your wife and children. All of your own. Only the old Akli has escaped and it was he who said that they were waiting to kill you in the guelta of Huaila.’

He had to make an extreme effort to stop himself from crying out as he struggled to contain his emotions, an effort that took much more strength than anything he had had to confront whilst in the depths of the “lost land.”

‘Where have they taken them?’ he said in a voice that did not betray his panic.

‘No one knows. Maybe to El Akab. Maybe even further north, to the capital. They want to exchange them for Abdul-el-Kebir.’

The Targui got up and walked slowly over to the dunes as everybody watched in respectful silence. The cheer of the party had disintegrated and no one in the group had even noticed that one of the lambs was burning. The gri-gri of misfortune had spread through the flames of the fire and its fetid breath had dampened the suggestive looks and sparks of desire that might otherwise have led to happy unions later that evening.

Gazel collapsed onto one of the dunes in the darkness and buried his face in the sand as he struggled not to cry out loud, burying his nails in the palm of his hand until he drew blood.

He was no longer a rich man on his way to the peace of his home after a long adventure. Nor was he the hero who had rescued Abdul-el-Kebir from his enemies’ clutches and crossed the “lost land” with him, carrying him to safety across the border. All he was now was a stupid fool who had lost everything he had in the world, due to his stubborn insistence that his old fashioned laws, which no longer meant anything to anyone, be respected.

‘Laila!’

A shiver, like a river of cold ice, ran down his back as he imagined her in the hands of those men in dirty uniforms, with their thick belts and stinking, hard boots. He remembered their faces as they had pointed their guns at him at the door of his jaima and their filthy camp and the abusive way they had treated the Bedouins in El-Akab. A deep groan escaped from his lips, against his will, making him bite down hard onto the back of his hand.

‘Don’t do that. Don’t keep it in. The strongest of men have the right to weep at a moment like this.’

He lifted his face. The beautiful girl with long plaits had sat down next to him and reached out her hand to stroke his face, like a mother might do to her son.

‘It has passed,’ he said.

She shook her head firmly.

‘Do not lie to me. It has not passed… These things don’t go away. They stay buried inside, like a bullet that’s lodged itself deep within you. I know because my husband died two years ago and my hands still search for him at night.’

‘She is not dead. No one would dare do her any harm,’ he said, as if trying to convince himself. ‘She’s only a girl. God will not allow any harm to come to her.’

‘The only God that exists is the one you want to,’ she said firmly. ‘You could leave it to Him if you want. But if you have managed to cross the “lost land” of Tikdabra then you are capable of getting your family back. I am sure of that.’

‘How can I do that now,’ he said despondently. ‘You heard; they want Abdul-el-Kebir and he isn’t with me any more.’

The girl looked at him fixedly under the clear light of a full moon that had climbed high in the sky, turning night almost back into day.

‘Would you have accepted that exchange had he still been with you?’ she asked.

‘They are my children,’ came his reply. ‘My children and my wife — the only things I have in this life.’

‘You still have your pride as a Targui. I remember her. And from what I know of you, you are the proudest and bravest of us all.’ She paused. ‘Too much so, perhaps. When you warriors go off to fight, you never stop to think about what might become of us women that stay behind, who suffer the brunt of your actions but take no slice of the glory.’

She clicked her tongue as if to stop herself. ‘But I am not here to admonish you,’ she conceded. ‘Fact is fact and you had your reasons for what you did. I came, because at a time like this a man needs company. Would you like to tell me about her?’ She tilted her head to one side.

‘She’s just a girl,’ he sobbed.