Tuareg

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.’

The following night, half walking and half crawling, he managed to get to the nearest fountain, where he washed with some difficulty but succeeded in removing the bandages that had almost become part of his skin.

Four days later, anyone who had dared go into the burnt-out old church would have been horrified by the sight of a ghostly, unsteady, skeleton of a man, dragging himself up and down the nave. Gazel Sayah was making an almost superhuman effort to overcome his tiredness and nausea, to regain his balance and return to the land of the living. He knew that each step took him further away from death and a little closer to the desert that he loved so much.

He gave himself another week to fully recover his strength, until he had nothing left to eat and he knew that the time had come for him to abandon his refuge forever.

He washed his clothes and himself in the fountain, in the darkness and solitude of his quarter. Then, the following morning, when the sun was already high in the sky, he set off, with only his heavy revolver, the one that had belonged to Captain Kaleb-el-Fasi, in his leather pouch, leaving his sword and his gandurahs, that were now in rags, reluctantly behind him.

He stopped in the kasbah, where he ate until he was about to burst and drank some strong, sweet, hot, tea. He felt the strength slowly start to return to his body and he bought himself a new shirt in electric blue, which made him feel momentarily happy.

Feeling much better he set off once again, stopping only briefly to look at the steps, where he had been shot and at the marks that the bullets had made in the wall.

He came out on to the wide avenue once again and was surprised by the amount of people gathered there on the pavements and when he tried to cross over the road towards the station, a policeman in uniform stopped him:

‘You can’t cross,’ he said. ‘Wait.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the President is about to pass by.’

He did not need to see it because he could already feel its presence. The gri-gri of death was back. Where it had come from, or where it had been hiding all that time, he had no idea, but there it was, clinging to his shirt once again and laughing at him for thinking that, even for one minute, he might have been free of it.

He had forgotten about the President. He had forgotten that he had sworn to kill him if he did not return his family to him. But now, as the station appeared before him and just one hundred meters stood before him and his return to the desert, it was as if fate had come to play one last mocking hand and make fun of his good intentions. The gri-gri of death was back to play one last tragic trick on him, as it dawned in him that the man who was responsible for all of his problems, for all of his wrongdoings, from beginning to end, was about to pass by in front of him.

‘Insh.Allah!’

If that was His will, then he had to fulfil his oath to kill him. He would kill him because he, Gazel Sayah, despite being a noble Imohag from the blessed Kel-Talgimus people, could not stand in the way of the will of the heavens.

‘Insh.Allah!’

If He had decided that on this day and time, his enemy would come between him and the life he had chosen to return to once again, then it could only be because the powers from on high would have this enemy destroyed and that Gazel Sayah was the man, the chosen instrument, to make this happen.

‘Insh.Allah!’

Two motorbikes went by with their sirens on and almost simultaneously the crowds at the top of the avenue started to clap and cheer.

Oblivious to anything but his mission, the Targui put his hand into his leather pouch and felt for the handle of his weapon.

More motorcyclists, this time in formation, appeared from around the corner and then another ten meters behind them, a huge, slow, black saloon car appeared, which almost hid another open-top car behind it. In the back of that car, sat a man waving at the crowds.

The policemen struggled to hold back the cheering and clapping crowds and the women and children threw flowers and coloured paper out of the windows.

He gripped his gun tightly.

The station clock chimed twice, as if inviting him one last time to forget everything and go, but its echo was lost in the midst of the sirens, the cheers and the applause.

The Targui felt like crying, his eyes misted over and he swore out loud at the gri-gri of death. The policeman, who had his arms outstretched in front of him, turned to look at him, surprised by his words that he had not understood.

The squad of motorcycles passed by in front of them, the noise of their engines blocking out all the other noises, then the big black car and then at that moment, Gazel dropped the large leather bag, pushed the policeman sharply aside and leapt forward. In just two strides he was only three meters away from the open-top car, his revolver pointing towards it, ready to fire.

The man who had been waving to the cheering crowds saw him immediately and a look of terror crossed his face. He held up his hands to protect himself and cried out in horror.

Gazel fired three shots and was confident that the second one had gone through his heart, but looked him in the face still, just to make sure from his expression that he had died. Then he stopped, as if he had been struck by a divine ray of lightening.

A machine gun went off and Gazel Sayah, inmouchar, also known by his own people as ‘the Hunter’ fell onto his back, dead, his body destroyed and an expression of chaos on his face.

The open top car speeded up sharply, its sirens wailing in an attempt to clear the way as it sped off to hospital, in a vain attempt to save the life of President Abdul-el-Kebir, on that glorious day of his triumphant return to power.

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