Tuareg

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.

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.