Tuareg

He sensed, before he was able to see them, a herd of antelopes in the distance, and he suddenly become aware of how hungry he was.

He had been so worried about his confrontation with Mubarrak that he had only eaten handfuls of millet flour and dates over the last few days, but now his belly ached for a piece of meat, cooked slowly over a fire.

He approached the edge of the grara slowly, leading his camel by the halter, making sure the wind did not carry his scent over to the beasts that he imagined to be grazing on some patches of stubby vegetation growing there in the hollow, which may have once been a pool or small stream and where there were probably still a few patches of slightly damp earth.

A few diffident tamarisks and half a dozen dwarf acacias sprouted here and there and he saw that his hunter instinct had served him well once again. There below him, grazing or basking in the mid afternoon sun, was a family of beautiful, long-horned, reddish-coloured animals, simply waiting to be preyed upon.

He set up his rifle, only loading one bullet in order to avoid the temptation of making a desperate second attempt, once the agile beasts had already started to flee. Gazel knew from experience that this second shot, which was usually a chance shot, rarely hit its target and was simply a waste, especially when ammunition in the desert was as rare, but as vital to survival as water itself.

He let go of the mehari, who started to graze straight away, oblivious to anything but his food, which was succulent and tasty after the rains. Gazel moved forward silently, almost on all fours, moving swiftly from behind a rock to the twisted trunk of a small bush, then from a small dune to another bush, until finally stopping on a small stone mound, from where he could clearly observe the slender silhouette of a great stag that was grazing in the midst of the herd, some thirty meters away.

‘When you kill a stag, a younger member of the herd will soon takes its place and mate with the females,’ his father had told him. ‘When you kill a female you are also killing her children and their children, who you need to feed your children with and the children of you children.’

He got his weapon ready and carefully aimed it at its front shoulder blade, level with its heart. From that distance a shot to the head would have been much more effective, but Gazel, being a good Muslim, could only eat meat from an animal that had had its throat cut whilst facing Mecca and accompanied by the correct prayers, as laid down by the prophet. To kill an antelope there and then would have meant leaving it to waste, when it was much better to run the risk of the animal fleeing wounded, since it was unlikely to get very far with a bullet in its lungs.

The wind suddenly picked up and the animal lifted his head and sniffed the air anxiously. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, but was probably no more than a few minutes, he glanced round at the herd to check for danger before lowering its head once again to graze on the tamarisk.

Once he was certain that he could not fail and that his prey was not going to jump or move unexpectedly, Gazel pulled back the trigger gently. The bullet sliced through the air with a shrill whistle and the antelope fell to its knees as if its legs had been chopped off, or the ground, as if by magic, had suddenly risen up beneath it.

The females looked up at him but remained unperturbed, because although the shot had reverberated through the air, they did not associate the noise with danger or death and it was only when they saw a man running towards them waving a knife, his robes billowing out on either side of him, that they took flight and scampered back onto the plains, disappearing quickly out of sight.

Gazel went over to the wounded animal that was struggling to stand up and follow his family, but something inside had already snapped and its body was no longer obeying its brain.

Only its enormous and innocent eyes reflected the magnitude of its anguish as the Targui grabbed it by the antlers, pulled its head to face Mecca and slit its throat with a sharp dagger, in one clean movement.

Blood came gushing out, spilling over his sandals and splashing his djelabba, but Gazel was oblivious to it, caught up in the moment and satisfied that his aim had been such an excellent one again, having shot his prey in exactly the right place.

He was still eating as night fell, but asleep before the first stars appeared in the sky, sheltered from the wind under a bush, his back warmed by the fire’s dying embers.

The jackals and the mocking call of the hyenas woke him up as they gathered round to claim the dead antelope, so he stoked up the fire until they withdrew back into the shadows. Then he lay there, looking at the sky, listening to the wind as it picked up and meditating on the fact that he had killed a man that day — the first time he had killed a human being in his life — which he knew meant that his own life would never be the same again.

He did not feel guilty about it because he considered his cause to be a just one, but he was concerned that it might unleash a war between the tribes, of the kind that he had heard so much about from his forefathers. A war that could spiral into a senseless massacre, where nobody knew why anyone was killing anyone or indeed what had started it all in the first place. The Tuareg, the few Imohags that remained wandering through the desert’s confines, still faithful to their traditions and laws, were simply not in a position to defend themselves from this type of warfare, struggling as they were to protect themselves from the advances of civilisation alone.

He remembered the strange sensation that had passed through his body as the sword had softly entered Mubarrak’s stomach and he could still hear the hoarse death rattle that had escaped from the back of his throat at that very same moment. As he had brought his arm back out, it was as if he had been carrying the life of his enemy on the end of his tabuka and he was already scared of having to use his sword against anyone again. He hurriedly reminded himself of the dry crack of the shot that had killed his sleeping guest and consoled himself with the fact that those men had committed an unpardonable crime.

It dawned on him that while injustice was bitter, it was an equally bitter experience having to right that wrong, because he had not taken any pleasure in killing Mubarrak. In fact, it had simply left him with a deeply unpleasant feeling of emptiness afterwards and just as Suilem had warned, his act of revenge had not brought back the dead.

Why, he wondered, was this unwritten law of hospitality that the Tuaregs put before all other laws so important — more important even than the laws of the Koran. He tried to imagine what kind of a place the desert would be if the traveller could not rely on their hospitality, on the help and respect that would be given to them whilst in their care.

According to legend, there were once two men who hated each other so much that one day the weakest of the two turned up at his enemy’s jaima, asking for hospitality. In respect of their deep tradition, the Targui accepted his guest and offered him protection until finally, after some months, he tired of looking after him and giving him food and promised him that if he went on his way he would never try to kill him again. That was many years ago, but the Tuaregs have used this same method ever since to resolve their differences and put an end to their quarrels.

How would he have reacted if Mubarrak had come to his settlement to ask for his hospitality and to beg forgiveness?

He would never know the answer to that, but he would probably have behaved as the Targui did in the legend, otherwise he would only have ended up committing a crime in order to punish someone for having committed that very same crime.

As the jet planes roared through the high desert skies and the lorries hurtled along its well-trodden tracks, pushing his people back into the remotest corners of the plains, it was hard to say for how much longer they would manage to resist their relentless advances. What he could say with confidence, however, was that while one of them remained on those sands, even if the rest of the infinite and stony plains were devoid of life and the hamada devoid of its horizons, the laws of hospitality would remain sacred, otherwise no traveller would ever dare to cross the desert again.

Mubarrak’s crime was unforgivable and he Gazel Sayah would take it upon himself to make those men that were not of the Tuareg people, aware that in the Sahara the rules of his race must continue to be respected. Those laws and customs had been created to suit an environment that had to be respected. They were intrinsic modes of behaviour that had been created to ensure their survival.

The wind picked up as dawn broke. The hyenas and jackals, having lost all hope of getting even the smallest morsel of the dead antelope, skulked off to their dark habitats, growling at their misfortune, joined by all the other creatures of the night: the long-eared fennecs, the desert rats, snakes, hares and foxes. As the sun started to heat up the land, these creatures would be asleep, conserving their energy until the shadows of the night returned to make their lives bearable once again. It was the law of nature that there, in that most desolate place on the planet, in contrast to the rest of the world, all activity was carried out by night, while the day was for sleeping.

Only man, despite the passage of time, had not managed to completely adapt to this nocturnal existence, and for that reason, at the first sign of light, Gazel found his camel, grazing about one kilometre away, took him by the halter and set off unhurriedly towards the east.