Impossible Journey Read online

  ‘At least you’re getting paid for it this time,’ Marinetta said.

  ‘Gah!’ he replied. ‘Half the money you gave me in Tombouctou was taken by that policeman who introduced us. He said he had to have a cut for bringing me the work. If I had refused; he’d never have given me the transit pass for Niger. That’s Mali now. Corruption and thievery, by God!’ So intense was the mask of tragedy on his face that I almost laughed.

  ‘You can understand why he’s such a miserable old sod,’ Marinetta commented later.

  Sidi Mohammed was one of the strange, hybrid charaders created by a combination of drought and political changes in the Sahara. Born a nomad, an expert in desert ways, he had been forced to take refuge in the town, where he possessed none of the skills required for survival. ‘You can’t get anywhere in the town unless you can read and write,’ he said. ‘And even if you can read and write, they won’t give a job to a white man. When did you see a white working in an office in Tombouctou? If you did, he was only the caretaker.’

  It was an aspect of his ambivalent attitude that he wouldn’t hear of the idea of sending his children to school. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. They’ll never get a job. And, anyway, it’s not right when the government tries to take your children away. I’ve seen how they do it in Libya. By force. I don’t want my children to grow up not knowing who their father is.’

  At the same time, he had acquired a taste for some of the benefits that modern town life bestowed. He had become addicted to the radio. ‘The Bee-Bee-Cee Arabic Service,’ he said. ‘I never miss it. “This is London, and here is the news, and here are the chimes of Beeg Beyn for eight hours Greenidge Meentaym. Dong! Dong! DOOONG!” I know all the announcers by their voices, by God! “This is London, Boosh Hawse, London doobel-yew-cee-too!”’ I was touched by the revelation. I thought of how Marinetta and I had been interviewed at Bush House before leaving to Nouakchott. The mention of it by this illiterate camel man made it seem suddenly very near.

  It took us eight days to cross the Niger valley. The rains had ceased, and we were stuck in the meteorological no-man’s-land between the Saharan wet season and winter, when there is a resurgence of summer heat. For the first time, we began to feel the effects of the immense distances both before us and behind. The landscape was dreary: spiky trees, spiky grass, spiky rocks, grey stones, grey sand, undulating hills. Soon, there were no more tents or people to relieve the monotony. The sun blazed down. Our lives became a mindless robotic routine: get up, load, walk, ride, unload, eat, load, walk, ride, on and on like an invariable musical tone. It seemed that we were getting nowhere, marking time in the same spot. We were travelling through time but going forward not at all. Sidi Mohammed muttered and hummed to himself, always the same 10 yards ahead. Marinetta rode close behind me, disinclined to talk, silently lapsing into the dreams that whiled away the featureless hours. The pacing camels lulled us half into sleep. The journey became an illusion. We began to forget who we were and what we were doing there. The strands that connected us to our own society had ceased to exist. If was as if we were under a spell.

  My mind plunged into lotus-eating dreams, a flux of past, present, and future. An endless movie played backwards inside my head. The plane was touching down in Nouakchott, the plane was touching down in Paris. We were sitting on the Spanish Steps in Rome. We were sitting in Marinetta’s home in Rome with General Peru looking stem and uncompromising. We were diving into the swimming pool at the Sudan Club in Khartoum. I was walking into a classroom in Dongola, nervously self-conscious before fifty black heads. I was sitting in a plain car in Belfast, and five crisp gunshots cracked over my head. Somebody screamed, ‘Black bastard!’ and then I was standing at the tail door of a C130 with the wind and fumes whistling through, one of sixty men with parachutes set to jump. The blood pumping like fire behind bleach-white skin, the red light flashing and the dispatcher shouting, ‘RED ON!’ The silent four seconds before the green light says, ‘GO!’ The aircraft behind me. The drone of the engine dies away. The canopy develops with a snap. I am floating down to earth like a poppy seed. I am floating across the desert on a camel, but where am I going? What is the future I am travelling towards? Sidi Mohammed is still 10 yards in front of me. Perhaps five minutes have passed. Patience. That’s all we need. Eat well. Walk a little. Ride your camel. Maintain your health. Fill your girbas. Don’t overstrain. Don’t try to be clever. Keep going on, bit by bit. On and on, load, walk, ride, load, each camping place a conquest, each night a tiny victory.

  We watered in the Tilemsi valley, where many Tuareg had pitched their camps. The plain was dotted with white-skinned mayneg camels. We saw men collecting wild yellow grasses and placing them in a basket, just as their hunter-gatherer ancestors had done 7,000 years before. Once, we saw a Targui leading a young girl by a rope tied round her leg. The girl was stunningly pretty and totally naked. As we came nearer, I noticed that she walked with a limp and had the vacant look of the sub-normal.

  When we passed these encampments, few people came to greet us. Those who did looked at us with hostility and whispered together menacingly. They never failed to ask for tea, sugar, or tobacco, and we never failed to refuse. Often, I grew tired of Tuareg ways, their hostility and their lack of hospitality. Sidi Mohammed told me, ‘There is a darkness in them. They have always been like this. I first came into this region when I was a boy, with a slave. Two Tuareg youths came into my camp and pointed at me. “Is that an Arab or a human being?” they asked. I took my gun and sat under a bush. I told the slave to move all our baggage. If they had touched him, I would have blasted them, by God! Then an old man turned up and ordered them to leave us alone. I had no trouble with them after that.’

  ‘Is it their custom to demand things from travellers?’ I asked.

  Sidi Mohammed laughed. ‘In their own language, they call themselves Amahaq—you know what that means? It means “Those who take”. That’s all their nobility is—taking. Before the nsara came, they lived by robbing trade caravans. The nsara finished that. Now they pester you for tea and sugar instead.’ He said that in the past, the Tuareg had claimed tribute from his people, the Berabish. For four years, they had paid. The fifth year, they had invited the Tuareg for a great banquet and afterwards had slaughtered them all, throwing their bodies into a well. The Tuareg are nothing now!’ Sidi Mohammed said.

  Once, near sunset, we passed through a camp under the brow of a hill. The Tuareg there looked wild. They were unveiled and wore wiry crops of hair; their swords were hung across their shoulders in leather baldrics. They followed us on foot as we rode, asking questions and demanding tobacco. After we got rid of them, Sidi Mohammed said, ‘Those were Tuareg vassals; they have warriors, marabouts, and vassals just like the Moors. They are thieves, without doubt. They will find our camp tonight if we aren’t careful. Omar, you

  should have bought a gun.’

  We camped in a dry wadi near some low, rocky hills. There was no moon, so we hobbled the camels tightly. While dinner was cooking, one of us watched them constantly. We had few weapons at our disposal if we were attacked. We had our survival knives, camel sticks, a rather bent hatchet, and our emergency flares. After we had eaten, we drove the camels into the camp. We sat awake for hours, listening to their belching and gurgling. A slight breeze whispered across the stony ground. Nothing else disturbed the tranquillity of the desert night.

  On 15th October, we descended into the valley of Asakrei. There were some leather tents scattered about, and as we made lunch in the bushes, a group of six men came to visit us. They looked dangerous, dressed in their long, dark gandourahs, their faces hidden by veils. They carried daggers and axes and wore thick skin sandals. They were inscrutable under their headcloths and came on with the dreadful steadiness of an army. Suddenly, Sidi Mohammed said, ‘Don’t worry; these aren’t Tuareg. They are Iddao Ishaak. They are of Jewish origin. They are rich in camels, but they aren’t warlike.’

  The men sat around us in a circle, and several
of them relaxed by removing their veils. Two of them began to make a fire a few yards away, and Sidi Mohammed grew very excited. He told us in Hassaniyya, ‘They’re going to slaughter a goat for us!’ He was disappointed, however. The men let the fire burn down to ash, then mixed the ash with chewing tobacco, which they masticated with relish. They told us that until the previous year, the drought had been terrible here. Thousands of head of livestock had perished, they said, and hundreds of Tuareg families had moved south as far as Nigeria and as far north as Tamanrasset. ‘They won’t be back!’ Sidi Mohammed commented drily. ‘They lost everything. I saw plenty of them in Tamanrasset last year, selling off their goats and camels. They’ll never be back, by the Prophet!’

  One of the Ishaak told us that the nsara had given them oil and grain. ‘The only thing that saved us was God and the Christians,’ he said. ‘The government gave us no help. They still take from us the animal tax for animals we haven’t got!’

  Sidi Mohammed suggested that we should offer to buy a goat, and at last, I agreed. The men fetched us a white kid, which I bought for about £10. Sidi Mohammed looked as happy as a child at Christmas. ‘Shall we slaughter it now?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘We’ll slaughter it tonight. I’ll carry it on my camel.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ he protested, his face falling. ‘It will die and then it won’t be hillal[AM1]. We won’t be able to eat it.’

  I showed him how it could be slung from a canvas sheet, a trick I had learned from my nomads in the Sudan, but Sidi Mohammed remained doubtful.

  That afternoon, we climbed up the valley, along rolling hillsides, where spires of blue rock pushed out of wedges of purple and the path twisted between egg-shaped white boulders like a waterless river. All afternoon, Sidi Mohammed fretted about the goat. Regularly on the half-hour, he would ask, ‘Is it all right, Omar?’ ‘Isn’t it tied too tightly?’ ‘Isn’t its head drooping too low?’ When I offered to tie up its head with string he cried, ‘No! No! You’ll break its neck!’

  We were travelling towards the wells at In Telli, where we hoped to rest for a day. It would be the first rest we had enjoyed since leaving Tombouctou, and we were all looking forward to it. At about four o’clock, Sidi Mohammed could stand the tension no longer. ‘Come on, Omar,’ he said. ‘Let’s kill it!’

  ’No,’ I repeated, unable to suppress a slightly truculent satisfaction, ‘we’ll slaughter the goat when we get to In Telli. Not before.’

  Sunset came and In Telli did not appear. We stopped for sunset prayers. ‘Why don’t we make camp here?’ Sidi Mohammed said.

  ‘No, we agreed to go on to In Telli.’

  ‘But this is a good place for the camels. There’s good grazing here.’

  ‘We go on!’

  ‘I’m only thinking of the camels.’

  We carried on, descending slowly into the valley of In Telli, where we made camp. As soon as we had unloaded, Sidi Mohammed grabbed the goat, sighing audibly with relief that it was still alive. He slit its throat with his knife and a splash of crimson stained the sand. In moments, he had skinned it neatly and expertly. He cut out the liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs and began to roast them on the fire. When the organs were roasted, he laid them out on a sack and began to cut them up carefully. The discarded intestines and skin were already obliterated by scarab beetles, hundreds of them squabbling over tiny pieces of carcass. Sidi Mohammed divided the meat into equal portions. Ours were considerably more equal than his. ‘In the name of God,’ he said, grinning wolfishly, ‘let’s eat!’

  In Telli lay in a natural depression encircled by black cliffs, with higher blue mountains in the background. Near the wells was a single mud house, but it was deserted. Two tents, covered in canvas, were rolled up on frames outside. Next to the house was a corral where goats had been kept. The wells were shallow and all contained water, though it seemed to be polluted with algae of some kind. Not far off, below an overhanging rock, we discovered damp sand; water lay 18 inches below it. We dug out a pit and watered our camels, then set them off, hobbled, among the green trees in the wadi.

  We put up the tent, Arab-style, near some bushes. Sidi Mohammed returned from driving the camels away and began to cook another leg of goat, roasting it on a low fire. The rest, he cut into strips, which he laid out to dry on a thorn tree. As he was cooking, a young Targui appeared, carrying an axe. ‘They can smell fresh meat from five miles away!’ Sidi Mohammed commented, but he was obliged out of custom to give the man some meat. After he had gone, we stuffed ourselves again. Sidi Mohammed ate most of Marinetta’s share as well as his own, even picking up the pieces I had discarded and declaring, ‘There is still meat on that!’ He picked at the bones with his knife, smashing them open on a rock and slurping at the delicious marrow-bone jelly inside. After this performance, he belched, rather more loudly than usual, and said, ‘Why don’t we stay here two days? One is not enough, by God!’

  Later, he went to chase the camels, and I wandered off to search for sweet melons, which grew in places around the wells. They grew on creepers, about forty melons to a plant; but were far rarer than the bitter melons, from which they were distinguished by a slightly different skin pattern. I had just discovered a plump, little fruit when I heard Marinetta shouting, ‘Maik! Maik!’ I ran back, clutching the hilt of my knife. Two Tuareg were standing over Marinetta, looking quite menacing. She had stepped behind the tent to wash herself and was desperately clutching a towel around her legs. ‘Go away!’ she was shouting at the men, but in Hassaniyya. Either they didn’t understand or they were pretending not to.

  ‘Here not good!’ I told them in my pidgin Tamasheq. ‘Over there good!’ I pointed to a tree about 20 yards away. In any culture, what they had done would be considered extremely rude. Reluctantly, the men followed my directions. They sat down in the shade.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked Marinetta.

  ‘Yes, but I had just got my knickers off when I saw them coming. It was so embarrassing.’

  ‘What do you think they want?’

  ‘They were pointing at the meat.’ Later I took them some of our meat on a plate. They ate it quickly then strode away.

  When Sidi Mohammed returned and heard the story, he muttered, ‘We shall have nothing left at this rate!’ We were distracted, however, by the curious appearance of his hair. He had tried to cut it short with his knife, and now it stood out in odd crowns and tufts all over his head. The effect was horrific, but Sidi Mohammed seemed quite unaware of it. On the contrary, he repeatedly ran his hand over the uneven surface, smiling proudly like a man in a hair-oil advertisement and saying, ‘Eh, Omar, what do you think? I made a good job. didn’t I?’

  ‘Beautiful!’ I grinned back, and Marinetta collapsed with giggles.

  We watered the camels again in the afternoon and filled all our waterbags. After sunset, we cooked the remaining leg of goat and Sidi Mohammed divided the meat into portions once, more, this time evidently according to age, not beauty. Sidi Mohammed, being the oldest, got the most. Again, we were treated to a repertoire of sucking, cracking, slurping, and belching, and afterwards, he placed a large portion of uneaten meat in a tree. The meat made him expansive. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I remember when I was in Libya, I had a friend who was a police chief. He employed me to hunt gazelles. I went by car, and I never got less than sixteen in a day. The meat was so tender, by God!’

  ‘But surely, the meat isn’t hillal when you shoot it?’ I said, remembering what a fuss he had made over the goat.

  ‘It is when you bless the bullets!’ he said. ‘The Libyans are good people, you know. It’s only the government that is bad. At least the Libyans are pure-blooded Arabs. Why, there are tribes in Mali that are more like apes than men. They’re not human beings at all. But there are slaves everywhere, even in Libya. Once, when I was a caretaker, I borrowed the company car. I got it stuck in the sand and had to abandon it. There was a lot of trouble about it. I wasn’t supposed to have taken the car a
t all. My supervisor was a slave, and he had the nerve to tell me that I would be finished. “You’re just a slave, that’s all!” says I. “You’re nothing!” And I kept my job. He was afraid, you see.’ He described how another supervisor, this time an Egyptian, had ordered him to move a bench first to one place, then to another, then back again. ‘I knew he was doing it to be clever!’ Sidi Mohammed said. ‘So I told him, “If you don’t make your mind up, I’ll break your neck!” He never spoke to me after that! Ha! Ha! But half the Egyptians I met in Libya were queers, you know. They liked other men. I once, had to share a room with an Egyptian who was queer. He touched my leg, so I got my knife out. “If you touch me again, I’ll slit your throat!” says I.’ Before his stories got any more hair-raising, we decided to retire.

  When we awoke the next morning, I noticed that the package of meat that had been put in the tree was gone. It should have been shared between us. ‘I bet he ate it in the night!’ Marinetta said, incensed. We still had the dried meat, which I kept carefully tied in one of my saddle bags.

  We left the wadi of In Telli behind and climbed up through a chasm just wide enough for the camels to pass. The walls were screes of black stone, shattered into pieces like lumps of asphalt. Along the canyon, sweet melons grew. We picked them and peeled off the skin, handing the slices out and cramming the succulent flesh into our mouths till the sugary juice ran down our chins. We emerged on to a plateau, where the camels padded across the smooth, silver bed of what might once, have been a tarn. The hardpan mud still shone dazzlingly with sodium salts. Around its rim lay trees, moribund and skeletal, and hundreds of castle-like termitaries, 6 feet high and solid as granite. We descended over some red dunes, where the sand was splashed with the green of melon plants. Far to the east, we saw a line of hills, deep blue in the morning sun. They were the Sakarezou range, which we should have to cross before reaching Niger. To the north and east lay endless acres of rag, black stones, and gravel, dotted with broken islands of trees and tufts of coarse grass.