A Cure for Serpents

by Alberto Denti di Pirajno

  He would present me with a letter from his father, and after I had read it he would begin to talk. He would talk for hours, until the stars faded and the sky in the east lightened, becoming tinged successively with pink, gold and blood red. He would tell me all that the letter had omitted, because Bubaker, like a good Tuareg of ancient lineage, entrusted the important news to his son’s mouth and made use of writing only to ask for money, watches, yards and yards of cotton material, gramophone records, and once even (a request which somewhat surprised us) a bicycle.

  In that year the drought had dried up the pasturage and whole populations had moved northwards with their animals in search of grass. One of the rebel tribes, the Imanghassàten, had also moved, and this worried Bubaker ag Legoui, because they were armed and always ready for a fight.

  It was essential that pacts of good neighbourliness be established if the Shaamba and the Ifoghas, local sedentary tribes, jealous of their pasturage areas, were to be prevented from starting trouble with the new arrivals.

  Our military authorities had sent into the desert a man whom the official reports described as ‘the well-known Bosu’, an informer of mixed breed who succeeded in reconciling and satisfying all who paid him – and they were many. I did not altogether trust the ‘well-known Bosu’, and so, armed with my medicine chest and instrument bag, I had followed him, accompanied by Califa ben Yunea, a Berber who spoke four languages, in search of patients to treat, wounds to dress – and men and women who would talk.

  The Tuareg people I met on that occasion may not be as fascinating as those of Antinea – but mine are real.

  Shaoui ag Ibejji, nephew of the chief of the Teghehé n’abbar clan of the Imanghassàten Tuareg, had been bitten on the hip by a camel. I had been treating the wound for twenty days and it had now healed. He was the Beau Brummell of his clan, tall and lean, and he appeared before my tent like the ghost of an ancient warrior.

  His head and neck were wrapped in a red and white striped headcloth. His face was covered from the forehead down and from the chin up, the merest slit remaining across the bridge of his nose. Over his breeches à la Zouave and his sleeveless undershirt he wore three long blue-black, bell-sleeved garments tightly gathered at the waist into a leather belt from which hung his takuba, a long-hilted sword. A brick-red mantle fell from his shoulders to his feet; from the upturned points of his large, boat-shaped sandals long straps were attached to his belt.

  He was magnificent. When he appeared in the opening of the tent which I used as a dispensary he assumed immediately a statuesque attitude: head up, chest out, one foot advanced and all his weight thrown back on the other, one hand on his sword hilt and the other extended in a dignified salute. He was so superb that at first sight one did not notice that his headcloth was in shreds, that the dye in his tunics had run and that they were mended with different coloured cottons, that his mantle was a mosaic of patches and that his sandals were held together with string.

  Inside the tent, into which he brought a stench of goats that could be cut with a knife, he took half an hour to undress. Finally, he stood naked except for his headcloth and the black veil over his face – for the Tuareg tradition demands that a man shall at all times and in all circumstances keep his face covered. Even when he eats in the presence of strangers or of women, a Tuareg does not uncover his face; he passes the mouthfuls of food under the lower veil which is raised a little from the bottom: it would be extremely improper to expose the ‘hole through which food passes’. Only later did Shaoui raise the frontal veil just far enough to uncover his eyes as a sign of confidence in my powers as a physician and in order to show that he was pleased with the gift he had finally wheedled out of me.

  The bandage was crawling with lice again, but the wound was now firmly closed and the mark of the stitches was already fading. When I told him, through Califa the interpreter, that he was cured and that there was no need for him to return to the dispensary, he began to question Califa who became annoyed and, instead of interpreting, took up the argument himself in an indignant tone. The dialogue became heated, and in order to prevent it degenerating into a fight I interrupted and ordered Califa to explain what was happening.

  After having used the most injurious epithets he could call to mind regarding the women of the Tuareg’s family, Califa informed me that Shaoui was asking for a handsome present as a reward for having recovered so quickly and so well.

  From the day the camel bit him this noble lord, by prayers and insistent begging, had succeeded in taking off me a pair of rubber heels (which he immediately stuck on to his downtrodden sandals), an enteroclysis tube with a hole in it (which he tied round his arm), and a broken paper knife (which he stuck proudly in his belt). He had now, it seemed, taken a fancy to an old and battered cigar lighter of mine. He began by asking if it was an amulet, if it contained magic; and when I explained that it must be filled with petrol before it would light up, the idea of a metal object which ‘drank water and spat fire’ filled him with enthusiasm. In vain did Califa explain that a cigar lighter in the hands of someone who did not smoke and had no petrol was as useful as a lamp in the hands of a blind man.

  ‘And who told you I should keep it in my hands?’ asked this noble mendicant in a supercilious tone. ‘I will tie it round my neck for good luck and every time I touch it I will think of your master.’

  It amused me to keep him on tenterhooks, and while he was dressing, Califa repeated to me some of the ingenious arguments and entreaties which Shaoui used, interspersed with his own views on the behaviour of this barefaced beggar.

  ‘Make him a present of a cord to hang himself with,’ he advised me in deep disgust.

  Finally, as Shaoui bent himself double to leave the tent, I put into his hand the object of his desires. His eyes danced with joy like those of a child, but the gesture with which he accepted the cigar lighter was restrained and full of dignity. He paused, laid the metal that spits fire to his heart, kissed it and whispered the ritual benediction.

  As soon as he was in the open, he drew himself up to his full height, placed his hand on his sword hilt, pressed it down so that the point raised a corner of his mantle and, in a tone of great condescension as though conferring a favour on a servant, said to Califa: ‘Tell your master that I shall compose a poem in his honour.’

  He turned and walked slowly away with the characteristic undulating gait of the Tuareg patrician – which is achieved by flexing the knees while scarcely raising the feet from the ground.

  * * *

  The head of the clan, Shaoui’s uncle, was a big man, so dark that he looked more like a Sudanese than a Tuareg. His mother, however, was niece to the famous Sheik Ofenàit, chief of all the Imanghassàten, and her stock had ennobled him and entitled him to become chief of his clan in spite of the fact that his father was a slave.

  He told me of the fortunes and misfortunes of his people, speaking nostalgically of the glorious days of the great raids, of furious pursuits and desperate battles, when the camps rang with the roars and cries of plundered beasts, when the women had so much silver they did not know where to put it, when at the ‘courts of love’ the beautiful musicians sang the exploits of the fallen heroes.

  The chief, however, was such a liar that the facts of a story, as given by him, were never twice the same.

  When he spoke of the women of his youth he became excited and positively lyrical. He conjured up girls with wasp waists and bodies as slender and flexible as serpents, with voices so soft and sweet that they ‘cut the nerves’ of those who listened. In those days, he said, Tuareg women were women indeed and dispensed their favours without bothering to look upon the face of the male, obeying to the letter the popular precept: ‘Whoever loves you, love him in return – even if it is only a dog.’ Those were the days of certain women who had since become legendary, of famous lovers who staked their claim to renown not only in the arms of free men but also in the furious embraces of the iklan, the negro slaves.

  To whom did he
allude? Califa, frankly disgusted as he interpreted these effusions, kept interrupting to tell me what he thought of this ‘son of a prostitute with more horns than a hedgehog has prickles’. He now explained that the chief was referring to his own wife who, when she was young and in a state of asri, did much honour to her name, ‘Tara’, which means love. Since I had been living among the Tuaregs I had, in fact, often heard of Tara ult Isakàn, the boast of the clan and glory of the tribe.

  It was said that when she was young she had taken every man in her clan as a lover, without exception – from young boys who were wearing the veil for the first time to old men obliged to lean upon their swords for support as upon a stick. Immediately after she reached puberty she conceived a mad passion for the septuagenarian Si Baska ag Urzig, the celebrated Inennankàten brigand. After the death of the old man, who expired in her embrace, she promised herself to every one of a band of warriors who were setting out to sack the tents of the Kel Uhat. She kept her word, and received under her tent the eleven members of the expedition who returned alive from the bloody encounter.

  Shaoui, proud of such an aunt, confided to me that ‘two camels were not enough to carry all the gifts she received from her admirers; in her arms boys became men, and old men renewed their youth’. When Tara played the umzad in the ‘courts of love’, warriors flocked from the Shati, from the Tassili, from the Wadi Tarat, covering hundreds of miles on the backs of racing camels, spurred on by the hope of spending a single night in her arms. ‘The poems written in her honour cannot be counted,’ declared Shaoui, always lyrical when he talked of this shining light of his family: ‘Her body was a mandolin and whoever played upon it remembered the melody for the rest of his life.’

  Alas, the mandolin was now mute and had lost its strings. Tara had passed middle-age. She was tall even for a Tuareg, with a square face and prominent cheekbones – a large face in which the nose and mouth were lost in heavy cheeks which were all one with the double chin and neck. Her body was shapeless, her arms were huge and flabby and her pendulous breasts swung low upon her belly. Of her beauty nothing was left but the smile which the years and endless tobacco-chewing had not dimmed.

  Nevertheless, even as a ruin Tara continued to have a legendary quality about her, for when the old men looked upon her they remembered unforgettable nights of long ago, and the young men saw in her the exemplary Tuareg woman who, after having dispensed her favours to innumerable men, had then chosen her husband and remained tenaciously faithful to him.

  And when Tara talked to me in her halting Arabic, when I listened to her shrewd remarks about her people and noted her authoritative judgements, her knowledge of what lay behind the scenes of the limited but complicated politics of the Azdjer confederation (to which the Imanghassàten belong), I came to the conclusion that she was the real chief here, that it was her big, strong hands, unsoiled by work but so long skilled in love, that guided the fortunes of this turbulent Teghehé n’abbar tribe.

  * * *

  One of my patients, Kemmeda ag Ermès, considered himself a highly evolved Tuareg. He was serving in the South Algerian Oases Command when the French President visited Tunis, and he took part in the grand military review and remained in the town for a week. He had, therefore, seen the sea, a train, and trams; he had discovered that glass in windows was invisible metal, that an electric bulb was a bottle in which light was kept and, above all, he had learned that in the country of the frangi everything had to be paid for. I removed a cyst from his scalp and he was much troubled at the thought of what I might demand for my services. When finally he made enquiries of Califa and was told that he would not have to pay a cent, he took on a new lease of life and even went so far as to express a desire to do me a tanfust – a service – but without being out of pocket.

  While I was sitting outside my tent trying to clean myself as effectively as possible and wondering why fleas do not exist in the desert whereas lice abound, Kemmeda approached me with his slow, undulating step, accompanied by the ‘well-known Bosu’ who, true bastard that he was, fussed around him, delighted to show me that he was the friend of a pure-blood Tuareg nobleman. They sat down and followed my patient efforts in silence. Kemmeda showed great interest in the insecticide powder and Bosu took upon himself to give him a complicated explanation, in Tamahàk, so that I was unable to understand what kind of story he was telling.

  When I had finished and was about to put on my shirt, Bosu informed me that Kemmeda was worried about the health of his cousin’s daughter. (In a country where a cousin is called ‘brother’ and a man’s wife ‘the daughter of his uncle’ it was not always easy to discover the exact relationship between people.) It seemed that this relative of Kemmeda was sick and Kemmeda wished me to visit her, convinced that as soon as I laid eyes on her the sickness would disappear because, he said, I was a great physician. Bosu multiplied the compliments, and made a long speech in the Tuareg language. He must have excelled himself in his account of my prowess, for Kemmeda struck his thighs in wonderment and emitted admiring exclamations from under his veil.

  They seemed unable to tell me what was wrong with the woman in question, however; I could not discover whether her bones ached, or her head; whether she vomited or was feverish.

  My suspicions began to be aroused by the insistence with which the Tuareg, through the half-breed, advised me not to forget to offer gifts to the sick girl because ‘girls are very susceptible to gifts from foreigners’.

  It was evident that the girl was young, but when I asked Bosu her age he pretended to consult Kemmeda and, after a long confabulation, informed me that the girl had ‘suspended prayer’ only six months ago; that she was educated and could read, write and speak fluent Arabic as well as Tamahàk. Then, fearing that I still did not understand, he whispered in my ear that she was as beautiful as the sun, that she was in a state of asri – and as lively as a colt, which was the meaning of her name – Tahûk.

  Kemmeda obviously knew exactly what the half-breed was telling me, and confirmed the interpreter’s words with rapid nods. I had met a number of Imanghassàten patricians, but this was my first procurer among them. The collection was now complete.

  * * *

  In the low tent, which I had to enter almost on my hands and knees, Tahûk was sitting on the ground, wrapped in an outsize garment from which only her head emerged. She smiled at me, displaying a wonderful set of teeth. Their sparkling whiteness contrasted sharply with her dark, full lips which were thickly plastered with a wine-coloured cosmetic.

  The smile accentuated her prominent cheekbones and lit up a sea-blue reflection in her enormous, liquid eyes, edged with their darkened lids; the antimony extended the outline of the eyes towards the temples and faded into green where it blended with the ochre colour with which the whole face was covered. What really made this Tuareg woman astonishingly beautiful, however, was her auburn hair which was dressed in curled masses on each side of her head.

  The disconcerting colour of the make-up on her Mongoloid features, combined with the mass of gold-copper hair, made her look like a bewitched oriental idol. The girl’s face so fascinated me that I almost failed to notice the odour of her unwashed body.

  My visit was not unexpected and Tahûk received me in a natural manner, using the traditional greetings in Arabic and addressing me as ‘my lord’ as she invited me to sit down beside her. She gravely accepted the first present I offered her, which was a mirror. Her hands were beautiful and all her movements full of grace as she held the mirror here and there to catch her reflection. When I produced a bottle of hair lotion, however, she snatched it up with an exclamation of pure joy and held the bottle to her nose, breathing the perfume with eyes half-closed and biting her lip as though she were about to swoon with ecstasy. With a sudden movement she seized and kissed my hand, leaving a wine-coloured stain upon it. She turned back her sleeves to the shoulders and spread the perfumed lotion on her arms, holding them to her nose and murmuring ecstatic words. She passed them under my nose
also so that I too might enjoy the scent.

  All at once she remembered that this was a doctor’s visit and that I had come to discover her sickness and – possibly – to cure her. She hurriedly put aside the mirror and the bottle and began to tell me how ill she was: she had pain here and pains there and a troublesome cough that split her ribs. She carefully recited what she had obviously been told to say, but when I questioned her she stumbled over her replies and, becoming impatient, insisted that she had pains everywhere.

  Under her outer garment she wore a kind of Sudanese ‘gandurra’, a sleeveless garment slit up the sides as far as the hips. She removed this with the rest because, she said, she wished me to hear how bad her lungs were.

  Her adolescent body – soft and supple as a cat’s and stained all over with indigo – did not seem to belong to the chrome-yellow face. Her arms were slender but not thin; her breasts, stained with blue, were like variegated marble, rose-tipped. Her waist was so small that she could enclose it within her two hands, but her hips curved like an amphora and her legs were long, slim and straight, right down to the short feet with their rows of neat toes diminishing evenly in size like tiny organ pipes.

  After I had examined Tahûk from head to foot I came to the conclusion that I had rarely found a human organism in such perfect condition. When I told her so she was not at all pleased. For a moment she began to sulk, but immediately her eyes lit up with a mischievous smile. She lay on her back, completely naked, with her head resting on my knee. She threw me an upward glance of interrogation – but I was watching her wonderful hair, fearing that at any moment a procession of lice might emerge from that gold and copper jungle and begin to swarm all over me.

  There was a long silence, in which I was quite at a loss for words. Then the young Tuareg noblewoman spat skilfully against the side of the tent, and asked me in a low voice if I knew how to ride a colt …