Sahara Unveiled

by William Langewiesche

  Attempts have been made. In the early 1990s, just before the outbreak of the Islamic revolution, the Algerian Army built and rebuilt the Trans-Saharan in sections as far as the geographic midpoint, in the mountain town called Tamanrasset. But as always the desert quickly took the road back. By the time I arrived in the M’zab, the ruin was nearly total. Only hours south of town, the pavement of the Trans-Saharan broke apart, and forced buses into the open desert, which fed them sand and shook them apart. Because the Ministry of Transportation had no money for bus repairs, the once-ambitious schedule had been reduced to the occasional departure. I discovered that I would have days to linger in the M’Zab. There are worse ways to wait for a bus.

  I FOUND A friend of friends, a Mozabite named Hassan Hamim, who owned the state concession for the M’Zab’s movie theater. Hamim was a placid clean-shaven man in slacks and Italian loafers, which he dusted insistently. He knew his customers, who tended to be young men frustrated by the smallness of oasis life. Hamim gave them cheap love stories and karate productions, and made a good business of it.

  Like other successful Mozabites, he had two houses—one in town for nine months of the year, and another in the shade of the palm groves for the worst heat of summer. The house in town was three stories tall, and had thick mud walls and traditional rooftop courtyards for sleeping in the coolness of night. He invited me to stay with him.

  We sat before lunch in an upstairs salon sparsely furnished with rugs and cushions. The walls were papered with murals of alpine lakes, and with verses from the Koran. Hamim introduced me to his young daughters, though not to his wife. The daughters disappeared into the family quarters, the harem, where unrelated men were forbidden to go. Hamim told me that the cloistering was as much his wife’s choice as his. I believed him. Within the extremes of a hard desert, it made a certain amount of sense. Had Malika truly cloistered herself, Ameur would never have seen her through the eyes of strangers. There are Saharans, women as well as men, who would call that freedom.

  Hamim’s friends arrived—a shy postal clerk, a date farmer, and a cynical commerce inspector in a three-piece suit. Work was over until evening. Hamim’s daughters served us. We shared a bowl of couscous, followed by oranges and tea. The men did not know the desert beyond the M’Zab. They wanted to talk, but had little to say. They dozed. They gossiped. They said it had been years since they had seen an American. They said now even the French were staying away.

  At the time the only foreigners in the M’Zab were those who had come with a Saudi prince to hunt gazelles with rifle and falcon. The prince had arrived the week before in a private airliner, and had set up camp north of town. His pilots, whores, and retainers had taken over the hotel, where they passed the nights in drink and dance. Hamim’s friends disapproved. As Mozabites, they resented hedonistic displays. As Algerians, they resented claims to royalty. I sympathized. When after a polite delay, they asked what had brought me to the M’Zab, I said I was waiting for the bus.

  The bus to where?

  “To Tamanrasset,” I said. Far to the south.

  They stared. Hamim spoke for them all. “The bus is not a bus,” he said. “It’s a Safari.”

  I did not understand him. I thought he meant an exotic trip.

  The date farmer said, “The Safari is not for you. It is only for Malians. It is like hell.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Hamim had seen the same movies I had. He said, “It’s not what you think.” He explained that the bus from the M’Zab did not go all the way. “Safari” was the name for the hard-sprung truck to which eventually I would have to transfer to cross mountainous central desert. He said, “Why don’t you fly?”

  “Because I want to see the desert up close.”

  “Buy a postcard.”

  “But I want to feel the desert.”

  “It feels bad.”

  IN THE EVENING Hamim took me to his movie theater. We entered by a side door, and stood near the screen, watching the show. It was a steamy Los Angeles mystery dubbed into Arabic. I forget the title and plot, but remember bared breasts and love scenes, an audience entirely of men, an atmosphere thick with sexual frustration. Hamim told me he had seen the movie before; but I noticed now that he intended to see it again. I wanted to leave, but Hamim was his own good customer. We stayed to the end.

  In the morning we strolled through town. Shrouded Mozabite women scurried close to the walls, like nervous one-eyed ghosts. One of them came toward us. At first she seemed like just another figure, as anonymous and uninteresting as she was meant to be. But then we exchanged glances, she and I, and I discovered an eye of the most exquisite beauty—oval, almond-colored, lightly made up, with long lashes and flawless skin. The eye was warm, lively, and inviting. I didn’t need to see more.

  I asked Hamim if he had noticed. He smiled and said, “But she is married.”

  “You know her?”

  He shook his head. “That’s why she veils herself.”

  “And your wife, does she wear a veil?”

  “Of course!” I had gone too far. He was offended that I had asked.

  Later I pointed to an unveiled woman crossing the street in a tailored suit. “And who is she?”

  “A whore.”

  “You know her?”

  He shook his head.

  I said, “Maybe she works in an office.” I thought of Malika’s sister Zora, and of women workers I had seen in other oases.

  Hamim was emphatic. “She is a whore.”

  It was like talking to someone about his faith. I said, “Okay, but why?”

  “These are loose women who become known. They screw for the pleasure of it. Afterward, no one will marry them.”

  About that, he was probably right. Oases are the smallest kinds of towns. People are stained indelibly by their reputations. There is little mercy. A girl who succumbs too easily to love may become a woman who knows no love at all.

  ONCE AT THE outskirts of an oasis, around midnight, I was sitting with a group of men by a campfire when two women appeared in the firelight. They were unveiled and unescorted, and they wore tight jeans. One was a schoolteacher, the other her best friend. I saw in their brazenness that they were outcasts. The men, my friends, despised them openly. They introduced them to me as “bad women, hungry for men.” When the women did not leave, the language escalated. In their presence my friends called them dogs in heat. They said I would not have to pay them, then said the women would pay me. And still the women would not leave.

  When later they allowed two of the men to take them into the desert, it was not for love or pleasure, but for self-loathing. The men were done quickly. The women came back to invite the hatred of the others. They did not take money. They had acquired the defensive habit of submission.

  On another occasion, in West Africa at a riverbank market, I saw a young woman with crippled, twisted legs, who swung along by walking on her hands. She wore a torn dress hiked up around her hips, and had a sweet and lively face, and matted hair. A band of market boys began to taunt her, calling her a “goat,” reaching down to fondle her breasts. She did not seem afraid or angry. She even smiled. Then one of the boys put his foot against her shoulder and kicked hard. The girl rolled sideways into a puddle of fetid mud. I started toward her, but stopped when she came up coated with filth, and laughing with her tormentors. Walking on her hands, swinging her twisted hips, she disappeared into the market crowd with a final backward look, not of horror but of satisfaction. She seemed to feel she had won something. People everywhere are confused by the oases they inhabit.

  HAMIM WAS NOT in the movie business by chance. He was a good Muslim, but had a vicarious fascination with sin. One evening he took me to dinner at the hotel, which stood on a hill above the M’Zab like a mud-walled citadel of forbidden pleasure. The Saudis had come in from the hunt, and had begun a long night of drinking. They were not good Muslims. They sat at tables heaped with food and wine, and were entertained by musicians with drums and horns.r />
  Hamim and I sat in a corner with two of his acquaintances—a former farmer employed by a German company to collect scrap metal in the desert, and a wiry architect in a beard and sports jacket, more grandly employed in the study of traditional Saharan houses.

  During a pause in the music, the architect told me that the houses of the M’Zab are renowned for their starkness and practicality. The French modernist Le Corbusier had come here to learn, to confirm his theories, to find a connection to the past.

  I was interested, and asked the architect if he liked Le Corbusier’s work.

  He said, no, and changed the conversation to women.

  The women with the Saudis were young Italians, starker and more beautiful than any building. The architect said something lewd about them, which rang hollow.

  Hamim forced a worldly smile. But I could see by the stiffness of his expression that the women bothered him. They were lively and vain, and openly sexual; they were entirely unveiled. And it was obvious that natives like Hamim hardly existed for them.

  Wine flowed heavily. Eventually the Saudi men rose from the table, and danced among themselves. The women urged them on. Then from the back reaches of the restaurant a young, lithe, curly-haired man, a stranger, leapt forward and joined the dance. He was like a woman himself. He danced the dance of a loose-limbed satyr with his arms upraised and delight on his face. He was decadent, anarchistic, and entirely sober. Hamim had to look away.

  The women laughed. The Saudis were unamused. One of their bodyguards, a huge man in a turban who had been standing with his arms folded, now shooed the satyr away. The satyr got around him and kept dancing. The bodyguard moved on him more firmly, and blocked his attempts to return. The women laughed. The Saudis were amused. The satyr slinked past our table looking aggrieved. The architect remarked wryly, “He’s unemployed, but manages to live here at the hotel.” He did not know how.

  There was more drinking upstairs. Hamim and I went to the room of an Air Algeria captain spending the night because his Boeing had broken down. He was a tight-tempered, sinewy, mustang of a man, sitting in an undershirt sharing whiskey from airline bottles with his flight crew. He liked Buffalo, New York, where he had taken his flight training. He bragged to me about being a real Saharan, the descendant of nomads. But he did not romanticize the desert. He talked about the oasis airports, and said, “V.I.P.s, there are always V.I.P.s. They make the entire airplane wait for them. I feel like telling them, ‘Me—my father was killed by the French! I throw you to the dogs!’ ”

  The pilot did not need to be a Muslim. He was a natural moralist. He drank a lot of whiskey. He curled his lips and snarled, “If I had my way, I would stand all those kinds against a wall and shoot them. Like that! And have no second thoughts about it.”

  He included the Saudis downstairs in his plans.

  Hamim was heartened. We left the hotel. By the certainty of his stride, I saw that he felt again like a man. The Air Algeria captain had been a fighter pilot. Saudis dance, but Saharans are soldiers.

  HAMIM’S BEST FRIEND was a Mozabite named Moustafa Oukal, who was as blustery as Hamim was timid. Oukal had driven once for Texan oilmen, and had admired them, and was thereafter known as “L’Américain.” When we met he grinned and said in French, “We Americans are not afraid to get our hands dirty!” He was bald and beefy, and had muttonchop sideburns, a tweed cap, and rough outdoor clothes. He told me he had given up an earlier career as a photographer. He still had a little photo shop near the market, but said he could not find film, and in any case no longer had time for such small pursuits. No matter who won the civil war, he was certain that ordinary Mozabites would continue to suffer. But he himself would prosper—he pretended to be certain of that, too.

  Oukal was a Saharan survivalist. His hope lay in a patch of desert about twenty miles out of town, where he had dug a well and planted the first palms. He called it his ranch, and promised to take me there, but first wanted to do a little drinking.

  We drove in his Volkswagen van, tools rattling in the back, to buy wine at the end of an alley. The wine was Algerian, originally intended for export to Europe. It was sold unlabeled from a doorway by a woman in a veil, doing a steady and furtive business. As we clattered up in the Volkswagen, an old man slipped down the alley, tucking a bottle into his robes. But Oukal was never bashful. He greeted the woman loudly, introduced me to her as his dear friend, and loaded up with two dozen bottles. He wanted to throw a party in honor of America.

  He held the party that night, in the concrete courtyard of his house. Already I recognized most of the men there—the architect, the scrap-metal farmer, the commerce inspector, the clerk from the hotel, the rug merchant from the market, the policeman, the sly, hooded plumber, good for a wink and a smile, and of course Hamim, ever the voyeur of sin. Oukal was in a fine humor. He apologized for the clutter in his house and made excuses for a wife overwhelmed by two young children. I guessed she might disapprove of her husband’s friends.

  It was all very American. Oukal cooked. He built a big fire directly on the concrete patio, and after it had settled into a glowing heap, he roasted skewered lamb over the coals. The night air became chilly. We huddled close to the fire, chewed the meat, and set to drinking. At first the mood was jovial. When the concrete below the fire exploded, shooting embers across the courtyard, the policeman somersaulted backward in surprise, and we laughed. But the wine was strong, and the conversation flagged. I wanted to talk about the oasis, but the others had done their complaining and their bragging, and had exhausted the easy things to say. The drinking grew humorless and isolating. Only Hamim, the good Moslem, remained sure of his future. Hamim could dream. He wanted to keep the evening going. But for the others, the party had turned sour.

  ON A BRIGHT afternoon, Oukal drove me to his homestead south of town. It lay in a desert depression, on land available to anyone willing to work it. Oukal had claimed ten acres of level ground, and an equal amount of hill. He had drilled a well and hired two nomads to clear the rocks for him. The nomads were illegal immigrants, Tuaregs from the highland deserts of Niger, to the south. The Tuaregs are Berber nomads, fierce camel riders who controlled the Sahara’s mountainous core for thousands of years. These two were typically tall and gaunt, and wore the chèche of the hard desert, a long cotton turban wrapped first around the head, then forward across the nose and mouth and neck. The chèche protects against the dryness and dust of the hard desert, but more important still, it gives its wearers the power of anonymity. Tuareg society was built on raiding and war. Tuareg men were so convinced of the chèche’s advantages that until recently they never showed their faces to strangers. Tuareg women, by contrast, do not veil themselves. Europeans excited by this apparent liberation have misunderstood the chèche and its context. The bareness of the women’s faces is in fact an expression of their vulnerability. The men’s chèche is not a veil but a mask.

  Oukal’s Tuaregs were the losers in a war against modern times. They lived in a roofless straw enclosure equipped with a wooden front door. Oukal had provided them with one shovel, one bucket, and a wheelbarrow. Today he brought them a week’s groceries, with which they retreated hungrily into their dwelling. Oukal chuckled and said they had found their door out in the desert. Smoke from a cooking fire soon rose above the enclosure.

  Oukal took me across the property to the well, which was 120 feet deep and sheathed in concrete. He started the diesel pump and offered me water from a gushing hose. I praised the water as sweet. He showed me the first date palms, tender chest-high infants planted in rows at the base of a hill. He explained where he would grow his vegetables. He said he would have chickens, goats, sheep, and maybe a horse for taking Texas-style rides in the hills. The water would make it all possible. He walked me over to where his house would be, and predicted that his wife would be less distracted here than in town. He predicted success for his children. He said they were young, and would learn to love the open horizons away from the oasis. He vowed to give
them that freedom. Like a good American, he even paced the outline of a swimming pool.

  But his enthusiasms could not endure the drive home. We both felt the change—the suspicion of defeat that overcame him like a slow fatigue, the thought that already his history could be written. He was not a young man anymore. He stopped the Volkswagen where the dirt road overlooked the valley of M’Zab, and sat silently behind the wheel. I waited for him to speak. Gazing out over the roofs of the oasis, he swore that he had no respect for the people who lived there. He called them lazy, and fearful. He called them Africans, although he was one too. He looked into the distance. He brooded.

  Hamim had told me already that Oukal’s ranch would fail, as his other ventures had. His well was sweet but weak, and could be pumped only an hour a day. He implied that Oukal was a dreamer.

  But Oukal was not a dreamer. Faced with the frustrations of a life in the M’Zab, he had simply refused to surrender. If this made him foolish, I admired his strength and his courage nonetheless.

  Hamim had said, “Oukal’s life is like this: he has a dog and a goat. The dog chases the goat. The goat chases the dog. They stir the dust.”

  But Hamim’s life was like this: he went to the movies.

  12

  THE

  MECHANICS

  OF ESCAPE

  IF YOU’RE LUCKY, you just take a bus. Mine was an old oily Nissan with bald tires, heading south from the M’Zab one sunny morning. I crowded up to the door, waved a ticket, fought my way on board. The other passengers were silent, watchful men in turbans and chèches. I made my way past their unsmiling stares, and found a broken seat in the back. The driver climbed on looking unshaven, unalert, overweight, surly.

  His assistant, the conductor, surveyed the passengers sternly. He was a small and self-important man, infused with the drama of his mission. We were headed for a town called In Salah, 400 miles deeper into the desert, down the disintegrating Trans-Saharan, in a decrepit bus, with a driver who didn’t give a damn, in a time of revolution. The conductor’s job was to keep the passengers under control. He seemed to look forward to the possibility of dissent.