He fled south on the train, and suffered the hostility of the passengers. On the Côte d’Azur he was thrown out of a café. The experience soured him; upon his return to Tamanrasset, he found the French tourists even more difficult to accept.
When he overheard them criticizing Algerians he would draw himself up and in elegant French ask them whose country they thought it was. When he overhead them trying to haggle with shopkeepers, he would intervene to ask them if they did the same in France. I thought it was beneath his dignity. But it was his habit.
The French in Tamanrasset were joined by Germans, Swiss, Italians, and sometimes Japanese. They arrived on the airline, and wandered the streets in cautious groups. Most stayed a few days on packaged tours. They bought souvenirs, rode camels through the outlying desert, and were taken in four-wheel-drive caravans to visit the hermitage built by Charles de Foucauld high in the Hoggar Mountains.
The hermitage had five stone huts and a stone dormitory where visitors could sleep on the floor. It stood at 8,950 feet on the Assekrem Plateau, amid desolate and windswept peaks sixty miles from Tamanrasset. I drove there one afternoon with Addoun in a hired Land Cruiser. We walked to the top of the mountain and sat quietly, watching the sun set. The wind turned cold. We climbed down past the chapel, where prayers were being said, to the dormitory, where a group of Swiss tourists had just arrived. They talked about trekking. They had been to Peru the year before, and had learned to dislike each other. We ate with them at a long table by the light of lanterns.
“Peru was marvelous,” said a middle-aged woman. “We actually lived among the Indians.”
“Shit,” said the old man next to her.
They were not religious. They offered to share their whiskey with us. Addoun glanced at me as if to say, “Do you see the decadence of the West?”
But also sitting at the table was a gray-bearded Californian with a gentle smile and bright, feverish eyes. He said he was a retired lawyer with a house in La Jolla. He admired Foucauld, and had come to the Hoggar Mountains to fast and to meditate. For thirty-one days he had gone without food, living in a one-man tent by a spring below the hermitage. He had talked to no one and had read only the Bible. This was his first meal and human contact in a month. I asked him if he had come to any conclusions. He said yes, he would devote the rest of his life to alleviating hunger. He was, I thought, a true ascetic. Addoun distrusted him anyway because, he said, he was not born to the desert.
A DIFFERENT TYPE altogether were the Europeans who came to Tamanrasset along the Trans-Saharan. For them the town was merely a stopping point on the long way south. The ones remembered were the lone eccentrics, the walkers, wanderers, bicycle riders, and lost souls of the sort who drift through all the lonely corners of the world. One man had come through pushing a wheelbarrow. It was said later that he had finished the desert crossing, and had pushed deep into equatorial Africa before dying of disease.
But most of the Trans-Saharan tourists—the ones you saw daily on the main street—were motorists. They traveled in groups of four-wheel-drive vehicles, usually to Dakar or Abidjan or some other famous place with a beach. The vehicles were equipped with colorful decals, with placards proclaiming EXPEDITION, and with gas cans, tires, shovels, and steel tracks for the sand. The drivers were dashing and self-conscious, mostly Germans and French playing the explorer. If they were brawny, they rolled up their sleeves to show off their biceps. If they were fat, they grew beards. They wore bandannas around their necks, and swaggered around the hotel, smelling of sweat and dust, talking loudly. Addoun called them “chichi.” They seemed to have seen too many cigarette ads.
But those tourists are gone now, chased away by the fighting. The Europeans who still drive through Tamanrasset are different again. Crossing the Sahara is their business. They drive luxury sedans, preferably big Mercedes, to be sold in Niger, or Nigeria, or points beyond. In the cities of Africa a Mercedes-Benz is seen as the ultimate earthly good, and the class of traders, politicians, and soldiers that floats on top has earned a new name—the Wabenzi. Many of these cars on the Trans-Saharan were said to be stolen, provided with papers to satisfy the Algerian police.
I talked to one Frenchman who had made the trip fifteen times before. He was barrel-chested and balding, with a drooping mustache and strong arms—a tough guy right off the docks of Marseilles. I asked if he worried about losing his way. No, never, he said. He did only this now for a living. I did not ask what he had done before. He took me to see the BMW he was ferrying south. Under the dust and mud it was gleaming black and very new. It had a digital radio and a burglar alarm. I asked him if he ever had trouble. No, never.
There are others for whom driving a car, stolen or not, is a one-time adventure. They operate on the assumption, probably correct, that if they keep moving, the Islamic revolution will not catch up with them. They are willing to gamble on the Tuaregs. Most are young, middle-class, and studiously carefree—thin Germans, and tangle-haired Frenchwomen. In Africa they have rejected the constraints of European society. They wear Ali Baba pants and sandals, and have the kind of self-congratulating conversations you might hear between cruising yachtsmen in warm waters. They have neither the money nor the desire to invest in satellite navigation. These are the people who still get lost. It happens most often after they leave Tamanrasset, somewhere on the way to the border of Niger, or in the hundreds of miles of wilderness that lie beyond. Addoun was right—his concrete markers have hardly helped.
Recently, four young Germans—three men and a woman—left Tamanrasset in a Mercedes. They drove south to within 60 miles of Niger, then turned east, probably to avoid the border police. They got lost. They wandered 400 miles to the Libyan border, turned around, wandered back, and ran out of gas. Their families came to Tamanrasset to search for them, and distributed a poster with photographs. Absurdly, the poster was written in German. In bold print it read, “LOST IN WEST AFRICA!” Weeks later, the Mercedes and three male corpses were found. The woman was presumed to have been eaten by jackals or buried by blowing sand.
I saw the poster tacked to the wall at La Source, a hostel built around a spring of bubbling mineral water three miles outside of town. I went there for a drink with Addoun and his friends. The poster was in the entranceway; the photographs had been slashed with a knife. When I remarked on this to my companions, they seemed unsympathetic.
“They’re dead anyway,” one said, as if that explained the slashes.
“They brought it on themselves,” said another.
Addoun was more expansive. “The families blamed us for not finding them alive—but how could we have? Just look at the emptiness here. It is something Europeans just cannot understand.”
THERE IS AN old sign still standing beside the track leading south from Tamanrasset. In crudely lettered French and English, it warns drivers about the dangers of crossing the desert, and advises them to take precautions. But even during the high years of Tamanrasset’s tourism, the sign made little difference. Drivers who got to the central Sahara were either fully prepared to start with or not inclined to take precautions.
The Belgian family probably went by it without a second look. They were husband, wife, and five-year-old boy, driving an old Peugeot sedan for resale in Burkina Faso. At first their trip went fast, from Algiers through the northern oases to points south. Eventually the pavement ended. They were prepared to spend nights in the desert, but the driving was slower than expected. They were encouraged when they arrived in Tamanrasset. After resting there, and refueling, they pushed on, planning three days to the border with Niger. They tried to follow Addoun’s markers, but many already had disappeared.
Partway to the border, as the desert descended into the great southern flats, the Belgians took a wrong turn. When they understood their mistake, they still had plenty of gas, and they set out to retrace their route. This was not easy, since the ground was hard-packed and rocky. But getting lost was part of the adventure, a memorable game for carefree Europeans. We
know this because the woman later wrote it down. People dying of thirst in the desert often leave a written record. They have time to think. Writing denies the incredible isolation.
The Peugeot broke down. The Belgians rationed their water and lay in the shade of a tarpaulin. The rationing did not extend their lives; they might as well have drunk their fill, since the human body loses water at a constant rate, even when dehydrated. The only way to stretch your life in the hot desert is to reduce your sweating: stay put, stay shaded, and keep your clothes on.
The Belgians hoped a truck would come along. For a week they waited, scanning the horizon for a dust-tail or the glint of a windshield. This was in a place, more or less, where the maps still insist on showing a road. The woman felt the upwellings of panic. She began to write more frantically, filling pages in single sessions. The water ran low, then dry, and the family grew horribly thirsty. After filtering it through a cloth, they drank the car’s radiator fluid. They had arrived at the danger stage.
Water is the largest component of our bodies, but we have little to spare. In the hottest desert we lose it, mostly by sweating, at the rate of two gallons a day while resting in the shade, or four gallons a day while walking. We are hardy animals. Because our sweating keeps us cool, we function well in extreme heat as long as we replenish that water loss. If water is available, we naturally maintain our fluid content within a quarter of a percent. But what happens when the supplies run out?
Thirst is first felt when the body has lost about 0.5 percent of its weight to dehydration. For a 180-pound man, that amounts to about a pint of water. With a 2 percent loss (say, two quarts), the stomach is no longer big enough to supply the body’s needs, and people stop drinking before they have replenished their loss, even if they are given ample water. This is called voluntary dehydration, though it is hardly a conscious choice. Up to a 5 percent loss (about one gallon) the symptoms include fatigue, loss of appetite, flushed skin, irritability, increased pulse rate, and mild fever. Beyond that lie dizziness, headache, labored breathing, absence of salivation, circulatory problems, blued skin, and slurred speech. At 10 percent, a person can no longer walk. The point of no return is 12 percent (a three-gallon deficit), when the tongue swells, and the mouth loses all sensation. Because swallowing becomes impossible, a person this dehydrated cannot recover without medical assistance. In the Sahara it may take only half a day to get to such a condition. Now the skin shrinks against the bones and cracks, the eyes sink into the skull, and vision and hearing become dim. Urination is painful, and urine is dark. Delirium sets in.
As the body dehydrates in a hot desert climate, a disproportionate amount of water is drawn from the circulating blood. The blood thickens, and finally can no longer fulfill its functions, one of which is to transport heat generated within the body to the surface. It is this heat that ultimately kills. The end comes with an explosive rise in body temperature, convulsions, and blissful death.
After the radiator coolant was gone, the Belgians started sipping gasoline. You would too. Call it petroposia. Saharans have recommended it to me as a way of staying off the battery acid. The woman wrote that it seemed to help. They also drank their urine. She reported that it was difficult at first, but that afterward it wasn’t so bad.
The boy was the weakest, and was suffering terribly. In desperation, they burned their car, hoping someone would see the smoke. No one did. The boy could no longer swallow. His name was Maurice. His parents killed him to stop his pain. Later, the husband cut himself open and allowed his wife to drink his blood. At his request, she broke his neck with a rock. Alone now, she no longer wanted to live. Still, the Sahara was fabulous, she wrote, and she was glad to have come. She would do it again. She regretted only one thing—that she had not seen Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III. Those were her last lines. She had lost her mind, but through her confusion must have remembered the ease of death in the movies.
The family’s remains were found, and returned to Tamanrasset. I arrived later on a flight from Algiers, and was shown the woman’s journal by the provincial judge. Her handwriting grew difficult to read toward the end. My own son, who was an infant then, has since turned five. I have not taken him to the Sahara. I cannot stop grieving for the Belgian boy.
AFTER A WEEK, Addoun found a man who was driving east to Djanet, an old oasis near the wild Libyan border. This man would allow me to accompany him, and then for a price would take me farther—into the infamous Tadart, a vastness of sculpted stone where the rock art endures.
I was not cautious enough. I simply asked Addoun if he knew this man. He said he did not, but knew of his family. The ride had been arranged by a merchant who from a distance had helped me before, Moulay Lakhdar Abderhadim, the most successful businessman of Tamanrasset. I had never met him. But the day before my departure, he invited Addoun and me to lunch at his house.
Abderhadim lived beyond the camel market. To the unaccustomed eye, it was a dismal neighborhood. Chickens and goats picked through garbage in the rutted streets. There were long, monotonous compound walls, crumbling and neglected, stained brown with mud and blowing dust. Only the vehicles hinted at money: Range Rovers and Land Cruisers, worth two to three times their price in Europe.
Addoun knocked at a metal gate. After a delay, while the women scurried out of sight, we were let in by an old Haratin in a robe and a turban. Addoun greeted him warmly and introduced him as a friend of the family, though clearly he was a servant. We entered a lush garden of fruit trees and flowering bushes. The house was sprawling, single-story, made of stone and adobe. Addoun knew his way and led me into the sitting room, where Abderhadim reclined on a mattress watching a soccer game on television. Plump and soft-looking, Abderhadim was a middle-aged man with a round face and thinning hair. He wore a blue running suit zippered up tight around his throat. A blanket was draped over his legs. He excused himself for not greeting us at the door; he suffered from rheumatism, and it had flared up in his knees. Addoun and I sat on cushions on the floor. The doorway gave onto a lush courtyard, brilliant with desert light. Other men arrived. The servant came with a bowl of couscous, and sat with us.
Abderhadim had an affable but impatient manner, with a decisiveness that hinted at his authority. He waved aside my thanks for arranging the trip to the east, and asked me to come to lunch again when I returned. He mentioned in passing that he himself did not know the driver who would take me. Most of his own business was with the south.
We talked about commerce. He described himself as a trader in food and car parts—and in other goods as the opportunities arose. I asked him to explain. Modestly, he called himself a simple shopkeeper who had become an importer by default. “Niger is very poor. But you can find everything there.”
I asked if he found business difficult across such distances, with no roads, no telephones, and nonconvertible currencies.
He smiled and said, “We are all Muslims.”
An older man, dressed in a white robe and turban, told me a story about this. His uncle had been a trader in Tamanrasset, who for years had run camel caravans to Niger and Mali, carrying dates and salt to the south, and returning with chickens. His name was Salem Ben Hadj Ahmed. In 1953, on the way to Agadez, Niger, he and his men came across the encampment of a nomadic Tuareg family. The father and older sons had gone off to hunt, leaving the mother and her youngest children alone. The woman made the caravaners welcome, gave them water, and prepared to slaughter a sheep in their honor. But Ahmed stopped her, since his men had killed a gazelle and had fresh meat. They roasted and ate the gazelle, shared the meat with the family, and in the morning moved on. It was Ahmed’s last trip; he was getting to be an old man. Afterward he stayed in Tamanrasset and sent out trucks to do his business. He died in 1968. News of his death spread by word of mouth through the desert. One day a letter arrived for his son. It was from Niger, and it said that his father had forty-five sheep there; he should come get them. The son had never heard of these animals. He checked his father’s wi
ll and found no mention of them. However, he set out for Niger and eventually found the old nomad whose wife had offered the sheep so many years before. The sheep was Ahmed’s, the nomad said, and so were her offspring.
The story seemed true. But fraternal love between Muslims is a fiction that has always been hard to maintain. Abderhadim was a subtle man, and he may have been embarrassed by the attempt. He brought the talk back to the present by criticizing his trading partners to the south. “Look at the poverty just in Mali. People are starving there. I know a merchant in Gao, a Muslim like us. He is a wealthy man. A beggar comes to his door, begging. He takes a date—one date!—and he does this.” He cupped his hands and touched them to his forehead. “Then he gives the beggar the date. He thinks he has fulfilled his duty. In Algeria we feed our goats better than that!”
Over tea, Abderhadim described his work more carefully. Some of the commerce is legal. Dates from the northern oasis are exported; camels, goats, and chickens are imported. Since the exports exceed the imports, over the course of the year the merchants of Tamanrasset build credit in the neighboring countries. Then, every spring, a fair is held here during which the government relaxes import restrictions. Consumer goods, mostly Japanese, flood across the borders. The fair is an exception to the regulated Algerian economy—a sanctioned experiment in free trade. In Tamanrasset, the balance sheets return to zero. The goods are sold to buyers from the north.
But the real profits are in smuggling. Abderhadim admitted it reluctantly, and only because others were in the room. After pointing out that he himself never broke the law, he explained how it is done. The driver who imports a load of declared Malian goats into Algeria might on the next trip south head out with an outlawed cargo of wheat bought at subsidized prices. The truck that hauls dates down the Trans-Saharan to Niger may return by a less public route with a load of precious car parts.
Sahara Unveiled Page 13
