The Timbuktu School for Nomads

by Nicholas Jubber

  ‘One day I was cornered in an empty street. They blindfolded and handcuffed me, put me in a black djellaba and kicked me into a car, locking me to the bar inside. I was in solitary confinement for 15 days while they questioned me. Then I was taken to a house and given a number: 72. That’s what they called me. I didn’t have a name anymore, just a number: 72.

  ‘That’s when the torture began. I was blindfolded, hung in the air for hours, or they made me sit on the floor and kicked me. They shaved off my hair and beard. They deprived us of food for days, then gave us lentils or chickpeas with insects in it. There were other Saharawis with me, and other groups the government didn’t like. We were like brothers, all together in this ordeal.

  ‘One day they transported us in the cars they use to round up wild dogs. Officially, we were “captured Algerian petroleum workers”. We were taken to Agdes, an old French prison in the mountains. We had to eat the leftovers after they’d fed the dogs and the whole place was full of cow manure. People got diseases easily. There were women with us. I remember one of them, her name was Naj Ibrahim, she died of sickness. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sounds of her suffering.’

  Mohammed and his fellow prisoners were hardly unusual – since the war of 1975, up to 2000 Saharawis had gone missing. As far as the Moroccan authorities were concerned, these prisoners were a huge logistical burden. To avoid press attention when King Hassan was making an official visit to nearby Ouarzazate, they were transported to the hill fort of Skoura in the High Atlas. Another time they were moved to an old French prison called Meguna (‘I saw an owl when we came off the truck,’ said Mohammed, ‘so I knew it was an abandoned place, and you could tell from the smell of the air we were on top of a hill’). The journeys were hellish and, for some, fatal. Mohammed spoke of a fellow prisoner who asked to go to the toilet: ‘They stamped on his groin until his bladder ruptured. He died a few days later.’

  Mohammed’s incarceration took place during the ‘Years of Lead’, the long period of state oppression under Hassan II. But in the twilight of the old king’s reign, there was a shift in policy. Mohammed experienced this when he was transported to a hospital and later a residency in Ouarzazate.

  ‘We frightened everyone who saw us, because we were so thin. They said we looked like skeletons coming out of hell. We were released at last in 1991, after 16 years, and on the journey back we saw a woman on a camel. She asked, “Are you the prisoners?” She trilled and gave us milk. I went back to my home and saw my parents. They couldn’t believe it. My mother just sat there staring at me, and my father kept repeating “alhamdulillah” (thanks to God). It was the only thing he said for a week. My sister was grown up now with her own family. My brother’s children had grown up, I didn’t recognise them.’

  It was like the Quranic tale of the ‘People of the Cave’, a group of youths who hid from persecution and only emerged three centuries later, to find the whole world had changed around them. But instead of sleep Mohammed had endured torture, beatings and three decades of confinement. I wondered if it angered him at all, having missed out on so much. He tipped his head, looking away for a moment. His expression was phlegmatic, his cheeks drawn under his lucid brown eyes.

  ‘This is God’s will. Nobody wants it to happen, but it is God’s will.’

  These were the moments when I glimpsed the power of Islam. Far more than any of the Quranic tenets my friends in Fez had taught me, it was this ability to process the worst life can throw at you, a philosophy born out of the rigours of nomadic life, that showed the consolation, and the power, of the faith.

  12

  Picnic in the Desert

  ONE MORNING, WHEN DAWN WAS STILL PAINTING A VIOLET SLUR OVER THE breezeblock apartments, I wandered out to the edge of Laayoune. Near the Souq Djemal, the grand bazaar, the houses shrunk to tent-shaped bungalows, ridged with dormer windows and bracketed with gas flues. Behind them sprawled the dunes, dipping and rising like rolls of brocade on a cloth seller’s table, sliding down to the glassy meander of the Sakiya al-Hamra. Palmwood logs poked out of the basins, rigged with plastic sheeting to protect the town from the greedy sands.

  I walked longer than I had intended, enjoying the press of my feet in the sand, the suck of the grain on my boots. The further I went, the more cautious I became, because whenever I mentioned the desert to Saharawis, they asked me: ‘Do you know how many landmines there are?’ (Answer: 9 million either side of the berm.) So close to town, I was probably safe. There were footprints to follow, signs of cultivation nearby, broken green bottles left by Saharawi youths who had fallen for the classic vice of the newly urbanised. Still, the free-floating pleasures of a ramble are slightly dented by the prospect of blowing yourself up, so after a while I decided to head back.

  It was not till my final evening in Laayoune that I was able to visit the desert. I had been invited to join some friends of Firas’s, who had a tent and a herd of camels a few miles east. Since they knew the land pretty well, I was crossing my fingers they would keep us free from the mines.

  That was one obstacle. Another – and the first to negotiate – was the difficulty of simply getting out of Laayoune. I was instructed to present myself at Firas’s activist HQ, but my phone buzzed the moment I slipped out of the taxi.

  ‘U R followed. Walk round block & back in 5.’

  Further texts advised me to sit on a step outside the block, wait on a bench, go inside a shop and ask for the back door. I’ve stumbled into the Bourne Identity! It took half an hour of cat-and-mouse before I was given the all clear, guided by cryptic texts to a Land Rover with darkened windows a couple of blocks away.

  ‘Welcome to Saharawi life!’

  Bubbling inside was a group of men in loose, crisp robes. Their festive smiles struck a surreal contrast to the fraught atmosphere outside. They were a cheerful, well-connected gang – one of them was related to the former Polisario president, another was the sheikh of his tribe. The latter’s name was Abdellatif. He was amply built, tucked inside his blankets, chain smoking Marlboro Reds.

  ‘My tribe is the Oulad al-Assad,’ he said. The name means Sons of the Lion. ‘We’re a famous tribe in Western Sahara, because we’re the only ones who fought against every single one of the others!’

  He ran his own camel dairy, with all the milk and cheese coming from the camels.

  ‘When we are in the desert, you will drink camel’s milk. There isn’t as much fat or sugar as cow and goat milk, so we have a lot of customers who are diabetics. And some of our best customers are ladies, because it is good for the skin.’

  An hour out of town, fields of moraine tilted the Land Rover and topsand nibbled at the tyres. The earth swayed below, guiding us into a ring of modest dunes, where a couple of tents were pitched beside a rug of palm-reed matting. Rags on wooden stakes shielded the brazier, stoked to boil the tea and keep us warm. The coals crackled and flashed, jetting sparks and tattooing our faces with shadow, while Saharawi music tinkled through the window of the Land Rover.

  The men around me were not only friends, they were also business partners in a camel-herding co-operative. The camels lounged around us, legs folded and necks bowed, unobtrusive as clumps of bunch-grass. I stepped away from the others to look at them. I hadn’t seen so many camels since Timbuktu, and I could feel my heart beating a little faster. Oh my God, I’m welling up at the sight of artiodactylic retromingent ungulates! They reminded me of Naksheh, who had carried me so gently (or was that just how I remembered it?) across the southern Sahara. I wanted to stroke them, saddle them and ride them. I wanted to try out the skills I’d been taught by Lamina and Jadullah. I wondered if I remembered them all.

  Moishin, the chief herdsman, was wrapped in a woollen cloak. His wiry hair jiggled when he laughed – which was often, in response to my Arabic. Slowly, he adjusted to my level and invited me to join him for the milking.

  ‘Now, hold this bowl, will you? The bosses are here, so I’ve got to make sure there’s plenty to drink … In th
e name of God! You never drank camel’s milk before? It is as if you were never born! Come on, give me the bowl.’

  Snood-like nets of cord webbed the females’ udders, preventing the calves from sucking the milk. Moishin crouched in his plastic slip-ons, kneading the teats, while I held the aluminium bowl on the other side. Camels have multiple milk canals in every teat (one of their advantages for a dairy farmer) and can produce up to 24 pints of milk in a single day. The calves lingered nearby, eager for sippings of the warm, sputtering juice; when the bowl was full, Moishin showed mercy and let them through.

  ‘Drink!’ he commanded. ‘Camel’s milk is the best milk in the world, and if you are travelling you will need to be healthy.’

  This was it! So much of Western Sahara is out of bounds to outsiders, thanks to the landmines and the army presence. To be here in the desert, milking camels with a Saharawi nomad: this was what I’d come for! A few generations ago, there was no other kind of Saharawi. But against the ever-rising tide of war, landmines, military occupation and plain old economics, Moishin was a member of an increasingly exclusive club – just 4 per cent of the modern Saharawi population. Standing next to him, holding the warm, foamy bowl in my hands, I was absorbing a new lesson among nomads. I had learned about goat milking with Lamina’s family near Timbuktu. Now I could add camel milking to the list.

  It was getting dark, so Moishin wrapped his cloak around my shoulders and helped me back to the others. He had been herding for several years, but it wasn’t a hereditary role.

  ‘When I was younger my family went to the Canary Islands.’fn1 He took my hand to stop me from tripping over the resting camels. ‘I was going to live in the town with my family. But I decided to come back here, and you know what? I am happy I did! Living in the desert is the best life – I wish I lived in earlier times when this was more widespread.’

  It was a refreshing point of view. Nomadism is usually characterised as a lifestyle of the desperate, TE Lawrence’s ‘death in life’. But for Moishin, it was life itself. I wondered what in particular attracted him.

  ‘That’s easy. It’s the camels, of course! They are much cleverer than people realise. I swear by God, people have no idea. For example, a month ago we lost two of our camels, but I knew they’d go back to the watering place even though it was 50 kilometres away. So we took the rest of the camels back to the watering place, and there we found them, just as I predicted.’

  Over by the windbreaker, the camel’s milk was passed between us – salty tasting and frothy, as hot as if it had come out of a samovar. My hosts were enjoying themselves, relaxing by the fire. They all lived in town, but like every Saharawi they had nomadic roots and still identified themselves through this heritage.

  ‘It isn’t just living in the desert that makes you a nomad,’ said Abdellatif. ‘You can tell a nomad from other things. For example, in the tea-house many of us shout, because that’s how it is in the desert. You have so much space and you get used to talking across big distances.’

  ‘But it is our nomadic identity that makes life difficult for us,’ said Abdullah, Firas’s brother. ‘When the Spanish did their census, many Saharawis were looking for pasture. So they weren’t included in the census.’

  When Moishin appeared with the meal – a stewed goat carcase on a bed of rice – we all clustered round. A bowl of water was passed between us, hands were wiped and God was praised. Then everybody dived in and ripped into the meat.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ said Abdellatif. ‘Here in the desert you have to fight for your food!’

  I struggled to keep up: eating with your right hand can be a hard task for a leftie, and I am not the nimblest of crouchers. The others could tear off pieces of flesh with one hand, sponging the juices with tufts of bread; and unlike me, their clothes remained unsplattered. I kept eating until only Abdullah and I were left mopping the last remains on a second tray, patting the rice into greasy balls in our palms.

  ‘It’s Barcelona against Chelsea,’ joked Abdullah.

  Even in the desert, the ‘code’ prevailed. We both laughed as we claimed our allegiances, taking turns to pull at the last vestiges of flesh.

  Driving back that night, the headlights picked out silvery rocks and the odd spectral rabbit. A guitar tune played on the Land Rover’s CD system and we swayed to the rhythm. Abdellatif clapped and hummed, and Firas plucked at the shoulders of his dara’a. According to an old Arabic proverb, ‘a man can only be free in the desert’. For the Saharawis, there is a melancholy truth to these words. The song was about the late Polisario leader Mazhoub, a figure widely admired by my companions, less so by the Moroccan authorities. So, when Abdullatif turned down the volume dial, I sensed there was trouble ahead.

  A checkpoint swung towards us and a soldier darted out of his kiosk. I felt my lips shaping a curse. I could see it now: we’re going to be hoicked into the police station, hauled over the coals, kept in for hours. Luckily I’m planning on leaving this country, but what about my companions? Having relatives among the Polisario heavyweights may not bode well.

  The soldier flicked through my passport, puckering his lips over my Mauritanian visa. He asked for my companions’ ID cards. Still unsatisfied, he demanded to see the car documents. That was when Abdellatif decided to launch a charm offensive.

  ‘Lebas! Bekheir? … Yek lebas. Bekheir? Barakallah! Yek bekheir! Wa usratak? … Alhamdulillah! Yeksalmim! … Lebas! Bekheir? … Barakallah! Alhamdulillah! No evil. How are you? … No evil! How are you? Praise God! And how are you? And your family? … Thanks be to God! May you and yours be safe! … No evil! How are you? … Praise God! Thanks be to God!’

  The greetings were garrulous but also genealogical (Firas told me later he only knew the tide was turning when Abdellatif teased out the soldier’s tribe). Well-worn implements in the nomadic toolkit, these salutations have been developed and deployed at wells and crossing points over the ages. Abdellatif rattled them out so fast I was lost after three or four sallies. He carried on, lobbing expressions through the window, attacking the soldier with clasped hands, magnetic smiles and flowery language. At last, his victim wobbled. A quick glance at the kiosk, and he posted my passport back through the window. More phrases were flourished, families were blessed, God and the prophets were invoked and eternal happiness became a bathtub for our souls, but it was all drowned by the squeal of Abdullah’s foot on the pedal. Relief was so palpable you could taste it. Along with the revived beat of the music, it tingled all the way back to the city.

  The other end of Western Sahara. Dakhla: a sun-baked frontier town where truckers in greasy vests played cards on the piazzas and sinewy black men crouched over ripped-open hessian sacks. They were Mauritanians, Senegalese and Malians, their massive bodies reflecting the physical challenges of Africa’s terrain. They offered batteries, mobile phones, sunglasses, bootleg Afropop, 12-inch steel knives for the forthcoming Eid festival, a night with the waitress at the café round the corner, a joint of ‘chocolat’, and rides to the Mauritanian border. I went for two of the first and one of the last. The driver was a fixed pole in a lavender-blue boubou. His name was Iselmu and he was a beidane (a white Moor), with a shiny-finned Merc and one place left.

  ‘You will reach Nouadhibou’, he declared, ‘at the time of dusk, God willing.’

  His head didn’t so much as twitch. His sunglasses shielded his eyes so completely, I couldn’t even tell if he was looking at me. But the sharply gathered syllables admitted no doubt – which was exactly what I needed.

  Since leaving Laayoune, anxiety had been scooping a cavern in my stomach. What did I know about Mauritania? Hmmm … there was its knack for military coups (five since independence, including two in the last decade) … the ongoing slave trade … the bandits infesting its deserts … Apart from a genteel French monograph about the birdlife on the Banc d’Arguin, nothing I had read about the country inspired any confidence. Like WB Yeats enlisting Leo Africanus’s ‘undoubting impulse’, I was in need of a boost. So to put
myself in the hands of someone who looked like he knew what he was doing – it was all I could hope for.

  Tomorrow would mark my first official border crossing since I started my journey in Fez. The return to Timbuktu was now well under way.

  The School for Nomads

  Lesson Four: Camp

  THE POUNDING OF MILLET AND THE CRACKLE OF GRAINS STIR ME INTO THE day. Against the 360-degree solar attack, flaps of canvas are lifted and dropped, levered by hooked sticks and acacia pegs. Constant adjustment is required to keep us unstifled and burn-free, despite being deep in the heat like chips in a scuttle.

  I hear yowling all around me. My early morning half-brain mistakes it for some kind of exotic wind, before I realise it’s the mewling of a baby. By the time I’m sitting up, there are naked, blubbering, drooling children everywhere. Fingers probe the air around my nose; eyes expand to the size of karité nuts. The women scoop the babies up, swaddle them, sing to them, plug them to their breasts and wipe their bums with strips of old clothing. At the same time, they putter about, tending the teapot, preparing the millet, performing the dozens of tasks that comprise the daily life of a camp. One of them is carrying a bowl of speckled milk eked from the goats while bearing a 1-year-old in a sling across her back.

  I go out later with Abdul-Hakim to watch. She caresses the nanny goats and strokes their underbellies, while Abdul-Hakim hamshackles the calves. The udders are nagged and slanted towards the bowl like a fireman’s hose. The calves bleat in protest as their mothers are drained; and when it’s over, they dive in for the slops.