Contents
Cover
Also by Stephen Davies
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Map
Glossary
1 Ali
2 Kadija
3 Ali
4 Kadija
5 Ali
6 Kadija
7 Ali
8 Kadija
9 Ali
10 Kadija
11 Ali
12 Kadija
13 Ali
14 Kadija
15 Ali
16 Kadija
17 Ali
18 Kadija
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Also by Stephen Davies
Hacking Timbuktu
Outlaw
The Yellowcake Conspiracy
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Text copyright © Stephen Davies, 2015
Map copyright © Kate Grove and Phil Huntington, 2015
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
ISBN 978 1 78344 270 6
For Debbie and Sven, with love.
When I read a book, I usually skip the foreword. If you’ve ever been to Timbuktu, please do just that. If you haven’t, you will find the following information useful.
There are three groups of people in the story. They are the people of Timbuktu, the Tuareg rebels and the Defenders of Faith.
The people of Timbuktu
As you may already know, Timbuktu is a real city. You can find it on a map on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Its people are – brace yourself for two massive generalisations – poor but peace-loving. They are followers of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam. They are proud of their vast manuscript collections, their wonderful music and their much-visited shrines (burial places of Timbuktu’s scholars and holy men).
The Tuareg rebels
The Tuaregs are an ethnic group in West Africa. The men are sometimes called ‘the lords of the Sahara’. They wear indigo turbans and ride camels through the desert, buying and selling salt. The Tuaregs live in Mali and other West African countries but they have always longed to have a country of their own, right in the middle of the Sahara desert. This imagined homeland, Azawad, will be at least the size of Spain, and its three main cities will be Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu.
The Defenders of Faith
There are many militant Islamist groups in the Sahara Desert. One is called AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb). Another is called ‘Defenders of Faith’ (Arabic: Ansar Dine). They hate the West and its allies, including the government of Mali, and they long for a strict form of Muslim law to be imposed across West Africa.
In March 2012 there was a military coup in Mali.
The President fled from his palace and the country was plunged into utter confusion. Confusion meant vulnerability.
The Tuareg rebels saw an opportunity to conquer the northern region of Mali and establish their glorious homeland Azawad.
The Defenders of Faith saw a chance to establish the Islamic state they had always dreamed of.
The two groups decided that by working together they could achieve both of these aims.
On 30 March, they captured Kidal.
On 31 March, they invaded Gao.
On 1 April their fighters massed in the desert north of Timbuktu, preparing to attack …
balaphone
a West African percussion instrument, an ancestor of the xylophone
baraka
(Arabic) blessing
dhikr
(Arabic) repeating the name of God over and over again
djinn
(Arabic) spirit beings in Islam, can be benevolent or mischievous
haram
(Arabic) forbidden by Islamic law
hijab
(Arabic) a veil that covers the head and chest, worn by many Muslim women
jembe
a West African drum made from hardwood and goatskin.
jihad
(Arabic) holy struggle, often seen as a call to arms
kora
a West African harp-lute with twenty-one strings
marabout
(French) a teacher of Islam
mujahid
(plural: mujahidin) (Arabic) warrior
ngoni
a West African guitar with four strings, an ancestor of the banjo
qadi
(Arabic) judge
Qur’an
(Arabic) Islam’s main religious text, which Muslims believe to be a revelation from God
sharia
(Arabic) Islamic law
Sufism
a mystical branch of Islam
Sura
(Arabic) a chapter of the Qur’an
tariq
(Arabic) a true story
timbakewen
Guardians of sacred manuscripts
I lie on my front on the crest of the dune. The sand is hot against my chest, the goatskin satchel tight against my shoulders. I take a deep breath and pull a fold of my turban up over my nose and mouth. The newly washed fabric smells sweet, like victory.
‘Are you filming?’
Omar holds up my phone and presses a button. ‘Now I am.’
My mission is simple.
Descend the dune. Cross the wadi. Scale the wall. Smite the enemy.
‘Go with God, Ali,’ whispers Omar in my ear. ‘Think of your namesake at the Battle of Badr.’
I stand up and sprint down the dune, the sand sliding away beneath me. Lion of God with the strength of God. There is no one like Ali and there is no sword like Zulfiqaar. Fast and light on the balls of my feet, I skitter sideways down the slope all the way to the bottom. The dry river bed lies before me, a jagged scar bisecting the desert. I speed up, shorten my stride, and leap.
Reach with the arms, pedal with the legs, land with a roll.
Perfect.
The next challenge is the wall. I drop into a crouch and reach over my shoulder into the goatskin satchel. Cord in the left hand. Claw in the right. Eyes on the parapet.
Five years of shepherding in the desert is good training for a warrior of God. If you can protect your sheep, you can protect your brothers. If you can master yourself, you can master an enemy. If you can kill the lion that threatens your flock, you can kill an infidel. If you can make your staff fly high and straight to knock down a baobab fruit, you can make a metal claw fly high and straight as well.
I take a deep breath and feel its weight in my right hand. Then I swing my arm and let it fly.
; Up it floats, and hooks itself neatly over the top of the wall as I knew it must. Alhamdulillah!
With my hands on the rope and my bare feet pressing against the hot concrete bricks, I climb. A mujahid is weightless. He is all spirit. With God’s help he can scale a high wall in a second.
At the top, I reach over my shoulder and take out a second length of rope. I tie it to the hook, and rappel down the far side of the wall.
I have breached the defences of the camp. On my right, two large termite mounds stand on guard. On my left, two sacks of bambara beans sleep deeply. I reach over my shoulder one last time and draw from my satchel a pistol and a hand grenade.
Call on Ali, who is able to bring about the extraordinary. O Ali! O Ali! O Ali!
I line up the pistol sights and fire two bullets into the bean sacks. Then I pull the grenade pin with my teeth and lob the deadly fruit towards the termite mounds.
Boom.
The rock quakes under my feet. Fragments of termite mound descend like rain. The enemies of God have been vanquished.
‘God is great!’ cries Redbeard, striding into view round the side of the wall. He claps his leathery hands and grins all over his desert-hardened face. Behind him come Omar, Rashid, Hilal, Hamza and the rest of the Brothers. Omar’s eyes behind his thick glasses look bigger than ever. He is still filming.
‘Forty-five seconds!’ declares Redbeard, holding up his watch. ‘You, Ali, are my champion infiltrator.’
‘Thank you, master.’
‘Behold the infidels,’ chuckles Redbeard, bending over the bambara bean sacks and slipping a finger into one of the bullet holes. ‘I don’t suppose this one will ever eat pork again.’
We laugh obediently.
When Redbeard straightens up, the smile is gone. ‘Tell me, Ali Konana, could you do it if the wall were a little higher? Could you hook it?’
‘Inshallah, master. God willing.’
‘What if it were night, with only half a moon?’
‘Yes, master. With God’s help I could.’
After infiltration practice comes target practice.
The fisherboys Hilal and Hamza shin up the rope onto the top of the wall and edge their way along the parapet, setting empty tomato paste tins at equal distances. The rest of us fetch our weapons from the back of a donkey cart. My AK-47 is marked with the same lopsided cross I used to use for my cows. We sling the guns across our bodies and follow Redbeard across the shimmering sand towards a distant dune, no longer a ragtag group of teenagers but a proud, invincible battalion.
‘Who can tell me,’ says Redbeard, ‘why the AK-47 is the greatest gun in the world?’
‘I know, master,’ gasps Omar, his fingertips reaching for the sun. ‘I know, I know.’
‘Go on.’
‘Easy to strip, easy to clean, easy to fire,’ chants Omar. ‘Spits out seven hundred rounds a minute. Never overheats or jams, not even in a sandstorm. A child can use it.’
‘Even my little brother can use it,’ whispers Hilal, ‘and he’s not much bigger than his gun!’
Hamza stares straight ahead, pretending not to have heard, but his nostrils twitch like they always do when he is angry. The fisherboys are twins, but they are not identical. Not even similar, in fact. Hilal is tall and Hamza short. Hilal is the comedian of the group and Hamza the thundercloud.
We trudge up the side of the dune and line up along the crest.
‘Thirty rounds each on full auto,’ barks Redbeard. ‘Go.’
We shoulder our guns and one by one we rattle off our rounds. Hamza is the best marksman of us all – five tins in four deafening seconds.
By the time it gets to my turn, there are no tins left on the wall, so Redbeard tells me to pick out a brick instead. I kick off my sandals, rest my finger on the trigger and fire.
In four joyous, bone-rattling seconds, my chosen brick and several of its neighbours dissolve to dust.
The other boys take their turns. We only built this wall yesterday, and now it looks like one of Hamza’s fishing nets.
Redbeard goes last. With his thirty rounds he strobes the weakened areas of the wall and reduces the entire edifice to a pile of rubble. Some of the boys whoop and slap each other on the back.
‘Incredible,’ I gasp.
‘I know,’ Omar whispers. ‘They say he once shot down an Algerian helicopter with that rifle.’
The cheering and clapping die down, and now there is another noise, an eerie rumbling sound that swells to a boom and then to a roar. It sounds like the voice of God himself.
Redbeard puts down his gun and stretches out his arms. ‘The desert is singing!’ he cries. ‘Who can tell me why the desert is singing?’
‘Our shooting disturbed the dune,’ gabbles Omar, forgetting to raise his hand. ‘Billions of sand grains are sliding away from the crest, each layer of sand rubbing against the one beneath it like a bow against a violin. You can’t see the sandslide but you can hear the—’
‘Nonsense!’ cries Redbeard. ‘It is joy that makes the desert sing. She hears the gunfire of the mujahidin and she knows that a new day of faith and justice is about to dawn.’
He glares around him, as if daring anyone to contradict him.
No one does.
Lunch is rice and bambara beans, as usual. We crouch in the shade, five boys to a bowl. Going sunwise round the circle, we take it in turns to palm a clump of rice and beans and raise it to our mouths.
Hilal says these beans are from the sack I shot this morning. After every mouthful, he clutches his throat and rolls his eyes in their sockets, pretending to choke on a bullet. The other boys are laughing like hyenas, which only encourages him.
‘Peace be upon you,’ says a voice behind us.
Hamza.
‘Brother, join us!’ says Hilal. ‘Sit down, if you haven’t already. I’m never quite sure.’
General cackling from the group.
‘I have a message for you,’ mutters Hamza.
‘Give it,’ says Hilal. ‘I like messages.’
The stocky fisherboy grabs his brother by the hair and knees him in the face. ‘Stop mocking me,’ he says.
After two o’clock prayers, we recite the Qur’an in unison. The name of today’s chapter is Al-Anfal. And you did not kill them, but it was God who killed them. And you threw not, when you threw, but it was God who threw that He might test the believers with a good test.
Omar and I learned our Arabic with a marabout back home in Goundam. On winter evenings we huddled round the fire in his courtyard, twelve small boys with furrowed foreheads and flapping tongues, writing and reciting long into the night. The firewood never used to last very long. In the early hours of the morning the embers glowed dim and the breeze from the Niger river made us cringe and shiver. The marabout was never cold, of course. Shrouded in a thick cotton blanket, he emerged only to correct our pronunciation or to scold us that our ink was too watery. He never talked about the Qur’an itself or told us how these peculiar Arabic verses might be relevant to our lives. However many hours we studied, our hearts remained as cold and numb as the fingers that clasped our writing boards.
This training camp is not like that. Here the fierce sun warms our bodies and the words of the Book warm our hearts. We learn about the prophets, peace be upon them, shepherds just like us. The Prophet Ibrahim, the father of nations, loved to fill his eyes with sheep and goats. The Prophet Musa walked behind a flock for forty years before God sent him to challenge Pharaoh. The Prophet Daouda chanted God’s praises with a shepherd’s crook in one hand and a slingshot in the other.
The last of the prophets was the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, the shepherd who became a warrior. We learn about his nights of solitude and prayer on Mount Hira, his visit from the angel Jibliiru, his zeal to prove to the world that there is no god but God. We learn about his friends – Omar, Bilal, Jabir, Hilal, Rashid, Iyas, Hamza – courageous in the cause of God and utterly devoted to their leader. We learn about Ali, bravest of the lot, t
he Lion of God with the strength of God. Wielding his shining scimitar, Zulfiqaar, he protected his master in the thick of battle.
When we first arrived at the camp three months ago, Redbeard gave us new names. He named us after the Prophet’s companions in the hope that we might also acquire their bravery and devotion.
In our camp, there is no memorisation without understanding, no recitation without conviction. Redbeard leads us in discussion and each boy gets to speak. We talk of God and Satan, angels and djinn, presidents and paupers, heroes and villains. We talk of battles to be won against disbelief, against the desires of the flesh and against the Malian army.
Those who disbelieved devised plans against you, plans to confine you or slay you or drive you away; they devised their plans, but God also had arranged a plan; and God is the best of planners!
As we recite those holy words, I realise that I am shivering – not with cold but with excitement.
After recitation, Redbeard makes an announcement.
‘I just received a telephone call, boys. Gao has fallen! The Tuaregs invaded this morning, along with one of our Al Qaeda battalions, and already they are in full control.’
A cheer goes up. Hilal whips off his turban and throws it in the air.
‘Kidal and Gao are ours,’ says Redbeard. ‘Timbuktu is next. When Timbuktu falls, we will rule the whole Sahara. We will return the desert peoples to the worship of the one true God – and after the desert, the entire world, from where the sun rises to where it sets!’
My spirit leaps. Someone in the row behind slaps me on the back. This is a golden moment.
‘Be warned,’ says Redbeard. ‘Timbuktu is not like those other towns. The army garrison is strong and they are expecting our invasion. We must be cunning, like serpents.’
A murmur of excitement thrills through the ranks. If our master needs cunning, so be it. We will give whatever he asks, and more.
‘As soon as darkness falls,’ says Redbeard, ‘Alhassan Litni will meet us here with one hundred and fifty of his best fighting men. As you know, Litni is a Tuareg chief and a courageous warrior. In the last ten years he has fought many battles against the Malian army and has inflicted heavy losses. I have allowed him the honour of commanding this operation.’
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