Impossible Journey

by Michael Asher

  ‘Then why didn’t you buy some?’ Marinetta cut in. ‘We’re the ones coming out of the desert.’

  Before sunset, we had arrived at the foot of the Teguidit cliffs, and in the morning, we sighted the unearthly structure of a T V relay mast. It looked strange here in the desert, but in a way, I was glad to see it. It spelled rest. By midday, we sighted the village of In Gall with its grey buildings and two massive growths of palm trees. Agadez lay east of us, 70 miles away along an asphalt track. We entered In Gall in the afternoon and were halted at the gendarmerie by three smart policemen, who examined our laissez-passer. The chief was a heavily jowled Soninke who looked uncompromising. I felt very glad that we had an official paper. He looked us both up and down very slowly. I realised suddenly what an odd sight we must be, ragged and unkempt and dirty, dressed anyway in Arab clothes that belonged to Mauritania. ‘How long have you been married?’ he started to ask us.

  ‘Not one of those!’ groaned Marinetta.

  ‘How is it possible for a woman to travel with two men? You know, isn’t it difficult for sex?’

  We were glad to escape from him and filled our girbas at some shallow pits beyond the town. From there, we could see a new road of shining asphalt crossing a metal bridge and, beyond it, a signpost saying ‘Agadez 119 km’.

  For three days, we followed the road, moving fast and stopping little. The signs of civilisation burgeoned around us. There were strips of burned-off tyres and pieces of engines lying along the hard shoulder. We were still hungry and thirsty, and the empty Sprite and Pepsi cans we saw tortured us with thirst as the discarded meat cans tormented us with hunger. Occasionally, cars passed us: a road-construction team in a tipper-truck and once, a Westerner driving a vehicle marked ‘Paris-Algiers-Dakar’. ‘That’s where we should be, Omar,’ Sidi Mohammed said. ‘In a comfortable car like that, not riding these camels. Why tire yourself and little Mariam out on camels? I’ll never understand.’

  ‘It’ll all be in a book some day,’ I said.

  ‘Gah!’ he said. ‘Books! The only book worth reading is the Quran. The knowledge in books is very fine, but it’s no good to you in the afterlife, is it?’

  We moved along the roadside past Tuareg camps of palm-frond huts and herds of piebald camels with brilliant white eyes, which Sidi Mohammed said were from the Air mountains farther north. We passed wells where Tuareg were watering thin horses and once, saw in the distance some Fulani tribesmen in broad-brimmed hats, leading a parade of black-and-white cattle and carrying spears. In the evening of 6th November, just before sunset, we saw Agadez, or at least the glitter of its petrol-storage tanks, on the brow of a rocky hill. We made camp as far away from the road as possible, but all evening, we were disturbed by the roaring engines of great trucks going to Niamey and the smell of their fumes.

  As we sat down to our last evening meal together, I felt numb. ‘I’m looking forward to getting back to Mali,’ Sidi Mohammed said. ‘It’s the best country on earth, by God! The only problem is that it has no economy and it’s ruled by slaves. But if there were schemes like there are in Libya, every man working on his own farm, that would be so good. I hate living in the city. Your children die because the mothers can’t feed them. In the desert, there is always milk. Oh, yes, there’s milk in the city if you can afford it, but not for the likes of us. Certainly not if you’re white. I hate the city, but what can I do? All my life, I’ve had nothing but fatigue, by God!’

  Just then, Marinetta announced that the sugar had finally run out. There’ll be no sugar for coffee tomorrow morning,’ she said.

  Sidi Mohammed hesitated for a moment, then edged over to his sack. I remembered, guiltily, how I had squeezed it in Tillia. ‘It happens I’ve got some sugar here,’ he said, grinning and showing his vulpine teeth ‘I brought it from Tombouctou. I thought it would come in useful before we finished.’

  Udungu

  It took us three hours to reach the town the following morning, hiking along the shoulder of the highway, where juggernaut trucks juddered past, blind as moles. It was difficult to adjust to the power and speed of these vehicles after our slow-coach camels’ pace. The animals were terrified of the fume-spitting monsters and shied away, straining on the headropes. Once, Shigar’s, nose ring was ripped out and had to be re-inserted.

  We crossed the asphalt road, Sidi Mohammed directing like a policeman on point duty, and came to a hill from where the town sprawled out beneath us. It looked as big as Nouakchott. There were rings of new buildings across the outer skin and, in the centre, a pattern of streets circling the famous red mosque that stood out above them like a disjointed leg. We entered the back streets and came into a bustling market square. There was life here in plenty. The zinc-roofed stalls were piled high with cheap, gaudy goods, clothes, and colourful blankets. The streets were awash with milling bodies, black, brown, and coffee-coloured. It was a confusion after the quiet of the desert. Several Tuareg youths attached themselves to our caravan as we dodged through the traffic and wove a winding course in and out of the crowds.

  We found a small hotel tucked away down a side street, next to a filling station. The manager was a polite young Targui dressed in Western clothes, who brought us bottles of lemonade from the fridge. We looked on incredulously as a real frost formed on the outside of our glasses. We drank the lemonade and went out to unload our camels for the last time.

  As we couched them, an enormous camper drew up at the filling station next door. There was a middle-aged Swiss couple in the front seat. Evidently, they had come across the Sahara, but the desert had left little mark on them. Their dress was spotless and their coiffeured hair immaculate. I watched the sequence of expressions that played across their faces as they noticed us, beginning with, ‘Camels! How interesting!’ and ending with ‘Hippies! How disgusting!’ as their eyes fell on our filthy clothes. After that they looked away.

  We unloaded and moved our gear into the hotel store. The manager was very helpful and friendly. He told me confidentially, ‘These youths who have followed you are all well known for robbing tourists. Don’t trust any of them. I say this only for your sûreté.’ I thanked him and went out to find Sidi Mohammed being hustled by a tough-looking Tuareg youth with a mop of spiky hair who was wearing a faded blue-denim suit. A few more diffident boys hung around behind him. Before I could speak, the youth said in French, ‘I will take your camels to the market. My uncle is the market manager. I will get good price for you!’

  ‘Merci,’ I answered. ‘We don’t need any help selling the camels. We know how much they’re worth.’

  The Targui looked belligerent, standing with his feet firmly apart, his hands thrust deep into his waistband. ‘You know nothing here!’ he said. ‘We know everything!’

  The aggressive posture somehow ignited a rocket of fury in my mind. ‘If you don’t clear off,’ I told him, ‘I’ll wrap this stick around your neck, and then I’ll call the gendarmes!’ I felt the veins standing out on my forehead. My muscles were as tense as iron. I couldn’t believe how vicious I felt. It was as if six months of the accumulated effects of living on the edge of survival were pouring out of me at once. Scoffing to himself, the youth called to his friends, and they strutted away.

  Sidi Mohammed looked at me approvingly. ‘Thieves and criminals!’ he said.

  As we approached the camel market, a toothless old man in an invalid chair came hurtling towards us and attacked us verbally. The sale of camels wasn’t till that afternoon, he said, and there was a commission charged on animals brought into the market, whether they were sold or not. Finally, he allowed us to lash them to some hitching-posts and to wait until the appointed hour in the shade of his straw shelter. We spent our last few francs on bread and sat there enjoying the fresh texture of the stuff and watching the world go by like a film on a cine-screen.

  The Tuareg here looked different from those in Mali. They wore flowing robes in voluminous cotton, their swords always dangling from their left side, their headcloths and their v
eils, the famous tagelmoust, covering most of their faces. Their headcloths were arranged into elaborate crowns, twisted around the head in a halo or piled up into a spiralling column and held in place by a sash or belt. The Fulani we saw among them might have belonged to a different planet. They were darker, with odd, bony faces and hair gouged into short locks. They were very lean. They wore tight-fitting pantaloons of garish colours, leopard-skin, and vermilion, and wide-brimmed sombreros of straw. Their women went bareheaded and wore scores of concentric earrings, which rattled as they walked. There were Arabs here, too, merchants of Moorish origin who, as usual, dominated the camel trade. One of them, a stern-looking man called Najim, expressed some interest in our camels. ‘They’re very weak,’ was his opinion.

  ‘So would you be if you’d come as far as they have!’ I told him.

  Najim laughed. He agreed to buy all three.

  As he led them away later, I felt miserable. I had become attached to all of them but especially to the patient Shigar, who had carried me from Chinguetti. I doubted that we should find such enduring desert camels here in Niger. Marinetta and I had already made a record-breaking trek, and we had done it during the most difficult time of the year. Yet I knew that more than half of any victory we had achieved belonged to those camels.

  Sidi Mohammed was already packing away his gear. He intended to stay with a relative in Agadez for a day or two before catching the bus to Niamey and another to Gao and Tombouctou. I paid him the balance of his earnings out of the money I had just received from Najim and added a small bonus to buy new clothes or meat. I handed over the remains of the rice and powdered milk. I grinned. ‘I don’t suppose you want the sardines?’

  ‘Gah!’ he said. ‘I’m going to eat meat tonight!’ He put the food away and tied up his sack. ‘If you come back next year, Omar, I’ll take you to Taudenni,’ he said, ‘but next time, we’ll go by car.’

  ‘God willing,’ I said, and we shook hands. Then he turned and walked away, as happy as he probably ever would be but still a lonely, tragic figure, slightly bowed and moving into the distance with the shuffling gait that had become so familiar to us.

  We were back in our hotel before sunset. I sat down at our small table and unfolded the Michelin map. It was an antique now, coming apart along the folds and almost yellow where my fingers had scrabbled at it. I had marked the line of our march in red felt-tip. I looked at that line now, halfway across the continent of Africa at its widest point. I stared and stared at it, trying to measure our achievement, but the coloured tracks and roads and settlements kept swimming out of focus, merging together and defying my attempts to separate them. I couldn’t even remember having crossed that vast landscape. All I could remember now was the exhaustion and the torturing heat. We had covered almost 2,000 miles in the Sahara in the hot season. Now our journey was no more than a line on the map.

  Sidi Mohammed was shouting, ‘Omar! Omar! This is London! This is the chimes of Beeg Beyn, Boosh Hawse, London doobel-yew-ceetoo! Dong! Dong! Dooong!’ I awoke and found the sun streaming into the room and someone knocking at the door. I remembered hazily that we had arrived in Agadez the previous day. Wrapping a towel around me, I opened the door. It was Sidi Mohammed. I told him to give me a few minutes and I would meet him in the hotel courtyard. As I shut the door, Marinetta groaned, ‘It’s like the story of Mustapha’s old shoes,’ she said. ‘Every time you think you’ve got rid of them, they turn up again.’

  Sidi Mohammed explained nervously that his relative had advised him to report his presence here to the police, and asked if we could go to the police headquarters together, since I had our laissez-passer. I told him to steady on and ordered breakfast. Some elderly French tourists entered and sat down, wishing us a hearty ‘Bonjour.’ The men were stout, and their wide buttocks were encased in large pairs of shorts. The women wore expensive cotton dresses from Paris. Sidi Mohammed’s eyes followed them distrustfully. ‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with the likes of them,’ he said. ‘Not even if they wanted a guide, I wouldn’t. I prefer the young, open-minded types.’ As we walked to the police headquarters afterwards, I asked if he had eaten meat the previous night. ‘Yes, by God!’ he said. ‘I ate till I could eat no more.’

  ‘You’ll never have to eat sardines again,’ said Marinetta.

  ‘Gah!’ he said.

  We parted from him for the last time at the police headquarters. Afterwards, we explored the town. It was thriving now in the height of the tourist season. Most of the tourists drove down the Saharan highway from Tamanrasset, which they referred to as ‘Tam’. Many of them were heading for Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina-Faso, which they called Wogga’. To me this seemed like calling New York ‘New’ or London ‘Lon’. They looked as exotic as the locals, with their fluffy, tinted hair, their skin-tight jeans, and their incongruous boots. They rode in Toyotas and Land Rovers painted with legends such as ‘Afrique ‘86’ and ‘Beyond the Sahara’. Their vehicles were equipped with rockblaring stereos, freezers, cookers and water-sterilisation units. Tome they seemed more unapproachable than the Tuareg.

  Near the red mosque, we discovered a real Italian ice-cream parlour. It was owned by a bearded man called Vittorio. His hair was thin and white, and he wore a Moroccan caftan and a pair of jeans. Marinetta asked him how he liked working in Agadez. ‘I don’t work here. I live here!’ he replied, anxious to stake his claim. He had once, been a bank clerk in Rome and had arrived in Agadez with another Italian fifteen years before. They had run a flourishing tourist business with a fleet of vehicles, but the other man had died and business had dwindled. Now he was reduced to running an ice-cream parlour. ‘Trade’s not much good now, and winter’s coming on,’ he mourned. ‘No one eats ice-cream in winter.’ Vittorio was married to a Tuareg woman and they had several children. When I asked him if he spoke Tamasheq, he replied, ‘Sana insabbiata -I have got stuck here!’ He wasn’t a Muslim. His ambiguous dress, neither Western nor native, did not speak of great contentment in this environment, I thought.

  Vittorio told us that if we wanted to go farther, we would have to consult the tourist office. It was the body that could give us permission to continue. When we visited the office that afternoon, we came up against our first hurdle: a puffy-faced Tuareg in traditional dress, who was the office manager. His tagelmoust was drawn so tight that only a circle of brown flesh showed like a single giant eye. Marinetta christened him Polyphemus.

  He asked where we wanted to go and shook his head at once, when I said we intended to cross the Ténéré Erg as far as the oasis of Bilma. From there, we would tum south across the Grand Erg of Bilma as far as Lake Chad. Polyphemus shifted in his chair. How many camels would we take? How much would we pay our guide? He doubted if we would be allowed to cross the Grand Erg, which was too near the fighting between the Libyans and Chadians in Tibesti. Had we any proof that we had come all the way from Mauritania? The Ténéré Erg was a dangerous place for foreigners. Even for locals, it was a dangerous place. Polyphemus um-ed and ah-ed for an hour, saying, ‘I have to think of your sûreté.’ I felt like telling him that if we had had as much trouble from threats to our sûreté as we had had from petty officials talking about it, we should never have got past Nouakchott. In the end, he sent us to Niamey to obtain official permission from the Interior Minister.

  It was December before we got everything arranged. We returned from Niamey with a busload of tourists, armed with a formidable battery of documents. We had letters from the British and the Italian honorary vice-consuls to Niger, a letter from the Minister of the Interior giving us permission to cross both Ténéré and the Grand Erg and another authorising us to enter Chad from the border post of N’Guigmi. The French Embassy had issued us with entry visas on behalf of Hissein Habri’s Chadian government in N’Jamena. We had even obtained permission to take photographs. The wad of papers had taken us days to compile, days of dreadful waits in corridors and offices. During that time, I concluded that governments fear wilderness. They are happie
r with towns and villages, where people are easier to control. That fear brought us constantly into conflict with the very bureaucracy from which we were trying to escape.

  Bilma lay more than 300 miles north of east across the hyper-arid wasteland of the Ténéré Erg. For centuries, salt caravans had traversed those sands, bringing salt from Bilma and the smaller oasis of Fachi. Once, the caravans had travelled together for fear of raids. Nowadays, they went piecemeal, only a hundred or so animals at a time. We had already decided that we would need five camels for this arid stretch. Two animals would be needed just to carry fodder for the others, for in these ergs, there was very little grazing. It took us another week to assemble our caravan.

  Each day, we were in the market early, examining every camel for sale. We were helped by Najim, the Arab merchant who had bought our other camels. He told us they were now grazing in the Air plateau but that the two Moorish camels were still weak. Most nights, just before sunset, we would lead yet another camel to the local compound, where it would be looked after by an honest Hausa shepherd called Abu Bakri. In the mornings, we acquired piles of provisions: cones of sugar, sheets of dried meat, tins of sardines and corned beef, rice, macaroni, couscous, and biscuits, dates from Algeria, and butter-oil from the U S A. We bought six new waterbags to replace the worn-out ones we had brought from Chinguetti and ordered two new pack saddles, which were inexpertly made by Tuareg smiths. We also bought a sharp machete for cutting wood. The stores, increasing daily, were soon cramming the hotel’s spare room.

  By the end of the week, we had our five camels and lacked only our new guide. We had often speculated about who he might be. Each guide was an adventure in himself, a unique chance for insight into the nature of Saharan people. Each of our three Moorish guides had been symbolic of some desert quality—Mafoudh was brotherhood, Moukhtar nobility, Sidi Mohammed tragedy. What would our next guide represent?