Impossible Journey

by Michael Asher

  It turned out to be ripe old age. He was a Targui called Udungu Ag Ibrahim, a man of about sixty from Air. He was like everyone’s grandfather, his face as bald and cherubic as a baby’s under the tagelmoust. He had lived in Algeria and spoke Arabic as well as a little French. He was quiet, dignified, and friendly, and he was quite used to Westerners. ‘1 went with nsara twice to Tamanrasset.’ he said. ‘But they drank so much wine! God help us, they were out of their wits most of the time!’

  ‘There won’t be any wine on our trip to Bilma.’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ the old man replied, ‘because Bilma is the hardest trek of all. I shouldn’t really go there. I’m an old man now. I should stay home at night. But I’ve still got young children to look after. So I go.’ I had no doubts about his strength. His limbs were massively powerful despite his age. He examined our camels and pronounced them good. Then he advised us to buy four plastic jerrycans to supplement our girbas. We arranged to leave Agadez on 13th December.

  Udungu was waiting for us at the camel compound when we trundled our baggage up on a hired handcart. Together, we walked to the market and bought two sacks of sorghum for the camels and five bales of the best hay, which we rearranged into two loads. Then Udungu bought a cheap woollen sweater. It was the only cold-weather clothing he possessed.

  Marinetta and I had already taken our warm gear out from where it had remained sealed in the bottom of our saddle bags. I had an old nylon anorak, a heavy-duty pullover, tracksuit trousers, and socks. Marinetta had brought a new down-filled jacket, warm trousers, and a balaclava. Both of us had a pair of Gore-tex desert boots supplied for us by Asolo.

  When all was ready, the shepherd, Abu Bakri, brought the camels out of the compound and helped us to load, The compacted hay was the greatest problem, and the Tuareg pack saddles, poorly made by comparison with the Moorish one, were ill-fitting and inadequate. I was pleased with the camels, though. They seemed strong, patient animals for the most part, all of them geldings with well-padded humps. One was a very old animal as strong as an elephant but missing several teeth. He was a veteran of the Bilma salt run, and we named him Shaybani, meaning ‘the Old Chap’. Udungu chose to ride a youngish red camel, which Marinetta named Pepper, and I chose a sand-coloured animal with some unsightly but harmless swellings on his neck. We called him Abu Wirim, ‘Father of the Swellings’. Marinetta rode a snowy-white camel, which we referred to as Abu Nakkas, or ‘Father of the Quarrel’, because he was the most troublesome of the group, yet also the strongest. The fifth camel had a hump so bulky that he could never have been ridden. We called him Abu Sanam, ‘Father of the Hump’.

  We tied the loaded camels into two strings. I took one headrope and the guide took the other. The two hay-carrying camels in Udungu’s string looked very like haystacks with legs. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been to Bilma by camel,’ Udungu announced, pulling up his veil for a dignified departure, ‘but I used to go there all the time when I was a boy. Once, you’ve been, you never forget.’

  ‘Didn’t Mafoudh say that?’ I asked Marinetta.

  ‘How long is it since you went to Bilma by camel?’ Marinetta asked the guide. ‘About twenty years,’ he replied.

  ‘God help us!’ she said. We passed the market, where people jeered and cheered at us, and skirted around the edge of the town, past the petrol-storage tanks shining bright as silver, past cohorts of donkeys piled with firewood from the hills. We passed rocks and trees and grass and more rocks. When we were out of the city, Udungu let his veil drop. This was like addressing someone as tu in French. It meant we could be friends. It was comical to see the wrinkled face tanned and brown about the mouth and pink below, where the tagelmoust usually covered it. Noble Tuareg were supposed to keep their mouths covered at all times, even while eating.

  We camped on an island of grass and coarse bush pricking out of the rocky plain. Marinetta made rice, and we sat down to eat in the shelter of our hay bales, turned against the cold night wind from the north. Udungu produced from his saddle bag a very large wooden spoon like a serving spoon. ‘Eh!’ he said. ‘We Tuareg don’t eat with our hands as the Arabs do.’ Udungu ate little, and he ate with consummate grace. There was no hint of a rude noise to be heard.

  We spent the first hour of the morning rearranging our loads to make them more comfortable for the camels and easier for the three of us to shift. Then Marinetta and I went to fetch the animals. We managed to bridle four of them with only minor snuffling and snorting, but as I approached the last one, the red camel called Pepper, he took one look at the headrope and skipped away. His front legs were hobbled, but he had evidently mastered the technique of running with the back legs and hopping with the front. In moments, he was many yards away.

  I called Udungu and we made a concerted pincer movement, but the camel seemed to anticipate us and gambolled off out of reach. I cursed myself for not fixing the hobble tighter on a camel whose character I did not yet know. In desperation Udungu saddled Abu Wirim and went in pursuit. He worked his way around Pepper cunningly and carefully drove him back towards our camp. He inched closer and closer to the runaway. Suddenly the old man rose up out of the saddle, let go of the headrope and launched himself through the air like a free-faller, landing heavily on the red camel’s back. For a moment he clung on desperately to the tufts of hair sprouting from his hump. Then the animal roared angrily and kicked out like a horse, charging forward on his hobbled legs. Udungu wobbled, then fell. He hit the ground with an audible crunch and lay there winded. The camel halted a hundred yards away and turned to watch.

  I ran over to the old Targui, hoping desperately that he wasn’t seriously injured. He sat up and rubbed his left wrist. It was badly bruised but not broken. I sat him down among the baggage and rubbed some analgesic balm into the sprain, then wrapped it in a bandage. He was a brave old man, I thought. I would never have dared to chance what he had just done. ‘It’s too late now,’ he said. ‘The camel knows both of us, and he won’t let us get near him. If someone else tried maybe.’ We both looked at Marinetta.

  ‘No!’ she gasped. ‘I’m too small! I can’t do it!’ A few moments later, I watched her walk up to the camel and bridle him as if she had done it every day for years.

  We lost three hours over the red camel. It took us another hour to load. Udungu’s sprained wrist hampered him, and the pain made him wince as we grappled with the hay. We lifted the two sacks of sorghum together, and Udungu grunted, ‘I could lift that weight on my own once. Now look at me, by God! That’s what old age does to you!’ The provision sacks, crammed with enough food for weeks, were equally heavy. So were the large jerrycans, which had to be balanced over the bales of hay. The camels rose, complaining, to their feet. Within half an hour, a headrope twanged. It was Abu Sanam’s, at the back of Udungu’s string. He sat down at once, and we only just prevented him from rolling on the hay. We clove the broken rope together, and while Udungu and I strained to lift the bales, Marinetta pulled on the bridle and encouraged the animal to his feet.

  Things went smoothly for a time. Then Abu Sanam started bellowing again. Twang! went the headrope. Waaaah! Waaaah! Waaaah! went the camel. Rushing back, we saw that the hay had toppled forward and was threatening to pin the poor beast’s neck to the ground. We removed the bales painfully, reset the saddle, then reloaded. So the morning passed, a string of disasters. Headropes broke, jerry cans tilted and leaked water drap! drap! drap! into the sand. At noon halt, the cooking pan collapsed and spewed rice and corned beef across the ground just as the food was ready. We had to build another fire and start again, while the camels shifted restlessly under their loads.

  Things were worse in the afternoon, when we rode our new camels for the first time. We plodded along in silence until the cold set in, and Marinetta decided to put on her socks. She leaned hard across the litter to get at her feet. The saddle, dislocated suddenly by the shift of weight, tilted ominously. ‘I’m falling, Maik!’ she yelled. I slid down but was too slow to catch her as the
litter keeled over and dropped her with a crash under the camel’s feet. The girth was still caught round his legs, and as I pulled her clear, he went berserk, kicking out and thrashing savagely at the weight dragging on his leg. I seized the headrope, but it was all I could do to keep him from bolting. He roared and spat and flailed like a drunken horse, dropping green vomit, his eyes ablaze with terrible madness. He stamped and beat at the litter until it cracked into matchwood splinters. He wasn’t still until he had smashed it beyond repair. ‘God Almighty!’ Marinetta said, staring at the pathetic remains of the saddle that had carried her from Chinguetti. ‘Just imagine if I hadn’t got out of the way in time.’ She was still shaking from the shock.

  Bits of luggage were scattered about. Among them were the cameras, still in their padded holdall. Marinetta examined them with trepidation but found them intact except for a broken lens cap. The only spare saddle we had was one of those spiky Tuareg riding saddles, which I had brought along in case we needed to do any fast, light riding. As soon as I had fitted it into place and pulled the girth tight, the saddle split. I looked at it in exasperation, muttering, ‘Those bloody useless Tuareg smiths!’ We had no choice but to walk until we could rig up an alternative. I was relieved that Marinetta was unhurt. Bowling along later by the caravan, in her thick jacket and balaclava, she looked like a yellow teddy-bear. I took her hand for a while. It was very cold but as small and soft and delicate as a child’s. A nice hand, I thought.

  We walked until after sunset and made camp in the moonlight. A chilling wind cut down on us from the north. Marinetta shivered in her anorak. Her period was approaching and she felt feverish. I gave her an aspirin and told her to rest in her sleeping bag. Udungu’s wrist was hurting him, and as I re-dressed it, I noticed it was badly swollen. When I went to relieve myself later, I found that I had liquid diarrhoea, the worst I had suffered since leaving Chinguetti.

  I awoke to a freezing dawn and saw the moon bathed in orange flame and, beyond it, the flamingo-pink essence of the sunrise. I lit a fire and woke old Udungu. He crouched over the flames, warming his ancient bones, and rolled a cigarette with rough tobacco and the type of brown paper used for wrapping parcels. He nursed his wrist and blew his nose loudly two or three times. It was like the bugle call of reveille. Marinetta, woken up by the trumpet blasts, immediately nicknamed him Tromboney.

  As we moved qown from the Air plateau over the next few days, the weather got progressively colder. We wore our jackets and boots constantly, and old Tromboney limped on with his threadbare blanket clutched around him. It was far colder when we were riding, so we walked longer hours. This arrangement didn’t suit our guide. Aftel two hours of walking, he would say, ‘It’s tiring, by God!’ Then he would add, ‘I’m an old man now. I can’t walk all day as I used to.’

  ‘You ride when you feel like it, uncle.’ I told him, but he always felt it necessary to make some apologetic remark before hoisting himself into the saddle.

  Gone were the days of rests and midday shelters. Now, we halted for no more than a few minutes at noon, dipping into a meal cooked the previous evening, followed up by a handful of dates. Udungu would eat only the soft dates. ‘I can’t eat the hard ones,’ he told me. ‘I haven’t got the teeth for it. I’m like old Shaybani, the camel. He’s an old man, and so am I. The Ténéré has worn us both out.’ His lack of teeth gave him problems with the macaroni, too. I watched him chewing it in vain with his soft gums. ‘Can’t you cook it longer?’ I asked Marinetta. ‘The poor old boy can’t eat it.’

  ‘I cook it as it’s supposed to be cooked,’ she said. ‘It’s al dente. Don’t try to tell an Italian how to cook pasta!’

  Udungu had been a regular rider across Ténéré as a youth. He had made his first journey to Bilma by camel at the age of fourteen. That must have been in about 1926. Since then, he had travelled all over the Sahara, first as a caravaneer and later as a guide. One experience that he shared with Sidi Mohammed was having seen the inside of a prison. In his case, though, the prison had been Algerian. He had taken some camels for sale in Libya and, having sold them in Tripoli, had recrossed the Algerian frontier. He had been arrested in Djanet. ‘They took me before the judge,’ he said, ‘and he asked me, “Where is your passport?” “I don’t know passports,’’ I said. “Do you know prison?” he asked me. “Because that’s where you’re going!” And that’s where I went.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad. We got food. We got tobacco. We didn’t have to do anything but sit all day. I was there for three months. There were all kinds of people there—men, women, and children, Arabs and Tuareg, and even Christians.’

  He had once, been a guide for caravans smuggling cigarettes and other goods north and south across the Sahara. ‘The cars get searched,’ he said, ‘but no one sees the caravans.’ He told us that he had once, brought a caravan of forty camels from Tindouf to Agadez, heavily laden with copper. There had been little grazing on the way, and when they reached Agadez, thirty of the forty camels had dropped dead. ‘Shshshok!’ he said. ‘Dropped dead, just like that, poor things. And the ones that didn’t were never the same again. Ha! Ha!’

  Recently, though, he had retired to Agadez. He had remarried late and had six young children. He had taken out a licence as a registered guide and travelled often with tourists, generally by motor vehicle. It was several years since he had ridden a camel, he said. ‘I shouldn’t really be here,’ he told me. ‘It’s a hardship for an old man. But when you’ve got young children, that’s the price you have to pay. You have to keep working if you need the money.’ Udungu had once, owned camels and goats and had pitched his tents in the Air mountains. I asked him if he had any camels left. ‘Only one,’ he said, ‘and he’s got the mange.’

  After four days, we watered in the wadi Borghat, in a pit about six feet deep. There was no one about but a Tuareg woman with some goats. She had a broad, primeval, elemental face, like an embodiment of the Sahara. It was neither black nor white; there was a touch of nobility in it, a touch of earthy ignorance, a pinch of joy and sadness. She giggled at us when we attached our saucepan to a rope to use it as a well bucket and spread out our plastic sheets as a watering trough. She was justified. After two fills, the saucepan sploshed into the well and floated cheekily on the water. I was about to tie myself to a rope and go down for it, when Udungu clambered into the pit using an old frame of wood lying along its side. He climbed out, grinning, with the pan in his sprained hand.

  The woman went off with a long staff and began knocking carobs down from the talha trees as the goats clustered around her feet. She saw Marinetta pointing the camera at her and giggled again. Later, she came back with a leather well bucket and helped us to fill our jerrycans. A razor-edged wind blew across the great erg and dashed itself among the thorn trees. When the watering was finished, I gave the woman a block of sugar and some tea, which she screwed up in a square of faded cloth. I offered her some zrig, but she tasted it and wrinkled her face into a grimace. I wondered what she must think of us.

  It was late afternoon before we got moving. Tromboney was for remaining in the wadi the night to let the camels graze, but as usual, I wanted to push on. ‘When I go by car, I just sit back and do nothing,’ he grumbled. ‘With the camel there is too much work, by God!’

  The sun was going down behind us in pink dragons rampant. Moonrise came like a fiery eye. Coolness spilled out of the moonlight and washed across the flagstone desert floor. There was silence but for the percussion of camels’ feet and the creaking of saddles. Often, I looked behind to check that they were all there. The monster-insect ruins of a camel skeleton gaped at us insanely out of the shadows. A little farther on was a dead camel still intact except for vacant eye sockets, smelling of decay. Udungu said that it must have fallen out of a salt caravan quite recently. That night, we halted in a rocky creek, where a few barbed-wire trees were fodder for the camels. They were the last trees we saw until Fachi.

  We awoke to the noise
of a high wind licking out of the night, sucking at the eardrums and scourging us with sand. It was icy. There was nothing to be seen beyond the capsule of our creek. The camels had wandered far down the wadi in search of food and were huddled together against the cold. They sniffed resentfully as we offered the headropes, jumping up and snapping when we reached for their noserings. By the time we had heaved on the baggage, the sun was up in a flurry of red and grey. We trudged on across a fractured land of peaks and ridges, while the sand-rasping gale tore at us, soughing and sighing through the desert, drawing mournfully across the sharp rocks like a violin bow on a lank string. The wall of sound slammed at our heads, drugging us dumb, whispering in tongues, drowning our senses under a tuneless bagpipe haw. It was too cold to sit for long in the saddle, but when we walked the sand-blown grit was worse. We bandaged our heads like mummies and turned, crab-like, away from the lacerating sand.

  Soon, the texture of the earth changed. The rocks fell away, and we advanced on rippled flats of sand. The wind wheezed out of the erg with its hollow entrails. The camels stopped, sullenly leaning away from the whipping dust. Abu Wirim sat down and cast his load. Udungu and I teetered in the thrashing hail, grunting with the weight of the grain sacks. Once, the camel was up, we noticed the jerrycans leaking. We couched Abu Sanam and readjusted the balance. If we looked directly into the wind, needles of sand stung our eyes sharply. We were on our way again when the oilcan sprang a leak and had to be plugged. Next the hayloads slipped forward, first on one camel, then on the other. ‘Damn this hay!’ I cursed through the wind. ‘It’s the cause of all our problems.’