island in the sand Essay and photographs by Anthony Ham Azima walks on the dunes surrounding Araouane. Behind him, the town’s dwellings are submerged in the desert sand. wait by an empty Timbuktu roadside in the found money to be of little use there; the only I pre-dawn January chill. Nothing moves in acceptable currency was gold and silver. And the fetid stillness of the seemingly abandoned like Timbuktu, Araouane was a renowned seat city. With its plastic bags, fly-blown offal, list- of learning, famed for its Islamic scholars and less dogs, and collapsed walls, the city’s decay priceless manuscripts. could be anywhere in urban Africa, save for its But now Araouane’s days are numbered. Sur- color: Timbuktu is the color of sand that blew rounded by sand dunes poised like giant waves in from the desert on yesterday’s orange wind above the town, and with the camel caravans and settled upon the city overnight. There is no that keep Araouane alive being consigned slowly sign of Azima, my Tuareg guide and friend of to history, Araouane could soon disappear for- long-standing, or of the car that will carry us ever beneath the sands. into the desert. Our journey to Araouane is no ordinary Sa- The city stirs. A muezzin calls the faithful to haran journey. For almost a decade, I have been prayer, and a camel bellows in protest. The day’s traveling through the Sahara in the company of first wind rustles the rubbish by the side of the the Tuareg, immersing myself in its solitude and road, and goats hurry through distant streets searching for stories from its vanishing worlds. en route to the desert fringe, there to pass the In the course of this quest, the Sahara has be- day foraging on thorns. Weak car headlights, in- come one of the grand passions of my life. But distinct in the gloom, jounce over the potholes increasingly, much of the Sahara is off-limits, beyond the dust like wild spirits of the night de- plagued by rebellion, banditry, and the latest parting. Swathed in blankets, Timbuktu’s inhab- low-intensity war between the Malian army itants draw near to the Songhai ovens, domes of and Tuareg rebel groups. Depending on whom mud and sources of heat on street corners, then you believe, to these age-old perils of desert scurry home with bread and glowing coals for travel has been added the shadowy presence of the precious first tea of morning. A cold sand al Qaeda, which has established bases deep in wind drives me indoors. the Malian Sahara; they have been blamed for Timbuktu may be the end of the earth, but killings and kidnappings from Egypt in the east it is also the start of a very long road, a once- to Mauritania in the west. If true, the Sahara lucrative trans-Saharan trail that connected north of Timbuktu has become one of the most Africa’s interior with the Mediterranean. Our dangerous places on earth. After weeks of dis- destination is Araouane, one hundred seventy cussion, and against all sound advice, Azima has miles to the north. Among the Sahara’s oldest agreed to take me to Araouane. caravan towns, perhaps even older than Tim- When Azima’s battered Land Rover arrives buktu, Araouane was for centuries renowned for in a cloud of dust, he emerges in robes of vivid the sweet water from its wells. It was also one blue, sandals slapping in the sand. Behind the of the few places of refuge along the waterless wheel sits Baba, Azima’s most reliable driver and tracts to the Saharan salt mines of Taoudenni, a veteran of many a dangerous desert encounter. and beyond to the historically great kingdoms Alongside Baba is Ali, his face gnarled like a des- of Morocco. ert acacia; Ali, who says not a word, not even in Like Timbuktu, Araouane was a prosperous greeting, has spent his life guiding camels along trading town, where gold, silver, ivory, pre- the caravan route north of Timbuktu. Azima is cious stones, ostrich plumes, and slaves passed as effusive as Ali is reserved and his chant-like through en route to the north, while glass and paper from Venice, pearls from Paris, and linen In the middle of a sand sheet in the Saharan desert, from Marseilles headed south. A European visi- a dead tree leans against the wind, surrounded by tor to Araouane in the early nineteenth century swirling dust.

106 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 ritual greetings will ripple through our conver- to Azima, Agouni’s reputation has scarcely im- sation until long after we are underway. But his proved in the almost two centuries since and it customary cheerfulness is tempered by a ner- remains a bastion of Islamist fervor. But Azima vousness that I have never before seen in him; is shocked to find the Sahara so silent and devoid his eyes scan the street and he hurries me into of its usual signs of slow commerce and human the car. movement. “I have never seen the Sahara like We set off in silence. this,” he says. “This is the first time I have trav- eled this road without seeing a single person, not even a single animal at the wells.” We are two hours north of Timbuktu when Ali Azima has always assured me that he has speaks for the first time, and his words are not been unconcerned about making this journey. welcome: “Put a turban on the white man.” I But now that we no longer have a choice, he have seen nothing, but my colleagues have seen advises me to be more careful. “Twice in Tim- a car. “It is very strange to see one car alone in buktu, you told people that we were going to the desert,” Azima says as he conceals my face Araouane,” he says. “There are rebels in the des- under meters of blue cloth. “And it was a very ert, yes, but there are many more listening in new car. It smelled bad.” Timbuktu.” Ever since leaving Timbuktu, we have seen We continue in silence, before Azima speaks no other signs of life; the litter of trails through again, shouting to make himself heard above the the sand has been strangely empty. True, we gave straining engine: “Soldiers don’t come into the a wide berth to Agouni, the only settlement of desert, even this close to Timbuktu. The govern- note between Timbuktu and Araouane and the ment gives them petrol so that they can patrol place where, in 1826, Alexander Gordon Laing, the Sahara, but they sell it on the black market. the first European to reach Timbuktu, was If we have trouble out here, we are on our own.” hacked to death by his Tuareg guide. According He again falls quiet. Then, as if talking to

108 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 One of the camel caravans that keep Araouane alive in his hand. ‘We have been marching for seven travels along the dangerous trans-Saharan trail from days and we didn’t even leave the streets of Tim- Timbuktu. buktu.’ Everyone was amazed that the old man still knew the sand and his cousin told him the himself, he speaks an old truth I have heard truth. So they continued on to Taoudenni, and from nomads across the Sahara: “There are the caravan returned to Timbuktu. The old man many tracks into the desert. There are not so died in peace soon after.” many that lead out.” Halfway across the sand sheet, a dead tree Yesterday’s wind has returned with relentless looms from behind the veil of dust, leaning away force, and eddies of dust snake across the earth, from the wind. I watch as Azima, Baba, and Ali howling through the emptiness like the ghoulish scurry for firewood, their robes billowing in the tails of desert djinns. Sand hisses and spatters wind. It could be the aftermath of the apoca- against the car and even inside it we are soon lypse, this infernal scene of veiled men silhou- coated in a fine layer of grit; visibility is down etted against the near horizon, tearing in manic to less than a hundred meters. We make slow haste at what could be the last tree left on earth. progress, meandering north under a weak sun. I shudder. When Azima returns to the car, he is Beyond the well of Taganet, we cross a vast exultant: “Isn’t it beautiful?” sand sheet, the famed azawad of desert lore, a hallucinatory void; in the strong wind our tire tracks disappear within seconds. We could be traveling in circles, and yet somehow Ali knows Great swells of sand the way, directing Baba with perfunctory hand threaten to engulf the signals to indicate subtle shifts of direction. When I wonder aloud how Ali can possibly know village, climbing the walls the way in this world stripped of landmarks, Azima tells a story. and lapping at the rooftops; “There was once a very experienced guide from above, it resembles with the salt caravans between Taoudenni and Timbuktu. But he was very old and became blind. a shipwreck breaking into He told everyone that before he died, he wanted pieces and drifting apart. to travel with one last caravan to Taoudenni and return. Everyone told him that he was crazy, but he insisted. No one would take him, until finally his cousin agreed. In Africa there is always a jok- Finally, beyond the sand sheet’s northern ing relationship between cousins, so the man shore, away to the west against a backdrop of took some sand from Timbuktu and put it in a sand hills, camels cluster around a well in the bag, and the caravan set out. They marched for midday gloom. On a sand dune to the north seven days, past Araouane, and then the caravan a lone building swirls into view and then dis- stopped. After two days, the old man asked him appears, like a lighthouse in heavy seas. Baba why they hadn’t moved for so long. ‘Are you no accelerates. From alongside the building, from longer a good guide? Did you forget everything atop the highest point for hundreds of miles in that I taught you?’ ‘I am sorry,’ the cousin said, every direction, we look out upon perhaps forty ‘but I am lost.’ The old man became angry and mud dwellings scattered in the sandy hollows. told the cousin to bring him some sand so that Oblivious to the wind, flies swarm and cling to he could taste it to see if he knew where they our faces, seeking moisture in the tinder-dry air. were. The cousin brought him the Timbuktu Down below, box-like mud buildings, many with sand, and the old man began to laugh. ‘I do not sagging walls, sit as if discarded at random by an even have to taste this sand,’ he said, holding it untidy desert wind, separated not by streets but

A n t h o n y h a m 109 by rivers of moving sand. Great swells threaten The sun rises against a dwelling in Araouane. The mud to engulf the village, climbing the walls and lap- walls are littered with goat and camel dung pellets, ping at the rooftops; from above, it resembles later used for fuel. a shipwreck breaking into pieces and drifting apart. From time to time, a face peers from a to live anywhere else. Here we are free. Some- darkened doorway, and a cowled figure, bent times I must go to Timbuktu to buy food, but I double, hurries out into the wind to cross the haven’t left Araouane for one year. If I had food open spaces between buildings like a sand crab. here in Araouane, I would never leave.” Were it all a mirage, it would be singularly un- “But does Araouane have a future?” impressive. “If the salt mines of Taoudenni close, Ara- Azima draws alongside me. “Welcome to ouane will be finished. There is nothing else Araouane.” here. Every house sends two or three young men to work in the mines when they turn twenty years old. And we make a living from the pass- We seek refuge at the home of Mohammed ing salt caravans, although there are not so many Bashir, Araouane’s young imam. The house, like of them now. But even if they close the mines, the other dwellings, has sand piled high against I and many other people in Araouane would the eastern wall; the flatter windward side is rather die here than leave.” strewn with dung pellets from goat and camel, “Will Araouane ever disappear beneath the a crucial source of family fuel. In the north wall, sand?” the entrance has been excavated so many times Mohammed does not answer directly. “The that a sand moat has appeared. To enter we must house I was born in disappeared in the way that step down into the house from above. you say. In the end, people thought it was a well, Inside, mud walls support a roof of uneven because you could only see the roof through a wooden beams and tightly packed straw mats, hole in the sand. Then it disappeared. We built and we make ourselves comfortable, cross- another house, the one where you are now. I legged, on carpets atop the sandy floor. As the can’t tell you exactly where my first house is. It faces of curious onlookers crowd the open door- is somewhere out there to the north.” way, a young boy brings us a tin cup of pungent As we talk, the wind buffets the walls with- camel’s milk, the traditional Araouane brew of out respite and gusts of sand blow in through welcome. the door. If first appearances are anything to go Azima and Mohammed talk. During the by, Araouane’s battle against the Sahara seems conversation’s many silences Mohammed stud- doomed to failure. Mohammed watches me, and ies me, as I have studied him as he speaks. A smiles. Moorish Arab, Mohammed has kindly drooping “When I was a child,” he says, “there were eyes, a patchy untidy beard, and a turban care- many more people in Araouane. Now there are lessly draped, more than tied, over his closely maybe one hundred, mostly women and chil- cropped head. He smiles easily, although rarely dren. There used to be many houses and tents, with abandon, and his voice, when it comes, is many more than now. Now most of them are as spare as the desert wind as he asks: “Are there under the sand.” places in your country like this, where there is “When was the last time it rained here?” nothing but sand?” But otherwise he displays a The young imam counts on his fingers. “Six singular lack of curiosity about the world beyond months ago. But it was only a few drops. The the desert: Araouane is his world. last real rains were a long, long time ago, many “Do you like Araouane?” he wonders. years.” “Yes . . . very much. But it must be a very We lapse into silence. hard life here.” After a time, Azima suggests that we explore “Yes, but Araouane is my home. I don’t want the village. It is mid-afternoon, but Araouane

110 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 is cast into perpetual dusk by sheets of wind- said on arrival, “a horrible place. Why anybody borne sand. Villagers cloaked in turbans and would have built a village here was beyond me. heavy coats huddle behind walls, passing the No vegetation, no shade, just sand and rubble. day, watching the wind. No beer, either. And ravenous swarms of black When Réné Caillié, the first European to flies buzzing over the inhabitants in their tat- reach Timbuktu and live to tell the tale, passed tered rags, and over the camels and goats and through Araouane on his return journey in 1828, salt bars. Surely this was hell on earth.” As Aebi he was greeted “by the howling of dogs” and lo- pointed out, the name Araouane, is pronounced cals pursued him through the streets, hurling like “Erehwon,” the utopia imagined by Samuel insults and threatening gestures in his direction. Butler in the nineteenth century; he came up Caillié suffered sandstorms, stifling heat, and with the name by spelling “nowhere” backwards. what he described as “a violent derangement of To Michael Benanav, an American writer the stomach.” Things didn’t improve. “I never who traveled to Taoudenni and back with a salt saw so dull a place,” he wrote. “I was unable to caravan five years ago, Araouane was “a crum- comprehend how the mere love of gain could bling village that is sinking into the huge swell of induce these people to live for twelve or fifteen sand upon which it is built.” Araouane, he wrote, years in such a dreadful country . . . I looked for- “barely has a pulse at all.” ward with pleasure to the happy moment when The insults which greeted Caillié aside, it is I was to leave this disagreeable country.” all true. We lean away from the wind and walk Even Ernst Aebi, an American adventurer as if through a sand blizzard, between houses who arrived in Araouane in 1988 and, in one of and rubble barely visible beyond the wall of sand. the Sahara’s more curious tales, set about saving In five minutes, we have walked from the Araouane from the march of history by planting heart of Araouane to its westernmost limits. gardens and making the village self-sufficient, Alongside a stand of perhaps ten trees which was similarly unimpressed. Araouane was, he date from the days of Aebi’s bold experiment,

A n t h o n y h a m 111 and which in the wind emit a roar like waves As day breaks and before the wind rises, the villagers of breaking on the shore, Azima leans on a crum- Araouane venture out of their homes. bling wall all but submerged beneath more than a decade of sand. This was the “Araouane Hil- to the Algerian border. ton,” a simple hotel built by Aebi in the days But everyone agrees that the presence of al when trans-Saharan tourism was big business Qaeda is a different matter altogether. And, it and offered hope to remote villages such as this. seems, we have been lucky. But the Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s drove Aebi “Yesterday,” Mohammed tells us, “the bandits away and his hotel, too, will soon be gone. crossed the desert close to here. They were Is- We talk little, our mouths filling with sand. lamists from Mauritania. If you had arrived a day As the wind drives us back to the shelter of the earlier, you could have been kidnapped.” imam’s home, I ask Azima how on earth people Mohammed has no time for those who would can live here. He shrugs. “They are Muslim. use fear to spread the message of Islam. “Now They trust in God.” in Timbuktu there are imams from other coun- At sunset, I sit in the semi darkness of the tries, especially Arabs, in the mosques. One day imam’s house, watching through the doorway as after prayers, the people were leaving and these an old Moorish muezzin stands at the entrance men told them to stay behind so that they could to the mosque, calling Araouane’s faithful few teach the people of Timbuktu about Islam. But to prayer; he bellows into the wind like a di- one old man said to them: ‘Listen to me. Islam vine madman. In the absence of water, Azima was here in Timbuktu long before you arrived. performs his ritual ablutions with sand. Azima We don’t need you to come here and teach us and Mohammed then trudge out into the gauze about Islam.’” light of the wind-shrouded sunset. It is Islam Everyone in the room nods in assent. unchanged in fourteen centuries. I ask if they have any problems here, whether After the sun has gone and the wind abates, from bandits, rebel Tuareg groups, or Islamists. Araouane is cloaked in darkness; there is no “No, why would we?” Mohammed answers. electricity. Men crowd into the room to talk and “They are looking for money, for rich people. to debate the Sahara’s troubled times. Here, in In Araouane, we only have sand. That is why the eye of a storm that has spread fear across the Araouane is good. It is a hard life, but it is safe open desert and the Saharan campfires of night, here, and peaceful.” people are hungry for news and full of opinions. When the men disperse to do whatever one Azima does his best to translate, but is discreet does in Araouane to pass the night, Azima voices about doing so: it is clear that those in the room the concerns that have followed us here. consider talk of rebels and bandits to be a private “The rebels have their contacts, even here in matter. At one point, Azima leans over to me and Araouane, even among some of the guides. They whispers: “People here are very worried.” know everything. They know how many cars are Rumors are circulating that three hundred coming, which route they take, the nationality rebel Tuareg fighters have this week gathered of the people who come. Did you see how they in Kidal, in Mali’s far northeast, for showdown had the food ready when we arrived? Araouane talks with the Malian government. “If they can knew we were coming. News in the desert trav- make an agreement,” Azima says, “there will be els very fast.” peace. If not, things will get a lot worse. This is “So the rebels know that we are in Araouane a very important week for the Tuareg and for now?” Mali.” Whether these stories are true or not, “Yes . . . Of course.” later reports in the Malian press will suggest I think of Ali, my taciturn guide, and of all that, at the very moment we are discussing the the people I have met here in Araouane. I walk situation in the imam’s house, the Malian army outside and scan the horizon by the light of the is destroying the main Tuareg rebel base, close moon. Nothing moves.

112 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 Tuareg rebellions are recurring features of life areg north. Grinding poverty and a succession of in the Sahara. When Mali became independent catastrophic droughts and famines wiped away in 1960, its frontiers cut across the open spaces the old Tuareg order; by the late 1980s, very of the desert, enclosing the nomadic Tuareg few Tuareg still lived as nomads. In June 1990, a within borders that they resented and routinely newly militant generation of young Tuareg rose ignored where they could. To the black Africans up in anger. When the government struck back, of the south who dominated Mali’s new army northern Mali and neighboring Niger were and government, the Tuareg were predators, plunged into open conflict. The Tuareg fled en plunderers, and the owners of slaves, a warrior masse, retreating into rebel camps or into exile. race who had throughout history raided cara- Azima was among those who fled with his vans and villages for the mere pleasure of it. As family. “During the rebellion in the 1990s, we part of its civilizing mission, the Malian govern- went as refugees to Mauritania,” he told me, “and ment forced many Tuareg to abandon their no- we stayed there for eight months. Timbuktu was madic life and humiliated veiled Tuareg nobles very dangerous at this time. Even though I had by conducting ceremonies of public undressing. good relations with the people there, it wasn’t When that didn’t work, soldiers burned nomads safe because I am Tuareg. They thought that I to death or buried them alive. The mainstays of knew the rebels and knew where they were hid- the Tuareg economy, cattle and camels, were ing. Many Tuareg were killed in Timbuktu.” mown down with machine guns. Rape, impris- Baba, our driver and a Saharan journeyman, onment, and torture were common. would later tell me the story of this time from The first Tuareg uprising in the early 1960s a different perspective. Born to a Tuareg father was brutally put down. During the almost three and a Songhai mother, he bears visible Songhai decades that followed, Tuareg areas came under tribal scars and refuses to recognize his Tuareg strict military control and Mali’s meager wealth blood: “I am not Tuareg. I am Songhai. The Tu- was rarely distributed in the predominantly Tu- areg are bad people. They are rebels.” He was in

A n t h o n y h a m 113 Timbuktu for the duration of the rebellion and and continued on foot. One of the commanders has distrusted the Tuareg, his deep friendship went to the drivers of the rebel cars and pre- with Azima notwithstanding, ever since. tended to be a rebel. ‘When are they coming?’ he “Was it dangerous in Timbuktu back then?” asked. ‘Soon,’ they said. So he killed the drivers, I ask him. not with a gun, but by cutting their throats. And “Very dangerous.” the soldiers did the same to each of the rebels “For you?” who returned to the cars. I never shot my gun, “For everyone.” except in training, but when peace came and “Do you know people who were killed?” they had the ceremony to hand over the guns “Yes. I had one friend who was a driver and and burn them, I was outside Timbuktu. When he was coming from Niafunké to Timbuktu. I came back, no one asked me for the gun. I have The bandits stopped him thirty kilometers from it to this day.” town. They killed him and his apprentice driver, In the mid-1990s, a peace of sorts was patched stole everything from the passengers, and raped together. Some former rebels were brought into the women.” the army and government money was plowed “The attackers were Tuareg?” into the north, especially the rebel capital, Kidal. “They were Tuareg. The government were A wary peace reigned. giving out guns and training people to help de- But distrust between the Tuareg and Mali’s fend Timbuktu, to help the army. On the day other ethnic groups lingered: the Tuareg con- that I heard my friend had been killed, I went sider themselves to be a people apart, and the to join them. One time, we were in a fortress black Africans of the south agree. For the most camp five kilometers outside Timbuktu, and we part, this tension rarely extends beyond the daily saw the rebels enter the town. We wanted to kill indignities of mutual dislike. “I have had many them, but when we radioed the military they bad experiences in the south of Mali, even in told us to wait. The soldiers came, left the car Timbuktu,” Azima once told me. “It is because I

114 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 Azima sits atop a dune, robes shielding him from was funded by al Qaeda money. Kidnappings of windborne sand and black flies. Westerners and attacks on remote army bases throughout the region have been claimed by am Tuareg. The police will always stop me, and shadowy groups asserting allegiance to al Qaeda. no one else, and ask for my identity card. Ba- In response, the US government has declared mako is not my capital.” Another of my Malian the Sahara to be a new front in the War on Ter- friends, a Dogon man named Ogomono Saye, ror. In 2006, General Charles Wald, deputy loathes Timbuktu with a passion—it is in Tim- commander of the US European Command, buktu that he is made to feel like a foreigner in described the Sahara as “a swamp of terror” that his own country and he is routinely overcharged “we need to drain” and warned that the Sahara by Tuareg traders and called “Bambara himchi” could become “another Afghanistan.” The Pen- (Bambara boy) to his face. En route to Tim- tagon called it “an al Qaeda terrorist zone” and buktu, in Bamako, a taxi driver told me: “I have labeled the desert’s isolated massifs “the Sahara’s traveled all over Mali, except for the north. That Tora Bora.” is a different country.” In 2005 rebel groups once again began at- tacking remote army camps in northern Mali, and a new rebellion was launched, albeit this time with limited popular support among the Kidnappings of Westerners and Tuareg. It was a dangerous moment in Mali’s his- attacks on remote army bases tory. Ogomono, who was in Bamako at the time, remembers a country that stood on the precipice throughout the region have been of civil war: “When this rebellion started, people claimed by shadowy groups in cities all over Mali wanted to go to the Tuareg Quartiers and kill all the Tuareg who lived there. asserting allegiance to al Qaeda. People were ringing into private radio stations In response, the US government saying ‘kill them, kill them.’ But the government stopped them.” has declared the Sahara to be a Whether it was the government, or because the uprising never really gained traction among new front in the War on Terror. its own people, this latest rebellion has been re- stricted to remote corners of the Sahara. Azima, now with a young family, considered returning into exile, and Baba, with two young children, Not everyone agrees. Jeremy Keenan, a re- prepared himself to once again take up arms. spected academic and Sahara expert at the But the fighting never reached Timbuktu. University of London’s School of Oriental and Unlike previous rebellions, this one has been African Studies, has described the claims as “one clouded by rumors that al Qaeda in the Islamic of the world’s most elaborate and diabolical in- Maghreb, a group to which the Tuareg are gener- telligence deceptions.” ally hostile, has taken up residence in the Malian Whatever the truth or otherwise of these desert. Such speculation has been disastrous for claims, just weeks before our journey to Ara- the peoples of the Sahara, slowing tourism to a ouane twenty soldiers were killed in an attack trickle and destroying the livelihoods of many on a Malian army base in Nampala, close to the in the process. Mauritanian border and well beyond the normal Stories, as yet unproven, continue to circu- sphere of Tuareg operations. In Ségou, on my late that the Hendrina Khan Hotel in Timbuktu, way north, I had watched a seemingly endless owned by the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist convoy of Malian military vehicles, piled high Abdul Qadeer Khan and named for his wife, with soldiers caked in the dust of Nampala and

A n t h o n y h a m 115 116 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 bristling with American-supplied weaponry, roll not say so, Baba is uneasy here, surrounded by through town, heading north for a final assault so much silence and uncertainty. On a trip with on Tuareg (or al Qaeda) positions. And although Azima to Kidal last year, he narrowly escaped we did not know it at the time, while we were with his life as Azima managed to convince a in Araouane, four European tourists were kid- band of rebels that he and Baba were aid workers napped in Niger, close to the border with Mali. come to help their fellow Tuareg. Baba knows, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed re- as we all do, that as a Songhai former member sponsibility. Three would later be released, but of an anti-rebel militia, he may not be so lucky one, a British man named Edwin Dyer, would be the next time. I also know from Azima that Baba beheaded in Mali, perhaps close to Araouane, six thinks it foolhardy that I should have entered months after we were there. into what may be al Qaeda territory. Even so, Araouane’s importance in all of this lies in its I feel safe here, lulled into a sense of security location. Close to the eastern limits of Tuareg by Araouane’s hospitality. The decision is mine, territory, and not far from Mali’s undefended and I decide to stay, knowing that to understand frontier with Mauritania, a country where the Araouane one must pass through its long, empty Islamist threat seems particularly acute, the des- hours. If Baba is disappointed, he does not let ert around Araouane is beyond the control of any me see it. government. As such, it serves as a crossroads Later that afternoon, Azima and I climb the for those groups, whatever their persuasion, who ridge of dunes that overlooks Araouane from the would turn the Sahara into a place of fear. south and we sit in the sand, talking from time to time. I ask Azima about his life. At first he says nothing, and we watch as a lone woman in Time in Araouane follows a reassuring rhythm. bright yellow robes moves from a well to a house We wake with the sun, then eat a simple break- down in the village, balancing a water container fast of stale bread. Like everyone in Araouane, atop her head. we drink endless rounds of tea and spend hours “I was born in the desert,” he says after a time, staring at nothing. For everyone but me, the day “although I don’t know the year. Someone told is divided into the five daily prayers. Otherwise, me it was 1970, but I have no way of knowing the only activity for the people here seems to be for sure. When I was a boy, we were nomads and watching me, a pastime of which they never tire; we were always on the move. My father’s family when the men go at night, a young boy watches is from around Tin Telloun, close to Timbuktu, over my shoulder as I write by the light of a small but my mother’s family, the Kel Enshara, comes lamp powered by a car battery. Time, the day, from close to the well of Taganet. I was born passes slowly. here”—he points away to the southwest—“close On our second day in Araouane, Azima sug- to Araouane. It is my country. That is why Ara- gests that I may want to return to Timbuktu ouane is such a special place for me.” earlier than planned. Azima is happy here, as A solitary brown-necked raven, the only wild am I, cocooned as we are from the world and its creature I will see in Araouane, lands away to the noise. But Baba wants to return and he comes to west searching for scraps, then flies away. me when no one is around to try and convince “One day, when I was a small boy, I went to me that we should leave soon for Timbuktu. I find water on my camel. On my way back to the have traveled with Baba before and he is a model camp there was a sandstorm. Yes, the wind was of discretion, willing without complaint to go bad here yesterday, but a true sandstorm is some- wherever he is told. And yet, although he does thing different. The sky was black and I couldn’t even see my hand. There was no warning, maybe Mohammed Bashir, the young imam of Araouane, five minutes at the most. I sat down and waited would rather die here than leave should Araouane be for the storm to end. It lasted for three hours, abandoned. maybe more. Then I went back to the camp.”

A n t h o n y h a m 117 A small child in a Barcelona football shirt He ruffles the young boy’s hair. climbs the hill towards us and sits in silence “One day I will take my sons into the Sahara nearby, watching. and we will stay there for a long time, so they “I didn’t even leave the desert for the first can learn about the desert and know it well, so time until I was fourteen or fifteen. We went to they don’t lose the connection.” Timbuktu and the first time I saw it I couldn’t “Will there always be nomads?” believe the lights! But this was a terrible time, “Yes, of course. Even I, who has been seden- the time of the great drought, and we went to taire for almost twelve years, I still miss the des- the city because we had no food. In Timbuktu ert. I don’t have a fixed telephone in Timbuktu the international agencies gave us something to for this reason—if I do, I will feel as if I am no eat. Before we arrived, we had nothing. We even longer a nomad. My brother and my cousin, they ate animal feed.” are still nomads, but they are unusual and their The small boy listens, understanding noth- lives are very hard: the rains never come and ing, and Azima speaks with him in Songhai. The there is no water, or pasture for their animals. boy smiles, grateful that Azima has included Even so, I still don’t want to be sedentaire. When him. He inches closer. the tourist season is over, I close up my house, I “My two sons were born in the desert, as is visit my father for a few days and then my cousin our custom, but we live in Timbuktu, and I want comes to take me on my camel to wherever his them to go to school, not like me.” camp is. I stay there for maybe one month, go to I think back to the first time I met Azima, Timbuktu to buy food, and then go back to the years ago, when I asked this man who speaks camp. If I have no choice but to be in Timbuktu, seven languages to write down his name and every night I go with my friends to the dunes address for me. He wrote only his first name in that surround the town, where no one can find the faltering script of a small child, telling me, us, and we drink tea.” “I never went to school. I cannot read or write.” We are silent. Time passes.

118 VQ R | s u mm e r 2 0 1 0 A woman wraps herself against the scouring force of father didn’t want me to go to Europe the first blowing sand. time. He thought maybe I wouldn’t come back. When I returned home, I said to him, ‘See? I “Before, to show that you were strong, you have come back. This is my home.’” He was very were a nomad,” Azima resumes, picking up the proud. thread of conversation. “Before those droughts it “But, as the Tuareg say, to know yourself you was unimaginable that a Kel Tamashek [Tuareg] must travel far from home. That is also why the would live a sedentary life. Now, to show that desert is so special. In the desert you can think. you are strong, you stay in one place, you become Here you can see everything.” sedentaire. That is why the people of Araouane stay here. It is to show that Araouane exists.” The sun nears the horizon and we have both Night falls. The sound of the imam’s family, the fallen quiet, lost in thought as we contemplate toctoc, toctoc, toctoc of women pounding millet, the great emptiness around us. High above the rises into the wind from beyond the courtyard. Sahara, a plane moves north across the sky. Chickens wander in and out, and people come Azima chuckles to himself, in thrall of a private and go, murmuring long ritual greetings and memory. I ask him where he is. It is a long time farewells. From nearby buildings, voices, occa- before he answers. sionally in song and muffled by the night winds “The first time I ever went in a plane was of the desert, die before they can be carried out seven years ago when I went to Spain to visit across the sand. We crouch alongside the walls, friends. I asked a French lady to sit by the win- wrapped in blankets against the freezing night. dow, and a friend to sit on the other side, next In the darkness, Azima tells stories of famous to the aisle. When the plane started to go fast, I desert guides and of vast caravans of camels put my head down and prayed. When we took and men swallowed up, like the ancient Persian off, I was happy that I am a man because if I was army of Cambyses, by Saharan sandstorms, and a woman I would have had a baby—I thought my of others that lost their way and died of thirst. stomach was going to fall out! When my friend As always, there is talk of wars, past and future. spoke, I asked him, ‘Are you a Muslim? How can “Araouane is empty,” Azima says between sto- you talk at a time like this?’ When we arrived in ries. “Many people went to the mines, yes, but Paris I asked if I could go home by car. I have they also are looking for oil in the north and I’m since gone back to Europe and it is better now. sure people went there from Araouane. I hope But not once have I looked out the window, and they don’t find oil in Mali, because if they do I am still angry when I see Africans talking on there will be war.” the plane, because we are in the hands of God.” I ask him to tell me a Tuareg story and it is “What does Europe look like to someone clear that the fable he chooses is one that he from the desert?” would like to tell the rebels among his people: “The first time I saw the ocean in Barcelona, “There was once a man in a village, but he I cried, because it is like the desert—you cannot was small and believed that no one respected see its end. For the first week in Europe, I am him. So he went to the blacksmith and told him happy. Then I start to miss the desert. Europe that he had a problem. ‘No-one respects me, and is very difficult for me—everything moves so when they greet me, they do it from far away. I fast! In the desert we have endless time but no want you to make me a gun and knives so that water. In Europe, you have plenty of water but I can kill some people. Then they will respect no time. The first time I was in Barcelona and me.’ ‘OK,’ said the blacksmith and the man paid I saw water just lying on the ground, I thought, him lots of money. He waited and waited, then ‘these people are crazy!’ went to see the blacksmith. ‘Why are you taking “I could never live there. I see many Africans so long? ‘Patience,’ said the blacksmith. Finally, there and I think that they are very brave. My when the blacksmith was ready, he went to the

A n t h o n y h a m 119 man’s house with an enormous azawad [com- of rain drives the last nomads from the desert munal eating plate] of sheep and rice and twenty and into the city, the Sahara’s winds erasing the spoons. When the man saw it he was very angry. last vestiges of the desert’s nomadic cultures. Or ‘I asked you to make me guns and knives and you it will be decreed by rebel armies who may leave bring me this food. Why?’ ‘You will see.’ So they Araouane untouched, but make it uninhabitable invited everyone from the village, and they all as the surrounding desert becomes the sole pre- greeted the man warmly and were very friendly serve of bandits, strangling life from the village. to him. ‘See?’ said the blacksmith. ‘This is how Do they know this, the men who last night in you earn their respect.’” the imam’s house laughed and clapped and sang The conversations strike up again and the until deep into the night? Surely they do, but men regale each other with epic stories of desert like the frog in the slowly heating pond, many disaster and survival. I leave them to their tall will not leave until it is too late. tales and step out into the night to walk with I have been to countless end-of-the-earth wonder under the stars of Araouane. outposts of human settlement all across the Sahara, many of them more remote even than Araouane. But for the most part they were straw On the morning we are to leave Araouane, I huts and tents that could be moved in search awake before dawn to the whispers of people of pasture, or to escape the ebb and flow of the shuffling out for morning prayers. An hour or Sahara’s natural and human history. Araouane two later, I wake again to find the room filled is different. With its long historical story and its with seven or eight silent faces watching me. buildings built to last, Araouane disturbs me, as After a breakfast of rock-hard bread, I climb to it has ever since I stood here and saw it for the the highest dune behind the imam’s house to first time, precisely because it has aspirations take in Araouane one last time. The air is un- to permanence. usually still and the sunrise shadows are long. Azima walks along the dune towards me. People emerge from their houses in ones and “Baba, he wants to go to Timbuktu,” he says. I twos, shrouded in blankets against the morn- know. “I want to stay,” says Azima. So do I. ing cold. Then, too fast, Baba revs the car and powers From my vantage point on Araouane’s sum- up to the dune’s crest where we stand. Moham- mit, I am reminded that, unlike so many villages med, now dressed in the flowing sky-blue robes in Africa that were hidden in inaccessible places of the Mauritanian Moors, will join us on the to escape slave traders and invading armies, this journey to shop for supplies; he will stay in Tim- is a village that needs to be found: if you do not buktu for a week and return as soon as he can find it, you die. In this role, Araouane has been find a truck traveling north. From beneath folds a symbol of hope for desert travelers down of cloth, he produces a gris-gris, a small cloth through the centuries. amulet of protection which contains a verse But one day, perhaps soon, Araouane will from the Quran. “It has more power if I give it itself disappear like the caravans of old. Per- to you here in Araouane,” he says. haps it will be abandoned before it comes to Children swarm up the hillside to see us off. this, when human beings despair of Araouane’s “This dune,” says Azima, “is known as Bismillah isolation and of fighting against the sands that Araouane [Goodbye Araouane] because it is the wash over the village. Or it will happen when last place in the village.” He wraps my head in a camel caravans no longer ply the trails between turban. I don’t need to ask him why. Taoudenni and Timbuktu, and when an absence Too soon, we are speeding down the dune, heading south. When I turn for one last look at The town viewed from a dune known as Bismillah Araouane, it is no longer there. Araouane (Goodbye Araouane), because it is thought We see not another living soul all the way of as “the last place in the village.” into Timbuktu.

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