Omar, who has been watching all this clowning with the mildly indulgent smile of a teacher on a school outing, tells me that this is the much-feared vipere du sable, the sand viper, whose bite, relatively harmless for humans, can cripple a camel. The desert is clearly not as empty as it looks.
As if to rub this in, Mohammed, normally so languid and laidback, gives a sharp cry as we lie on the mats after lunch. He’s been bitten by a scorpion. I’m lying next to him and move pretty smartly out of the way, as someone grabs my boot and deals the scorpion a fatal blow. Like the snake earlier, the scorpion looks a pale defenceless little creature, the last thing in the world to cause trouble, but even after the poison is sucked out and sedatives administered Mohammed is clearly in serious pain, and says he will be for another four hours.
The excitements of the day are not yet over. Shortly after darkness has fallen, distant headlights stab the gloom and soon we hear a rapidly approaching vehicle and, at the same time, a high-pitched drone in the sky above us. There is some nervous speculation that we have been mistaken for Osama Bin Laden and American Special Services have come to deal with us, but the reality proves to be a pair of French paragliders. First the ground support arrives and minutes later, once signal lights have been set up and vehicle headlights switched on to pick out the landing strip, an Icarus appears, strapped to a motor attached to a wheel-like frame and swinging on the end of a yellow mattress parachute. After two or three low passes over the camp this surreal figure hits the ground to a burst of spontaneous applause.
Renaud Van De Meeren is the flyer and Francois Lagarde the ground crew. As they join us around the single lamp it’s hard to distinguish features, but Francois is clearly the older man. Wiry, tall, with a boyish flop of fair hair, he has flown his machine all over the world but still regards the Sahara as his favourite desert.
‘It’s still alive, you know. There is authentic life, here.’
He talks about the paraglider like a boy with a new toy. The whole kit folds down into two bags and can be carried with them as accompanying baggage. Yesterday they were in Paris. And the experience of flying it? Smooth and solid.
‘Like swimming in oil.’
Their theatrical arrival is upstaged by the clutch of Western newspapers and magazines that they have brought with them. These contain the first pictures we have seen of the attacks on America eight days ago. Since then we have all carried our own separate mental pictures of the destruction, made up of descriptions from families and friends at home, BBC World Service reports and individual imaginings. Now, by the light of a flickering lamp in the heart of the Sahara, we share with the rest of the world, for the first time, the classic images that will come to define the tragedy; bodies falling through the air, black smoke blotting out Lower Manhattan, dust clouds racing down the streets.
By the time I climb into my tent it’s nearly eleven. This is very late for the desert, where darkness rules and we’re usually in bed by half past nine, yet for once I can’t get to sleep. The arrival of the paragliders, with their papers and their magazines reminding us of where we came from and what we shall soon have to go back to, has broken the spell, compromised our isolation, drawn us back into the wider world just as it was becoming soothingly irrelevant. Much as we might want it otherwise, life in the desert is a diversion and the blazing skyline of New York is the reality.
And that’s not all that’s keeping me awake. There are persistent scratchings on the side of my tent, as if the wind is blowing something against it. But there is no wind.
Heart beating a little faster, I pull the zip open and peer out, but there’s nothing there, and indeed what could be there, in the middle of the Tenere? Apart from camels. Oh, and snakes. And scorpions. And gazelles. And paragliders.
Day Sixty-Seven
THE TENERE DESERT
The noises in the night prove to have been the work of little black beetles, and judging by the network of tracks around my tent they had put in a full night’s work. There are over 350 species of black beetle in the Sahara, but I haven’t seen so many in one place since we watched the camel train come into Timbuktu. They bustle around as I pack, full of curiosity, wanting to get into everything, as they had presumably wanted to get into my tent last night. Nor was I the only one to have been kept awake by them. J-P, dark-eyed and dishevelled, became convinced that hyenas were prowling around and has barely slept a wink. I can understand it. In such a soundless environment the slightest noise can become weirdly amplified. And he had had a brandy or two.
Renaud, whose speciality is aerial photography, is also up early to take advantage of the light at sunrise. Lashed to the wheel of his paraglider like some mediaeval penitent, he runs into the wind, but there isn’t enough to fill his parachute, and he has to keep on running, trying to find the elusive lifting breeze. He disappears behind a dune, engine revving away. There’s a pregnant pause, and a moment later the sound of an engine cutting out, followed by a short splintering crash.
Renaud is fine, but his machine is a write-off. Later, Francois manages to get his craft airborne and the morning’s travelling is enlivened by his appearances over the dunes, sweeping down across the camel train, filming with one hand, steering with the other.
To get the right pictures the camels have to be led backwards and forwards over the same ground, which emphasises how, in a way, things have changed. Omar and his team are following us instead of us following them. Whatever relationship I might have assumed I was forging with the Touareg has been subsumed by Western technology.
In the evening I have one last meal with the cameleers. In a recklessly generous act of hospitality they cook the remaining sheep, preceded by a tasty mix of crusty-topped goat’s cheese and dates. We sit round the fire and go through my Touareg vocabulary for the last time.
‘Tagel-la.’ (Roars of laughter.) ‘Izot!”Issan!’
As we raise our glasses of mint tea I teach Izambar some useful English in return.
I advise him that the English say ‘Bottoms Up’ when they raise a glass.
Izambar is a very quick learner, though his first faltering attempts - ‘Bott-erm erp’ - give me a chance to get back for all the Tagel-las.
The main thing is that we laugh a lot. Almost like old friends.
Day Sixty-Eight
OUT OF THE TENERE DESERT
Breakfast on the side of a long stony slope with no cover other than a few boulders. Ekawik, perhaps sensing my imminent departure, is very frisky and when Elias has finished loading him he breaks away, scattering his cargo and skipping about with joyful abandon. For his pains he gets a ticking off and a very severe kick up the bottom (not an easy thing to do to a camel).
‘Mediant. Tres mechant,’ mutters Omar, but he can’t help smiling.
I want to give Omar something for his help and good company, but all he will take is my bottle of eye-drops. Eye problems are the most common complaint in his village and he will keep these till he gets back. It feels a pathetically inadequate thanks, but I think he has enjoyed himself. We have been on the move with the camel train for five days. They have adapted their movement to our own and would normally, by now, be over halfway to Bilma. As it is, we have moved only about 100 miles from the mountains. We must leave them to go on at their own pace and I must strike off, north, to the Algerian border.