Gazel had seen how the “French” had killed off the antelopes from the north to extinction, and the mouflons in much of the Atlas, and the beautiful hamada addax that came from the other side of the great Sekia, which thousands of years ago used to be a mighty river. That was why he had chosen this stony corner of the plains, with its endless sand and inhospitable mountains, a fourteen-day walk from El-Akab, because only someone like him would dare to take on such an inhospitable land, in the most inhospitable of all deserts.
The days when the Tuaregs were true warriors — ambushing caravans and attacking the French military with their war-like cries, sweeping the plains like fierce winds, pillaging and killing and in combat with anything that stood in their way — were long gone. They had been proud of their reputation as the “desert bandits” or “masters” of the Saharan sands, from south of the Atlas to the shores of the river Chad. But the fighting and wars of fratricide were long forgotten now, apart from in the distant memories of some of the older generations. The Imohag race was in decline, as the most valiant of its warriors chose to leave the desert and drive lorries for a “French” patron instead, or joined the regular army or sold candles and sandals to tourists in tie-dye t-shirts.
On the day that his cousin Suleiman left the desert and went to live in the city to sell bricks, driving them around from one place to the next, day after day, covered in cement and whitewash, he knew that he to had to leave and establish himself as one of the last of the solitary Tuaregs.
And it was there, high up on that same dune, his family below him, that he would sit every night and give thanks to Allah one thousand and one times and not once in all those years — so many now that he had lost track — had he regretted his decision.
From the bits and pieces he picked up from passing travellers, it seemed to him that strange things were happening in the world. They brought with them tales of death and war, of rapid change that did not seem to be of any great benefit to anyone and he was happy not to have witnessed the events that they spoke of.
One night, as he sat there, contemplating the stars that had so often guided him through the desert, he saw one he did not recognise, shining brilliantly and moving at a fast but steady, almost purposeful rate, unlike the reckless paths of errant shooting stars that would eventually fade away to nothing. For the first time in his life he had frozen with fear, unable to find in his memory or in the memories of his ancestors a tradition or legend that told of such a star, of one that followed the same path, night after night. They grew in number over the years, until together, they resembled a pack of racing hounds running riot through space and disturbing the ancient peace of the skies.
He would never know the significance of these strange apparitions. Nor would the ancient Suilem, the father of nearly all his slaves and so old, that his grandfather had bought him, already a man, in Senegal.
‘The stars have never taken such strange paths through the sky, master,’ Gazel noted. ‘Never. This could mean that the end is nigh.’
He had asked one traveller about them, but he had been unable to give him a straight answer. The second traveller he asked had said that it might have something to do with the “French.” But Gazel was not convinced, because even though he had heard rumours that the French were making significant advances in technology, he still could not believe they would be mad enough to start putting more stars into a sky that was already full of them.
‘It must be a divine sign,’ he said. ‘Allah is trying to tell us something. But what?’
He tried to find the answer in the Koran, but the Koran did not mention shooting stars that followed paths of mathematical precision, so over time he just got used to their presence, but that is not to say that he forgot about them.
In the clear air of the desert, in the darkness of a land where not a single light burned for hundreds of kilometers all around, the stars looked so close to the land that Gazel would sometimes stretch out his hands as if he was trying to touch the trembling lights that hovered just above him, with his own fingertips.
He remained up there for a long while, alone with his thoughts, and then scrambled quickly down to take a last look at the livestock and the camp and to check for hungry hyenas or cunning jackals that might threaten his small world, before retiring to bed.
At the door of his tent, the biggest and most comfortable in the encampment, he stopped and listened. If the wind had not started up, the silence would have been so intense that it hurt.
Gazel loved this silence.
Every day at dawn Suilem, the old man, or one of his grandsons would saddle up Gazel the inmouchar’s favourite camel and leave it at the entrance of their master’s tent.
Every day at dawn the Targui would fetch his rifle, mount his white, long-legged mehari and head off to one of the four compass points in search of prey.
Gazel loved his camel, as much as a man of the desert is capable of loving an animal and often depended on him with his life. When they were alone together he would chat to him out loud. He called him “R’Orab, the raven,” and made jokes about his snow-white colour, so close to the colour of the sandy landscape through which they travelled, that it often just melted into the background.
There was not a faster or stronger mehari to be found on this side of Tamanrasset. A rich merchant, who was the owner of a caravan of over three hundred animals had once offered to exchange it for five of his choice, but Gazel had turned down his offer. Gazel knew that if anything were ever to happen to him on one of their solitary adventures, “R’Orab” would be the only camel in the world capable of carrying him back to his camp, even on the darkest of nights.
Sometimes, overcome with tiredness and lulled by the animal’s swaying gait, he would arrive at the entrance to his tent fast asleep on its back and his family would take him down and put him into bed.
The “French” were convinced that these camels were stupid, cruel and vindictive creatures that only responded to shouting and whipping. A real Imohag knew that a good desert camel, particularly the pure-blooded mehari, that was well cared for and well trained, could be as intelligent and faithful as a dog, but a thousand times more useful in that land of sand and wind.
The French would treat the camels in the same way throughout the different seasons of the year, without understanding that in the rutting season these creatures became irritable and dangerous, especially if the heat intensified with the east winds. This was one reason the French had never made good horseman in the desert and why they had never managed to conquer the Tuareg, who, back in the days of battle and unrest, had always managed to defeat them, despite their larger numbers and more sophisticated weaponry.
The French came to dominate the oases and the wells, and these scarce water sources became their strongholds, which they barricaded in with canons and machine guns, forcing the free and indomitable horsemen, the sons of the wind, to surrender to the enemy they had faced since the beginning of time:
Thirst.
But the French were not proud of having conquered the veil people, because in reality they had not conquered them through open warfare. Neither their black Senegalese men, nor their lorries or tanks were of much use to them in a desert that was still dominated by the Tuaregs and their meharis, from one end of it to the other.
The Tuareg were few and far between, while the soldiers marched in from the cities or the colonies like clouds of locusts, until eventually the day came when neither a camel, man, woman or child could drink in the Sahara without permission from the French first.