To Timbuktu for a Haircut

by Rick Antonson

  “De Luzy. France,” called a border guard flaunting a passport. It was Matthew’s. We pointed at his waving hand. His proof of nationality was secured.

  “Antonson. Canada.” I heard new acquaintances shout my whereabouts to the petty official, who threw my passport to a black hand in the crowd. It was fumbled, caught and flipped in the air to a lady, from where it moved like a hot potato over half a dozen hands in a black wave and into mine.

  A customs guard mispronounced the next surname, tried to say it again louder, and then added, “United States.” At the building’s corner stood two women, retreated from the fray, seemingly Americans in early adulthood. They were out of earshot and looked nervous. I moved their way, asking the pony-tailed brunette, “You American?”

  “Yes,” she said as if it were a secret. Her friend looked pale from the food, frail and worried. She shied a step backward. “Why?”

  “I think they called your passport,” I offered.

  When they returned with their booklets, they linked arms as if to make their presence appear larger. They were bound for Bamako, and from there a straight return to Dakar, by air. The midwesterner was a Peace Corps worker in Senegal, the other a shell-shocked friend visiting from stateside.

  “I wanted to go to Timbuktu,” she said as we chatted about my goal. “But my supervisor refused to sign permission papers. It’s very dangerous, you know. She threatened to cancel my entire trip when I suggested it.”

  “Timbuktu,” her friend sighed poetically. “Forever far away.”

  Matthew and Eric walked by and cocked their heads, “Rick, come. We’re going to get our passports stamped.” Sure enough, nothing had been added to the documents that the officials had held for hours. Not a whisper of ink to signify our entry. And that oft-advised “It’s a turn-back offence” warning? The Yellow Fever certificate was still in my pack on board the train. My French companions had been told by a Japanese university student that the police station would stamp passports. We wanted this odd accreditation for our journey, unsure if it was a souvenir or a validation.

  Kids stopped us and offered frozen fruit juice in plastic bags the size of a fist. We wove around three women balancing bananas in pink plastic pails on their heads, shouting “Nanasabe (banana-here), Nanasa-be.” Matthew found the police corps at ease in front of a black-and-white television, where two French football teams were engaged in a match. Their building was a privileged location and enjoyed the broadest shade trees of the city. While two policemen were delegated to find the stamp and ink pad required to emboss our passports, Alec and Matthew argued for their favourite teams. A static, flipping image on television, maddening to me at home, brought joy to the gendarme.

  Mindful that we were now out of earshot of the train’s thin whistle (assuming there’d be such a courtesy), the three of us ran toward the station’s tracks. As we neared, we could see through a fence that locals were boarding. A man palmed his hands in a groundward motion and said, in French, “It’s not leaving.”

  We re-crossed the street, ordered three colas and a firm-topped bottle of water, and watched the football match continue on another static television screen. Drinking the healthy water, I downed my daily anti-malaria quotient.

  Football transcends the utter nonsense of political ruin in Africa, providing fans with spirit and belief in their countrymen. The Africa Cup of Nations had been held in Mali the previous year, bringing new stadia, national pride, and a burp of economic renewal. As I travelled a year later, this pan-African series of contests played on transistor radios, on television sets, and in arguments over millet beer.

  Making our way back to the train, we ran into the Japanese couple against the backdrop of our grungy transport. We exchanged stories, and the Kyoto student nodded slowly toward my French friends. He leaned his head my way, looking at me uncertainly, and then nodded some more. “Timbuktu … ahh … unreachable.”

  The Big River, as the locals called it, flowed under a train trestle as we ventured through labrousse, the French name for the bush country. The train hunched forward and sidled along the Sénégale River to more arid lands. Into the evening we stopped at a village near the river.

  “Eight more hours to Bamako,” announced Ebou, the optimist.

  “Ten,” countered Pierre, smiling his awareness of the train’s poor reputation.

  “Twelve hours,” anted Ussegnou in a guess that would come closest to the actual.

  Sunglasses deflected the grit thrown by the moving train toward our open window as dusk claimed the scene. The engine’s headlamp glowed in the desert dark.

  The train stopped abruptly and our coach argued, bunting its displeasure against the car in front. It was Ebou’s turn to watch the bags, and Pierre, Ussegnou, and I leapt down to the platform of dirt. The scene engulfed us immediately, and we each went our separate way. It was very dark, and the way was pitted; there was hawking and unintended shoving.

  A chain of cooking fires lined the track, commas in a sentence that described a land, a people, a way of life, an economy, families, and hierarchy. Each fire hole was stoked with twigs: every offering was different. My flashlight found a skewer-covered grill and would not let go. The charcoal flared under droplets of grease. My light skimmed across the choices. I took three kebabs and rolled them away from the others, setting them above the highest flame, and instructed the squatting grandmother that I wanted to keep these morsels cooking, to what I believed would be a singed, safe crispness.

  A boy, maybe ten, called out from behind me as I tended the mystery meat. He had bread to sell and had been following me. His baguettes were large, and I took one that cost more than it should have but was still less than its value to me. The young seller scampered into the night. I tore the loaf in half to make it sandwich-sized. Then I split the bread the long way with my thumb and forefinger. I sheared each of my personal skewers of its blackened meat into a bread mitt.

  “Sauce?” (I’m sure that was the intention of the Bambara word). The cook tipped a bowl toward the meat.

  “Non merci,” I hastened, loudly and stupidly repeating it in English. One stomach adventure at a time.

  “Rick!” It was a yell. I swivelled. Distracted, I hadn’t noticed the train’s movement. Pierre hollered again from the train as it moved away, gaining speed. “Rick!” I ran toward Pierre, one hand outstretched his way, the other protecting my dear dinner and my day pack. He gripped my fingers, then my wrist. Tight. And he hoisted me up the closed stairway, steel wheels clicking at my heels.

  Eventually my adrenaline gave way to calm, and I eased into the best meal I’d had since my arrival in Africa. Ebou, Pierre, Ussegnou, and I crouched on the lower bunks, sharing my food. They laughed at the inanity of my near miss and peppered me with echoes of my misspoken French.

  There is a woman’s walk, a call to attention. The striking woman who had made cameo appearances at the earlier station stops walked past our roomette, and then back to her roomette. It seemed that she was travelling with her father, and we hoped he was her father as she was young, boldly attractive, and a rarity; he was none of these. She was in her late teens, he a father’s age. “Beautiful,” said Pierre.

  “As pretty as God would be willing to make a woman,” Ebou added.

  Pierre was the first to flirt with her, simply asking if she’d like to visit with him and his friends. “Non,” she replied, and then he laughed at her rebuke and she fell in with his infectious giggling. Ussegnou apologized for any misinterpretation, saying, “Join us, it is innocent.” And this solidified an evening’s visit.

  For a couple of hours, the four of them mirthfully told stories in their language. I eavesdropped while reading on my top bunk. I was a shadow on their tableau, and that was fine. Every once in a while, they’d include me in a story, telling me the punch line in English so that I wouldn’t be left out of the laughs. Ebou formally introduced Jeniba to me, saying that he was my professor and that she could help him teach me French. She did not even smile a
t this notion.

  I left them in the room and walked in the coach’s empty aisle. I felt alone with my thoughts of the coming weeks’ unknowns and the happy attainment of a Saturday train departure from Dakar. It had worked out, after all. It now meant four more days in Mali. That opened my travels to new possibilities.

  Ussegnou’s bent radio aerial gave the announcer a fuzzy voice for the football game, and I noticed this as I retraced my steps to the roomette. I heard Ebou and Jeniba cheer. Ebou shouted the final score to me, twice. Jeniba arched as she rose from her seat on the bed and left for the night. All three of my roommates leaned out the roomette to watch her walk away.

  We dimmed the lights and readied the beds. Pierre and Ebou sang a Senegalese ballad with a happy mellowness. Ussegnou joined their quiet singing and hummed the melody. In our two days together, our French conversation had gone from vous to tu.

  The window in our roomette was up full, closed tightly. I struggled with the window frame and finally pulled it down to elbow height, and leaned out into Africa for the night’s benediction. Stars and a moon and comrades. I was starkly aware of my good fortune. All went quiet, even the rails seemed sensitive. After a while, I stepped back and started to climb into my bunk.

  Ebou closed the window against the rushing air. I reached back and trimmed it down to half.

  “Rick,” said Pierre. “Are you not cold at night?”

  “Hot, not cold,” I said.

  “I woke,” he said, with a mock shiver, “in the middle of last night. You lay snoring. Asleep. No jacket. Me, I’m so cold.”

  “Cold. Very cold,” added Ebou, shaking himself.

  “Me? Me, I’m freezing,” said Ussegnou.

  “Canadian: one; Africans: three,” I said, signalling the ratio in our room with my fingers. “For Africa, this much,” I moved the window closed in proportion, stopping at three fourths. The top quarter was left open for upper bunk air, “And for Canada, un peu.” Had the Frenchman Paul Flatters been successful in his 1880 mission, I might have boarded my train in Algeria, on French-laid tracks for the Transsaharian Railway, disembarking at Timbuctoo Station.

  In 1880 Colonel Paul Flatters, “a middle-aged, under-employed officer in the Bureau Arabe,” led a disastrous French mission to chart a route for the ill-conceived Transsaharian Railway.

  The world today has travel corridors, routes carved for convenience or commerce, predetermining where most of us can or will take our journeys, our vacations, our travel experiences. France believed that a railway connecting the Sahara’s north and south, a line across the awesome desert, would bring commercial and military benefits similar to those that trains were then bringing for North America — a colonial mindset that would eventually be expressed as “Eurafrica.” It led to the greatest disaster to befall an expedition in the Sahara.

  Flatters was a respected lieutenant-colonel, experienced in the desert and, approaching forty, considering final efforts to claim a significant career achievement. Although he was long tempted by the lure of Timbuktu, his earlier submissions for support of an expedition under his leadership had been declined by the French government. Now, on a journey of conquest and trade, France provided funds for seventy-seven troops, tirailleurs, and assorted engineers, guides, and native Algerian porters. They embarked with three hundred camels southward from Ouargla, an oasis and marshalling centre in Algeria. Defining a railway route across the Sahara Desert for trade and travellers was their only mandate.

  Six weeks later, low on water and sensing how desperately poor was the proposal for this railway, Flatters sent his last dispatch, though he did not know it at the time, from remote Inzelman. The style of the wandering Tuareg had been welcoming to the Frenchmen. The Blue Men of Africa shadowed Flatters’s group as it moved across their territory, the Tuareg having no idea that Flatters’s engineers were surveying for a railway.

  In need of water, Flatters accepted the Tuaregs’ advice that he and most of the camels go with them to a nearby well while the remaining troops set up camp and unpacked the supplies. The entire Tuareg contingent left with Flatters and his party of thirty-six to find the promised water. The appearance of nearly one hundred men behaving as a military unit had been a sufficient deterrent for the Tuareg up until that point. But once they had separated into two units, the French were vulnerable.

  On the slow move toward the oasis, the Tuareg attacked Flatters’s men with swords, killing Flatters and most of the Frenchmen with him. Many of the natives were captured, some murdered. A few escaped and made their way to where the main force encamped and told of the massacre. A young Lieutenant Dianous, terrified and confused, was now in charge. His decision, based on a pitiful lack of options, was to retrace their two-and-a-half-month journey back to Ouargla.

  The Tuareg weighed on Dianous’s mind. Scouts returned, confirming the patient following by these nomads. Dianous, his fellow Frenchmen, and the Algerians were well armed and confident that their ammunition supplies could ward off the Tuareg. But within two weeks of embarking northward, they were without food. They were starving and chewing the leather straps and beltings of their luggage. It was then that the Tuareg, in a gesture of desert hospitality, gave the remnants of the once-powerful French force a gift of dates.

  Soon the men writhed in agony. Many went mad, and some ran into the desert. The dates had been poisoned.

  Disoriented and distressed, the surviving soldiers broke their next night’s camp before dawn and began to march toward a big well within the day’s reach. An hour after moving into the horizon, the desert sun rose, the sand’s surface glimmered, and a strong line of Tuareg, mounted on their camels, waited.

  The Tuareg hovered in this threatening position for a long time, until advancing suddenly. Charging into the volley of French musket balls, they suffered heavy casualties. It was not their expected victory. But the Tuareg’s retaliation to the French rebuff was immediate and horrific. They slew those prisoners they’d held alive from the Flatters incident. Shocked and demoralized, the Frenchmen watched the killings just out of musket range. Then, from a Tuareg sniper, a bullet pierced the desert air, striking Dianous. He fell.

  An anguished sergeant assumed responsibility and led a switchback course for the near-dead, who remained under his command. It is said that he shook the Tuareg at the edge of their lands. Those soldiers who could walk, stumbled north. In desperation, they killed and then ate their weaker comrades. When the brain-addled sergeant himself could barely walk, he, too, was killed and eaten by those he’d led.

  Four months after they had left to find a suitable route for the Transsaharian Railway to connect European markets with the gold-rich trade cities of the River Niger, tattered traces of the tirailleurs found their way into a north Saharan village. France’s dreams of a railway evaporated with the tales of these half-mad survivors.

  In the early 1900s, France faced the challenge of mollifying the renegade Tuat tribes under Moroccan claim. If it was to effectively influence the Sahara, its military operations required a means of regular supply. “Paradoxically, the Transsaharian could not be built until the Tuat was firmly under French control, and the Tuat could not be controlled until the Transsaharian was in place,” writes Fergus Fleming in The Sword and the Cross. Should France build a railway?

  It did not, and not until 1965 was a Trans-Saharan Railway again proposed. But the idea was just as quickly dropped. The Trans-Saharan Railway is now unthinkable as much for the inhospitable geography of shifting sands as for the shifting politics, or the lesser cost and convenience of air travel. One of the few safe travel predictions for Africa’s future is that it will not include the phrase, “All aboard for Timbuktu.”

  No travellers fall into easier conversation than do train travellers. Paul Theroux observed that “train travel is the last word in truth serum.” Eye-to-eye contact, known departure points, and a sense that when you leave, the train stays behind with your stories and secrets, all add to the candour.

  Ussegnou began
. “Your travels are long, Rick. Do you not work?”

  “I have time off,” I said, and rolled over in my upper bunk.

  “Do you not work?” he repeated.

  “I work in travel,” I said.

  “You’re working now?” He saw the looseness in my life, and I could see that he wondered at the relevance of my job. I felt defensive.

  “No. This is my holiday. I will go back to work when my vacation is over.”

  “And then your work is more travel?” I sensed Ussegnou’s bemusement.

  “Why in Africa?” he asked into the darkness. “Because we are poor and you are not?”

  FOUR

  From Here to Timbuktu

  A JOLT ON THE TRACKS WOKE US AND ANNOUNCED our arrival in Kita. It was early, dark. We were still 185 kilometres from Bamako. I rolled over and felt a loaf of bread crumble under my weight. Unable to see, I slipped off the top bunk, my hands exploring to find the doorway, and headed into the dimly lit corridor. I hoped for coffee with milk. Hot water was available in the dining car, but the serving staff was preparing for our arrival at the Bamako terminal and therefore not in the mood for serving. Two washed mugs sat on the bar, and I took one. Powdered milk filled a tumbler in the corner and I shook a clump of it loose. A pile of sugar was spilled on the counter. I scooped that into the cup as well. The porter pushed a broom around the chairs and a half-used packet of Nescafé fell from his trouser pocket. I picked it up off the floor and sprinkled the granules into my cup.

  West of Bamako, we skirted the Manding Mountains, home of the once-mighty Malinké, custodians of the Mali Empire. The train’s chugging made one marvel at those who crossed that barrenness on foot or camel. My disembarkation point neared, first with glimpses of garbage and then with struggling buildings that seemed to not want to be noticed.