Sherlock Holmes, The Missing Years: Timbuktu

by Vasudev Murthy

  We planned the journey carefully, and fixed a date. We chose those who would accompany us, the food and water we would take, weapons, and so on. A journey at peak summer through the Tinariwen is only for fools or for those with skill and stamina who prepare well.

  As planned, he brought you one day, and we moved immediately. By this time, I had been made aware of the identity of the pursuers—the Guardians of the Letter, is what they arrogantly called themselves. But I knew of them in a different way, and I was aware they were nothing but bandits. We would have to be very careful.

  I found you, Dr. Watson, a strange but gentle man. I was not sure if you would be able to handle the rigours of the Tinariwen, especially since you had just arrived from a much cooler place. But Father Bąkiewicz assured me that you could and, moreover, he said that you were very important for the mission. In addition, you were a tanesmegal—a doctor— and perhaps your presence would be helpful. When I look back, I am glad I agreed.

  We set out for Timbuktu. Father Bąkiewicz was in a great hurry. As for us, we were to travel again across that which has made us, the Tinariwen. And how can I explain the joy of returning to the Ahaggar Mountains and once again feeling the presence of Tin Hanan, the beloved Mother of us all?

  A conversation reported to Said aṣ-Ṣabār:

  ***

  The mint tea was excellent at the roadside café. A group of Moroccans were scanning the newspapers and enjoying the pleasant morning sun.

  “Said aṣ-Ṣabār must be admired. He is growing to be a leader, someone who will fight for the Berbers without fear.”

  “But we must be careful. The French are capable of anything. And they particularly do not like their people to be exposed or ridiculed.”

  “This case has helped all of us feel united, we must grant.”

  “Yes, that is quite true. The Father from the prefecture apparently played a very important role, though Said aṣ-Ṣabār has received the credit.” He slammed his cup heavily on the saucer, drawing a glare from a passing waiter.

  “Yes, that is what I heard. It appears his thinking was simple but sharp and he unearthed something that Said aṣ-Ṣabār would not have known by himself about some point of history regarding the Roman Catholics in France.”

  “Is that so? But why would he be willing to get involved? After all, most of the French are Catholics. It is really difficult to be heard in this noise, my friends!”

  “Yes. Well, for one, he is not French, I hear.”

  “Is that so?” The group looked at the speaker with new interest.

  “Yes, though I do not know where he is from. By the way, isn’t it time for this menu to be changed? Why do we come here?”

  “Waiter, some more tea! Why the delay?”

  “Sometimes I feel the service here is deteriorating,” the speaker grumbled, lowering his voice.

  “Ah! I know who you mean! I have seen this man walking about town. He speaks Arabic well and minds his own business. He does not try to talk about religion.”

  “A smart man, if so. It would be arrogance to try to convert us. Especially since ours is the true religion anyway.”

  Everyone nodded. Elsewhere, some crockery crashed and an acrimonious argument began.

  “I wonder if he is a priest at all. Something does not seem to be right.”

  “Could he be a spy? Waiter! Here please!”

  “Anything is possible. How could a priest from another country help in freeing a Tuareg and getting a Frenchman suspended from his job? Why would he?”

  “I have heard that he never conducts services in his own church.”

  “Very strange. Could it be that he is not really a Father?”

  “But if he is a spy, whom is he spying for and why?”

  “Strange are the ways of these foreigners. Ah, more tea, finally! Excellent!”

  Two tables away, a man listened carefully. He sat motionless for several minutes. Then he got up, paid at the counter and left. His plans had abruptly changed.

  He was now to travel to Casablanca immediately.

  ***

  “The news that you have brought us is interesting. Our friend in Paris should know.”

  “The Moroccan lawyer was assisted by a Catholic priest? We can easily get the lawyer to talk.”

  “I do not recommend that. He is influential even in these troubled times. Let us move carefully and not react spontaneously. Let us check to see who this man is.”

  ***

  The following came to our attention much later through sources:

  “Interesting. We made some enquiries at the church, and also elsewhere in Tangier. He arrived several months ago. He does not conduct any Christian ceremony. He is some kind of accountant at the prefecture. He visits that old man, Haji Ahmad Bouabid, near the tomb of Ibn Batuta and learns Arabic! The Haji has no other information about this man except that he is a sincere student. However, in the initial days, he did express some interest in Ibn Batuta, but perhaps not more than any tourist.”

  “Our advisor in Paris is certain this is the man. Our contact, Colonel Sebastian Moran, confirmed it when he called today.”

  “Why are we waiting then? Months have been wasted searching for the man in Europe and he has been right here!”

  “He has been busy meeting Tuaregs too, recently, I hear. There too, he has tried to learn how to speak Tamasheq.”

  “Why has he not left for Timbuktu yet, then?”

  “Perhaps he was preparing, who can say?”

  “Yes, that may explain his desire to learn Arabic and Tamasheq.”

  “Our advisor in Paris has also sent us the English copy of a half-manuscript which was stolen from a London museum. Let us prepare to travel. Inform the Master from India that we may leave for Timbuktu shortly. Write to Paris if we should do that.”

  The return wire a week later was to the point.

  Do not waste any more time. Go.

  The new caravan started from Tangier a week after we had left.

  “Master, we shall look after you, do not worry,” bowed one of the Guardians.

  “I have never experienced such heat. It must be even worse along the way!” Thalassery Vatoot Mohammad Koya was concerned.

  Months had passed. He had been treated like a king. Money had been sent to his wife and sister but they must have wondered what had happened to him. He was homesick. He missed the sands and coconut trees of the Malabar. People were communicating with others in Paris and London. They were coming and going. It was easy to see that everyone was frustrated.

  Now, it suddenly looked like things would move. Excitement swept the band as arrangements to travel from Casablanca to Timbuktu were made at a feverish pace. And very shortly, a caravan of twenty motivated Guardians, accompanied by some Tuareg guides, was observed to be getting ready to set off for Fez, Sijilmasa, Taghaza, and Timbuktu.

  Hasso Ag Akotey had arranged for a much smaller messenger caravan to travel behind us to warn of any new development. This caravan left Tangier barely a day or two ahead of the Guardians.

  8Once again, we see Holmes’ perplexing desire for immortality by producing monograph after monograph on various (rather inconsequential) aspects of the human experience.

  9I have masked the real name because there are important diplomatic sensitivities involved.

  10At that time, a territory part of French Equatorial Africa and later, Chad.

  11The Melila War of 1893 proved deeply damaging to the Rif tribes of Northern Morocco, who fought against the Spanish.

  12Kill them all. God will know his own! – This most sobering perspective expressed in other ways through history by those who deem their religious affiliations to be absolute and final. The reader is requested to reflect on the matter and visit a library for additional details of this particular depl
orable incident that marked the mass murder of the Cathars.

  13A note from Dr. John Watson: I discussed this extremely strange event with Holmes years later. He was, he said, quite exasperated and fascinated—at the same time—by how enmities come down through the centuries. “If the peculiar undying loyalty of the Guardians we came across to Ibn Batuta was remarkable, so was the zealous desire of this man of Cistercian roots to erase any sign of the Cathars—the Perfecti—almost 700 years after the grim events of the Languedoc, spurred by Pope Innocent III. I wonder how many more men the magistrate quietly eliminated as he discovered their religious views were incongruent to his. And we look down upon the ‘savage and primitive’ beliefs of those elsewhere in the world, eh Watson?”

  14Said aṣ-Ṣabār died mysteriously shortly after his discussion with me. The French apparently kidnapped him and executed him, though they claimed that he had taken his own life. Inquiries with my friends at the Sûreté drew a blank; let us remember that those were troubled times in northwest Africa. It may seem that he has a cameo role in this story, but his fortuitous appearance made a profound difference to the chain of events; it gave true meaning to the word “serendipity.” We deeply regret his demise.

  15My American editor had not heard of the word mentioned in the previous footnote. I was not surprised.

  I travelled alone on that ancient path, onward to Taghaza

  Caressed endlessly by the restless sands

  That held the memories of a thousand caravans

  I sang the tunes I had heard from my grandmother

  She watched from the night sky

  The ghosts of the Tinariwen hummed with me

  I was no longer alone

  The Sahara

  Holmes had done his planning brilliantly, as might be expected.

  He sent me ahead with Mehdi to the city of Fez, and joined me a day later after bidding a quick good-bye to Bishop Landel in Tangier, with the story that he proposed to see the city of Fez and then Casablanca and then return. Bishop Landel did not show his surprise; he was used to managing his own affairs perhaps, and had not found the presence of Holmes very necessary. The recent visit of the Guardians inquiring about Father Bąkiewicz had also unnerved him. The sooner Holmes left, as far as he was concerned, the better.

  He said that the plan seemed agreeable. “I have not seen either city, Father Bąkiewicz, even though I have been here for a few years. You certainly have quite the spirit of adventure in you!” he remarked. “That must be the secret to your youthfulness!”

  Holmes met me in Fez, and Mehdi returned to Casablanca. He took with him a message from Holmes to be passed on to Lestrade. He also promised to keep watch on the movements of the Guardians and ensure that word was sent ahead in case events escalated.

  We travelled over the rugged Atlas Mountains on mules for a couple of days with another group of travellers and finally reached the ancient town of Sijilmasa in the oasis of Tafilalt late in the evening. Hasso Ag Akotey, our Tuareg friend, was patiently waiting there with his comrades as agreed previously in Tangier. We slept early as our departure was to be before sunrise.

  We rose at about three in the morning and readied for our journey and left Sijilmasa before dawn as planned. The Tuaregs had probably not slept very much; I observed that the camels had been fed and watered overnight, and all our provisions were loaded.

  Holmes and I had already been shown how to wear the tagelmust and the accoutrements that a Tuareg must wear especially in preparation for a long and arduous journey. Hasso Ag Akotey was very thorough and checked all matters many times. He was not just our protector for the purpose of the journey; he knew what it would take to travel across the Sahara. The slightest carelessness would kill not just us but endanger the lives of everyone. Travelling between known oases was a timed activity, contrary to the apparent lassitude observed. Calculations needed to be made about the weight the camels could carry, which included food, water, live goats strapped to the side of the camel, and so on. A delay caused by carelessness or overconfidence meant death, especially of camels, who were sometimes valued more than men.

  The tagelmust was no longer a matter of a disguise; it was a very practical garment, needed to counter the endless sand that swirled about us. The chief, Hasso Ag Akotey, also applied some kind of oil to our faces to protect us from the sun and to make us look like authentic Tuaregs. We were warned that banditry was still common and staying together at all times was our only guarantee of personal safety. “This is not the time to discover how brave and tough we are as individuals. We shall survive only if we are together. We fully expect to battle a few bandits and perhaps lose a few of our group. Our weapons are sharp and tested. Since we are a large caravan, we may not face a problem. But who can say? We must always be very careful,” said he.

  I was apprehensive about travelling on a camel but we had no real choice. I was shown my beast and was assured its temperament was even and he would follow the rest quietly. Holmes’ strong personality allowed him to control his larger camel easily. We were told that his camel had travelled on the trade routes many times and could possibly cross the Sahara without human intervention. Mine was travelling for only the second time.

  Our caravan was of a modest size and completely Tuareg in composition, except for the two of us. There were perhaps about thirty five camels and some thirty men. Many Tuaregs preferred walking for short distances when they could, I learned, to avoid sleep and a consequent drop in alertness, and so some camels carried only goods to trade.

  We slipped away gently into the desert in one long line. Holmes and I were somewhere in the middle with Hasso behind me. The caravan was silent. An onlooker could be forgiven for calling the sight ghostly. We proceeded to the east and soon observed the first rays of the rising sun. The silhouettes of the veiled and turbaned Tuaregs in front of me, moving to the rhythm of their camel’s walk was quite charming and picturesque. The silence was punctuated by the sounds of the noisy exhalation of the camels and the swish of their hooves through the sand. The effect was hypnotic.

  The Tuaregs began to sing a song softly using the implicit cadence of the caravan. The melody was quite lovely and blended perfectly with the rolling sand dunes. I was familiar with the concept of men singing together while performing certain tasks, having witnessed sea shanties with Holmes at the London Dockyards. This was done to bond together as a group and to relieve tedium.

  But there was a difference here, and an elegance that was captivating. The tune began at the head of the caravan and rolled back toward the end. The man at the head would sing a line and the next person picked it up and so on. Because of the veil we all wore over most of our face and mouth, the words were muffled and indistinct. The collective effect was wonderful. In spite of myself, and not knowing the language, I soon found it pleasurable to join the singing. It made the journey bearable, given that I had never before ridden a camel. The tune was probably more than a thousand years old, and was important to keep the nomads focused especially on long walks through the blazing sun. The Tuaregs were not able to translate the tune to my satisfaction and understanding, but I decided to express it as my imagination interpreted. It had to do with the grave of their legendary Queen Tin Hanan in Abalessa, deep in the Sahara desert. She was, I understood, the originator of the Tuareg culture.

  Where do you journey?

  Abalessa, Abalessa, Abalessa...

  I must go to Abalessa

  Blessed camel, take me there

  Whom do you seek in

  Abalessa, Abalessa, Abalessa?

  She who is our blessed mother,

  blessed mother of us all

  What is her name, this

  blessed mother, blessed mother, blessed mother?

  What is her name, this blessed mother?

  She is called Queen Tin Hanan

  How will you know tha
t you have found her

  when you come to Abalessa...

  How will you know that you have found

  the Queen you are seeking, Tin Hanan?

  We shall find her with our music

  With our music, with our music…

  She will hear our blessed music,

  And her voice will lead us home

  What will you do once you have found her,

  When you come to Abalessa?

  Shed our tears of joy and sadness

  for our mother, at her grave

  The caravan turned south at some point and we came to a small oasis where we stopped. At this point Hasso helped us dismount and we ate our first meal of the day. We sat together as a group and they conversed in their language about the path ahead, how the sands were likely to be, which camel would need extra attention and so on. We had a heavy meal of millets, sour curds, and some mutton.

  “What is our next destination?” asked Holmes.

  “The salt mines and oasis of Taghaza. It will take us about twenty-five days if we move quickly and conditions are favourable. Remember that we are in peak summer. Even we think many times before travelling this time of year.” Hasso was quite matter of fact.

  We were soon on our way.

  The sun was high above in the clear blue sky. Suddenly the heat became oppressive. The winds had picked up a little and biting hot sand blew across our path. The camels carried on unperturbed, but the men had stopped singing, conserving their energies. I followed the lead of others and adjusted my tagelmust very carefully. No part of my skin was to be exposed, except my eyes. And yet, because of my inexperience, sand entered my garments. Soon I was in acute discomfort, scratching and moving about on my saddle. I thought of asking that we stop, but held back, fearing that I would cause delays. I was able to manage well soon, but I was already feeling quite exhausted. After a few hours, the caravan stopped and we dismounted. We were not at an oasis, but at some place with a few rough buildings. It appeared that travelling at this time of the year and at this time of the day was dangerous. We were to stop till the heat from the late afternoon sun was bearable and then restart. The Tuaregs understood these nuances of desert travel exceedingly well.