The first few kilometres move quickly. The Sahel, which spans several million square kilometres beneath the sun, remains unruffled. Further along, the group clambers aboard an antediluvian boneshaker that weaves its way between the gnus and the antelopes. It is filled to bursting and falling apart.
There is a stop for something to eat in a boui-boui in the middle of nowhere. They wolf down bucketsful of dust, they talk to lubricate their throats, they do their reckoning: a hundred kilometres lie behind them, ahead, in the blazing heat there are 3,900 kilometres, maybe more since it’s impossible to know in advance how often they will lose their way. They laugh because what they are attempting is insane, because failure is unthinkable. The barman spits and goes back to his calabashes. The group sets off again. The camera pans across the horizon. In the distance, near a herd of buffalo, a sandstorm blows up. The temperature rises to melting point. People cover their faces, they avoid breathing. It is a senseless futile precaution since the sand in the Sahel is wily, it gets everywhere. In an old issue of Science et Vie, I read that it can travel as far as the Amazon, which gives you some idea. They stop to rest in the shade of a rocky outcrop bizarrely sculpted by millennia of scorching sandstorms. Here they spend the night, they have nightmares, the whole savannah is a distant cry that comes from the bowels of the earth to be taken up by millions of hungry throats. Several days later, at daybreak, a caravanserai appears on the horizon. It is beautiful! Guided only by ancient mysteries, it is heading north. Our group joins the caravan. They chat with the cheikh over glasses of mint tea. He is a Kel Ghella, a nobleman who can trace his lineage back to ancient upheavals. His face is covered by his alasho, all that is visible are his glassy eyes which look as though they are inhabited by a large sandworm.
– Are you heading north?
– Yes, to Tamanrasset, the Assihar begins there at the next moon.
– Can we travel with you?
– This is our route, but the Sahara belongs to those who know it.
– So we can come?
– If that is the will of Allah.
– What is Assihar? asks the camera.
– It is a festival that takes place once a year for all the Tuareg peoples, the Azdjer, the Ahaggar, the Aouellimiden, the Mourines, the Imohaghs, from the seven corners of the earth they come, from Mauritania and Sudan, from Algeria and Senegal, from Libya, Niger, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina-Faso, from as far away as the distant empire of Tibesti!
– It must be magnificent!
– It is tradition, we barter, we talk, we celebrate our ancestors. We come from el djanoub, from the south, from Timbuktu, and you?
– From Mali.
– And you?
– From Paris.
– What do you have to barter?
– Nothing, a little hope, a little friendship whenever possible, we are going to Bordj Badji Mokhtar to visit a dear friend.
– Are your papers in order?
– Eh . . . why?
– The Algerians are wary of foreigners, they do not like us, they kill us whenever they can or else they demand twenty bales of rare documents and a king’s ransom.
– So what do you do, how do you manage?
– The Sahara is our home for as far as it extends beneath the sun, we need no papers, they are the ones who should have to tell us who they are, where they are from.
The caravan is making steady progress. The camels bray just for the pleasure of hearing their voices, the Sahara has long since ceased to amaze them. Travelling alongside them, our heroes become more confident, Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr regain their strength. They make friends with young lanky Tuareg men born on the move and hence unfamiliar with the changing world. They talk to them about Europe, about the pleasures of life, the joy of love and of things that an eternal nomad can scarcely imagine: about the métro, social security, sports cars, snow, cinemas, Christmas holidays, microchips. But they are talking simply for the pleasure of talking, no one needs to understand. Question: What do they barter over there, in Europe? Curious, the camera has drawn nearer. Answer: There, there is everything, you don’t want for anything.
At the Algerian border, our friends go their separate ways.
– You have arrived, my brothers, we must travel on to Tamanrasset.
– But we are going to Bordj Badji Mokhtar. Where is it? We can’t see anything.
– It is right before your eyes.
– But there is nothing here.
– It is a mere two days’ walk towards the west.
– Thank you, noble cheikh.
– If the soldiers challenge you, tell them you are going to meet hajj Saïd le Chanceux, they will escort you and give you food and drink.
Bordj Badji Mokhtar – or BBM as we northerners call it – is a large town which grew from nothing and grew too quickly. It is rampant chaos: houses half-finished or half-demolished, streets little better than rutted dirt tracks, ramshackle trucks, camels on their last legs, roving goats, rabid dogs, corrupt cops, all covered over with thick dust imported from the north.
The meeting point is a depot belonging to the aforementioned hajj Saïd, aka Bouzahroun, aka ‘Lucky’, a man who is never seen without his night-vision goggles and his state-of-the-art mobile phone. He reminds me of sidi Saïd Bouteflika – also nicknamed ‘Lucky’ – the brother and special adviser to the president of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, a man who is never seen without his ski goggles and his walkie-talkie, but I suppose it’s not a crime to look like someone else. The camera, which has been roving around the town, quickly finds out that the mega-rich tycoon is a former terrorist who plotted with the high command and, for his exceptional services, was awarded a monopoly on human trafficking from BBM as far as Bamako and Niamey. Sidi Saïd has a fleet of a hundred trucks, a private militia numbering a thousand pistoleros, and, in case of war, has the right to mobilise the army and the customs service. When he is planning a particularly big coup, he calls one of a list of numbers in Algiers until he reaches the top. The camera did not hesitate, it was determined to discover what was really going on. It got its answer from an old man sitting lazily at the foot of a half-built wall playing an imzad – a violin with a single string stretched across a turtle shell. The camera pulled no punches.
– Have you any idea what’s going on here?
– Go to Laoni and you will understand.
– Where is that?
– Three days’ walk, south-west of here.
– Laoni?
– Yes, Laoni, the gold mine.
– What about it?
– The gold extracted from the mine is transported to Tamanrasset and from there it’s sent on to Algiers.
– I don’t see the problem.
– The gold never arrives in Tamanrasset; your friend Saïd commandeers it for his friends in high places.
– Is this true?
– And that’s not the whole story: Algiers denies that there is a secret American military base in the area and so Saïd is told to supply it on the quiet. He has dollars coming out of his arse.
– How do you know all this? No one in Paris has heard anything about it.
– Why wouldn’t I know? I occasionally work as a guide for Saïd and the Americans.
Over the days that followed, other harragas arrived at Saïd’s place, and eventually there were a dozen of them. Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr lost their starring roles in the documentary. The camera fell upon the newcomers, beardless boys with big eyes, a Malian, a Nigerian, a Ghanaian, two kids from Togo, one a pregnant girl, a Sudanese boy, an Ivoirian, a Senegalese, a Congolese and a Guinean, the last three having travelled the same route via Gao, the second largest trafficking hub in the Sahel after Tamanrasset. They all told the same story, they were all looking for the promised land. The tragedy – though they did not yet know this – was that they have come too far to get there in this life.
While they waited for the people smuggler to arrive, Saïd set them to work for the customs inspector.
They repaired his roof in exchange for some bread and a little water. ‘A man must earn his keep,’ Saïd says to the camera, a smiling Good Samaritan. The camera takes the opportunity to rile him a little.
– How much do you make on the transfers to Tarifa? They say you bleed these people dry and very few make it there alive.
– That’s just malicious gossip, I do this out of Muslim charity. They want to have a little fun, the little black bamboulas, so I help them out.
As he says this, the people smuggler jumps down from his Land Rover. He takes off his keffiyeh and drinks down mint tea. Oh, he looks evil! He is just back from an expedition he is reluctant to discuss. The camera insists. ‘I was on holiday with friends in Tamanrasset,’ he swears, looking greedily at his new clients. In the camp, there is much talk about a group of Ugandan mercenaries who have been turned over to Gaddafi who, bored as a dead rat, dreams of opening up a new route. It’s crazy how much goes on in the middle of the desert.
Dawn the next morning, the immigrants are woken with a boot, loaded on to the back of the truck, covered with a tarpaulin, then they’re off. The camera has rented an air-conditioned 4x4, a driver and a guide. The voiceover does not mention the fact, but it clearly belongs to Saïd. The Toyota drives behind or in front of the truck, as filming dictates. The little convoy raises clouds of dust. They take no precautions, they drive at top speed, they have no need to worry since everywhere within a five-hundred-kilometre radius is controlled by Saïd. At military checkpoints, they are greeted with honours. Further north, as they enter another private fiefdom the truck pulls off the road before it reaches the checkpoints. Regardless of the faction they’re allied to, truckers stick together and so oncoming trucks flash their headlights to warn of an upcoming roadblock. Once means danger is 1km ahead, twice means 2km ahead and so on. Sometimes they stop, regroup and draw up a plan of battle. After the first few deaths, they negotiate over a pot of mint tea. It is perfectly timed and the Toyota, pretending to be a tourist who has broken down, manages to film the magnificent jamboree that takes place around the fire in the shadow of a cave.
Every time the truck slows and leaves the road, the harragas huddle together. The government does not take kindly to foreign intruders. They are beaten and then killed after a period working as slave labour for an officer. This is one of the perks offered to ranking officers, all of whom have palm groves that need tending or roofs that need mending.
The convoy arrives at the oasis town of El Oued, the ‘City of a Thousand Domes’. In the desert, it stops to visit a famous marabout, a bizarre old man, a dwarf in rags named sidi Abdelaziz who stands on solid-gold stilts and calls himself ‘El Mahdi’ – the Guided One. The little bastard has considerable influence, he hawks his bullshit prophecies from douar to douar and the people lap it up. His fame has spread far and wide, all the way to New York where people wonder what it’s all about. To some, he is a great prodigy, to others a vulgar charlatan. He looks to me like a lunatic, I thought, the first time I saw him shimmying around his kubba jabbering bits of marabout gibberish. Time is short. A confab takes place between the people smuggler and the master of the house. They high five, El Mahdi clicks his fingers and from a deep well hidden among the cacti, soaked to the skin, frantic and half-blind, twelve puny little runts appear. These are boys from the area around the fields who protested against poverty and found themselves being hunted down by the police and the Americans. They were looking for work, waving banners outside the Hassi Messaoud oil base. They have endured terrible dangers in order to get here to the meeting point, they have nothing but the clothes on their backs. ‘We will continue on foot, steering clear of the main roads,’ announces the smuggler. Northern Algeria is tightly controlled, there are roadblocks everywhere, and everywhere there are spies, barons, emirs, armed factions, dishonest officials, brazen bounty hunters. Dear God, what a journey, what terrors they must face; it’s enough to break your heart.
They trudge on for two weeks – a century and a half in any normal country. Long funeral marches between two alerts, two watches. The straggling group looks barely human now, a ragman would reject them. I felt wretched and ashamed as I watched them founder, unable to do anything to help.
Finally, just beyond the horizon, the border looms. On the far side is Morocco – the Kingdom of the Alaouites as they say in high places here in Algeria to imply God knows what. It is the same land, the same sun, the same peoples practising the same religion, the same food; but there the air is different, there a man can breathe. The group feels a sense of relief, this is like stepping into a picture postcard, one of the hand-tinted photos of long ago so charmingly idyllic that tourists felt a sudden need to siesta in the shade of a palm tree, or saddle the nearest donkey. All along this uncertain line established in endless treaties, everyone is in the business of contraband and smuggling; under the watchful gaze of both armies, oil is exchanged for kif. The soldiers keep a friendly eye on each other, a state of war with no war; it is a godsend, everyone gets to line their pockets and no one gets hurt.
The harragas are making good progress. Like them, the viewers are eager to cross the finish line. Another hairpin bend or two and we find ourselves in a withered pine forest on the outskirts of the Spanish exclave Ceuta, which in a former life was the walled city of Abyla. Hundreds of harragas live here, some have been here for several years. They have clearly put down roots: tents and shacks have sprung up everywhere, pots and pans hanging from the branches tinkle among the pine trees. The camera does a sweep of the location. A quick interview with one person, then on to another. Endless tales of harragas. The camp is segregated according to skin colour, nationality, religion, dialect and tribe. This is old-fashioned racism; peoples live cheek by jowl without acknowledging each other. As the camera prowls the Algerian quarter, I keep my eyes peeled. Every boy there looks just like Sofiane, same age, same pathetic affected air, but of Sofiane himself, there is no sign. I felt both disappointed and relieved. Each group has its own territory, its own survival strategy, its plans for freedom. Some have their sights set on Ceuta itself, others are merely passing through, heading for Tangiers, the gateway to Tarifa. This was what Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr were planning. They have come too far to spend all eternity picnicking in a pine forest. The film’s epilogue was devoted to them. Having survived the sandstorms and the vastness of the desert, they died in the arms of the sea within swimming distance of the Spanish coast. Only a young Togolese girl, beautiful as the sun at noon, set foot upon the promised land. Death must have realised that taking two wretched lives for the price of one was too unfair.
They come from afar
Seeking the impossible
Bellies empty, bodies taut with truth.
As they advance
Time flees before them
And behind them the corpses pile higher.
The sun wheels in the sky
Not a soul must escape
All must die before nightfall.
And so they die in their shadows
The wind gathers their bones
And with the earth, so turns the millstone.
The film ends with a long pull-back shot of the Ténéré while a haunting threnody comes from the heavens, from the oppressive, boundless, ochre sky. A funeral lament. Eyes close and we hear a final prayer as the ad break arrives with tips on how to make money in the capital which reminds me of Jean Yanne’s film Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil, prophets come and go, but advertising is for ever.
I was exhausted, I felt dirty, tattered, lost in thoughts of Sofiane, of Ahmadou and Abu-Bakr, of the young Togolese girl with the pretty face, and all those flailing in the background. My mind was in turmoil, lightning flashes, waves of sand as high as the Himalayas, the stench of sweat and shit, the chattering of TV commercials, the screams of the insane. It is terrible how painful noise can be in a universe of silence. One must love life to suffer so much. One must love death to court it so assiduously. Where does evil come from? What
goes on in our heads?
I spent the whole night fretting.
Sofiane had everything, he had a house, he had my affection, he had friends, he had a routine. What about the rest? You can’t live on love alone when you’re imprisoned. Try as I might, I can’t work it out, but it is not always possible to name the thing that kills. The daily hardship? The all-idiocy? Yes, these play a part, but there are more powerful reasons: corruption, religion, bureaucracy, the culture of crime, of violence, of clannishness, the veneration of death, the glorification of the tyrant, the love of ostentation, the passion for strident sermons. Is that all? There are those who set a bad example. It comes from the top, from a government that mistakes ignorance for a priceless diamond; barbarism for sophistication; shoddy policies for brilliant statesmanship misappropriation of funds for legitimate disbursements. Oh, the bastards; oh, the stink of corruption! What about the intelligentsia, what do they have to say? They’re not all dead. What do you want them to say? They’re in prison, begging for a blanket and a piece of bread like everyone else. What about the heroes, the veterans, the hard nuts who revelled in the war? Oh, you poor deluded fool – they’re fossils now, their memories belong to others who rake in lots of cash. So is that all? No, there are the walls collapsing, the disasters the government has signed us up for, and the fear, the dreadful fears of a static life. What is left when all routes are cut off?
Harraga Page 16