Sahara (2002)

by Michael Palin

  There’s a WC prominently indicated, one of a row of privies in an ablution block. As I push open the door I’m hit by a sharp whiff of uric acid rising from the damp sides of a hole in the mud floor. We who are used to having our body waste disposed of instantly forget that in the desert flushing lavatories appear only in mirages.

  Our host for the next few days is a short, wiry man of middling age, eyes creased and narrowed. With his hands sunk deep in the pockets of a thick quilted jacket and his body angled forward as if braced for the next sandstorm, everything about him suggests stoic defiance.

  His name is Bachir Mehdi Bhaya and Algeria is not his home. He was born and brought up in the contentious territory of Western Sahara, a land of long coastline and hostile desert, larger than the United Kingdom, which once comprised the Spanish colonies of Rio de Oro and Saguia el Hamra. When the Spanish abruptly left in 1975 taking everything including the bodies in their cemeteries, they offered what was left to Morocco and Mauritania.

  The Polisario Front (Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y de Rio de Oro), acting on behalf of the half million inhabitants, known as Saharawis, who wanted to be neither Mauritanian nor Moroccan, began a guerrilla offensive. They were encouraged by the judgement of an International Court of Justice, which upheld the right of the locals to self-determination and scored early guerrilla successes against the Mauritanians, who have now abandoned claims to Western Sahara. The Moroccans are less amenable. They regard Western Sahara as having pre-colonial ties with the rest of Morocco. Its acquisition would almost double the size of their country, and the exploitation of valuable phosphate deposits would be a huge boost to their economy. To this end they encouraged 350,000 settlers to move in to Western Sahara during the 1970s.

  Rather than accept this ‘invasion’, almost half the Saharawis fled to Algeria, who offered them land on this bleak military exercise area to set up temporary camps.

  But, as the saying goes, ‘there is nothing more permanent than the temporary’, and, twenty-five years later, this compound near Tindouf remains the first port of call for anyone wanting to do business with the Saharawis. This includes many NGOs from all over Europe, but predominantly Spain, which explains the sallow men with moon faces and chunky moustaches, drawn here by the old colonial connection.

  They are anxious to offer what help they can until the United Nations, which has monitored a ceasefire between the Moroccans and the Polisario for ten years, can come up with some permanent solution to the problem.

  Bachir, who has lived as a refugee for nearly half his life, is the personification of the embattled exile. He will not compromise. He and his people will not rest until things are done the way they want them done. I recognise the syndrome. It’s like being a Yorkshire-man. As it turns out he has spent time in Leeds and learnt his English there, so he takes this as a compliment.

  ‘I like them,’ he says, grinning.

  ‘We’re very stubborn,’ I remind him.

  He nods approvingly.

  ‘I like stubborn people. I’m one of them. Even if I’m wrong, I’m right.’

  He won’t hear of us staying here with the other foreign visitors.

  ‘You will all stay at my house,’ he insists.

  And I know there’s no point in arguing.

  ALGERIA

  Day Fifteen

  SMARA REFUGEE CAMP

  The extraordinary thing about Bachir’s house is that we all fit in. How many of us would be able to accommodate seven extra people and forty-five pieces of luggage and equipment when you’ve already got a wife, four children and a constant influx of relatives? It’s not as if his home is that much larger than any of the others in Smara. Exile means equality. Within its low, mud-brick walls are the standard small courtyard, kitchen, single squat toilet, two rooms and a tent.

  The tents are of traditional design, with tall peaks and wide rectangular bases. According to Bachir, they are not only practical but also symbolic, a reminder to the Saharawis of their nomadic inheritance, and a reminder too that this cheerless landscape is only a temporary resting place on the journey back to their homeland.

  The sun’s up around eight. Two of us have slept in the tent and the other five, including myself, are squeezed into a room at the opposite end of the courtyard with the equipment strewn around us like the spoils of a pirate raid. Three of Bachir’s children, including the two five-year-old twins, stand at the door, eyes wide, watching us folding up sleeping bags, cleaning teeth, combing hair, taking this, that and the other pill, and washing ourselves as best we can in small bowls of water, filled from the communal can.

  Smara, a dozen miles into the desert from Tindouf, is, like the three other refugee camps, named after a town in Western Sahara. Though the camp has roughly the same population as the city of Winchester, it has neither mains water nor electricity. The communal water can for drinking, cooking, washing and sanitation is filled from metal cisterns half a mile away, which are in turn filled by old Volvo tankers, supplied by the UN, which shuttle between the camp and its nearest water source, an artesian well 16 miles away.

  No-one in their right mind would choose to live in this sun-bleached, rubble-strewn wilderness, which makes the self-belief of the Saharawis seem all the more impressive. Despite the fact that they have few influential friends, 170,000 of them are content to remain in someone else’s desert waiting for a breakthrough.

  Bachir is proud of this solidarity, but aware too that it will not last for ever. He clutches at any straws to raise morale. The recent decision of the Spanish government to honour the pensions of those Saharawis who served in the Spanish army is seen as a major benefit, putting a little money into the pockets of those who have too often relied on UN hand-outs, and creating a small but growing private market in the camp.

  We walk down the main street, where the shops are little more than makeshift stalls, fashioned from branches hung with whatever coverings can be found. This results in some bizarre combinations: a shack entirely covered by an ancient German wall map of South East Asia, another dominated by a poster of a Cuban beach resort. Out front are small amounts of oranges and onions, car tyres, clothes, a few plastic buckets. A butcher’s shop has a dismembered camel carcass on the floor and, outside, on the ground in front of the shop, is its head, complete and looking strangely serene.

  This evening, as a fat full moon rises over the camp, Bachir’s wife Krikiba produces a meal for all of us and her family, cooked, as far as I can see, on one primus stove on the mud floor of a tiny kitchen.

  We slip our shoes off and enter the tent. A white strip light, powered by electricity from a solar panel, casts a harsh glare. There are no chairs, and, unable to lounge and eat with nomadic nimbleness, we contort ourselves awkwardly on the mats, carpets and cushions, providing a continuing source of entertainment for family, relatives and neighbours as we tuck into camel casserole and rice. This is the first time I’ve knowingly eaten camel. The meat has a slightly sweet flavour, more like mutton than beef, and I can’t stop myself wondering if any of this was ever attached to the head I saw in the market, with its inscrutable Mona Lisa smile.

  Day Sixteen

  SMARA CAMP

  The children are getting bolder now, especially Sidi, the more hyperactive of the five-year-old twins. In between fetching water and preparing breakfast, Bachir tries to call him to order, but the lure of thirty pieces of film equipment is too much and he spends most of his time in our room shrieking with excitement at each new discovery.

  Though I hear the muezzin’s call in the morning, religion does not seem a big issue here. Education and political discipline are more important. Bachir and Krikiba’s children are educated at the primary school near by, after which they will go to one of the two big boarding schools that serve the camps. The literacy rate amongst the Saharawis is now 90 per cent, far higher than in Morocco or Algeria. The Hispanic connection is strong and many of the teachers are from Cuba. Some of the brighter pupils go over there to
complete their education.

  Bachir introduces me to a young woman called Metou. She is in her early twenties, was born in the camps and has never seen her homeland. She’s bright, well educated, lively and attractive, a modern girl. She wears a light, but all-encompassing, purple sari called a melepha, which doesn’t attempt to hide the imitation leather jacket, jeans and Doc Marten boots beneath. Metou is a cosmopolitan Saharawi. She has travelled in Europe, speaks fluent Spanish, French and English and spent time at university in Wales. Beneath the blazing Saharan sun we discuss the knotty problem of getting from Machynlleth to Aberystwyth by public transport.

  She takes me to a workshop in a collection of mud buildings called the 27th February Village, which cumbersome title commemorates the day on which the landless Saharawi Democratic Republic was founded, in 1976.

  Thirty women are weaving brightly patterned rugs and carpets on the simplest of hand-looms. The carpets are made of thick, coarse sheep’s wool, in bright, strong colours and improvised designs, and I’d buy a couple if we weren’t on our way to Timbuktu.

  The women run the camps, says Metou. They cook, build, administrate and raise the children. The young men leave at eighteen for military training.

  I ask her if keeping a conscripted army isn’t just a romantic gesture, bearing in mind there has been no fighting for years. Her response is quick and unapologetic.

  ‘My people are tired of being ignored. If force has to be used to gain our birthright of independence, then that’s the way it must be.’

  Smara camp is so well run that it really doesn’t resemble a camp at all. As I look out from a low hill, which is now the cemetery, the pale brown mud houses blending in with the desert around them could have been there for ever. The considerable size of the cemetery, a scattering of rocks and boulders just outside the town, suggests that life expectancy is low. Bachir shakes his head vigorously.

  ‘It is seventy, eighty years.’

  Sanitation is basic, he concedes, but the air is dry and there have been no epidemics here.

  He smiles at my nannyish concern. ‘People don’t die in the desert, you know.’

  In that case, the size of the cemetery merely emphasises how long the Saharawis have been away from home.

  That night in the camp we tuck into camel kebab and pasta cooked with carrots and turnips, served, as ever, with tea. Tea is central to the nomadic life. In a land where alcohol is forbidden and most bottled drinks are beyond people’s means, it offers welcome, gives comfort, stimulates conversation and provides a focus for social intercourse. Being a rare indulgence in a land of extreme scarcity, its preparation is taken very seriously. The water we splash on our faces in the morning is not good enough for the tea.

  ‘Too salty,’ says Bachir. ‘The best water for tea comes from 50 miles away.’

  Water this prized should not be heated on a gas ring, but on a brazier with charcoal from acacia wood, which heats the water more slowly and provides better flavour. Once heated, the tea is poured from one vessel to another before being tipped into small glass tumblers from ever-increasing height. Then it’s tipped from tumbler to tumbler, until the required alchemy is deemed to have taken place, whereupon it is poured with one last grand flourish that leaves a foaming head on each individual glass. These are offered around on a tray and drunk swiftly. Then the glasses are washed and a second serving is prepared, tasting delicately different as the sharpness of leaf and sweetness of sugar continue to blend. The process is repeated a third time and that’s it. I’m told that if you’re offered a fourth glass it’s a polite way of saying you’ve overstayed your welcome.

  Tonight Bachir’s brother-in-law and two other men are sat around the brazier taking tea with us. Their eyes sparkle and their faces crease easily into laughter. It seems a good time to ask Bachir about the future for the Polisario.

  He plays down the military solution.

  ‘We still have many friends,’ he argues, reminding me that only a year ago the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, and US Secretary of State, James Baker, had been staying in this same camp. The Moroccans might be supported by other Arab monarchies, like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, but the Polisario have powerful European allies, especially the Spanish, their old colonial masters, who now seem to be falling over themselves to help. Assuaging guilt? Annoying the French? Whatever the reason, Bachir is a grateful man.

  ‘Five … six thousand Saharawi children go to stay with Spanish families every summer, and the families come back to see us.’ His eyes shine in the lamplight. ‘Two thousand came last year to the camps - doctors, nurses, teachers.’

  He pauses as if aware I’m not convinced.

  ‘We are small, but sometimes the small guys win. Look at Kuwait …’

  But he and I both know that the Saharawis are, in world terms, much smaller small guys than the oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf.

  Day Seventeen

  SMARA CAMP

  My request for a bin for the rubbish rapidly accumulating in our cramped quarters is met with a blank stare. Rubbish is a Western concept. What I wanted to throw away - paper, a spent packet of film, a mineral-water bottle - certainly wasn’t rubbish to them, and as Krikiba and the children rifled through my pile of rejects, I felt embarrassingly over-stocked. What we see as basic necessities they see as complicated over-indulgences. Take toothpaste, for instance. Sidi and Khalia, the terrible twins, are fascinated by our teeth-cleaning rituals. Not just that we prefer to foam at the mouth rather than use acacia sticks like everyone else, but that once we’ve foamed we seem to have such trouble getting rid of it. At first light the streets of Smara are dotted with frothing Westerners looking for somewhere to spit out and little heads peering out of doorways to observe this quaint ritual.

  Nor is toothpaste the only problem. There’s a toilet paper crisis looming. All of us, family and crew, evacuate into the same hole in the ground. It’s situated in a mud enclosure in the corner of the yard and is about the size and shape of a small slice of Hovis. There is a plastic jug of water beside it, which is considered sufficient for washing and cleaning. Those of us brought up to regard toilet paper as one of the essentials of civilised society are rapidly bunging up this delicate system and waste levels are rising alarmingly. There are reports that Krikiba has been seen coming out of the hut with a rubber glove on up to her elbow. I’m sure it’s as well for everybody that we are moving on tomorrow.

  Day Eighteen

  SMARA CAMP TO TFARITI

  The wind is rising. As it gusts it hisses against the tent and there’s a grittier than usual texture to the freshly-baked bread this morning. We’ve eaten most of the camel by now, but it appears at breakfast today in one last manifestation. Along with the usual offering of tea, coffee, bread and oranges is a dish of beans and diced camel liver. Out of a confusion of politeness, greed and a misplaced desire to experience all life has to offer, I pop a couple of cubes into my mouth. I know immediately that this is a mistake. The liver has a high, slightly gamey piquancy. But it’s too late. One has already gone before I can retrieve it. I put up my hand to palm the other, only to meet Krikiba’s eye. She beams at me expectantly. What can I do but grin and swallow.

  In bright sun, sharp shadow and a cold wind the drivers Bachir has organised to take us several hundred miles down the West Saharan borderlands to the Mauritanian frontier are loading up. Our overnight bags are being squeezed into any available space left around the 200-litre fuel drums, which weigh down two small pick-up trucks. Ourselves and the rest of the baggage, as well as a cook, food and cooking materials, are divided between three four-wheel drive vehicles, which stand as tall as the house we’re about to leave.

  The children are going to miss us. We’ve been like a travelling funfair for them, and the extended family presses things upon us at the last moment, including a cassette of Saharawi music and a near-impregnable can of Spanish ham, which none of them is allowed to eat. As a parting gesture, eighteen-year-old Hadi, Bachir’s pretty, coy niece, int
roduces me to her boyfriend. He’s a young soldier and doesn’t smile. The long-suffering Krikiba is persuaded into a hug and even, for Vanessa, a kiss.

  Finally, away we go, up the hill from the house, sliding and swerving on the fine sand until we have a grip on the stony rubble at the top.

  My last images of Smara camp are the small plots on the edge of town, fenced with anything from rice sacks to beaten-out oil cans, where people keep their livestock - goats, sheep, even camels. Two young girls are dragging a length of chicken wire across the sand to build another enclosure. That life goes on like this in these most straitened of circumstances is extraordinary. Smara is becoming less like a camp and more like a proper town every day. For everyone under twenty-five this is their only home. And that’s not good news for the Polisario.

  All morning we rumble across the hammada, stony, gravel-strewn desert, which appears featureless and forbidding, but is constantly changing. At one moment we’ll be on the flat, at another cutting down a ravine or passing a small hill, both of which seem to come from out of nowhere. A scattering of acacia trees suddenly evaporates, leaving no cover at all. At moments like this, when there is no single piece of shade as far as the eye can see, the desert becomes quite frightening, and our vehicles seem small and pathetically vulnerable. It’s like being on a rowing boat in the middle of the ocean.

  Fifty-five miles later we stop at a Polisario checkpoint. A rough barrier made from lengths of piping, a few outbuildings, goats sheltering beneath the skeleton of a jacked-up, wheel-less lorry. A couple of Toyota pick-up trucks stand side by side with a couple of anti-aircraft guns in the back. The Saharawi army, Bachir points out.