The Timbuktu School for Nomads

by Nicholas Jubber

  Abdramane’s house is a two-storey fortress of mud brick, built by his late father 20 years earlier. Three slat-ribbed cows are tied to stakes pitched in the sand. Behind them, sitting under a roof of painted logs, is his mother, a warmly smiling woman in primary-coloured batik.

  ‘Ça va bien?’

  She pulls herself up and goes off to bring the tea things, gesturing for me to sit. Abdramane leans over a basin of water, splashing the dust off his face.

  ‘Welcome to the family,’ he says, his voice croaky from the journey.

  Days pass in restful indolence: unfinishable bowls of rice, bottles of Fanta orange, ORTM news. We move between Abdramane’s family house and his older sister’s posher place, with a fake plum tree in the living room and a ceremonial cupboard loaded with 12 rows of cooking pots – presents from her wedding to a civil servant, which stand on permanent display and are never used. Her husband Baba works for the Department of Water and Forests, and admits they have their work cut out.

  ‘The biggest problem’, he says, ‘is water. It’s too far underground to dig and the river is too far away for irrigation, and the development money never reaches us. If we could find water, all our problems would be over.’

  In Abdramane’s bedless bedroom, which is built onto the rooftop, we sprawl across a mud floor, basking in pools of chocolatey shadow. Light gilds the roofs around us and creeps inside around siesta time to snaggle our feet. When the sun has sunk, a hurricane lamp illuminates the room, whose unpainted mud walls reflect nothing back.

  These are idle, lotus-eating days. Abdramane talks about Songhay culture: the triple scars on most Songhays’ faces, which are not only ritual but medicinal, keeping the dirt from the corners of your eyes. He talks about the children he’s teaching: the sparky ones, who gulp down their lessons like water after a drought; the mischievous ones, who pass secret notes and whisper behind his back. Most of his students are nomadic Fulani, and their mobile lifestyle can be a challenge when it comes to establishing a curriculum.

  ‘Sometimes the children have to walk more than two hours to get to class,’ he says. ‘Or they stay with a host family in the village while their real family is with the herd. And they must work to pay for their board – preparing tea, doing the cleaning, looking after the animals. So they have no time for their homework.’

  Many students disappear for several weeks if it is a busy time with the herd, and there is never enough time to bring them up to speed. But the boys, at least, do eventually return.

  ‘If you have a class of 7- or 8-year-olds,’ says Abdramane, ‘there are as many girls as boys. But when they get to 12 or 13, the parents want them to marry so when you look at the top year, we have hardly any girls at all.’

  Abdramane’s is the settled perspective. He finds nomads hard to trust, because he comes from a culture in which they are seen as predators (his ancestors were enslaved by Tuareg herders) and sometimes this surfaces in proverbs and sayings. ‘We say that trusting a Tuareg’, one of his relatives tells me, ‘is trusting a vagabond.’ The way some of them talk about the Tuareg reminds me of the way many people in Britain talk about gypsies and Irish travellers. Except there is one key difference: it is modulated by awe. When the apocalypse comes, it is the Tuareg who are most likely to survive. What Abdramane and his family give me is a shoreline, tugging me back from the ocean of elegy, keeping me in sight of the other point of view.

  All this time I should be enjoying myself; I am certainly blessed in my host. But I can’t help feeling anxious. Because, on my second night in Goundam, a man in uniform knocks on the door of the house. ‘Venez,’ is the only word he says to me. Inside an office of flaking plaster, Inspector Maiga – official chief of the Goundam gendarmerie – glowers behind a broad metal desk.

  ‘Are you from Goundam?’ A bony finger shakes at Abdramane like a swagger stick.

  My friend swallows and slowly explains.

  ‘Yes, sir, certainly I come from Goundam. I have brought my friend here because I want to show him our hospitality.’

  ‘You fool!’ snarls the inspector. ‘Do you not know the reality of Mali at the moment? Have you not watched the news?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘What’s happened?’

  He’s too busy growling at Abdramane to hear me, leaning further across the desk, as if considering what to do with my friend’s throat. So I ask the question again. He points to the television in the corner of the room: the blurred pictures of helicopters, soldiers with AK-47s, and the palm-spiked Djingereyber mosque.

  ‘But that’s … Timbuktu,’ I say.

  ‘Yes! They are evacuating all the white people.’

  Slowly, the story unfolds. This morning, when most of the townsfolk were at Friday prayers, a truck swooped out of the desert and parked beside a guesthouse. Three tourists, from the Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden, were kidnapped, and a German man was shot dead for trying to resist. Four lives have been wrecked, one of them for good. I wish I could say my initial thoughts are for those poor travellers, mercilessly punished for their spirit of adventure. But my first impulse is selfishly precise: what about the azalai? It is due to leave – if the plan still holds – in just over a week.

  Judging by the news report, all foreigners have been air-lifted out of town. It isn’t an ideal time to be making tracks for Timbuktu. A phone call would be a more practical step. Yet I decide to leave it. I know if I call now, they will tell me not to come. They need time to recover; and I need time to get my head around the news.

  I can’t sleep for the lowing of the police motorbikes. I lie awake, thinking of the gentle noises round the campfire in the desert: the chomping camels, the soughing wind. But then I remind myself why the motorbikes are thrumming around us. Somebody has come out of the desert, somebody aggressive and cunning and cruel, infecting the town like a virus.fn1 Like the desert dwellers of the past, who filled the townsfolk with such terror, inspiring them to build their high-walled, fortified houses. It’s a one-off, I tell myself, it’s not part of a pattern. Then I remember the white tents in the desert, the uneasiness Jadullah and Lamina expressed about the ‘strangers’ pitching camp among them.

  I hug myself tight, thinking of home, wondering if anyone has seen the news. I send a text message. Malitel beeps straight back: le message n’a pas pu être envoyé. I bash my phone on the mattress and close my eyes, trying to block out all the nastiness and complications of the world outside.

  Three days later, several pounds fatter and bloated with indigestion, I mummify my face in an indigo cotton veil, button myself into an old shirt of Abdramane’s and a pair of black gloves, and sit in the front passenger seat of a bush taxi. It is a strange experience, to be un-looked at. I haven’t heard a cry of ‘toubob’ for days. At last – this is what I’ve been trying to achieve for weeks. I’m like Claude Rains when he injects himself with monocaine in The Invisible Man.

  Abdramane’s advice is to return to the safety of the capital. He can accompany me to Tonka and wait there with me for the pinasse to Mopti. His mother agrees. His sister agrees. His brother-in-law agrees. The man in the local store agrees. It is the only sensible thing to do. Going back to Timbuktu would be crazy.

  Even so … I have called my friend Mahmoud, and he says the situation in Timbuktu is calm again. If I can make it to Timbuktu, then I can find out if the azalai is feasible. A few times before, I’ve been warned against going to some dangerous place, only to find it quite secure. Maybe everything will turn out all right again.

  ‘I’m sorry. But I have to go back to Timbuktu. I can’t explain it really, I just need to find out.’

  ‘In that case,’ says Abdramane, ‘I will take you to Diré. They have boats to Timbuktu. When we get there, we can find out the situation.’

  I tip my head, too grateful to meet his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ I whisper. ‘Thank you.’

  A couple of boys bounce past on a beautiful mehari, a white camel. A herdsman with a spear for a goad is driving a couple o
f cows and a flock of sheep across the road, their yellow eyes slitted against the light. Impossible weights – sacks and trays of several tiers – glide down the roadside, raised on the heads of women in wind-tossed gowns. They are the only flashes of primary colour in the wasteland around us. Even the sky seems drained, listless and grey, as if the heavens are protecting themselves with a pane of frosted glass. Road-layer rollers paste the track with piles of heaped clay while guards twitch behind them, peering into the haze.

  After a couple of hours, mud-brick walls nuzzle the sky and the ground splits into the rainbow colours of plastic rubbish, hardening the track for motorcycles and scurrying donkeys. At the back of the market of Diré, pinasses bob behind piled sacks of charcoal and millet. Be-gloved and be-turbanned, I follow Abdramane through the crowd, watching out for anyone who eyes me too long. I feel like an outlaw spirited into a forbidden city – Luke Skywalker driving into Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan Kenobi. My heart sounds in my ears like a drumbeat at a fantasia. Well, isn’t this what travelling is all about?

  We hide away the afternoon in a shop: me a silent heap of indigo cooling off beside the fridge, while Abdramane chats with the shopkeeper. I want to join in the talk – I can follow snatches of it when they meander from Songhay into French. But Malians rarely stick to a single language for long. Abdramane speaks Songhay, French, English, Bamanankan, a little Fulfulde, and during the course of the afternoon he uses all of them. Quite apart from the language, the veil keeps me out of the conversation. Watching my companions through the slit in my cowl, I feel like I’m occupying a different dimension. I wonder … is the notorious aloofness of the Tuareg simply a consequence of their turbanning?

  Shortly before dusk, a wooden canoe peels away from Diré, curved like a melon rind, with karité roots straggling its tips. Abdramane is out for the count within minutes of bearing off, curled across sacks of millet and flour. But I can’t find a comfortable position, so I sit against the side, looking up at the fat, creamy moon and the phantom boats of shadow it casts on the surface of the water.

  I am glad the river is calm, because we are only a few inches above it. I have heard stories about the spirits dwelling among the whorls and eddies, as truculent as the djinn that haunt empty ruins and hillsides. But the closeness of the water is a boon for anyone who needs to perform their ablutions. All around me, they kneel down to pray, prostrating themselves across planks of wood and charcoal sacks. Among them is a group of religious students surrounding their marabout, who carries a copy of the Quran in a painted calabash hanging from his neck.

  It is impossible to sleep. Dirtwater and fuel mingle with the hot, milky air. The engine is grouchier than any camel, the sacks beneath me are too lumpy and I’m desperate for a pee. When we pull in near the village of Minnesengue, I roll up my trousers and splash through the shallows, wading to a bank of mud that gouts round my feet and curls between my toes, as oily as butter. I’ve been holding in for five hours, so it’s a fantastic relief to empty my bladder, a flowering of ease right through my body. As if the political threats are no longer important and all that matters is the state of my organs.

  Still, I’m unable to sleep; there are too many thoughts and feelings itching at my temples like fresh mosquito bites. I sit by the rim of the boat, looking over the sleek, serpent-like water, enjoying the burble of the current and the clarity of stars. It will be good to reach Timbuktu and find out what fate it holds for me.

  We reach the port of Koriumé before dawn and moor in the harbour, waiting until the light has drunk up most of the darkness before unloading the cargo. Squeezed into a pick-up, carefully arranging my veil, I peer out at stick-and-reed shacks and the gentle sway of bony-trunked eucalypti. We jolt onto tar, stopping at a checkpoint to show our documents.

  A mulberry ribbon of dawn glimmers over the boards on the outskirts of Timbuktu. USAid hovers near the Direction Regional des Eaux et Forêts and warnings against HIV. An upright sign promotes the Fond Libye, celebrating the planting of date palms under the auspices of ‘le guide, Muammar el-Kadaffi’. It is a reminder of the close links between Libya and Mali; one of the reasons so many bandits are now at large around Timbuktu.

  The streets are eerily empty, the last of the stars fading over the timber fingers of the mosques. I keep the turban tight around my face until I’m safe inside the limestone walls of the Hotel Colombe.

  ‘You didn’t sleep?’ asks Abdramane.

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’ I sit down on the bed, my aching buttocks sinking into the softness of the mattress.

  ‘So you should get some rest. And be very careful, Nicholas.’

  He helps me put down my bags, then leaves me to sleep. When I wake up a couple of hours later, he is already rolling back through the desert – the cheaper, more dangerous route to Goundam. It is hard to express how lucky I have been in Abdramane’s friendship. He kept me free from prying questions and nudged me when my veil dropped. He advised me against returning to Timbuktu, but when he saw my mind was set, he did everything in his power to help me. Now I am on my own again, in a city that is just as sun hammered, but in every other sense has become far, far colder than when I was last here.

  I didn’t notice before just how much the Quartier d’Abaradjou differs from the centre of Timbuktu. This is the northern district, abutting the desert, home to many of the town’s semi-nomadic population. Glimpsed from low down, the lumpy mud brick tilts over you, jagged rows of bricks sticking out like fangs; the doors are crude flaps of rusty metal. I have wrapped myself in my veil, but I can sense people watching me. My disguise has lost its power, and when I hear a child call out ‘toubob’ I shiver – a strange sensation when it’s 80 degrees.

  My friend Mahmoud has found a car. He is a spiky black Tamashek who calls himself the ‘future mayor’ because he knows everyone in town. A few weeks earlier, we bumped into each other in the street, and for a decent price he ferried me around on his motorbike. But this trip calls for a more substantial mode of transport.

  ‘Listen, Nicholas, I can get you a car,’ he tells me, ‘but there is one condition.’

  ‘Anything!’

  ‘You keep your head down.’

  I do as I am told, until a blue metal gate hoves over the window. I dive into the courtyard of the Refuge de la Paix, introducing myself to a smiling, stocky man in a stripy blue gown. This is Bouge, the manager: the sort of guy who would normally be chatting up the female visitors and offering camel rides or his cousin’s collection of Tuareg gewgaws. Now, he only has his smile. It is like a torch shining in the dark.

  ‘I never thought this would happen.’ He shakes his head, clutching the sides of his gown. ‘That’s why the gate was open – we never thought anyone would do this.’

  We cross the dusty courtyard and climb up some steps to a small patio.

  ‘The first I heard was shouting,’ he says. ‘I thought a dog had come in and was disturbing them. I looked out from my room and saw a man with a gun. That moment, I swear I died.’

  He shudders and laughs. I think this is his way of dealing with the terror.

  ‘The man kept the gun on me so I hid inside,’ he continues, ‘then after some moments I heard the gunshot and the sound of the truck and I ran outside and saw the German’s body on the ground.’

  I stand on the patio and try to imagine the terror those travellers suffered; the terror they are continuing to suffer. The awful realisation they had been picked out, chosen, by hard luck and fate and wrong-place-wrong-time, to undergo the nightmare that flickers in the mind of every traveller in the Sahara. I think of the German man, his life snuffed out in a moment, just because he was brave enough to stand up to those thugs. And I think of those three travellers, captured in the middle of a wonderful journey. Where are they now? How are they? What is going through their minds?

  There but for the grace of God …

  As we drive away from the Refuge, I look up at the towering Peace monument, where thousands of weapons were incinerated after the T
uareg uprising of the 1990s. That word ‘peace’ – shared by the monument, the garden in which it stands, the hotel, the road we are driving down, ‘Rue de la Paix’. Sometimes words really do screw up.

  I have been told to wait in the hotel this evening: Lamina will come to see me.

  True to his word, he arrives soon after the dusk prayer, clutching the skirt of his robe over bare legs, glancing anxiously up the corridor. He takes hold of my shoulders, kissing the air on either side, letting out a series of grunts and loudly exhaled breaths. We nod silently to each other for several moments, recalibrating our relationship in terms of recent events. When Lamina finally breaks the silence, his words are serious and passionate, carrying with them the extremities of life in the desert. It is as if the sands themselves are speaking, through this wiry man who knows them so well.

  ‘Yusuf, I tell you the truth. When you go to the wells, there is always somebody there. The desert is like a village, and everybody knows everybody else’s business. I do not fear the desert. There is only one thing I fear: the people we do not know. Now there are too many of them, strangers with bad intentions, people who cannot be trusted. The desert is no longer the same place as before.’

  We sit together for an hour or so. Lamina talks about the caravan – the lines of camels stretching across the dunes, the celebration of tam-tam drums when the caravan returns. It doesn’t soften the blow to hear these details of an experience that remains tantalisingly out of reach. Yet I will cherish them, along with the only real consolation Lamina offers me.

  ‘You must choose a sign,’ he says. ‘It will be your sign and nobody else’s, and we will brand it on the necks of your camels. They are waiting for you, for Yusuf the British, and even if you do not come to collect them for a hundred years they will be there for you.’