The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

  At the center of this activity for more than three hundred years, Araouane had been the beating heart through which goods and spiritual teachings had flowed to all parts of the Azawad, south to Timbuktu, east to Niger, and west to Mauritania. Today it barely has a pulse at all.

  When I first saw Araouane from a distance, it looked like an old fortress positioned atop the highest hill in the area, its dark, angular walls standing in ominous contrast to the curvaceous white landscape surrounding it. In truth, it is a crumbling village that is sinking into the huge swell of sand upon which it is built. Dunes break like waves against the dilapidated walls of the few mud-brick houses that are this desert outpost, some of which are almost completely buried. The streets, if that’s what you call the space between buildings, are filled with deep, soft sand. Were it not for the few people walking around in vibrant, flowing clothing that billowed and snapped in the wind, it would’ve been easy to mistake the place for a partially excavated archaeological site.

  There’s no electricity, no shops, no television antennas on the flat rooftops. There is little activity except that of the livestock that gathers around its wells. But for a few trees that had been planted many years before, no plants grew. The only sign of modernity was the small concrete-block structure that housed a one-room medical clinic and a radio-telephone office. The entire town could’ve easily fit inside a football stadium.

  We walked our camels to a house on the northernmost edge of town. As we unloaded, two girls and a boy emerged from the door, followed by a man in a white djellaba. After a hearty round of greetings, the man and the boy helped us unload our camels. We left our belongings in piles covered by blankets to protect them from the sun, then followed the man into the house.

  Like many houses in this part of the world, this one was built around an inner courtyard that served as a kitchen, laundry room, and livestock pen. The northern “wing” of the house, which we had entered, consisted of two rooms divided by a partial wall, so it was possible to walk between them without passing through any doors. We were ushered into the smaller of the two rooms, which was lit by the open door to the courtyard, and were invited to sit on geometrically patterned mats of woven plastic fibers. The floor was made of the same loose, fine sand as the earth outside. The thick adobe walls that kept the house cool were rounded and plastered a soothing buff yellow. The ceiling of sticks and twigs was supported by aged wooden beams that must have been brought from more than 150 miles away.

  The older of the two girls disappeared into the courtyard and came back carrying a small brazier topped with a teapot, then made a second trip for an aluminum tray with shot glasses, a box of tea, and a bag of sugar. While the water heated, the man, named Mohammed, exchanged news with Walid and Baba.

  After the tea was finished, Walid, Baba, and Mohammed left to water the camels and take care of a few other things we’d need for the next leg of our journey. I was left alone in the room with the two girls, one of whom was nine, the other who was hardly more than a toddler. The nine-yearold, named Hannah, spoke French, which she said she had learned during the three years of schooling that children in Araouane receive. While we talked, her sister lay on the sandy floor, watching.

  “Do you like living in Araouane?” I asked.

  A look of disgust crossed her face. “No,” she said. “I hate it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s ugly here. There is nothing to do. There are no shops, no restaurants; we have nothing here.”

  “If there are no shops, where does your family buy food?”

  “Three times a year we go to Timbuktu. There, we buy all of the rice, millet, flour, and everything else we need until the next trip.”

  “How do you like Timbuktu?”

  “Oh I love Timbuktu! There is so much to see, so much to do! Timbuktu is rich and colorful. Araouane is poor and dead.” In her mind, Timbuktu was still like the fabulous city of legend. “When I get older, I want to marry a man from there, someone who will take me away from here …,” she said, like a Saharan Cinderella.

  Just then her mother called, needing her help in the courtyard. Hannah excused herself and I was alone again for a few minutes before Anselm came in and sat down. I was glad to see him, and asked him what was going on.

  He said that Sali had wanted to get to Araouane the day before, but as the sun started to set, Anselm, with much gesturing, conveyed his desire to spend the night atop a dune just outside the village. They arrived in Araouane that morning, and Sali’s intention was to take a quick look around, then head back the way we had come. Anselm, however, had found someone who spoke French to translate between the two of them. He asked about the possibility of returning to Timbuktu alongside a salt caravan, and asked why they hadn’t come north through Bou J’beha.

  It quickly became clear that Sali had no idea that Alkoye had promised Anselm that they’d take the Bou J’beha route, and they hadn’t done so because it was longer. Moreover, there was no chance of him riding back to Timbuktu with a caravan, unless Anselm wanted to wait in Araouane for a few weeks. Feeling like he’d been screwed all around by the Timbuktu tour agent, he offered to pay Sali the hundred dollars he still owed to Alkoye if Sali would take him back through Bou J’beha. It was a tremendous sum in local terms, and Sali had instantly agreed. Anselm figured he’d claim a breach of contract if Alkoye gave him any trouble about it. They’d be heading out in a few minutes, and Anselm had just wanted to check in and say good-bye one more time. We wished each other well, and parted for the last time.

  (Many weeks later, I learned that when Anselm got back to Timbuktu and explained the situation to Alkoye, Alkoye threw a fit and said the matter would have to be taken to the police, and could take weeks to get cleared up. If Anselm tried to leave town without paying, Alkoye said he’d have him arrested. Unable to spend the time to resolve the dispute, which he likely would have won, Anselm paid.)

  Left alone with Anselm’s story of frustration, my doubts about whether or not there’d be a caravan to meet surfaced afresh. Again, I suppressed them, and distracted myself by taking a walk around the village. Few people were out: Women were dressed in flamboyant colors that leapt out against the background of pale sand. Some, known as sand women, earned a few pennies by sweeping clear the everinvading desert from the doorways of Araouane’s houses. I looked down the hill where men were splashing water from a well into troughs, just as we had done, then passed by the mosque—a small wind-weathered box capped with a mud cone, from which a dark iron star and crescent moon protruded starkly against the colorless sky. As I’d just about completed my circuit of the town, I was approached by one boy whom I guessed was about eight, who greeted me with the traditional salutation offered by many Malian children: “Toubab! Donnez-moi un cadeau!” which translates into: “White guy! Give me a gift!”

  I was surprised that this practice had made it out to Araouane. It’s so annoyingly prevalent in “mainland” Malian cities (with the notable exception of Bamako), that it’s practically impossible to walk down their streets without being accosted by throngs of kids demanding gifts, pens, and money. The funny thing was that even after I had been in Mali for a few months, I never met any travelers who gave handouts to the children, since no one wanted to promote a culture of begging. I wondered why the kids kept at it, since it didn’t appear to produce results. I began to imagine that sometime in the distant past, a foreigner once gave a kid the most wonderful cadeau imaginable, and the story spread across the land and was passed down through the generations—that at bedtime kids beg to be told the tale of the Toubab and the Fabulous Cadeau—so that even though none of them has ever received one, they live in hope for the day when they’ll be just like the lucky boy or girl in the story. Then when they reach a certain age, they realize that, like Santa Claus, it doesn’t exist, and they stop asking for it.

  Rather than a cadeau, I gave the boy in Araouane a lecture on hospitality, telling him it was important that he leave the foreigners who came this
way with a good impression of his village. He apologized, momentarily embarrassed, then asked me for a pen.

  I got back to the house and read for a while, soaking up the luxury of resting indoors, before Walid, Baba, and Mohammed returned. Mohammed’s wife, Barka, served lunch: a round loaf of freshly baked bread for each of us, smothered in a thin orange sauce that was mildly spicy and flavored with hints of meat. After eating the same boring food for the past week, the home cooking was downright ambrosial, and I devoured my portion like a starving man.

  Mohammed’s eleven-year-old son ate with us, and with him as a translator I posed a few questions to Baba and Walid that I didn’t know how to phrase in Arabic. Most important, I asked whether the trucks that now ran the salt route would soon make camels obsolete. The three men chuckled. Some trucks did make the trip to Taoudenni, Walid said, but he claimed that camels were much more suited to the work and would never disappear from the salt trade. This took me by complete surprise. It contradicted all the assumptions with which I had embarked upon this trip, and I wanted to know why Walid thought the way he did.

  His response was vague, and focused on the high cost of the gasoline that the trucks consume. Baba and Mohammed nodded in agreement. The camel caravans would only stop running, Walid said, if the nomads one day had the opportunity to do something else. He himself would much prefer to own a shop in Timbuktu than ride back and forth to Taoudenni, but he didn’t have anywhere near the money to open one.

  Though I imagined Walid knew what he was talking about, I had trouble letting go of the opposite conclusions drawn by the Western reports I had read about the situation—and I realized that these men were likely biased in favor of the camel. I wasn’t sure what to believe, and knew I’d need more information before forming an accurate opinion. I’d have to wait until Taoudenni to get it.

  When we finished with lunch, the men left again. I rose to go with them, but Walid told me to stay put. I didn’t argue, knowing I’d soon be glad for whatever rest I could get, wishing I could store it up the way a camel stores fat in its hump. My own belly deliciously full, I drifted off to sleep, wondering what it would be like to finally meet up with the caravan, which Walid had said we were going to do this very night.

  As the sun neared the western horizon, we prepared to leave. Walid had exchanged our inner tubes for bigger ones; we had new, thicker cargo pads; the camels’ bellies were swollen to capacity with water. These small changes foreshadowed the increasing intensity of the terrain we were about to cross. While we loaded up, a crowd of about fifteen people gathered around.

  “Where are you going?” one young man asked.

  “To Taoudenni,” I said.

  “Taoudenni?! Eeeeee!” he exclaimed in surprise, shaking his head as though I had told him we were going to try to walk to the moon. “Good luck.”

  With our baggage slung, the camels stood. We thanked Mohammed and Barka, and said we’d see them in a few weeks, ensha’allah. We turned north and the crowd followed us down to the bottom of the hill upon which Araouane sits. They stayed there and shouted blessings and good-byes while we waved back at them and kept on going.

  The desert was awash in a magical light that had an almost tangible quality, as though the particles it was composed of had condensed into a vapor. Our shadows grew by the minute, falling to the right upon sand that had hours before been blindingly white, but appeared to have been recently touched by Midas. Soon the rippled earth was decked with sheaves of long, bent-over grasses. This, it seemed clear, was the “good grazing ground” north of Araouane where the caravan was supposed to gather. And before long, we passed a large herd of camels browsing among the bushes and a handful of men sitting by a fire. Though we kept our distance, we could easily hear the huffing and snorting and occasional groans of the animals. Walid shouted to the men, who answered back, but we didn’t stop.

  About twenty minutes later, just as it got dark, Walid dismounted. We unburdened our beasts and set them loose to feed. Baba, it seemed, was taking over most of the domestic duties, so he readied both the teapot and the dinner pot while Walid built a fire.

  “Where is the caravan?” I wanted to know. “We should be with them tonight, right?”

  “Oh, we passed it back there. Didn’t you see it?” Walid said.

  “Yes, I saw it. But why didn’t we stop?”

  Walid explained that it would be better for us to stay where we were. Lachmar and L’beyya wouldn’t have to compete with the other camels for food; it would be quieter; and the caravan would have to come this way when it left, so we could join it then. I was a little disappointed, but I figured that one less night with the others was no great loss, and I trusted Walid to know what he was doing.

  While we sat around eating, however, he suggested traveling to Taoudenni on our own, meeting up with the caravan there, then traveling back with it. He said the three of us would be able to move much faster by ourselves, which meant we’d have extra hours every night to sleep. And we could stop and let the camels graze in places that would be too sparse for an entire caravan. Overall, he said, it would be much easier.

  I considered his proposal. Easier had an appealing ring to it, and I liked the friendly dynamic that was evolving among Walid, Baba, and me. But I had come here to immerse in caravan life, not just to take a camel ride to Taoudenni. So I said no, I wanted to hitch up with the caravan when they passed, and go with them to the mines. Walid said okay, and asked me to set my alarm for 1 AM.

  I have never been a morning person. I naturally prefer to stay up late, then wake up late, and have always found that being dragged from dreamland by an alarm clock is a miserable way to start the day. So when, at one, Walid told me to reset my alarm for four and to go back to sleep, I didn’t argue for a second. Besides, if he knew how to find his wife’s family in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, I had faith that he’d know when a convoy of camels marched by.

  At four, we did get up and, rather than waiting for the caravan to arrive, we started off into the darkness on our own.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Where is the caravan?”

  “It passed us while we slept.”

  His words fell like a bomb upon my composure. I was speechless. The concerns I’d kept at bay about failing to meet the caravan had come to pass, after I was sure there was nothing left to fear. Stricken with angst, I felt an urgent need to catch up to it while we were still within its range, for fear of losing it for good. We were suddenly in a race against time, against the speed of the caravan. As light broke over the desert, I strained my eyes to the horizon, scanning for the herd, but saw nothing.

  Our chase across the Sahara had begun.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ascending ridge after ridge of sand, my anticipation swelled, certain that from each crest the caravan would appear before us, marching in regimented rows across the undulating ivory earth. Upon spotting specks of brown in the distance, my heartbeat quickened, only for it to falter with disappointment when the “camels” proved to be nothing more than bushes. On and on we rode. My eyes grew tired from squinting, but I saw nothing.

  We stopped for a break some eight hours after we’d left camp. I figured enough time had probably passed to allow us to catch the caravan, and was mystified as to why we hadn’t. I asked Walid where it was.

  “They’re going a different way,” Walid said.

  “What?” I replied, completely bewildered.

  “They are going the long way,” he said, and drew a diagram in the sand that depicted the caravan’s path as an arc, while we traveled in a straight line. “They need to pass places where there is enough food for all their camels. Since we only have three, we can graze where they can’t, and can travel a more direct route.”

  “But I’m here to travel with the caravan, not just in the same desert.”

  “Don’t worry,” Walid said, without the slightest hint of apology. “We’ll meet them up ahead at the well at Foum el-Alba.”

  I was
torn by conflicting reactions to this news. Part of me was irate that my trusted guide, and now my friend, had changed the plan and was directly contradicting my wishes. But another part of me thought that maybe I hadn’t been as clear about my desires as I’d believed, that my words might have been misinterpreted. Though disappointed, I gave Walid the benefit of the doubt and chalked it up to a misunderstanding. With nothing to do about it anyway, I chose to let it go, enjoy being with Walid and Baba, and look forward to our rendezvous at Foum el-Alba.

  By the end of the day we had left the rolling ridges behind us. The earth had settled into an endless sheet of orange sand. In the evening, the pleasant breeze intensified into a blustery squall, buffeting my body and hurling plumes of grit through the air. When we camped for the night, I laid my blanket on the lee side of a grassy bush, thinking only of taking shelter from the wind; I’d forgotten that windblown sand accumulates in precisely such calm spots. By morning, it had worked its way inside my blanket, my ears, my clothing, and coated every inch of my skin as though I’d been in an explosion at a flour mill.