The Caravan of White Gold

by Michael Benanav

  As Walid prepared to pour the tea, an old man with a single camel wandered into our camp and asked if he could join us. We invited him to sit, and he did. It was no intrusion; rather, it was satisfying to offer some hospitality to a stranger before leaving the desert.

  I awoke in the morning to the lilting prayers of our nighttime visitor, who sang his devotions in haunting tones over the sound of the crackling tea fire. Dawn had just arrived. I lay in my blanket watching a fluid palette of grays, blues, pinks, and yellows swirl in the sky, in sync with the hypnotic voice of our guest.

  Oddly, I wasn’t in a hurry to pack, load, and leave. Normally I’m impatient on the last day of an expedition; I like to get up, get going, and get the hell out, regardless of how much I enjoyed the trip. But not this morning. I waited until I heard the splashing of tea and sugar being mixed in the pot before rolling out of my blanket and walking a few feet to the fire.

  When we finished our three glasses, we loaded our camels and hit the trail for the last time. It was the thirty-sixth day of the journey.

  I walked in silence, devising a vague plan for my arrival in Timbuktu: find an affordable hotel, take a shower, eat a chicken. I felt energetic and strong. My mind was sharp, my spirits high.

  After about two hours, I mounted Mabrouk. Since Walid was already riding and Mabrouk was tied to L’beyya’s tail, the camel was moving at its full marching pace. Without causing it to slow or miss a step, I sprang onto its neck and smoothly slid atop its hump, my form worthy of any seasoned azalai.

  Perched high on Mabrouk’s hump, I could see Timbuktu’s tallest buildings in the distance—the dark cone of a minaret, the steel lattice of a radio tower, both pointing toward the heavens. I was content to watch them get slowly closer, grow slowly higher, with no impulse to rush toward the comforts they promised. I felt none of the desperation that can set in when the end of something difficult appears on the horizon, when the mere sight of the finish line causes one’s reserves of strength to drain away. We’d get there when we got there, and that’d be soon enough. I could soar with the Rukh as long as it cared to fly.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For this edition of this book, special thanks are owed to my agent in Mumbai, Sherna Khambatta, for the conviction and enthusiasm with which she worked to find an Indian publisher for it. I’d also like to thank my agent in New York, Jennifer Joel, and the editors Ann Treistman and Christine Duffy, whose support and wisdom were crucial to the success of the original American edition.

  Two people whose contributions were indispensable to my understanding of Saharan trade in general and the salt trade in particular are Dr. E. Ann McDougall (professor of history and classics and director of the Middle Eastern and African StudiesProgramme at the University of Alberta) and Dr. Ghislaine Lydon (assistant professor of history at UCLA), both Saharan experts. They provided me with copies of their work, both published and unpublished; took the time to consult with me by phone and e-mail; and turned me on to other sources as essential as they were esoteric, which I likely never would have found on my own. Thanks also to Dr. Susan J. Rasmussen, anthropology professor at the University of Houston, for sending me some of her published work on the Tuareg.

  I send a heartfelt shokran to the azalai, the salt miners, and the people of Timbuktu, including historian Sidi Mohammed Ould Youbba, who took time from his busy schedule at the Centre de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba to answer my questions about the salt trade, and Jiddou Ag Almoustapha, a Tuareg leader, at whose home I drank many cups of tea while talking about the people and ways of the Sahara.

  My deepest thanks go to Walid, Lamana, and Abdi, who opened the doors to a world beyond anything my imagination had conceived. I will never forget them or their kindness, and hope one day to see them again.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Factual information within the chapters was gleaned from the following sources:

  PREFACE

  The first few paragraphs of the preface are based on what I saw with my own eyes, supplemented by information found in Forbidden Sands: A Search in the Sahara by Richard Trench, Tribes of the Sahara by Lloyd Cabot Briggs, and The Quest for Timbuctoo by Brian Gardner, as well as conversations with historian Sidi Mohammed Ould Youbba of the Centre de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba in Timbuktu. After much searching for answers to the mystery of the evolutionary advantages of one-humped versus two-humped camels in their respective environments, I finally found them not on the Internet, but in a book (of all places): Richard Bulliet’s The Camel and the Wheel. The section on the value of salt and its uses as currency was based on sections of the doctoral dissertation of Ghislaine Lydon, Ph.D., called “On Trans-Saharan Trails: Trading Networks and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Western Africa, 1840s–1930s”; as well as a paper written by Dr. E. Ann McDougall, “Salts of the Western Sahara”—the paper from which I also learned about the other uses for and types of salt in the region.

  CHAPTER 1

  Essential to my understanding of Mali’s overall economic situation was the piece titled “Overview: The Malian Path to Democracy and Development” by R. James Bingen, in the book Democracy and Development in Mali. Additional facts were acquired from The New York Times Almanac, the U.S. State Department’s Web page on Mali, and the 2004 United Nations Human Development Report. The quote “the most distant place imaginable” and the date of its first recorded use as a synonym for Timbuktu comes from The Oxford English Dictionary. Information about the uses of contracts and “traveler’s checks” in Saharan trade was found in Dr. Lydon’s doctoral dissertation (mentioned above). My recounting of the history of Timbuktu and the journey of Gordon Laing was adapted mostly from Gardner’s book (mentioned above), The Quest for Timbuctoo, and supplemented a bit by what I read in the book Sahara by Paolo Novaresio and Gianni Guadalupi (it should be noted that this last book contains some glaring factual inaccuracies—when I mention it as a source, it is always a secondary source that merely confirms what I’ve read in other sources, or is one from which I’ve taken a direct quote that has no historical importance). The interview with Wilfred Theisger to which I refer was in the January—February 2002 issue of National Geographic Adventure. The translation of the Sindbad story I read and quoted comes from The Arabian Nights II, by Husain Haddawy.

  CHAPTER 2

  Much of the information about the Saharan climate through the ages, and its animal life, was adapted from the books Tribes of the Sahara, by Lloyd Cabot Briggs; and The Sahara, by Jeremy Swift. Dinosaurspecific facts came from BBC News Online (May 31, 2001); CNN.com (May 31, 2001); a University of Chicago press release (November 11, 1998); and a Web site called Dino Land—which is where I found the story about the Tuareg chief who told the paleontologist where he could find “a lot of big camel bones lying around.” I learned about the history of green tea in West Africa through e-mail correspondence with Dr. Lydon, as well as from her dissertation. The paragraphs about the dung beetles were based on what I learned from Swift’s book (mentioned above) and two Web sites: “In Praise of Dung Beetles” at earthlife.net, and “Our Friend the Dung Beetle,” a paper on the University of Waterloo site.

  My primary source for facts about male and female headdress practices in Tuareg culture was Dr. Susan Rasmussen’s paper “Veiled Self, Transparent Meanings: Tuareg Headdress as Social Expression”; the quote about the veil and pants being brothers is from Dr. Jeremy Keenan’s book Sahara Man. My account of Saharan ethnicities and the similarities and differences between tribes is based on Dr. Lydon’s dissertation (especially the hasani/zawaya distinction), a telephone conversation with Dr. McDougall, and the book The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara by H. T. Norris. I compiled the account of camel breeding among the Azawad’s tribes from those same sources, as well as conversations with Jiddou Ag Almoustapha, a Tuareg leader in Timbuktu. Aside from the oral accounts of Saharans, including Ag Almoustapha and Abdi Abdurahman, I learned about the Tuareg Rebellion and the plight of Saharan nomads from Kare Lode’s “Mali Feature Stu
dy” in the online magazine Accord, and a paper called “Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Sahel: The Tuareg Insurgency in Mali” by Lieutenant Colonel Kalifa Keita (Army of the Republic of Mali). I read about the Great Drought in An Overview of Drought Strategies and Land Use in African Pastoral System by Gufu Oba and Walter J. Lusigi, and heard much about it in personal conversations with Saharans.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sidi Mohammed Ould Youbba told me about the French improvements to Saharan wells. Facts about camels and their water needs came from Jeremy Swift’s The Sahara, as well as the Web site for the Chaffee Zoo. The historical information about camel domestication and the disappearance of the wheel in North Africa and the Middle East was found in Richard Bulliet’s The Camel and the Wheel. I found the story of the first automobile crossing of the Sahara on the Citroën Web site, as well as a site devoted to Citroëns called Tractions in Switzerland. The information about the djinn was derived from a paper called “Friends of the Kel Essuf: Perspectives on Shamanism in Tuareg Mediumistic Healing,” by Dr. Susan J. Rassmussen, as well as personal conversations with Jiddou Ag Almoustapha and other Saharans.

  CHAPTER 4

  I read about the fennec in Swift’s The Sahara. Historical information about the founding of Araouane and the Sufi principles of the Kel Es-Suq was found in H. T. Norris’s The Tuaregs: Their Islamic Legacy and Its Diffusion in the Sahel. Information about Sidi al-Mukhtar and the Kunta came from the same source, as well as a paper by Dr. E. Ann Mc-Dougall called “The Economics of Islam in the Southern Sahara: The Rise of the Kunta Clan.” This was supplemented by material from Dr.McDougall’s unpublished manuscript titled “Salt and Saharans in the Pre-Colonial Development of Mali-Mauritania, 1600–1900.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Facts about the Tanezrouft were derived from Swift’s The Sahara (as was the information about the “reg”), Trench’s Forbidden Sands, and About.com. The quote about the desert being a place not for living but for traveling through was found in Novaresio and Guadalupi’s Sahara.

  CHAPTER 6

  The history of the Tegaza salt mines and their abandonment in favor of Taoudenni was found in Dr. McDougall’s paper “Salts of the Western Sahara: Myths, Mysteries, and Historical Significance.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Facts about the forced marches in Romania and Transnistria during World War II were culled from The Holocaust in Romania by Radu Ioanid.

  CHAPTER 10

  The number of languages in the world and the percentage that are endangered was found in Light at the Edge of the World by Wade Davis. (Though the thoughts and feelings I express may mirror Davis’s in places, I came to them on my own, before I ever read his book.)

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Glasgow/ New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

  Briggs, Lloyd Cabot, Tribes of the Sahara. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.

  Bulliet, Richard, The Camel and the Wheel. New York/Oxford: Columbia University Press, Morningside Edition, 1990.

  Davis, Wade, Light at the Edge of the World. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2002.

  Gardner, Brian, The Quest for Timbuctoo. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1968.

  Haddawy, Husain, The Arabian Nights II. New York/London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995.

  Ioanid, Radu, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000.

  Keenan, Jeremy, Sahara Man. London: John Murray, 2001.

  Mahfouz, Naguib, Arabian Nights and Days. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

  Norris, H. T., The Arab Conquest of the Western Sahara: Studies of the Historical Events, Religious Beliefs and Social Customs Which Made the Remotest Sahara a Part of the Arab World. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1986.

  ________, The Tuareg: Their Islamic Legacy and Its Diffusion in the Sahel. Oxford: Aris & Phillips, 1975.

  Novaresio, Paolo, and Gianni Guadalupi, Sahara. San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2003.

  Swift, Jeremy, The Sahara. Amsterdam: Time, Life, Inc., 1975.

  Trench, Richard, Forbidden Sands: A Search in the Sahara. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1978.

  Wright, John W., editor, The New York Times Almanac 2001. New York: Penguin Reference, 2000.

  PAPERS, ARTICLES, AND DISSERTATIONS

  Bingen, R. J., “Overview—The Malian Path to Democracy and Development,” in Democracy and Development in Mali. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000.

  Lydon, Ghislaine, “On Trans-Saharan Trails: Trading Networks and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Western Africa, 1840s–1930s.” Dissertation: Michigan State University, 2000.

  McDougall, E. A., “Camel Caravans of the Saharan Salt Trade: Traders and Transporters in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Workers of African Trade, C. Coquery-Vidrovitch and P. Lovejoy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985.

  ___________, “The Economics of Islam in the Southern Sahara: The Rise of the Kunta Clan,” in Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa, N. Levtzion and H. Fisher, editors. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1986.

  ___________, “Salts of the Western Sahara: Myths, Mysteries and Historical Significance.” International Journal of African Historical Studies xxiii, 1990.

  Rasmussen, Susan J., “Friends of the Kel Essuf: Perspectives on Shamanism in the Tuareg Mediumistic Healing.” Cultural Survival Quarterly, summer 2003.

  ___________, “Veiled Self, Transparent Meanings: Tuareg Headdress as Social Expression.” Ethnology 30, no. 2, 1991.

  Shnayerson, Michael, “The Man Who Walked Through Time: Wilfred Thesiger.” National Geographic Adventure, January–February 2002.

  ELECTRONIC ARTICLES AND WEBSITES

  “Crossing the Sahara: 1922–1923.” Citroen.com, http://www.cttroen.com/CWW/en-US/HISTORY/ADVENTURE/CrossingTheSahara/

  “Dromedary Camel.” The Chaffee Zoo, http://www.chajfeezpo.org/animals/camel.html

  Eberli, Daniel, “1994 an Anniversary of a Famous Company: 75 Years of Citroën Automobiles; 60 Years of Citroën Traction Avant.” Tractions in Switzerland, 1994, http://www.traction.ch/history/hist_ctr_e.html

  Gwynn-Jones, Terry, “Bill Lancaster: Lost in the Sahara.” About.com, 2002 (originally published in Aviation History in January 2000), http://africanhistory.about.com/library/prm/bllostinsaharai.htm?terms=Tanezrouft

  “Huge Fish-Eating Dinosaur Emerges from the Sahara.” University of Chicago News Office, November 11, 1998, http://wwwnews.uchicago.edu/releases/98/981111.suchomimus.shtml

  Keita, Kalifa, “Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Sahel: The Tuareg Insurgency in Mali.” Monograph: Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, May 1998, www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pdfjiles/PUB200.pdf

  Kellan, Ann, “Second-Largest Dinosaur Found in Egypt.” CNN.com, May 31, 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/oj/ji/egypt.dinosaur/

  Lode, Kare, “Mali Feature Study.” Conciliation Resources: Accord # 13, 2002, http://www.c-r.org/accord/peace/accord13/mapea.shtml

  “New Species of Primitive Dinosaur Found in Niger.” Dino Land, November 13, 1999, http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Galaxy/8152/serenodino.html

  Oba, G., and W. J. Lusigi, “An Overview of Drought Strategies and Land Use in African Pastoral Systems.” Overseas Development Institute, March 1987, http://www.odi.org.uk/pdn/papers/23a.pdf

  “Our Friend the Dung Beetle.” University of Waterloo Department of Science, http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~ja2macne/412paper.html

  Ramel, Gordon, “In Praise of Dung Beetles.” http://www.earthlife.net/insects/dung.html

  “‘Striking’ Dinosaurs Found in the Sahara.” BBC News Online, November 11, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/i/hi/sci/tech/516012.stm

  United Nations Human Development Report, 2004, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/presskit/HDR_PKE_HPI.pdf

  Whitehouse, David, “Dinosaur Heaven Reveals Wonders.” BBC News Online, May 31, 2001, http://news.bbc.c
o.uk/i/hi/sci/tech/1362194.stm