Tuareg. Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa

would be capable of protecting a border in the desert and besides, the soldiers are scared of it.’ He smiled gently underneath the veil that hid his face and which he always kept on in the company of strangers.

      ‘Only the Imohag are not afraid of the desert. Soldiers are like spilled water here, the sand just swallows them up.’

      The young boy tried to say something but the Targui reminded him that he was tired and told him to lie back down on the cushions.

      ‘Don’t push yourself too hard,’ he begged. ‘You are weak. Tomorrow we will speak and maybe your friend will also feel better.’ He turned round to look at the old man, and for the first time realised that he was not as old as he had initially thought, despite his thin, white hair and deeply lined face. ‘Who is he?’ he asked.

      The boy hesitated for a moment, then closed his eyes and muttered quietly:

      ‘A scholar. He is researching our most distant ancestors. We were on our way to Dajbadel when our lorry broke down.’

      ‘Dajbadel is very far away…’ Gazel remarked, but the boy had already fallen back into a deep sleep. ‘Very, very far south. I’ve never been that far.’

      He left the tent quietly and once out in the fresh air he felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach; like a warning that he had never before experienced. There was something about those two, seemingly harmless men that unsettled him. They were not armed nor did they look at all frightening in appearance, but a whiff of fear hung in the air around them and it was this fear that he too felt.

      ‘He is researching our ancestors…’ the young boy had said. But the other man’s face, with its deep lines of suffering, told a different story and they were certainly not the scars caused from just one week of wandering hungry and thirsty through the desert.

      He looked into the descending darkness in search of an answer. His Targui spirit and a thousand ancient desert traditions told him that he had done the right thing by putting a roof over the head of the two travellers, because the notion of hospitality was the first of all the Imohag’s unwritten rules. His instinct, however, as a man that was used to being guided by a sixth sense that had saved him from death on many an occasion, told him that he was running a huge risk and that the new arrivals would jeopardise the peace that had cost him so much to achieve.

      Laila appeared at his side and his eyes warmed as he felt her sweet presence and beheld the startling beauty of this dark-skinned, adolescent girl-woman. He had made her his wife, against the wishes of the old men, who believed it was wrong for an inmouchar of such noble heritage to make a union with someone from the lowly Akli slave caste.

      She sat down beside him and turned to face him with her huge black eyes that were always full of light and hidden reflections and gently said:

      ‘These men bother you don’t they?’

      ‘Not them…’ he replied thoughtfully.

      ‘But something that hangs around, them like a shadow or a smell.’

      ‘They’ve come from far away. Anything that comes from far away unsettles you, because my grandmother predicted that you would not die in the desert.’ She put out her hand timidly, until it touched his. ‘My grandmother is often wrong,’ she added.

      ‘When I was born they predicted me a gloomy future and instead I married a noble, almost a prince.’

      He smiled gently.

      ‘I remember when you were born. It can’t be more than fifteen years ago… Your future had not even begun…’

      He was sorry that he had made her feel sad, because he loved her and even though an Imohag was never supposed to express too much affection to a woman, she was the mother of the last of his sons, so he opened up his hand and took hers in it.

      ‘Maybe you are right and the old Khaltoum is wrong,’ he mused. ‘No one will force me to abandon the desert or die somewhere far away from it.’

      They remained in contemplation of the silent night for some time and he felt at peace once again.

      It was true that the black lady Khaltoum had predicted the death of her father due to an illness, one year before he contracted it and that she had also predicted the great drought that had dried up the wells and left the desert devoid of shrubs, killing hundreds of animals that had, from time immemorial been accustomed to drought and thirst. It was also true that the slave woman often ranted for the sake of ranting and her visions often seemed more the result of senile dementia, than true visions of the future.

      ‘What is there on the other side of the desert?’ Laila asked, breaking their silence. ‘I’ve never been further than the Huaila Mountains.’

      ‘People,’ came his reply. ‘A lot of people.’ Gazel meditated, remembering his experience in El-Akab, the oasis in the north, and he shook his head gloomily. ‘They like to settle in crowded and small spaces, in narrow, stinking houses. They shout and remonstrate loudly to each other for no reason, and rob and cheat on each other like animals that only know how to live as a herd.’

      ‘Why…?’

      He wanted to be able to explain to Laila why, because her admiration for him filled him with pride, but he was unable to give her an answer. He was an Imohag who had been born and bred in the solitude of the wide, open spaces, so, as hard as he might try, he simply could not understand the herd-like instincts that these men and woman from the other tribes possessed.

      Gazel embraced visitors whole heartedly and loved to sit round the fire with them, telling old stories and chatting about the idiosyncrasies of daily life. But once the fire had died and the black camel that carried sleep on its back had crossed the encampment, invisible and silent, everybody would retire to their tents and to their own lives, to breath in deeply and absorb the silence.

      Life in the Sahara was peaceful and provided an ideal environment within which to explore the self and the universe. The way of life there lent itself to the slow contemplation of the natural surroundings and the unhurried meditation of the lessons of their sacred scriptures. This kind of peace, of time and space, did not exist in the cities or towns, not even in the tiny Berber villages, which were filled with a general confusion of noise and petty problems. To Gazel, the people in these places who fought and gossiped, seemed strangely more interested in everybody else’s business and behaviour than their own.

      ‘I don’t know,’ he admittedly, reluctantly. ‘I have never understood why they like to behave in this way, crowded together, all of them so dependent on each other. I don’t know…’ he repeated. ‘I have never met anyone that could answer that question properly either.’

      The girl looked at him for some time, perhaps surprised that this man who was her life and from whom she had learned the value of knowledge, was not able to answer one of her questions. From the minute she had been able to reason, Gazel had meant everything to her. First and foremost he had been her master, as a child of the Akli slave race this meant he was, in her eyes, an almost divine being, the absolute master of her life and her contemporaries; master of her parents’ lives, their extended families, their animals and whatever else existed on the face of their universe.

      He was also the man that one day, when she had reached puberty and with her first menstruation, had made her into a woman. He had called her into his tent and possessed her, making her cry out in pleasure, like the other slave women before her who she had heard at night when the west wind blew. In the end they became lovers and he had carried her with him, as if on wings, swiftly to paradise and back. He was her master, but more so than ever before, because now not only did he dominate her soul, her thoughts and her desires, but he also owned her most hidden and forgotten instincts.

      It took her a while to reply and just as she was about to, she was cut short by the appearance of one her husband’s eldest sons who had come running over from one the sheribas situated at the other end of the encampment.

      ‘A camel is about to give birth, father,’ he said. ‘And the jackals are prowling around…’

      His