South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara. Justin Marozzi

us into his office where he welcomed us graciously. He sat behind a desk sporting a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they distorted his eyes into a demonic grimace. Despite the daytime heat, he wore a heavy beige cardigan, two jumpers, a shirt and thermal vest. This was midwinter for Ghadamsis.

      The town dated back to 895 BC, he told us, and had long been an important transit point for goods going north and south across the desert. ‘I tell you something else you do not know,’ he said, with an air of mystery. ‘Ghadames was first city in world to have passports, post office, free market and water gauge.’ ‘Passports’ had once been necessary, he explained, to cross from one half of Ghadames into the other. The system of gates dividing the town into two sections – one each for the predominant but mutually hostile Bani Walid and Bani Wazit tribes – dated back more than 2,000 years. When a man from one tribe wanted to visit someone from the other, he had to have a certain paper, like a passport, that enabled him to pass through the gateway into the neighbouring quarter. Richardson called these two long-feuding tribes ‘the Whigs and Tories of Ghadames’. On asking his guide about the history of their conflict he was told: ‘The Ben Weleed and the Ben Wezeet are people of Ghadames, who have quarrelled from time immemorial: it was the will of God they should be divided, and who shall resist his will?’ These strict tribal divisions no longer existed and intermarrying was increasingly common, Abd as Salam informed us.

      The postal service consisted of a small box, into which people would place letters to various destinations across the Sahara. Anyone setting out by caravan to Tripoli, for example, first had to see if there were any letters bound for that area. ‘If he do not look in box before he go, he make big mistake,’ Abd as Salam said. ‘He will be in big trouble with the people.’ The world’s first free market consisted of a square with mosques on two sides. Both the Bani Walid and Bani Wazit were at liberty to meet here and conduct business.

      Abd as Salam told us the removal of the town’s population from the Old City had started in 1972, when Gaddafi authorized the construction of new houses. We asked him about the solitary inhabitant of the ancient medina. One old lady, whose house we had seen, had refused to move. ‘She is still in love with her husband,’ he replied. ‘He died several years ago. She does not want to leave because it was his house and she has memories of him there.’ What of the rest of the medina, we wondered? ‘There will be big programme to increase tourists,’ he replied optimistically. ‘We will have fairs and festivals, new hotels, cafés, and handicraft shops. We will not forget Old Ghadames.’

      That evening, we revisited the camels, tried out the saddles, and packed up the bags ready for a morning start. At last we were ready to set off into the desert. ‘Really, I am happy now because you are leaving,’ boomed Mohammed, staring up at the evening sky with his lazy eye. ‘Believe me, before we had too much problems. Now you have camels, you have Abd al Wahab and you can go into the desert and we are all in good condition, alhamdulillah.’

      We returned to Othman’s house, made final preparations for the journey, and retired to sleep after thanking our host for all his kindness and hospitality. He had been good natured throughout our stay, despite the constant invasions of his house by parties of unknown Touareg men and daily interruptions from the high-spirited Mohammed Ali.

      This was our last night in civilization, and it was another freezing one, but neither Ned nor I really noticed it. Submerged under heavy blankets, my mind was racing, already dreaming of the desert and its open spaces, of unbroken horizons and long nights beneath the stars with our small caravan of five camels and Abd al Wahab. Tomorrow it would all begin.

       CHAPTER IV

       The Journey Begins

       The transition from camel to car is under way; it cannot be checked. But the passing of a romantic tradition is certainly sad. We can but console ourselves with the thought that it has all happened before – that Roman travellers must have felt the same sense of sacrilege when the hideous camel was introduced to penetrate the sanctity of mysterious desert fastnesses, destroying all the romance of donkey journeys.

      RALPH A. BAGNOLD, LIBYAN SANDS

      Though your mouth glows, and your skin is parched, yet you feel no languor, the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone, and your spirits become exuberant; your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you stir up all the energies of your soul – whether for exertion, danger or strife. Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded: the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of civilisation are left behind you in the city. Your senses are quickened: they require no stimulants but air and exercise … There is a keen enjoyment in mere animal existence. The sharp appetite disposes of the most indigestible food; the sand is softer than a bed of down, and the purity of the air suddenly puts to flight a dire cohort of diseases. Hence it is that both sexes, and every age, the most material as well as the most imaginative of minds, the tamest citizen, the parson, the old maid, the peaceful student, the spoiled child of civilisation, all feel their hearts dilate, and their pulses beat strong, as they look down from their dromedaries upon the glorious Desert. Where do we hear of a traveller being disappointed by it?

      SIR RICHARD BURTON, PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A PILGRIMAGE TO AL-MADINAH AND MECCAH

      We left Ghadames on 4 December, making our way through a series of farewells that began at the camel pen and carried on right into the desert. Looking less crafty than usual, Abd an Nibbi and his friend Billal came to wish us well, joined by Ibrahim and our host Othman. Mohammed Ali pulled up alongside in a minibus as we left the road.

      ‘Really, I am going to miss you, believe me,’ he bellowed across the plain. ‘I am too sorry you are leaving now but I am happy also because you are in good condition. You must be very careful now because the desert is too dangerous. Maybe I will come to see you after one week, inshallah.’

      One by one they left and the silence of the desert began to enfold us. It was a still day and the heat bore down on us steadily as we marched away from the diminishing smudge of green that was Ghadames. The noises of the town receded into nothing. None of us spoke. Only the rhythmic padding of the camels and our own footsteps broke the quiet. There was something mesmerizing about these first steps into the desert, a sense of wonder that increased as we left behind the familiar comforts of civilization.

      In front, the vastness of the Hamada al Hamra (Red Plain) unfurled before us. It was golden and supremely monotonous, stretching out as far as the eye could see and disrupted only at its extremities by the distant bosoms of hills, discernible as sloping summits floating above the ground, their bases lost to sight in the vaporous shimmering light that rolled over the horizon like a pool of mercury. It was impossible to estimate their distance from us on a plain like this. The light played too many tricks. They could have been three or four hours away or a whole day’s march. Even Abd al Wahab, a man who had grown up in the desert, confessed he did not know how far off they were.

      At last we were under way. The desert expedition, which I had longed to make for six years, was beginning. Behind us were all the delays, negotiations and hitches which had felt so interminable, although it had taken us only three days from our arrival in Ghadames to get started. By the standards of nine-teenth-century travellers in Libya, we had not tarried unduly. Ritchie had arrived in Tripoli in October 1818, joined by Lyon a month later. Beset by difficulties in arranging the expedition and receiving permission to visit the interior, they did not set off until the end of the following March. Their plans to reach the Niger from the north were subsequently ruined, first by the exhaustion of their limited funds and then, on 20 November 1819, by the pitiful death of Ritchie from bilious fever in Murzuk. Three decades later, Richardson, who had also intended to penetrate farther south, this time to Kano, found himself marooned in Ghadames for three months while waiting for a caravan to Ghat. There, in failing health and running out of medicines, he was forced to abort his plans to continue and diverted