my My Wandering

Communication with the people in Djanet was, as contradictory as that might appear (but only appear) scarce and flavourous at the same time, precise places or names were substituted by general, often literary descriptions, while what could and could not be done was rather vaguely defined at best (if not all the way ignored). Disregarding of the number of questions one had and wrote down in an e-mail as briefly, precisely and clearly as possible, only one question got an answer at a given time, while the rest, however urgent, were simply overlooked. But then, the missing precision and pragmatism were expectedly and generously balanced by the unmissable courtesy that often made up more than half an e-mail or phone call. And then, yes, what could have been sorted out in a couple of e-mails or a single straight-forward conversation eventually took a couple of months of going back and forth, even so leaving many blank spots that were to be sorted on the ground or simply dumped. And still, all communication carried on with infinite patience and granted one a rejuvenating humanity that would have been well worth the effort even if the trip had not succeed at all. A bird sings only one song at a given time. The bird is not multi-tasking, and thankfully so. And then, every few days, even when there was nothing to settle, an e-mail arrived: ‘Bonjour, ça va bien, la santé, votre père?’. No other question or reason. Nothing else to sort out. No necessities. No factual reason. And no need for a factual reason. Time is not money, tasks numb one’s senses and marathon runners lose from the very beginning.

A few years before I had gone to the Algerian Embassy on behalf of a friend of a friend, as, in the absence of a consulate in Skopje, Macedonians could not apply for a visa in nearby Sofia or Belgrade, for some peculiar reason (or maybe not so peculiar given the sometimes complicated relations between Balkan nations and their always great pastime obsessions) being assigned to the embassy in Bucharest. The courteous consul had received me in the grand chancellery hall at the embassy, where the rather scarce, but tasteful hardwood furniture and the airy early 20th century architecture of the elegant property hosting the embassy only emphasized the great chimney adorned with a fine pattern marble mosaic in the middle of which throned a large portrait of Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The same consul welcomed me this time, with the same balance between his impeccable posture, haircut, outfit and carefully chosen words, respectively his soft-spoken, kind and very patient approach. And when I mentioned an interest in the Kharijite history and the prolific Ibadi communities in and around Ghardaïa, he picked the visa application forms, supporting documents and passports, showed me to the door, and then pointed to the left instead of the right where the building entrance was:

‘Vous pouvez venir récupérer les passeports cet après-midi (they had initially mentioned a 21 day delay for the visa approval process). Mais maintenant venez avec moi, vous devez parler à mon collègue. Vous voyez, on a un Mozabite ici!’

A lengthy discussion followed, one where we passed from the meandering Ibadi history and the adjacent rich traditions to the architecture that had inspired Le Corbusier, all that while leafing through Manuelle Roche’s extraordinary 1973 book I had found in an antique bookstore and had meanwhile taken out of my backpack.

‘Oh, cet endroit, on y venait se jouer avec les copains de l’école, on a tant de souvenirs… mais ce bâtiment-ci n’existe plus, on a eu une émeute et il fut détruit… l’armée est arrivée un jour et…’.

We parted as he gave me a contact in Ghardaïa (one that would prove essential for our making it along the central route East of Béchar), while I promised I would give him Roche’s book when back home from Algeria. And then it all unfolded: someone knew someone else, that someone else directed us to someone else that would eventually help. Air Algérie flight tickets that could only be paid online with local cards (or that could be booked through third party websites, but that was out of the question) got paid with local cards, overnight train tickets that could only be booked in person were done this way, and that while expecting nothing in return as long as it was only a matter of time. Because time is not money. 

The wood-fed stove was like a magnet as we popped in the modest-looking kebab place while coming from the damp, rainy darkness in Arnavutköy, the once small and nondescript town out of any tourist route that had found itself in the middle of things with the opening of one of the world’s busiest airports. A rather small hardwood table with equally small chairs were drawn next to the stove and the whole place was soon filled with the grill smoke, which guaranteed our smelling like a couple of shepherds coming down the mountains at the end of the warm season, fact that would bring back succulent memories the following day, on the Algiers-bound flight. A flight where our own smell met that of road perspiration and the odd, enchanting incense fragrance coming form some of the many Hajj pilgrims returning from Mecca, whose modesty and silence were of welcome inspiration.

‘Les Arabes portent un burnous pendant dix ans. Nous sommes fiers et nous nous croyons très civilisés parce que nous portons six complets par année (consommation = fabrication = industrie = travail = taylorisme = commerce = concurrence = stérilité des efforts et suppression de la vie intérieure).’

The domino pieces started their typical scheme, with one falling and the others following suit one by one. Our flight was delayed while waiting for the incoming pilgrims’ flight from Jeddah, our luggage came out the last, the small amateur binoculars (I had bought it for Mohammed which had a big herd of camels to look after) was on the prohibited import item list so that formalities to have it stored until our leaving the country needed be done, the Algiers Airport exchange offices with their lousy rates were all deserted and the local ATMs with the same lousy rates expectedly refused dealing with international credit cards (they were notorious for that) except for one that only took a next to forgotten (and next to no fund) Visa card I had, but that granted us enough dinars and just the time to rush to the adjacent railway station and get tickets to Algiers, with the clerk there appeasing us:

’Soyez les bienvenus. Ça va? Bon, je vous fait les billets et j’appelle le conducteur, le train va vous attendre. Pas de hâte, c’est une si belle journée.’

On the Algiers-bound train we were awaken by what appeared to be the repetitive sound of a fusillade, as an army of poorly dressed children on both sides of the railway crossing a banlieue competed at throwing quite big stones at the train windows, which had the whole train car echo, to the amusement of an elegant lady sitting behind us:

‘Leur grand plaisir. Souvent le seul.’

I have never been particularly fond of what I call whipped cream or flamboyant chocolate cities. Paris. Cute little balconies endlessly repeating themselves both on the vertical and horizontal in an uninspired attempt to force life into – flowery, true – patterns of confinement. Grand avenues. Imposing this. Imposing that. Haussmann. Past the outskirts, Algiers talked of the same story, the result of a short-lived and eventually immensely bloody foreign rule; one found however joy and captivation while immersing in the casbah with its hidden jewels or while walking across the bustling area above Agha Station, off the market place, with the many merchants of everything, the plethora of restaurants tucked in the tiniest of spaces and savorously announced by one’s nostrils, as well as the symphony of lively sounds, shouts or calls there. 

We soon hopped on another train and enjoyed the more the dramatic scenery en route to Oran, with drier or greener hills running down to intensely worked fields and orange or olive tree orchards, with communities where many houses were unfinished, with poverty that struck from under a bridge or in a hamlet tucked in a deep ravine, with carefully irrigated fields, where the way pipelines ran to the very roots of cabbage reminded me of remote Muscat one torrid August day. I was munching on a hard, sugary ‘palmier’ and my father was deep into Mohammed Dib’s ‘Who Remembers the Sea’ (some Algerian authors had been translated in Romanian during the 1970s and 1980s given the fact that the country was a Democratic Republic the Communist Romanian regime considered kinship for), sometimes excitedly reciting the poems inserted in the novel, when a man sitting across the aisle, surrounded as he was by a few bags of groceries, made a gesture at me. I popped out the second ‘palmier’ and handed it over to him. He was not begging, he was just hungry, as he had probably been on the road to do all those shoppings, and he was not afraid or ashamed or a-anything to say it. Upon alighting, he placed his hand over his heart and uttered a short and unceremonious ‘shukran’. It was that simple, that natural. Afwan.

‘Au M’Zab, on fait son testament a douze ans, l’âge de la raison, l’âge où on commence à suivre le Carême. Homme ou femme, chacun a le droit et quasiment l’obligation morale de léguer aux pauvres un tiers de ses biens. Pas davantage sinon la famille sera lésée, et à son tour pauvre, devra accepter la charité d’autrui.’

Oran reminded one of parts of old Bogotá, with the vibrance of its youth plying those dark side streets bordered by picturesquely decaying grand properties, their peeling paint, crumbling plasterwork, dark hallways, rusty balconies and stained façades fitting the picture in a much better way than back in the time of their prime age. Small shops selling viennoiserie alternated with those with heaps of Oriental pastries in their window, respectively the no frill, tiny joints where a young man busied while frying donuts or baking spicy vegetables-stuffed chapatties. The air was filled with scents that often varied from one shop to the next, from one street corner to the next, while the highly contrasting atmosphere could not have been better emphasized than by those brand new, fancy tramways going up and down those streets. It would have sufficed to sit down on the stairs or lean against a wall like groups of local young men and take in the air, the fragrances, the street, the colours. Camus was said to have greatly disliked Oran, which he chose as a background for ‘La peste’, which commences with an anything but glorious reference to the city. And yet, his words in a letter written several years before publishing the novel stood out: ‘Pour le moment, je suis inactif dans la ville la plus indifférente du monde.’ A greater way of putting into words one’s love for a place is hardly conceivable.

The train South was packed. We were going by train as much Southwards as it was possible, i.e. for as long as the railway went, to Béchar.

‘L’Islam, c’est simple. Si simple comme ses 5 piliers.’

‘Certainement, seulement si on peut voir au-delà de soi. Bah bon, si on le veut aussi…’

‘Oui, seulement si on est ouvert à découvrir les choses telles qu’elles sont. […] Votre Jésus est notre Issa, notre Ibrahim est votre Abraham. En effet, tout ça, cette séparation entre ce qu’est le vôtre et ce qu’est le nôtre, ce n’est que de la démagogie. De la religion, peut-être, mais certainement pas de la foi.’

One of the men we were sharing the 6 bed berth with stood out, as if he was radiating an inner light. He was wearing a thick, woolen djellaba with a typically pointy hood, he had an equally pointy beard, short hair and a long face. His speaking almost in a whisper, his always next to no gesturing, as well as his carefully chosen words greatly fit his out of this world posture, even when he slept, his face always upwards and his still serenity about.

There was no ado as the train called at Béchar, fine dust running down its roof and doors. People left it with a murmur, those waiting met their relatives and friends with soft spoken greetings, there was no room here for shouts, cries, theatrical drama and extrovert orgasms. Upon alighting, we met Ahmed, the quiet, respectful and humble driver taking us to Ghardaïa, a man that had always made a ‘yes’ come forward even when my questions had followed a doubtful trajectory. After the de rigueur visit to the local gendarmerie office, a serious and imposing institution, we headed straight out of town and, soon after passing by the typically new dormitory quarter out of town, we soon dived in a sea of sand, barren plateaus, scarce shrub and cypresses, respectively rivers of stones glittering in the sun. Taghit and its ksar acted as a great wake up call, with the typically winding alleys stirring one’s imagination, while the eye could only be enchanted by the views to the point where sand dunes met the local palmeraie, respectively the mud brick or clay wall residences. But, not much later, it was the ksar (and not necessarily one Charles Foucauld’s legacy) in Béni Abbès, the tough reality behind its dark streets, short doors, mosque windows and hiding-prone dark corners, it was all these that moved one more than anything. 

Some hundreds of kilometers on, next to always at 120 kmph., we approached Timimoun with the sunset, just as the red dust created the typical, yet always surprising, glare in the dying sun rays, when men and buildings, sand dunes and rugged scenery, all are present in what we label as reality, just to transcend a moment later. A moment later when all daytime buzz typical to a relatively busy town came to an abrupt end, being replaced by the absolute silence that almost hurt one’s ears, so familiar from a previous trip way South, in Chad.

Some ksars around Timimoun shared the deep red colour of the old town there, while others, especially those off Aghled, had grey as the main colour, strikingly resembling in structure and even top of the wall V-shaped patterns the mountain villages off Al Baha in South-Western Saudi Arabia and Northern Yemen. An eerie, lonely and remote feeling was omnipresent around them, even where modern communities were located nearby. A few square meter grottoes or man hewn cavities dotted the the steep sandstone cliffs, while mud brick or stone walls with palm tree beam-supported flat roofs created similarly small dwellings where the slope allowed such rudimentary buildings to be erected. Narrow and steep alleys winding between them, sometimes half covered in sand, at other times with boulders or easy scrambling sections along the way. The odd hand print in a clay wall, the polished foothold imprinted in the sandstone after centuries where the inhabitants had walked up and down that way or pieces of broken black paint pottery scattered here and there talked of those that had lived, raised their children and eventually died there, being interred in graveyards marked by nothing else but a sea of standing stones located at 50-100 m. from the community itself. Often perched on seemingly impossibly steep slopes, set amid rugged cliffs or sitting on top of lonely mounds, the many ksars here talked of a life pattern keeping a humble balance with the harsh environment around, an environment that at its turn granted humans the little that kept them alive and going. And a life pattern that had mostly come to a sudden end in the first part of the 20th century. Man had evolved, he had traded humility, balance and roots for convenience, while only the wind granted many such places with buzz nowadays.

‘Je comprends qu’on veut avoir de l’électricité, du confort, qu’on prefère une maison durable, un accès facile. Mais renoncer à ses traditions et racines en déménageant et pourrissant dans une maison grise perdue dans les quartiers neuves et sans âme d’une ville convenable et seulement convenable, ça je ne peux, bon, je ne veux pas comprendre’, said Omar, our local connection before announcing with sincere, comradeship joy that Maurice (n. Maurice Freund) was relaunching the Djanet, Ghardaïa and Timimoun operations. Born in Béni Isguen down the M’Zab, having run a hostel in Tamanrasset for 7 years, having lived and played traditional music in Bamako for a couple of years, having escorted travelers across the Libyan, Malian, Nigerian and Mauritanian borders for years on end, Omar had little formal education, but an overwhelming share of factual experience, one of the free men that bore deep inside them an extraordinary sense of rooting in the ancestral values of his predecessors, a sense of ultimate respect and dignity. And any apparent contradiction about him was wiped out as soon as he started talking, his earnest, straight-forward and warm-hearted approach included: ‘J’ai vécu une vie vagabonde et je mourrai vagabond.’

The great sand dunes first spaced out and then vanished, making room for a pancake flat, barren scenery while the road seemed to go nowhere in the absence of any visible point of reference. Pyramid or trapezoid shaped hills then appeared at a distance and the road commenced to snake around or among them. More than once the distance between two communities along the road was of over 150 km. As the wind then picked up, waves of sand poured over the straight road, turning it white, as if there had been a winter blizzard beating against it. Gendarmerie checks got more thorough, while young men staffing the poor cafeterias at the odd inns by the road got ever friendlier, more polite and more courteous. As we approached El Goléa and its 10th – 11th century ksar located on top of the pyramidal, rocky hill, the land got greener – or simply green, with lines of cypresses planted around one’s property as a fence so as to stabilize the ground and allow various plantations in the area surrounded upon their growing.

M’Zab Valley welcomed visitors with a roar coming from its river bed. Yet there was no torrent running downstream, instead there were a few people driving their cars up and down the river bed. What had once been a dry valley hosting five towns now looked like a valley about to choke with ever more buildings, with wide avenues and new districts turning everything into a big melting pot. The Mozabites seemed to have a cheer ready for pretty much any situation, and all greeting and parting was always joined by one of their smiles, no ado, no scheme in mind, like the cook in a poor Ghardaïa restaurant that obliged to uncover all pots on the stove so that we could see what there was inside, and then approved every choice we made, completing everything with one contagious, lengthy laughter.

The main square in the old town of Ghardaïa had a chameleonic nature. At daytime it acted as the centerpiece of rug and souvenir merchants, as well as a busy transit point for customers and merchants en route to or from other market lanes around. As the 6 PM call to prayer had most merchants there call it a day and close their shops, the square was conquered by children playing football. But their reign did not last long as soon after nightfall they were gone and the now deserted place got a ghostly atmosphere, with late shoppers or merchants hurrying across it and the odd motorcycle sending flashes over the column way surrounding it.

‘Est-ce que vous avez des Euros à changer?’, asked the young man selling fruits up a lane off the square after our briefly chatting upon my buying some oranges.

Having spent almost an hour earlier that day walking from one bank to the other because those that used to do foreign exchange no longer did (just to eventually change at a black market rate with one of the bank clerks there, as the official rate was way lower), I realized that the Ibadite approach to things was not limited to architecture and function, these people were always ready with solutions for whatever life threw at them. As for the former, the ingenuity they built their towns, houses and lives upon, the beauty of simplicity they had turned into art, the ultimate balance they lived in and the strict rules they adhered to even as far as tourism was concerned, all these matters were simply impressive. Impressive way beyond the picturesqueness of the five towns down the M’Zab, whether this was about the impeccably white prayer grounds preceding mosques off Béni Isguen, the gracious, desert colour minarets in all five towns of which the one in Bou Noura was emphasized by the spatial setting or the light blue tomb of Sidi Aïssa in Melika. Through structures like these, complete with their simple and outstanding at the same time, skywards pointed extremities, as well as through their day-to-day life routine deriving from strict rules and a greatly balanced vision (such as the ‘work the first half of the day for yourself and your family, respectively the second half of the day for the community’ principle, which had nothing to do with the imbecile and imbecilizing Communist ideology), the Ibadite culture proved its extraordinary openness to the sacred. 

And then, when a day, a normal sightseeing day, turns into a succession of events talking of a bygone era humanity (in other continents and crumbling civilizations), one cannot just carry on untouched. While waiting for the 5 PM tourist office opening time (after the typical siesta for a country facing soaring temperatures and a blazing sun not only in summer) by the gate to the old ksar in Bou Noura, a man stopped and obliged to call the guide, then a second one stopped his car, talked to us for a while, then gave us a couple of packs of biscuits and a couple of oranges, not starting his engine again until we accepted to also try what he simply labeled as ‘Algerian perfume’. After nightfall, as we waved a taxi back to Ghardaïa, one stopped, but at the end the driver wanted no money because he was ‘going that way anyway’. And then, upon returning to the hotel room, the receptionist called to tell us there was someone waiting for us there: on the way back we had passed by a drugstore looking for some eye drops for my father; as they did not have exactly the formula prescribed by his doctor, we left, but the pharmacist there eventually found it after our going and, with the only information we had given him that we were coming from Romania, he jumped in his car, drove to our hotel which happened to be among the closest ones to the drug store and asked the receptionist about a couple of Romanians. 

From another point of view, the very fact that foreigners could not stay overnight inside and their very visiting the old ksars could only be done accompanied by a local guide, observing a set of strict common sense rules, showed the extent to which these people had thought of preserving their lifestyle, their true traditions and their faith. Because when old towns start looking similar in the name of tourists’ convenience, with cute, yet sterile little cafes, shaped up by whipped cream restoration projects and a mass tourism approach (where, if the maximum capacity for an old town is reached, the local authorities try to increase the said capacity, instead of limiting the number of visitors, instead of making sure the thriving number of visitors does not turn an old town in a strawberry flavour Disneyland where there no longer is any factual difference between the hyped, but ultimately dead old towns of Prague or Vienna which are nothing more than glitz open air malls). Because hospitality does not stand for bread and salt the way Romanians for instance pride themselves with. It instead stands for deeds, facts, openness, respect, humility. As my father put it while we were taking in M’Zab Valley after scrambling up a hillside off Béni Isguen one beautiful late afternoon: ‘these towns talk of Ibadites’ faith; everything else comes naturally once one has such powerful, sincere, true faith.’

‘Les hommes qui ont bâti il y a dix siècles ce monde jusqu’à ce jour préservé, étaient alors à la pointe du progrès. Le démarche d’esprit qui les conduisait était le fruit d’une culture profonde, d’une philosophie mesurée, d’une rigueur morale que nous pourrions leur envier. C’était un sommet de la civilisation d’avant le machinisme et l’on peut se demander si le ‘progrès’ a su apporter aux hommes que nous sommes le bonheur qu’ils lui demandaient. Au M’Zab il n’est peut-être pas question de bonheur, mais de vie, de travail, de nature souveraine et pourtant domptée, de sérénité et surtout de beauté. […] En arrivant là, les Ibadites n’avaient que leur culture et leurs mains nues. Pour eux, le désert était devenu un choix.’

Days passed and on the flight to Djanet a party of six French did not want to be parted according to their assigned seats, instead they sat together and, when the passengers allocated there showed up, chose to make a fuss, arguing the flight was long and they wanted to be together. It all started and ended with one word: capital T ‘They’. Bon sense, courtesy had been lost. The Western society ultimately lost the civilization it prides itself with the very moment it started working on force-imposed rules and façade, cardboard courtesy. At that point, a gap appeared between what man said or did, and what he actually thought or believed. When one needs be fined or fear being fined in order to stick to rules, when openness is replaced by plaisantries and comme il faut gestures alone, man is lost, doomed to live a miserable life pursuing wealth, fame, social status: pyramids to build and ladders to climb. But it all comes to an inevitable end when both accumulating things and getting higher up the social ladder lead nowhere in the absence of belief. The Mozabites we had met were not wealthy and neither did they believe that by helping strangers or simply being nice they would go to heavens. There was no rule, written or unwritten, saying they had to act one way or the other. They chose to do so out of belief. People greeted one another down the road, they picked the (very rare) piece of garbage down the alley in their old towns, there was no hotel in the old towns as there had never been, they needed no authority forcedly implementing laws (police or gendarmerie had no access or authority in their old towns which were ruled by a local council instead) and their mosques lacked any decoration, as people needed focus on prayer and meditation when there instead of being distracted. Meanwhile, the West (and not only) had fallen in its own trap, even though, true, a golden one, that of pyramids and ladders, that of flamboyant cathedrals and obedience to authority instead of faith in fellow beings as a means of relating to the sacred.

’Le nord du Niger? C’est mieux maintenant, ça ira peut-être prochainement…’, answered Mohammed, a tall, elderly man wearing a brown djellaba and a long, white shesh, as we finally met in Djanet after being in contact for years. The flight had been first rescheduled hours later due to aircraft availability issues, then further delayed with some more hours possibly for the same reason and eventually luggage took over an hour to be delivered in the small Djanet Airport, so that the introduction to the land of patience and slow pace living was properly made, while this piece of good news was welcome.

Spreading off a couple of old ksars overlooking an oasis that plied a long oued, Djanet was lively and colourful, yet, after going around town with errands several times, the time had come to set out and paid our respects to the ‘vache qui pleure’ that seemed about to step out of the monolith it had been engraved in while defying millennia. We then spent the night in a windy and cold oued, gathered around a hot coal-covered pit where a thick loaf of teghila was baking. This dense, hard crust, but extremely filling bread, one of the two basic sources of Touareg living (alongside the thick, strong and sweet chai) could not have contrasted more with the invasion of poor, tasteless and quick drying, then instantly crumbling baguette, a greatly unsuitable import (even as it was, a far cry from its French counterpart, but even the latter far from being an outstanding piece of bakery).

Shelters at the foot of wind-shaped rocks hosted many ancient paintings, most of them from the Bovidian period and a few from the Round Head Men period. Hunting or domestic scenes, depictions of what appeared to be deities, as well as wildlife and human figures abounded on the Jabbaren plateau, a labyrinth-like maze of couloirs, dry falls, cliffs, collapsed boulders and great falaises. And yet, out of the rich heritage where ochre prevailed, something else stood out. One of the ancient dwellers there had placed his hand on the rock and sprayed paint on it, hence achieving its contour. It was slightly bigger than a child’s hand, about half the size of mine. And yet, that was the signature of someone that knew not reading or writing, that knew not religion at the extreme ferocity it would reach during events such as the Crusades, that did not kill for pleasure, that had no plans to conquer the world or subdue remote communities in the name of ideology or ethnicity. 

We carried on exploring the plateau in the company of Henri Lhote’s account of his expedition in the tassili. An endeavour that was even more evocative for his team’s passion as it had taken place in 1956, at a time when Europe had just nearly self-destroyed itself twice, a time when the Soviets and their East European satellites were still killing and torturing millions of people (for instance political oppression theoretically ended in Romania with surviving political convicts’ release in 1964, yet de facto it carried on unabatedly until 1989), a time when the world seemed to have learnt nothing and not to give a damn about learning anything from its recent past (the war of independence in Algeria and the over 300,000 casualties inflicted by the French army shortly after Lhote’s expedition included). In this context, Lhote’s devotion was outstanding and one was deeply touched by just seeing the remnants of his team’s quarters – one meter tall stonewalls, a couple of beds equally made of stone, one for him and one for Djebrin, his Touareg companion, and a few other modest structures serving as kitchen or bathroom. In places like that one could not but realize how alienating guidebooks are while telling travelers where to turn right or left, but missing the enthousiasmos, that sense of being uplifted by the sacred in ancient Greek mythology, the vibrant passion of past and present generations, the true nature of a specific – or not necessarily specific for that matter – geographic place or the natural communication with those around. 

As we were about to start the descent along the couloir bordered by sandstone walls, filled with gravel and stones of all sorts and shapes, the Tamanrasset-born young man showing me the way stopped and uttered a couple of the very few words in French he knew:

‘Cinq minutes.’

He was obviously not tired, he did not want to use the green (well, rather grey in this case) door and it was not the prayer time. Instead, he just sat on a rock overlooking the couloir and the typically desolated oued below, a great beige-grey tongue stretching for many miles before it gradually dissipated in a sea of yellow sand dunes creating the horizon line. He kept on looking, his head steady, his eyes fixed, his body still, taking in the wind, the perfectly clear sky, the typically harsh sun and the absence of any sound save for that made by the wind.

The grand canopy of stars above our camp set in an amphiteatre-like cul-de-sac in Tikoubaouine came down on all sides with the cliffs all around us glittering in the twinkling light it provided. There was no sound, no noise around and only Mohammed’s low voice could be heard as he was saying his prayer that included short beautiful chanting stanzas. A sense of completeness prevailed over them rocks, sands, scarce vegetation and beings.

‘Bientôt vous êtes en ordre vous aussi, et également mortel, comme la fleur du jasmin tombée le matin tête en bas, fanée dans la journée, balayée et oubliée le soir, remplacée le lendemain. Les nuits du désert […], c’est à la fois le vertige, l’enchantement et la détente totale, l’équilibre.’

A 70 km. long maze of oueds, crests, cliffs, rock gendarmes and castle-like monoliths allowed the visitor to let his imagination loose while recalling childhood stories, with only the omnipresent sun and sometimes cool wind to remind him of the here and now. Like in a Middle Eastern souq, it was light rather than landscape that created reality, as it came in down deep canyons, peered in through cracks and holes or got filtered through the canopy of the scarce acacias.

‘La Mauritanie, certainement. Le Niger, peut-être. Le Mali, surtout pas, comme vous le savez’, said Mohammed with sadness, as he had married in Timbuktu and had run business there as well. My father asked what was the greatest problem in Mali nowadays.

‘On n’a pas seulement un problème là-bas et en dehors des multiples organisations et groupes combattantes il y a tel de monde qu’on pourrait y avoir un festival multi-ethnique: les Saoudites, plus récemment les Russes, puis bien sûr les Français…’, I started an answer.

‘Vous savez quel est le plus grand problème dans les pays du Sahara et du Sahel? C’est les Français. Et cela pas seulement maintenant’, came Mohammed’s answer delivering the crude truth in line with the lyrics of Amadou & Mariam’s ‘La réalité’.

‘Quand on saute d’un extrême à l’autre, il y a quelque chose qui ne marche pas, et il y en a des dizaines d’exemples en Afrique. Soit on a des hélicoptères atterrissant dans la cour du palais présidentiel à Bangui et arrêtant le dictateur pendant la nuit pour le remplacer avec un autre dictateur plus attentif avec les entreprises de l’Hexagone et généralement plus obéissant quelques mois plus tard. Soit, après 8 ans sans aucune finalité à Gao, on ramasse ses jouets et on fiche le camp tout en laissant la porte ouverte aux Russes avec leur idéologie staliniste et leur cruauté, ceux à qui on a enseigné le communisme après l’avoir forgé en 1789, puis défini son ‘humanitarisme’ avec la guillotine’, I could not keep myself from replying.

Even in such an amazing, beautiful place like this (or maybe especially here) reality was not shy and needed no introduction to step in.

A cold, yet nearly windless night later, Basjir, the 15 year old young man leading us deep in the Essendilène canyon to the small, yet cool guelta it ended with, took turns at playing with his hands as if changing gears, puffing from a strong cigarette and imitating different wildlife. All these were not children games however, as, apart from showing people around, he cooked and provided for his family, worked as a car engine mechanic and tended a dozen goats. Bordered by over 100 m. tall walls and cliffs sometimes defying gravity, the guelta, while definitely greater than the Guelta d’Archeï in Chad, lacked the small crocodiles in the latter: the last one had been killed by French soldiers to be stuffed and exhibited in an Algiers museum. To posterity, nothing but museums and pickle or preserve jars. 

Overlooking the paved road to Illizi, the plateau at Dider was crossed by oueds filled with light green-yellow grass enchantingly completing the setting made up by imposing reddish cliffs. As if the soft, warm colours had a say in this, the night was warmer despite the wind that took turns at sweeping the oued we set camp in, while making the fire sending sparkles up in the sky, blending with the stars above.

The large engravings on the extensive element-polished sandstone rock at Tin-Taghert depicted cattle, wildlife and a few human figures in a similar manner with the ‘vache qui pleure’ off Djanet, but some bore purely decorative patterns revealing an artistic expression and not only a mere reproduction of what their authors saw around them. 

A hard piste going over stonefields and across deep trenches delivered us to a perfectly flat, wide bottom oued bordered by the familiar beige cliffs made of the same sandstone sediment layers: the Erassin. The shelter at the bottom of the Northern cliffs hosted extremely well preserved paintings: the difficult access paid off. Among them, a few stood out: first, there were some where human figures bore a clear Egyptian influence, and then another one depicted a human figure driving a horse-pulled chariot. Henri Lhote’s conclusion that Hellenic people or rather a middle Mediterranean coast-based population bringing the Hellenic influence there seemed obvious by just looking at this ancient image. No matter how much one reads about something like this, it was that particular moment granting one a revelation where connections were mande and sense appeared in its most beautiful, pure manner.

Going out of the oued and carrying on towards the cliffs above the maze of couloirs North of it, we then reached a 2 meter tall, 2-3 meter wide and some 50 meter-long shelter at the foot of a great wall, where Touaregs had built 5-6 round, stone wall huts that used the bottom sediment layer as floor and the top one as roof, featuring very small entrances and even smaller windows further covered with perforated metal plates. A few scattered tea boxes still bearing the ‘Fabriqué en Chine – Tripoli – Libye’ text, a couple of goatskin water jugs, as well as other tools spread around and excellently preserved by the desert climate looked as if the people living there had just left, and yet they had done so many decades before.

Half a dozen round stone huts with pointed thatched roofs and small windows, each with a 20-30 square meter yard surrounded by a rough stone fence. Slightly above them on the slope, two fenced plots shared by baby goats and poultry; no other structures, as the nomad community changed location at least once a year. In between the huts, a couple of quiet little children playing in the dust. In the yard adjacent to one hut, the community elder, aged 79 and half paralyzed, lying on a blanket, looking at the strangers with curiosity, but still managing to put a smile on his wrinkled face. No electricity, no road, no grocery or other such luxury. The only thing that had changed in this place during the last generation was probably the water tank strategically placed between the huts. The sack of dates we had brought was received with a smile, no ado about. We were invited to share a bowl of rice with the head of the community and another man, a short, yet meaningful event confirming my conclusion that the poorest of people, those living in the toughest of conditions, are the most generous and kind humans around.

A phone rang and Ahaman asked Mohammed to pull over. He stepped out and carried on talking in a low voice, then returned and said something to his old friend Mohammed in an equally low, yet solemn voice. His mother had died. We all shook hands with him uttering a few words of sadness, then waited for his family to come pick him up and proceeded along our way. Everyone was silent in the car and only the wind getting in through the open windows had its say, as if joining the engine in chanting. Eternity had merged in with present reality to become one. A while later, as the dry, wide oued suddenly gave way to a big oasis changing the colour of the dead, dry scenery, the silence ended with Mohammed’s words: ‘C’est joli le paysage, n’est-ce pas?’. We were back in the world of the living, selfishly and kicking.

The Ihrir guelta was actually a rather lengthy river of beautiful green water flowing lazily, creating fine pools and giving birth to quite lush vegetation along its way, with palm trees and reed omnipresent. The only humans seeming to hurry in Ihrir were the visitors that wanted to carry on or had a schedule to stick to. Even local children moved unnaturally slowly for their age, while half a dozen ladies in the local artefact market dozed and invited strangers to do the same. Several young men played football barefoot, but even that game was quiet, lacking any shouting and even the running being rather slow-paced. The oasis had its own living, its own pace, it was well aware that the abundance of water could very well be an illusion, that life is a matter of here and now, but even so, it should not be used in excess. And indeed, half a day’s walk downstream, the valley opened up at Idaren, a captivating spot where the right bank was dotted with stone huts, some in use, most in ruins, with the verdant area sticking to the valley bottom, while the slopes shared the same grey-brown colour all around.

‘L’oasis répond: „Je limiterai tous mes travaux a ceux qui me font passer du dénuement (le désert, pays illimité de la faim et de la soif) à la splendeur, de la souffrance et de l’angoisse au bien-être, de la terreur à la quiétude, du vide au plein, du désert à l’oasis.” ‘

On to Tassit, a plateau with a thousand huge cliffs and rocks looking as if dropped there from the sky, the night was windy and noisy, just to turn entirely quiet at a certain point, with only some first remote and then not so remote jackals’ howling as background. While wandering through the already familiar maze of cliffs, couloirs and open areas filled with sand, around a great rock we popped into a couple of large canvas tents, with a few small children shyly, but not typically (for their age) curiously or joyfully showing up and looking at us with a blend of surprise and fear in their eyes. Theirs were eyes that knew not giggling, playing and laughter, as each of the little nomads had a job to do: some were collecting dry shrubs for the fire, while others were tending to the donkeys or goats. There had been a while since I had last seen that cold, dark fear in a child’s eyes, and it took me a second or two to get my act together and look elsewhere, then to move on to the beautiful lowlands of Tassit, with its seas on golden sand, great portals, mysterious grottoes and massive towers or monoliths.

Half, if not most village, made up of similar government-built single floor, square concrete houses with blind walls or obstructed windows, with a small yard on one side surrounded by a tall concrete wall. Inside the sandy yard, a square tent that blended in traditional and contemporary materials: reed, rugs, plastic sheets, cement sacks, rope and plastic wires, with woolen rugs on the sandy ground and two mats on the sides, a short table with a teapot and glasses in a corner, a prayer rug in another corner. Inside the house, a large communion room with divans on all sides, a TV set mounted on a wall, the receiver stuck on one side, an air conditioning machine on the other, carpets covering the floor. A bedroom, with two mats on the sides and a prayer rug in one corner, with carpets covering the floor. A bathroom. A kitchen. Tired walls, with peeling paint, stains and cracks. No furniture anywhere, no decoration save for a few handfuls of majolica sprayed on the walls. No pictures on the walls. No souvenirs of some bygone period of time, no dreams or prospects for some glorious future. No past to rely on and no living in the past as the prevailing national psyche in countries like, among others, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Greece or Russia goes, with their weeping for a certain ‘great’ period of time, even if that actually meant two decades for Romania, a still celebrated Middle Age defeat for Serbia, two great, but long gone empires for Bulgaria and a nation of obedient savages defying evolution for Russia. No careers to build and no living in the future as the Western approach goes, with countless nations to tick. Instead, beyond what appeared in the first place to be striking poverty (even though those living there were not poor by local standards), a pregnant sense of the present, not of today, but of this very moment. A sense of living life for its immaterial nature, of valuing time and humanity rather than objects and lifeless items. Ahaman’s father’s house. Following his mother’s death, she had been buried the previous day and now all family had congregated at her relatives in another part of Bordj Haouas, so that he invited us spend the night there en route to Djanet. I tried to decline, but the way he insisted would have made our refusing look more like of an offense, while our accepting appeared to bring a sort of relief at a grieving time in a place where human touch, community and sharing are respected, sacred values.

That night, before I fell asleep, a soft noise came from a corner and then a white mouse crossed the dark room at a steady, unhurried pace. The dawn was hours away and even so a prospect, a mere possibility with no guarantee that it would actually come, and yet it suddenly seemed as if there had been broad daylight and the room had been endowed with big windows to let the strong and harsh life-giving sun rays in, while the white mouse could only be a harbinger of the Infinite Grace in a place of apparent poverty, but in fact of immense richness.