South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara. Justin Marozzi
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It was too much money, certainly. Our problem was that Abu Amama was not even particularly keen on selling the camels. He would have preferred to hire them to us, he had said before, since if he sold them he would then have to make a long journey south to Niger to replace them. Meharis were relatively rare in Libya, he had explained, freely admitting that this was why they were so expensive. More importantly, if we were determined, as we were, to buy our camels here, we had little alternative, and everyone in Ghadames knew it.
‘What do you think are our options?’ Ned went on.
Short of having a look for camels down in Ghat or, less practically, Kufra (a little under 900 miles away as the crow flies, much more by road), there appeared to be no alternative. Besides, we would lose valuable time leaving Ghadames and would still have to pay the transportation costs to bring the camels back to our starting-point. I didn’t think there was much we could do but pay the exorbitant sum demanded.
‘You know what Anthony Cazalet would say in this sort of situation?’ Ned said.
‘Something about being bloody cold no doubt.’
‘No, he’d say it’s time to throw money at the problem.’
It was. There seemed nothing else for it. We returned to our lodgings and, after holding off an attempt by Abd an Nibbi to dispute the black market exchange rate, handed over several thousand dollars. Everyone was smiles. The transaction was complete. The camels were ours. Now we needed a guide. The next morning Mohammed Ali arrived with a message from Ibrahim saying one had been found. ‘You see, Mr Justin, really we are in good condition. I tell you Ibrahim help with everything, alhamdulillah.’
Things were looking up. We trooped back into the hole in the wall to find a fat man with two lazy eyes waiting for us. With him and Mohammed Ali in one room, it was almost impossible to know who was speaking to whom. He shook hands without warmth and was introduced to us as Mohammed Ramadan from Awbari. There was something unpleasant about his manner. He did not seem at all interested in getting to know the people with whom he was volunteering to travel several hundred miles across the Sahara. This was a simple business transaction, no more, no less. In a bullying tone, he told us he knew the area between Ghadames and Idri intimately and was ready to go with us. We started to discuss the route in more detail and asked him how he travelled in the desert. Things went rapidly downhill from there and his manner became ever more aggressive and confrontational. He would only travel by camel if we had a car as back-up, he insisted. It would carry food and water supplies for us and the camels. Each day his sidekick would drive ahead of us for thirty miles or so and in the evening we would rejoin the car for dinner. Mohammed Ali looked embarrassed. He knew this was not what we wanted to do.
Having talked over the route together and ascertained there were several wells en route to Idri, we asked Mohammed Ramadan why he needed a car. We were happy to go without one. It seemed an unnecessary, profoundly unromantic and expensive means of travel. He took this as an attack on his desert skills and pounded his fist on the table.
‘The journey is very difficult and dangerous,’ he insisted. ‘There is no food or water for the camels for many days.’
‘But you’ve just said there are several wells along the route, so how can it be so dangerous?’ I asked.
‘I go with a car or I don’t go at all,’ he spluttered aggressively. He banged the table with his fist again and his pudgy face wobbled with the impact.
I thought of Michael Asher’s notes again.
Choosing a guide or companion is very much more difficult than choosing a camel. As the Arabs say, ‘you cannot know a man until you have been in the desert with him’ … Many who present themselves as desert guides may have only a rudimentary knowledge of camels. Even those who are official desert guides may have become so used to travelling in motor vehicles that they have grown lax. Do not fall for the ‘Wise old Arab’ syndrome.
A heated exchange followed between Ibrahim and Mohammed Ramadan about taking the car. The latter repeated his conditions, pounding the table at intervals to drive home his point. The meeting was over. This was not the man we wanted to travel in the desert with and it appeared the feeling was mutual.
‘So much for that,’ I said to Ned as we returned in low spirits to Othman’s house.
‘Look on the bright side. He was too fat for the job,’ came the phlegmatic reply. Never one to moan about our bad luck, Ned was adept at making light of such failures.
Mohammed, too, had his own style. ‘Really, I am sorry for you,’ he mourned sympathetically. ‘Now we are in bad condition. I am embarrassed about this, really I feel shy.’
I asked him if he knew anyone else in Ghadames who might agree to come with us.
‘Really, I don’t know, Mr Justin, because you are the first to do this,’ he replied sombrely. ‘Oh my God, you like camels too much. Other people go by car. But I am also wanting you to go by camel now. Maybe tomorrow we will find good guide for you, inshallah (God willing).’ From the tone of his voice, it was clear he thought our chances of success extremely limited. And then, in a gesture that took both Ned and me by surprise, he suddenly raised his hands to the heavens in the most theatrical supplication to the Almighty. ‘Please God, help us so they can do the journey without a car!’ he implored. Would He listen?
The next day, Ibrahim confessed he no longer held out great hopes of finding another guide prepared to travel from Ghadames to Idri by camel. He had lost the urge, never very great in the first place, to look for one. Mohammed Ali, a more enterprising character altogether, said he would talk to some of the people from the Mehari Club. Buying camels in one of the ancient centres of the caravan trade had been difficult but manageable. We now wondered whether finding a guide prepared to exchange the comforts of travel by Toyota Landcruiser for the hardships of a camel trek would prove too much in late-twentieth-century Ghadames.
While we waited to hear the results of Mohammed’s efforts, we visited the museum, a very basic series of rooms in the old fort containing traditional Ghadamsi costumes, utensils, folkloric medicines, a Touareg tent and the usual Gaddafi propaganda. In one room lay a few stones with barely legible Roman inscriptions. In another was a rope above a sign saying ‘It used for climbing tree’ and a photograph of a man delicately balanced with a rope tied around his waist and the date palm, resting his feet on the trunk. Mohammed Ali’s uncle had fallen to his death several years ago while collecting dates from a tree. The museum did not do justice to Ghadames’ past, but after those of Tripoli, Leptis and Sabratha there was something to be said for brevity. A tour took about ten minutes.
Outside Ibrahim’s office, an elderly Land Rover with two gerbas (waterskins) attached to the wings had arrived. Two languid Frenchmen came to say hello. They were looking for another vehicle with which to make a convoy down to Ghat. We said we could not help, but there seemed to be a fair amount of tourist traffic heading that way if they waited around. Moments later, a monstrous Mercedes Unimog desert vehicle pulled in. Emblazoned on the sides in lurid colours was a romanticized desert scene and the hideous caption ETHNOGRAPHISCHE EXPEDITIONEN. Its German occupants spilled out. They too were en route to Ghat. ‘Ja, ve make documentary about ze Touareg und little bit about ze Sahara,’ they told us. Ned and I retired to one side. The Frenchmen, whose faces had fallen when they saw this brute of a vehicle arrive, approached the Germans reluctantly. It was obvious they would rather not have gone with them but had no alternative. We British sat apart from the Continental throng. ‘A microcosm of Europe,’ said Ned.
Mohammed reappeared later that afternoon in a state of excitement.