“R’Orab” would be the only camel in the world capable of carrying him back to his camp, even on the darkest of nights.
Sometimes, overcome with tiredness and lulled by the animal’s swaying gait, he would arrive at the entrance to his tent fast asleep on its back and his family would take him down and put him into bed.
The “French” were convinced that these camels were stupid, cruel and vindictive creatures that only responded to shouting and whipping. A real Imohag knew that a good desert camel, particularly the pure-blooded mehari, that was well cared for and well trained, could be as intelligent and faithful as a dog, but a thousand times more useful in that land of sand and wind.
The French would treat the camels in the same way throughout the different seasons of the year, without understanding that in the rutting season these creatures became irritable and dangerous, especially if the heat intensified with the east winds. This was one reason the French had never made good horseman in the desert and why they had never managed to conquer the Tuareg, who, back in the days of battle and unrest, had always managed to defeat them, despite their larger numbers and more sophisticated weaponry.
The French came to dominate the oases and the wells, and these scarce water sources became their strongholds, which they barricaded in with canons and machine guns, forcing the free and indomitable horsemen, the sons of the wind, to surrender to the enemy they had faced since the beginning of time:
Thirst.
But the French were not proud of having conquered the veil people, because in reality they had not conquered them through open warfare. Neither their black Senegalese men, nor their lorries or tanks were of much use to them in a desert that was still dominated by the Tuaregs and their meharis, from one end of it to the other.
The Tuareg were few and far between, while the soldiers marched in from the cities or the colonies like clouds of locusts, until eventually the day came when neither a camel, man, woman or child could drink in the Sahara without permission from the French first.
So, the Imohag, tired of watching their families dying, laid down their arms and from that point in history they became a people condemned to oblivion; a “nation” that no longer had any reason to exist since the very essence of their existence - war and freedom - had all but disappeared.
There remained some families here and there, like Gazel’s family, lost in the desert’s confines, but they were no longer made up of proud, tall, warriors, but men that raged internally in the knowledge that they would never be the feared veil people, masters of the sword or spear again.
The Imohag, however, were still masters of the desert, from the hamada to the erg and up in the high, wind-battered mountains, since the real desert was not made up of the wells found scattered through it, but of the thousands of square kilometres that surrounded them. The French had never dared venture too far away from these water sources, nor did the Senegalese Askaris. Even the Bedouins, who despite their keen knowledge of the sands and stony plains, tended to follow the established routes and moved from one well to another, from village to village, fearful of the large and unknown territories that lay on either side of them.
Only the Tuaregs and more specifically the solitary Tuaregs were fearless enough to take on the “lost lands”, which were nothing more than a white smudge on the map. They were places where the intense heat of midday would make your blood boil and where not even the hardiest of shrubs grew. Migratory birds even avoided those lands by flying around them, even if it meant adding thousands of kilometres on to their journeys.
Gazel had only crossed that smudge, the so-called “lost land”, twice in his life. The first time as a challenge, when he had wanted to prove that he was a true descendent of the legendary Turki, and the second time, as a man, when he had wanted to prove to himself that he was still made of the same stuff as the Gazel who had risked his life as a young boy.
Gazel was strangely drawn to that inferno of sun and heat, to that desolate and maddening furnace. It was a fascination that had started one night, many years previously when, sitting by the fireside, he had first heard the story of the “great caravan” and its seven hundred men and two thousand camels that were swallowed up by a “white smudge” and never seen again.
It had been on its way to Gao in Tripolo and was considered one of the best caravans ever to have been organised by the rich Haussa merchants, guided by men with the highest knowledge of the desert. It carried with it, on the backs of carefully chosen meharis, a veritable fortune in marble, ebony, gold and precious stones.
One of Gazel’s distant grandfathers, who was also his namesake, had been in charge of guarding the caravan’s merchandise, and he too, along with all his men had disappeared forever, as if they had never existed, as if it had all been just a dream.
Many men had since set off on many a mad adventure since, in search of clues and in the vain hope that they might recover some of the immense riches that it had been carrying when it disappeared. According to the unwritten law, the person who managed to outwit the sand and discover its hidden treasures would be their rightful owner. But the sand hides its secrets well. Sand alone is capable of swallowing entire cities, fortresses, oases, men and camels in one swift, unexpected and violent gulp. With the help of its ally, the wind, a storm of sand could be whipped up enough to turn anyone unlucky enough to be travelling upon it, into just another dune, amongst the millions of other dunes that stretched endlessly through the erg territories.
Nobody knew how many people had lost their lives in search of that lost and legendary caravan and the old men never tired of begging the young not be so foolish as to go in search of it themselves:
‘What the desert claims for itself belongs to the desert,’ they would say. ‘May Allah save those that try to claim it back.’
Gazel only wanted to uncover the mystery that surrounded it and the reason why so many beasts and so many men had just disappeared without trace. It was only when he had found himself in the heart of a “lost land” that he had finally understood. In fact, it had made him realise how easy it would be, not just for seven hundred men, but for seven million human beings to disappear into that flat abyss and how surprising it was that anyone, no matter whom, ever came out alive.
Gazel came out alive. But there were not many Imohags like Gazel and so the veil people respected the solitary man, “the ‘Hunter,” inmouchar, who ruled over territories that no one else would have ever dared to claim dominion over.
They turned up outside his jaima one morning. The old man was on the brink of death and the young boy, who had carried him on his shoulders for the last two days, only managed to stutter a few words before passing out.
He gave orders for the best tent to be prepared for them and instructed his slaves and children to look after them day and night in what became, against all logic, a desperate battle to keep the two visitors alive.
It was a miracle that they had survived at all, not being from any one of the desert tribes and travelling without camels, water or guides. It was especially surprising since they had been caught in the heavy and dense sirocco wind that had whipped across the desert in the days prior to their arrival.
They had been, from what he could understand, wandering aimlessly for about a week between the dunes and stony plains, but he still did not know where they had come from, who they were, or where they were headed. It was as if they had arrived on one of those shooting stars. Gazel visited them morning and night, intrigued by their appearance, which suggested that they were city men, their clothes being quite inadequate for the desert and the incomprehensible phrases that they uttered in their dreams. Theirs was an Arabic that was so pure and educated that the Targui could barely discern a word of
