cruel land, without doubt, but Gazel could not imagine living anywhere else. He would never have swapped the thirst, the heat and the cold of his inhospitable land without frontiers, for the comforts and limitations of other worlds without horizons. During his daily prayers, with his face turned east to Mecca, he would always give thanks to Allah for allowing him to live there and for belonging to the blessed race of the veil, spear and sword men.
As he slept he yearned for Laila and when he awoke the hard body of the woman that had pushed against him in his sleep, became nothing more than the soft sand that now slipped through his fingers.
The wind cried out at the hunting hour.
He looked up at the stars to gauge how long it would be before the light erased them from the firmament. He called out to the night and his mehari, who was drinking from the damp bushes, answered him with a soft bellow. He saddled up and set off once again and by mid afternoon he could just make out in the distance, five dark smudges on the stony plains. It was Mubarrak-ben-Sad’s settlement, the Imohag of the spear people, the man who had shown the soldiers the way to his jaima.
He said his prayers and then sat down on a smooth rock in order to think through the events that had altered his destiny so cruelly. As he sat there, lost in his black thoughts, he realised that this was the last night of his life that he would sleep in peace.
The following dawn he would be forced to open the lid on the elgebira of wars, on revenge and hate, and no one could say how much violence it would unleash or how many deaths might follow on from this one act of revenge.
He also tried to understand what on earth had prompted Mubarrak to break with the most sacred of Targui traditions, but he could not. He was a desert guide, a good guide without doubt, but a Targui guide was only supposed to guide caravans, track down prey, or aid the French on their strange expeditions in search of their ancestors’ relics. A Targui never had the right, under any circumstances, to enter another Imohag’s territory without permission and even less so when he was guiding foreigners, who were themselves ignorant of these ancient traditions.
On that same dawn, when Mubarrak-ben-Sad opened his eyes, a shiver ran down his back as the terror that had consumed him in his sleep now troubled him at the waking hour and he instinctively turned his face towards the entrance of his sheriba, fearful of, but almost resigned to what he would see there.
His fears were confirmed as standing there, some thirty meters away, gripping the hilt of his long takuba that he had thrust into the ground, was Gazel Sayah, noble inmouchar of the Kel-Talgimus, waiting for him, ready to call him to account for his actions.
He picked up his sword and moved forward slowly, proud and dignified, stopping some five paces away from Gazel.
‘Metulem, metulem,’ he said, using their preferred form greeting.
He did not receive an answer and neither had he expected one.
He did, however, expect the to hear the question:
‘Why did you do it?’
‘The captain of the military outpost at Adoras made me.’
‘Nobody can make a Targui do something against his wishes.’
‘I’ve been working for them for three years now. I could not say no. I am the government’s official guide.’
‘You swore, as I did, never to work for the French.’
‘The French have gone. We are a free country now.’
For the second time in the space of a few days he was hearing the same thing and it suddenly dawned on him that neither the official nor the soldiers had been wearing the colonial uniforms they had previously so despised.
None of them had been European and none of them had spoken with the strong accent he had been used to hearing and their vehicles had not displayed the perennial tricolor flag either.
‘The French always respected our traditions,’ he said. ‘Why are they not being respected now, if, moreover, we are free?’
Mubarrak shrugged his shoulders.
‘Times have changed…’ he said.
‘Not for me,’ came his reply. ‘Only when the desert becomes an oasis, the water runs freely through the wadis and the rain falls as often as we need it to, will the Tuaregs change their customs. Never before.’
Mubarrak kept his calm as he asked:
‘Do you mean to say that you have come here to kill me?’
‘I am here for that reason.’
Mubarrak nodded silently, in quiet acceptance of his answer, then glanced around him at the damp earth and the tiny acheb shoots that were already pushing their way up between the rocks and the pebbles.
‘The rain was beautiful,’ he said.
‘Very beautiful.’
‘Soon the plains will be covered with flowers and only one of us will be around to see them.’
‘You should have thought about that before bringing those strangers to my settlement.’
Under his veil, a faint smile played at the corners of Mubarrak’s lips:
‘It had not rained then,’ he replied and then very slowly he took his tabuka out, freeing the metal blade from its embossed leather sheath.
‘I pray that this act does not unleash a war between our tribes,’ he said. ‘We alone must pay for our mistakes.’
‘So be it,’ Gazel replied solemnly, then crouched down as if ready to receive the first charge.
But it took a while before either of them made a move, because neither Gazel nor Mubarrak were warriors of the sword or spear any longer, but gunmen. The long tabukas were rarely used in battle any more, but brought out during ceremonies or festivals for dramatic effect rather than to draw blood. During these festivities the noise of the swords smacking against the leather shield and the dodges and feints were just theatrical moves as opposed to genuine acts of combat.
But this time round there were no shields or spectators to admire their twists and turns and the flashing blades were not for the benefit of an audience. On this occasion the opponent was brandishing his sword with the intent to kill, before being killed himself.
How to block a blow without a shield?
How to recover a position having fallen backwards or slipped up, when your rival was waiting to pounce?
They studied each other, trying to work out what each other’s intentions were, circling each other, one after the other slowly. Men, women and children had started to come out of their jaimas to observe them in silence and dismay, hardly daring to believe that what they saw was for real and not just a theatrical display.
Mubarrak finally made the first move but it was more to test the water, to see whether this really was about a fight to the death.
The answer made him jump backwards as the blade of his furious enemy missed him by only a few centimetres and his blood turned cold. Gazel Sayah, inmouchar of the terrible Kel-Talgimus,
