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Sun, Salt, and Caravans: The Nomadic Tuareg of Algiers
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12491 |
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Culture
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7 / 1987 |
4,717 Words |
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Gert Muller
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Innsbruck, the alpine-encircled capital of the Austrian state of Tirol, is welcoming an exotic visitor. Hadji Abderahman, a man of the Tuareg people, is on another European vacation and is stopping over to see his Austrian friends. In a brilliant blue gandoura (Bedouin robe), with a snow-white turban on his head, the tall, dark-skinned man steps off the express train. He strolls easily through the crowd, to the wonder of passersby, just as though he were walking alone through the desert. The summer heat seems to please him. In the summer months in his hometown of I-n-Salah, Algiers, the thermometer climbs to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.
Hadji Abderahman is probably the only Targi (singular of Tuareg) who travels to Europe. Most of his brothers barely cross the border of the desert. They never leave their homeland. Hadji is a rare exception, a Targi with wanderlust. He can afford it, for he is a successful son of the desert. In I-n-Salah, the former slave and caravan center in the middle of the Sahara, he owns a restaurant that is a favorite stop for locals and Sahara travelers alike. Hadji Abderahman is an exceptional host, one who knows not only how to put good food and drink on the table but also how to greet his guests with real warmth. He has many friends, even in Europe, whom he visits from time to time.
Abderahman travels light, eats in moderation, abstains from alcohol and nicotine like a good Muslim, and is a modest and considerate guest. Not everything he sees in Europe pleases him. He notes with critical astonishment the hectic pace and the waste prevalent in the industrial nations. He feels most comfortable in the Alpine countries, where there is still a certain leisureliness and human contact, and where--most importantly--he enjoys fresh drinking water from the mountain springs. A glass of fresh water is his favorite drink, and the sight of a bubbling waterfall can entice him into ecstasy. The homeland of the Tuareg is vast and beautiful. But one thing is missing--water!
The World of the Tuareg
I-n-Salah lies in the blazing hot, sandy depression of Tidikelt, the crossroads of the old caravan routes leading from Libya to Mauritania and from the oases in the north to the Niger. The oasis city with its red clay brick houses belongs to the great south of Algeria and is surrounded by sandy mountains. A palm forest and modest gardens provide the required fruit and vegetables. The city is the northernmost outpost of the Tuareg. In earlier times, the "knights of the desert" only rarely ventured over the Plateau of Tademait to the north of the city, that great stony highland of nearly forty thousand square miles, exposed to the storms and the glare of the sun. Their world is the central Sahara and the southern edge of the great desert.
This desert world has a thousand faces. Only someone who has wandered through it personally can describe it accurately.
The desert can be as cold as it is hot, as threatening as it is lovely, as varied as it is monotonous. But it is always full of surprises. It is flat and mountainous, strewn with pebbles, slabs, and round stones--ocher, red, purple, turquoise, gray, brown, and black. Mountains shaped like semicircles, pyramids, cones, or the roofs of temples tower over plains as large as an average-sized country. There is no shape which cannot be found among the mountains
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