In his five crossings of
the Sahara, Sidi Hamet had never seen worse
conditions. Forty days out of Wednoon,
the sand had turned as fine as house dust
and as hot as coals of fire. With their
heavy loads, the camels labored up shifting
dunes in spine-buckling bursts, then stumbled
down the other side. With each step, the
dromedaries thrust in to their knees, their
wide, padded feet, designed by Allah to
skim over sand, sinking like stones.
Despite his experience on
the desert, Hamet had had no say in choosing
this, the most direct route to Tombuctoo,
about twelve-hundred miles in all, one
that would take many months to travel.
Having dropped south from Wednoon, then
east around the AntiAtlas Mountains in
six days, the caravan of a thousand men
had halted on the edge of the desert, collecting
many tons of the date-size argan fruit.
The men had extracted oil from the argan
pits to fortify their food. They had roasted
the meat of the pits, rolled it into balls,
and packed these in tent-cloth sacks to
serve as camel fodder and fuel for their
fires. After ten days of preparations,
the caravan headed southeast, navigating
the trackless waste by moon, sun, and stars.
Hamet and his younger brother Seid, merchants
from the north, near the city of Morocco,
had only ten camels. Eight were their own
and were richly loaded. The other two belonged
to Hamet's father-in- law, Sheik Ali, and
they carried barley. There were four thousand
other camels in the caravan, many of them
milk camels to feed the men en route and
four hundred to bear the provisions and
water. About half belonged to a powerful
warlord who was a friend of the caravan's
chief, Sidi Ishrel.
Like all successful caravan drivers, Ishrel
was tough but just. Imposing and erect
of bearing, the Arab leader had flashing
eyes beneath an ample turban and a thick
beard to his chest. He wore a long white
haik of good cloth, befitting his status,
drawn tight around his body and crisscrossed
by red belts carrying his essentials: a
large powder horn, flints, a leather pouch
with musket balls, and his scabbard with
a broad and burnished scimitar. He carried
his musket night and day, always prepared
for a sudden attack from the wild bedouins
of the desert. His constant nemeses, however,
were the terrain and the sun.
For six days, Ishrel's caravan
weltered in the deep drifts, the cameleers
alternately singing to their camels and
goading them with clubs, constantly dashing
on foot here and there to square the loads.
They gave violent shoves to bulges in woven
sacks and tugged on ropes with the full
weight of their bodies. For all their efforts,
uneven loads were inevitable, causing strains
to the camels' joints and bones. It did
not take long for an inattentive master
to lame a camel, and a lame camel was a
dead camel, a communal feast. In that way,
Allah provided for them all. It was his
will, and there was no compensation for
the camel's owner in this world. “We
only feed you for Allah's sake," says
the Quran. "We desire from you neither
reward nor thanks.”
On the seventh day, the irifi roared in
from the southeast, and the sand swirled.
Sidi Ishrel ordered the camels to be unloaded
and camp made. In a hurry, the Arabs stacked
their goods-iron, lumber, amber, shotguns,
knives, scimitars, bundles of haiks, white
cloth and blue cloth, blocks of salt, sacks
of tobacco and spices - in a great pile.
They circled up the camels and made them
lie down.
All around them the sand blew so hard
that the men could not open their eyes,
and if they did, they could not see their
companions or their camels even if they
were nearly touching them. It was all they
could do to breathe. Lying on their stomachs,
Hamet and Seid inhaled through the sheshes
wrapped around their heads and across their
faces, which they pressed into the sand.
They did not fear much for their camels,
which have their own defenses: deep-set,
hirsute ears and long eyelashes that protect
against flying grit, collapsible nostrils
that add moisture to the searing air they
breathe, and eyes with lids so thin that
they can close them during a sandstorm
and still see. They did not worry about
them overheating either, for camels have
a unique ability to absorb heat in their
bodies while their brains remain insulated
and stable. They conserve their body water
by not sweating or panting, instead retaining
the heat during the day and releasing it
later. On bitterly cold nights, their owners
often took refuge in their warmth. As all
good cameleers knew, these prized beasts
were as impervious to the abuse of the
desert as it was possible to be, and they
were as long-lived as they were ornery,
some reaching half a century in age. Many
would outlive their masters.
During the long hours of howling wind,
Hamet recalled his reluctance to join Ishrel's
caravan. After he had returned to Wednoon
from a previous Tombuctoo caravan, which
had lasted eighteen moons, his father-in-law
had punished him severely for not bringing
him a suitable return on the goods he had
sent. The caravan, nearly as large as this
one, had traveled south on a western route,
near the sea, where the poor coastal tribes
were too weak to attack them. They had
fed, watered, and rested the camels before
leaving the north. Only three hundred camels
of the three thousand died of thirst and
fatigue on the journey, but Hamet and Seid
lost two of their four. They returned with
two slaves, gold dust worth six camels,
and jewelry for their wives. Hamet's father-in-law,
Sheik Ali, had demanded both slaves as
part of his share. When Hamet refused,
Ali destroyed his home and took back his
wife along with their children.
Hamet had then fled back to his tribal
home near Morocco, a depressed city still
feeling the devastation of the Great Plague
of 1800. He had sworn off the risky life
of a caravan merchant and had begun accumulating
livestock. A year later, Ali returned his
family to him, but Hamet stayed in the
north. Then, after another two years, a
friend who had been with them on the caravan
persuaded the two brothers to try again.
Time had washed away the memory of the
cuffing sands and the sting of Ali's unjust
demand and swift reprisal.
Drawn by an unnameable urge to return
to the desert and counting on better luck
this time, Seid and Hamet had sold their
cattle and sheep, bought merchandise to
trade, and joined this caravan.
And now this. For two days,
sand filled their long-sleeved, hooded
wool djellabas and formed piles on their
backs until they shifted to ease the weight.
Hamet and Seid and the rest of the traders
and cameleers beseeched, “Great and merciful
Allah, spare our lives!”
When the wind at last halted and the sand
fell to the ground, three hundred men lay
dead on the desert. Hamet and Seid, who
were strong, rose and joined the rest of
the survivors in prayers of thanksgiving
to Allah for saving them. They spent two
more days burying the dead men, always
on their sides, facing east toward Mecca,
and topping their graves with thorny brush
to keep the jackals away. All but two hundred
of the camels had been spared. As the men
dug them out, the beasts rose, grunting
and snapping madly, weak-kneed, snorting
out the beetlelike parasites that grew
in their nostrils. There were no plants
for the camels to eat where they had stopped,
so the men watered and fed them from the
dwindling provisions.
For twenty-four more days they racked
through deep, hot sand. To keep the camels
from flagging under their loads, they gradually
dumped tons of the salt they carried for
trading. Although they encountered no more
sandstorms, they found little forage for
the suffering camels, whose humps grew
flaccid and sagged. Before they had even
reached Haherah, a celebrated watering
place perhaps two-thirds of the way to
Tombuctoo, they had lost three hundred
more camels.
As they neared the oasis, those who had
been there before described its verdure
and big wells to those who had not. From
the lush oasis they would, replenished,
continue on to Tombuctoo and its great
riches. They would return to the north
with elephants' tusks, gold dust and jewelry,
gum senegal, ostrich feathers, and many
slaves. A fine male slave could be bought
for a two-dollar haik and sold back home
for a hundred dollars. Yet now thirst coursed
so deeply through their veins that greed
for Tombuctoo's treasures no longer motivated
them. They dreamed not of gold dust but
only of purging their cracked throats of
dust. To encourage them, Sidi Ishrel let
it be known that they would rest the caravan
there for twenty days.
When they arrived in Haherah, the news
spread like flying sand to the back of
the caravan, reaching many of the men before
they had even set foot in the much-anticipated
valley: There had been no rain in over
a year. Haherah's famous wells were dry.
The cameleers panicked. For many, like
Hamet and Seid, the camels and goods with
them represented their whole fortune, all
they possessed for the future support of
their wives and children. The caravan disintegrated
as men abandoned their stations and set
out on their own, frantically scouring
the brown valley for water.
After two fruitless days of searching,
they realized that such an effort was hopeless.
The despondent men made their way back
to the caravan, where Sidi Ishrel marshaled
them together in teams to remove sand and
stones from the old dry wells and mine
them deeper. For five days, the teams dug
in unison but still found no water. Sidi
Ishrel concluded that they had no hope
of salvaging the caravan. They could only
try to save themselves, so he ordered all
but three hundred of the best camels to
be slaughtered. They would drink their
blood and the fluid stored in their rumens,
and they would eat and dry as much of the
meat as they needed.
Though aggrieved at what his losses would
be, Hamet believed that this was, truthfully,
their only choice. Thirty elders selected
the camels to be spared, and the slaughter
of the rest began. In the heat of the moment,
with blood spilling from bellowing beasts
and swirling dung dust burning the men's
eyes, coating their tongues, and inflaming
their minds, they began to quarrel. At
first they only brandished their scimitars
threateningly, but it was as if death must
beget death. Once the crescent-shaped blades
clashed, friends joined friends. There
was no escaping the feverish battle that
resulted. It engulfed the men like a fire
sucking in oxygen, leaping from one pocket
to the next. Some maimed and killed to
slake their helpless frustration; others
fought back in self-defense. Seid was stabbed
in the arm with a dagger and badly wounded.
In their fury, some of the men murdered
Sidi Ishrel. More than two hundred others
died that day. The survivors drank their
blood and butchered five hundred camels
for their fluid.
Early that evening, in the exhaustion
and despair after the bloodbath, Hamet
decided to gather his friends and leave
Haherah on his own. He had been made a
captain in his previous caravan and knew
how to navigate the desert. He and his
wounded brother spread the word among their
allies to quietly prepare to depart that
night. Hamet and Seid killed four of their
six remaining camels and fed their blood
and water to the two strongest. Hamet packed
as much of their barley and merchandise
as they could reasonably carry, for they
could not arrive at Tombuctoo empty-handed.
Around midnight, Hamet led thirty men
and thirty-two camels silently out of the
valley into the inky, cloud-dark night.
The plain roared with Allah's thunder as
they went, but no rain fell.
North of the Niger River in the land Seid
and Hamet called Soudan (now Mali), the
merchants of Tombuctoo searched the horizon
anxiously for the season's caravan. The
famous walled city brimmed with fresh stores
of gold and slaves to be exchanged for
the goods they coveted from the far side
of the great void. Once a seasonal camp
of the central-Saharan Tuareg nomads, Tombuctoo
had risen to prominence in the fourteenth
century as the continent's chief marketplace
and a locus of African Islam, with learned
men and fine books. But its riches also
made it a target, and it was sacked by
Moroccan invaders in ????, precipitating
a slow but steady decline. Nonetheless,
two centuries later, the caravans still
came and were sometimes even larger than
the one Hamet and Seid had set out in.
When the brothers' small company finally
limped into Tombuctoo, a total of twenty-one
men and twelve camels had survived. They
were weary, starving, broke, and alone.
No one from their once mighty caravan had
preceded them and no one followed.
It was a land of much hardship, and there
was little remorse to spare for lost foreigners
and even less sympathy for those who had
had the fortune to be spared by Allah.
The king of Tombuctoo conscripted Hamet,
Seid, and ten of their companions and dispatched
them in a caravan into the interior. They
worked for nearly a year, each earning
two haiks and some gold, and then joined
a caravan of merchants from Algiers, Tunis,
Tripoli, and Fez, returning to the north
with turbans, ivory, gum, gold, and two
thousand slaves.
On the deep desert, a large party of Tuareg,
the Sahara's most feared raiders, armed
with muskets, spears, and scimitars, had
lain waiting for them for months. They
attacked quietly at night, holding their
fire until the last minute and then pouring
a furious storm of musket balls into the
circled-up caravan. Hamet took one in the
thigh. One of the Tuareg stabbed Seid in
the chest with a dagger. The caravaneers
fought for their lives. The raiders killed
230 men and wounded many more before being
repulsed, but both brothers survived. Seid
assuaged his anger by helping himself to
one dead raider's fine musket.
Two years after they had set out in Sidi
Ishrel's grand caravan, Hamet and Seid
returned to Wednoon with one camel and
a trifling amount of merchandise. Sheik
Ali had once again failed to profit. This
time, he cast Hamet and his brother out
onto the Sahara with bundles of haiks and
blue cloth to trade with the fierce Kabyles,
the desert tribes who raised and raided
for camels, hunted ostrich, and on occasion
salvaged shipwrecks. Ali had instructed
the brothers to trade for ostrich feathers
to sell in Swearah or Morocco.
Hamet and Seid wandered south some three
hundred miles. One sweltering late-September
afternoon in 1815, they spied a cluster
of worn-out tents and decided to seek shelter
from the sun. They rode into the camp,
where to their surprise, they discovered
among some Arab women two Christian sailors.
One of them was the captain of a merchant
ship that had wrecked on the shores of
Cape Bojador.
Through his deference to them and his
overriding concern for his men, the captain
quickly demonstrated that he was a brave
and worthy man, no matter how diminished
by the Sahara. He approached them with
a proposition: He would pay them many pieces
of silver if they would render him and
his crew, who were scattered nearby among
the nomads, a service. But, the brothers
knew, the service was as risky as a donkey's
trek through a lion's den. It would require
that they invest all their goods and then
travel across hundreds of miles of hammada,
dunes, and Atlas foothills. The sailors,
frail from thirst, starved, and flayed
by the sun, might all die or be stolen
before they could be ransomed.
Most of all, Hamet and Seid worried about
being cheated in the end. Could they trust
a kelb en-Nasrani-a Christian dog? Did
they dare risk disappointing Sheik Ali
again?
Sidi Hamet prayed to Allah for guidance.
