Justin Marozzi - South from Barbary - Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara

The Touareg’s use of the veil has also baffled scholars for years. The confusion stems from the curious anomaly that the classical authors never referred to the veil when writing about the ancestors of the Touareg. It has to wait until the Arab writers for recognition. ‘They that will seeme to be accounted of the better sort, couer their heads … with a peece of blacke cloth,’ wrote Leo, ‘part whereof, like a vizard or maske, reacheth downe ouer their faces, couering all their countenance except their eies; and this is their daily kinde of attire.’

Sociologists and historians have agonized over its significance. If, for example, it is simply to protect against the sun, why is it then that only the men wear the tagilmus and Touareg women remain unveiled? Whatever the answer, the veil has remained a defining, some would say romanticizing, symbol of the Touareg. ‘Almost all Tuareg, unless they have become denationalised, would as soon walk unveiled as an Englishman would walk down Bond Street with his trousers falling down,’ observed Francis Rodd, author of People of the Veil , the seminal study of the Touareg, in 1926. The slit left for the eyes and part of the nose was no wider than an inch, Rodd observed, and sometimes less. To judge by Abd al Wahab, such strict sartorial standards have slipped somewhat and it is no longer the heinous offence it once was for a Touareg to let another man see his mouth. The Touareg used to lift up the lower part of the veil to eat but would cover their mouth with their hand as they did so. Abd al Wahab, a gentle and well-mannered man in his early forties, was not so prudish.

We had walked for three or four hours on our first day when Abd al Wahab suggested we stop for lunch. Here, in a small patch of pasturage, we received our first ominous insight into what a camel trek involved. All five camels first had to be couched and unloaded, a slow and awkward process for the inexperienced. To prevent them escaping, they then had to be hobbled. To us, this looked a formidably difficult and dangerous undertaking. With one hand holding the head-rope, Abd al Wahab crouched down alongside the two colossal forelegs and plaited an already doubled length of rope about a foot and a half long around the ankles. A large knot in one end fitted neatly through a loop at the other, and the hobble was complete. He then loosened the knot that kept the mouth-rope firmly attached, the camel happily lowering his head to help get rid of this undignified halter. With a firm slap on the rump the animal was encouraged to go off to feed, a stimulus that was rarely necessary. He was already making a beeline for the nearest morsel of unappetizing-looking scrub. Trailing thick twines of frothy saliva, the head-rope was thrown to the ground and the whole process repeated on the next camel. Hobbling the camels enabled them to move about grazing without, in theory, wandering too far. The scope for disaster – such as a swift hoof in the head – seemed huge. Not the least of the difficulties was getting the camel to stand still while the hobble was tied. Every time Ned or I approached one, he would shy away with a flustered flick of the head. Abd al Wahab would not let us attempt it for now. ‘The camels do not know you yet and they are frightened,’ he said. ‘They have to become familiar with you first. You must wait for a few days.’

The sun was fierce and the shade elusive as we fell upon our first lunch of tuna fish sandwiches. I watched the camels receding in the distance, moving ever onwards to the next patch of food. I began to think we had bought fine specimens, for in no way were they ugly animals, as many people suppose camels to be. Perhaps ours was an unusually vain caravan, but together they formed an extremely handsome group. When not hobbled they walked proudly with carefully placed steps, always minutely aware of the slightest obstruction on the ground. Even the darkest and least elegant of the five had a certain dignity of bearing. His svelte, confidently planted legs suggested a long-legged Frenchwoman striding prettily into a brasserie. In due time he would be christened Gobber, due to his habit of spraying anything or anyone around him with generous quantities of saliva.

The hobble reduced the camels to an amusingly inelegant gait. Unable to stretch out their forelegs to anything like their full extent, they shuffled forward instead with tiny steps, an awkward mince that was an absurd contrast to the great length of their limbs. When they wanted to cover ground more quickly while hobbled – whether from fear or having spotted food – they lurched forward with both forelegs together in a rude canter. Their lower lips fell down and quivered each time their padded hoofs landed with a jolt.

By the time we were ready to move on again, lunch had lasted more than two hours. This was far too long. Travelling by camel was already a slow business without holding it up further. We came to the reluctant conclusion that having a lunch stop and covering a respectable distance in a day were mutually exclusive. Having seen us fumble around uselessly while attempting to repack and load the baggage on to the camels, Abd al Wahab, who was never a great eater anyway, thought the same, and we never unloaded the camels again for a lunch break.

The absence of this midday meal was the ‘first inconvenience’ suffered by Frederick Horneman, the explorer who in 1796 was commissioned by the African Society to explore the continent from Cairo. He had had a difficult start to his expedition. The French fleet had landed at the coast and the invasion of Egypt was under way. Initially imprisoned, he was later presented to Napoleon himself, who offered the traveller his protection for the onward journey. ‘Young, robust, and, in point of constitution and health, suited to a struggle with different climates and fatigues,’ Horneman nevertheless was a man who liked his food. ‘We had travelled from day-break till noon, and no indication appeared of halt or refreshment,’ he groaned, ‘when I observed the principal and richest merchants gnawing a dry biscuit and some onions, as they went on; and was then, for the first time, informed, that it was not customary to unload the camels for regular repast, or to stop during the day-time, but in cases of urgent necessity.’

Our first and last lunch break ended as soon as Abd al Wahab had retrieved the camels, who had wandered off several hundred yards. A camel is an intelligent and stubborn animal. He understands life is more comfortable without a heavy load on his back so can hardly be blamed for trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the deposited baggage whenever the occasion presents itself. Besides, there is always the siren call to freedom across the desert. It has always been like this. Richardson’s camels were no different. ‘The camels are terrible things for straying,’ he complained. ‘If they are surrounded with immense patches of the most choice herbage, even which is their delicium, they still keep on straying the more of it over miles and miles.’ In this respect, Gobber was the worst culprit. Whatever time of day we stopped, he would always make a doomed bid for freedom, invariably heading for his beloved Ghadames with unerring accuracy. The other four, buoyed by his confident departure for better things, would soon follow his lead. Sometimes they would wander maddeningly far.

The first week passed in an aching, weary blur. A little dazed and more often than not exhausted, I did not manage to keep a diary. Part of the problem was a lack of fitness. I had never walked more than twenty miles a day, day in, day out and now wished I had paid a little more attention to Asher’s exhortations on pre-departure fitness. It was also a question of acclimatization, learning the routine of desert travel – the early nights and the waking at dawn – and becoming used to the meagre quantities of food, which seemed to consist almost entirely of tuna fish in various guises. We existed in a condition of permanent ravenousness. By the end of each day bones were groaning, stomachs were rumbling and feet were in shock. There never seemed to be a free moment. We were either walking or riding, cooking or washing up, packing or unpacking the camels, hobbling the camels one minute, rounding them up and removing the hobbles the next, adjusting loads or repairing saddles. The only time when there was nothing to do we slept.