Between Stones and Skies in the Libyan Desert

By Brigitte Paturzo

Until the recent outbreak of civil war in Libya, it was still possible to explore the fabled lands of the mysterious Blue Men, in the vast wastes of the country’s south west where travel by camel is still the optimum mode. Brigitte Paturzo organised many of the trips undertaken by the few intrepid Europeans who made the attempt, several expeditions having to be curtailed due to the unforeseen hindrances which are run into in such adventures. Here she relates her dealings with her favourite camel handlers and guides and describes the beautiful wadis, the long dried up rivers which meander across the landscape, through which they trek, and the rock art created millennia ago. Between stones and skies in the Libyan Desert is a little window open onto a world which shall doubtless remain closed to foreigners and indeed the majority of Libyans for the foreseeable future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brigitte Paturzo
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311973238

Brigitte Paturzo

Every winter for almost twenty years, Brigitte has traveled riding her camel through the Sahara of southeast Algeria and southwest Libya. She has learned Arabic, and Tamahaq, the Tuareg language. Her passion for both cultures comes from her childhood in Algiers.The desert inspires her. It is very present in her book “Between stones and skies in the Libyan Desert”, as in her stories for children, in which she relates the adventures of a young camel, Couscous, and which are illustrated with her own gouaches.Brigitte lives and works in Nice, France.

Book preview

Summer 1989

I am looking at an atlas to try to find a country that will tempt me for my holidays because I have not travelled for a long time. But nothing attracts me. Nice, France, between the sea and the mountains, seems sufficient for me. However, when I unfold the three pages of the Sahara, I feel a strange emotion, similar to fear, my heart beats with no reason, and all comes back to me.

Algiers, 1961. I am ten years old. One evening, still sitting at the table, the adults talk to each other, and their conversation sounds like a tale: The lords of the desert are tall, slender, covered with indigo veils that dye their skin blue. We call them the Blue Men. Their silhouette is dark, and we only see their eyes. They live in impregnable mountains, in the heart of the Sahara where none dare venture, where there are no borders. They enjoy poetry, songs, love and war. They make raids on their white camels, with swords and spears, and slip away like the wind. We never catch them.

So, that evening, I learn that in the south of my country, Algeria, in the sand of the Ahaggar Mountains, live those we call the Tuareg. An unknown world appears in my imagination, in the heart of the desert, made of mountains with nocturnal colours, lit by the moon and brushed by the wind, a world where men have blue skin. They sing poems and can handle the sword as well as the spear. They ride big white camels. In their mountains, no one can catch them. In their labyrinth of stones, no one can walk in, without risking being lost forever. They are the Lords of the Desert. I am captivated. The personages of this tale really exist, and I already dream of approaching them. Like in the fairytale of Donkey Skin, I would have dresses the colour of the weather, of the moon, of the sun. And like Peter Pan, I would fly on the wind, on my tall white camel. However, their world seems inaccessible to me, and their mystery impenetrable.

In June 1962, suddenly, I discover with heart-wrenching fear that Algerian Independence is going to be proclaimed at the beginning of July. We have to leave Algeria quickly, abandoning our houses and our dreams. The boat, taking us away, is full of people crying. In a few days, thousands of repatriates arrive in France, our homeland that most of us do not know yet, creating a sudden intrusion in the country. Here, nobody knows the French people from Algeria, the Black-Feet as we are called, and therefore, obviously, nobody knows anything about the Tuareg. Even at home, nobody talks about the desert anymore, and the tale is buried in my memory.

This day of summer 1989, I can’t close the atlas anymore. I am transfixed. The huge yellow patch of the Sahara brings me back to my childhood dreams, and I feel the same desire as in the past, with the same fear, to approach the Lords of the Desert. Two months later, I book a camel ride to the Ahaggar Mountains with a travel agency specialised in the Algerian desert. I finally leave in February 1990, with something very similar to a dreadful stage fright.

Technical organisation of my trips

When I am back at the end of February 1990, some luck helps me start a training course in a travel agency, at the end of which I am hired in the department in charge of groups travelling all over the world. I am going to work there fifteen years, and it will help me.

In December 1991, I book another camel ride, again through a travel agency because I don’t know how to organise my trips alone. And I go back to the Ahaggar Mountains.

In the spring of 1992, I am invited for dinner at a friend’s house who receives a Tuareg he has met in an oasis of southeast Algeria. I am thinking of my next winter holidays, because this Tuareg knows an old guide who lives in a tent in the desert. He offers to lead me to him and start a camel ride from wadi Iskaouen to erg Tifernine. I travel with a friend in November 1992 to the north of the Tassili n’Ajjer.

One month later, the manager of a travel agency in Metlili, southwest Algeria, invites my manager to go and visit his country. I get the authorisation to replace him, and I leave in January 1993 to The Great Western Erg, a huge sand sea, alone with three Cha’anba, nomads of this part of the Sahara. Unfortunately, I don’t understand their language.

I can’t go back to Algeria anymore, because of the civil war. So I go and visit southern Morocco in November 1993, and I take two friends with me. I have more experience in my work, and with a correspondent based in Morocco, I can make a trip by camel from Zagora to Mhamid and back, with a Berber guide. I explain to him that I have learned Tamahaq, one of the Tuareg languages, and I can verify with him what I read through books. The language of the Tuareg looks a lot like the language of Berbers, the original people of North Africa.

A travel agency from Tozeur invites me to visit the south of Tunisia, and I leave in February 1995 with six friends. Unfortunately again, the Bedouins don’t speak Tamahaq.

In October 1996, the manager of a travel agency from Tripoli sends me his programs of the Libyan Desert. The country is under an international embargo, but as I know there are some Tuareg in the southwest, I leave in November, with two friends.

Since that moment, I organise my winter holidays with the help of an agency based in Tripoli, which has a correspondent in Serdeles, in the southwest, because it would be difficult for me to communicate from France with my guides who don’t have a phone. I always take a few friends with me, except in 2008 where I go alone. During each trip through the desert, my Tuareg guide tells me the course we can take the following year. A few months later, I give my dates to the agency in Tripoli, which gives them to Serdeles, and everything is ready when I arrive, transfers for the round trip, and guides with their camels waiting for me in the desert. This way, I don’t waste time in a lot of formalities, either crossing the country, or with on-site organisation.

Tamahaq and Tifinar

From that day of summer 1989, I start gathering words in Tamahaq found in books, and I write them in a little notebook, but I don’t have much command of verbs. During my initial travel, in February 1990, I need many days before I can say a few words like imnas, ateï, or timse, camels, tea, or fire. The word tazidert, patience, is one of the first words I learn. The first time I say it to a Tuareg, he does not understand anything. Then he changes his mind and repeats, insisting on the tonic accent: Taaazidert.

For my second trip, in December 1991, I know more words, thanks to the Elementary Textbook of Tuareg Conversation by Lieutenant Barthé (1961) that the tour leader of my last trip has copied and sent me. My private Saharan library is growing with old books. My vocabulary is getting more and more important, albeit very slowly.

The Textbook of Barthé teaches me a lot, but I would like to find a real grammar book. I write to Mr. Salem Chaker of INALCO, the French National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations in Paris. On his advice, in January 1992, I start working on the Tuareg Texts in Prose of Father Charles de Foucauld, and I go to find the grammar book of Brother Jean-Marie Cortade in the holdings of the IREMAM, the French Institute of Arabic and Muslim World Research, in Aix-en-Provence, but we can only consult on-site. A woman employed there, understanding my disappointment not to be allowed to borrow the grammar book of Cortade, lets me take it out for two hours in order to copy it down the street, which I do right away. In February 1992, I exchange a few letters with Brother Jean-Marie Cortade before going to see him in May, at the brotherhood Charles de Foucauld in La Thoberte near Marseille. This meeting is important for me. He is the link with Charles de Foucauld because he lived for many years in his hermitage in the Hoggar Mountains, in the far south of Algeria. We talk a long time, while walking through a forest and eating at the brotherhood with one of the monks.

My reading subjects at that moment always have the same theme, the Sahara with the Moors, the Cha’anba and the Tuareg. My preference is for the Tuareg Texts in Prose of Charles de Foucauld that I work on each day. I start a second notebook reserved for verbs I find difficult.

In April 1996, a bookseller from Paris, to whom I left my address during a trip in Paris in spring 1991, finally sends me the Dictionary Tuareg-French in four volumes of Father Charles de Foucauld, who finished it just before being killed in his fort in Tamanrasset on the 1st of December 1916. For some economic reasons, this huge work could not be published before 1950. I think about the twelve years he spent there, gathering the words and writing them. The two thousand pages, finely and legibly written by hand, then photographed and printed on the Alfa paper of Algeria, contain all sorts of information on Tuareg life, and many drawings with high precision. This brings tears to my eyes. First, I spend a lot of time finding the words, written in phonetics and classified by roots. Then, I start learning the tifinar writing (also written tifinagh where gh transcribes the guttural sound), noted in front of each word.

Finally, in 2002, I discover Letters to the Marabout, published by Lionel Galand. It is a real working tool for me, who wants to write the language. These letters written in tifinar, that Father Charles de Foucauld received from his Tuareg friends during his stay in the Hoggar, are photographed, and translated in phonetics and in French. I work on the writing seriously, many hours a day. I can write a letter to my guide Azhar, but I will know, one year later, that he did not understand all of it because he does not know tifinar very well.

My sentences in this language remain simple, but I can express myself easily on many subjects important in the desert. One night, I even have a dream where I am speaking Tamahaq fluently.

*°*

Map of Libya

Map of south of Serdeles

Map of north of Serdeles

We shall not go to Mathendous

November 1996

Saturday

Libya has been under international embargo since 1992, and foreign planes can’t land in Tripoli. That’s why Moktar waits for me at the airport of Djerba in Tunisia. He is the manager of a travel agency in Tripoli, and has sent me his brochure a month earlier. He welcomes me with a board, on which he has written Princess Brigitte. He probably hopes I will bring back many people with me next time, because tourists are few in his Libya. Nevertheless, I don’t want to share my passion with my clients back home. This year, I have come with a friend, Henri, who had already travelled with me to Morocco and Tunisia. He came with Sandrine, his new girl friend whom I do not know yet.

Omar drives us in a Peugeot through Djerba, a big island joined to the continent by a road built on the lagoon by the Romans. We are going to this place that is almost terra incognita. I can hear the narratives of the 19th century resounding in me. We are finally travelling to the mythic Libya. A fast jeep with a siren sound and a blue light turning on the roof passes us, followed by a long white car driven by a friend of Moktar. They make a sign to each other. It’s quite incredible, because he is the driver of a son of the Libyan President Gaddafi. We can’t see the passengers behind their curtains. They must have landed in Djerba like us, and are coming back home. In our Peugeot, there is a big silence as we reflect on this coincidence, and our surprise doesn’t stop there. A line of speedy cars now passes us. I am impressed to be so close to these personalities, all hidden by their curtains. Behind us, there is another jeep, also with a flashing blue light on the roof, but it doesn’t want to pass. Mouktar screams to Omar to go faster and to stay in the long line of cars since the last jeep doesn’t want to pass us, and Omar, paralysed, still slows down. But the jeep does not want to join the convoy. The friend of Mouktar probably phoned the driver, and asked him to keep us with them. I am sure they are escorting us and saluting our bravery in travelling in a Libya under embargo, banished by the international community and ignored by the travel agencies. We laugh and joke, delighted. Omar accelerates and catches up to the convoy of cars, followed by the last jeep stuck behind us.

This road is amazing. Everything seems orchestrated to let our mad rush go. During the full one hundred and fifty kilometres, everybody parks on the side of the road, and the eight military checkpoints, which inspect the cars all along, don’t want to stop us. Omar slows down in front of each stop sign, but Mouktar, a bit upset, tells him not to look at them and to follow the others at the same speed. This waterfront road, crossing towns, villages and farms, is full of trucks, mini-vans, taxis, and motorbikes sometimes transporting three persons, carts and mules, donkeys and donkey-drivers, women and students walking along the asphalt. The first jeep cuts through the disorder. The convoy follows, and we drive in their slip stream with the last jeep still stuck behind us. Everybody deviates from his path and looks at us. Mouktar says it will take us one hour to arrive at the border. I am so happy! Even though travel agencies don’t propose this country where no foreign planes land anymore, while my boss said I was crazy to choose this destination, I arrive under high protection! At the border, we leave the convoy voluntarily to proceed with the custom formalities, while the official cars continue without stopping. I thought there would be only a few cars at the border, but even at night, we find vehicles in four long lines. We stop at a sentry box, at a hangar with civil policemen, to be searched, at a bureau for the passports, and at another sentry box. Omar takes care of all the formalities, and we leave. We have a hundred seventy kilometres left to go until Tripoli.

Before the border, Henri complained he was itching. Now, he is scratching his belly, his neck, his arms, and behind his ears. As we can’t see anything in the car, I take my flashlight to inspect him. He is covered with red patches on his back, and when I light his face, his neck is swollen under his ears. It’s really alarming. There is a pharmacy on the road to Tripoli. We are very lucky because it is not closed yet, and the pharmacist is enjoying a visit from a dermatologist friend. Henri shows them his skin, and they give him a shot. With Sandrine, we prefer to wait for him outside. We even think it’s the end of our trip. We were so happy with this first adventure on the road, and now our camel ride is compromised! I already imagine we shall have to renounce this country that has always been an enigma to me. When we enter Tripoli, his skin recovers its natural colour. The pharmacist and the dermatologist have understood he has had a violent allergy to antibiotics he has taken for a few days to cure bronchitis. Henri doesn’t seem very perturbed and keeps his big, usual smile.

Tripoli, which looks like Algiers in some places, is a living town. Women are walking dressed like they want, alone or with men. Omar drives us to a restaurant. Mouktar, in a hurry, presents us to Aymen, our tour leader waiting for us, and wishes us a good camel ride through the south before going back with Omar. Then, we eat our first Libyan couscous. Aymen speaks French very well. He is not tall, quite stocky and almost bald, with small lively eyes and a big forehead. His face is marked by the wrinkles of his forties that he seems to have lived twice. He shows us pictures of the Akakus Mountains where we are going to travel. We can see beautiful rocks in the sand, and a few 4X4s doing some pirouettes in the dunes. He says that by camel, we can’t go very fast, and a car will allow us to see more landscapes. I wonder why he tries to justify the use of cars when he knows we are going to ride camels. Henri and Sandrine seem very interested by the words Aymen says, but I turn a deaf ear. For me, the desert on a camel is slower, more silent, more mysterious, cleaner, and without the usual mechanical problems.

Omar comes back in the Peugeot to bring us to the hotel el Mehari, the Camel. I could not have felt better about this choice. I would not have liked to sleep at the Paris-Dakar or the Raid 4X4 hotels.

Sunday

Today, we have nine hundred and fifty kilometres to travel to Tkerkiba in the south. Tripoli is busy when we leave it, with intense traffic. Some women drive, veiled or not, some groups of Blacks, young and old, are standing along the road in the cold morning. Aymen explains that they wait for hoping that some employer’s truck drivers will offer them a work. They wait here without knowing if a truck is coming to take them or not. Aymen says that there is always someone who needs someone, that there is no unemployment in Libya and work for everybody. It is true that they are building everywhere in the dust brought by the desert. We can see tower cranes and bulldozers already working. Farmers and ranchers are awake too, with vans transporting goats, sheep, vegetables and hay, like busy ants. Omar stops in a souk, a market, outside the town under big eucalyptuses, to fill up the car trunk with fresh provisions.

After the plain of Tripoli, the road, vertiginous and twisty, climbs to the plateau where we find potters on the side of the road. The earth is red and well ploughed, with olive trees. Then, we cross villages born from stone: Gharyan, Mizda and Shwayrif where little cafés, groceries, gas stations, and schools have grown with their tamarisks. If we can’t read Arabic, we can have some hesitation about the name of a village, like we have in front of the road sign of مزدة when we arrive in Mizda. Aymen translates them and I can follow our trajectory on my Michelin map. The road is long when you try to find the desert, but we have some stops for relaxation, tea, petrol, and for the many military checkpoints. From Djerba to Serdeles, our destination tomorrow, there are about twenty checkpoints where we must give a road-sheet stamped by the police in Tripoli, which mentions our names, our passport numbers and the car registration number. So we have a sheaf of them in Aymen’s bag because we need twenty sheets to go down and twenty to come back.

It is a real pleasure to be in this tin of sardines. Omar and Aymen in front, and the three of us in the back, caught between bags, bottles of water, kilos of oranges, warm coats and other packs. Henri and Sandrine don’t know each other very well yet, and we don’t talk a lot. Sandrine is sitting in the middle and me just behind Omar, who drives. I am too astounded by this country finally revealed to me to have something to say. Omar is concentrated on his windscreen and must take care if we’re not to wind up like the burned, stripped cars on the side of the road. From time to time, we find a pyramid of blown tyres, perhaps to mark a miracle, when someone survived after a car overturned. Omar remains vigilant. Beside him Aymen is falling asleep, and then wakes up, talks, puts on once again the tape of local music which has been silent for an hour, sings, and sleeps again. The kilometres don’t end, but we are patient, because we are approaching the great Libyan south.

The landscape is more and more deserted and full of thin dust pushed by the wind. The road, while very good, is sometimes covered with sand, forcing Omar to slow down. The sun beats upon the car’s roof. We take our lunch on a mound of sand away from the road tar, in the ruins of an Italian military post built around 1930 during the colonisation, the only shade around. Behind us the dunes are pure. From time to time, a car or a truck passes away on the road. Then, the silent comes back where only the wind talks. At night, we are stopped one more time by a checkpoint, at the crossroads of Brak, about sixty kilometres from Sebha. This time, the soldiers are frightening in their parachutist uniforms with their big boots and their machine guns. They have a severe appearance. In the night, with their black skin, we only see their scary white eyes. They don’t speak either French or English, and I feel powerless not understanding Arabic. The soldiers seem suspicious. They inspect our passports and the road-sheet very carefully. Since we left this morning, I have put my black scarf on my head like the nomads, and they only see my eyes. Two soldiers come to my window and put their nose on the glass to look at me intently. We don’t move. I smile at them under my scarf to say hello, but they don’t smile at me. I take off my scarf to show them I am a woman. They are nervous and busy around our Peugeot for half an hour, probably looking for someone and having doubts about us. Other cars are stopped but are let free after a brief control check. I wonder if Henri’s allergy was not a sign to stop us in a tour that would be dangerous at the end. We should not have continued. We should have gone back when his allergy started. However, it’s too late, since we now are in the middle of the country. Sandrine is more frightened than me, and whispers to me that she has a Jewish name on her passport, and that they might arrest her. Henri does not say anything. We have nothing else to do than to wait. When they give us the green light to go, Omar starts, and we finally relax. Aymen explains to us that the guards must remain alert because of illicit immigrants. Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Egypt are the six countries surrounding Libya, and their borders, all in the desert, can’t be surveyed easily.

Sebha is a big modern town, full of lights, alive and very crowded. The traffic is so intense that we move slowly and have time to look at shops from the car. We still have to drive to a camping area, further on, around one hundred and fifty kilometres. The road passes in front of an ancient Italian fort and disappears in the night. We are the only ones driving. It does not end. Nobody talks anymore. Rock shapes stand up on the left like Egyptian mastabas. Aymen says they are a good landmark in the night to show our arrival in Tkerkiba. It is after nine o’clock. It took us thirteen hours to go nine hundred and fifty kilometres, which is a long time on a good road, because we had to stop in the market, at the checkpoints, to pray, to eat, and at the gas stations. Each time we cross a gas station, we fill up our tank one more time, because even if we are in the country of petrol, gasoline is difficult to obtain in the south.

Tkerkiba stretches along the only road going to the southwest, between the high dunes of the erg Aoubari to the north and the first cliffs of the Messak Settafet, the Black Plateau, to the south. Despite the late hour, illuminated huts sell beautiful vegetables all along the road. Everything is still in movement. A lot of cars and tracks are moving. Men are dressed like in the south, with large trousers and turban. In the cafés, life is intense. Our lights show some women in the night, alone or accompanied, the face veiled or not. The camping area is built at the bottom of the erg, a sea of dunes. Omar turns right at the request of Aymen, who does not know where the entrance is. It is complicated because there is no sign, and he doesn’t remember the exact place. Omar can’t help us because it is his first time in the south. The car goes across a labyrinth of sand paths under palm trees, between the road and the erg, through a patchwork of vegetable gardens fenced with reeds, a real oasis revealed by the lights of our car. We finally arrive in front of the opened gate of the camping area, a square of little wooden houses in an idyllic setting, in the middle of which a fire is glowing and a couscous is simmering.

A group of men is waiting for us. Sayfeddine, called Sayf, twenty-five years old, born in Tripoli, must take us tomorrow in his 4X4. He will follow the caravan during the whole camel tour. He smiles, wrapped in long black cloth, but does not say anything, probably because he only speaks Arabic. We shall have to show our thoughts with our hands. Once the salutations are expressed to everybody, we pass through the gate again. Omar is sad to leave us tomorrow and return to the north, but the Peugeot would not be practical in the sand. Sayf and Henri set the tents up at the bottom of a high dune, while Aymen puts the mattresses on the ground, with a tablecloth and dishes, and then goes and gets a steaming couscous. We eat quickly. We have no fire to keep us awake, and anyway we are tired.

Our first night is freezing, as always in the dunes. Even in my tent I am shivering.

Monday

We must continue, but by 4X4 this time. The road goes through Germa, the ancient Garama that was the town of the Garamantes. Around 450 BCE, Herodotus talked about them in his book Histories. He writes that these very important people of the dunes live thirty days walking from the Lotus-eaters, probably the people on the Tunisian coast, and drive chariots pulled by four horses. Today, the walls of Germa are half collapsed. Made of clay and stones, this little city, surrounded by a rampart, keeps remnants of narrow streets, of a square at the entrance, of a water network, and a palace now crumbled. The palm trees Herodotus mentions are today stunted. According to Aymen, this place has been deserted since the 9th century. Why did they abandon Garama? Did the river overflow and destroy the houses? Did an invader ravage the country? Was it an epidemic? All civilisations end, nothing is eternal, and even the most powerful cities disappear.

In Aoubari, we must obtain the second visa on our passport, the south one, a white stamp with a blue eagle, obliterated by a triangle. Without it, we can’t travel in the desert. While Sayf is taking care of this, Aymen takes us shopping because we want to buy black trousers embroidered with arabesque motifs at the ankles, the Tuareg trousers. We are a real attraction in the main street, with the crowd surprised to see us. But no one bothers us. There are no tourists here, and no Occidental women. France seems to be liked because people smile when they learn where we come from. Aymen stops at a butcher’s. I don’t want to know what he buys because some pieces of camel are hung on the wall. The shop from which we buy the trousers is run by a Tuareg from Niger. I can at last say my first words with him in Tamahaq, even though Tuareg from Niger speak Tamajaq, and not Tamahaq. The two languages are understood by the Southern and the Northern Tuareg. I’ve gone a long time without speaking with a Tuareg, since 1992 in Algeria, and even if I have regularly studied the language since that time, I feel I have forgotten everything. Our black trousers are wonderful, embroidered in blue arabesques at the ankles, and designed to be comfortable when riding camels.

The last kilometres of the asphalt road are travelled in silence. We are the only ones driving to the southwest, on the wadi Ajal. The wadis are ancient rivers, now without water. The road follows its large dry bed, between impregnable cliffs on the left and golden dunes on the right. The ancient trail is under our tyres, the unique link between the north and the south, and I think of all those travellers who have walked on it, including Garamantes, Romans, slaves, adventurers, scientists and soldiers. In Arabic, Serdeles is called el Awaynat, the Little Sources. We arrive in a nice camping area around two o’clock. There are no tents, but little round cement huts topped with a conical roof in palm leaves. The terrace of the open-air restaurant is shaded by a pergola of reeds.

After chicken with rice, a stop at the squat type toilets and a last warm shower, we leave the oasis in the falling night and drive thirty kilometres on a trail. Finally, Sayf cuts the motor. An intense silence prevails under the stars. There is only sand, with strange shaped rocks lit by the headlights of the car. Suddenly, two Tuareg come out magically from the night and walk toward us. I tell them my greetings in Tamahaq, and it has a good effect on them. I say some polite forms, but not all of them because they are long. My accent must be comical because they laugh and readjust their veil on the nose up to the eyes. They take us a bit further, behind rocks where they have built a fire. We sit on mats. We can only see their eyes. One of them, Barka, has half-closed eyes, wears a saffron turban and is barefoot in iratimen, the red leathered sandals of Tuareg. He must be sixty years old. The other, Hama, seems to be thirty years old and wears tennis shoes. Their long black tunics do not cover the embroideries on the bottom of their pants. They left Serdeles with their camels three days ago and have waited for us to be our guides and cameleers. Henri and Sandrine are enchanted by such an appointment. We were not expecting to see them arriving, nor to find a teapot on embers behind a rock. It is extraordinary to be simply like this, under the stars of the Sahara, with wonderful mushroom rocks surrounding us, lit by the flames. These are covered by engraved tifinar, the Tuareg writing, made of rounds, vertical bars, points, and crosses. All these writings, left for centuries, show that this place has been a favourable stop for a long time. Aymen cooks. Nobody talks, we are subjugated to them. What a splendid night under the Milky Way, far from the road and from our