Sahara Unveiled by William Langewiesche

Author:William Langewiesche [Langewiesche, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78066-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

AFTER A WEEK, Addoun found a man who was driving east to Djanet, an old oasis near the wild Libyan border. This man would allow me to accompany him, and then for a price would take me farther—into the infamous Tadart, a vastness of sculpted stone where the rock art endures.

I was not cautious enough. I simply asked Addoun if he knew this man. He said he did not, but knew of his family. The ride had been arranged by a merchant who from a distance had helped me before, Moulay Lakhdar Abderhadim, the most successful businessman of Tamanrasset. I had never met him. But the day before my departure, he invited Addoun and me to lunch at his house.

Abderhadim lived beyond the camel market. To the unaccustomed eye, it was a dismal neighborhood. Chickens and goats picked through garbage in the rutted streets. There were long, monotonous compound walls, crumbling and neglected, stained brown with mud and blowing dust. Only the vehicles hinted at money: Range Rovers and Land Cruisers, worth two to three times their price in Europe.

Addoun knocked at a metal gate. After a delay, while the women scurried out of sight, we were let in by an old Haratin in a robe and a turban. Addoun greeted him warmly and introduced him as a friend of the family, though clearly he was a servant. We entered a lush garden of fruit trees and flowering bushes. The house was sprawling, single-story, made of stone and adobe. Addoun knew his way and led me into the sitting room, where Abderhadim reclined on a mattress watching a soccer game on television. Plump and soft-looking, Abderhadim was a middle-aged man with a round face and thinning hair. He wore a blue running suit zippered up tight around his throat. A blanket was draped over his legs. He excused himself for not greeting us at the door; he suffered from rheumatism, and it had flared up in his knees. Addoun and I sat on cushions on the floor. The doorway gave onto a lush courtyard, brilliant with desert light. Other men arrived. The servant came with a bowl of couscous, and sat with us.

Abderhadim had an affable but impatient manner, with a decisiveness that hinted at his authority. He waved aside my thanks for arranging the trip to the east, and asked me to come to lunch again when I returned. He mentioned in passing that he himself did not know the driver who would take me. Most of his own business was with the south.

We talked about commerce. He described himself as a trader in food and car parts—and in other goods as the opportunities arose. I asked him to explain. Modestly, he called himself a simple shopkeeper who had become an importer by default. “Niger is very poor. But you can find everything there.”

I asked if he found business difficult across such distances, with no roads, no telephones, and nonconvertible currencies.

He smiled and said, “We are all Muslims.”

An older man, dressed in a white robe and turban, told me a story about this.

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