Exploration of Aïr

by Angus Buchanan

CHAPTER XV
THE TUAREGS OF AÏR

Before concluding this narrative I would like to make brief reference to the native inhabitants of Aïr.

I have said elsewhere that the total population of Aïr at the present time is made up of 5,000 Tuaregs. And they are strange people—the strangest race I have ever come in contact with— independent, haughty, daring, unscrupulous, and lazy in leisure, yet fit to rank among the finest travellers and camel-riders in the world. If one is to judge these Tuaregs fairly, one must try to conceive their surroundings and realise the all-important fact that they are practically wild people in a wild land that lies remote and unknown, and that they have had no advantages to influence them to be aught but wholly primitive. While, further, it may be well to remember that they are the remnant descendants of a race that was once crafty and able in war; indeed, even in the present day, they consider themselves the aristocrats of the land, and look down with scarcely veiled contempt on all negro tribes.

To the French officers and to many Hausa natives they are known as downright rascals, because they are cunning and deceitful in the most unprincipled way the moment they have any dealings with strangers, and I imagine that among themselves they hold belief that anyone outside their own tribe is a legitimate enemy to be overcome, if possible, by cunning artifice, since strength of arms is no longer theirs.

For my own part I found the Tuaregs of Aïr difficult people to deal with, and impossible people to rely on. Except at Timia and Aouderas, I met with no sincere friendliness at their hands, and was inclined to be wholly harsh in my judgment of them all, until my later experiences prompted me to be more inclined to mitigate my opinion of their shortcomings; for, after all, especially with primitive natives, one must live among such people for a long time to break through that protective reserve that shuts out the stranger as a suspect and interloper, and to learn to know them from an intimate point of view.

In appearance these Tuaregs, who are an Arab-like Semitic race, are not tall. The men are generally of strong, wiry build, inclined, if anything, to slimness, and I have never seen one of their sex in any degree corpulent. The women are smaller than the men, many of them not much more than five feet in height, and, at middle age, often grow to moderate stoutness.

The features of the Tuareg natives are usually of a swarthy copper colour of fairly light hue, while a few of them are as yellowish-white as Arabs. Their features are, of course, not of blunt negro type, and—when they can be seen unmasked—there is a pleasant variety of facial character among them, and no two are found to be alike.

Many of the women paint their faces—especially when attending a marriage or a feast—with a hideous pigment, sometimes yellow and sometimes red.

The men, without exception, wear the yashmak over their faces on all occasions. This is a long swathe of cotton cloth, sometimes white, but generally dark blue or black, which is wound round the head so that the lower folds cover all the face up to the centre of the nose-bridge, while the upper folds are passed over the forehead and overlap the eyebrows, so that a hood is formed to shade the eyes from the fierce rays of the sun. All that remains visible of an individual’s face are two piercing dark eyes that peer out of the narrow slit in the mask. One may know Tuaregs thus masked for months, and identify individuals by little more than their eyes; but should the yashmak ever be removed, the transformation is so staggering that it is impossible to recognise the person at all, since you have never seen the face before in its entirety. The women wear a cotton shawl cast over the crown of the head, in typical work-girl fashion, but they do not cover the face or wear yashmak in any form. Wearing the yashmak is a Moslem custom, but outside its religious purport I am not sure but that it is a very comfortable and sensible thing for those nomads of desert places to wear, for it serves as splendid protection to the face in biting sandstorms, since it completely covers the mouth and nostrils and ears, while it hoods the eyes from fierce and tiring sun-glare.

As to the garb of the men, they are clothed in full-flowing cotton gowns which reach almost to the ground, while folds drop from the shoulders to the elbows to look like wide sleeves without being actually sewn to that form. Underneath this robe are worn loose baggy cotton trousers secured round the waist. The robes are, in general, white or dark indigo-blue (a dye locally obtained in Hausaland, where all Tuareg clothing is bought), and the latter colour is the most becoming. All the men wear leather sandals on otherwise naked feet. For ornament they wear leather wallets containing charms and trinkets, which are hung in front of the person suspended from a cord round the neck. Bangles above the elbows on the arms are also commonly worn, usually made out of soft slate-like native stone, which may be hewn to bangle-shape and then polished to a glossy blackness; sometimes the bangles are of cheap metal, welded out of scraps of brass or tin by the local blacksmith. All Tuaregs carry double-edged swords in a leather sheath slung over the shoulder on a strap.