People of the veil

by Baron Francis James Rennell Rodd Rennell of Rodd

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

By constantly seeing the same people for nearly three months at Auderas and in the neighbourhood, I was able to dissipate much of the innate diffidence which the Tuareg display in their relations with Europeans. Language always remained a source of difficulty. An interpreter is never satisfactory, more especially if he belongs to a people whom the Tuareg at heart really despise, while real proficiency in a language cannot be attained in so short a time as I had at my disposal. By the end of my stay in Air I had acquired a sufficient knowledge of Temajegh to be able to travel comfortably with a guide speaking only that language, and to collect a considerable amount of vicarious information, but never at any time was I able to discuss really abstruse questions. At Auderas I was lucky enough to find that Ahodu, the chief of the village, had a working knowledge of Arabic which was almost as indifferent as my own; but we both made up for lack of grammar by volubility. The local “inisilm,” or holy man, named El Mintaka, was a Ghati who had been settled for fifteen years in Air, where he had taken a Tuareg wife. He, of course, spoke Arabic in addition to Temajegh, and acted as scribe to Ahodu, who could neither read nor write. With these two men in the village, with my servant Amadu, a Fulani soldier who had served with distinction in the West African Frontier Force during the war, and had a working knowledge of English and Hausa, which most of the Air Tuareg speak, and with my interpreter Ali, a man from Ghat, I found myself quite at my ease.

This Ali ibn Tama el Ghati had lived for some years in Kano and had travelled all over the Central Sudan. He was small and very black, but constantly cheerful and as clever as a tribe of monkeys. Somewhat of a rogue unless watched, he was tireless and devoted, and proved to be one of only two natives who, after I had been obliged to return home, completed the whole journey with Buchanan. He was one of the original race of Ghat, now called the Atara, who were there before the Tuareg and Berbers came. Ali spoke no English, but was loquacious in Hausa, Temajegh and Kanuri; he also spoke some Tebu and Fulani, in addition, of course, to Arabic. His especial joy was to wear many different combinations of gay clothes for periods of about ten days at a time. He would then change his apparel and adopt another disguise until the novelty of appearing as a Tuareg or a Hausa or an Arab in turn had worn off.

PLATE 16

AUDERAS: HUTS

AUDERAS: TENT-HUT AND SHELTER

On reaching Auderas I took up my residence in some huts which Ahodu had prepared on the edge of a diminutive plateau between the main bed of the valley and a secondary affluent. The area between the valleys and ravines which intersected the little plain was bare, but the sides of the valleys were covered with vegetation. About a hundred yards away across a steep gully was Teda Inisilman, the House of the Holy Men, the smallest of the three hamlets which together make up Auderas. On the other side of the main stream bed, where the water-holes of the village were dug in the sand, lay the larger hamlet called Karnuka, containing the house of El Mintaka. The third settlement was a few hundred yards further down-stream. These hamlets were all built of reeds and palm fronds, but the little plain was covered with what proved to be the ruins of stone houses, many of which were inhabited until 1915. Teda Inisilman is the village of the nobles where Ahodu and the only other three Imajeghan families of the place lived, together with their own dependent Irawellan and Ikelan, and the Enad or smith, a most important person in Tuareg society. Down-stream of Teda Inisilman and Karnuka lay the date-palm groves and most of the gardens; there were a few above our camp also, in a side valley and in the main bed under a huge mass of overhanging rock resembling the keep of a fortress rising high above the sheer side of the stream. To the south were only dûm palms and the rugged hills, called Tidrak,[150] which formed the further edge of the valley. Elsewhere the ground was more open. Down-stream to the west were the low Mafinet and T’ilimsawin hills, joining on to the T’inien peaks north of the point where my road had emerged from among them on the way from Agades. To the north the ground rose over a low ridge to the Erarar (plain) n’Dendemu, the Taghist plateau[151] and the distant peak of Dogam.[152] The glistening black domes of the Abattul and Efaken peaks were rather nearer, on the far edge of the Auderas valley itself. A few miles north and north-east, this basin reached to the foot of the mountain group of Todra, which towers 3000 feet and more above the valley to a total height of about 5500 feet above the sea. The rounded sides rose out of a bed of green and yellow to a crest of bare red rock at the top. The mountain used to change colour all day, a whitish gleam off the rocks at high noon giving place to blue-black shadows under storm clouds and in the evening. At sunset it seemed to glow vivid red from within. It is one of the most beautiful mountains in the world. The Tuareg regard Todra and Dogam as one group, but separate from the Bagezan Mountains, and this is certainly the case. They are reckoned among the five principal massifs of Air, the others being Taruaji in the south, Bila or Bilet north-west of Todra, and Tamgak which includes the Azañieres, Tafidet and Taghmeurt ranges in the north.