Yet the boy kept well out of the way of all Touaregs, the veiled men of the desert of whom his mother had spoken. He watched them from a safe distance when they roamed through the city, spear in hand, ready and willing to quarrel with any native who should cross their path.
They wore a head-dress that covered their fore-heads and helped to shade their eyes, and a veil that shrouded the lower part of the face and kept the mouth free from sand.
Their true home was the desert, where they reared vast flocks on scanty pasture, but they held the natives of Timbuctoo in no respect, and would stalk through the market-place, spear at the ready and sword beside them, and call the men of the city “Sand-eaters,” because they went with mouths and nostrils uncovered. On their side the natives spoke of the Touaregs as the “Abandoned of God,” and would have kept them from the city altogether, had their strength been equal to their will.
Day by day camel caravans reached Timbuctoo, coming across the desert from Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Marzuk’s one interest in his home district was connected with these caravans.
Twice a year, in midwinter and midsummer, the camels would arrive in huge convoys. There would be many hundreds of the unhandy supercilious beasts there at one time, enjoying their longed-for rest, and making hearty meals on the more succulent growths of the dwarf forest.
The camel-drivers themselves, gaunt, hard-lived men, with faces like birds of prey, had many adventurous tales to tell, and Marzuk was a very ready listener. He heard how the veiled thieves of the desert held up whole caravans and taxed them, helping themselves moderately if unopposed, but quite ready for wholesale killing if resisted in any way. He heard, too, of the great salt country, visited by all caravans coming from Morocco.
“It is a wonderful place,” said Hadj Abdullah the camel-driver, on a day when he arrived at Timbuctoo after six months’ absence, “and Allah has set it in the midst of the desert where no unbeliever may see it. The houses are fashioned out of salt, and so is the mosque, there are camel-skins over all the buildings, and the people live on their salt.”
“Oh, my master, do they eat it?” asked Marzuk.
“Silence, little empty head,” said Aminah, his mother, who listened beside him. And the camel-driver continued:—
“Twice a year we go there, carrying away the white salt, which is the best, and the red-veined if the other supply has failed. In return we leave dates and corn and cotton, and so these people live.