South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara

Mohammed suggested what was beginning to appear inevitable: ‘I think you must go to the Mehari Club of Ghadames.’ This was an organization that owned several riding camels and hired them out for special occasions.

‘If we do, it’s not going to be cheap,’ I said to Ned.

Abu Amama, its head, had previously offered to sell me five camels at a rate that seemed murderously excessive. We were a captive market in a nine-camel town. The collapse of the slave trade, followed decades later by the arrival of the motor car, meant that the town, through which countless caravans had passed over the centuries, now struggled to equip a tiny party like our own with five camels. Bracing ourselves for a financial showdown, we arranged through Mohammed to have an inspection of the animals the next day.

‘We must look as though we know what we’re doing,’ said Ned firmly when we were both back in Othman’s house. He was in serious mode now. Most of the time he was not, so it was sometimes difficult to adjust.

‘We haven’t got a clue,’ I replied.

‘Yes, but you mustn’t let them see that.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, but I can’t see us pulling it off for long,’ I said doubtfully. Somehow I could not see us fooling the assorted officers of the camel club that we were anything but neophytes as far as camels were concerned.

The next morning, taking another day off from monitoring Ghadames’s untroubled airspace, Mohammed collected us from Othman’s house. We squeezed into the front seat of his pick-up and he tried unsuccessfully to hotwire the ignition. ‘Really, this car is in bad condition,’ he boomed blithely, bustling about beneath the bonnet and tinkering with the engine. This was an understatement. Most of the basic components of a vehicle – such as seats, windows and dashboard – had disappeared long ago and if you looked down between your feet, there was more road than car. It said much both for Peugeot engineering and Ghadamsi mechanics that the car was still, albeit precariously, on the road. After several more attempts, it rattled reluctantly to life and we howled off several kilometres out of town to see the animals, clutching our paper by Michael Asher on how to choose camels.

‘Judging a camel’s age and condition takes experience and a novice will need the help of a local,’ it warned,

However, certain facts can be ascertained by examining the animal closely. First, make the camel kneel and inspect its back and withers. Any open galls or wounds immediately rule it out as a mount: on a long desert trek it can mean death. Let the animal stand again and look for obvious defects like crooked legs, in-growing nails, a hobbling pace, excessive fat on the legs. Check the inside of the front legs where they meet the chest: if you find evidence of rubbing there, the camel will be weak and slow. Generally, look for an animal that is well covered: no ribs showing, a fairly robust hump, bright eyes, well formed long legs and an erect carriage of the head. Finally, have someone saddle and ride the camel: note whether it snaps, bolts or roars at its handler; lead it around and see that it walks freely; make it kneel and stand up several times.

We thought we could manage that. Abd an Nibbi, who was deputizing for Abu Amama during the latter’s absence in the southern town of Ghat, welcomed us to a makeshift camel enclosure on a patch of wasteland. He looked faintly amused, and at the same time – was it our imagination? – crafty. There were seven Mehari camels inside, of which it took no expertise to see that two were clearly unsuitable for a long journey. They were puny youngsters, half the size of the others. It did not leave much room for choice. We needed five.

At close quarters, they looked terrifying. Huge hulks of beasts with mighty, towering legs, together they formed a striking picture of grace and power. The first Mehari camel Richardson had seen walking into the medina of Ghadames had had a similar effect on him. ‘It amazed me by its stupendous height. A person of average size might have walked under its belly.’ An Arab philologist suggested to him the word Mehari derived from Mahra, the Arabian province on the south-east coast adjoining Oman, from where the animal was supposed to have originated. ‘This remarkable camel, which is like the greyhound amongst dogs for swiftness and agility, and even shape, they train for war and riding like the horse,’ he wrote. The Touareg warriors of Ghadames sitting astride their Meharis looked ‘splendid and savage’ to him.

Massive, disdainful and apparently in no mood to be paraded around for our convenience, these Meharis roared terribly, jerked from one side to another and lashed out at the handlers with their legs to show their displeasure. Not a man to be cowed by mere animals, Abd an Nibbi entered the fray. Masterfully he subdued them, throwing a rope around their heads, pulling down their necks and grabbing their nose-rings with supreme assurance. Once he had hold of the nose-rings he tugged at them vigorously until the camels were completely cowed. Within seconds they had been transformed from proud, dangerous-looking beasts into the meekest creatures conceivable. Abd an Nibbi shot us a knowing look, as if to make sure we had witnessed this demonstration of camel skills. I remembered Ned’s advice of the night before and thought ruefully of what amateurs we were. There was no going back now. We had to look convincing. One by one, Abd an Nibbi brought the five camels in front of us.

I looked across at Ned, who had begun to scribble notes with what I imagined was the practised calm of a professional camelbuyer. He looked every bit the part. It was time to join the act. Together, we walked slowly around each one, trying to look as though it was the most normal thing in the world. We bought camels all the time, of course. We nodded sagely, conferred and shook our heads regretfully (we did not want to look over-eager), checked their legs (all of which to our untrained eyes looked crooked), stared into their eyes, slapped their flanks with what we hoped was the air of connoisseurs, and pondered carefully. Ned continued to take notes throughout the inspection. Mohammed Ali pottered about here and there, pausing occasionally to admire a particular animal. ‘Ohhh, really, these are good camels, Mr Justin. They are in good condition.’

At this initial viewing, three of the camels appeared particularly impressive. Cream in colour, they exuded a definite aristocratic hauteur and swaggered about with the greatest nonchalance. They paid us little attention beyond a certain sneering look before continuing their perambulations. Another, a barrel-chested brown, did not seem to be on good terms with the whites, but looked a robust mount. A handsome and effeminate beige, slighter than the others but with the demeanour of a lively thoroughbred, completed the party.

Ned looked up from his notes for a second. ‘Get them to trot,’ he said to me, as though addressing his camel boy. All that training on horseback in the Andes had not been for nothing. He was warming to the task. I looked at the tall beast beside me and wondered how I could get it to do anything, let alone trot. Then I remembered it was essential to show no fear in front of a camel. Grabbing the rope that was attached to its nose-ring, I ran off with the first. Disturbed from an otherwise peaceful afternoon munching hay, the camel appeared to think this was the greatest impudence but within seconds broke into a light trot behind me. At last. I was in control.

‘That’s good,’ said Ned, with the same air of authority. ‘Keep going.’

We took it in turns to take them trotting and got them to kneel down and stand up again repeatedly. Whether we presented a convincing picture to the Ghadamsis around us was a moot point. Judging by his face, Abd an Nibbi was struggling hard not to laugh.

Undaunted, Ned continued taking notes. I saw them several days later. They went something like this:

(1) 13 years old. Wound on front left leg. Slightly knock-kneed.

(2) 12 years old.

(3) White. Bobbles on nose.

(4) ‘V’ on neck. Good temperament.

(5) Brown.

All were for sale, Abd an Nibbi told us with a confident expression that indicated he knew something we did not. We started discussing prices, at which point he pulled out his own paperwork. It consisted of a letter from Abu Amama saying on no account were the camels to be sold for a dinar less than the figure he had quoted me on my last trip. In other words, they were going for £800 each. We could take it or leave it. There was to be no haggling.

We returned to Othman’s house to think it over.

‘What do you think?’ asked Ned.

‘It’s a lot of money,’ I replied, ‘and I don’t like the way there’s no haggling.’

It was too much money, certainly. Our problem was that Abu Amama was not even particularly keen on selling the camels. He would have preferred to hire them to us, he had said before, since if he sold them he would then have to make a long journey south to Niger to replace them. Meharis were relatively rare in Libya, he had explained, freely admitting that this was why they were so expensive. More importantly, if we were determined, as we were, to buy our camels here, we had little alternative, and everyone in Ghadames knew it.

‘What do you think are our options?’ Ned went on.

Short of having a look for camels down in Ghat or, less practically, Kufra (a little under 900 miles away as the crow flies, much more by road), there appeared to be no alternative. Besides, we would lose valuable time leaving Ghadames and would still have to pay the transportation costs to bring the camels back to our starting-point. I didn’t think there was much we could do but pay the exorbitant sum demanded.

‘You know what Anthony Cazalet would say in this sort of situation?’ Ned said.

‘Something about being bloody cold no doubt.’

‘No, he’d say it’s time to throw money at the problem.’

It was. There seemed nothing else for it. We returned to our lodgings and, after holding off an attempt by Abd an Nibbi to dispute the black market exchange rate, handed over several thousand dollars. Everyone was smiles. The transaction was complete. The camels were ours. Now we needed a guide. The next morning Mohammed Ali arrived with a message from Ibrahim saying one had been found. ‘You see, Mr Justin, really we are in good condition. I tell you Ibrahim help with everything, alhamdulillah.’

Things were looking up. We trooped back into the hole in the wall to find a fat man with two lazy eyes waiting for us. With him and Mohammed Ali in one room, it was almost impossible to know who was speaking to whom. He shook hands without warmth and was introduced to us as Mohammed Ramadan from Awbari. There was something unpleasant about his manner. He did not seem at all interested in getting to know the people with whom he was volunteering to travel several hundred miles across the Sahara. This was a simple business transaction, no more, no less. In a bullying tone, he told us he knew the area between Ghadames and Idri intimately and was ready to go with us. We started to discuss the route in more detail and asked him how he travelled in the desert. Things went rapidly downhill from there and his manner became ever more aggressive and confrontational. He would only travel by camel if we had a car as back-up, he insisted. It would carry food and water supplies for us and the camels. Each day his sidekick would drive ahead of us for thirty miles or so and in the evening we would rejoin the car for dinner. Mohammed Ali looked embarrassed. He knew this was not what we wanted to do.

Having talked over the route together and ascertained there were several wells en route to Idri, we asked Mohammed Ramadan why he needed a car. We were happy to go without one. It seemed an unnecessary, profoundly unromantic and expensive means of travel. He took this as an attack on his desert skills and pounded his fist on the table.

‘The journey is very difficult and dangerous,’ he insisted. ‘There is no food or water for the camels for many days.’

‘But you’ve just said there are several wells along the route, so how can it be so dangerous?’ I asked.

‘I go with a car or I don’t go at all,’ he spluttered aggressively. He banged the table with his fist again and his pudgy face wobbled with the impact.

I thought of Michael Asher’s notes again.

Choosing a guide or companion is very much more difficult than choosing a camel. As the Arabs say, ‘you cannot know a man until you have been in the desert with him’ … Many who present themselves as desert guides may have only a rudimentary knowledge of camels. Even those who are official desert guides may have become so used to travelling in motor vehicles that they have grown lax. Do not fall for the ‘Wise old Arab’ syndrome.

A heated exchange followed between Ibrahim and Mohammed Ramadan about taking the car. The latter repeated his conditions, pounding the table at intervals to drive home his point. The meeting was over. This was not the man we wanted to travel in the desert with and it appeared the feeling was mutual.

‘So much for that,’ I said to Ned as we returned in low spirits to Othman’s house.

‘Look on the bright side. He was too fat for the job,’ came the phlegmatic reply. Never one to moan about our bad luck, Ned was adept at making light of such failures.

Mohammed, too, had his own style. ‘Really, I am sorry for you,’ he mourned sympathetically. ‘Now we are in bad condition. I am embarrassed about this, really I feel shy.’

I asked him if he knew anyone else in Ghadames who might agree to come with us.

‘Really, I don’t know, Mr Justin, because you are the first to do this,’ he replied sombrely. ‘Oh my God, you like camels too much. Other people go by car. But I am also wanting you to go by camel now. Maybe tomorrow we will find good guide for you, inshallah (God willing).’ From the tone of his voice, it was clear he thought our chances of success extremely limited. And then, in a gesture that took both Ned and me by surprise, he suddenly raised his hands to the heavens in the most theatrical supplication to the Almighty. ‘Please God, help us so they can do the journey without a car!’ he implored. Would He listen?

The next day, Ibrahim confessed he no longer held out great hopes of finding another guide prepared to travel from Ghadames to Idri by camel. He had lost the urge, never very great in the first place, to look for one. Mohammed Ali, a more enterprising character altogether, said he would talk to some of the people from the Mehari Club. Buying camels in one of the ancient centres of the caravan trade had been difficult but manageable. We now wondered whether finding a guide prepared to exchange the comforts of travel by Toyota Landcruiser for the hardships of a camel trek would prove too much in late-twentieth-century Ghadames.

While we waited to hear the results of Mohammed’s efforts, we visited the museum, a very basic series of rooms in the old fort containing traditional Ghadamsi costumes, utensils, folkloric medicines, a Touareg tent and the usual Gaddafi propaganda. In one room lay a few stones with barely legible Roman inscriptions. In another was a rope above a sign saying ‘It used for climbing tree’ and a photograph of a man delicately balanced with a rope tied around his waist and the date palm, resting his feet on the trunk. Mohammed Ali’s uncle had fallen to his death several years ago while collecting dates from a tree. The museum did not do justice to Ghadames’ past, but after those of Tripoli, Leptis and Sabratha there was something to be said for brevity. A tour took about ten minutes.

Outside Ibrahim’s office, an elderly Land Rover with two gerbas (waterskins) attached to the wings had arrived. Two languid Frenchmen came to say hello. They were looking for another vehicle with which to make a convoy down to Ghat. We said we could not help, but there seemed to be a fair amount of tourist traffic heading that way if they waited around. Moments later, a monstrous Mercedes Unimog desert vehicle pulled in. Emblazoned on the sides in lurid colours was a romanticized desert scene and the hideous caption ETHNOGRAPHISCHE EXPEDITIONEN. Its German occupants spilled out. They too were en route to Ghat. ‘Ja, ve make documentary about ze Touareg und little bit about ze Sahara,’ they told us. Ned and I retired to one side. The Frenchmen, whose faces had fallen when they saw this brute of a vehicle arrive, approached the Germans reluctantly. It was obvious they would rather not have gone with them but had no alternative. We British sat apart from the Continental throng. ‘A microcosm of Europe,’ said Ned.

Mohammed reappeared later that afternoon in a state of excitement. ‘Now really we are in good condition!’ he bellowed. ‘I have found someone who will go with you. His name is Abd al Wahab and he is very good guide.’ He had spent several hours talking to the Touareg of the Mehari Club. ‘Now you can go without car, inshallah. Believe me, this will be good for you. I know you are liking the camels!’ He would bring the man to see us in the evening.

Ruminating over this apparent change in our fortunes, we were interrupted by the unannounced arrival of Taher Ibrahim, an oleaginous Ghadamsi travel agent I had bumped into on my last visit. He spoke fluent English with a Cockney accent, unexpected in someone whose contact with England had been limited to two years in Colchester.

‘You speak excellent English,’ said Ned.

‘Yes, I know, best in Ghadames,’ he replied smugly. He started prying. How much were we paying for the camels? How much was the guide going to cost? Where were we going? How long would we be in Ghadames? To the last we replied shortly: ‘As long as it takes.’ This expression reminded him of an encounter with a prostitute on London’s Gloucester Road. Captivated – as he seemed to think we were too – by the recollections of his sexual triumph, he launched into an account of the episode.

‘I asked her how much. She said £20 or something like that. How long do I get with you, I asked? As long as it takes, she said.’ He burst into laughter.

We met Abd al Wahab for the first time that evening. A handsome Touareg possessed of the silent gravitas of the desert nomad, he had a dignified bearing, benevolent eyes that peered out from his clean white tagilmus (the veil worn by all Touareg men), and a large slug of a moustache that crawled greedily across his upper lip and would have reached the bottom of his sideburns if he had worn any. He was smartly dressed in a black woollen burnous and his manner was calm and retiring, a welcome contrast to the aggressive hectoring tone of Mohammed Ramadan. When he spoke – and he did so rarely – it was in a soft assured voice. We discussed the journey and his terms for accompanying us around a dinner table on a dais in Othman’s house. I repeated to Abd al Wahab what Mohammed Ramadan had told us about the great dangers of the route. He shook his head.

‘It is not so dangerous,’ he replied quietly. We would reach our first well after three days, the second after another three and thereafter they would appear regularly, so we need not be concerned about water for the camels. ‘Also, it is winter now, and the camels can go longer than that without water,’ he went on. ‘Of course, we do not need to take a car.’ Everything about him inspired confidence.

This was our man. We shook hands with him, delighted at having overcome our first serious difficulty, and arranged to go the next day but one. Leaving, he did not look where he was going, stepped down from the dais onto a bed below and was promptly trampolined into the air, before returning to the floor in a confused heap of white cotton and black wool. He laughed at himself good-humouredly, if somewhat sheepishly, and excused himself. He looked as though he would be far happier in the desert than surrounded by these trappings of modern civilization.

The next morning was a flurry of shopping. We descended on the town’s market to buy ten- and twenty-litre plastic water bidouns, cooking pots, buckets, a tarpaulin and blankets to cover the riding saddles that we were buying from the club. Neither of us had ever provisioned for a journey of two weeks, so it was a hit-and-miss affair. Mohammed Ali totted up our bill while we both raided the shop shelves. We thought it best to err on the side of generosity, and tin after tin of tuna fish duly flew into cardboard boxes, joining a plethora of pasta, tomato puree, tea, coffee, sugar, bread, biscuits, tinned fruit, olive oil, garlic, onions and oranges. These complemented our scanty supplies from England. I had brought packet soups, packet sauces and a pot of Marmite. Ned, more of a minimalist, had half a dozen bottles of Encona West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce to enliven the pasta. Having heard that arguments with guides over food were notorious in the desert, we took pains to ensure Abd al Wahab liked everything we were buying. Ned picked up a tin of beans. Here was a chance to practise the Arabic he had been learning on his Linguaphone course.

‘Are you a fasulya bean?’ he asked him, in flawless classical Arabic.

Abd al Wahab smiled and nodded.

The last things we needed from the market were some suitable clothes for the desert. I suggested to Ned we buy a couple of cotton jalabiyas, the free-flowing garment worn throughout the Arab world, as well as a shish, a five-metre length of cotton to protect our heads from the desert sun. As Michael Asher had written,

it seems to me that the West has devised no better dress for travelling than that worn by desert people. The long, loose-fitting shirt allows a layer of cool insulating air to circulate beneath it. The baggy trousers or loin-cloths worn by most desert tribes are extremely comfortable for riding. The turban or headcloth, with its many layers not only keeps the head cool but can also be used in a number of other ways, including veiling the face in a sand storm.

Ned, resolutely English, was initially unconvinced and took some persuading of the advantages of going native. While he hesitated I bought the last large cotton jalabiya in the shop. All that was left in his size was one in diarrhoea-coloured polyester.

Hearing of our imminent departure, Othman had kindly arranged an interview for us with his uncle, Abd as Salam, the chief government official of Ghadames. Minders showed us into his office where he welcomed us graciously. He sat behind a desk sporting a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they distorted his eyes into a demonic grimace. Despite the daytime heat, he wore a heavy beige cardigan, two jumpers, a shirt and thermal vest. This was midwinter for Ghadamsis.

The town dated back to 895 BC, he told us, and had long been an important transit point for goods going north and south across the desert. ‘I tell you something else you do not know,’ he said, with an air of mystery. ‘Ghadames was first city in world to have passports, post office, free market and water gauge.’ ‘Passports’ had once been necessary, he explained, to cross from one half of Ghadames into the other. The system of gates dividing the town into two sections – one each for the predominant but mutually hostile Bani Walid and Bani Wazit tribes – dated back more than 2,000 years. When a man from one tribe wanted to visit someone from the other, he had to have a certain paper, like a passport, that enabled him to pass through the gateway into the neighbouring quarter. Richardson called these two long-feuding tribes ‘the Whigs and Tories of Ghadames’. On asking his guide about the history of their conflict he was told: ‘The Ben Weleed and the Ben Wezeet are people of Ghadames, who have quarrelled from time immemorial: it was the will of God they should be divided, and who shall resist his will?’ These strict tribal divisions no longer existed and intermarrying was increasingly common, Abd as Salam informed us.

The postal service consisted of a small box, into which people would place letters to various destinations across the Sahara. Anyone setting out by caravan to Tripoli, for example, first had to see if there were any letters bound for that area. ‘If he do not look in box before he go, he make big mistake,’ Abd as Salam said. ‘He will be in big trouble with the people.’ The world’s first free market consisted of a square with mosques on two sides. Both the Bani Walid and Bani Wazit were at liberty to meet here and conduct business.