Travel: Mary Russell on a literary journey through the complexities of the Sahara.
You only have to look at the main Post Office in Algiers - majestic, built to last - to see that the French colonisers thought they were in north Africa for good. Two who were convinced of the rightness of this ambition were the eccentric Viscomte Charles de Foucauld who came bearing a cross, and General Henri Laperrine who wielded a sword.
The two had known each other in France in the 1880s, before de Foucauld abandoned the hedonistic life of a hussar (he dressed his mistress Mimi in furs for an al-fresco ball on the frozen Loire ) to become first a Trappist monk and finally a hermit in the Sahara.
The French conquest of northern Africa was hampered by the similar aims of the Ottomans and the British, but most of all by the Sahara itself. Fleming's book is a sorry account of successive military expeditions failing to observe the primary laws of the desert: carry little, move fast and travel in small groups.
De Foucauld, on the other hand, was an excellent desert dweller, content to settle in one place, say Mass under the most primitive conditions and to eat one meal of rice a day. He studied the languages of the many dwellers of the Sahara, recorded their customs and attended to their ailments. As such, he was a resource to his military friend Laperrine, who had no compunction in using de Foucauld as a means of reaching the people he aimed to subdue.
Despite his asceticism and aura of holiness, the hermit had no problem with this for his own long-term aim was to evangelise. Thus sword and cross worked in tandem, though without lasting success. Both men yielded up their lives to the all-powerful Sahara when de Foucauld was murdered in 1916 by a 15-year-old tribesman while Laperrine perished in 1920 when his bi-plane ran out of fuel in the desert.
Fleming's book is a well-researched and detailed yarn of two desert adventurers - unless you happened to be one of the colonised, in which case it is a terrible but timely account of what happens when an imperialist nation seeks to expand its power.
Jeffrey Tayler, an American now living in Moscow, was seduced by the Sahara - as many of us have been - and, in 2001, set out on a two-month camel trek along the River Draa following it from its source in Morocco to the Atlantic Ocean. Fluent in Arabic and with a wry take on his camel-herder's burning need to convert him to Islam, Tayler makes his way along the valley of the Draa, stopping off at the many oases en route. In fact, this account makes the desert at times seem as populated as any European country: he is forever bumping into nomads, shopping for provisions and even dropping by a local hospital in search of treatment for a tummy bug.
At one point he has to cross the great wall of sand erected by Morocco in its war with the Saharawi - his sympathies lie with US-backed Morocco - and is fearful he will be picked up by the infrared surveillance cameras. But this desert war has been dragging on since the 1970s, the world has lost interest in the Saharawi and he crosses unchallenged. The whole journey passes off so peaceably that, perversely, one wishes for a desert bandit to leap up from behind a sand dune and capture his camel. Lucky for him, this didn't happen. The desert peoples were all probably at home watching television.
The Sahara is the largest, most austere desert in the world, but beneath its sands lies its greatest resource: water. In their excellent book, Sahara - the Life of the Great Desert, Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle chart its evolution, the development of its peoples, the history of the salt and gold trade - and the story of water. A person can survive in the desert without water for two days at most. Wells, therefore - their sinking, maintenance and protection - are of prime importance. European colonialists shocked desert dwellers by sinking too many wells, thus causing a build-up of foetid, rank-smelling pools.
The introduction of artesian wells in oases encouraged nomads to abandon their tents and settle in shanty towns. The building of the Aswan Dam was hailed as progress, and indeed one result was a decrease in fatalities due to seasonal flooding. But another result was that the land was no longer enriched by alluvial soil from the Nile Basin. Consequently, farmers were driven to introduce their crops to growth-enhancing chemicals.
But what is fascinating about this book is its time span: there are traces of human activity in the Sahara from 20,000 years ago. Stone-age pots and fish hooks have been found at the bottom of desert lakes, and I myself have come across a whole scattering of shells near the Mauritanian border. The Sahara is a complex place which continues to confound the curious, to amaze the adventurous. Long may it do so.
Mary Russell is a travel writer and journalist
Sahara - the Life of the Great Desert. By Marq De Villiers and Sheila Hirtle
Harper Collins, 326 pp, £16.99
The Sword and the Cross - The Conquest of the Sahara. By Fergus Fleming, Granta Books, 334pp, £20
Valley of the Casbahs - A Journey Across the Moroccan Sahara. By Jeffrey Tayler, Little, Brown, 335 pp, £16.99
Mary Russell on a literary journey through the complexities of
the Sahara