Book review: The Search for the Tassili Frescoes ~ Henri Lhote

See also:
Tassili N’Ajjer mule trek (gallery)

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THE SEARCH FOR THE TASSILI FRESCOES
Henri Lhote, 1959 (o/p)

There are several picture books describing or including the rock art of the Tassili. The best known though not best admired is this one: The Search for the Tassili Frescoes published (in English) in 1959 and easily available used on the web. It was he who led an expedition to record the art for posterity as the colony of Algeria was slipping out of France’s hands. Unfortunately Lhote and those in his service adopted the practise of wetting the rock art to produce more vivid photographs – something which has accelerated fading in a few decades after surviving millennia on the plateau.

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In this case he may not have known any better, though a little-known Swiss expedition recorded many of the Tassili’s sites in the late 1940s; doing a much more thorough job than the well-publicised Lhote missions. But Lhote was also accused of turning a blind eye and indeed including fakes (painted as a joke) among his recorded discoveries. The slinky quartet known as ‘The Bird Headed Goddesses of Jabbaren’ are known to be one such fake, supposedly included (but excised from later editions and indeed Jabbaren itself) to help attribute the style to ancient Egyptian influences. If anything it was probably the other way round.

Book review: A Season in Hell ~ Robert Fowler

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A SEASON IN HELL
Robert Fowler (2011)

Robert Fowler’s account of his four-month captivity in northern Mali with Louis Guay in 2009 doesn’t so much leap off the page as grab you by the ears and haul you in. I read it over a weekend because here at last is a lucid, thoughtful and detailed description of an experience about which many wonder: ‘how would I cope?’. And before the first page is turned Fowler answers that question: ‘better than you’d assume’.

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Thankfully, a lazy Day 1, Day 2… diary format is avoided. Instead, events or themes are covered over the pair’s months ‘en brousse’, while fending off the malice, provocations and mind games of their captors, as well as navigating their own inevitable mood swings. Some like to dismiss AQIM and similar groups as mere criminals enriching themselves from smuggling and kidnapping. If that’s the case then Fowler’s abductors, led by Moktar bel Moktar (‘MBM’, who went on to organise the deadly gas plant raid in Algeria in 2013) put up a convincing performance refuting that. Not one of the ragged jihadists failed to try and convert the two diplomats to Islam while at ‘Camp Canada’, and vigorous religious debates dominated the gang’s conversations, rather than which Rolex they’ll buy with their share of the loot.

Throughout this episode both Fowler and Guay were put to the test, but astutely deployed their hard-won diplomatic nous to help lessen their misery, as well as using other methods to maintain morale. One topic I thought oddly absent was any obsessive discussion over food. Some emotionally sensitive subjects were proscribed, but you’d think the harmless pleasure in food fantasies would be fun.

After months of uncertain negotiations, unexpected gifts, hurried relocations as well as calls home, somewhere in the desert the two Canadians are finally handed over to shady mediators. With them are two desperately emaciated European women, kidnapped by more brutal rivals who are deeply unsatisfied with the settlement. In a tense denouement the two AQIM leaders face each other down but MBM prevails. The jeeps speed south and diplomatically staged photo calls, long-overdue ablutions and happy family reunions ensue. The book ends with a warning that action must be taken against the scourge then oppressing northern Mali (in January 2013 the French led Operation Serval invaded the area). There’s also an unapologetic swipe at the way the RCMP handled Fowler and Guay’s abduction.

For some the elephant in the room is the matter of ransom payment – denied by the Canadian government. Fowler was kept in the dark but elucidates in appropriately equivocal terms: ‘… there tends also to be a difference between what governments do and what they say, and this seems to me quite reasonable… Many countries adopt what are more or less pragmatic approaches while others proclaim immutable doctrine, but I know for certain that everybody has blinked at one time or another…’
Wikileaks since revealed that €700,000 was paid and AQIM prisoners released, thus prolonging the scourge. The conduit for the cash was the then convenient treasury of Ghadafi’s Libya, in return for unspecified concessions.

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Some speculate about publicity bans put on former Saharan hostages (nearly 100 in the last decade) by their governments; perhaps a condition for covering the usually denied ransoms. If that was the case with Robert Fowler, he ignored it. ‘A Season in Hell’ illuminates their desert captivity in vivid detail, including as far as they could gather, the motivations of the people who abducted them. It might even be read as a manual on how to cope with such an experience. However you choose to take it, it’s highly recommend.

Longer version with more background here.

Book review: Shadows across the Sahara ~ John Hare

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SHADOWS ACROSS THE SAHARA
John Hare, 2003

Possibly of pensionable age but with experience with Bactrian camels as well as living in Africa and speaking Hausa, John Hare sets off to traverse the great trade route from former Borno Kanem (northern Nigeria) to Tripoli. With him are his chums: an even older Kenyan farmer, a Chinese academic and the relatively young Johnny to do the chores, plus Tubu and Tuareg cameleers and two dozen camels.

The organisation and permission for this trip goes unerringly smoothly – even the intractable Libyans are up for it and so the guides and camels turn up on time and the crew sets off reversing the camel prints of Hanns Vischer’s 1906 trek (the author’s inspiration), if not Denham, Clapperton and Oudney’s 1822 expedition. So far so good. But what should have been a stirring account of a historic trans Sahara trek plods along without enough engagement. Interminable quotes from Denham and Vischer fill the gaps, but there is barely a conversation recorded between the protagonists (a Brit upper lip was stiffly maintained, perhaps) while the local guides come across as the customary grumps.

Anticipated highlights like the Bilma Erg slip by in a couple of paragraphs while the dreary Hamada el Hamra is built up to epic proportions. One fails to get an impression of what the undoubtedly arduous three-month trek along a little-known Saharan axis was really like, even on a practical level. It all comes across as too easy and repetitive – perhaps it was, although it’s interesting to learn about the history of this trade route and why it became depopulated. It’s on this level that the book has something to offer, rather than using camels as a mode of travel in the Sahara.

Book review: Sheltering Sky ~ Paul Bowles

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SHELTERING SKY
Paul Bowles (Penguin)

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A cult novel by the Tangiers literary guru based on the author’s own experiences in North Africa. Not a thoughtful gift for a nervy visitor to Morocco, but a thrilling read if you like your desert with a bit of sex, madness, infidelity and death. Bertolucci’s eponymous 1985 film turned out to be a hackneyed desert romance with dashing Tuareg princes, graceful caravans crossing golden dunes and ululating tribes women at every village. While certainly good-looking (filmed partly in the Tenere), it fails to get its teeth into the inscrutable, existential quandaries of the protagonists. Although he appeared in one of the final scenes, Paul Bowles had this to say of the film: It should never have been filmed. The ending is idiotic and the rest is pretty bad.

The track from the Police’s Synchronicity album, Tea in the Sahara, relates a morbid legend described in this book.

Book review: Skeletons on the Zahara ~ Dean King

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SKELETONS ON THE ZAHARA
Dean King, 2005

This astonishing yarn expands on the gruelling tale of the 1815 wreck and enslavement of the crew of the American brig Commerce mentioned in Spanish Sahara reviewed elsewhere. The ordeal the crew suffered at the hands of the barbaric Western Saharan tribes (described collectively but not so accurately as ‘Saharawi’) is truly horrendous. At that time (and indeed right up to the St Exupery era), ransoming of foreigners to European trading posts at Essaouira or St Louis was the norm, but the Commerce had the misfortune to run around Cap Boujdour midway between the two.

Pounced upon and subsequently sold on and on to other nomads for a blanket or other chattels, the miseries of the beaten, stripped and starved crew as they tramp around the desert of present day southern Western Sahara and northern Mauritania are based chiefly on the Commerce‘s Captain Riley’s own account. This book gained wide popularity following his eventual rescue and even influenced Lincoln’s anti-slavery attitudes. For weeks at a time the best drink they could manage was cupping their hands behind a urinating camel and most lost half their body weight. Some lost their minds.

You do have a feeling the author, more familiar with maritime than desert matters, embellishes a little too heartily at times, but it all helps to drive the narrative along with barely a dull moment. This is a survival story on par with Shackleton’s amazing escape from Antarctica, and right up to the very end their continued depredations leave you guessing as to the final outcome.

Book review: Spanish Sahara ~ John Mercer

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SPANISH SAHARA
John Mercer, 1976 (o/p)

John Mercer visited this tightly controlled colony as power was slipping from Spain’s hands and the region’s Saharawi people faced recolonisation led primarily by Morocco, that resulted in the protracted Polisario conflict which endures today with the territory divided by the berm. All that was about to kick off as the book ends, and up to that point Mercer gives a very through account of this seeming Saharan No Man’s Land starting with geology, natural history and prehistory. The Berber history of the Almoravids who conquered most of Spain leads to the feeble (or unproductive) Portuguese and Spanish incursions of the late Middle Ages on which Spain based its colonial claim in the late nineteenth century. We also read about the activities of early traders like the Scot, Mackenzie, whose fortress-like trading counter still lies off Cape Juby an adventurer-entrepreneur who tried to buy into the rich trans-Saharan caravan trade before it got to Moroccan markets. Or the depredations suffered by Alexander Scott and James Riley, shipwrecked in the early nineteenth century, but who at least lived to tell the tale (see: Skeletons on the Sahara review).

We also get what must be the best English-language account of the tribes of that region closely related to today’s Moors; the well-known Arabised Reguibat, the Delim and other lesser clans who, when not raiding each other, preyed on shipwrecks, their victims and early explorers. Their complex allegiances, culture, customs and daily life is especially detailed, as in an account of the manoeuvres behind the French colonisation of the region. Resources was what they were after: the world’s largest source of phosphate at Bou Craa, the iron ore at Zouerate and the rich offshore fisheries.

It may be 30 years old, but its hard to think of a more thoroughly researched account (in English) that opens up the Western Sahara and its neighbouring regions – you’ll find it used on the web from around a tenner.

Book review: The Sword and the Cross ~ Fergus Fleming

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THE SWORD AND THE CROSS
Fergus Fleming, 2004

A double biography of two extraordinary characters who helped shape France’s colonial fortunes in North Africa. This is the story of General Henri Lapperine, the dashing Commander of the Oasis whose camel corps rode sleek racing méharis with the general at their head. Alongside walked his guide and interpreter – a sunburnt scarecrow of a man reciting prayers as they went – Charles, Pere de Foucauld.

Fleming’s style is well researched and enthralling. He admits that there is not a lot of material on Lapperine, who wrote little down and seems to have been little appreciated in his lifetime. Foucauld, an obsessive letter writer and list maker, left a large legacy and has been the subject of many works – mostly in French and usually lionising his saintly attributes.

In order to tell the tale, Fleming first describes the situation in the French African colonies of Algeria and the Soudan to the south during the 19th Century. The grandiose plan is to link the two – eventually by rail – via the Sahara, the conquest of which becomes a matter of national honour. The descriptions of the large expeditions sent to achieve this aim are horrifying – they end in unmitigated disasters, each one greater than the previous. The flamboyant characters involved are described – with a repetitive postscript ‘…they too were murdered’.

Into the desert enter two seemingly different men – bound by a desire to see the Sahara and its population as French – in Foucauld’s case, Godly and French. The main protagonist is Charles de Foucauld, an aristocrat turned hermit. Starting out as an overweight and not very good cavalry officer with a taste for women and the easy life, he is sent to Algeria. Here he discovers not only a love of the desert but also forms the idea of creating a religious order – not just an average order, but one whose regime of self denial makes Trappism seem luxurious. Living on a diet of barley and dates, spending twelve hours a day in prayer he founds an order that had a membership of one during his lifetime (unsurprisingly) and converted a single elderly blind woman. He never loses touch with his acquaintances from military days – they provide protection for him and he in turn supplies them with maps and information regarding the ‘ground feeling’ of the desert tribes.

Lapperine sees the folly of the mass marches and forms a camel corps, whose swiftness in smaller numbers and less need for supply chains enable them to subdue the Tuareg. A ‘soldiers’ soldier’ he was a hard taskmaster admired by his troops (when one of his natives was questioned about his loyalty to France he replied that his loyalty was not to France – but to Lapperine). He needed information from the Hoggar (a little light spying) and who better than his old friend Foucauld. When offered the chance to set up a hermitage in the remote outpost of Tamanrasset, Pere de Foucauld relishes the prospect of tending to the locals (and supplying Lapperine with reports).

By 1910 with the Tuat and Hoggar under the control of the French and with Foucauld alternating between Tamanrasset and his even more remote hermitage at Assekrem, Laperinne sets out on a series of tours. Although successful these are seen by his superiors as meddling in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire (which at the time was nominally in charge of the Tripolitania to the east of Algeria). Lapperine is recalled to France as war clouds gather leaving Foucauld behind. In an obscure footnote to the international situation Senoussi raiders roam the Sahara attacking the remaining French at the behest of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Caught up in the intrigue, Foucauld is assassinated on December 1st 1916.

Upon hearing the news Lapperine requests immediate transfer back to Algeria to avenge his friend. Three years later as he lays dying, lost in the desert following an aircrash, General Lapperine’s utters his final words: ‘People think they know the desert, people think I know it. Nobody really knows it’.

Tim Stead

Book review: Tubu: The Teda and the Daza ~ Catherine Baroin

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Tubu: The Teda and the Daza
Catherine Baroin, 1997

At only 64 pages and with large print, this short book is classified as ‘history – juvenile literature’ and takes half an hour to read. Being produced in the US, I thought the publisher might have some evangelical missionary agenda, like the Joshua Project. In fact Rosen is a publisher of under-12 educational material and this title is part of their Heritage Library of African Studies, from Akamba to Zulu.

As for the book, you feel that the content is rather superficial and fragmentary and may well have been shortened or edited into its current slim form. The author has written longer books on the same subject in French, but then so have many others in that language. Not surprisingly, many of the customs described bear close resemblance to the better studied Moors or Tuareg with whom the Tubu share many characteristics.

What one would wish to know is what makes them different other than their fierce reputation. If anything, the wiki-like details presented on the Joshua page are more gritty and pertinent because the fact remains the Tubu, who are said to have adopted Islam less than a couple of centuries ago, remain the least known of the Saharan tribes.

Book review: The Western Desert of Egypt ~ Cassandra Vivien

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The Western Desert of Egypt, An Explorer’s Handbook
Cassandra Vivien,  2000

A niche publication covering the Western Oases (Bahariya, Dakhla etc), the northern coast, Siwa, the Darb el Arbain region and of course the Gilf. It was originally published in the early 1990s as Islands of the Blest; A Guide to the Oases and Western Desert of Egypt which we’re told became an ‘overnight bestseller’.

Sorry to have to say this, but the first thing that strikes you while flicking through this book is a waffle-bound, juvenile, credulous writing style; a complete absence of editing hampered by a muddled hierarchy of headings which have little relation to the ramblings that sometimes follow.

The book starts with the ‘The Natural World’ but includes a patchy, Sahara-wide history using ancient labels like ‘Bilad al-Sudan’ as if contemporary – an example of the author’s limited understanding of her subject. The author parrots the Bagnoldian declamation that the Libyan Desert and the Sahara are separate natural features because, in her words, “the Fezzan is a fertile plateau corridor that separates the Libyan Desert from the Sahara”. Me, I still think it’s a political designation about as valid as the Urals dividing Asia and Europe (as discussed in my Great Warm Deserts of the World review). We do however get a good summary of geological epochs, events and evolution pertaining to the region.

There is a good double-page map covering the book’s region on the prelim pages, and a couple of good ones elsewhere, but the half-pager on p2 is a mixture of ancient, colonial and contemporary place names. It adds up to another of this book’s many grating, literary, stylistic and graphic inconsistencies; you’d think better of the AUC Press.

The Western Oases section looks thorough, this is really where the book is best and was once knowledgeable, though you can be confident that the 100-odd pages which the latest Rough Guide devotes to the area will be more useful.

As for the Gilf (“the top of the Gilf is like the top of the world”); rather tellingly the author admits earlier that her tour guide in that region, the late Samir Lama “guards his secrets from the prying eyes of writers like me”. So be prepared to accept nothing more than historical accounts retold day-by-day, along with heartfelt observations that Lama could not censor: “Wadi Hamra is red. Red sand dunes are so beautiful. Red drifts of sand cascading down the side of a black mountain are so beautiful”. This is as much as we learn about Wadi Hamra. We learn next to nothing about Jebel Uweinat (apparently the highest point in Egypt) or the riches of Karkur Talh, although we are informed that Aqaba Pass was first ascended by “Ford 2×2 cars”.

The trivial errors, remorseless piffle and batty analogies go on and on and remind me of that other flu-ridden turkey, Sahara, the Life of the Great Desert. A Sahara-based historical novel I’ve just started reading starts in the acknowledgements with the following endearing admission: ‘As a reader I never knew the importance of a book’s editor. As a writer I have learned the truth of it’. Amen to that. While well-intentioned and enthusiastic, Cassandra Vivian seems to have spent too much time in libraries digging up archania but missed seeing the sand for the dunes, and was then let down by her publishers. Watch the binding too; open it too fast and it will explode in your face.

A newer edition was released in 2009 with 60 extra pages. The above review refers to the 2000 edition.

Book review: Wind, Sand and Stars ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery

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WIND, SAND AND STARS
Antoine de Saint Exupery

An existential adventure classic based on the author’s semi-autobiographical escapades in the early days of commercial aviation. This included flying mail across the dreaded Terres des Hommes (the Western Sahara) where you saved the last bullet for yourself. It features the almost obligatory near-death experience after crashing in the Libyan Desert. Along with Thesiger and possibly Monod (as yet untranslated in English), Exupery remains one of the few writers who adequately describes the enigma of the desert’s appeal. Heroic and philosophically poetic Man’s Stuff: Hemingway with propellers and one of the best you’ll read to capture the spirit of the desert.

To be reviewed one of these years: The Citadel – St Ex’s posthumous oeuvre.