TIMBUCTOO[8]
An immense and brilliant sky, and an immense and brilliant stretch
of land, with the grand outlines of a town uniting the two. A dark
silhouette, large and long, an image of grandeur in immensity,--thus
appeared the Queen of the Sudan.
Across the space everything looks simple and severe; the forest is
dwarfed out of sight, and nothing diminishes the vast landscape, which
is lighted by the throbbing glare of the veritable sun of the desert.
Truly she is enthroned upon the horizon with the majesty of a queen.
She is indeed the city of imagination, the Timbuctoo of European legend.
Her sandy approaches are strewn with bones and carcasses that have
been disinterred by wild beasts, the remains of the camels, horses,
and donkeys that have fallen down and died in the last stages of the
journey. The cities of the East are invariably encircled by their
bones, and the roads across the desert are lined by their bodies.
The details of the distant shape grow clearer by degrees. The illusion
of walls, produced by the distinctness with which the town stands out
from the white sand, disappears, and three towers, placed at regular
intervals, dominate the mass. The terraces of square houses are now
distinguishable, giving an appearance of depth to the outlined mass,
and renewing the first impression of grandeur.
[Illustration: A STREET AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE TOWN]
Whether you approach from the banks of the Niger, from the shores of
the Atlantic, by the Moroccan and Arawan routes, or from the coasts
of the Mediterranean by Tripoli or Ghadames, the town presents the
same outlines: fine, long and deep, and evoking the same impression of
grandeur in immensity.
* * * * *
We have entered the town, and, as behind the scenes of a theatre,
behold! all the grandeur has suddenly disappeared.
It is another scene now, equally impressive, but on account of its
tragic character rather than its beauty. Instead of finding the compact
and well-ordered city which was promised us by the exterior, we enter a
town that seems to have recently passed through the successive dramas
of siege, capture, and destruction.
The foreground, to which the play of sun and shadow had given the
distant effect of city ramparts, proves to be a mass of deserted
houses. The roofs have fallen in, the doors are gone, the walls are
broken and crumbling, and have become mere heaps of ruin. Piles of
earth, bricks, and bits of wood are scattered over the open spaces
which were once the paths leading to these defunct dwellings.
Beyond these ruins behold the market, or rather one of the markets.
This is the largest of them, I am told, and I begin to hope that the
sinister impression left by the entrance to the town will now be
removed.
The place is spacious, certainly, but is this the great market of
Timbuctoo? These women with little baskets, little calabashes, and
little round mats, selling insignificant little things, red, green,
white, drab, and black, spices and vegetables, for infinitely little
sums of cowries, just as in any, no matter what, little market in no
matter what little town of the Sudan. Is this the universal commerce of
Timbuctoo? Why, if I only recall the market of Jenne, this is the most
miserable in the world. And I, who thought to find here a pendant to
the great fairs of yesterday or those of Nijni Novgorod of to-day! I,
who expected to see heaps and heaps of the produce of Arabian Africa,
Negraic Africa, and Europe!
[Illustration: TIMBUCTOO: THE GREAT MARKET]
Instead of obliterating the image of these ruins, this spectacle bites
it in more deeply. What is passing here? what has passed here? I ask
myself in disconcerted bewilderment. The houses round the market-place
have the appearance of being able to stand, certainly, and are even
inhabited, but, O my beautiful dwellings of Jenne, how far away you
seem! Where are your imposing forms and harmonious outlines? You would
appear monumental now. Here are merely houses of a kind, things without
character, height, or style. Just four walls and a flat roof. If this
mediocrity were only pleasingly clean! But their unburnt bricks are
worn, crumbling, and cracked, under the combined effects of rain,
wind, and sun. Any attempt to keep them repaired was given up long
ago. They seem to have been deserted for years and inhabited again
quite recently. The bizarre appearance of their enclosing walls seems
to confirm this hypothesis, for the breaches in them have been hastily
stopped with carelessly adjusted mats, bundles of straw, and fagots of
brushwood.
The further we advance the more the misery increases, and all traces of
the majestic exterior disappear. Only the sky is the same, brilliant
and immense.
[Illustration: A LARGE HOUSE]
Let us follow the road that buries itself in the heart of the town.
The buildings bordering it are rather higher here; they even have an
additional story. But indulgent as I am inclined to be, I cannot deny
that they also are threatened with ruin, and that neglect is written
on their walls in cracks and crevices. Their second stories are still
further advanced in disintegration, and the bars of the little Moorish
windows have fallen away. Only the doors and thresholds show any sign
of care and habitation. The former are curious, being very massive,
garnished with a profusion of enormous-headed nails, and bound with
iron like a safe. They are all carefully shut, too, contrary to the
custom of negro countries.
Beyond this road (a comparatively sound spot), the leprous patches
reappear, and vague bits of ground (the sites of houses which have
been deserted or destroyed), mingle with poor hovels enclosed by a
heterogeneous collection of brushwood, mats, and walls. The general
wretchedness is occasionally varied by groups of straw huts with fences
of matting. They are clusters of nomad Foulbe dwellings in the midst of
the _débris_ of the town.
In spite of certain vague imaginings, I had not expected to find
an Athens, Rome, or Cairo here; but straw huts! not many of them,
certainly, but--in the very heart of the town.
[Illustration: THE STRAW HUTS, WITH STRAW ENCLOSURES]
Here and there I pass a few healthy islands of tall houses with
studded doors close shut; then, more ruins. One of the latter arrests
my attention. Although it is a lamentable wreck, with ceiling and
roof hanging from a lacework of walls, its great size indicates some
dwelling of importance. A public building perhaps. Who lived here?
It proved to be no ordinary house, for the man who dwelt there was
known all over Europe, all over the world, and the Queen of England
corresponded with him. A man whom the learned and the explorers of
every country held in pious memory, Barth’s host and protector, Sheik
el Backay, lived here. Its crumbling walls have no other roof than the
sky. The family of one of his servants vegetates in a little corner
of the courtyard, into which some seedlings of the cotton-plant have
thrust their way. This is all that remains of the once brilliant life
that held sway there.
From one extremity of the town to the other the same story is repeated
of roads ill and dying. You sink in their sands as if you were in the
midst of the desert. A city in deliquescence, such is the town which
the sun had shown from afar as so majestically great.
[Illustration: TIMBUCTOO: A STREET]
Have I been the sport of a mirage? The spectacle was so unexpected and
absorbing that I had hitherto paid no heed to the life and movement
stirring among these ruins, and had not noticed their contrast with
the fading town. But tall blue-and-white forms are energetically
stirring about the city, and strings of heavily laden camels, donkeys,
and porters encumber the roads. I scarcely notice that all the idioms
of the Sahara, Sudan, and elsewhere, from the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic to Lake Chad, are to be heard here. I do not distinguish,
under white turban or red fez, all the different types of the negro
races,--Arab, Berber, Songhoi, Mossi, Bambara, Toucouleur, Malinka,
among the blacks; and Foulbes, Moors, Touaregs, and Tripolitans among
the whites. This human amalgam is miserably clad, and their untidy,
ragged, and dirty coats are so completely in harmony with their
background, that one confounds them with the ruins. The obstinately
closed doors would lead you to imagine that all these passers-by are
strangers to the town.
[Illustration: TIMBUCTOO: A CORNER OF THE TOWN]
The impression is so profound that sight and judgment are deceived,
overthrown. It is not only the illusion of the distant view, the
vanished mirage, which embitters the deception, it is the destruction
of all that glamour which surrounded the name of Timbuctoo in the mind
of the European. The disillusion is complete, for I know that the town
has not been besieged, pillaged, bombarded, nor destroyed since it was
occupied by our troops. Our flag was planted there some months back
without a shot being fired. The town is precisely what it was before
we entered her.
And this is the great Timbuctoo, the metropolis of the Sudan and the
Sahara, with its boasted wealth and commerce. This is Timbuctoo the
holy, the learned, that light of the Niger, of which it was written,
‘We shall one day correct the texts of our Greek and Latin classics by
the manuscripts which are preserved there.’ And I have not even seen
one of the open-air schools which were so numerous at Jenne.
These ruins, this rubbish, this wreck of a town, is this the secret of
Timbuctoo the Mysterious?
* * * * *
You can imagine my perplexity when it became time to think of a
lodging. My first thought was naturally to settle in the road and
pitch my tent in one of its empty spaces,--at a respectful and prudent
distance from these falling houses, be it understood. My servant,
however, an old Senegalese tirailleur, who had fought against Samory,
and who was afraid of nothing, set out in quest of an abode while I
continued to explore the town. ‘I have found a house,’ he cried on his
return, and radiantly led me towards one that was in every respect as
deliquescent as the rest.
To my great surprise, however, the inside did not harmonise with its
exterior. It was no palace, but it was fresh and clean, and in good
condition, truly regal in contrast with the outside sights. I decided
upon it at once, and found the habitation comprised two rooms, a
vestibule, and an ante-room to a court, which was about as large as
a couple of linen sheets. Three rooms (the apartments proper) opened
from these. A passage led to a court of vague locality somewhere at the
back, and a little staircase gave access to the roof. The whole was let
for twenty-five francs a month.
The camels grunting at the door were immediately unloaded, and I
contemplated my traps with emotion. A moment ago I thought there was
not a whole thing in Timbuctoo,--in the world even. The sight of my
packages dispelled this nightmare. In a regular fever I insisted
upon unpacking them myself. I set up the camp-bedstead, my table and
folding-chair, my pots and pans, my tub and my toothbrush, and then I
contemplated them all with a childish joy, not unmixed with tears, for
all these things were not cracked, crumbling, and falling into ruins.
* * * * *
Next morning I sent round the letters of recommendation provided by
my friends in Jenne. The little pieces of paper were filled with warm
words, and very soon rows of slippers on the threshold of my dwelling
announced the presence of numerous visitors within. My house was filled
with welcoming presents, eggs, dates, ostrich plumes, hens, chickens,
and sheep. I was compelled to sacrifice the latter, as pasturage was
not included in the twenty-five francs a month, but the poultry were
installed in the court at the back. For the first time in my life I
had a poultry-yard, and I experienced all the deliciously childish and
countrified sensations of ‘fetching the eggs myself.’
I responded to the graciousness of my new friends with stuffs,
Mussulman chaplets, tea, sugar, and perfumes. The letters of
introduction had instructed them concerning the object of my visit,
and having learned wisdom from my experience at Jenne, I hastened
to explain my purpose still further. They were assiduous in their
attentions, and constantly brought me new visitors, whose acquaintance
they thought might be useful to me. A charming life now began for me in
the house I had entered with so much distrust.
[Illustration: MY COURTYARD AT TIMBUCTOO]
In the penumbra of the little court, which was partly covered by a
verandah, and still further defended by a large awning against the
ardour of the Saharian sun, I held meetings night and morning. My
visitors sat crouched upon their heels, while I occupied the solitary
chair, with a little table and some blank paper before me. The picture
recalled certain glimpses of the Mosque University of El Azhar at
Cairo. It was a class, in fact, with the proportions reversed, the
professors being the many and the pupil the one. The deliberate
and picturesque phraseology of the Oriental flowed on unceasingly,
recitations being succeeded by readings from the old chronicles of
Timbuctoo.
There was nothing pedantic nor affected about our gatherings; each
member related his memories at random, and passed from subject to
subject with every imaginable ease. Tea, coffee, cigarettes, and kola
nuts circulated at intervals. The neighbours’ pigeons and ‘my hens’
made an occasional irruption, but with discretion. Chaffinches with
red throats and tails, and the lively little lizards who shared the
apartments with me, joined the party. They frolicked in our midst with
the utmost effrontery. The lizards ran about all over my guests, and
the birds flew round them, fluttering and singing incessantly. No one
but myself took any notice of them, however, so accustomed is Timbuctoo
to their numbers and caprices.
For several days I did not stir out of my house; my life was so full
I had no leisure to do so. Yet so pleasantly active and varied was
it that I was content to remain in, and gradually, without having
set foot in the street, a new Timbuctoo was built up before me. The
wretched spectacle which had greeted me on my arrival, and which I had
believed ineffaceable, disappeared bit by bit. A secret had clearly
hovered over Timbuctoo the Mysterious. I had the eyes that saw; and at
last the image of the great city, the wealthy Timbuctoo of the legends,
was restored to me.
[Illustration]