[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact &
Fiction December 1961 and January 1962. Extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
renewed.]
"Take up the white man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed...."
--Kipling
* * * * *
The turmoil in Africa is only beginning--and it must grow worse
before it's better. Not until the people of Africa know they are
Africans--not warring tribesmen--will there be peace....
I
The two-vehicle caravan emerged from the sandy wastes of the _erg_ and
approached the small encampment of Taitoq Tuareg which consisted of
seven goat leather tents. They were not unanticipated, the camp's scouts
had noted the strange pillars of high-flung dust which were set up by
the air rotors an hour earlier and for the past fifteen minutes they had
been visible to all.
Moussa-ag-Amastan, headman of the clan, awaited the newcomers at first
with a certain trepidation in spite of his warrior blood. Although he
hadn't expressed himself thus to his followers, his first opinion had
been that the unprecedented pillars were djinn come out of the erg for
no good purpose. It wasn't until they were quite close that it could be
seen the vehicles bore resemblance to those of the Rouma which were of
recent years spreading endlessly through the lands of the Ahaggar Tuareg
and beggaring those who formerly had conducted the commerce of the
Sahara.
But the vehicles traveling through the sand dunes! That had been the
last advantage of the camel. No wheeled vehicle could cross the vast
stretches of the ergs, they must stick to the hard ground, to the
tire-destroying gravel.
They came to a halt and Moussa-ag-Amastan drew up his teguelmoust
turban-veil even closer about his eyes. He had no desire to let the
newcomers witness his shocked surprise at the fact that the desert
lorries had no wheels, floated instead without support, and now that
they were at a standstill settled gently to earth.
There was further surprise when the five who issued forth from the two
seemingly clumsy vehicles failed to be Rouma. They looked more like the
Teda to the south, and the Targui's eyes thinned beneath his
teguelmoust. Since the French had pulled out their once dreaded Camel
Corps there had been somewhat of a renaissance of violence between
traditional foes.
However, the newcomers, though dark as Negro Bela slaves, wore Tuareg
dress, loose baggy trousers of dark indigo-blue cotton cloth, a loose,
nightgownlike white cotton shirt, and over this a _gandoura_ outer
garment. Above all, they wore the teguelmoust though they were
shockingly lax in keeping it properly up about the mouth.
Moussa-ag-Amastan knew that he was backed by ten or more of his
clansmen, half of whom bore rifles, the rest Tuareg broadswords,
Crusader-like with their two edges, round points and flat rectangular
cross-members. Only two of the strangers seemed armed and they
negligently bore their smallish guns in the crooks of their arms. The
clan leader spoke at strength, then, but he said the traditional "_La
bas_."
"There is no evil," repeated the foremost of the newcomers. His Tamabeq,
the Berber language of the Tuareg confederations, seemed perfect.
Moussa-ag-Amastan said, "What do you do in the lands of the Taitoq
Tuareg?"
The stranger, a tall, handsome man with a dominating though pleasant
personality, indicated the vehicles with a sweep of his hand. "We are
Enaden, itinerant smiths. As has ever been our wont, we travel from
encampment to encampment to sell our products and to make repair upon
your metal possessions."
Enaden! The traveling smiths of the Ahaggar, and indeed of the whole
Sahara, were a despised and ragged lot at best. Few there were that ever
possessed more than a small number of camels, a sprinkling of goats,
perhaps a sheep or two. But these seemed as rich as Roumas, as Europeans
or Americans.
Moussa-ag-Amastan muttered, "You jest with us at your peril, stranger."
He pointed an aged but still strong hand at the vehicles. "Enaden do not
own such as these."
The newcomer shrugged. "I am Omar ben Crawf and these are my followers,
Abrahim el Bakr Ma el Ainin, Keni Ballalou and Bey-ag-Akhamouk. We come
today from Tamanrasset and we are smiths, as we can prove. As is known,
there is high pay to be earned by working in the oil fields, at the dams
on the Niger, in the afforestation projects, in the sinking of the new
wells whose pumps utilize the rays of the sun, in the developing of the
great new oases. There is much Rouma money to be made in such work and
my men and I have brought these vehicles specially built in the new
factories in Dakar for desert use."
"Slave work!" one of Moussa-ag-Amastan's kinsmen sneered.
Omar ben Crawf shrugged in obvious amusement, but there was a warmth and
vitality in the man that quickly affected even strangers. "Perhaps," he
said. "But times change, as every man knows and today there no longer
need be hunger, nor illness, nor any want--if a man will but work a
fraction of each day."
"Work is for slaves," Moussa-ag-Amastan barked.
The newcomer refused to argue. "But all slaves have been freed, and
where in the past this meant nothing since the Bela had no place to go,
no way to live save with his owner, today it is different and any man
can go and find work on the many projects that grow everywhere. So the
slaves slip away from the Tuareg, and the Teda and Chaamba. Soon there
will be no more slaves to do the work about your encampments. And then
what, man of the desert?"
"We'll fight!" Moussa-ag-Amastan growled. "We Tuareg are warriors,
bedouin, free men. We will never be slaves."
"_Inshallah._ If God wills it," the smith agreed politely.
"Show us your wares," the old chieftain snapped. "We chatter like women.
Talk can wait until the evening meal and in the men's quarters of my
tent." He approached the now parked vehicles and his followers crowded
after him. From the tents debouched women and children. The children
were completely nude, and the Tuareg women were unveiled for such are
the customs of the Ahaggar Tuareg that the men go veiled but women do
not.
* * * * *
One of the lorries was so constructed that a side could be raised in
such fashion to display a wide variety of tools, weapons, household
utensils, and textiles. Ohs and ahs punctuated the air, women being the
same in every land. Two of the smiths brought forth metal-working
equipment of strange design and set up shop to one side. A broken bolt
on an aged Lebel rifle was quickly repaired, a copper cooking pot
brazed, some harness tinkered with.
Of a sudden, Moussa-ag-Amastan said, "But your women, your families,
where are they?"
The one who had been introduced as Abrahim el Bakr, an open-faced man
whose constant smiling seemed to take a full ten years off what must
have been his age, explained. "On the big projects, one can find
employment only if he allows his children to attend the new schools. So
our wives and children remain near Tamanrasset while the children learn
the lore of books."
"Rouma schools!" one of the warriors sneered.
"Oh, no. There are few Roumas remaining in all the land now," the smith
said easily. "Those that are left serve us in positions our people as
yet cannot hold, in construction of the dams, in the bringing of trees
to the desert, but soon, even they will be unneeded."
"_Our_ people?" Moussa-ag-Amastan rumbled ungraciously. "You are smiths.
The smiths have no people. You are neither Kel Rela, Tegehe Mellet,
Taitoq, nor even Teda, Chaambra, or Ouled Tidrarin."
One of the smiths said easily, "In the great new construction camps, in
the new towns, with their many ways to work and become rich, the tribes
are breaking up. Tuareg works next to Teda and a Moor next to a former
Haratin serf." He added, as though unthinkingly, even as he displayed an
aluminum pan to a wide-eyed Tuareg matron, "Indeed, even the clans break
up and often Tuareg marries Arab or Sudanese or Rifs down from the
north ... or even we Enaden."
The clansmen were suddenly silent, in shocked surprise.
"That cannot be true!" the elderly chief snapped.