Chapter X: Timbuctoo8

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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.

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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.

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.