What Possessed Me

The Mali Magillah: The Day Is Done

It's taken me seven months to write this post. I'm staring at these final photographs of my time in Mali and I still don't know how to tell you all the things that are in my heart. Will pictures and poems suffice?

It it this deep blankness is the real strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.¹

My head swims with memories of Tuareg tents, stringy goat roasted over a fire, nomad children selling silver trinkets from their pockets.

We are in Timbuktu again. The Festival Au Desert honors the annual gathering of the Tuareg tribes

who still convene from all over the Sahara once a year to socialize and share information. The Festival is about Malian and West African music, but the Tuareg are still in evidence, perched on sand dunes and guarding their camels, looking on.

The days are searingly bright and hot, best spent in what little shade is provided by our four person tent. I share this small space with a slightly unhinged German whose hair-raising stories of motorcycle rides across Africa with compound fractures make the rest of us lily-livered mortals blanch. The transplanted Texan, the disgruntled Brit and I circle around each other sniffing, noses twitching. Something is off. Do they detect fear? Eagerness? Or - God forbid - ENTHUSIASM? We are not off to a good start. I am determined to be liked god damn it all! and by sundown we are as thick as thieves.

The music starts - the vast majority of the acts are brilliant and inspiring, and a very few are fucking awful (harmonica guy from Connecticut or wherever, I'm talking about you. Stop embarrassing me with your pretend New Orleans bit - it gives me eczema.)

We sit atop the dunes and listen until we are moved to dance. The Tuareg children join us, showing off their moves while simultaneously trying to pry cadeaux from our hot little hands. The crowd, full of Malians, is ecstatic, rapt, full of unbridled joy. When Oumou Sangare comes out, it's like the second coming of Jesus.

While the German is off breaking his neck somewhere, we three laugh and play and roll down giant sand dunes. All deeply miserable in our own ways, this unexpected lightheartedness is a salve for invisible sores.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.²

The Tuareg men are dandies. They wear six foot lengths of fine cotton cloth wrapped around their heads and faces, the color contrasting with their indigo robes. Some of the more benighted gringos mimic the style, which is, let's face it, Fucking Embarrassment Number II. Leave it for the Tuaregs, bitches! They're harder than you are, and much better-looking. I say this with my inside voice, but with great emotion.

While the Tuaregs race their camels, I watch idly as two boys play with a rusty razor blade in the sand. Hey look! Kids playing with a rusty razor blade! Do they cut themselves? No. Do they get tetanus and die? No. Does someone lose an eye? No. Neurotic mothers of the United States, please take note.

Three nights of belly laughing, goat carving, sand dancing and star gazing seem too few. It is over before it ever began. The adventure has come to a close, the day is done.

Sprawled out on a far dune staring up at the night sky, I think about what Achilles said to Briseis in Troy, perhaps the worst film ever made:

 

You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. 

And it all seems too heartbreakingly true.

* * *

Here endeth the Mali Megillah. To read earlier installments, click the category "Mali Megillah" under this or any of the other relevant posts.

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Pictures: Mine, except for the second, third and fourth brought to you by CH, one of the Unholy Trinity of Timbuktu.

Poems: 1. "Let It Go" by William Empson, 2. "The Day Is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

 

Oumou Sangare in Brooklyn tonight!

I'm going to see Oumou Sangare, the first lady of Malian music, tonight at the Prospect Park bandshell. I'll be there at 7:30 to witness this amazing force of nature - come join me! You will not regret it. I'll be the one in the black and white striped t-shirt dancing like a white person.

The Mali Megillah: Lost in Time

Though its name signifies an impossibly remote Never Never Land of camels and caravans, Timbuktu is not big on first impressions. So underwhelmed was 19th century French explorer René-Auguste Caillié that he described this legendary city as "a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth." At first glance, it appears that not much has changed since the first European adventurers had their romantic notions dashed against the city's mud brick walls. It's difficult to believe that this unassuming city was once the site of the world's most important university.

At first wander, Timbuktu's charms are not immediately apparent.

First impression: Arcghhhh (clearing a throatcoat of sand). 

Second impression: Brown. More brown. Still more brown. An entire city the color of that not-quite-right Lancome freebie eyeshadow that's somehow lost at the bottom of your bag and covered with bits of Kleenex and hair.

Third impression: Gchaaaach (tongue almost completely shriveled and in search of water). Ahhh...what is that? A mirage? Could it be...

"May I have a Coke please?" I ask in my super formal textbook French. 

Silence. Befuddlement. 

I continue. "A Coke...to drink?" (You know, just in case there is confusion with my shitty French.)

"Il n'ya pas de Coca." There is no Coke. No Coke at the Depot of Drinks, the Cabine de Coca. I wander on, dazed and confused. It's white hot and blindingly bright. A man outside hands me a thimble of strong Tuareg tea, and I drain it with gratitude, pausing to watch a gaggle of children chase a dusty lamb straight into a moped. A narrow escape for all involved, quickly recovered with a sharp word and a quick smile.

I wend my way down quiet side streets, where women bake bread in communal mud brick ovens.  Few people are about - the sun is high and everyone seems to be heading home for the main meal.

The doors are astoundingly beautiful - elaborately carved, adorned with thin cutouts of tin. Behind them are internal courtyards for cooking, and dark, cool, thick-walled rooms for sleeping. 

The muezzin calls for prayer from the mud brick mosque where scholars have studied and prayed since the thirteenth century. Outside, men perform their ablutions, washing hands, feet, faces, noses, ears, and teeth, a ritual unchanged with time.

I am in search of the 700,000 Medieval religious and scientific manuscripts that are now housed in Timbuktu's libraries. The Ahmed Baba Institute is closed for prayer, so I wait on the roof, enjoying an impromptu tabla performance until the Iman scolds us from below.

The manuscripts are bountiful and badly in need of restoration. Every month, more manuscripts turn up from families who have kept them for generations. 

They speak of astronomy, law, the sayings of the prophet - the combined intellectual property of countless early African scholars.

Some of the more beautiful pages are on display, while others are catalogued, digitalized, and stored for safekeeping. The restoration work is painstaking, underfunded, and sisyphean. I dream of joining the Tombouctou Manuscript Project and taking part in the preservation of early African history.

A few blocks away, an indoor market is packed with merchants and artisans selling Tuareg silver, diaphanous lengths of brightly colored fabric, huge slabs of sea salt carried across the Sahara in caravans.  A silversmith stokes a fire with a goatskin bellows and hammers a curve into a fine bracelet. With a few small alterations, it could be a scene from the golden age of Mali, when Timbuktu was the center of trade and scholarship in Africa.

 I feel lost in time.

Next up: Are we there yet? The final installment of the Mali Megillah. Read the rest of it here.