Places and Persons

...I had ample time to notice the intense magnetism of his personality...

...Foucauld replied that he was a Christian and a priest, and poor Moussa was at once seized with sorrow for what the beyond had in store for his friend...

...The world war came and the Turks and their henchmen, the Senoussi, decided to stir up trouble in the French Sahara...

...But the break expected by Ahmed failed to materialize...

...Places and Persons SAHARAN SANCTITY By ROBERT DU CHALIEU AFTER a stiff fortnight of desert duty the Spahi troop of which I was second in command was enjoying a deserved rest in In-Salah, an Arabian hamlet strategically important because it is the intersection point of various caravan routes...

...you are now falling under the influence of a Christian priest...

...Tamanr'asset is a valley throughout which are scattered a few Touareg tents...

...The remaining Touareg turned their horses about and galloped under a hail of bullets to where they had left tethered their white racing camels—the meharas, which can run twice as fast as a horse, keep up the pace for a day at a time, and subsist for half a week without food or drink...

...From that moment Foucauld became so interested in the Touareg nation that he finally decided to take up with his old friend, the then Colonel Laperrine, the project of entering the Ahaggar and settling there...

...Instead the Amenokal who knew about Christian priests only the desecrations chanted by the mollahs and the marabouts, grew worried about Foucauld, his adviser and friend...

...While as a cavalryman I admired the remarkable skill of the rider, I did not think the man could possibly be a priest because, apart from the fact that there were no Christian clergymen in Moslem In-Salah, priests as a rule are not trained to strenuous feats of horsemanship...

...He was at that time a resident of the Hoggar and was on his way to fulfil his biennal duty of reporting for instructions to Algiers, to the Trappist friar who is in charge of the Saharan regions as prothonotary apostolic...

...He was wounded and the blood drenched his blue tunic...

...That hero and builder of the Saharan empire of France had the enthusiastic soul of a knight of old...

...This should have been a matter of rejoicing...

...he shouted in despair...

...He spent two days with Foucauld in the retreat of Mount Asakcem...

...I am sure that you will act tactfully among the veiled tribesmen," he answered...

...Pere Foucauld had barely administered the last rites to a couple of dying legionnaires when he was attracted by a commotion centering around an upturned tent...

...I had barely reached a clearing behind the first grove of palm trees when I saw a slim, sunburned rider, the bare toes of his sandaled feet sticking out from the stirrups and a monk's frock flapping in the breeze, smartly leading one of the troop's horses above a rough steeplechase composed of a crumbling net of low mud walls...

...Veteran soldiers of the Foreign Legion are not easily routed...

...In fact they thought that in time he would grow tired of his opposition, and they left him alone...

...Moussa bowed his head...

...He knew that Foucauld had grown indignant at the high-handed manner of dealing with Imrads and slaves that prevailed among the Kel'Relas, the ruling Touareg caste...

...This has grieved the Touareg greatly...

...he asked...

...It is the law of the desert...

...Foucauld's remains were buried near his abode, towering above the valley of Tamanr'asset...

...The men with whom they had to deal were tall, muscular Touareg, past masters in the use of the takouba or two-handed sword, and of the allar, the peculiar lance of solid iron three yards long that the Touareg inherit from the ancient Celtiberians...

...But the devotion which carried him daily on long journeys to minister to the ailing, and the prestige of his blameless life, found a warm response in the heart of the Touareg...

...It is doubtful, however, if their gallant behavior had anything to do with a sincere feeling of love toward France...

...even haughty Akhmouk, the present Amenokal and heir of Moussa, cried when he heard it...

...Ali," I asked sternly, "who is that man...

...He thoroughly understood Foucauld and knew his potentialities...

...One of the Touareg who up to that moment had lain unconscious under a dead horse was coming to his senses...

...Probably the motive of Foucauld's murder was to direct suspicion at the rulers of the Touareg tribes...

...The string which pierced and kept together the worn golden disks composing the necklace was a modern cord of soft camel hair...

...The tamashek, or spoken idiom of the Touareg, is a Berber dialect similar in many respects to those spoken in some parts of Morocco and Tunisia...

...Foucauld's tomb became in time an object of pilgrimage among the Touareg...

...The retreat which the Touareg, who at once befriended Foucauld, carved for him into the rock was perched near the top of Mount Asekcem, about sixteen hundred feet above the valley...

...This dastardly plan to create ill feeling between the French and the veiled tribesmen miscarried, because the emissaries who slew Pere Foucauld in a gloomy night of December, 1916, neglected to make sure that his servant was dead too...

...which incidentally meant a round trip of forty days, most of it by camel...

...Your people are forsaking one superstition for another," he said crudely...

...Pere Foucauld mused aloud...

...Yet Foucauld did not attempt to preach Christianity to the veiled tribesmen...

...I will rather relate the occasion of his first becoming interested in the Touareg, as it was told me by an eye-witness, the late Captain Bertone of the First Foreign regiment...

...a brief article would prove inadequate to such an undertaking...

...He gradually brought the horse to a trot and came toward us...

...I gave a last glance at the long rows of tethered horses munching peacefully under the porches of a dilapidated caravanseraj and at the troopers who were busy around the kettles steaming on a score of fires, and walked slowly toward the oasis which separated the troop's quarters from the village proper...

...Today they are Moslems in name and agnostics in fact...

...In the brief and frenzied melee that ensued fourteen tribesmen and twenty soldiers were killed or sorely wounded...

...This decision of the French Ministry of the Colonies is the result of a postwar hysteria that is rendering French Northern Africa a difficult country to live in for those who are not Mohammedan...

...He even disbanded his concubines...

...I understand why the Touareg are monogamous, why they do not seclude their women but on the contrary admit them to tribal councils...

...There is no definite proof that such a thing happened...

...I was about to hail the rider and order him to dismount when Ali ben Abad, veteran top sergeant of our outfit, emerged from behind a huge palm tree...

...During the world war, thousands of Arabian and Negro Moslem soldiers were sent to France and fought bravely against the Germans...

...You will find them less antagonistic than the Arabs, because the Touareg are by no means strict Moslems...

...Luckily the legionnaires outnumbered them six to one...

...The horseman had noticed our conversation and Ali's embarrassed attitude...

...I knew too much about mrbets (Arabian for marabouts) to like them...

...they feel indebted to the Moslems and sympathize with them, chiefly because they know little about them...

...Moussa received him kindly and took advantage of the circumstance to praise warmly "F'caldji, the holy man...

...Those enthusiastic irresponsibles cannot see anything else than the Arabian and Negro contribution to the mighty struggle of the world war...

...It might have been instrumental in reviving among the veiled tribes that Christian conviction which ruled their ancestors and which, apart from religious considerations, would certainly be a force of reaction against the stagnant influence of Mohammedanism...

...Its truth is proved by the numberless tribesmen, subjects of France, who a few years ago joined Mehmed Abd el Krim, leader of the Riffs, as soon as that African Napoleon won initial successes at the expense of a large number of French battalions...

...Ali snapped to attention and replied with a tinge of reproach in his voice: "But Sidi, he is a very holy man...

...It was late in the afternoon...

...Later, when Foucauld opened the tunic of the Targui to attend to his wound, his eyes fell on a strange necklace surrounding the brawny neck of the captive...

...For many years you listened to the mollahs...

...He is F'caldji, the mrbet...

...Arabs and North African blacks will always fight for those who are strong enough to force them to do so...

...The veteran white soldiers of the Nineteenth Corps, the millions of southern French, Spaniards, Italians who, having settled in Algeria and Tunisia have rendered those provinces prosperous, warn against the dangers of an excessive pro-Moslem policy...

...During his youth Pere Foucauld had lived for many years in Morocco and he was able to question the tribesman...

...I became convinced that a trooper had illegally loaned one of our mounts to a sporting Moslem of the neighborhood...

...Of course Foucauld or Moussa could not have spoken of it without giving a deadly blow to Moussa's political power...

...The Kel'Relas were rather hurt than incensed by Foucauld's efforts...

...He realized perhaps that if he had done so at first the Touareg would have found it almost impossible to understand him, benighted as they were by centuries of Moslem influence and by the complete isolation of the thousands of miles of desert wastes surrounding them on all sides...

...One day a lieutenant of the meharisti, or camel corps, brought a message from the commander of the zone of the oasis of the Sahara to the Amenokal Moussa...

...The sentries shouted the alarm, but before the soldiers could overcome the numbness of sleep and muster some sort of array, the tribesmen were on them like a cyclone...

...Most likely their descendants imposed their customs on the Berbers who escaped to the Ahaggar when the Arabian hordes swarmed over Tunisia...

...While part of the sky was red with the haze of sunset, the stars already shone brightly on the eastern horizon...

...Abandoning the horses which they use only in actual combat, they mounted the meharas and rode away at top speed...

...I prevailed on my old acquaintance Ali to lend me a horse...

...My experience had taught me that the scanty resources of every Arabian community were invariably devoted to keeping in extravagant comfort these Moslem soothsayers, hermits and priests, who paradoxically unite an unlimited greed to the supine ataraxia of their creed...

...They are planning to give to the Mohammedan hordes of Algeria and Tunisia a full electoral and administrative equality with the industrious white colonizers...

...I hope you will forgive a former officer of the Chasseurs d'Afrique who felt the urge of going through the exercises in which he indulged in his youth," he said smiling...

...About the sixth century the Touareg fervently embraced the Christian faith, which had been brought among them by Byzantine missionaries...

...Pere Foucauld interfered just in time to stop a legionnaire from finishing the Targui with his bayonet, and stooped to help the wounded tribesman crawl from beneath his dead horse...

...Three years later the body of General Laperrine who had died stranded near a battered airplane in the Tanazerouft desert was carried to the Ahaggar...

...The two great Saharans were laid to rest side by side under an obelisk bearing both their sculptured likenesses...

...They swear, I do not know with how much truth, that men afflicted by illmended wounds or incurable diseases were miraculously healed after calling for relief to Pere Foucauld near his grave...

...They are the rulers and they have the power...

...I stammered that the whole troop was his for the asking...

...Foucauld went to make his home in Tamanr'asset, in the southeastern region of the Ahaggar or Hoggar...

...They refrained from shooting to avoid hitting each other, but they attacked the raiders from every side, swinging their guns as clubs or bringing into play their long triangular bayonets...

...He undertook the long journey separating the Taitoq country where he resided from the Tamanr'asset valley, with the purpose of asking Foucauld if the words of the lieutenant were true...

...The man was telling the truth, you are a Christian...

...Yet the French authorities have lately ordered the removal of Foucauld's body...

...That night Pere Foucauld was a guest at our mess...

...But I refrained from venting my anger, for an outraged mrbet is bound to become a preacher of revolt in the desert...

...My forefathers wore it when Taniteh ruled," the Targui replied...

...Laperrine did not raise any difficulty...

...But then all your austerities, all your good deeds and virtues, will not help you any in your next life...

...I will not speak of the scientific and philological achievements of the vicomte de Foucauld, both as a soldier of France and as a minister of God...

...Several commissioned officers of the Nineteenth Corps firmly believe that in those days Moussa learned Christianity and embraced it...

...Then it is true that when the Carthaginians, who no longer needed them, drove their mercenaries to die in the desert, the straggling Aryan warriors finally found a haven in the valleys of the Ahaggar...

...I am Brother Foucauld...

...The removal of the body of Pere Foucauld, priest, scientist and martyr, is a flourish of homage to Moslem North Africa in general and in particular to the Bedouins who hem in from every side the white and formerly Christian stronghold of the Ahaggar...

...Where did you find that necklace...

...Bertone's company had been detailed to put the fear of the French administration into the hearts of a semi-nomad Arabian tribe whose camps, scattered about a region of twenty square miles in the southeastern zone of In-Salah, had refused to pay the yearly tax mark of their submission...

...The fanatical and ruthless Sultan Ahmed el Shereef, supreme chief of the Senoussi, closely watched Touareg affairs from his stronghold of Tripolitan Fezzan...

...Who gave him one of our chargers...

...Moussa," Foucauld replied, "if I have done any good among your people it is only because my God, the true God, has assisted me...

...Tank, the moon goddess of Carthage whom the Celtic mercenaries of the Suffetes learned to worship when Rome was young...

...but some of the disks preserved ancient Celtic characters, which the centuries had only partly smoothed away...

...As a result the Senoussi drive of a few months later was met by the Touareg led by a handful of French officers, and encountered a complete disaster...

...During the grey hour that preceded the dawn of the fourth day of desert duty, a score of horsemen seemed to materialize from the mist enveloping a distant dune...

...After all, the frock of a monk is much like a gandourah, and the skull cap that the rider wore far back on his head was similar to the peculiar headwear of the Saharan shepherds...

...From that lonely abode the fame and the influence of Foucauld grew so strong that his advice was sought even by the chief of chiefs, Moussa ag Amastane, and by Dassine, Moussa's beloved cousin and the leading woman of the Ahaggar...

...As was his habit, Pere Foucauld had joined the column as volunteer chaplain...

...This poor wretch survived long enough to say that he had heard the murderers shout at each other in the harsh dialect of Fezzan...

...Accustomed to the law of violence ruling the Sahara, they considered that they had the right to deal with their subjects as they pleased, but they loved and admired Foucauld too much to feel angry...

...Did you notice that they wear great red and white Saint Andrew's crosses on their shields and garments...

...The lieutenant was a rough soldier endowed with a practical military skill but by no means overburdened with brains...

...Having no time to dress, they hastily buckled their ammunition belts over their naked bodies...

...But their protests are sneered at by most of the members of the French Parliament...

...If Moussa had been a fanatical Moslem instead of a barbaric but intelligent leader, these words would have caused Foucauld's death...

...They continued most zealous Christians until, nine centuries later, they were forced to accept the Moslem creed to avoid being exterminated by a confederation of fanatical Arabian tribes...

...But it is a fact that from that time Moussa dealt more leniently with the Imrads, or low-caste Touareg, and with his slaves...

...but what impressed me most was that his every word had weight and meaning, learning and significance...