Tales of the Unexpected
Daily Telegraph, January 2014
For most people it would have been a nightmare. We were stuck in the middle of the Sahara, all flights grounded due to a sandstorm. Around us people flapped like headless chickens, trying to communicate electronically, for it was right at the end of the trip and transatlantic flight connections were in danger.
We however were as smug as cats. We had at long last visited Roman Timgad (on the edge of the desert) and Roman Tipasa (against which the waves of the Mediterranean still break). These longed-for ruins had been fully explored, the images were safely in the bag. And now to cap it all, my travelling companion, Don McCullin, was entertaining me with stories as I sat on my green kitbag. Beside being a world-famous war-photographer, Don is a first-class mimic and over the years he has worked with most of my travel writing heroes. So while others fought for broadband-access, I listened entranced as Don told real travellers’ tales, first in the camp, educated tones of Bruce Chatwin, then the chatty, laughter-ridden timbre of Eric Newby (a velvet-glove beneath which lurked a hand of steel) and oddest but most entrancing of all, the strangled half Welsh-half-Enfield-Essex accent of Norman Lewis, spiked with that unmistakable bone-dry, laconic wit.
I knew beforehand that travelling in Algeria is seldom predictable. It’s unchartered territory, as a friend, now a Washington D.C.-based expert, had explained to me. ‘We don’t even know the names of the commanders of three of the most important military districts – which for a country dominated by its generals ranks as pretty inscrutable in this spy-in-the-sky, where every mobile is phone-tapped, age of ours.” My first taste of Algeria’s enigmatic behaviour had been twenty-five years ago. I’d gone through 90% of the bureaucratic hoops of a land-crossing from eastern Morocco, only to watch my passport being literally frisbeed out of the window of the last kiosk. After which the shutter was slammed down in a very decisive manner. Not daunted I tried another frontier post, then another one further south in the desert, but the same Alice-in-Wonderland procedure occurred each time, and always at the very last desk. After that rather than dwell on paranoid theories, I took the long-cut, driving back across northern Morocco, crossing the straits to Spain, driving up the coast and across southern France, to catch a boat from Marseille to Tunis and try things from that end...
Years later, after the ten-year civil war was over, I was plotting a literary event with a charming Algerian cultural attaché over tea in London. He told me that all would be possible once I was in Algiers, but that he could promise absolutely no assistance with the Visa department downstairs in the same consulate building! My passport is now stuffed full of green Algerian visa-stickers, but the element of surprise remains. In the years immediately after the civil war, police escorts were mandatory (with sirens wailing), and like some parcel-delivery service foreign guests were counted, signed for and passed over at each Wilaya (county) boundary.
The last three trips have all had moments of sudden derailment. On one all the hotels in Oran were commandeered by the Oil Ministry, an another an Algerian win over Egypt on the football pitch had shut-down any traffic movement through the streets of Algiers for 24 hours as delirious crowds let off fireworks and danced on the rooves of their cars with remarkable passion. And now we were in the Sahara awaiting a sandstorm to blow through. This time last year, 16th January 2013, there was the deadly terrorist assault at In Amenas, and though this had little to do with Algerian politics and much more to do with French intervention in Mali and the collapse of state authority in the Libyan Sahara, it has undoubtedly discouraged the more nervous sort of traveller. But you have always needed to be determined to travel in Algeria, and to understand that the Saharan provinces are a world apart. They are, after all, as far south of Algiers as Paris is north.
Over half a lifetime of travelling in North Africa and the Sahara, has taught me that safe-routes come and go with the political wind and the decades. Libya was inaccessible for half a generation, opened to travellers for ten years and then closed up again. Routes into Niger, Mali, the Western Sahara and the Western Desert (of Egypt) have come, gone but will also re-emerge. Who would have thought that Chad, war-torn and faction-ridden pretty much all my life, is now enjoying a period of stability. All this means that you gather your the rose’s while you may.
Timgad, the most intact, and the most southerly of all the Roman military colonies planted in North Africa, was a bloom I’d long dreamed of adding to my bouquet of other men’s flowers. Its immaculate grid of streets rolls over the steppe-land like a giant chess-board. The vivacity of the settlement attested by the fine monuments that over two hundred years were added to this first plan, so that Timgad would be embellished with every sort of urban refinement: bath-houses a plenty, a magnificent theatre, half a dozen temple enclosures, a library, elegant market-places, fountains and fine squares framed by magnificent arches. Yet it also feels like an astonishingly intimate space. It is also the most emphatic proof of the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. It was laid out for discharged veterans of the Third Augusta Legion but build from the agricultural prosperity of their heirs. It is not a capital, or an oasis enriched by the gold, salt and slave trade of the Sahara, it is just one of the six hundred cities that once existed in Roman North Africa, preserved by chance and wind-blown sand. How Roman the first veteran-citizens actually were, or whether they were second or third generation Romanised Berbers, is a moot and much debated point. But wandering through the streets of Timgad there can be no doubt just how very Latin they were in culture. Nor how the Empire had caught the imagination of its North African subjects. As Hilaire Belloc wrote, ‘Timgad impresses me more powerfully with the past than any other place I know.” There are other proves elsewhere in Roman Algeria, such as the tomb of the Berber who conquered Scotland on his way up to the number two job in the Empire and Roman Libya, similarly would later provide a whole dynasty of Emperors. But it was only amongst the romantically wooded ruins of coastal Tipasa that we saw this ancient marriage of North and South Mediterranean fully alive today. For though still empty of foreign tourists, the modern citizens of Algiers flock into the Roman ruins of Tipasa at the weekend complete with picnics and grandmothers. By contrast, in Timgad we had mixed with armed guards and ghosts of the legion. It must have been a good place to be, for one of them has scratched contently on a paving stone, “Venari, lavari, luderi, rideri, occ est vivere ‘to hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh, that is to live.’ Quite right, seize the hour
TRAVEL TIPS for ruin-hungry travelers in 2014
July and August are too hot, and the light too strong to enjoy a tour of Roman ruins. Spring is the best, avoiding January to Easter when the North African shore can be surprisingly bleak. Autumn is also good, though you miss the show of spring meadow flowers unless you time your trip to the little summer of St Martin in early November.
Martin Randall Travel are currently running two ten day Roman Algeria tours this Autumn: www.martinrandall.com
Getting an Algerian Visa is an exercise in patience and the diligent reading of the small print of the application form. From previous experiences, remember to use black ink, pay by cash (no plastic accepted), use original documents (such as the necessary letter of invitation from an Algerian Tour Company) as photocopies or printed out e-mails are sometimes not accepted, with the full knowledge that you are playing a bureaucratic game of snakes and ladders with an old Soviet-like respect for procedure. So any mistake can mean starting all over again, right back at the start of the queue on the pavement. So in the past I have weakened and used the ladies (who keep a terrier and a parrot in their office ) at 1, Stephens Mews, London W2 5QZ, telephone 020-7229-4784, open Monday to Friday 8.15 am to 5 pm.
The best guidebooks for the Roman ruins are still in French, such as the 1974 edition of the Guide Bleus Algerie (which is better than the current edition) and the color photograph filled Sites et monuments antiques de L’Algerie by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles and Cladue Sintes, published by Edisud. There are three good historical introductions in English. Susan Raven’s Rome in Africa, Fentress and Brett’s Berbers and Barnaby Rogerson’s North Africa. I should confess that the latter is my own work, and in its fourth edition as published by Overlook/Duckworth, isbn 978-0715643068 (non-swank). When back home you can contemplate buying Don McCullin's Southern Frontiers, his arrestingly beautiful survey of some of the Roman ruins eluded to in the article. Published by Jonathan Cape in an edition of 2,000.
Which reminds me to warn ALL photographers that sometimes the guardians of ruins will forbid all photography on the site and this prohibition always applies inside museums.
TEXTS – although Herodotus, in Book IV, is only describing the Berber tribes along the coast of Libya and southern Tunisia, this text is of great interest in understanding the likely culture of the Berber tribes of Numidia and Mauretania.
168. “I will now provide a description of the Libyan tribes: starting from Egypt, first are the Adyrmachides who have much in common with the Egyptians but they are dressing like the rest of the Libyans. Their women wear a bronze bracelet on each leg and they keep their hair long. (…) It’s the only Libyan tribe (…) which forces all the girls who are about to get married to visit the king. When the king is fond of any of these girls, she leaves the palace without her virginity.”
170. “Next tribe to the west are the Asbystes. (…) They are distinguished among the Libyans, for they use four horse chariots.”
172. “Advancing westward, we meet the Nasamonians. (…) Every man of this tribe has plenty of women, and shares them with other men. (…) Regarding vows, they tend to swear by the most renowned for their integrity and value of their compatriots, and place hands over their graves. Regarding again the oracles, they pray and then sleep over the graves of their ancestors and analyze what dreams they saw. If two men want to make a serious agreement, they drink from each other’s hand and, if no liquid is available, get some sand and lick it.”
174. “Further inland and to the south, in the Libyan territory that is full of wild beasts, live the Garamantes who avoid any contact with people; they do not possess arms and they do not know how to defend themselves.”
175. “Along the coast to the west, neighbouring the Nasamones, are the Macae. These people cut their hair in the shape of a crest by shaving the sides of the head and leaving the hair in the middle untouched. In battle, they use shields of ostrich leather.”
176. “Next to them live the Gindanes. Their women tie leather straps around their ankles, equal to the exact number of their lovers so far. (…) She who has the most straps around her ankle is considered the most desirable among men.”
180. “The people next to the Machlyans are the Auseans, both tribes living on the shores of Lake Tritonis and the River Triton defines their region’s borders. The Machlyans let their hair grow long at the back of their head, the Auseans at the front. Every year they perform a ceremony to honour the goddess Athena [Plato states in his Dialogues that the prototype of the Greek goddess Athena was the Libyan godess Neith] and during the ceremony girls divided in two groups attack each other using clubs and stones. They say that this is a ceremony established from ancient times and by performing it they honour the local goddess who is the equivalent of the Greek Athena. If some girl during the battle is injured and dies, this simply proves to them that she was not a virgin.”
190. “The nomadic Libyans, except the Nasamones, bury their dead just like the Greeks, but the Nasamones bury them in a sitting position, ensuring that the dead die seated, not lying down. Their homes are portable, made of dried reeds and daffodil, twisted together with strong ropes.”
191. “West of the River Triton and beyond the Auseans’ land, Libya is populated by people who live in regular houses and cultivate the land. First are the Maxyans, who let their hair grow long on the right side of the head and completely shave the left. They paint their bodies red and they claim that they are the descendants of the Trojans.”
193. “Leaving the land of the Maxyans, we meet the Zauekes, among whom the war chariots are driven by women.”
194. “Next to them are the Gyzantes, in whose country there is plenty of honey, a great part of which is produced by bees, but the most is created by a method invented by the locals. They usually paint their bodies red and they eat monkeys, which are numerous on the hills.”
Then there is Strabo’s (64BC-AD 24) description of the Berbers of Mauretania in his Geography, Book XVII.7, which as neighbours of the famous Masaesyli of Numidia should be placed in western Algeria-eastern Morocco
“Although the most of the country inhabited by the Maurusians is so fertile, yet even to this time most of the people persist in living a nomadic life. But nevertheless they beautify their appearance by braiding their hair, growing beards, wearing golden ornaments, and also by cleaning their teeth and paring their nails. And only rarely can you see them touch one another in walking, for fear that the adornment of their hair may not remain intact. Their horsemen fight mostly with a javelin, using bridles made of rush, and riding bareback; but they also carry daggers. The foot-soldiers hold before them as shields the skins of elephants, and clothe themselves with the skins of lions, leopards, and bears, and sleep in them. I might almost say that these people, and the Masaesylians, who live next after them, and the Libyans in general, dress alike and are similar in all other respects, using horses that are small but swift, and so ready to obey that they are governed with a small rod. The horses wear collars made of wood or of hair, to which the rein is fastened, though some follow even without being led, like dogs. These people have small shields made of raw-hide, small spears with broad heads, wear ungirded tunics with wide borders, and, as I have said, use skins as mantles and shields. The Pharusians and Nigretes who live above these people near the western Aethiopians also use bows, like the Aethiopians; and they also use scythe-bearing chariots. The Pharusians mingle only rarely even with the Maurusians when passing through the desert, since they carry skins of water fastened beneath the bellies of their horses. Sometimes, however, they come even to Cirta, passing through certain marshy regions and over lakes. Some of them are said to live like Troglodytes, digging homes in the earth. And it is said that here too the summer rains are prevalent, but that in winter there is a drought, and that some of the barbarians in this part of the world use also the skins of snakes and fish both as wraps and as bed-covers. And the Maurusians are said by some to be the Indians who came thither with Heracles. Now a little before my time the kings of the house of Bogus and of Bocchus, who were friends of the Romans, possessed the country, but when these died Juba succeeded to the throne, Augustus Caesar having given him this in addition to his father's empire. He was the son of the Juba who with Scipio waged war against the deified Caesar. Now Juba died lately, but his son Ptolemy, whose mother was the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, has succeeded to the throne.”
“I’d gone through 90% of the bureaucratic hoops of a land-crossing from eastern Morocco, only to watch my passport being literally frisbeed out of the window of the last kiosk. After which the shutter was slammed down in a very decisive manner. ”