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‘The city presented, at first sight, nothing but a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth. Nothing was to be seen in all directions, but immense quicksands of a yellowish white colour ... the most profound silence prevailed.’
    The myth of Timbuctoo the Golden had been punctured. Where Chapman could write ...
    Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies
A mystic city, goal of high enterprise
the young Tennyson only questioned ...
    Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient time?
    Apart from the two French forts, the hotel, the lycée and the tactfully hidden quarter for the colons , the appearance of Timbuctoo cannot have changed much since Caillié’s time. It still presents ‘a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth’. Some, it is true, are built of blocks of white chalk, but the pale alluvial dust works its way into the pores very quickly. Some doorframes are painted a strawberry red incised with green scrolls, the only concession to decoration, and sole legacy of Moroccan conquest.
    They still bring in slabs of salt from the dreaded Taodeni mines in the Sahara – a favourite target for anti-slavery societies. The Touareg still prance like storks around the town, on their best behaviour now, for they have little say in the government. They still buy their spears, stone arm bracelets and the indigo veil called the litham, for their mouths must never be seen in public. But next door to the Touaregi market booth, a salesman specialises in pots of macaw-coloured brilliantine, black lace brassières, Thermogene Medicated Rub and ‘Moon Rabbit Brand Nylon Stockings Made in China’. Such are the changing patterns of trade.
    The market women hover over the most unlikely messes. Ochre-coloured calabashes contain a favourite drink – of sour milk, crushed millet and honey. Fricassé of crocodile is also quite common.
    The streets are bare and dusty, but if you peer into the courtyards of the richer houses you can see obese women lying on the ground or on low couches. To sit up is thought to ruin the shape of the posterior. Obesity in women is admired, as a symbol of wealth. To maintain such girth in a desiccating desert climate requires mountains of food – all the time. Only the very rich can afford the luxury of a wife so large that she has to be carried by servant girls.
    An enthusiastic staff of boys run the hotel for the benefit of the staff. They live like princes. They dress up for dinner and eat sharply at eight. Guests must eat before them or after them. The least request they greet with howls of laughter. They have a communal girlfriend. She is supposed to be the barmaid. More often she can be found on the floor in an agony of laughter. She then has to go home to change. The boys dance most of the night to gramophone records sent from Guinea. They’ve been dancing here for centuries.
    The graffiti are wonderful and worth a special visit to Timbuctoo alone. They range from the simple boy meets boy— ‘Mahomet aime Yahya’— to the overtly political— ‘Chinois sont les Cons’ . Happily they are all in neat copybook handwriting and in French.
    There are still two bookshops. The Evangelical Library and the Librairie Populaire du Mali glower at each other across the principal square. Sales cannot be high. Above the Evangelical Library a placard reads ‘La Crainte de L’Éternel est le Début de la Sagesse’ —fine words for a people who live sensibly in the Eternal Present. The complete works of Billy Graham are for sale and some postcards.
    The Librairie Populaire runs two periodicals – La Femme Soviétique and Les Nouvelles de Moscou . Newspaper is at a premium, and is very useful for wrapping fish, meat or vegetables in the market. More serious and substantial ideological books, such as the complete works of V. I. Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Marx or Engels are allowed to collect dust a little