Tamanrasset the pearl of the Sahara

I have long pronounced "tamanrasset" in speaking of this southern city that I only knew by name. But, when I went there for the first time, Boubeker, our Tuareg guide, explained to me that the good pronunciation was "tamenghast" (like this kind of in the soil, so in the sand, of origin human or natural). Tamenghast was going to book me a lot of surprises! The first tour in the city was already revealing the difference with the North in general and for me the Algerian, with the capital in particular.

In Tamenghast, women walk straight. Their attitude is imposing, their eyes are hard and their step dancing. Their traditional dress, the famous tissegh'ness, shows pretty black henna tattoos; this beauty of the South amazed me. I had stopped one of them. I spoke to her in Arabic, but she knew only Touareg and French, which she perfectly mastered. After a little discussion, this girl, whom I had only known for a few minutes, spontaneously gave me her name and telephone number and offered to make a tattoo similar to hers.

According to traders, business has taken a hell of a blow in the last two years: the threat of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) ... The sellers, from all over Algeria and bordering countries, offer very little of Algerian products, rather henna made in India, medicines from Mali, or coconuts and sugarcane from somewhere. Foreigners, Malians or Nigeriens, instead sell counterfeit laptops at unbeatable prices: 4,000 to 9,000 Algerian dinars [40 to 92 euros] for the latest iPhone! As for locals, Tamenghast natives, they like to present themselves as specialists in traditional clothing and jewelry. At the market, pretty women flock to junk jewelry: bling-bling gold-plated bracelets and necklaces are very fashionable.

In Tamenghast the atmosphere evoked me more Bamako [capital of Mali] than Algiers. The locals also call Algiers "whites". According to them, Tamenghast does not represent much for the people of Tel (the North), were it not for the two too-folk festivals that were organized there every year [in February the Ahaggar International Arts Festival, devoted in the Sahara Arts, in April the Tafsit, the Spring Festival, with craft exhibitions, traditional music and song concerts and a camel race]. In Tamenghast unemployment kills young people. Basic infrastructures such as hospitals are lacking and recreational areas are almost non-existent. "We do not feel Algerian," they told me.

The next day it was agreed that we go to the Assekrem to visit the hermitage of Charles de Foucauld, located at more than 2,700 meters above sea level [this officer of the French army, born in Strasbourg in 1858 and died in Tamanrasset in 1916, became an explorer and ethnologist, then a linguist; in 1901 he was ordained priest]. Rocky mountains and endless tracks, the places are breathtaking ... A Polish monk with the unpronounceable name and a Spanish monk live there for five years. Their main task is to welcome visitors and preserve the hermitage and all the books written by Foucauld, including a Tuareg-French dictionary that he had started writing with Tuaregs upon his arrival in Tamenghast. Each Tuareg word is rewritten phonetically in Latin characters and its definition affixed beside in French. The two monks were happy to receive us. It was a good time to settle down and admire the sun set over the Tahat, the highest peak in Algeria. In almost religious silence, the colors of the day sank into the depths of the night.
The monks told us that the security situation at the borders [with Mali, Niger and Libya] deterred tourists, yet so many there are barely two years. In early March, a suicide bomber targeted the city's gendarmerie and injured 26 people. This first attack perpetrated in the wilaya of Tamenghast was claimed by an obscure movement calling itself "Unity and Jihad in West Africa", an Islamist group that would be linked to AQIM. This attack did not really surprise the inhabitants of the city: a climate of instability was already clearly felt in the region because of the presence of the terrorist groups on the borders, in particular Libyan, and the return in combat of the Tuareg rebels in northern Mali. Tamenghast had become the crossroads of arms trafficking in the region ...