The Tuareg, the Blue People of the Sahara

There are people who cross the Sahara the way other people cross a street.

They are the Tuareg, and the Sahara is the biggest hot desert in the world. It is so big that you could put whole countries inside it and lose them.

The Tuareg wrap their heads and faces in a long cloth called a tagelmust, wound round and round, leaving only the eyes. The cloth is dyed a deep indigo blue, and the dye is not washed out with water, it is beaten into the cloth until it shines. Which means that over the years, a little of the blue comes off onto the skin.

That is why people call them the blue people of the desert.

For hundreds of years their caravans carried salt across the sand. Not gold, not jewels — salt, in great heavy slabs, roped onto the sides of the camels, because in those days salt was worth as much as gold and much harder to find.

The camels walk in a long line, one behind the other, all day, for weeks.

There are no roads. There are no signposts. There is nothing but sand in every direction, and sand moves.

So they travel at night, when it is cool, and they steer by the stars — the same stars, in the same places, night after night, year after year. A grandfather teaches a child which star sits above the well, and that child will still be using it when they are old.

And when the caravan stops to rest, someone unwraps an imzad, a violin with a single string, played with a bow by the women. Its sound is thin and sweet and it travels a long way in the empty air.

The camels fold their legs. The fire goes low. The stars come out in their thousands, all the way down to the sand.

Goodnight, travellers. Sleep well.