Chapter 40
Aahil accelerated out the gate of the Agadez storage compound, caught in the swirl of a many day rush. He drove his newly delivered Toyota, a gift said to be from the president’s office. But contacts told how the Asians financed his exploded Nissan replacement, along with the newly installed target lock detector. He left the yard behind, uncomfortably scattered with half and fully emptied crates, metal cylinders and boxed balloons.
Turning west, he viewed the desert city fully and the highways running into the emptiness beyond. His foot lost push for the pedal and the Toyota slowed until coasting to a stop in the road’s middle. Reaching to turn off the key, he pushed the window buttons allowing a dry breeze to wisp at his turban. The sun touched ground where the road wove through the whispering sands among scattered bushes. Before him the endless desert, the shifting Sahara, and he could almost see the twinkling eyes of Tuareg faces.
Agadez stretched to the south, past the Stade where the urban launch began that day. There, the N11 began a winding path across the desert to Ingall. At the Cure Salée, the Tuareg met the Wodaabe as the rains ended each year. Late September brought that Festival of the Nomads, reviving their common wandering spirit. In times past, a greening desert brought many years promise of the good life for any nomad. If all goes well, the Sahel will have its Green Sahara.
He stared as the last sliver of sun disappeared below the rocky road. Two of his cousins drive scout trucks this night, seeking spent balloons returning to the ground. Familiar with terrain and wadis among and around the Ayăr Mountains, they gain retrieval bonuses with ease. Business will be good in their camps; they will eat well for some time. As long as this struggle of world forces continues. For him as well, the driver contracts look prosperous. He checked the surface drone target lock—life here had always had its dangers.
Shadow highlights of the road winding down from the Ayărs—the N25—trailed north along the mountains to the Dabous Giraffes. As tourist dollars arrived, the allure of the Dabous Giraffes could replace the Cure Salée. In whatever way it was to be, Tuareg people believed the Green Sahara would be returned to them, the one of so many millennia past. What was he to tell his cousins of the Ténéré? As his engineering friend said, a sway in the ways of many people had come, perhaps shifting as dunes back to the ways of old. A nomadic gathering now blown by new winds, and the changing season of the rains. The Dabous celebration may invite more than nomads. Those cheering their hero president would arrive, the one whose political friends brought true the green Sahara promise.
In a green savannah first the antelope and skittering Darcus gazelles will spread from the mountains. Followed by the cheetah and the Barbary sheep. The date palms, the Acacia trees. Desert elephants, and one day giraffes restoring to life the ancient rock wall paintings. Where once there was but sand.
In Niamey, people of the city will gather to cheer for the promise of cheaper rice, of sorghum, millet and peanuts in the markets. They will look to the urban night for the president’s Green Sahara balloons floating skyward, or to their visiscreens to watch this huge desert launch. They will understand how the rains came and they will vote for the one who brings them the good life, the green of the future.
His cousin Aksil, to the northeast in the middle of the Ayărs will closely watch this fleet of balloons rising up to expand his green pasture, banding up with him to plunder grass from the rock and sand. The rains in the Ayărs will bring nothing but good fortune to the pasturelands of his cousin.
The darkening desert sky stretched out to the edge of a bright orange horizon. Watching, he sensed the desert sands about to rise and replace the darkening evening with billowing sandy balloon plumes. Volcanoes, they said, but these appeared as a mysterious morning sun, rising on the wrong horizon to overtake the desert and the desert sky. First tens, then hundreds had, and now thousands ascended with their sky-changing loads.
His eyes glimmered at the twists in events. He never had to try influencing the engineers, with money or trickery. The president would get what he wanted, or perhaps more. A new story was being written, to be told in times ahead. How as the Sahara greened, the Nigerien people found balloon work, and food came to grow in abundance all around them. If the story played out well new lakeside land markets would arise. For the people of Asia, or any who would come to live in a Sahara among free roaming Dabous giraffes.
His eyes caught slight movement, and he shifted his gaze upward. As the sands of the Tinarimen rose before him, so his life had been carried aloft with the lives of the desert Tuareg, along with the life of his American friend, and the lives of the world beyond. Yet, could the descendants of European conquerors who have taken the world befriend the new power from Asia? He glimpsed the motion expanding. Lead balloons now touched sunlight as they rose faster than the setting sun, the main fleet close behind and the stragglers trailing to last find the light.
He stared in awe.
How will all things be for his engineering friend in his western end of the world? This fellow global citizen who piloted this fleet up. Can a Tuareg relocated to his African city, the Canadian from the oil city and the American from the most powerful nation join with the good ideas of his and their ancestors? What will be their common future, or will they have one at all?
Aahil turned the engine key. The balloons would soon be descending, in the dark, and he must be there to refill for their next trip to the sky. He sped off down the road, back into the rush of the times.