Algeria - part 6

After the regular meal of tinned sardines, harissa paste and souring UHT milk that evening, Hamdi the leader of the Tunisians took me aside. “Do you have any cash you can lend us?” he asked. “We need to purchase a new radiator to replace the one broken this morning, and there is someone here who says he has one to sell. We have no cash now, but we will repay you in Niger when we have sold our first car. He is asking for two thousand francs.”

It was an awkward moment. On the one hand they had looked after me for several days when they could just as easily have dumped me in the desert, and I did indeed have exactly two thousand francs in cash. On the other hand, while I also had travellers’ cheques and a certain amount of dollars and pounds in notes, only French francs cash were likely to be any use until I reached the nearest big city, still at least a thousand kilometres of desert and bush to the south.

Hamdi knew it was a tricky request, and waited patiently while I thought it over in the quickening dusk. In the end I realized the decision was a simple one. If they were going to rob me or cheat me, they could just as easily do it in the desert. An open request here at the border indicated a very good chance of being repaid. I asked for a minute, feigned looking in my rucksack while actually extracting the notes from my money-belt, and then handed over the requested amount.

Hamdi shook hands gravely on the deal, and headed off to the “Europeans’ carpark.” An hour later he returned, and handed back the money with another handshake. “That guy changed his price when he saw I had the money. He is asking more than the price of a car, not just the price of a radiator. We will not buy from a thief!” He had clearly had a most frustrating negotiation.

The Tunisians’ frustration only increased next morning, as the inevitable border “paperwork and fees” a.k.a. “a hefty bribe to the border guards” was apparently not only more expensive than on previous trips but also took several hours to complete. Possibly their frustration contributed to the next incident.

The desert south of the border was flat and smooth. 90 mph flat and smooth. 150 km/h flat and smooth. Apart, as it turned out, from the occasional rock. Not a big rock, just a rock large enough to roll over a car doing 150 km/h when a front wheel hits it. Possibly a modern, well-built car might be able to perform this kind of desert gymnastics without sustaining too much damage. Not so an ancient Paris taxi with a quarter million kilometres on the clock.

The car completed a full roll, returning to its wheels, apparently with its engine and underside completely undamaged. However, before rolling the vehicle measured 150cm from ground to roof, after rolling only 120cm. This was all well and good for the car, less good for the driver who suddenly found that his headroom finished at the neckline.

Not so good.

We hurried back to find the grave, grey-haired driver shaken but otherwise apparently remarkably unhurt. The Tunisians began a rather heated discussion in Arabic. The driver was having none of it. Certainly he could continue to drive, he insisted in French. The vehicle was still driveable despite a tendency to steer to the left and a missing windscreen. There was not even a puncture. We should push on to Arlit while the daylight remained. With a shrug the others gave way and we continued on our route. (Next day the driver looked the same colour as his hair, and began to consume my ibuprofen tablets in quantity. I gave him a whole packet when our ways finally parted).

After several days without vegetation of any kind, the first dry, scrubby bushes began to appear occasionally again. The sand was softer where they grew, presumably indicating the presence of at least minimal moisture, and I began to fear that we were in for another long afternoon digging the Silver Monster out of the sand. Certainly others had suffered this fate, for the area was a kind of vehicle graveyard. Where once elephants might have gone into the desert to die away from the herd, leaving their skeletons white against the sand, now this was where Parisian taxis came to die.

As we approached Arlit, our small herd of ex-taxis, proudly led still by the Silver Monster, but with two of its members badly wounded, began to be hounded by jackals. “10000 francs for the big silver one,” they shouted, as they wheeled around us in Peugeots even older than ours. “I’ll offer 2000 for the car with no windscreen.” We were approaching the objective of the crossing, the great bargaining over the cars.

As I later learned, the African traders who followed us into Arlit were mostly middlemen, looking to buy cheap from travellers exhausted by the journey, and then drive the vehicles themselves down to the capital Niamey or better still, on to Nigeria, where they could be sold for a significant mark-up. Eventually one of them made a more realistic offer, and we stopped to allow a car to be examined in detail. It was the one with the damaged radiator, still on tow.

“What is wrong with it?” demanded the Africans. “Ran out of water” came the response, somewhat economical with the truth. After further bargaining which I was unable to follow (I can’t follow discussions about cars and their engines in English, let alone in heavily accented French), cash was paid, documents scrutinised and handed over, and the tow-rope exchanged. Apparently we had made our first sale, unlikely as it seemed to me.

Rather later that evening as we were heading to bed, our purchasers returned. They were not happy. They had discovered the damaged radiator. Discussion was heated. The Africans demanded to know whether car-dealing was an honourable trade or not. The Tunisians demanded to know what the problem was. “You said open the bonnet, we opened the bonnet. You said open the boot, we opened the boot. There was no problem when you took the car. If the radiator is damaged, you have damaged it yourselves by towing it too fast.” I feigned English-only, and then when one of the Africans demonstrated surprising fluency I pleaded, quite truthfully, a complete ignorance of the inner workings of cars.

Our convoy led by the silver Mercedes swept majestically into the streets of Arlit, a town of low sand-brick buildings lining sand roads, uniformly yellow-brown. We pulled up outside high padlocked gates, and waited while their key-holder was located. The Tunisians saw me looking around, and perhaps reading my expression, announced cheerfully “Welcome to Arlit, the Arsehole of Africa.”