There was grudging agreement around the table.
“OK, Artiste, you win. So, what are our plans for today?”
Jason glanced around assuring himself he would not be overheard. “Emphani, it’s too late for Fajr, the prayer said before sunrise…”
“Tell me about it,” Andrews grumbled. “Surely, I wasn’t the only one that screeching from the mosques woke up.”
“I was already awake,” Emphani replied coolly. “Saying my Fajr.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
A smile twitched across Emphani’s lips. “Recording the muezzin’s call to prayer instead of having a live person call from the minarets hasn’t done a lot for the tone.”
Jason looked from one to the other. “If I may, gentlemen.”
When he was certain he had their attention, he began. “Emphani, you are the only one who speaks both Arabic and French…”
“But not Koyra Chiini.” The dialect spoken along the Niger Valley and by far the most popular dialect in Timbuktu, one of over fifty in Mali.
Jason continued. “Do the best you can. French is the country’s official language and you’re sure to hear some Arabic if the people we think are here are here. You go to Dhur prayers shortly after noon at the Sankore Mosque, snoop around. Oh yeah, no point in playing with a disguise. If anyone asks, you’re with the magazine’s mission here because of your linguistic skill but, more important, because you are a Moslem. The mosques here are not open to us infidels. And, of course, you want to look around, maybe take some pictures if the local imam doesn’t mind. Naturally, you’d be interested in the older parts of the place like the southernmost of the two minarets.
“Chief, you take in Djinguereber, the Great Mosque, on the western side of the old town. Viktor, the Sidi Yahya Mosque. Don’t slink around. You are legitimate journalists, OK? Just remember, non-believers are not welcome inside, and we don’t want to cause a ruckus.”
The rule regarding non-believers in mosques varied according to two seemingly conflicting verses of the Koran. In Turkey, for instance, tourists are welcome during non-prayer hours as long as dressed appropriately. In most African mosques, not so.
“No one ever accused Moslems of being open-minded,” Andrews grumbled.
“That is one person’s view,” Emphani replied tartly. “Had it not been for such mathematical devices as the invention of zero as a number, you will still be counting on fingers and toes.”
A glare from Jason silenced them both.
Andrews and Viktor exchanged glances before the former asked, “Anything in particular we should be looking for? I mean, if we can’t go inside…”
“Well, from the wreckage of the Air France plane, the angle of damage to certain parts of the aircraft, the French triangulated back to this area of Africa, give or take a hundred kilometers or so. Assuming this ray, or whatever it is, can’t jump sand dunes, trees, and the like, it would have to have been launched from a relatively high point…’’
“Only one of which in maybe fifty kilometers of here would be tower, er, minaret of one of the mosques,” Viktor interrupted.
“Precisely,” Jason continued. “So, what we are looking for is anything suspicious around a mosque.”
Emphani cleared his throat. “But you think it is the one we can see from our windows. Why?”
“Making another assumption, that the beam or missile or whatever moves in a more or less straight line, it would have had to depart in a westerly direction. According to the guidebook I read on the plane, the southern minaret of the Sankore Mosque is the only one with an opening facing away from Mecca, westerly.”
“And you, Artiste, what is going to occupy you this morning?”
Jason drained the dregs of his coffee. “I’m going to take advantage of the height on which this place is built. I can see damn near the whole town.”
49
Emphani stood outside a heavy wooden door set into a wall from which regular rows of timbers extended, serving as a foundation for the mud brick beneath the adobe facade. He was reminded of a porcupine. To his left, men splashed water from a trough on face, hand, and feet, a ritual ablution preparatory to entering preparatory to Dhur, still several hours away.
Festooned with three cameras with varying sizes of lenses, he walked the sandy street along the outside wall to an arched opening. Inside was a courtyard surrounded by arcaded galleries. It was here, he thought, the great madrassah, Islamic university, had flourished in the fourteenth century. The city had been a crossroads of trade then: salt from the Arabic north, slaves and gold from the black African south. All that remained of the epicenter of culture and learning were a pair of anemic date palms with dusty fronds and the ever-shifting sands from the desert.
From the corner of his eye, that part of the human eye that best detects movement, Emphani saw something move in the shadows of the arcade to his left. Slowly, as though simply scratching, his fingers reached to touch the Glock in the small of his back.
Two figures emerged into the near blinding sunlight, both of whom wore Bedouin clothes.
“As-salām ’alaykum,” one said, hand over his heart. A typical Sunni greeting.
Emphani had spent enough time in North Africa for his ears to pick up a mispronunciation like an orchestra conductor a false note.
But he replied, “Wa ’alayakum as salām,” the appropriate response.
Emphani kept a little more than two arms lengths’ distance, avoiding the handshake that would customarily follow. There was no profit in having his gun hand otherwise employed should he need it. Particularly as he could see neither man had the angular facial features or the dark desert-tanned skin of a Bedouin.
“You are a Moslem brother,” the one who had spoken before said.
It was not a question but Emphani answered anyway. “Yes,” he said also in Arabic.
For the first time, the other man spoke. “You are a visitor in Timbuktu.”
Another statement.
“Yes. I am with a crew from the American magazine National Geographic. Perhaps you know of it?”
The reply, more grunt than words, had equal chances of being negative or affirmative.
“You live in the United States?” the first man wanted to know.
“No. I live in France among other Moslems.”
The two exchanged glances before the first one said, “I hear of great oppression of our brothers and sisters there. The women are humiliated by being prohibited the wearing of the veil.”
Emphani had to bite his tongue not to smile at the thought of his daughter, Margot, being told she had to wear a veil. Either open-mouthed disbelief or, more likely, unrestrained guffaws.
“The infidel oppresses the believers,” he said simply.
“But you are employed by the infidel,” the second man observed.
Emphani shook his head, holding up one of the cameras slung around his neck. “I am a photographer who takes work where he can find it. I am not in a position to refuse pay from a wealthy American magazine.”
The answer seemed to satisfy whatever doubts the men had. The first one nodded in appreciation of financial realities. “You are a stranger here. Perhaps you might honor us by letting us guide you through both this holy mosque and the city so that you will have identified and photographed the important places. In shā’ Allāh.”