To refuse would only arouse suspicion if these men did not already know his real mission. “Bāraka Allāhu,” may God bless you, the traditional response to a gift or gratuitous kindness.
Like so many mosques, parts of the Sankore had been used for secular purposes. Some, like this one, included schools. Others had and did encompass hospitals, tombs, libraries, gymnasiums, and civic centers. But when entering the masjid, the part that, once so designated, would remain holy ground until the last day, certain rituals had to be observed by all. Emphani sat on the sand-strewn floor, removing his boots. He placed them on one of several shelves beside the sandals of his companions and perhaps a dozen more of worshipers already inside.
Emphani stepped back, his camera raised. “Perhaps you would do me and the magazine the honor of letting readers see how the faithful remove their shoes?”
Smiling, the two reenacted the sandal removal before the three proceeded through Moorish-style archways to the musallā, or prayer room. By far the largest chamber in the mosque, it was two stories high, apparently the maximum height for mud-brick structures without supporting wood beams. Around the walls about ten feet above the floor, Islamic calligraphy spelled out verses of the Koran in faded gilt. The religion strictly forbade portrayal of any of Allah’s creations, so there was no other art. To Emphani’s right, the qibla wall ran perpendicular to a line directly to Mecca so that those before it would be facing the holy city. Several worshipers, on knees with foreheads touching prayer rugs — or, in this impoverished section of the world, reed mats — were already attending to their immortal souls well ahead of Dhur.
Emphani raised a camera only to feel a hand on his arm. The second man was scowling, shaking his head. No pictures during prayer. Emphani nodded his acknowledgment.
Passing out of the musallā, the three came to the base of one of the mosque’s two minarets. An open entrance showed steps leading upward, but only a few before an iron gate blocked access.
“I would very much like to take pictures from the top,” Emphani said, noting another pair of “Bedouins” had suddenly appeared.
“I fear that is not possible,” the first of his escorts said. “The minaret is old and in poor repair, unsafe. With the adhān, call to prayer, prerecorded, there is no need for anyone to risk going up there.”
Perhaps, but Emphani noticed that the lock securing the gate was new, shiny brass. And there were footprints in the sand that coated the steps, prints the dry breeze would have obliterated in less than an hour.
50
Lieutenant Commander James Whitefoot Andrews, USN (Ret.), noted Timbuktu ran not on horsepower but donkey power. Donkeys pulled two-wheeled carts loaded high with bags of grain, charcoal, or vegetables. Donkeys carried bulging sacks across their backs. Men rode donkeys, their sandals nearly touching the sandy streets as they urged their diminutive mounts on with thin whips cut from branches.
An occasional mud-splattered truck roared by, trailing clouds of blue smoke, its muffler little more than a memory. Noise and air pollution maybe, but the trucks did not leave something for the unwary to step in.
Young boys in what Andrews guessed were school uniforms chattered like monkeys as they dashed by for the first class of the day, each laden with a knapsack.
In the square to his right, brightly striped fabric provided shade to women in garish-colored hijabs who squatted beside clay pots of what looked like fish or hunks of meat. There was no effort at refrigeration. Was Andrews only imagining he could hear the buzz of the clouds of flies attracted to the display? Other pots contained rice and vegetables not all of which he could identify. Babies, naked and semi-naked, dozed in mothers’ arms while those slightly older chased one another noisily through stalls of weavers, fruit grocers, knife sharpeners, and bakers’ ovens. The sound was a babel of voices, each trying to be heard above the others as merchants haggled with customers. The smell of charcoal, fresh dung, rotting vegetation, and human sweat hung in the air like an early morning fog.
He paused a moment, unslinging a camera from his shoulder. He framed a picture. Then from a slightly different angle. His subjects were colorful and exotic, so much so he might even like to keep the images being recorded on the camera’s card. If it even had a card.
He was focusing on a woman taking something out of a mud-brick oven when two figures in white blurred in the lens. Irritated, he lowered the camera. Two men in what he would describe as Bedouin dress were carefully sorting through a collection of cheap beads on strings in front of a wrinkled woman who gestured wildly extolling the virtues of her wares.
Andrews knew next to nothing about Bedouins, but he’d bet a bottle of reasonably good scotch they didn’t wear beads. Pretending to ignore them, he moved about the bazar, snapping pictures in what he hoped looked like a professional manner. Wherever he moved, the two positioned themselves so he was between them, classic surveillance technique.
Seeming only interested in what he could catch in his lens, Andrews carefully noted the available alleys and doorways. He could probably give these guys the slip, but to what end? Suddenly disappearing was not something a man on a legitimate mission would do. Better to continue the charade.
Leaving the bazar, Andrews walked purposefully toward Djinguereber, the Great Mosque, whose twin minarets were already visible. Like Sankore, this structure was largely built of earth although the northern facade and one minaret had been repaired in the 1960s with limestone blocks rendered with mud, according to the Google site he had called up earlier. Also like the Sankore Mosque, Djinguereber had been built in the fourteenth century. The two, along with the Sidi Yahya Mosque, had formed the University of Sankore.
The narrow street, lined with mud and mud-brick buildings, made a perfect frame for a photograph of the building as its earthen walls were turning a rich chocolate brown in the morning’s sun. His two escorts, one on either side of the street, were making no efforts to conceal their interest in him. Ineptness or threat?
Andrews reached the wall of the mosque just as the last worshipers completed their ablutions, entered one of the three courtyards, and disappeared into the building. His two uninvited companions made a show of washing face, hands, and feet, but demonstrated no immediate intent to enter the prayer service. He resigned himself to their company.
51
Colonel Wild Bill Hasty had a corner office, perhaps the only one in the building occupied by anyone below the rank of brigadier general. His was a suite of three second-story offices facing the threshold of Runway 01R, the right of two parallel runways with a compass heading of ten degrees, almost due north, where a pair of DC Air National Guard F-16s were shooting touch and goes.
The colonel was too busy collecting the data necessary for tomorrow’s flight to notice. He had already made certain his Jeppesen approach plates to both Cairo International and the military field, Cairo West, and his high altitude charts were current, both those in the loose-leaf binder and their electronic duplicates fed into the aircraft’s GPS electronic display system. The ones published by NOAA, the AJV-3s, were furnished free by the Air Force; but, like so many products, those by the privately published Jeppesen Sanderson Company were superior to those offered by the government. They were both more likely to be current, and certainly more detailed.