Mythological Tuareg Gods in Ibrahim al-Koni's Work / ‫‬ميهاربإ‫ ‬لامعأ‫ ‬يف‫ ‬قراوطلا‫ ‬ةهلآ‫ ‬ايجولوثيم‫‬

‫‬ينوكلا‫‬
Author(s): Amira El-Zein and ‫نيزلا ةريمأ‬
Source: Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 35, New Paradigms in the Study of
Middle Eastern Literatures / ‫&طسوألا ‬قرشلا‫ ‬بادآ‫ ‬ةساردل‫ ‬ةديدج‫ ‬ﺔﻴﻓﺮﻌﻣ‫ ‬جذامن‫‬lrm; (2015), pp. 200-216
Published by: Department of English and Comparative Literature, American University in
Cairo
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24772817
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 Mythological Tuareg Gods
in Ibrahim alKoni's Work

Amira El-Zein

Tuareg writer Ibrahim al-Koni is considered one of the most

prominent and prolific writers in Arabic today. Born in 1948 in the south
Libyan Desert, al-Koni grew up in the Ghadames Oasis at the edge of
the Red Hamada. Initially educated in Libya, in his native language
Tamasheq, al-Koni later learned Arabic. This article offers an interpre
tation of the role played by Tuareg mythology in alKoni's oeuvre,
though given the density and complexity of this mythology, I limit my
research to Tuareg gods. Specifically, I examine these gods in four of al
Koni's novels, namely, The Seven Veils ofSeth,Anubis, The Bleeding of
the Stone, and New Waw: Saharan Oasis, though I occasionally refer to
his other novels Tibr (Gold Dust) and Marathi Ulis (The Elegies of Ulis)
and to the many essays that the author has written.
A complex syncretism of ancient Egyptian and ancient Libyan
myths, regional belief systems, rituals, cosmologies, and magical and
animist beliefs coming from sub-Saharan and Equatorial Africa as
well as Egypt, Tuareg mythology is also blended with Sufism and
Islamic mysticism. Yet the presence of Tuareg mythology in alKoni's
fiction exceeds by far the Sufi-Islamic dimension.1 Indeed, the major
ity of alKoni's novels are devoted to the Tuareg myths: In addition to
the novels examined in this article, one could cite novels such as al
Bi'r (The Well), alMajus (The Magi), and Baytfi-l-dunya wa baytfi
lhanin (A House in this World and a House in Nostalgia) as evidence
of Tuareg mythological influence on alKoni's writing. Here, I focus
on the complex ways in which al-Koni weaves the myths of his peo
pie, the Tuareg, and recreates them through a system of literary sym
bols and metaphors where the universal and the local meet. I empha
size that al-Koni is first and foremost a writer of fiction for whom the

imaginary realm constantly recreates reality.

Having experienced firsthand the rituals and beliefs prescribed by
Tuareg mythology, al-Koni brings these alive in his fiction.2 In his novel
Marathi Ulis, al-Koni underscores that the place you have lived in remains

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with you forever (18), and some critics read this move as evidence of al
Koni's sense of his mission to safeguard the myths of his people before
modernity sweeps away their legacy (Fahndrich 333). This speaks to the
contemporary concern that the Tuareg heritage might be absorbed into a
stricter Islam unless the Tuareg defend their traditions.3 Indeed, nomadic
activities are dwindling in most parts of the territory where the Tuareg
move—i.e., across Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Libya—and
many among the younger generation migrate in search of jobs or for polit
ical reasons (see Kohl). In addition, it is becoming almost impossible to
herd due to the changes in the environment and the exploitation of urani
um mines, especially in the Niger. This has led to one of the most striking
changes in this nomadic way of life: the Tuareg's use of modern vehicles
in which they smuggle trade or carry animals and which they use when
they move across borders (Kohl 452).4 A majority of the Tuareg people
today are unemployed, poor, and lacking resources, all of which compels
them to look for jobs in cities such as Tripoli, Benghazi, or Algiers. Those
who stay behind wait desperately for the international aid to arrive from
Niger, Mali, or Algeria (see Bonte and Claudot-Hawad).
AlKoni's fiction is about Tuareg life in the deep Sahara, the
largest desert on the planet; a place where it is very difficult for any
form of life to be sustained. It is only in the few oases that human life
is possible. AlKoni's evocation of the vast and infinite landscapes of
the desert is unique in Arabic literature. It reveals the Sahara as a par
adoxical space, both eternal and empty, offering freedom for the spir
it and captivity for the body. These compelling contrasts have prompt
ed some critics to observe that his imagery evokes prelslamic poetry;
the anthropologist Helene Claudot-Hawad calls it the "imaginaire
tuareg arabise" (the Arabized Tuareg imaginary realm)(278).‫ق‬
Although there is some geographical resemblance between the
Great Sahara (where the Tuareg live) and certain landscapes of the
Arabian Peninsula and the area of Najd where pre-Islamic poetry was
born, the comparison between alKoni's work and Arabic pre-Islamic
literature remains problematic. While it is true that both ancient Arabs
and Tuareg had a mainly pastoralist mode of life and their resources
were scarce, the space in which the Tuareg moved is very different. It
is vaster, harsher, and farther from the centers of the urban world. Al
Koni replies directly to the assertions that his work is "Arabized"
when he maintains that it is not a continuation of Arabic pre-Islamic
literature, adding that, apart from Abdel Rahman Munifs Cities of
Salt, there is no Arabic "literature of the desert"; the Arabs have lived

Alif 35 (2015) 201

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and written at its borders.6 His aim is to finally let the desert speak
(qtd. in Fahndrich 331). In his book, Diwan ainathr albarri
(Anthology of Wild Prose), al-Koni depicts in detail impressive scenes
of the Sahara with its rocky mountains, its strong winds, its ahl al
khafa' (people of the invisible), and its desolation (30-40).
Over the past few decades, more authors have sought to engage with
the geographical space of the desert, and in a recent article, Salah Salih ana
lyzes some modern Arab novels that have dealt with the desert in one way
or another, such as the Egyptian novelist Sabri Mousa in his novel Fasad
alamkina (Seeds ٠/ Corruption) and the Tunisian writer Mahmud al
Massoudi in Haddathani Abu Hurayra (Thus Spoke Abu Hurayra). Yet, to
the best of my knowledge, no author writing in Arabic today has surpassed
or even come close to alKoni's evocation of the deep Sahara. His fiction
deploys a complex metaphysics that is rooted in the Sahara itself. With the
exception of the old southern Arabian kingdoms' mythology, the rest of
pre-Islamic Arabia had a relatively simple cosmology, whereas Tuareg
mythology was extremely sophisticated. Moreover, the Tuareg, despite
their conversion to Islam and the influence of the Arabic language, have
continued to maintain their old beliefs, and endeavor to keep these traditions
alive, fighting against the tendency among Muslim Arabs to look down on
this heritage as "pagan" or jahili (ignorant).
One of the most conspicuous aspects of this mythology is the
Tuareg belief that they are the descendants of a tribe of jinn which has
taken the shape of certain animals, such as the waddanJ Another strik
ing feature is that men wear the veil to cover their mouths, ears, and
nostrils, as they believe evil spirits could enter the body from any of its
orifices. The mouth, in particular, seems to be the most important part
of the face that should be constantly veiled because of the potential for
it to be an entry point of shame, pollution, and, most importantly, evil
spirits. A large robe always covers the body. Tuareg are often pictured
wearing amulets to protect them from these evil spirits since covering
all orifices might not be enough to protect them. In this context, magic
plays a seminal role in their lives.8

Myth and the Novel

Literary critics and theorists from the mid twentieth century

onwards have deemed myth an essential component of literature, especial
ly fiction. In his study of D. H. Lawrence, John Vickery pointed out how
myth not only characterizes the work of the writer, but also develops it and

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brings it into existence (185; Frye, "The Archetypes" 93). Pierre Brunei in
turn emphasizes the seminal importance of myth in literature, touching on
the narrative impulse that myth gives to fiction, stressing that story is the
common denominator in both. He declares that literature demonstrates the

creative power of myth and the reality of experience mythique (10). In The
Educated Imagination, Northtrop Frye suggests that both myth and fiction
share a logic that is different from the reality of everyday life (34). Eric
Gould goes as far as to say that modern poets and novelists, like storytellers
of oral societies, reach to the enduring meaningful characteristics of nana
tive that he names "mythicity"(65).‫و‬
AlKoni's work highlights in its own way the archetypical and
mythical nature of literature (Fahndrich 331). He fictionalizes the Tuareg
myths that constitute the matrix of his oeuvre. He resorts to symbols to
mirror life's wholeness and to creatively represent universal themes deal
ing with the human condition, such as the question of life, death, spirits,
and the otherworld. For him, symbols are not simply elements in a creative
text, but rather pointers to a multi-layered reality in which the different
levels communicate with each other in an alchemical way. His writings
show us how Tuareg mythology's endurance relies on the Tuaregs' apti
tude to interpret the most complex signs within their surroundings.
It is in this context that al-Koni proposes that the desert of
which he speaks "is a synonym of the world; it is an allegory" ("Le
'discours'" 101; my translation). This understanding of the symbolic
highlights the specificity of the Tuareg mythology as well as the uni
versal elements it contains. For symbols belong to a language devel
oped by the human race, thus rendering them universal. Al-Koni con
siders myth an alchemical agent that transforms the Tuareg tradition
into a highly artistic fiction.
In what follows, I examine the presence of Egyptian mythology
in the Tuaregs' myths, as it appears in the fictional work of al-Koni
and in his essays. I focus primarily on the legends of two Egyptian
gods: Seth and Anubis.

Ancient Egypt and Tuareg Mythology

The Tuareg mythology as evoked in the work of al-Koni bears strik

ing resemblances to old Egyptian mythology on many levels. The mytholo
gies of Libya and Egypt need to be interpreted in the context of their African
geography and, for the purpose of this article specifically, in light of the
ways in which the nomadic Tuareg played a role in disseminating and main

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taining these mythologies in ancient Phoenician and Egyptian territories, as
well as in modern Libya and Egypt. More and more, Egyptologists stress the
difficulty of fathoming the complexity of the ancient Egyptian religion and
its impact on its neighboring countries outside of its African context. This
perspective has in turn helped to reassess African contributions to ancient
Egyptian religion and to correct the errors that scholars hostile to non
Egyptian Africans have committed in the past (see O'Connor and Reid).
The Tuareg mythology seems to have interacted historically
with Egyptian mythology and even impacted it. One of the first schol
ars to detect this was Oric Bates (d. 1918), curator of African
Archaeology and Ethnology at the Peabody Museum in
Massachusetts. Bates maintains that there are remarkable similarities

between ancient Egyptian and ancient Libyan religions, such as the

strong belief in an afterlife and the choice of the same sacred animals
like the bull and the ram in both ( 217). Alfred Wallis Budge (d. 1934)
reiterates the same point. Budge goes further, stating that the Egyptian
god Osiris was originally a Libyan god. He writes that all the texts of
all periods show that he was a native god of NorthEast Africa, and
that his origin is most probably Libyan (qtd. in Spence 64).
Thus, it is clear that there was interaction between the beliefs of
the nomadic Tuareg and the settled peoples of ancient Egypt, and alKoni
is keen to highlight this hidden history in his fiction. Specifically, he is at
pains to identify the way that his people who were and are still living in
Libya and elsewhere in the Sahara have been instrumental in building the
ancient Egyptian civilization. He alleges that the Tuareg who migrated to
Egypt brought with them their beliefs, their practical experience, and the
techniques they used to build "the house of eternity" as it was called later
in Egypt. On many occasions, and in many of his writings, especially in
his al-Suhuf al'ula (Ancient Scripts and Texts), he comes back to this
ancient Libyan influence on ancient Egypt (36).
Furthermore, alKoni claims that "It is the Tuareg —who settled in
the Nile Valley—who built the Egyptian civilization some thousands of
years ago" ("Le 'discours'" 97; my translation). Several scholars consid
er these views exaggerated. J. Gwyn Griffiths,for example, maintains that
there exists a general influence of ancient Libya on Egyptian mythology,
but it is hard to talk about a specific one (89). Moreover, one cannot take
at face value äl-Koni's assertions because of the scarcity of written docu
ments during the period that preceded the coming of the Romans and the
colonization of North Africa. While rock paintings that were discovered
in the caves of Tassili in the Libyan Desert point to the existence of an

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advanced and thriving mode of life, this is not enough to maintain that it
is the Libyans who shaped the Egyptian mythology. Rather, we should
view alKoni's remarks in the context of his desire to re-insert the effaced

history of the Tuareg people in the history of Egypt.

The Seven Veils ofSeth and Anubis

Given both the historical nature of these interactions between

Libyan and Egyptian mythologies, as well as al-Koni's personal agenda

in re-narrating them, it is not surprising that he wrote two novels on two
of ancient Egypt's most iconic gods: Seth and Anubis, gods present in
both traditions. The first novel, entitled The Seven Veils ofSeth, takes
place in an oasis where a group of Tuareg set up a thriving settlement.
An enigmatic traveler, Isan, enters the oasis and draws the attention of
its inhabitants by his bizarre behavior. He rejects all offers of hospital!
ty that the oasis people offer him. Even worse, he chooses to dwell in a
crypt in the graveyard, which makes people ill at ease. No one seems to
know his intentions, except the Fool who warns the town's elders of the
danger of showing him hospitality; he even advises them to kill him
before it is too late. At the end of the novel, Isan brings about a storm
that destroys the settlement, thus forcing the people to leave the place
and return to their previous nomadic life. Furious, the Fool kills Isan
without knowing he is killing his own father.10
ALKoni creates in Isan a character that resembles the Egyptian
god Seth in many respects. First, like Seth, Isan appears evil at first
glance. Ancient Egyptian texts mention that Seth not only murdered
his brother Osiris, but also cut him into pieces which he spread all over
the land of Egypt (Griffiths 42). Seth is presented as a jealous and
angry god because the Supreme god, Ra, has made Osiris, his brother,
king of Egypt, and because the people love Osiris as a just ruler. In the
novel, one of Seth's names is Wantahet, a character in Tuareg mythol
ogy who represents the Devil. Isan reveals one of his names to the
third nymph he encounters: Spirit World Demon (196).
Like Seth, too, Isan is ugly and bestial. He is a combination of
eccentric features that do not occur elsewhere in nature. He is
described as having a long forked tail and a curving snout (Quirke 37).
When the Fool comes close to him in order to kill him, he notices that
"His large ears resembled those of the she-ass!" (268). And one of the
seven nymphs he meets at the spring immediately identifies his "ani
mal" nature and notices his ass ears and his tail (19).

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 In Watani sahra' kubra (Sahara Is My Home), al-Koni reveals
that the ancient Tuareg tradition uses the name Seth to indicate an ass.
He adds that Seth appears as an ass on the rock paintings in the Sahara
and in Ancient Egyptian art as well, which proves the wide-spread belief
in these myths in both traditions.11 Not only is Seth evil, bestial, and
ugly, but he is also the symbol of infertility in Egyptian mythology.
During the battle between Horus, the son of Osiris, and Seth, both gods
get injured (Velde 42-46). Horus loses his left eye, yet is able to cut
Seth's testicles. Since then, the legend goes, Seth not only became infer
tile; he also made women infertile, and even caused their miscarriage if
pregnant (Velde 29). Likewise, Isan uses his magical talents to poison
the oasis water causing an epidemic that makes women infertile.
Another name of Seth is the "storm god." In The Egyptian Book of
the Dead, Seth is called "Lord of the Northern Sky" (Lindemans n. pag.).
And while his brother Osiris is the god of agriculture, Seth is known in
Egyptian mythology to be the god of the desert and of nomadic life. In
The Seven Veils, Isan reminds us that Tuareg ideology highlights "state
lessness" (60-61) as a seminal characteristic of their identity. The Tuareg
do not have a fixed place, but rather travel throughout the entire Sahara,
from Libya up to Morocco and beyond, and through Africa.
In all his writings, especially in Watani sahra' kubra, al-Koni
comes back to the idea that settled life stifles spirituality, that prophe
cy was born in the desert and has nourished humanity with its wisdom
for thousands of years. He stresses that migration within the desert ere
ated the ancient civilizations, giving birth to many of the world's first
civilizations, from the great Sahara to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,
as well as the Arabian Peninsula and Asia Minor (105). InaiRabba al
hajariyya wa nusus 'ukhra (Stone Goddess and Other Texts), he
reminds the reader that the Tuareg believe that if one remains in the
same place for longer than forty days, he loses his freedom (65). Often
his novels end with the destruction of the oasis and with the people
back in the desert. Interestingly enough, al-Koni indicates in alSuhuf
al-'ula that the equivalent of the Arabic term qabr (grave) signifies in
the Tuareg language a house, a hut, or mausoleum, "because the grave
is in its authentic truth a house for the eternity while the house is in its
authentic truth a grave for this world" (36; my translation).
Despite his wicked acts, Isan, like the god Seth, is not only evil,
as we tend to think at a first reading. An analysis of the Egyptian Seth
and Isan unveils a trickster figure whose mission is to destabilize
society in order to enable the emergence of goodness. In Egyptian

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mythology, for example, despite all the horrific deeds he commits,
Seth ends up protecting Ra, the supreme god, from his enemies, and,
as such, having a place in the solar boat of the god (Armour 85). We
even find invocations that are addressed to him, not as the slayer of
his brother Osiris, but as the god who has conquered the monster of
chaos, the snake Apep who attempted to destroy Ra.12 Likewise, Isan
destroys the oasis that has welcomed him in order to make its
dwellers closer to the Spirit world, which can be achieved only
through migration in the desert. Yet, he also performs good deeds: He
is the only one in the oasis willing to cure a man from smallpox with
his magical talents when the oasis's people had left him to die alone
in his tent (180). In this sense, he is also similar to the shaman of
ancient tribes and traditional cultures. Unconstrained by boundaries
such as good or evil, life or death, heaven or earth, Isan, like Seth of
the Egyptian myth, shows the way in which contradictory aspects can
be united.13 Al-Koni's skill in re-narrating the myth of Seth in the
character of Isan lies not in his fusion of myths, but rather in using
these myths to dramatize the values of nomadic versus settled life.
AlKoni continues to explore the intermingling of ancient
Egyptian religion with Tuareg religion in a second novel, Anubis. The
title carries the name of one of the most complex and iconic gods in
the ancient Egyptian pantheon. In the novel itself, however, alKoni
additionally uses the name Anubi in its Tamasheq sense, meaning
'orphan,' 'individual,' or 'human being.' The novel illustrates Frye's
notion of "the quest-myth" (Fables 10): "the innermost myth of liter
ature" ("The Archetypes" 87). Though Frye's notion concerns quests
within a novel, in the case of Anubis, the writing of the novel was itself
a quest: The author traveled to different parts of the Sahara in order to
research the novel, conferring with Tuareg elders and investigating the
origin and circulation of this god's worship.14
The hero Anubi is himself on a quest: The novel deals with the
tribulations of the protagonist searching for his absent father whom he
ends up killing, as did the fool with his father at the end of the Seven
Veils. In Anubis, the narrator declares: "We must kill the father in
order to seek the father" (206). The father departs, while the mother —
"ma" as he calls her—remains with him. The text is anchored in the
matrilineal Tuareg society, which, like many other mythological tradi
tions, sees in heaven the father and in earth the mother. In alKoni's
fiction, especially in the novels under analysis here, the father is often
absent, the son following his traces and repeating the same pattern.

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Anubi in al-Koni's novel is the god who represents the son of an
unknown father, as is the case in Egyptian mythology where he is pre
sented as the illegitimate son of Osiris and Nephythys.15
Both novels reveal how Tuareg myths, like Egyptian ones, con
ceive of humans and animals as forming a single entity. They speak the
same language that Anubi calls "the forgotten language," a language he
remembers after drinking the gazelle's urine (21). AlKoni constantly
highlights this aspect of Tuareg mythology in his fiction in general.
Anubis and Seth appear in al-Koni's novels as half-animal, half-human,
just as they are depicted in ancient Egypt. Isan appears with a forked tail
and the ears of an ass in the oasis, while Anubi crosses the desert with
the head of a man and the body of a gazelle. Yet it is especially in The
Bleeding that alKoni shows us the power of a Tuareg: The protagonist
Asouf transforms himself into an animal. The novel intermingles human
with animal form from its outset, progressing toward hybridity, and cul
minating with Asouf himself becoming the waddan and slaughtered as
such on the stone. This is how the herdsman is "sacrificed," his death
fulfilling a prophecy in which the Tuareg believe: "I, the High Priest of
Matkhandoush, prophesy, for the generations to come, that redemption
will be at hand when the sacred waddan bleeds and the blood issues
from the stone. It is then that the miracle will be born; that the earth will
be cleansed and the deluge cover the desert" (135).
The events in Anubis, The Bleeding, Gold Dust, and—to a certain
extent—77‫ أء‬Seven Veils illustrate the Tuareg belief in the inseparability of
the human, the animal, and the spiritual. This is why any harm that affects
one affects the other. Toward the end of Gold Dust, the animal sacrifices
himself in order to save Ukhayyad, trapped in the cave. The waddan also
saves Asouf who recognizes in him his father. Thus, the boundaries
between humans and animals seem to be erased. Both species exchange
sentiments. In this sense, animals do not exist only to serve humans, as
food or pets, as is the case now. In all of al-Koni's writing, one finds a fas
cinating depiction of reciprocity of knowing and feeling between humans
and animals, similar to the relation between animals and humans in many
indigenous societies, in general, and in Native American traditions, in par
ticular. These relations between the two species encompass viewpoints on
the notion of personhood, discernment of ecology, and thoughts on COS
mology. Animals are endowed with perceptive faculties which allow them
to foresee events (see also Elmusa). Most importantly, animals in al
Koni's fiction seem to have access to the spirit world, and, in several
cases, seem to penetrate deeper and farther than humans in the unseen

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realms, which sometimes makes them the spiritual superiors of humans.
In Anubis, for instance, the narrator himself is transfigured, so to speak,
after fixing for a long time the eyes of the hybrid animal which seems
rather an apparition than a real being (56).
Like The Seven Veils of Seth, Anubis deals with essential themes
related to Tuareg mythology. It revolves around light and obscurity, as
if to hint that Anubi is at the frontier of good and evil. He commits vio
lent acts that he regrets later on, unable to understand their meaning until
a long time passes by. In Anubis, chapter titles refer to different shades
of light and darkness.16 Each chapter indicates a certain moment of the
day or the night. Thus, the first chapter, entitled "Sunrise," revolves
around the solar disk which is the symbol of the god Raugh in Tuareg—
Ra in ancient Egyptian mythology. It is in this chapter that the reader is
introduced to Anubi's birth and his learning about the sun god. His "ma"
holds him and introduces him to his "father," the supreme god Ra,
bathing him in the light of the golden sun. Then she addresses him with
these words: "You shall call him Raugh, once your speech clears and
you regain your ability like mine to make the 'r' sound" (7). Ziad
Elmarsafy rightly describes this powerful mystical moment as "marked
by the ritual definition of the self' (216). Al-Koni explains the symbol
ic importance of the letter 'r' in both ancient Egyptian mythology and
Tuareg mythology, maintaining that both Tuareg and ancient Egyptians
represent the sound 'r' by a circle to indicate the sun, which refers to the
supreme god. Moreover, the circle as a closed entity is used in both tra
ditions as a talisman as alKoni explains (Watani 143).
The second chapter is entitled "Forenoon"; the third "When the
Flocks Head Home," meaning sunset. In the fourth chapter, the action
takes place in the afternoon, as the title indicates. The fifth chapter is enti
tied "Dusk"; the sixth "Night"; the seventh ،'Last Watch of the Night"; and
the eighth "Dawn." In the second part of the novel, a new day begins, and,
again, each chapter corresponds to a certain moment of the day or the
night. I argue that the chapters depicting different moments of the night
refer to Osiris, the god of the underworld, while the sections evoking light
refer to Ra. In this sense, alKoni plays on the doubt concerning the origin
of Anubi's father. These recurrences in the order of the novel are also sig
nificant inasmuch as they indicate the Tuareg belief in cyclical time. It is
noticeable also that the first part begins with sunrise and the last chapter
of the second part is entitled "Morning." Thus, the end resembles the
beginning, and light is triumphant in both. This cyclical structure is also
reflected in the protagonist Anubi who evokes his own rebirth, or "com

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ing back" to earth. Anubi celebrates the Tuareg cyclical vision with these
words: "Wherever you come from, there you'll return, for man, like a car
avan, would not be man, unless he returned to his point of departure" (90).
It is also not clear whether Anubi is looking for his physical father —
Osiris, the lord of resurrection, the god who receives the deceased and
decides after weighing their hearts if they should go to heaven or to hell —
or if he is searching for Ra, his mystical father, the one in heaven.
The novel ends with Anubi's aphorisms, which mirror the Tuareg
wisdom accumulated through time. Dominique Casajus maintains that
aphorisms are widely used among the Tuareg. She claims that the goal of an
aphorism for the Tuareg is to close the conversation gradually towards an
indisputable and peaceful truth (35). In the light of this comment, it is pos
sible to understand the closure of the novel as illustrating a Tuareg tradition.
However, Fahndrich, in his afterword to the very recent translation of al
Koni's Tuareg aphorisms by Roger Allen entitled Sleepless Eye, maintains
that the aphorisms simply express alKoni's belief that every single thing in
the world has its own role to play and occupies a special place that is des
tined to it alone (111). Thus, water joins sky and earth through rain, while
stones and rocks preserve the heritage of the ancestors. Be that as it may,al
Koni comes often to the question of aphorisms that express something from
the Tuareg's Lost Law (٠alnamus al mafqud). I suggest that these aphorisms
are at the heart of äl-Koni's message, which is to preserve the sayings of the
Tuareg sages of old and remind us of other prophets' aphorisms. It is as if
the whole purpose of the narration was to reach the wisdom expressed in
these aphorisms at the end. This knowledge seems to be the result of an
experiential endeavor, not intellectual speculations. Anubi, like other char
acters in äl-Koni's fiction, has left home, gone into an arduous journey
across the desert, and, in his hardships, learned about the secrets of life and
death. His crossing of the desert resembles other heroes' voyages in other
mythologies across the world. Towards the end of the novel, and just before
he dies, Anubi struggles to light a fire and write his story on a square of
leather for the future generations to read and ponder.

The influence of ancient Egyptian religion on äl-Koni's work is not

limited to these two novels. It can be found scattered in his numerous

books and novels. For example, at the end of his novel Marathi Ulis, the
narrator,possibly a representation of al-Koni himself, stands on top of the
mountain in the land of Tuat to meditate on life and death. Al-Koni
explains in a footnote that Tuat is the land of the West to which all the dead
return, as mentioned in the mythology of the Tuareg and Ancient
Egyptians. From Tuat, the protagonist enters the land of eternity which is

210 Alif 35 (2015)

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called in both Tamasheq and ancient Egyptian language "Imdawat" (246).
In ancient Egyptian religion, Tuat is where Osiris and other gods—such as
Seth, Anubis, Hathor, and Horus— dwell. Allen and Der Manuelian's The
Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, successive spells from the fifth and sixth
dynasties, illustrate this association of the desert with death, one which we
also find in alKoni's writing. Both gods, Seth and Anubis, in both novels
illustrate the necessity of continuous migration that alKoni considers sacred.
His novel New Waw: Saharan Oasis, for example, starts with a chapter enti
tied "The Winged People." It describes in lyrical and symbolic terms the
arrival of an immense community of birds to the oasis. Birds, like the Tuareg,

are in continual migration. Their halt in the oasis is only for a few days.
Al Koni maintains that the immobility characterizing sedentary life is
death, while movement characteristic of migration is the cure for the soul.
After all, his people the Tuareg have survived hardships because they knew
how to navigate the desert. Because of his celebration of nomadic life, al
Koni opposes the views of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) who, in his Muqaddima
(Introduction) compares ''primitive" culture Cumran badawi) to civilized
culture {'umran hadari) (Elmusa 13). Ibn Khaldun deems nomads a threat to
civilization because they repeatedly raid refined cities. For him, the inhabi
tants of the desert are primitive people (Ibn Khaldun 286-87; 290). Consistent
with his veneration of the Tuareg style of life, alKoni opposes also Marx
who invited people to quit rural life and choose instead the industrial revolu
tion taking place in plants and manufactures. In fact, al Koni would agree
with the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (d. 2009), who praises
the intellect of socalled primitive people. Levi-Strauss makes it clear that sei
entific thought does not supplant mythic thought. Both kinds of thought are

valid. They are simply two independent ways of thinking rather than two
phases in the evolution of thought, as it was commonly believed. Levi
Strauss, in fact, distinguishes between the untamed (mythic) and tamed
minds (scientific) (219). In his obituary for Levi-Strauss, Le Clezio writes:
"In his book La Pensee Sauvage, published in 1962, he showed these 'prim
itive' people as the equals of those in the most elevated cultures of the civi
lized world" (n. pag.). AlKoni is urging us to return to the state of the
untamed mind in order to stay closer to nature and truer to ourselves.

By recreating the mythology of the two Egyptian and Tuareg

gods, alKoni has invented in his fiction new fictive patterns. He has
shown us how myths are centrally intense and enduring. The reader's
curiosity is aroused as to the meaning of these tales and the manner in
which they have been articulated across time. AlKoni reformulated
Anubis and Seth through his own vision, and in his own language.

35 (2015) 211

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Notes

1 Susan Rasmussen emphasizes the notion that prelslamic beliefs persist in

several rites, cosmology, and symbolism. She traces this non-Islamic pres
ence especially in the healing seances fiom spirit possession where non
Quranic invocations are addressed as well as in heibal treatments. Based on

her numerous sojourns with the Tuareg of Niger, she finds that they have
been able, to a certain extent, to blend their ancient Tuareg beliefs with
those of Islam. She describes how they invoke both Islamic and pre-Islamic

deities in their healing seances. Likewise, they appeal to spirits fiom both
pantheons, such as jinn mentioned in the Quran and Kel Essuf, or people
of solitude, in the Tuareg tradition ("Re-Formations" 189).
2 AlKoni also notably chooses images for his book covers taken from the
rock paintings that represent his ancestors, signaling a desire to remind the
reader of this mythology's centrality in his work.
3 Rasmussen notes that the preaching of Islamic teachers from Saudi Arabia
and Pakistan has led to a strict understanding of Islam. She asserts that
marabouts control "even those rituals peripheral to or outside 'official
Islam,'" {Those Who Touch 150). See also the article by Andy Morgan,
who traveled extensively to the Tuareg territory. Morgan writes:
Some Salafi Tuareg consider their Berber culture to be backward
and irrelevant in the modem world, a folksy throw-back kept alive

by meddling Western anthropologists. They would prefer their

people to adopt Arabic, the language of the Quran and of the wider

Muslim community. With that they would welcome a greater

Arabisation of the Tuareg. They deem certain other aspects of
Tuareg culture, especially music and dance, to be licentious and
ungodly and they object to the relative freedom and social power
that Tuareg women enjoy. They also revile the old "backward'
Sufi traditions of Islam that most Tuareg actiere to. (n. pag.)
4 Ines Kohl and Anja Fischer claim that the Tuareg, especially those who live
in the Sahara bordering Mali, are more and more compelled to quit their
nomadic way of life and adopt ujban style (1).
5 Roger Allen similarly sees in alKoni's work a continuation of prelslamic
poetry (247).
6 Pre-Islamic poetry does not focus on the desert itself; rather, it offers reflections

on various themes, such as love, camels, and departure. Moreover, al-Koni's

work is essentially fictional while pre-Islamic literature was poetical. The dif
ference in literary genre generates in itself a different vision of the world,
regardless of time and space. Comparisons between both literatures couldlead

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 to a misunderstanding of alKoni's wori‫ ؛‬and a refutation of what the author

himself asserts, namely, that his aim is to let the Sahara speak.
7 The waddan is a wild sheep that continues to survive in the isolated moun
tain desert of southern Libya.

8 Not all anthropologists agree on this interpretation of the veil. Robert F.

Murphy, for example, thinks otherwise. The veil, in his view, creates dis
tance from others and allows the individual to remain aloof diring a con
versation (1260). Jeremy Keenan who visited the Tuareg of Algeria a few
years ago, writes that traditions are changing; the younger generation no
longer believes that the mouth is especially to be protected They wear col
ored veils in a rather fashionable manner (114).
‫ و‬Since its inception, the novel has taken for its own use mythological ele
ments. Eric Gould maintains that mythologies infiltrated the novel
because the novel desired to go beyond history. In other words, the novel
as a literary genre has always been in need of mythic elements. Gould
stresses that the novel is "mythic in scope" even before being influenced
by classical or religious mythologies (137).
٠‫ ؛‬The same thing happens in another novel entitled, al-Fazza'a (The
Scarecrow) in which the protagonist also destroys the oasis's community
that he has been visiting, thus compelling people to migrate.
11 It is worth noting here that the symbol of the ass carries connotations of
evil in many traditions (Cooper 16).
12 "O Seth, lord of life, who is upon the prow of the barque of Ra, save me
from all evil clamour of this year" (qtd in Velde 99).
13 Velde maintains that Seth existed also in ancient Libyan mythology.
There, too, he ends up destroying the settlements of the Libyans as in the
novel of alKoni (115).
. 14 Interestingly, alKoni dscoveredthat a version of this myth was written ،bwn
using inscriptions in the caves of Tassili and other parts in the Sahara, such as
the rocks ofMasak and the caverns of Akukas (Anubis xvixvii). Assisted by

Tuareg sages, alKoni tried to decipher the symbols in these caves. He consult
ed scholars in Timbuktu, traveled to Ahaggar and other places
er the narratives he assembled and wrote them in his own mother tongue, the

Tamasheq, which is veiy similar to ancient Egyptian. One wonders if, by writ

ing than first in his native language, he wanted to come closer to the
Tuareg/Egyptian god He translated them into Arabic several years later.
15 This is the most well-known version. However, there are variations on
this legend Some claim Anubis is the son of Osiris; others assert he is
the son of Seth, while others still believe he is the son of the supreme
god Ra (Budge 201).

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1‫ ة‬Budge, for instance, cites Plutarch on the issue of light and obscurity in the

myth of Anubis: "On the subject of Anubis, Plutarch reports some interest
ing beliefs. . . . After referring to the view that Anubis was bom of Nephthys,
although Isis was his reputed mother, he goes on to say, 'By Anubis they
understand the horizontal circle, which divides the invisible part of the world,

which they call Nephthys, from the visible, to which they give the name of

Isis; and as this circle ecjially touches upon the confines of both light and dark
ness, it may be looked upon as common to them both.'" (264).

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