European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 22, 1978, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Fabled Timbuktu is that All there is by John Darnton new York times it Africa a Quarter of the world mens skins Are their hair is Crisp and and some where unknown to Public a mighty City called Thackeray wrote Man than a Hundred years the Are not made of the Bottoms of the Rivers do not Glisten with nuggets the size of there is no great with ancient Manu scripts to Correct the texts of greek and latin and no Imperial court with footmen who shoot Poison arrows and hundreds of Beautiful slave the people do not spend the nights singing and dancing in the streets with luxuriant in a climate said to stimulate prodigious feats of sexual so great is the Power of that six centuries Oiler the world conceived of Timbuktu As an Eldorado of the desert and two Ltd half Cento after european explorers braved madness and almost certain death to disprove the the Lour kit still they Are lured by nothing More than a famous place a Symbol of the end of the and a Chance to Send postcards to make those at Home sick with what they find when the step off the thrice weekly flight from malls is a Village of mud Brick huts and streets of ankle deep baking quietly on the fringes of the a letdown its a kind of a said Ken a a year of electronics technician from from the time youre on your mothers you threaten to run off to when you gel a Little you find out there actually is such a but when you get Here you see it for what it just a lot of mud is that All there u signed Christine a Young frenchwoman in Blue with her bad lust completed three boar walk and the in Ltd free beat and the Mali not about to question Why some to tourists trek to the Edge of the desert every year is adjusting to this irrational urge of westerners with plan for a new Broom hotel on what is now an in promising the hotel win replace the present an establishment conceived in the Graham Greene tradition and called the the Ca Pement has five bar signs to discourage credit Sand in the bread Anda flight of Majestic Steps out the rear Tot once ended at the up of a Lagoon but now myself Yeagly Tato Krocune Walter in White gloves to adhere to the government tourism Agency promotes the Trade with posters promising mysterious they do not Promise and the Touru Tod that they cannot Cash a travellers Check because there is no Bank in that they cannot buy a local postcard and that sometimes the Post office forget to add that most valuable of All we will always be a Magnet for proclaimed Omar they come for three Doniki Magazine what was perhaps the wealthiest caravan Ever Assem he dispersed so much Gold that its Price actually plummeted As he crossed the Gold could have come from anywhere in West since it was Timbuktu Fortune to be situated at the Crossroads of the niger River traffic and the saharan caravan Taure insisted that u had been mined locally and was subsequently removal the Wise people sent the Gold away to there would be no More he sacked by the moroccans in the 16th harassed by the tuareg in the i7lh and 18th conquered by the French in the late 19th Timbuktu today is a sad relic of its former its population is around a tenth of what it Beehive shaped ovens Tho minaret of the fluted with an Ostrich egg figure at the Summit to symbolize must be rebuilt each year after the Rainy set among the squat Adobe huts whose drainpipe stick out like gun barrels Are Beehive shaped ovens for baking under the branches of Thorn Trees Are wooden suitcases of cigarette vendors and one or two clusters of old my playing which centers around tossing Slicks at a Peg in the donkeys hug the Walls for the houses in which the peat zip lorts at the Early 19ut Century lived Are marked by one can Only after Reading of the tribulation they endured to reach what they Mast have Felt Ai they gated out Over a scene that is largely unchanged the French government has renovated the House of Rene the Frenchman who disguised himself As a moslem in 1828 and so was Able to come and go in the German government has done the same for the House of Heinrich who followed 25 years but the House of Gordon the British explorer who became the first european to willingly set foot in Fem there Are those just As Taure explained was More than a the a group of tuareg tribesmen called Ima Scharen bad a servant named Boca she Wai left behind during their desert wander teat guard the children and the eventually the amp came to be known As Tun place of its reputation As a repository of endless riches began in the in us the emperor of Manaa traversed the desert on a pilgrimage to Mecca in us City in 300 has not been of All the dashing and was the most starting from where he languished for he fell in with the British con suls daughter and married her two Days before setting out on the condition that he leave the marriage Union Summa in the desert he was betrayed by a protector and was nearly hacked to death by he managed to travel 400 Miles to a Friendly Camp where he Recupero Only to fall victim to the plague when it swept the recovering he travelled to Timbuktu in 1926 and stayed five upon he was again by a and slain about 30 Miles North of the his journal was never 1 three or four times a the Camel caravans still leave from Timbuktu to the infamous Salt mines 400 Miles to the where the life expectancy of tic who have Only brackish water to is said to be two a few Miles out in tie bleached Bones be in the at dusk the them Trees assume vivid almost like living u is possible to As local lore bos that the Trees can be heard to the stars leap out of the in in the Cool night the thick wooden doors Are reserved for men Only in the Section of the houses reserved for there Are said to be lavish Oriental carpets and Golden but these quarters Are not readily shown to at night the ghost of Al whose Sulue adorns Independence u said to ride through the the Hoof beats of his White stallion muffled in the at As the Moon comes five men in turbans talk softly near a silent a Camel groans in the the Moon goes behind a and when it they Are no Tom Jown Danton unlike the Timbuktu is a mud Brick Village on the Edge of the Page 9 january 1978 the stars and stripes