Mauritania

"Mariam is a refugee in Nouakchott. She admires Abraybone the Tinariwen, and supports the cause of 'freedom fighters'. Yet she remains a stranger to the mistrust that has set in between people from the south of Mali and those from Azawad in the north. She considers many Bambaras amongst her closest friends. Mariam first went to a Koranic school and a madrasa in Timbuktu in order to learn to read and write Arabic. Then, of her own accord, she decided to follow the public curriculum to also master French. She would have continued higher studies in accounting in Ségou if she hadn’t got married.

“Bounba,” Mariam says, “was a Tuareg from Gao, and hadn’t yet earned his colonel stripes in the Malian army. He was charismatic, loved by everyone, and by his soldiers in particular.” Mariam recalls the most wonderful days of their life together, when her husband had just been posted to command the Sikasso military base. Their joy was short-lived. “I knew from the start of the conflict with the North that things would end badly. He went to visit cousins in Gao who had come back from Libya… He told me: ‘No, I’m not going to desert the army and join the MNLA.’” He ended up doing the exact opposite. “On 28 June, my husband was killed in Gao. By who? The Mujao? Other Tuaregs? I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to avenge him. The important thing for me would have been for him to stay alive. He isn’t any more. He was so well loved. Everyone around me was in pieces.”

Extract from Retour à Tombouctou, 2015, Éditions Gallimard