MALI

"Mohammed Ali ag Amoye, Aïcha’s brother, welcomed me in Timbuktu. He chartered trucks to bring back all the families from his district of Bariz, refugees along with him in Burkina Faso, in the Mentao camp. Things are at an absolute low point. The beautiful house that he had built for the Amoye 'clan' met with the war, literally. His wife, children, brothers and sisters have stopped over in Bamako. Time will be needed before they can see the family residence again. For now, the coffers are empty. We meet Adda, Mariam’s brother-in-law, already encountered during his exile in Mauritania. Before the events, Adda and Mohammed Ali had joined forces to set up a tourism agency and a car business... Each is as lively and skillful an entrepreneur as the other. They lost everything during their exile.

'We could open a Titouan museum together in Bariz,' suggests Mohammed. 'Sell posters, postcards to tourists…'

'But Mohammed, look! I’m the only foreign visitor in Timbuktu today!' I protest.

Tourists came regularly at the start of the 2000s. But I’m not the only observer who’s convinced that the climate will not be conducive to their return for a long time to come. Adda is not any more inspired, but he’s found an odd job. He’s a salesman in one of his relative’s shops."

Extract from Retour à Tombouctou, 2015, Éditions Gallimard