There are two Timbuctoos. One is the administrative centre of the Sixth Region of the Republic of Mali, once French Sudan -- the tired caravan city where the Niger bends into the Sahara, "the meeting place of all who travel by camel or canoe," though the meeting was rarely amicable; the shadeless Timbuctoo that blisters in the sun, cut off by grey-green waterways for much of the year, and accessible by river, desert caravan or the Russian airplane that comes three times a week from Bamako.

And then there is the Timbuctoo of the mind -- a mythical city in a Never-Never Land, an antipodean mirage, a symbol for the back of beyond or a flat joke. "He has gone to Timbuctoo," they say, meaning "He is out of his mind" (or drugged); "He has left his wife" (or his creditors); "He has gone away indefinitely and will probably not return"; or "He can't think of anywhere better to go than Timbuctoo. I thought only American tourists went there."

"Was it lovely?" asked a friend on my return. No. It is far from lovely; unless you find mud walls crumbling to dust lovely -- walls of a spectral grey, as if all the colour has been sucked out by the sun.

To the passing visitor there are only two questions. "Where is my next drink coming from?" and "Why am I here at all?" And yet, as I write, I remember the desert wind whipping up the green waters; the thin hard blue of the sky; enormous women rolling round the town in pale indigo cotton boubous; the shutters on the houses the same hard blue against mud-grey walls; orange bower-birds that weave their basket nests in feathery acacias; gleaming black gardeners sluicing water from leather skins, lovingly, on rows of blue-green onions; lean aristocratic Touaregs, of super-natural appearance, with coloured leather shields and shining spears, their faces encased in indigo veils, which, like carbon paper, dye their skin a thunder-cloud blue; wild Moors with corkscrew curls; firm-breasted Bela girls of the old slave caste, stripped to the waist, pounding at their mortars and keeping time with monotonous tunes; and monumental Songhai ladies with great basket-shaped earrings like those worn by the Queen of Ur over four thousand years ago.

And at night the half-calabash moon reflected in the river of oxidised silver, rippled with the activity of insects; white egrets roosting in the acacias; the thumping of a tam-tam in town; the sound of spontaneous laughter welling up like clear water; the bull frogs, whining mosquitoes that prevented sleep, and on the desert side the far-off howls of jackals or the guard-dogs of nomad camps. Perhaps the Timbuctoo of the mind is more potent than one suspects.

It has been claiming European victims, and luring many to their deaths, since it first appeared (as Tembuch) on a Catalan map of the fourteenth century. Rumours had filtered to Europe of an African Kingdom where children of the sun ran about in naked innocence ruled by a wise black monarch called Rex Melly. He was often confused with Prester John, the mysterious Christian king who, they prophesied, would rise up out of his country at the head of countless multitudes. He would smite the Infidel, reunite Christendom, and the world would settle down to an everlasting peace. Rex Melly's kingdom was also known to the commercially minded as the inexhaustible source of red African gold. Visions of a New Jerusalem beyond the desert were more than tinged with thoughts of commercial enterprise.

But Mansa Mussa, the King of Mali, who gave rise to the legend, was a devout Muslim. Far from smiting the Infidel, the founder of Timbuctoo gave his Arab friends so many golden handshakes on his visit to Cairo in 1324 that the price of gold took a sudden dip on the Cairo exchange. His entourage caused such a stir that a stream of merchants, artisans, scholars and architects, including an Andalucian called Es Saheli, followed him back. A great mosque, and the first black university in the world, rose up from the sand dunes.

The gold of Timbuctoo came from a nearby country. It grew in the ground in nuggets as large as carrots. The men who brought it to market were cannibals and insisted on slave-girls for dinner. But this was a small price to pay in a barter system where gold might be exchanged for its own weight of salt.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Earthly Paradises were in short supply. Most had evaporated under the critical gaze of geographers. The African Association was founded, and was determined that a Britisher should be the first European to set foot in Timbuctoo. And so he did. He did not return. Major Gordon Laing arrived in Timbuctoo in 1826. He wore his uniform throughout, talked grandly of his master, the King of England, and ostentatiously made notes and plans of the city. He was murdered by his escort on leaving the city after refusing conversion to Islam (and probably slavery thereafter).

Two years later the French announced that a Monsieur René Caillié had reached the lost city, dressed as a poor Arab, and returned alive. "I had formed a totally different idea of the grandeur and wealth of Timbuctoo," he wrote. "The city presented, at first sight, nothing but a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth. Nothing was to be seen in all directions, but immense quicksands of a yellowish white colour ... the most profound silence prevailed."

The myth of Timbuctoo the Golden had been punctured. Where Chapman could write ...

Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies
A mystic city, goal of high enterprise

the young Tennyson only questioned ...

Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient time?

Apart from the two French forts, the hotel, the lycée and the tactfully hidden quarter for the colons, the appearance of Timbuctoo cannot have changed much since Caillié's time. It still presents "a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth." Some, it is true, are built of blocks of white chalk, but the pale alluvial dust works its way into the pores very quickly. Some doorframes are painted a strawberry red incised with green scrolls, the only concession to decoration, and sole legacy of Moroccan conquest.

They still bring in slabs of salt from the dreaded Taodeni mines in the Sahara -- a favourite target for anti-slavery societies. The Touareg still prance like storks around the town, on their best behaviour now, for they have little say in the government. They still buy their spears, stone arm bracelets and the indigo veil called the litham for their mouths must never be seen in public. But next door to the Touaregi market booth, a salesman specialises in pots of macaw-coloured brilliantine, black lace brassières, Thermogene Medicated Rub and "Moon Rabbit Brand Nylon Stockings Made in China." Such are the changing patterns of trade.

The market women hover over the most unlikely messes. Ochre-coloured calabashes contain a favourite drink -- of sour milk, crushed millet and honey. Fricassé of crocodile is also quite common.

The streets are bare and dusty, but if you peer into the courtyards of the richer houses you can see obese women lying on the ground or on low couches. To sit up is thought to ruin the shape of the posterior. Obesity in women is admired, as a symbol of wealth. To maintain such girth in a desiccating desert climate requires mountains of food -- all the time. Only the very rich can afford the luxury of a wife so large that she has to be carried by servant girls.

An enthusiastic staff of boys run the hotel for the benefit of the staff. They live like princes. They dress up for dinner and eat sharply at eight. Guests must eat before them or after them. The least request they greet with howls of laughter. They have a communal girlfriend. She is supposed to be the barmaid. More often she can be found on the floor in an agony of laughter. She then has to go home to change. The boys dance most of the night to gramophone records sent from Guinea. They've been dancing here for centuries.

The graffiti are wonderful and worth a special visit to Timbuctoo alone. They range from the simple boy meets boy -- "Mahomet aime Yahya" -- to the overtly political -- "Chinois sont les Cons." Happily they are all in neat copybook handwriting and in French.

There are still two bookshops. The Evangelical Library and the Librairie Populaire du Mali glower at each other across the principal square. Sales cannot be high. Above the Evangelical Library a placard reads "La Crainte de L'Éternel est le Debut de la Sagesse" -- fine words for a people who live sensibly in the Eternal Present. The complete works of Billy Graham are for sale and some postcards.

The Librairie Populaire runs two periodicals -- La Femme Soviétique and Les Nouvelles de Moscou. Newspaper is at a premium, and is very useful for wrapping fish, meat or vegetables in the market. More serious and substantial ideological books, such as the complete works of V.I. Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, Marx or Engels are allowed to collect dust a little longer before their pages are passed on to the market. They are used for wrapping little packages of dye, chile pepper, snuff, chewing tobacco, the crushed leaves of the baobab tree used as an abortive, or charms to counteract djinns. Never throw stones at dogs in Timbuctoo. The lean hounds that skulk in the thorn bushes by day may be the djinns that will haunt you by night. A djinn starts as a small black spot in the corner of your room and ends up as big as the house. If you believe in djinns and the ability of holy men to fly of their own volition, the miracles of the jet age are amateur bungling. "How long would it take me to fly from here to Mecca?" an old man asked. He might do it in under a day, I told him. He was unimpressed. Local saints regularly take off on a Friday morning and are back the same afternoon. He also knew of a people called the Mericans who claim to have flown to the Moon. "That is impossible," he said. "They are blasphemers." The inhabitants of Timbuctoo are Arabs, Berbers, Songhoi, Mossi Toucouleur, Bambara, Bela, Malinke, Fulani, Moors and Touaregs. Later came the English, French, Germans, the Russians and then the Chinese. Many others will come and go, and Timbuctoo will remain the same.
May 13, 1997

Bruce Chatwin worked at Sotheby's and then for the Sunday Times (London). One of the most influential travel writers of his generation, he wrote numerous books, including "In Patagonia," "On the Black Hill," "The Songlines" and "Utz." He died in 1989.

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Copyright © the Legal Personal Representatives of C.B. Chatwin 1996.