I wait by an empty Timbuktu roadside in the pre-dawn January chill. Nothing moves in the fetid stillness of the seemingly abandoned city. With its plastic bags, fly-blown offal, listless dogs, and collapsed walls, the city’s decay could be anywhere in urban Africa, save for its color: Timbuktu is the color of sand that blew in from the desert on yesterday’s orange wind and settled upon the city overnight. There is no sign of Azima, my Tuareg guide and friend of long-standing, or of the car that will carry us into the desert.

The city stirs. A muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, and a camel bellows in protest. The day’s first wind rustles the rubbish by the side of the road, and goats hurry through distant streets en route to the desert fringe, there to pass the day foraging on thorns. Weak car headlights, indistinct in the gloom, jounce over the potholes beyond the dust like wild spirits of the night departing. Swathed in blankets, Timbuktu’s inhabitants draw near to the Songhai ovens, domes of mud and sources of heat on street corners, then scurry home with bread and glowing coals for the precious first tea of morning. A cold sand wind drives me indoors.

Timbuktu may be the end of the earth, but it is also the start of a very long road, a once-lucrative trans-Saharan trail that connected Africa’s interior with the Mediterranean. Our destination is Araouane, one hundred seventy miles to the north. Among the Sahara’s oldest caravan towns, perhaps even older than Timbuktu, Araouane was for centuries renowned for the sweet water from its wells. It was also one of the few places of refuge along the waterless tracts to the Saharan salt mines of Taoudenni, and beyond to the historically great kingdoms of Morocco.

In the middle of a sand sheet in the Saharan desert, a dead tree leans against the wind, surrounded by swirling dust.

Like Timbuktu, Araouane was a prosperous trading town, where gold, silver, ivory, precious stones, ostrich plumes, and slaves passed through en route to the north, while glass and paper from Venice, pearls from Paris, and linen from Marseilles headed south. A European visitor to Araouane in the early nineteenth century found money to be of little use there; the only acceptable currency was gold and silver. And like Timbuktu, Araouane was a renowned seat of learning, famed for its Islamic scholars and priceless manuscripts.

But now Araouane’s days are numbered. Surrounded by sand dunes poised like giant waves above the town, and with the camel caravans that keep Araouane alive being consigned slowly to history, Araouane could soon disappear forever beneath the sands.

Our journey to Araouane is no ordinary Saharan journey. For almost a decade, I have been traveling through the Sahara in the company of the Tuareg, immersing myself in its solitude and searching for stories from its vanishing worlds. In the course of this quest, the Sahara has become one of the grand passions of my life. But increasingly, much of the Sahara is off-limits, plagued by rebellion, banditry, and the latest low-intensity war between the Malian army and Tuareg rebel groups. Depending on whom you believe, to these age-old perils of desert travel has been added the shadowy presence of al Qaeda, which has established bases deep in the Malian Sahara; they have been blamed for killings and kidnappings from Egypt in the east to Mauritania in the west. If true, the Sahara north of Timbuktu has become one of the most dangerous places on earth. After weeks of discussion, and against all sound advice, Azima has agreed to take me to Araouane.

When Azima’s battered Land Rover arrives in a cloud of dust, he emerges in robes of vivid blue, sandals slapping in the sand. Behind the wheel sits Baba, Azima’s most reliable driver and a veteran of many a dangerous desert encounter. Alongside Baba is Ali, his face gnarled like a desert acacia; Ali, who says not a word, not even in greeting, has spent his life guiding camels along the caravan route north of Timbuktu. Azima is as effusive as Ali is reserved and his chant-like ritual greetings will ripple through our conversation until long after we are underway. But his customary cheerfulness is tempered by a nervousness that I have never before seen in him; his eyes scan the street and he hurries me into the car.

We set off in silence.

We are two hours north of Timbuktu when Ali speaks for the first time, and his words are not welcome: “Put a turban on the white man.” I have seen nothing, but my colleagues have seen a car. “It is very strange to see one car alone in the desert,” Azima says as he conceals my face under meters of blue cloth. “And it was a very new car. It smelled bad.”

Ever since leaving Timbuktu, we have seen no other signs of life; the litter of trails through the sand has been strangely empty. True, we gave a wide berth to Agouni, the only settlement of note between Timbuktu and Araouane and the place where, in 1826, Alexander Gordon Laing, the first European to reach Timbuktu, was hacked to death by his Tuareg guide. According to Azima, Agouni’s reputation has scarcely improved in the almost two centuries since and it remains a bastion of Islamist fervor. But Azima is shocked to find the Sahara so silent and devoid of its usual signs of slow commerce and human movement. “I have never seen the Sahara like this,” he says. “This is the first time I have traveled this road without seeing a single person, not even a single animal at the wells.”

Azima has always assured me that he has been unconcerned about making this journey. But now that we no longer have a choice, he advises me to be more careful. “Twice in Timbuktu, you told people that we were going to Araouane,” he says. “There are rebels in the desert, yes, but there are many more listening in Timbuktu.”

We continue in silence, before Azima speaks again, shouting to make himself heard above the straining engine: “Soldiers don’t come into the desert, even this close to Timbuktu. The government gives them petrol so that they can patrol the Sahara, but they sell it on the black market. If we have trouble out here, we are on our own.”

He again falls quiet. Then, as if talking to himself, he speaks an old truth I have heard from nomads across the Sahara: “There are many tracks into the desert. There are not so many that lead out.”

Yesterday’s wind has returned with relentless force, and eddies of dust snake across the earth, howling through the emptiness like the ghoulish tails of desert djinns. Sand hisses and spatters against the car and even inside it we are soon coated in a fine layer of grit; visibility is down to less than a hundred meters. We make slow progress, meandering north under a weak sun.

Beyond the well of Taganet, we cross a vast sand sheet, the famed azawad of desert lore, a hallucinatory void; in the strong wind our tire tracks disappear within seconds. We could be traveling in circles, and yet somehow Ali knows the way, directing Baba with perfunctory hand signals to indicate subtle shifts of direction. When I wonder aloud how Ali can possibly know the way in this world stripped of landmarks, Azima tells a story.

“There was once a very experienced guide with the salt caravans between Taoudenni and Timbuktu. But he was very old and became blind. He told everyone that before he died, he wanted to travel with one last caravan to Taoudenni and return. Everyone told him that he was crazy, but he insisted. No one would take him, until finally his cousin agreed. In Africa there is always a joking relationship between cousins, so the man took some sand from Timbuktu and put it in a bag, and the caravan set out. They marched for seven days, past Araouane, and then the caravan stopped. After two days, the old man asked him why they hadn’t moved for so long. ‘Are you no longer a good guide? Did you forget everything that I taught you?’ ‘I am sorry,’ the cousin said, ‘but I am lost.’ The old man became angry and told the cousin to bring him some sand so that he could taste it to see if he knew where they were. The cousin brought him the Timbuktu sand, and the old man began to laugh. ‘I do not even have to taste this sand,’ he said, holding it in his hand. ‘We have been marching for seven days and we didn’t even leave the streets of Timbuktu.’ Everyone was amazed that the old man still knew the sand and his cousin told him the truth. So they continued on to Taoudenni, and the caravan returned to Timbuktu. The old man died in peace soon after.”

Halfway across the sand sheet, a dead tree looms from behind the veil of dust, leaning away from the wind. I watch as Azima, Baba, and Ali scurry for firewood, their robes billowing in the wind. It could be the aftermath of the apocalypse, this infernal scene of veiled men silhouetted against the near horizon, tearing in manic haste at what could be the last tree left on earth. I shudder. When Azima returns to the car, he is exultant: “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Finally, beyond the sand sheet’s northern shore, away to the west against a backdrop of sand hills, camels cluster around a well in the midday gloom. On a sand dune to the north a lone building swirls into view and then disappears, like a lighthouse in heavy seas. Baba accelerates. From alongside the building, from atop the highest point for hundreds of miles in every direction, we look out upon perhaps forty mud dwellings scattered in the sandy hollows. Oblivious to the wind, flies swarm and cling to our faces, seeking moisture in the tinder-dry air. Down below, box-like mud buildings, many with sagging walls, sit as if discarded at random by an untidy desert wind, separated not by streets but by rivers of moving sand. Great swells threaten to engulf the village, climbing the walls and lapping at the rooftops; from above, it resembles a shipwreck breaking into pieces and drifting apart. From time to time, a face peers from a darkened doorway, and a cowled figure, bent double, hurries out into the wind to cross the open spaces between buildings like a sand crab. Were it all a mirage, it would be singularly unimpressive.

Azima draws alongside me. “Welcome to Araouane.”

We seek refuge at the home of Mohammed Bashir, Araouane’s young imam. The house, like the other dwellings, has sand piled high against the eastern wall; the flatter windward side is strewn with dung pellets from goat and camel, a crucial source of family fuel. In the north wall, the entrance has been excavated so many times that a sand moat has appeared. To enter we must step down into the house from above.

Inside, mud walls support a roof of uneven wooden beams and tightly packed straw mats, and we make ourselves comfortable, cross-legged, on carpets atop the sandy floor. As the faces of curious onlookers crowd the open doorway, a young boy brings us a tin cup of pungent camel’s milk, the traditional Araouane brew of welcome.

Azima and Mohammed talk. During the conversation’s many silences Mohammed studies me, as I have studied him as he speaks. A Moorish Arab, Mohammed has kindly drooping eyes, a patchy untidy beard, and a turban carelessly draped, more than tied, over his closely cropped head. He smiles easily, although rarely with abandon, and his voice, when it comes, is as spare as the desert wind as he asks: “Are there places in your country like this, where there is nothing but sand?” But otherwise he displays a singular lack of curiosity about the world beyond the desert: Araouane is his world.

“Do you like Araouane?” he wonders.

“Yes . . . very much. But it must be a very hard life here.”

“Yes, but Araouane is my home. I don’t want to live anywhere else. Here we are free. Sometimes I must go to Timbuktu to buy food, but I haven’t left Araouane for one year. If I had food here in Araouane, I would never leave.”

“But does Araouane have a future?”

“If the salt mines of Taoudenni close, Araouane will be finished. There is nothing else here. Every house sends two or three young men to work in the mines when they turn twenty years old. And we make a living from the passing salt caravans, although there are not so many of them now. But even if they close the mines, I and many other people in Araouane would rather die here than leave.”

“Will Araouane ever disappear beneath the sand?”

Mohammed does not answer directly. “The house I was born in disappeared in the way that you say. In the end, people thought it was a well, because you could only see the roof through a hole in the sand. Then it disappeared. We built another house, the one where you are now. I can’t tell you exactly where my first house is. It is somewhere out there to the north.”

As we talk, the wind buffets the walls without respite and gusts of sand blow in through the door. If first appearances are anything to go by, Araouane’s battle against the Sahara seems doomed to failure. Mohammed watches me, and smiles.

“When I was a child,” he says, “there were many more people in Araouane. Now there are maybe one hundred, mostly women and children. There used to be many houses and tents, many more than now. Now most of them are under the sand.”

“When was the last time it rained here?”

The young imam counts on his fingers. “Six months ago. But it was only a few drops. The last real rains were a long, long time ago, many years.”

We lapse into silence.

After a time, Azima suggests that we explore the village. It is mid-afternoon, but Araouane is cast into perpetual dusk by sheets of wind-borne sand. Villagers cloaked in turbans and heavy coats huddle behind walls, passing the day, watching the wind.

When Réné Caillié, the first European to reach Timbuktu and live to tell the tale, passed through Araouane on his return journey in 1828, he was greeted “by the howling of dogs” and locals pursued him through the streets, hurling insults and threatening gestures in his direction. Caillié suffered sandstorms, stifling heat, and what he described as “a violent derangement of the stomach.” Things didn’t improve. “I never saw so dull a place,” he wrote. “I was unable to comprehend how the mere love of gain could induce these people to live for twelve or fifteen years in such a dreadful country . . . I looked forward with pleasure to the happy moment when I was to leave this disagreeable country.”

Even Ernst Aebi, an American adventurer who arrived in Araouane in 1988 and, in one of the Sahara’s more curious tales, set about saving Araouane from the march of history by planting gardens and making the village self-sufficient, was similarly unimpressed. Araouane was, he said on arrival, “a horrible place. Why anybody would have built a village here was beyond me. No vegetation, no shade, just sand and rubble. No beer, either. And ravenous swarms of black flies buzzing over the inhabitants in their tattered rags, and over the camels and goats and salt bars. Surely this was hell on earth.” As Aebi pointed out, the name Araouane, is pronounced like “Erehwon,” the utopia imagined by Samuel Butler in the nineteenth century; he came up with the name by spelling “nowhere” backwards.

To Michael Benanav, an American writer who traveled to Taoudenni and back with a salt caravan five years ago, Araouane was “a crumbling village that is sinking into the huge swell of sand upon which it is built.” Araouane, he wrote, “barely has a pulse at all.”

The insults which greeted Caillié aside, it is all true. We lean away from the wind and walk as if through a sand blizzard, between houses and rubble barely visible beyond the wall of sand.

In five minutes, we have walked from the heart of Araouane to its westernmost limits. Alongside a stand of perhaps ten trees which date from the days of Aebi’s bold experiment, and which in the wind emit a roar like waves breaking on the shore, Azima leans on a crumbling wall all but submerged beneath more than a decade of sand. This was the “Araouane Hilton,” a simple hotel built by Aebi in the days when trans-Saharan tourism was big business and offered hope to remote villages such as this. But the Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s drove Aebi away and his hotel, too, will soon be gone.

We talk little, our mouths filling with sand. As the wind drives us back to the shelter of the imam’s home, I ask Azima how on earth people can live here. He shrugs. “They are Muslim. They trust in God.”

At sunset, I sit in the semi darkness of the imam’s house, watching through the doorway as an old Moorish muezzin stands at the entrance to the mosque, calling Araouane’s faithful few to prayer; he bellows into the wind like a divine madman. In the absence of water, Azima performs his ritual ablutions with sand. Azima and Mohammed then trudge out into the gauze light of the wind-shrouded sunset. It is Islam unchanged in fourteen centuries.

After the sun has gone and the wind abates, Araouane is cloaked in darkness; there is no electricity. Men crowd into the room to talk and to debate the Sahara’s troubled times. Here, in the eye of a storm that has spread fear across the open desert and the Saharan campfires of night, people are hungry for news and full of opinions. Azima does his best to translate, but is discreet about doing so: it is clear that those in the room consider talk of rebels and bandits to be a private matter. At one point, Azima leans over to me and whispers: “People here are very worried.”

Rumors are circulating that three hundred rebel Tuareg fighters have this week gathered in Kidal, in Mali’s far northeast, for showdown talks with the Malian government. “If they can make an agreement,” Azima says, “there will be peace. If not, things will get a lot worse. This is a very important week for the Tuareg and for Mali.” Whether these stories are true or not, later reports in the Malian press will suggest that, at the very moment we are discussing the situation in the imam’s house, the Malian army is destroying the main Tuareg rebel base, close to the Algerian border.

But everyone agrees that the presence of al Qaeda is a different matter altogether. And, it seems, we have been lucky.

“Yesterday,” Mohammed tells us, “the bandits crossed the desert close to here. They were Islamists from Mauritania. If you had arrived a day earlier, you could have been kidnapped.”

Mohammed has no time for those who would use fear to spread the message of Islam. “Now in Timbuktu there are imams from other countries, especially Arabs, in the mosques. One day after prayers, the people were leaving and these men told them to stay behind so that they could teach the people of Timbuktu about Islam. But one old man said to them: ‘Listen to me. Islam was here in Timbuktu long before you arrived. We don’t need you to come here and teach us about Islam.’”

Everyone in the room nods in assent.

I ask if they have any problems here, whether from bandits, rebel Tuareg groups, or Islamists.

“No, why would we?” Mohammed answers. “They are looking for money, for rich people. In Araouane, we only have sand. That is why Araouane is good. It is a hard life, but it is safe here, and peaceful.”

When the men disperse to do whatever one does in Araouane to pass the night, Azima voices the concerns that have followed us here.

“The rebels have their contacts, even here in Araouane, even among some of the guides. They know everything. They know how many cars are coming, which route they take, the nationality of the people who come. Did you see how they had the food ready when we arrived? Araouane knew we were coming. News in the desert travels very fast.”

“So the rebels know that we are in Araouane now?”

“Yes . . . Of course.”

I think of Ali, my taciturn guide, and of all the people I have met here in Araouane. I walk outside and scan the horizon by the light of the moon. Nothing moves.