In 1965, accepting me as a member of his family, a noble Kel Rela Tuareg
took off his veil and let me photograph him without it under his tent. This
surprised even his grandsons, who had never seen his full face. Their surprise
made his younger sister behind them laugh. It surprised me too, of course. And the man may have been smiling over his audacity.
Like Tuareg men often do, he had shaved the front part of his long hair to mitigate the heat generated by his tagilmust, or turban veil. His hands were blue from the
heavy indigo dye of his robe, which comes off like that of carbon paper and has
earned the Tuareg the name of Blue People.
The Kel Rela are originally
from the Sahara’s Ahaggar Mountains in southern Algeria. However, dwindling
pastures there had pushed them south to txhe Sahara’s Tamesna region of
Niger.
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