Eleanor Clark
A SAHARA SILHOUETTE
If
neither French nor Roman Catholic nor a Sahara buff,
a traveler to the vast lower quarter of Algeria, the part of the Sahara
called the Hoggar, may never have heard of the Atakor range of
mountains or of a certain candidate for sainthood associated with
one of them. His image clings to the whole region around the town
ofTamanrasset and to its nomad people, the Tuareg, for whose lan–
guage early in this century he wrote the first dictionary, grammar,
and translations of a great store of oral poetry. Later it came to seem
very peculiar indeed not to have known about this odd priest, sub–
ject of innumerable books. At least to the tourist trade, and in the
perception of any in the outside world who have chanced or cared to
look into it, his name looms over the Hoggar like Lenin's over Red
Square, and greater difference than between those two gentlemen
the human race can rarely have conjured up. His name was Charles
de Foucauld, and he was murdered in Tamanrasset, called Tam
thereabouts, in 1916. The mountaintop linked to him, because he
built a little hermitage there (although he actually didn't spend very
much time there), is the Assekrem.
A legend already in his lifetime, now still not officially declared
a saint, Foucauld was first proposed for sainthood at the Vatican in
1927. At the time of his death, he was fifty-eight years old and prob–
ably would have died soon anyway, as a result of extreme self–
inflicted deprivations throughout the second half of his life. The fact
of his death can doubtless be taken as an answer to his prayers over
many years; the manner of it stands in a causal relation to the most
dire days of World War I for France. They were bound to be days of
strain and sorrow for this fanatic and aristocrat whose patriotism
was almost on a par with his Christian zeal.
After the first presentation ofhis cause in Rome, in 1927, more
than a half-century would pass before the formal petition for beatifi–
cation and canonization, apparently still in abeyance, was made in
1979. The time in the celestial waiting room isn't always so long, as
witness the last-stage elevation a while ago of the Polish priest–
martyr of World War II. Obviously, as with all international
awards, recognition of sainthood can entail political expediences and
general horsetrading. Conceivably, if all or any big majority of Pere
de Foucauld's compatriots were begging for his canonization and be-
