The wonder of the wandering life

Anthony Sattin begins with a quotation from Bruce Chatwin, who famously tried all his life to produce a book about nomads but never quite succeeded (the nearest he got was Songlines). Hoping to persuade Tom Maschler at Cape of the virtues of the project, Chatwin described nomads as ‘a subject that appeals to irrational instincts’ – perhaps not the best way to sell something to publishers, who tend to pride themselves on their rational ones. But Chatwin’s thesis – that we were all originally nomads and need to recover some of that instinct – is now triumphantly brought to its conclusion in Sattin’s fascinating journey through 12,000 years, from the nomadic ways of prehistoric man to the Bedouin and Maasai of today.

Who self-identifies as a nomad? Michael Palin has a charming story about being in a remote part of the Sahara when some Tuareg ride up on camels. Their leader hands him a business card saying Abdullah Ibrahim (or whatever), ‘Nomad’.

This is a recovered history, of those who have, by definition, been too itinerant to leave any account of themselves behind. History has mainly been written by monks, academics and those who had a desk and access to a library. Not surprisingly, they have favoured their own institutions of settled civilisation and portrayed nomads like the Huns and Mongols as barbarians who did nothing but bring occasional chaos. As a result, the story of nomads has been as elusive as the almond tree blossom that blows across the Berber mountains in spring. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze observed that ‘nomads have no history; they only have a geography’.

This book is an attempt to retrieve their considerable contribution to our past and, sometimes, present, even though their numbers are much reduced (the author describes his recent travels with pastoralists in Iran).