Tekna Erotic

The Tekna are less a single tribe than a standing alliance. They form a confederation of Saharan tribes centered on the Oued Noun, the dry river country around Guelmim where the last folds of the Anti-Atlas give way to open desert. Their territory runs south through Tan-Tan, Assa and Tarfaya into the north of Western Sahara. Member tribes such as the Izarguien, the Aït Lahcen and the Aït Oussa were historically grouped into two opposing blocs, the Aït Jmel and the Aït Bella. A family's bloc decided who stood with whom in a feud or in a dispute over grazing.

Their ancestry combines Sanhaja Berber and Arab lineages, and their languages show it. Hassaniya, the Arabic of the western Sahara, is the everyday language for most Tekna. Tashelhit, the Berber language of the Souss, survives among some sections closer to the mountains. The Tekna are Sunni Muslims of the Maliki school, and religion is part of daily routine rather than something set apart from it. Prayer shapes the day in town and in camp, and saints' shrines and lodges, including the old zawiya at Assa, are still places for visits and seasonal gatherings.

For centuries Guelmim was a gate between Morocco and West Africa. It was a caravan town trading in gold, ostrich feathers, cloth and enslaved people, and its camel market became what it was best known for. In the nineteenth century the Beyrouk family of Guelmim controlled enough of that trade to bargain with European merchants on their own account, which pushed Moroccan sultans to assert their authority over the Noun. Colonial rule then cut Tekna country apart, with France in Guelmim and Spain on the coast at Tarfaya and in the Sahara beyond. Tarfaya passed to Morocco in 1958. But the dispute over Western Sahara that followed Spain's exit in 1975 has left Tekna relatives on both sides of a contested line, some in Moroccan-administered towns and some among the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria.

Tekna life now moves between the tent and the apartment. Families whose parents followed the rains with their herds now work in Guelmim, Tan-Tan and Laayoune, and some still keep camels out on the desert edge. The melhfa wrap for women and the wide daraa robe for men are ordinary street clothes, not costume. The guedra, a kneeling dance performed to a skin drum stretched over a cooking pot, is closely tied to Guelmim. The Moussem of Tan-Tan, a gathering of Saharan tribes recognized by UNESCO, brings camel racing, music and Hassaniya poetry together on Tekna ground.