The ceiling at the house in Dirkou where we had lunch, made of cardboard. This house was of some relative of one of the tour people, and was apparently one of the places in the desert where fuel had been stored. Maybe if I were adhering to such construction codes my kitchen would be done, too. I had been worried, off and on throughout the trip, of various scenarios of Betrayal by the Invisible Hand. What would happen, for example, if a Japanese tour agency showed up willing to pay five times the market price for diesel fuel, and Souleymane found his supplies sold out from under him? But in retrospect, it is apparent that the honor of the Tuaregs runs considerably deeper than that. They have to live with each other for the next several centuries.