I found Haidara, one of Timbuktu's preeminent historians, in the blinding mid-morning glare of his family's stone courtyard, not far from the Sankore Mosque. He wanted to show me what he said was ...

while the Mosque of Sankore was “quite picturesque”, according to an Australian visitor. I worry that if no one under the age of 20 uses the Timbuktu metaphor, then the vital signs are even ...