‘To the palace!’ How many times in life does one get the chance to announce that to a taxi driver?
Our filming team was the guest of the Emir of Kano in northern Nigeria. He is part of an ancient tradition of kings who have ruled in Kano for over a thousand years. The Emir’s court is a world where few foreigners are permitted to intrude, and we were excited that permission had finally been granted for us to film there.
Kano is one of the oldest cities in Africa. It was the major trading centre for all Saharan trade from Lake Chad to the Niger river and beyond to Europe and ancient Arabia. It was at least as important as the fabled Timbuktu. Salt, indigo, leather, silver, bronze were all traded in Kano and had been for centuries. The written records of its kings go back to A.D. 900, when Europe was being pillaged by the savage Norsemen.
The legend of its beginning goes back even further. The story goes that the founder of Kano was a hunter of such prodigious strength that he could kill an elephant with a stick and carry it on his back.
We drove through the dusty streets of Kano wondering what to expect. The harmattan dust hung in the air above the city and, for a fleeting moment, one could almost imagine the old camel caravans plodding sore-footed into the mud-walled town after having crossed 1600 miles of desert from Cairo and Damascus.
The streets of the city were filled with concrete and rusting steel. At almost every street corner a tangle of electricity and telephone wires stood out starkly against the hot sky. The roads were snarled with car and scooter traffic belching fumes into the air.
Yet the magic of the old city was not all gone. We had just set up the camera on a double-laned highway when a rider wearing a scarlet turban shot through with gold and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses came trotting down the road. He wore a dark red cloak, and his horse was caparisoned with a rich saddlecloth and bridle. He did not even glance at our camera as he rode by.
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