Assouf is a particularly hard word to translate. It can mean "loneliness", "longing" or "nostalgia", but also a specific feeling or mood associated with vast uninhabited spaces where spirits dwell. And with exile too. A Touareg once summed up "assouf" as meaning everything which lies out there in the darkness, beyond the warmth of campfire. This is a song written by Ibrahim in the 1980s expressing the longing and homesickness of exile.

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