The name of the old town of Timbuktu carries mythical associations for many people around the world.
I remember as a young man listening to the American ballad, Take a message to Mary, about a young man in prison for murder but who doesn’t want his sweetheart to know where he is. “You can tell her I went to Timbuktu, or tell her I’m searching for gold.” Far away, hazy, unreachable, it was, in the imagination of many people the world over, the Never-Never land of lost romance.
