The Kel Essuf, the 'people of solitude' or 'people of the wild', are the spirit-beings that inhabit the essuf - the empty, silent immensity of the desert that is at once solitude, wilderness and longing. Encountered in deserted places, darkness and the disorientation of long crossings, they enter and afflict those who are alone, causing illnesses of the heart and soul. As documented by Susan Rasmussen among the Kel Ewey and by Johannes Nicolaisen and Dominique Casajus elsewhere, they are not exorcised but negotiated with in the tende n goumaten rite, in which a mortar-drum and the massed songs of women summon the spirits and coax them into release rather than combat.