by Holly Smale
“Kiss the snake. Just a quick peck. And make sure the watch is on show the whole time.”
I glance at the gold still weighing down my wrist. I don’t think there’s an alternative, frankly: you could see this thing through a dark pair of curtains.
Then I look at the snake doubtfully.
There are 3,000 species of snake in the world, and 600 of them are venomous. If I had any poison, a random redhead trying to kiss me would be my very first target.
I swallow, take a deep breath and give it a quick peck.
“Yes!” Kevin shouts. “Again!”
I peck it again.
“Again!”
I kiss the snake again. I think in some countries we are now married.
“AND CUT!” Kevin claps his board so sharply somebody in the audience gives a little squeak. “Now, let’s see what else we can do that won’t get us sued, shall we?”
I spend the rest of the evening wandering aimlessly through the winding, narrow souks of Marrakech with a film crew trailing four metres behind me.
And every few steps, somebody yells at me.
Occasionally, it’s a stall owner who thinks I have an eye for a bargain. “Hey, lady!” one shouts, trying to grab my hand. “Hey, Rihanna! You want to buy a scarf? Lovely scarf for you and your family! I give you super good price!”
“Hey, Beckham! You like nice carpet?? I have so many nice carpets!”
“You are a pretty lady! Come and have a butcher and a wag of the chin!”
But mostly, I’m just yelled at by Kevin.
Every time I reply to the stall owners, or laugh, or walk the wrong way, or say thank you very much but I already have a carpet at home, my director explodes at me.
“I said no, Hannah! No talking! Laughing is not fashion! Do it again! Take a left! A right! No, a right! Look at the watch! Faster! Slow down! And make sure you look at the watch! This isn’t an advert for orienteering!”
Until I’m starting to feel very confused, very lost and very late for something important: I’m just not entirely sure what, exactly. Like a particularly rubbish version of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.
I’m so disorientated that during an especially enthusiastic head-toss one of my enormous dangly earrings gets caught in a long yellow scarf hanging from a pole and renders me abruptly immobile.
“What are you doing?” Kevin yells at me as I lurch backwards with a wince and cover my ear with my hand. “What is this?”
“I’m …” I pretend to rub the scarf on my face while I try to surreptitiously unhook myself. “I’m just … Really getting into it, you know? Into the vibe. Of this … uh, summer accessorising.”
Into it, on to it, attached to it: pretty much the same thing.
Kevin scowls at me as I start pretending to sniff the scarf instead. “Well can you stop? It does not look sophisticated and expensive at all.”
The cameras keep filming as an outraged stall owner charges forward and unhooks my earring while muttering loudly. In the meantime, all the other stallholders are now filming me on their mobile phones.
“Americans!” one says cheerfully, shaking his head. “Always making my day.”
You know what?
If I can find a hole through to another universe, it might be best for everyone if I just jump straight down it.
Once released I wander a bit more – stumbling into a gutter full of dirty water – and then I accidentally venture into a one-way street at which point I have to confidently put my hand on my hip and pretend it was entirely intentional.
Finally, Kevin decides he’s probably got enough footage for the day.
That or he’s given up on me entirely.
It’s hard to tell.
“Done!” he shouts as his phone starts ringing, grabbing it out of his pocket. “I can just pay somebody to edit all the rubbish out. Get an early night, peeps. It’s a long way to Erg Chebbi, so we’ll precede at four.”
Then he disappears down a dark little path that presumably leads back to the riad, still yelling into his phone.
There’s a short silence.
“It’s midnight,” Helena finally sighs. “How exactly are we going to get an early night? Time travel?”
“He means four am?” Joe the cameraman moans. “In four hours?”
“No wonder the money for this was so good.”
Annabel and I wait until the entire crew has stumbled off to bed – still grumbling and rubbing their eyes – then we look at each other.
“Are you sure you still want to do this?” she says calmly. “Because this is a man that doesn’t know the difference between proceed and precede, and our life is in his hands.”
I nod sleepily and grin.
Despite being shouted at so much – and despite getting so much wrong – I’m actually having a surprising amount of fun, living life so far on the edge I’m basically tipping over.
Maybe I’m more like my dad than I hoped I was.
“All right, then,” Annabel says with a swift nod. She gets a guidebook out. “In that case, the good news is that Erg Chebbi consists of fifty-kilometre dunes of sands blown by the wind, and it’s part of the Sahara desert.”
I open my eyes, suddenly very alert.
I’ve had a Sahara desert poster in my bedroom since I was seven, and I may or may not have cut a photo of myself out and stuck it on top to look like I’d already been there.
“And the bad news?”
Annabel puts the guidebook back in her bag and rubs a hand over her eyes. “It’s an eleven-hour drive away and we’re taking a bus.”
leven hours on a bus is a long time.
Eleven hours on a bus with Kevin sitting behind you is an infinity.
Before sunrise the next morning, we’re piled in the back of a tiny white van, driven out of the city … and into the Atlas Mountains.
As the sky slowly begins to lighten, we see the outline of dark peaks speckled with snow. Sweeping valleys and gorges are dotted with trees and rivers and here and there small turreted, castle-like kasbahs are perched randomly on the hillside.
We drive past goats and sheep, market stalls and little villages, including the incredible Ouarzazate: a red-walled Berber city made of mud, and the setting for Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator.
And Kevin doesn’t see any of it.
“I just came from nowhere,” he says as we all watch a man walking a donkey with a little bell along the road. “BOOM. Nobody knows how I did it.
“I suppose I’ve always been creative,” he ponders as we stop for some traditional Moroccan tagine for lunch: stewed chicken with vegetables and currants in a clay pot. “Some of us are just born to really see the world, you know?
“Oooh!” he says as we pull over to take photos of a pretty village with peach walls and yellow flowers. “Seventeen retweets! Eighteen! Twenty!”
By the time the land starts to get dustier and the mountains flatten into brown plains, scattered with little piles of sand, the only thing stopping everyone on the bus from literally killing Kevin is the knowledge that we must be nearly there now. That, and the fact that Morocco still officially has the death penalty for murder.
Finally we pull into a small, crunchy car park and stop.
Helena and I wobble quickly off the bus into the sweltering heat, then dive into a small cement building so I can get changed again before the sun sets: this time into a long yellow, blue and orange silk dress covered in gold sequins, as dictated by an even more elaborate stick figure.
She covers my face in yet another thick layer of gunk and secures the watch with the same horrified face as yesterday.
Then she leads me to a long line of camels, grunting and chewing with the laconic, disinterested expressions of old men with grudges. Every now and then one opens its mouth and makes a loud, grumbling sound: halfway between an angry dinosaur roar and a really acidic belch.
Annabel is standing cautiously next to them.
“Apparently the Arabic language has 160
words for camel,” she says, grimacing slightly. “I can probably think of a couple more. However, if this is what’s next on the list then …”
“Oh, there isn’t a camel for you,” Kevin says brightly, ambling past on an enormous brown one, with a blue scarf tied elaborately round his head. “You weren’t on the crew list, lady. Frankly, you’re lucky there was even room in the bus. I was all for leaving you in Marrakech.”
Annabel’s jaw clenches. “You’re so kind.”
“My charity work is well documented,” he agrees. “Hannah? I’m not paying you to stand and stare gormlessly at the transport. Get on Zahara immediately, please.”
He points at an enormous, white fluffy, curly camel, who turns and gives me a slow, long-lashed blink, like a flirty film star from the 1920s.
Take risks, Harriet.
I clamber nervously on and squeak slightly as Zahara slowly stands up with her back legs first – tipping me terrifyingly forward – then with her front legs, so I’m flung backwards again like a rag doll.
Annabel writes something in the little notepad she’s started carrying around with her. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but from her expression I’m guessing it’s not a love poem.
“Are you sure you don’t need me, Harriet?” she says, holding a flat hand up and squinting against the sunshine. “Because if you do, I’ll steal one of these furry old man animals. But if you don’t … I suppose I could stay here and make a few phone calls.”
Her fingers twitch unconsciously towards her briefcase.
It’s only just occurring to me now that this must be the longest Annabel’s ever been away from Tabitha. Plus she’s just started back at work after maternity leave, and it’s a Friday afternoon: she must have work coming out of her ears. This isn’t a fun sunny holiday for Annabel at all.
The only reason she’s here is to look after me.
“I’ll be absolutely fine,” I say as confidently as I can while Zahara experimentally licks my left ankle. “Give Dad and Tabby my love. See you when I get back, OK?”
I blow her an affectionate kiss.
Then I ride off alone into the orange sands.
should probably have said: if I get back.
Camels aren’t known as ‘ships of the desert’ for nothing, and it turns out I’m not a very good sailor. As we start walking across little heaps of sand towards the dunes, Zahara begins to sway dramatically from side to side, up and down, round and round: staggering, belching, shuffling, clambering up the first of the dunes, twitching her tail and sliding back down again.
Which is a bit of a problem.
The film crew has been set up fifteen metres away so they can film me, wobbling precariously past with my head jiggling loosely like one of those little plastic dogs that go on the dashboard of a car.
I lurch one way, then the other.
I swerve and dip and squeak, and at one point slip so violently I’m hanging off the side of the camel and one of the Moroccan camel-men has to grab me as I close my eyes and hang on to the poor animal’s neck for dear life.
“Stop. Strangling. The. Camel,” Kevin hisses from his position to my right. “You are so not good with animals.”
Finally, I find a kind of awkward rhythm.
Together, Zahara and I climb slowly up a particularly enormous and powdery dune to the very top. At which point every bit of remaining breath leaves my body in one big whoosh.
Annabel has disappeared. The bus has disappeared. The gravel car park has disappeared.
All that’s left is sand.
Approximately eight octillion grains of sand, to be precise: spread across three and a half million square miles in tiny, sea-like ripples and enormous soft, cascading mountains, all in golds and oranges.
To my left, the shadows of the camels are stretched to the horizon, perfectly outlined in black with long, thin legs like the elephants in the famous Dali painting.
The sky is bright pink, and little yellow and tangerine clouds are scattered above us; below us the ground keeps shifting like magic from rust to orange to crimson. Little stars are beginning to pop out and the air is utterly silent. Not a bird, not a plane.
Just perfect stillness.
Modelling has opened the world up for me.
I’ve seen the bright lights of New York and the candy-like turrets of Moscow in the snow. I’ve watched Mount Fuji as the sun goes down, and the neon colours of Tokyo as it comes back up again. I’ve walked the streets of Marrakech and navigated empty warehouses in London.
But of all the places I’ve ever been, this is by far my favourite.
It’s just a shame I have to share it with Kevin.
“Remember,” he yells from several metres away, cupping his hands round his mouth. “You are a queen! You are an empress! You are the monarch of everything you survey! Now look at the flaming watch!”
But as we pause on top of the dune and the crew films me for a few minutes, staring at the horizon with my dress floating in the wind, I suddenly feel every single muscle in my body start to relax. Kevin can shout at me as much as he likes: I am the luckiest girl in the entire world.
And for a brief fragment of time, I don’t need to act.
As I sit on the camel and stare at the calm, empty, limitless sands spreading millions of miles around me, that’s exactly how I feel: like a queen.
Brave, confident and capable of anything.
Because after a childhood of dreaming and imagining, I am finally here.
I am in the Sahara desert.
hings that live in the Sahara desert include:
Kevin appears to think he’s the only one.
“Does anybody have reception?” he yells as we roll carefully back down the dune again and are brought to a juddering halt. “I need to upload this selfie, and I’ve got jack.”
Carefully, I’m helped off the camel.
I give Zahara a little pat and a thank-you.
Then I’m led to a flat piece of sand between two dunes while the crew starts setting up lights in a semicircle. I glance around expectantly: so far I’ve been buddied up with a camel, a monkey and four snakes.
My next task will no doubt involve subduing a fire-breathing dragon with my bare hands while simultaneously attempting some kind of whimsical recorder playing.
“Right,” Kevin says, leaning nonchalantly against his camel. “This is my final shot, Hannah, and will be my Pièce de Résistance. Do you know what that means?”
I nod in relief: finally, something I can answer properly. “Yes. It’s French for piece of resistance, and it traditionally refers to the most substantial dish in a meal.”
“Wrong. It means this is the bit that will make me famous. More famous. So I need you to really dig deep and bring out your best stuff. You know. Do your thing.”
I stare at Kevin for a few seconds in bewilderment.
“Sorry, my thing?”
Does he want me to do complex algebra for the cameras? Analyse a bit of metaphysical poetry? Experiment with the migration of manganite ions?
Kevin bends down and pulls two little yellow boxes out of his bag.
Then he wedges them in the sand.
“I’m thinking nomadic. I’m thinking free spirit. I’m thinking my classic timepiece by Jacques Levaire is so glorious I can’t control my happiness. Pretend there’s a campfire and sparklers if you need them. We can always CGI that in later. ACTION.”
Then he waves his hand at the cameras and clicks a button on his iPod.
Oh my God. What is happening?
Except as huge white lights switch on with a bang and the cameras start whirring, I think I already know. Sure enough: a loud, tinny beat begins to thump across the sand. Thud. Thud. Thud thud thud thud. Then a little voice starts screeching ooooooooh babyyyyyy hiiiighhhh iin theeee skkyyyyyyy yeahhh baby. An electronic keyboard joins in, followed by what appears to be a random fake owl sound.
The kangaroo rat has wide toes that turn its feet into sand shoes, allowing it to run across
sand really fast in the opposite direction to danger without sinking in.
I may need to quickly grow some too.
“Now,” my director confirms as he leans back on the camel again and throws his hands out widely. “Dance.”
So I dance.
Or – more specifically – Hannah does.
With the skills she learnt during a short stint with the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, she swirls and spins, pirouettes and squats, jumps and curtsies. She rolls around a bit on the floor, getting sand in her eyes and mouth and hair and trying to surreptitiously spit it back out again in the most glamorous way possible.
She fake-drowns and jives, shuffles and wiggles.
She even attempts a little break-dancing. And you know what? Harriet Manners can’t do any of this. But Hannah Manners?
Apparently she’s not that bad at it.
I must have harnessed her powers more accurately than I ever dared dream could be possible, because for the first time Kevin hasn’t got a single word of criticism.
“Superb!” he yells as I attempt to moonwalk across the sand. “Marvellous!” he shouts as I huff and puff through three extremely low star jumps. “Genius!” he exclaims as – in a panic – I steal a few of Dad’s key moves and start doing ‘wobbly-knees’ and making big boxes with little boxes inside them with my hands. “This is precisely what I wanted! It’s fresh, it’s unorthodox! It’s visionary! Could you, perchance, try a little krumping?”
Which I assume is dancing like a crumpet.
So I obediently roll myself on to the sand and try to look as bread-like as possible.
Finally, the music stops and I crash in exhaustion to the ground and end with tired jazz hands. I’m sweating all over and breathing so hard I sound like a tree being cut down.
“AND THAT …” Kevin yells, clacking his little board for the final time, “… IS. A. WRAP! Could you take a photo of me jumping?” He hands his phone to Helena. “I need one for my Facebook profile.”
I sit for a few seconds in the sand, trying to get my breath back.
Then I look upwards at the sky.
The light is fading, pink has deepened to a purple-blue and stars are popping out and multiplying by the second like freckles in the sun. I give a little sigh and try to quickly take as many mental photos as I can. I’m only sixteen, after all. I can always come back and enjoy my first ever night in the desert without somebody yelling I CAN JUMP HIGHER! DO IT AGAIN! another time, right?