A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  This was how it began, I thought, a million years ago, when the first flame trembled on the first twig. That had been the beginning of man’s conquest of the environment. From those hearthstones, the simplest of all architecture, had grown up villages and cities. From the closeness of those hearth companions had grown up the tales and myths that had become history and literature. In my world, the process that began with fire had ended in electricity and engines, computers, spacecraft, microchips, and atomic fission. Here, though, there had been no such progress. The ancestors of these men had broken away from those who had become city dwellers at a very early stage and adapted themselves well to life in this wilderness. For millennia they had needed nothing more than the simple technology required to live here. But already, the world of the city dwellers was encroaching upon them. Already, the fume-spewing motor vehicles were crossing this desert, taking away the salt that had been theirs for centuries. Already, great climatic changes beyond their control were biting into the life they and their forefathers had known since ancient times.

  After eating, the Arabs talked, getting to know each other. Mohammid and Balla discovered that they were distantly related on their mothers’ side. Much of Arab conversation was designed to discover such relationships, so that each man could fit the other into the greater world of tribal and family links. I knew that one of the reasons I would remain an outsider was because I did not fit into this intricate system.

  Later, the conversation turned to the subject of lorries. ‘These lorry people are taking away all the salt from Al Ga’a!’ declared Balla. ‘By God, we should attack and kill every one of them, then they will not come back!’

  ‘What about the government?’ I said. ‘I do not think they would let you get away with it.’

  ‘Hah! What is the government!’ stormed the youth, lifting up Mohammid’s old rifle. ‘This is the government, by God!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mohammid agreed. ‘The Kababish rule here. We will not let slaves rule us. The Arabs have no government, by God!’

  It was freezing that night, as we curled up in our blankets. We had a single blanket each, except for Balla, who slept in a thin prayer mat. It was too cold for any of us to sleep except in snatches. I knew that I could have brought a sleeping bag, as I had on my earlier journeys, but told myself that I had no wish to sleep in comfort while my companions shivered a few feet away. If there was any chance of being accepted by these Arabs, it would only be by sharing hardships. If I had brought with me foreign luxuries, then why not travel by motor vehicle? I could have reached El ’Atrun much more efficiently in one of the salt lorries, as many European tourists had done. But El ’Atrun was only a goal, a place on which to set my sights. The real secrets I had come in search of lay here in the open desert with these desert peoples. Without them, I should have been just another tourist, and my journey would have been no more than a sightseeing trip.

  The next morning, we were assailed by a biting wind from the northeast, and we wrapped ourselves in blankets before setting off. The camels now moved close together in four parallel strings, and we took turns leading them. They paced on over the sand and rock, stalwart and impassive. The plain looked like a sheet of polished bronze, crusted with a dark patina of iron. At intervals, there were rock towers with sharp, angular faces. Pieces of rock had cracked and fragmented; they lay across the desert in nests of debris. To our west lay the faint outline of Tagaru, the massive inselberg that extended eighty miles north towards Wadi Howar. I had heard that the plateau had some interesting rock pictures, and I asked Mohammid if he had seen them. He replied that he had not, and that only the ’Atawiyya really knew the inside of the mountain. ‘They say that there are caves there where the whole of the Kababish could hide, and no one would ever find them,’ he told me. ‘There is plenty of treasure buried there too, by God!’ I knew there was no chance of exploring the plateau on my present journey, but I hoped that one day I should find a chance to return.

  As the days passed, I got to know my companions better. Old Ali was treated a little mockingly by the others. He was unmarried, which was unusual for a man of his age. As he had no sons to help him, he was forced to make the arduous journey to El ’Atrun several times a year. Ballal was a tough, hardy Arab, inclined to be gruff and moody. He spoke as little as possible. My liking for Balla did not increase, for he was a merciless critic of everything I did. Often, we would go off to bring back the camels in the morning, if they had been left out to graze all night. I was still unaccustomed to the vicious animals and several times, I was almost bitten or kicked as I stooped to untie the hobbles. On one occasion, I was wrestling with the hobble of my old friend of the jaw-tying incident, a huge camel called Girish. Someone had pulled the hobble tight, and as I struggled with chilled hands, the animal lowered his head and snapped at my skull. I noticed the movement, which could have broken my neck, only a second before the jaws champed together, and thrust myself backwards into the sand. As I picked myself up, I saw Balla standing a few yards away and laughing loudly. ‘You are a fool if you cannot even untie a hobble!’ he said.

  As we rode on that afternoon, Balla leaned over and said to me, ‘What can you do? It seems that you know nothing!’ I thought of trying to explain that I was here, speaking in a language that I had first heard less than four years previously, riding an animal that I had formerly seen only in a zoo, travelling with an alien people in a foreign land. Yet I knew that these were excuses that would have no meaning for him. He was totally unaware of the world outside this desert. ‘What can you do?’ I asked in return.

  ‘I can tie ropes and hobble camels, I can make hobbles and waterskins, I can ride and shoot and hunt, herd camels and dig wells. I know all the names of the trees and the grasses, the birds and the animals, and the meaning of the tracks. That is what is needed for living here. If you do not know these things, then you know nothing!’

  And I was forced to admit that he was right.

  Over those days, I became increasingly worried about my camel, Wad at Tafashan. It seemed that Wad Fadul had been right when he predicted that the animal was too worn out to make El ’Atrun. He began to stumble and his head sagged. It became more and more difficult for him to keep up with the others. Finally, one afternoon, he sat down and refused to get up again. We kicked and pulled at him until he responded. I remembered the she-camel I had seen with Dagalol; those that could not keep up were left or slaughtered. Mohammid said, ‘It is not just tiredness. He has a saddle sore, for certain.’ Later, after we had made camp, I found that the Arab had been right. Beneath the rear saddle pad was a neat red sore that was badly swollen. When the fire was lit, Mohammid heated an iron and cauterised the swelling. ‘So that the poison will not spread,’ he told me. We all knew that the camel would be unridable for days. ‘You will not make it even to Wadi Howar if you ride him,’ Mohammid said. That night, when I went out alone in the darkness to bring back the camels from the little grazing they had found, I felt deeply disappointed. Without my camel, I felt that my independence had been lost. But far more serious was the lack of trust between myself and Balla, which in this vast environment felt unnatural and destructive.

  When next morning came and Mohammid told me to saddle my old friend Girish, I could not suppress a laugh. He was far more comfortable to ride, and far more manageable than I could ever have imagined. During the next few days, we crossed valleys thick with red sand piled into drifts and shallow crescents. The desert surface was a constantly changing pattern of colours and textures the deep ochre of the sand sheets, the steel-grey of the gravel plains, packed as hard as asphalt. In the mornings, the wind drove runnels of dust across the ground, sawing against the clusters of blue basalt boulders that stood like nests of giant eggs in the sand.

  Once, we came across an ’Atawiyya camp. Two brown tents were pitched in the very centre of a sand sheet. Mohammid and Balla rode off to investigate them, and returned saying that there was no one there but an old lady and her dog, and that she had given th
em a little buttermilk. I was astounded that anyone lived in this almost sterile desolation, yet I knew that many Kababish, particularly the ’Atawiyya, the Awlad Huwal, and the Sulayman, had adapted to this harsh world. They had survived here because of their skills, their ability to shape things with their hands. They survived by their understanding of the camel that provided them with milk and wool and enabled them to carry their shelters and water supply over large distances.

  I soon began to see that what I had thought a sterile world was actually teeming with life. As my eyes trailed along the surface, I learned to take in the telltale signs that my companions saw. I noticed the hardy desert grasses and lichens, the tracks of insects and arthropods, lizards of all sizes, hares and foxes, ostriches, gazelles, and Barbary sheep. Much of the life here was not on the surface, where the stinging tongue of the sun sucked away all life-giving moisture. It dwelt in the cool, dark womb of the earth below, where it had been woven into many forms, exotic and beautiful: the delicate structures of the ants and beetles, the glittering scales of the lizards and snakes, the shimmering silver of the fennec fox. Each of these creatures survived here by developing some special mechanism that enabled them to adapt to the hard dictates of the environment. Only man had no such mechanism, but depended for his life on his culture, his behaviour, and his social organisation.

  After sunset on these days, we would ride for hours. I began to feel the first pinch of real hunger. It was a gnawing, acid ache that seemed to dissolve the stomach lining, lingering all day, even after eating. Our meals were even more frugal now there were five of us, but the rations all came from the stocks of Mohammid and myself. The Ruwahla in particular seemed reluctant to share their food, though they ate ours with gusto. Mohammid and I both noticed this, but said nothing.

  Balla continued to criticise me, and I began to wonder if I could do anything right. One day, as we were crouching to eat, he said, ‘You do not eat properly. You waste too much. That is forbidden here in the desert!’ He went on to explain in great detail how the globs of porridge that remained on my hand after eating should be slopped back into the pot and not allowed to fall on the ground.

  The Arabs talked at great length about sex, and were very explicit in their descriptions. They questioned me in detail about the sexual practices amongst my tribe. I tried to answer as truthfully, but was met by either horror or amusement. The idea that our women were not circumcised, for example, struck them as disgusting and filthy, while my description of kissing brought peals of hilarious laughter. I gathered that their sex lives were very surreptitious affairs. Because of the lack of privacy men and women neither undressed nor indulged in any foreplay during their lovemaking.

  One night, as I knelt down to relieve myself, Balla cried, ‘God! That is not how to do it! You do not know anything! You should not kneel, but squat down as we do!’ This was humiliating to the point of provocation, but I refused to be provoked. I told myself that Balla was right, there was only one way to do things in the desert: the way tried and tested by time. However, there were further humiliations to come. Once, Balla noticed that I was uncircumcised. This was considered by the Arabs to be a kind of deformity, for to them circumcision signified the passage from childhood to manhood. Anyone who had not been through this ritual could not properly be considered a man. The new revelation provoked massive controversy and a whole day of discussion. In general, they were very anxious that the situation be put right. When we made camp, Ballal offered to perform the operation there and then. He began to sharpen his knife on a stone, saying, ‘It will not hurt at all. We will tie a piece of string round the end. Look how sharp my knife is, by God! We will have it off in a moment!’ I actually considered permitting the operation, but I knew it could cause serious bleeding and might attract an infection that would be fatal here. I had a tremendous struggle to dissuade him from the idea without being aggressive or seeming to be afraid.

  We remained with Tagaru for three days. On November 2, however, we saw the head of the plateau, Ras Tagaru, looming out of the desert like the bow of a battered submarine. We moved into a vast area of volcanic rubble, like a geological rubbish tip. Our caravan passed over shelves of gravel scattered with hard flint boulders, cut by narrow channels that were carpeted with soft sand. Soon, the rocky ground gave way to a great sand sheet stretching as far as the eye could see, broken only by the peaks of Ummat Harrir like a strange, fairytale castle.

  About two hours before sunset, Balla spotted a group of camel riders. They were as small and black as mosquitoes, moving on the extreme periphery of our vision. ‘Meidob!’ Mohammid cried. ‘They must be. They are moving from the west, out of Wadi Majrur, by God!’

  ‘The slaves had better not come near us,’ growled Balla, threateningly.

  ‘We will be in Wadi Howar tomorrow,’ old Ali said. They will not touch us there. The ’Atawiyya will not let the slaves get away with anything!’ Despite the talk, though, a palpable sense of tension seemed to grip the party as we drove the camels on. While Mohammid, Ali and I led the strings from the front, Balla and Ballal pushed them from the rear. Occasionally, one of us looked back to check

  on the movements of the other party. They remained at a distance, pursuing their own oblique course northeast

  After sunset, we camped at Ummat Harrir. It was again bitterly cold and the camels shivered wretchedly as we unloaded them. None of us mentioned the riders we had seen, but there was an unspoken agreement tonight that the animals should be hobbled and not left to find grazing. The Arabs built up their saddles and baskets into a semicircular fortress, laying the hearth in its centre. We piled up all our remaining firewood and lit a blazing fire against the cold. It seemed to hold back the gloomy curtain of the night, beyond which unknown primeval horrors seemed to lurk, as real for us as for our remote ancestors.

  I went to sleep early, but the Arabs sat up for what seemed like hours, and I was dimly aware of their voices until the middle of the night I awoke suddenly, shivering with cold, and saw that the fire was still burning with a desultory flame. Old Ali was sitting by it, hunched up and wrapped in a blanket, shawl and headcloth. His old rifle was clasped over his knees and a grim expression set on his features. I rose to join him, throwing the blanket over my shoulder and taking my shotgun. The fire gave out little warmth, but both of us sat staring into its flickering flames without speaking. I felt an almost hypnotic sense of calm, sitting there in the acute silence and the impenetrable darkness. Above us, several constellations glittered through the night sky, but I recognised none of them. We sat there almost motionless until the first red glow of the morning crept over the horizon. The others soon uncurled from their sleeping places and began to perform their morning prayers. Ali and I joined them, still wrapped in our blankets.

  The waterskins were empty and the firewood all gone. We wasted no time on tea, but began loading and saddling almost at once. The camels seemed frozen and exhausted; Wad at Tafashan was reluctant to get up from the, pit of sand he had excavated during the night. I noticed how tight the skin was stretched over his ribs and how his legs trembed as he finally stood up.

  We were on our way before sunrise, two of us leading the camels and the others driving from behind. We were thirsty, hungry, and exhausted, and our camels seemed to know it. Before we had travelled for half an hour, one of Balla’s animals shied and jostled, breaking the lead rope as if it were a thread of cotton. The other animals roared and spat in agitation, writhing and cavorting on their ropes until they also snapped. There were crashes as several of them cast off their saddles. We had to halt the caravan, dismount and carefully reload and re-rope the miscreant animals. We set off once again, but before long, the same camel, the third in Balla’s string, roared and skipped once more, pulling the lead rope apart and causing a commotion. The Arabs dismounted, cursing and shouting in desperation. Balla seized the troublemaker by the nostrils and lips, and Ballal got out a long packing needle. While the camel gnashed his teeth, growling and bellowing, the Ar
ab made an incision through the nostril until the blood ran down the creature’s jaws. He then strung a piece of thin cord through the hole and tied it to a headrope. ‘Now break that, my friend!’ he said. For a time the caravan went smoothly, but suddenly, one of Ali’s camels tore the headrope from the tail of the beast before him and threw off his saddle, shaking and bleating in anger. The other camels rushed forwards, startled by the sudden noise, and we narrowly prevented them from stampeding. This meant another exasperating delay.

  As we drove on, the desert seemed interminable. Our eyes scanned the horizon for the faintest shadow of grey that would mark the wadi. Several times, we imagined that we had seen it, but it always proved to be an illusion—a core of grey rocks or a patch of dark sand on the desert’s crust. Ali and I had the lead when suddenly, Ballal came trotting up from the rear. The slaves are with us!’ he shouted. We looked back, straining to make out the nest of grey-black figures riding behind us, still far away but closer than on the previous day. It was at that moment that Ali saw the peak of Jabal Rahib and the greyish line of the wadi at its base. We drove the camels on now in desperate haste, hoping to God that the lead ropes would not break again. Slowly, the ghost-thin line thickened into the recognisable form of trees, yet still it seemed an age before we came near them; then all at once, we were amongst the groves of siyaal and arak. There was an oval hill that marked the well of Ghobayshi, and the well itself lay in the bed of the wadi below. The wadi was an expanse of sand bars covered in thorn trees, between which ran numerous channels cut by the passage of water some time in the past. Half of the trees were in leaf, and the perfume of their flowers was thick in the air. Others were brittle, dead, and broken, with their branches lying like dry splinters around them. The ground was disturbed by the footprints of hundreds of camels, and littered by their droppings.