A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  That night Mohammid and Balla slept with the camels at Tolra. Mohammid had spotted some gazelles there and hoped to shoot one at first light when they came to feed. As we sat drinking tea the next morning, there was a muffled report and Ali said, ‘That is Mohammid! God willing, he bagged something!’

  The two Arabs did not return until noon, but they brought with them the carcass of a gazelle hidden in a saddlebag. ‘We will eat it tonight,’ Mohammid told me. ‘Or everyone will invite themselves!’ I had already piled up enough salt for the remaining four bags. We spent the rest of the afternoon filling sacks, which Mohammid stitched up with rough thread. Afterwards, I walked to the base of Toli’a and climbed up through the rippled sand on its western side. I sat down in the old camel-corps sangar and looked around me. The sun was still hovering just above the skyline and the desert was bathed in soft gold. To the south, I could see the dunes of Bir Milani, and to the north, a barrier of jagged hills that guarded the route of the ancient Darb al ’Araba’in. I felt exhausted yet satisfied. I had achieved my ambition of reaching El ’Atrun by caravan with the desert nomads. If I had come by lorry I should have learned little, and the desert would have flashed past as if on a cinema screen. I knew that to really understand the vastness of this land, it had to be crossed by camel. Just then, as if in answer to my thoughts, there came the penetrating roar of an engine. I looked down and saw a Fiat lumbering across the salt pan, leaving a tail of dust in its wake. It seemed to dwarf everything with its booming motor and its choking fumes. Ten years previously, there had been no trucks at El ’Atrun. Ten years hence, there would probably be no more caravans.

  As soon as I arrived back at the workings, Mohammid took me aside and said in a quiet voice, ‘We are ready to leave. We will load in the morning and spend the night at Bir Milani.’

  ‘Ballal and Ali are not yet finished,’ I said.

  ‘We do not need to wait for them. We shall go without them: you, me and Balla. It is better to have three men to lift the salt. Two can do it, but it is more difficult. Anyway, they are not good companions. See how they ate our food. Do not tell them that we are leaving.’

  I was too confused by this new revelation to argue or ask questions. It was unusual for Arabs to abandon travelling companions in this way, but I told myself that this was Mohammid’s business. Anyway, I was starving and could think only of the gazelle.

  We ate it after sunset, cooked in a little oil over our wood fire. After so long without it, the meat was indescribably delicious, the most succulent of flesh. We dipped our hands into the pot again and again until the grease ran down our chins, and when there was no meat left, we scraped out the pan greedily with our fingers.

  The next day, we laid out our fourteen sacks on the surface of the salt pan, two by two. Mohammid and Balla brought up the camels for loading. With Balla’s camels, we had fourteen between us, and a total of twenty-six bags of salt. Only Wad at Tafashan carried no load, and I was pleased to see that he looked much better after his rest. The dull sheen in his eye had been replaced by a brighter light, and he looked more alert. I hoped that he would remain like this, for I knew that the return journey might prove even harder than the outward one.

  First, we saddled each camel carefully with the specially modified saddles, then each camel was brought up individually and couched between two of the sacks. Two men would lift the first sack, using the inderab pole to help take the weight. A third man would hold it in place against the saddle, while the other two ran around and lifted the second bag. The two sacks acted as counterweights and were secured over the bar of the saddle by two wooden pegs. The bar between the saddle horns was designed to keep the load high, for if it rubbed against the camel’s hide, a sore would appear in hours and a septic wound in days. This would mean the loss of a load.

  Just after noon, we moved the caravan towards Bir Milani, walking and leading the camels in two strings behind us. Mohammid told Ali and Ballal that we should meet them at Bir Milani. I still could not guess what this deception was really about, but I had little choice but to go along with it.

  It was a freezing night and the cold would not let us sleep, even in the shelter of the high sand dunes. I was up with the red glow of dawn, collecting firewood with the help of my torch. I shivered desperately with the cold, dressed only in my thin cotton jibba. Soon, the fire was roaring in the hearth and Mohammid made tea. After I had thawed out, I took two skins down to the nearest well to get water. It was still very cold. The well was about seven feet deep and had a bucket made out of a broken, plastic oil can. I hoisted one bucketful to the lip of the well and tried to pour the liquid into my first skin. The bucket was heavy and required two hands for pouring, and the freezing water splashed over my fingers, making them smart. I realised then that the waterskin also needed two hands in order to hold it open. The task was impossible for one person. I managed to pour a little water into the skin and to stand it up against a stone. Smiling at my ingenuity, I hoisted up another bucketful. I gripped the bucket in both hands and took the rope in my mouth, pouring carefully, not spilling a drop. The skin bulged out as the liquid went in. I turned to draw another bucketful and at that moment the skin tipped over slowly into the sand, and all the water ran out. Livid with rage, I hurled the bucket into the well, but forgot to grip the well rope in my frozen hands. At the last moment I realised, but too late. The bucket and rope had fallen into the well, seven feet below me.

  I felt like running away or jumping up and down in desperation. Suddenly, a figure appeared. He was an Arab of middle age, dressed in a black overcoat and a tightly bound ’imma. He chuckled to himself as he greeted me, and I got the feeling he had watched the entire performance. ‘You dropped the bucket!’ he commented, smiling. ‘That is not good, by God, not good at all!’ Then he walked calmly over to a bush and came back with a long, thin branch of sallam. He knelt at the edge of the well and fished beneath with the branch, as if it had been the easiest task in the world. In a moment, he had the rope in his hand. Afterwards, he held my waterskin open as I drew the water up, carefully winding the rope around my hand.

  This was no more than the overture to the day. When I returned to camp, we set out at once to collect our camels, which had wandered off in the night. Some of them had walked almost as far as Bint Umm Bahr, and it took two hours to gather them all. I drove a group of five back towards the camp, but I could not keep them going in a straight line. One would waddle off west, making a beeline for a bush, and as I went to chase him back another would turn sharply east. They seemed to know what lay ahead of them and were being deliberately exasperating. When we finally got them all together, each one had to be tied by the jaw and roped into the caravan. When this performance was completed, they all had to be saddled; then came the loading.

  It was an excruciatingly hard job even for three men. The bags seemed dauntingly heavy on an empty stomach, and we had twenty-six of them to lift. At first, I had the job of steadying the bags while the others lifted. I imagined that it was the easier job, but I was wrong. The lifting involved two quick efforts, but the holding involved one protracted one. The entire weight of the bag, almost 300 pounds, rested on my arms for several minutes, while the others lifted the counterweight and wrestled with the pegs. The camels were no help. As I strained to balance the enormous weight, they would try to rise and throw off the load. They lurched and roared, turning their heads back as if to bite. Once, I dropped the bag completely, hopping madly out of the way, afraid of being crushed. The bag split open and had to be restitched. ‘You fool!’ Balla said. ‘You are too weak to hold the bags!’ Five minutes later, the two of them dropped a bag as they brought it up to the saddle. I grinned at them silently. ‘Why don’t we take it in turns?’ I suggested. Mohammid agreed, and for a while, I lifted with them while Balla secured the sacks. However, none of us dropped one again, and we let the matter rest at one-all.

  Once the load was on, we had to help the camel to its feet. The beast would stand in the queue with
its legs trembling from the tremendous weight. We had to be very alert to make sure the camel did not sit down again, for once on his knees he could not bear the weight and would roll over and split the sacks or smash the saddle. I had never realised that the organisation of a caravan was so complex.

  It was midmorning by the time all the animals had been loaded, and we set off, walking at the head of the strings in order to preserve the strength of the camels. We paced on towards the grey weathered mass of Zalat Hammad, until the biting wind dropped and the hot sun came out. We could no longer afford to stop at midday as we had done previously. Once the caravan halted for more than a few minutes, the camels would sit down. This meant that the loads would have to be dropped to prevent the animals from wrecking the saddles; then the bags would have to be lifted again. We could barely manage to lift them once a day on our meagre rations: twice would have been an impossible effort. We had to keep the camels moving all day from sunrise to sunset.

  Every few kilometres, something would go wrong. A camel would cast its load. A bag would come undone, and lumps of natron would be scattered across the desert. One of us would notice a potential sore, and the load would have to be shifted higher. The saddlebags would come loose. A camel would sit down and break the lead rope. We moved in fits and starts all day and seemed to get nowhere. Each time we stopped, we had to work with feverish speed in case the animals sat down. I began to understand why the Arabs said that the return from El ’Atrun was the most difficult journey of all.

  Each small drama was acted out against the background of the empty plain of steel-grey gravel, with its spattering of volcanic chunks blue, black, and russet-red. I picked up a boulder as we walked. It was the size of a billiard ball and felt as heavy as iron. Yet it was hollow inside, a volcanic bubble that had shot out of some hot cone two million years ago.

  We mounted our camels in the afternoon and rode on until the heat was again replaced by the chilling cold of the night. Sunset came, and we travelled into the blackness for two hours until we came across a lone siyaal tree that had somehow pushed its way through the hammada. We made camp there. The camels sat down, grumbling, and we ran along the lines pulling out the wooden pegs and jumping clear as the loads crashed to the ground. Afterwards, we left the saddles on for another hour to prevent the animals’ backs from swelling while we made tea. There was a little firewood under the tree and I climbed into its branches with our axe, cutting off any branches that seemed dry enough to burn. After we drank the tea, we unsaddled the camels and hobbled them. Balla chased them out into the night to find whatever poor forage they could. As I sat down wearily by the glowing spills of our fire, my blanket wrapped about me, I reflected that this had been one of the most exhausting days of my life.

  But the hardship was not yet over. Eating our porridge was an ordeal in itself, despite our hunger. The flour, from Balla’s stock, was bad and tasted bitter. We had no seasoning to smother the bitterness, and to cap it all, there was insufficient food to alleviate our hunger. After we ate, Balla said, ‘Omar, you can lift salt and you can dig it out, but you are not a man. Men are circumcised, and anyway, you have no scars!’ I looked at his gloating face in the poor light and sighed. He and Mohammid had often showed me the deep whip scars they bore on their backs. The scars were a source of great pride. I knew how they were obtained. It was the custom amongst the Kababish for the young braves of the tribe to submit to being lashed on occasions such as weddings. The youth who wished to display his strength and endurance would call out a rival—usually someone known to have a grudge against him. He would hand the man his rawhide whip and doff his shirt. The women would gather around to watch, singing and clapping, as the youth turned his back to them. The rival would lash him viciously from shoulder to kidneys. Crying out was permitted, but not flinching. The youth who flinched would be mocked by the watching women, while the man who stood firm would establish a solid reputation as a strong and brave warrior. Juma’ Wad Siniin had once told me, ‘If you can take the first two strokes it is easy. Those are like fire, but after that you don’t feel much!’

  I had often scoffed at the idea that whip scars made a man, but I now reminded myself that this was their world, not mine. My views had been nurtured in an effete culture where men used machines to do the real work. Here, physical strength and prowess were the measure of a man. No matter how objectionable their views might seem, I had to remember that my own ideas were firmly rooted in a culture that was vastly different.

  It was two days before we reached Wadi Howar. They were days of unending toil. We were always up well before dawn, shivering on the freezing sand. The camels always wandered off in the night and scattered far and wide; we had to walk for at least an hour to find them all, and bringing them back to camp took even longer. Then came the ritual of jaw-tying and fitting the shakima masks. When this was done, we would drink tea with a little unground millet to prepare ourselves for the task that we always viewed with trepidation: loading the salt. Each day, it became harder, and I looked on it as an exacting test that had to be performed every morning. To have failed would have invited humiliating mockery from the Arabs. When everything was ready, we would lead the caravan off across the desert, striding on barefoot over the cold surface for hour upon hour with our blankets clutched around us to ward off the icy grip of the wind.

  Always there were delays, and as we grew more tired and hungry, such small stoppages seemed disproportionately irritating. Sacks split, utensils dropped, the axe was lost and I had to run back to find it. We were all bad-tempered and the Arabs continued their mocking jests, which I found more difficult to laugh off as time went on. Balla continued with the theme, ‘you are not a real man’, which he knew irked me, and occasionally Mohammid joined in.

  We moved through the massif of Zalat Hammad. If I had not been so tired, I should have delighted in exploring this ancient rock maze with its monoliths of sandstone perched on plinths of harder rock and its great cliffs of shattered blocks, looking as if they had been hit with a gigantic sledgehammer. We walked out of the zalat on to a smooth plain of grey dust, the camels tramping on like automatons, knowing they were heading for home.

  We would mount around noon, swinging up into the saddle. Mohammid was always first to mount, and I would follow about half an hour later. Balla mounted last, trudging on across the nothingness with a grim look on his face, his pathetic prayer mat wrapped around his gaunt body.

  Wad at Tafashan went well for a time, but soon a flow of green slime replaced his solid black droppings. There is something wrong in his belly!’ Mohammid told me. ‘But it may not be serious. Anyway, there is no other camel to ride, so you will have to go on as you are. God is generous!’ My companion was also having trouble with his riding camel. It was badly trained and objected to carrying the salt bags. When he mounted, it would spin and buck, sitting down and rubbing its neck on the sand petulantly. Once, he gave it a tremendous thrashing with my whip. The camel behaved for a time, but was soon back to its old tricks.

  We descended into the wadi in the middle of the afternoon. Mohammid led the caravan, weaving a tortuous path through the sand bars with their topping of thorn bush. Suddenly, we saw the dark shapes of grazing camels, and with them, the unmistakable figure of a woman. As soon as they saw her, the youths’ mouths fell open and both of them said, ‘Omar, take my rope!’ Then they charged off madly towards the girl on their camels. I had no idea what they hoped to achieve, nor why they had become so excited. Certainly sex was the last thing on my own mind. I was left to lead the camels through the labyrinth of dunes. There was no easy path. In the end, I was forced to climb over one of the steep ridges of sand.

  As I approached the top, Wad at Tafashan bolted suddenly. At once the lead rope twanged. The camels, halfway up the slope, began to turn back. There were struggles as the animals pulled briefly against each other, then the ropes snapped. Some camels sat down and others began to scatter into the wadi. I couched my camel and ran around in desperate confu
sion, shouting for Mohammid and hoping that he would hear me far across the dunes.

  In a few minutes, he and Balla appeared and together, we managed to gather all the beasts and re-rope them. As we set off again, Mohammid said. ‘It was stupid to try and climb that ridge with a caravan.’

  I was suddenly livid with anger. ‘It’s your damned fault!’ I shouted. ‘Whose salt is this, mine or yours? What would your father say if I told him you left me to find my own way while you went running after some girl? You say I am not a man, but you two are just children who have not yet grown up!’

  Mohammid was silent for a moment, then he said. ‘You are right. It was wrong to leave you.’ It was the first time he had admitted that he might be in the wrong.

  That night, we camped near the wells at Ghobayshi. After dark, we had to fill our skins from the well, and took turns hauling up the heavy buckets. I was amazed that any of us had the strength left for this task.

  The next day, my face turned to a raw red mass and my skin itched so much that I scratched at it violently. I saw that my companions’ skin was covered in brown blotches where it was peeling. ‘It is the salt,’ Mohammid said. ‘It gets under the skin. There is nothing you can do about it. It will go in a few days.’

  We left the wadi behind and headed for the outcrops of Ummat Harrir, where we had spent the night on the outward journey. I remembered the Meidob bandits we had seen on our way, and sincerely hoped we would not be attacked now. I doubted if we would have been able to put up much resistance. Perhaps our ravaged faces would have been enough to scare them off! The only people we saw were some ’Atawiyya who had been herding camels in Tagaru. They begged water from us, and we were obliged to give them as much as we could spare. We had filled only two skins at Ghobayshi, one large and the other small. I doubted that the water we had left would last us until we reached lidayn, but I said nothing. It would have been considered rude to refuse water to those who asked for it, and the Arabs were by nature improvident, trusting always to the will of God for preservation.