A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  There were hundreds of palm trees, some of them huge and ancient, amongst them, the smaller frames of sallam and siyaal and a few tamarix. Underfoot were sharp yellow-green hummocks of hallif and takhlis—grasses that grow in watery places. There were scores of gazelle tracks, which suggested that no hunters had been here for some time. After the pale, washed-out colours of the desert, this place was a royal feast. We rode gratefully into the umbrella shade of a palm tree and unsaddled. We spread out our canvas sheets and lay still for a moment in the peace of the world.

  When we explored the place, we found many human and animal tracks, and traces of occupation. A cluster of reed huts, now derelict, had been built outside the palm groves, and the ground was covered by the prints and droppings of goats. There were slivers of leather and bark from hobbling loops and piles of ash. No doubt, these remains were left by the Gur’an who still came here to harvest the date crop in the cool season, bringing with them a large caravan of camels and cutting the dates tree by tree. The harvest must have taken weeks, for there were more than a thousand palms in the oasis, which covered almost fifty square miles. There were no ripe dates in the trees on that day, though many had produced the new crop that was still small and green.

  The Gur’an had used this place for generations. More important than the date harvest in the past had been the role the oasis had played as a base for their deep penetration raids across the Libyan desert. These raiders had been the hardiest in the Sahara, sometimes pushing a thousand kilometres through the void to attack the Egyptian oases of Dakhla and Farafra, or riding eleven days east to raid the wells of Al Ga’ab near Dongola. They would attack caravans of traders and salt diggers, coming by night and attacking in a rush with the moon behind them. In 1928, they massacred an Egyptian salt caravan in the Laqiyya Arba’in oasis. The Gur’an had lain in hiding until midnight while the men slept, then crawled forth to slit their throats. Two of the salt diggers escaped off into the desert and walked back to Selima to tell the gory tale.

  But discoveries of large caches of water jars in the deserts of Egypt had thrown new light on their achievements. It was possible that the Gur’an had developed a technique of leaving these water dumps buried under the sand in marked places. The dumps were often large, and if replenished, often formed an artificial oasis that greatly extended the range of the raiders. Since the Arabic word for water jar, zir, was from the same root as the word Zarzura, it is possible that the lost oasis may have been no more than one of these artificial watering places.

  The Gur’an were believed to be the descendants of the ancient Garamantes, who in Roman times were the most powerful nation in the entire Sahara. They drove four-horse chariots and worshipped strange animal-headed gods similar to those of the ancient Egyptians. Their territory once stretched from the hinterlands of the Mediterranean as far east as the Nile. Indeed, the Bayuda desert, just south of the bend in the Nile above Khartoum, had once been known as the ‘Desert of the Gur’an’.

  When Newbold and Shaw explored Nukheila in 1928, they found the remains of a sacred siyaal tree that gave evidence of their pagan practices. The tree was half dead and lying on its side, with two branches sticking up in the air. On one of these, they saw a smooth patch, smeared with the fat of a dead camel, and on the other, a thong of hide from the same animal. In the crack below, they found undigested grasses from the animal’s stomach. They surmised that the Gur’an sacrificed a camel to the tree to bring them good fortune in raids. I searched the oasis carefully for the tree, but did not find it.

  That night, we slept near the palm trees. Juma’ threw the khatt again; after half an hour of making lines in the sand and rubbing them out, he said with great conviction, ‘There are people near. They can see us but we cannot see them. Perhaps they are Gur’an!’ In this lonely setting, it was difficult to dismiss his words, especially in light of his former success with the khatt. I looked around me uncomfortably. It was an eerie and evil feeling to imagine that we were being watched.

  The only raiders we encountered that night were hordes of mosquitoes. They came zooming out of the palm groves and attacked us by the squadron. In the end, we were forced to move our bedding on to the higher ground near the abandoned huts; I saw now why the Gur’an had built them outside the trees.

  Next morning, we moved further north, and within an hour came to the famous water pool. It was wedge-shaped and the water was bluer than blue, completely encircled by date palms and reeds. The lake was humming with life. The trees harboured swallows and some hawks, and the surface of the water was covered in black fly larvae. The sand roundabout was caked with salt, and we found that the water was so thick with it, it was nauseous. The black fly drifted around the surface in living rafts, and the air was filled with the sound of their buzzing. To the east of the lake, the sand had been piled up into the tallest and most perfect crescent dune I had ever seen. At the base of its slip face was a field of hallif grass. We unloaded by the pool and set the camels to graze by the dune, where we discovered a set of shallow wells that had been scooped out of the sand. The water lay about two feet beneath the surface. Near the pool was an upright stone on which many camel brands had been carved. We found brands of the Zaghawa and Bedayatt, as well as the crocodile mark of the Gur’an. Juma’ took the axe and added to them the brand of the Nurab.

  The heat became unbearable, and the simoom came thrashing through the palm trees with a vengeance. We took shelter under some trees, but just as we did so, Juma’ exclaimed, ‘Oh God! The camels have wandered off! Now we shall have to fetch them!’ The animals had forsaken the green grass and shuffled out into the bare sand to the south. They were already two kilometres away and were still going. We had to struggle for more than an hour to bring them back, fighting with the soft sand and the blast of the simoom. ‘They do not like this place!’ my companion said. They want to return to Umm Sunta. See how obstinate the camel is!’ If we had left them, they would almost certainly have continued shuffling south in their hobbles until they died of thirst or came back to where they had left their herds.

  We brought them back to the pool and hobbled them with the knee hobbles so that they could not shuffle off again. Then we both removed our clothes and bathed in the lake. The water was warm and very soothing after the strains of the journey. As our bodies dried, the salt left a thick white crust on our skin. Juma’ said that the water had great medicinal value, and he brought out a plastic container that he filled from the pool. ‘I shall drink a little every day!’ he declared.

  By sundown, the camels were flopping over in the grass and snapping madly at the mosquitoes that emerged as the wind dropped. We moved camp into the dunes overlooking the pool, but the mosquitoes followed us. They were huge and voracious and tortured us for hours. Finally, we got up and collected armfuls of palm fibre from beneath the trees and lit a huge bonfire upwind. The thick smoke drifted over our camping place. It made our eyes smart, but it got rid of the mosquitoes.

  The simoom began at dawn the next day with a whooshing sound that rattled the heads of the palm trees. Within minutes, our gear was buried under drifting sand. The sky was obliterated by dust, and the date palms bent over at odd angles in the high wind, which prevented us from making a fire. We decided to move camp again.

  We loaded up and headed north away from the pool. Progress was agonisingly slow. The simoom clutched at us like a claw and I had difficulty breathing. We sought out the shade of some palms, but visibility was down to a few feet and we could do nothing but wrap ourselves up as always and stay in the lee of the trees, running out now and again to bring back the camels that hopped off into the mist of sand on their three legs. The rustling of the palms, bent over at incredible angles, was deafening. I knew that to continue north in this blizzard would be madness, and reluctantly decided that we should have to abandon the idea of finding the lost oasis. Perhaps it had never existed, or if it had, its water and palm trees had disappeared long ago. When I told Juma’ of my decision, he brightened a littl
e and said, ‘We will leave tomorrow!’

  The next day, the simoom was fiercer. We moved back to the area of the pool and cut some tamarix trees for firewood. We filled our skins from the sweetest well we could find. I set my compass on a back bearing, and we moved off southeast across the dunes. The going was easier with the wind behind us, but the dust obscured the face of the barchans and made them very dangerous. Several times, we came to a sheer precipice without realising it until the very last moment. Between the high dunes were more patches of deep sand, where the camels trembled and staggered. By noon, though, we were back on the flat hammada and the camels stepped out, knowing that they were returning. The sky was still dark and visibility limited. Juma’ rode slightly ahead while I came behind with my compass, shouting out directions as we rode.

  It took two and a half days of hard riding to reach El ’Atrun. We camped in the groves of Bir Milani, near the tent of some ’Atawiyya. As soon as we couched our camels, an old man came out to greet us. A little later, he sent out an attractive, buxom daughter with a can of milk for us. She smiled at me, and I asked how she was. When she had gone, Juma’ mimicked my voice, saying, ‘Why don’t you marry her and be done with it!’ For a moment or two, we grappled together boyishly, but we were too drained for a real wrestling match and lay in the sand, panting. It was almost sunset, and we brought the camels near us. After dark, a slave brought us a bowl of porridge drowned in sour milk, and we ate in good spirits.

  I was disappointed that I had had to abandon the search for Zarzura, but I knew that the mistake had been to set off at the beginning of the hot season. The weather had defeated us. I knew that, underneath it all, Zarzura had only been a goal I had set myself. The experience of desert life with the desert people was my true interest. If I had really been intent on finding Zarzura, I could have hired a Land Rover or even a plane. I had not found the lost oasis, but I had found many more things of greater value, not the least of which was the company of this Arab, Juma’ Wad Siniin, whom I could now call my friend.

  After supper that night I felt strangely content. I felt that I belonged here. I remembered the trek with Mohammid Wad Fadlal Mula as no more than a harsh apprenticeship. I had passed that apprenticeship, and tonight, I felt that I was reaping my reward. Against all the odds, two men from vastly different worlds could be friends and brothers. I had been working towards that end for five long years, and I had never felt closer to it than I did that night.

  We stayed with the ’Atawiyya for two days. On the second day, we attended a circumcision feast at one of the tents. Soon after sunrise, we were escorted across the dunes by a slave. We came to two camel hair tents, and opposite them, a tukul of wood. As we approached, the women of the tents greeted us with piercing ululations and ran out with bottles of perfume with which they drenched our moustaches. The boy who was to be circumcised was sitting on a saddle in the shade, looking quite unconcerned. He was about ten and dressed in clothes of bright new cotton.

  At once, our host came to greet us. He was called Ali Wad Salih, a slim ’Atawi wearing the usual short tunic with a thick leather belt. He had chosen two goats from his flock for the feast, and he brought them out and slaughtered one immediately. Tbe other wriggled away and dashed off into the dunes, with the boy and another in hot pursuit. They returned in minutes, dragging the animal by the ears.

  Not long afterwards, a host of other guests arrived, bristling with weapons, some of which they fired into the air. We sat down to eat the cooked heart, lungs, and ribs of the goat. The tent nearby was very small and tidy. Inside it sat the two girls who had sprayed us with perfume. One was the buxom one who had brought us milk. Both were strikingly beautiful, wearing coloured dresses with garish flower designs and straight underskirts of faded blue cotton. They wore wraps around their breasts, but their copper-bronze shoulders were naked.

  In the afternoon, more women arrived. All the girls lined up in front of the tent and began to clap their hands, stepping from side to side in a swaying, erotic movement. They began to sing in shrill voices as their bodies swayed. Some of the men jumped up and shouted, waving their rifles and firing them again. Meanwhile, Ali lit a roaring fire at the end of the avenue formed by the two tents. The old man who was to perform the circumcision arrived. The men formed up in a rough line opposite the women, some of them carrying camel whips that they brandished above their heads. They began to clap and to stamp their feet in the sand, singing in deep, grating voices as a counterpoint to those of the women. Sometimes, they formed a circle, each man stepping forward and backward with a complicated series of movements. They raised their hands to their mouths and made a deep, resonating chant in such harmony that the music seemed almost to be coming from outside them; at the same time, the women would let rip with their shrill ululation. The boy who was to be circumcised was dragged into the line of men. He held a tiny camel whip and was told to hold it high and shout with the others. He looked very small and bemused in his spotless new clothes. Soon, he was taken inside the tent, for the operation was not performed in public. The singing and dancing reached a new pitch, intended as an encouragement for the painful events taking place inside.

  As soon as it was over, he emerged from the tent, still looking bemused. His new clothes were smeared with blood. He was pulled back into the line of dancing men and danced with them till sunset.

  The next morning, Juma’ and I examined our camels to prepare for the rest of the journey south. Both of them had red, sore feet, and Hambati’s back was swelling from the riding saddle that I had never managed to exchange. The morning was incredibly hot; I could feel the latent heat lying near the surface even before the sun rose. We set off from Milani at midmorning, and the simoom followed us like an old friend, now in full swing and driving white dust behind us. Its blasts hit us like the flash of a flamethrower, painful and totally exhausting, crushing the breath out of our bodies. The wind sucked the moisture out of us. I felt my body temperature rising, my brains boiling. I cursed my camel and Juma’ silently and without reason, as snatches of personal history, memories, and visions of childhood passed through my head.

  From far off, we saw the shadow of some sallam trees, and I prayed that they were real. It seemed hours before we reached them. We couched our camels by the largest tree, working like automatons. We strung up our shelter and hobbled the animals. Juma’ then poured out some water, and I heard it gurgle into the metal bowl. He handed it to me and I drank the entire contents without a pause. Then he filled it and drank himself. Without another word, we both collapsed in the shade and lay prone, covered with our shawls from head to foot, trying to trap as much moisture as we could, while the simoom played over us like the fingers of the devil.

  We did not load again until the afternoon was almost over. We moved off very slowly, walking to preserve the strength of the camels. The cool that came before sunset was unbelievably luscious. I walked barefoot, glad to feel the good crust of the planet under my feet. As I walked, I started to see something new in the surface of this place. I saw the great blue hunks of granite split in half by heat and cold, and the splinters of stone that collected around them. A little further on were the fields of rocks where the splinters had been eroded by the wind and the fluctuations in temperature, broken into yet smaller particles. Further still were even finer gradations of gravel, and then the sand itself, also graded by the size of its granules. This desert seemed a living, changing organism, by no means a dead world.

  After two days, we reached Rahib. From here, we crossed west to the wells at Ghobayshi, where the desert was as smooth as cream, the wind playing over its surface producing a prismatic rainbow effect around the soft edges of the sand sheet. We moved through another unexpected Stone Age site. There were more grinding mills and arrowheads, flaked bones, and flint tools, the last memories of an ancient people who had been born, lived, and died with all their joys and agonies on this shelf of land now washed over by these desert sands.

  At sunset, we came to Ghob
ayshi, where we found a single tent. We couched our camels nearby and a woman came out and shook hands with us, saying, ‘Welcome! Welcome to the guests!’ She took the headrope of my camel and led it over to a comfortable, sheltered place. She couched it and began to unload my gear, laying it out neatly. She disappeared for a moment and came back with some glowing spills of dry wood. She scooped out a hollow in the sand near to where we sat and kindled a fire. She brought out a kettle and a bowl of goat’s milk, setting the kettle on the embers of the wood and crouching near the fire as she talked amiably. She told us that her family was Awlad Huwal and that she was a widow and the daughter of the tribal sheikh. She was a tall, reedy woman, very stately and gracious, with a face seasoned by the elements. She wore a long underskirt from which the colour had faded like old denim, and over it, a wrap of rough, blue cotton. Her head was covered with a ragged hood of cloth.

  When the tea was ready, she asked us to produce our cups. She poured out the hot liquid, adding a few drops of milk to each one. As we sipped, she said, ‘What is your family?’

  ‘Nurab,’ Juma’ answered.

  ‘And the sharif, is he Nurab, too?’

  ‘He has spent a long time with the nazir’s people, but he is an Englishman from the English.’

  We drank noisily, placing the cups down for refills. When the pot was empty, the woman offered to make more, but we politely declined.

  Next morning, the Awlad Huwal slaughtered a goat for us, and we were obliged to stay a little longer. During the morning, I climbed the slip face of some great, transverse dunes that towered over the camp. From the top, Wadi Howar looked endless, and the little tent far below me in its few trees was dwarfed by the vastness of the landscape. To the north, about three kilometres away, was a line of sandy spurs, beneath which the Awlad Huwal camels were being watered. They looked as tiny as ants. Beyond them and further west, more than 200 miles away, lay the country of the Gur’an and the hills of Ennedi and Erdi with the Mourdi depression between them. Beyond those hills were the volcanic pinnacles of Tibesti. All around, the desert lay as boundless as an ocean.