by Paul Sussman
Now the storm was gone and they were on the move again, pushing hard to cover the remaining distance before their water ran out completely, their camels lolloping across the desert just short of a full trot, driven on by cries of ‘hut, hut!’ and ‘yalla, yalla!’
So intent were the Bedouin on reaching their journey’s end as swiftly as possible that they would almost certainly have missed the corpse had it not appeared directly in their path. Rigid as a statue, it protruded waist up from the side of a dune, mouth open, one arm extended as though imploring them for help. The lead rider shouted, they slowed to a halt and, bringing their camels down onto the sand and dismounting, gathered around to look, seven of them, shaals wrapped around their heads and faces against the sun so that only their eyes were visible.
It was the body of a man, no doubt about that, perfectly preserved in the desert’s desiccating embrace, the skin dried and tightened to the consistency of parchment, the eyes shrivelled in their sockets to hard, raisin-like nuggets.
‘The storm must have uncovered it,’ said one of the riders, speaking badawi, Bedouin Arabic, his voice coarse and gravelly, like the desert itself.
At a signal from their leader three of the Bedouin dropped to their knees and started to scoop sand away from the corpse, freeing it from the dune. Its clothes – boots, trousers, long-sleeved shirt – were worn ragged, as if they had undergone an arduous journey. A plastic thermos flask was still clutched in one of its hands, empty, the screw-top gone, the rim scarred with what looked like teeth marks, as though in his desperation the man had chewed at the plastic, hopelessly biting for whatever tiny drop of moisture remained within.
‘Soldier?’ asked one of the Bedouin doubtfully. ‘From the war?’
The leader shook his head, squatting down and tapping the scratched Rolex Explorer watch around the body’s left wrist.
‘More recent,’ he said. ‘Amrekanee. American.’
He used the word not specifically, but to denote anyone of western, non-Arab appearance.
‘What’s he doing out here?’ asked another of the men.
The leader shrugged and, rolling the body onto its front, tugged a canvas bag off its shoulder and opened it, removing a map, a wallet, a camera, two distress flares, some emergency rations and, finally, a balled-up handkerchief. He unfolded this, revealing a miniature clay obelisk, crudely made and no longer than his finger. He squinted at it, turning it this way and that, examining the curious symbol with which each of its four faces was incised: a sort of cross, its top arm tapering to a point from which a thin looping line curled upwards and over like a tail. It meant nothing to him and, balling it in the handkerchief again, he laid it aside and turned his attention to the wallet. There was an ID card inside, bearing a photo of a young, blond-haired man with a heavy scar running parallel to his bottom lip. None of the Bedouin could read the writing on the card and, after gazing at it a moment, the leader returned it and the other objects to the knapsack. He began patting the man’s pockets, and pulled out a compass and a plastic canister with a roll of used camera film inside. These too he dropped into the knapsack, before tugging the watch off the man’s wrist, slipping it into the pocket of his djellaba and coming to his feet.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said, swinging the knapsack onto his shoulder and heading back towards the camels.
‘Shouldn’t we bury him?’ one of the men called after him.
‘The desert’ll do it,’ came the reply. ‘We need to get on.’
They followed him down the dune and mounted their camels, kicking at them to bring them upright. As they moved off, the last rider – a small, wizened man with pockmarked skin – turned in his saddle and looked back, gazing at the body as it slowly receded behind them. Once it had faded to no more than a blurred lump on the otherwise featureless desert he fumbled within the folds of his djellaba and pulled out a mobile phone. Keeping one eye on the riders in front to ensure no one was looking round at him, he pressed at the keypad with a gnarled thumb. He couldn’t get a signal, and after trying for a couple of minutes gave up and returned the phone to his pocket.
‘Hut-hut!’ he cried, slapping his heels into his camel’s quivering flanks. ‘Yalla, yalla!’
CALIFORNIA, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
It was a five-hundred-metre wall of vertical rock rearing above the Merced Valley like a billow of grey satin, and Freya Hannen was just fifty metres from its summit when she disturbed the wasps’ nest.
She had toed into a small rock pocket near the top of her tenth pitch and, reaching up onto an overhanging ledge, was feeling for purchase around the roots of an old manzanita bush when she accidentally swiped the nest, a cloud of insects erupting from beneath the bush and swarming angrily around her.
Wasps were her primal fear, had been since she had been stung in the mouth by one as a child. A ridiculous fear to have, given that she made her living climbing some of the world’s most dangerous rock faces, but then terror is rarely rational. For her sister Alex it was needles and injections; for Freya, wasps.
She froze, stomach tightening, her breath coming in short panicked gasps, the air around her a mesh of skimming yellow-jackets. Then one stung her on the arm. Unable to stop herself, she snatched her hand away from the ledge and barn-doored outwards from the rock, her lead-line flapping wildly, the ponderosa forest 450 metres below seeming to telescope up towards her. For a moment she swung, hinging on her right hand and foot, her left limbs flapping in space, carabiners and cams jangling on her harness. Then, gritting her teeth and trying to ignore the burning sensation on her arm, she heaved herself back to the wall and locked her hand around a protruding rock knuckle, pressing into the warm granite as though into a lover’s protective embrace. She remained like that for what felt like an age, eyes closed, fighting the urge to scream, waiting for the swarm to calm and dissipate, then traversed swiftly to her right beneath the ledge and climbed up further along, beside a stunted pine that lurched outwards from the rock like a withered arm. She anchored herself there and sat back against the trunk, panting.
‘Shit,’ she gasped. And then, for no obvious reason: ‘Alex.’
It was eleven hours since she had received the call. She had been back at her apartment in San Francisco when it had come, just after midnight, totally out of the blue, after all these years. Once, early in her climbing career, she had lost her footing and fallen from a two-hundred-metre rock face, plunging vertiginously through open space before her line caught and held her. That’s how the call had felt: an initial giddy sense of bewilderment and disbelief, like plummeting from a great height, followed by a sudden, sickening jerk of realization.
Afterwards she had sat in darkness, the late-night sounds of North Beach’s bars and cafés drifting in through the open windows. Then, going online, she had booked herself a flight before throwing some gear into a bag, locking up the apartment and roaring off on her battered Triumph Bonneville. Three hours later she was in Yosemite; two hours after that, with the first pink of dawn staining the heads of the Sierra Nevada, at the base of Liberty Cap, ready to start her ascent.
It was what she always did in times of turmoil, when she needed to clear her head – climbed. Deserts were Alex’s thing: vast, dry, empty spaces, devoid of life and sound; mountains and rock were Freya’s – rearing, vertical landscapes through which she could clamber up towards the sky, pushing mind and body to the limit. It was impossible to explain to those who had never experienced it; impossible to explain even to herself. The closest she had come was in an interview with, of all things, Playboy magazine: ‘When I’m up there I just feel more alive,’ she had said. ‘Like the rest of the time I’m half asleep.’
Now, more than ever, she needed the peace and clarity that climbing brought her. Thundering east along Highway 120 towards Yosemite her first instinct had been to free-climb a route, something really tough, punishing: Freerider on El-Capitan, perhaps, or Astroman on Washington Column.
Then she had started thinking about Lib
erty Cap, and the more she had thought about it, the more attractive it had seemed.
It was not an obvious choice. Parts of it were aided, which necessitated extra equipment and denied her the absolute purity of a free-climb; technically it wasn’t actually that difficult, not by her standards, which meant that she would not be pushing herself as hard as she wanted: not right to the very edge and beyond.
Against that, it was one of the few Yosemite big walls she had never attempted before. More important, it was probably the only one that at this time of year was not going to be covered with a scrabble of other climbers, thereby ensuring absolute peace and solitude – no one talking to her, no one trying to take her photo, no amateurs blocking her way and slowing her down. Just her and the rock and the silence.
Sitting on the ledge now, the midday sun warming her face, her arm still smarting from the wasp sting, she took a gulp from the water bottle in her day-pack and gazed down at the route she’d just ascended. Apart from a couple of aided sections it hadn’t thrown up too many problems. A less experienced climber might have taken a couple of days to summit, overnighting on a ledge halfway up. She would do it in less than half that time. Eight hours tops.
She still couldn’t escape a vague twinge of disappointment that it hadn’t stretched her more, taken her to that heady, intoxicating plateau reached only through extreme physical and mental exertion. Then again the views from up there were so spectacular, the sense of removedness so complete she could forgive the lack of challenge. Yes, she thought, in the circumstances Liberty Cap had been just what she needed. Holding on to the anchor rope she extended her legs – long, tanned, toned – rubbing at the muscles, pointing the tips of her Anasazi climb shoes to stretch out her feet and shins. Then, standing and turning, she scanned the rock above ready to start her eleventh and final pitch, fifty metres up to the summit.
‘Allez,’ she murmured, rubbing chalk onto her hands from the pouch at her waist. ‘Allez’, and then, as if prompted by the similarity in sound, ‘Alex’ again, her voice all but lost in the roar of Nevada Falls below.
Later, back down at her motorbike, the climb done, she bumped into a couple of guys she knew, fellow wall rats, one of them pretty good looking although at this moment that was the last thing on her mind. They chatted for a while, Freya describing her ascent – ‘You soloed Liberty Gap? Jesus, that’s impressive!’ – before she cut the conversation short, explaining that she had a flight to catch.
‘Anywhere nice?’ asked the good-looking one.
She rolled the bike off its stand and swung her leg over the saddle.
‘Egypt,’ she replied, starting the engine, revving it.
‘To climb?’
She clicked the bike into gear.
‘For my sister’s funeral.’
And with that she roared off, her blond hair whipping behind her like a flame.
CAIRO – THE MARRIOTT HOTEL
Flin Brodie adjusted his reading glasses and glanced up at the audience: fourteen elderly American tourists scattered amongst the fifty or so chairs in front of him, none of them looking especially interested. He ventured a quip about how he was glad they’d all managed to find a seat, which brought a guffaw of laughter from his tourist-guide friend Margot, but was otherwise greeted with blank stares.
Oh Christ, he thought, fiddling nervously with the pocket of his corduroy jacket. It’s going to be one of those.
He tried again, explaining that years of working as an archaeologist in the western desert had got him well used to large empty spaces. Again, the joke fell horribly flat, even Margot’s supportive laughter starting to sound strained. He gave up and, hitting a button on his laptop to bring up the opening Powerpoint slide – a shot of the receding dune ridges of the Great Sand Sea – was about to start the lecture when the door at the side of the room clicked open. An overweight man – extremely overweight – in a cream-coloured jacket and bow-tie, leaned in.
‘May I?’ His voice was curiously high-pitched, almost feminine, the accent American, Deep South. Flin glanced at Margot, who shrugged as if to say ‘why not?’ and waved the man forward. The newcomer closed the door and sat down in the seat nearest to it, removing a handkerchief and dabbing at his forehead. Flin allowed him to settle, then, clearing his throat, began talking, his accent English, the diction clipped and clear.
‘Ten thousand years ago the Sahara was a considerably more hospitable place than it is today,’ he told them. ‘Radar imaging of the Selima Sand Sheet by the Space Shuttle Columbia has revealed extensive fluvial topography – basically the outlines of long-lost lakes and river systems. This was a landscape much like the savannah of modern-day sub-Saharan Africa.’
Next slide: the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
‘There were lakes, rivers, forests, grasslands – home to an abundance of wildlife: gazelles, giraffes, zebras, elephants, hippos. And to humans as well – itinerant hunter-gatherers for the most part, although there is also evidence for more permanent Middle and Upper Palaeolithic settlements.’
‘Speak up!’
This from a woman right at the back of the room, a hearing aid clamped to her ear like a plastic barnacle.
Why in God’s name do you sit at the back if you can’t bloody hear properly? Flin thought.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said aloud, lifting his voice. ‘Is that better?’
The woman waved a walking stick to indicate that it was.
‘More permanent Palaeolithic settlements,’ he repeated, trying to pick up the thread of what he was saying. ‘The Gilf Kebir Plateau in the south-western corner of Egypt – an upland region covering an area roughly the size of Switzerland – is particularly rich in remains from this period, both material …’
Slides of, respectively, rearing orange cliffs, a grinding stone and a collection of flint tools.
‘… but also votive and artistic. Some of you may know the film The English Patient, which featured the prehistoric rock paintings in the so-called Cave of the Swimmers, discovered in 1933 by Hungarian explorer Ladislaus Almasy in the Wadi Sura, on the western side of the Gilf.’
A picture of the cave came up: stylized red figures with bulbous heads and stick-like limbs appearing to swim and dive across the uneven limestone walls.
‘Anyone seen the film?’
General murmurs of ‘No’, which persuaded him not to bother with the brief critique of the movie he usually slipped in at this point. Instead he pushed straight on with the talk.
‘Towards the end of the last ice age,’ he said, ‘around the Middle Holocene, about 7000 BC, this savannah-like landscape underwent a dramatic change. As the northern ice sheets retreated so aridification set in, the verdant plains and river systems giving way to the sort of landscape we see today. The desert peoples were forced to migrate eastwards into the Nile Valley …’
Scenic slide of the Nile.
‘… where they developed the various pre-dynastic cultures – Tasian, Badarian, Naqada – that would eventually coalesce to form a single unified state. The Egypt of the pharaohs.’
One of the listeners, Flin noticed, a jug-eared man in a New York Mets baseball cap, was already starting to nod. And he hadn’t even finished the introduction. Christ, he needed a drink.
‘I have travelled and excavated in the Sahara for well over a decade,’ he continued, running a hand through his unkempt black hair. ‘Primarily at sites in and around the Gilf Kebir. In this lecture I wish to put forward three propositions based on my work. Three rather controversial propositions.’
He emphasized ‘controversial’, scanning the audience for any sign of interest. Nothing. Not a flicker. He might as well have been talking about vegetable-growing. Would probably have done better if he had been. Christ, he needed a drink.
‘Firstly,’ he went on, struggling to sound enthusiastic, ‘I believe that even after they had migrated eastwards into the Nile Valley, the ancient Sahara dwellers never entirely forgot their original desert home. The Gilf in part
icular, with its dramatic cliffs and deep wadis, continued to exert a strong religious and superstitious influence on the early Egyptian imagination, its memory kept alive, albeit in allegorical form, in a number of myths and literary traditions, notably those relating to the desert gods Ash and Set.’
Slide of the god Set – human body surmounted by the head of some indeterminate animal with a long snout and pointed ears.
‘Secondly I intend to demonstrate that not only did the ancient Egyptians preserve memories of their former home in the Gilf Kebir, but also, despite the formidable distances involved, actual physical contact with it, sporadically returning across the desert to worship at sites of special religious and sentimental significance.
‘One wadi in particular, the so-called wehat seshtat, the Hidden Oasis, seems to have been held in particular reverence. Although the evidence is scanty, this latter site appears to have continued as an important cult centre right the way up to the end of the Old Kingdom, almost a thousand years after the emergence of Egypt as a unified state.’
The listener who had been nodding, Flin noticed, had now fallen asleep. He raised his voice another couple of notches in a vain effort to jolt him out of his slumber.
‘Finally,’ he went on at something just short of a shout, ‘I will argue that it it this mysterious and to date undiscovered wadi that served as the inspiration and model for a whole series of subsequent legends of lost Saharan oases, notably that of Zerzura, the Atlantis of the Sands, for which the aforementioned Ladislaus Almasy spent much of his career vainly searching.’
