The Hidden Oasis

by Paul Sussman

  They trooped towards the north, then turned into a narrow, sand-clogged gully that sloped away eastwards, carrying them gently back down onto the surface of the desert.

  ‘Very safe,’ said Said, slapping his hands against the rock walls to either side. ‘No close shut.’

  ‘I’m extremely pleased to hear it,’ said Flin.

  At the bottom end the gully opened out into a small bay in the Gilf’s eastern face, where Zahir’s Land Cruiser stood parked in the shade beneath a low, umbrella-like overhang. They shared water, and talked about Zahir, and Said produced a first aid box and patched up Flin’s various cuts and wounds – ‘No be woman,’ he muttered disapprovingly as the Englishman groaned and winced. Then they climbed into the 4x4 and set off into the desert, following the cliff-line south, back towards the rock tower and the doorway in the sand.

  Except that neither was there any more. They found the microlight easily enough, a garish pink blob that stuck out from the surrounding desert like a paint-spot on a bare sheet of paper. But the curving sickle of black stone had collapsed and broken into pieces, all that was left of it a featureless scatter of glassy rock that gave no hint of its former shape. And where the Mouth of Osiris should have been there was nothing, just flat, empty sand, perfectly level, perfectly blank. Even the rectangular opening in the rock face had gone, that particular portion of cliff seeming to have disintegrated and slid away, reduced to a jumbled heap of boulders piled up at the base of the wall. The only thing they found, the one indication that anything unusual had happened here was a thin triangle of metal that protruded above the sand like a small black fin. It took them a moment to realize that it was the tip of a helicopter rotor blade. Not far away lay a pair of mirrored sunglasses, one of the lenses cracked.

  ‘It’s like it was all a dream,’ murmured Freya.

  ‘I can assure you it wasn’t,’ grunted Flin, touching a hand to his cut lip.

  ‘No be woman,’ muttered Said.

  They drove back out to the microlight, Said waiting in the 4x4 while Flin climbed into the pod and checked the engine. It seemed to be working fine and, leaving it to idle, he climbed out and walked back to the Land Cruiser. Freya stood beside him.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK, Said?’ Flin asked, leaning down to the open driver window. ‘It’s a long way back to Dakhla.’

  ‘I Bedouin. This desert. Of course OK. Stupid question.’

  It was barely noticeable, no more than the faintest twitch of the lips, but he was definitely smiling. Freya reached in and touched his arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It sounds so inadequate after everything you and your brother have done for me. For both of us. But thank you.’

  Said just gave a slight nod of the head and, leaning forward, turned the ignition key and engaged the gears, gunning the engine.

  ‘When you come in Dakhla you come my house,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘You drink tea. Yes?’

  ‘I’d love to come to your house and drink tea,’ said Freya. ‘It would be an honour.’

  He gave another nod, raised a hand in farewell and moved off across the sands, tooting the horn as he gained speed. They watched him go, staring after him until the vehicle was no more than a distant white smudge bobbing its way across the dunes, then turned and walked back to the microlight. Flin bent down and picked up a small lump of what had once been the curving rock tower.

  ‘Souvenir,’ he said, handing it to Freya. ‘A little keepsake of your first visit to Egypt.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I’ll treasure it.’

  They refilled Miss Piggy’s tank, donned their helmets, climbed into the pod and rode out onto the sand flat on which they’d landed the previous night. Flin ran them back and forth for a while to get the oil temperature up, then increased the revs, eased the control bar forward and lifted them into the air, circling and gaining height. The Gilf’s eastern face reared to one side; an endless sea of yellow desert stretched off to the other.

  ‘I’d offer to show you some of the sights,’ came his voice through the intercom. ‘Jebel Uweinat, the Cave of the Swimmers. But in the circumstances I expect you just want to get back, get cleaned up and get straight into bed.’

  There was a pause, then his shoulders tensed.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  He craned round towards her, flustered suddenly, embarrassed. Freya just smiled, winked and dropped her head to the side, gazing down at the desert below.

  They flew over the area where the oasis must once have been, nothing there save rock and gravel and the odd stunted bush. And, also, birds. Hundreds upon hundred of birds diving and wheeling and swooping as if searching for something. Flin did a couple of circuits, then banked the microlight and took them towards the north-east, the Sahara rolling away all around – immense and majestic and indescribably beautiful. They flew in silence for a while, then Freya reached out and laid a hand on Flin’s shoulder.

  ‘Can we talk about Alex?’ she asked.

  He took her hand in his.

  ‘I’d love to talk about Alex.’

  Which is what they did, the Gilf Kebir slowly dropping away behind them, a new horizon opening up ahead.

  The drone of the microlight had faded and disappeared. The birds too had moved off to the north, seeking out new homes in the other wadis further up the Gilf. The desert was wholly still and wholly silent, and wholly empty. Nothing but sun, sky, sand, rock and, down at the base of the cliffs, lounging in the shade thrown by a tumble of newly fallen boulders, a small dappled dune gecko, its eyes rolling lazily, its tongue flicking in and out. Even that scuttled away when a patch of sand in front of it began to tremble. Barely noticeable at first, the tremors swiftly built and became more forceful, the desert heaving and swirling and bulging until eventually its surface tore apart altogether, like a bursting sack. A meaty, ring-covered hand clawed upward into daylight. To the left another hand appeared, thrusting from the sands like some grotesque gleaming toadstool. There was more movement, more swirling, confused glimpses of heads and limbs and torsos and two brawny, ginger-haired figures heaved themselves free of the ground. They staggered to their feet, sand showering everywhere.

  ‘You OK?’ asked one.

  ‘Just about,’ replied the other. ‘You?’

  ‘Just about.’

  They brushed themselves off and looked around, taking in their surroundings.

  ‘Helicopters have gone.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Guess we’d better get walking.’

  ‘Guess we’d better.’

  ‘Don’t want Mama to worry.’

  ‘Certainly don’t.’

  ‘Still got the …?’

  They delved into their pockets, each producing a gleaming handful of what looked like gold foil. They grinned and high-fived. Then, slipping off their jackets and throwing them over their shoulders, they linked arms and started to trudge towards the east, two tiny red dots creeping across a vast immensity of yellow, the sound of singing drifting behind them:

  ‘El-Ahly, El-Ahly,

  The greatest team there’ll ever be,

  We play it short, we play it long,

  The Red Devils go marching on!’

  THE REAL ZERZURA – AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Of all the many myths and legends associated with the Sahara, few if any have captured the imagination in quite the same way as the mysterious lost oasis of Zerzura.

  Supposedly a paradise of lush palms and bubbling springs, Zerzura is said to lie somewhere in the burning wastes of the Libyan desert. Many have argued that it is nothing but a fairy tale, a mirage, an El-Dorado of the sands. That has not stopped people looking for it, and much of the early pioneering exploration of the Sahara was carried out by those hoping to track down this curious forgotten watering hole.

  The name Zerzura is almost certainly derived from the Arabic zarzar, meaning a starling or a small bird. It first crops up in a thirteenth-century manuscript written by Osman e
l-Nabulsi, the governor of the Fayyum, who talks of an abandoned oasis somewhere in the desert to the south-west of Fayyum. A more detailed and colourful account appears two centuries later in the Kitab al-Kanuz – the Book of Hidden Pearls. A medieval treasure-hunter’s guide, the Kitab lists some four hundred sites in Egypt where hidden riches can be found, and outlines the various spells and incantations required to ward off the evil spirits who guard those riches. According to the Kitab: ‘The city of Zerzura is white like a pigeon, and on the door of it is carved a bird. Take with your hand the key in the beak of the bird, then open the door of the city … Enter and there you will find great riches, also the king and the queen sleeping in their castle. Do not approach them, but take the treasure.’

  The first European to mention the oasis was the English traveller and Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, who in 1835 wrote of hearing about a ‘Wadee Zerzoora’ – a place of palm trees and ruins located somewhere in the Great Sand Sea. A Bedouin had apparently stumbled on it while out looking for a stray camel, although his subsequent attempts to find the oasis again had proved futile (these two elements – the accidental discovery and the inability to relocate the oasis – are common to almost every tale of Zerzura).

  The nineteenth century saw growing academic interest both in the Sahara and in the idea of a lost oasis, especially after the German explorer Gerhard Rohlfs’ groundbreaking 1874 journey through the Great Sand Sea. However, it wasn’t until the early part of the twentieth century that ‘Zerzura fever’ really took hold.

  This was the great age of Saharan exploration, with figures such as Hassanein Bey, Prince Kemal el Din, Ladislaus Almasy, Patrick Clayton and Ralph Alger Bagnold – to name but a few – travelling though and mapping wide tracts of what had until that point been unknown, unrecorded desert. A fascination with Zerzura formed a key element of these exploratory journeys, and while not every expedition set out specifically to find the oasis, the possibility of doing so was never far from people’s minds. The subject was debated in depth in newspapers and learned journals, and there was even an informal Zerzura Club comprising those involved in desert exploration (founded in a bar in Wadi Halfa in 1930, the club came together for an annual meeting at London’s Royal Geographical Society followed by dinner at the Café Royal).

  The work of Bagnold, Almasy et al. revolutionized desert travel, pushing forward the frontiers of geography, geology, archaeology and science. Indeed Bagnold’s The Physics of Blown Sand – a study of the process of dune formation and movement – remains a standard text on the subject and was used by NASA when planning its Mars landings.

  Their adventures also had a significant bearing on the North African campaigns of the Second World War, with many Zerzura Club regulars putting their expert knowledge to use as members of the British Army’s legendary Long Range Desert Group (founded in 1940 by the ubiquitous Bagnold). Almasy alone threw in his lot with the Nazis, something for which his fellow explorers never forgave him.

  But through all of this Zerzura itself remained frustratingly elusive. Numerous theories were advanced as to its whereabouts – in 1932 there was huge excitement when an expedition led by Almasy and Clayton made an aerial sighting of two green valleys in the northern part of the Gilf Kebir (later named Wadi Abd el-Malik and Wadi Hamra). While Almasy always maintained that one or both of these wadis were the basis of the whole Zerzura legend, others were not so sure, and the search went on, as it does to this day.

  With the Sahara now thoroughly mapped and explored – from the ground, air and space – it is unlikely the search will ever prove successful, but that in no way diminishes Zerzura’s mystique. If anything it only adds to it, elevating the oasis from the realms of the earthly into something altogether more potently symbolic.

  As the great Ralph Bagnold put it in his book Libyan Sands, the power of Zerzura lies less in its actual physical presence than in what it represents – the thrill of exploration, the magic of secret places, the lure of the unknown. In a world in which few corners of the globe remain uncharted, Zerzura gives us hope that there are still adventures to be had and mysteries to be resolved. Seen in that light, Zerzura will always be out there, even when there is nowhere left to explore, for what on one level is simply a lost desert oasis is on another something far more elemental, something that lies deep within all of us: a yearning for the wonder of discovery.

  (Note: If you want to learn more about the whole Zerzura story and those involved in it, Saul Kelly’s The Lost Oasis: The Desert War and the Hunt for Zerzura is by far the best overview.)

  GLOSSARY

  Abu Treika, Mohamed Egyptian footballer, known as the ‘Egyptian Zinedine Zidane’. Plays for El-Ahly. Born 1978.

  Abydos Cult centre of the god Osiris and burial ground of some of Egypt’s earliest pharaohs. Also home to the spectacular mortuary temple of pharaoh Seti I. Located 90 km north of Luxor.

  Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Born 1956.

  Aided A climbing route in which specialist equipment such as pitons, bolts, webbing ladders etc. are used to help the climber ascend. Aid climbing is the opposite of free climbing.

  Aish baladi Coarse, pitta-type bread made from wholemeal flour.

  Akhenaten Eighteenth Dynasty (New Kingdom) pharaoh. Ruled c. 1353-1335 BC. Generally considered to be the father of Tutankhamun.

  Al-Ahram Literally, The Pyramids. Best-selling Egyptian daily newspaper.

  Allez French for ‘go’. Used by climbers to encourage each other.

  Almasy, Count Ladislaus (László) Hungarian aristocrat, pilot, motor enthusiast and desert traveller, one of the pioneers of Saharan exploration in the early twentieth century. Lived 1895-1951.

  Amun-Ra One of the state gods of the New Kingdom whose major cult centre was at Waset, modern Luxor. A conflation of the gods Ra and Amun.

  Ankh Cruciform symbol. The ancient Egyptian sign of life.

  Apep A spirit of evil and chaos. It lived in eternal darkness and took the form of an enormous snake.

  ARCE The American Research Center in Egypt. An organization that funds archaeological training, research and conservation.

  Arête A sharp ridge. In climbing terms it generally refers to a vertical feature that can be used to help the climber ascend.

  Ash Ancient Egyptian desert god, particularly associated with oases.

  Ashmolean A museum in Oxford specializing in art and archaeology. It has an extensive collection of Egyptian artefacts.

  Astroman A climbing route up Washington Column in Yosemite National Park.

  Atum Literally ‘The All’. Primal Egyptian creation deity. Often associated with the sun god Ra, giving the composite name Ra-Atum.

  Badarian A Neolithic culture that flourished in the southern part of the Nile Valley around 4500 BC. Named after El-Badari, near Asyut, the site where the culture was first identified.

  Bagnold, Brigadier Ralph Alger One of the great pioneering figures in the exploration of the Sahara in the late 1920s and early 1930s (among other epic journeys he made the first east-west crossing of the Great Sand Sea in 1932). During the Second World War he founded the legendary Long Range Desert Group. He was also a world-renowned scientist whose book on dune movements, The Physics of Blown Sand, remains a standard reference work to this day. Lived 1896-1990.

  Ball, Dr John One of the earliest European explorers of the western desert. Discovered Abu Ballas, or Pottery Hill, in 1916. Wrote numerous articles on the desert and the lost oasis of Zerzura. Lived 1872-1941.

  Banu Sulaim A North African Bedouin tribe.

  Beato, Antonio Anglo-Italian photographer who produced numerous images of the monuments and people of Egypt. Lived c. 1825-1906.

  Bedja A type of bell-shaped pot used by the ancient Egyptians to mould bread.

  Beirut Barracks bombing A double suicide-bombing in Lebanon on 23 October 1983, targeting the International Peacekeeping Force that had been deployed during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1991). Explosives-laden tru
cks were driven into the US Marine Headquarters at Beirut international airport and the nearby French Army barracks, killing 241 American servicemen, 58 French paratroopers and five Lebanese nationals. It is generally accepted that the bombings were the work of Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants.

  Beirut Embassy bombing A suicide bombing in Lebanon on 18 April 1983 in which an explosives-laden truck was rammed into the US Embassy building, killing 63 people. A group calling itself Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility, although most analysts believe the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement was behind the atrocity.

  Benben A conical or obelisk-shaped stone venerated in the ancient sun temple of Iunu.

  Benu A sacred bird closely associated with creator-god Ra-Atum. It was depicted as either a heron or a yellow wagtail. Considered by many scholars to be the prototype of the phoenix.

  Bersiim A type of clover used as cattle feed in Egypt.

  Blessed Fields of Iaru Ancient Egyptian term for the afterlife. Iaru was sometimes spelt ‘ialu’, which some scholars have suggested is the derivation of the term Elysian Fields.

  Blix, Hans Swedish diplomat who from 2000 to 2003 was the head of Unmovic (United Nations Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission), the organization tasked with investigating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Born 1928.

  Boat Pit A number of Egyptian royal burials included pits containing full-sized boats. Five such pits surround the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, two of which – discovered in 1954 – yielded intact vessels.

  Butneya An area of Cairo renowned for its thieves and drug dealers.

  Cam Short for ‘camming device’. A spring-loaded device wedged into a rock crack to secure a climber’s rope.

  Carabiner An oval or D-shaped ring with a spring-loaded gate through which a rope can be threaded. One of the most basic items of climbing equipment.

  Carter, Howard English archaeologist, discoverer in 1922 of the tomb of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, the greatest find in the history of Egyptian archaeology. When he first looked into the tomb and was asked by his companion and sponsor Lord Carnarvon if he could see anything, Carter uttered the immortal words: ‘Yes, wonderful things!’ Lived 1874-1939.