Impossible Journey

by Michael Asher

  We stalked through the soft sand looking for a gap in the hedge of thorn and tamarix that obscured the steep riverbank. A little farther on, we found a clearing in the trees that would allow us to get down to the water. I climbed down the loose, sandy bank. About halfway down, I froze. Lying under a thorn tree was a very wizened old man in a long shirt and layered headcloth. He was sound asleep. Or perhaps he was dead. I didn’t wait to find out but rushed back to the camels, shushing Marinetta’s questions until we had moved on. There was something very eerie about finding a man asleep in such a lonely place. It reminded me of stories from the Arabian Nights.

  We pushed on for half an hour until we saw the village of Abri standing on the opposite bank. Its yellow plaster buildings glittered starkly through the trees. The bank was very steep here, but someone had cleared a path down to the water’s edge through the tangled bush. We couched our camels in the shade of some acacias and I carried our empty girbas and jerrycans down to the river. Crouching there, I could see the Sudanese flag dancing over the police station at Abri. I sincerely hoped that no inquisitive and keen-sighted policeman would look out across the river and notice the Arab with the incongruous red face. I filled all the vessels, dipping my travel-scarred feet into the cool stream. Then I manhandled the lightest girba up the steep slope. It was an excruciating task. My wet feet slipped in the sand, and I stumbled left and right, trying to balance the awkward shape of the goatskin. I was panting hard by the time I reached the top of the slope.

  There was no possibility of hauling the heavier girbas up alone. I called Marinetta, and we shifted them, inch by grunting inch, hoping desperately that no one would see us. We slipped and floundered, cutting our feet on sharp slivers of bush, cursing and sweating. My arms ached and my legs burned like fire. Getting those water vessels up the incline seemed the most difficult task of the entire journey. At last, we had them all at the top of the slope, and we collapsed, snatching a moment’s rest. In the same moment, I saw a man in a clean white gandourah coming across a mud flat on the river. He looked lean and purposeful. ‘Quick!’ I hissed at Marinetta. Never had we loaded as fast as we loaded those water vessels. In less than five minutes, we were mounted and moving out into the desert. When I looked behind, the man in the white shirt was examining our tracks.

  The river was soon out of sight. We followed a trail of camel skeletons, which increased in number as we approached a natural gate in a rock wall. The pass was an ossuary of camels. Some lay in the sand with their heads bent back towards their shoulders. Others were still in the sitting position. Some of them had been deliberately arranged by the herdsmen into horrific configurations, guarding the pass with vacant occiputs and canine fangs polished sharp by the windblown sand. One of the camel skulls was clamped over the mummified remains of a great Nubian vulture.

  We spent the night near the pass and woke to find ourselves in a wonderland of knolls and peaks. The rocks were sharks’ jaws gaping at us across the void, pieces of grey Gruyere cheese, eaten away by time, the shapes of houses and tents and covered wagons laagered into circles. On the horizon, we saw successive terraces of hills, each a subtly different shade of grey, black, or silver, fitting into each other’s shadow with serrated edges. At midday, we heard a sound like the throbbing of an aircraft engine. It went on and on, though no aircraft passed over us. I stopped and listened carefully. It was like the boom of a great drum being pounded over and over again, stroke after stroke. There was no wind. It could not have been the river, which was too far away for us to hear. I suddenly realised what the sound was. It was the Drummer of Death.

  In the afternoon, we cut through another natural gate and saw the Nile beneath us, bluer than blue, like a vision from a dream. We came to a village standing on an alluvial beach which ran down to the water. The village was deserted. The people who had lived there had probably left when the opening of the High Dam in Aswan had swollen the Nile’s banks in this area. Farther on, the river flexed and twisted through high cliffs of Nubian sandstone, the grain in the rock standing out like blood vessels.

  We camped in some tamarix, and I led the camels down to drink. While they mooched about, nuzzling at the fuzz of grass, I sat on a rock and smoked my pipe. Two ibis skimmed across the surface and circled in a cloudless azure sky. Silver fish jumped out of the water, and when I dipped my feet into it I could feel them nibbling. The river seemed almost to whisper to me. It was the most beautiful, most tranquil, place I had ever seen.

  Marinetta pulled her clothes off and bathed naked, standing up to her thighs in the stream. She looked cheerful, splashing water through her dark hair and over the smooth skin of her body. I stopped watching the water and looked at her instead. Just then, I registered a flurry of movement far across the river. Through the binos, I saw a man riding a donkey along the opposite bank. ‘Get your clothes on!’ I told Marinetta without thinking. ‘There’s someone coming!’

  She splashed more water over herself and giggled. ‘I can’t see anyone!’ she said. ‘Anyway, what does it matter now?’ I shrugged and went back to my pipe.

  That night, we camped in soft desert sand near Lamulay. Both of us felt sanctified after our wash in the Nile. After we had eaten, Marinetta said, ‘It’s funny how being clean makes you feel hungry for sex, isn’t it?’ Then she took off her clothes for the second time that day. If there were any donkey riders that night, we didn’t see them.

  The following morning, we found ourselves in the middle of a great expanse of grey earth, which had been cracked by the sunlight into a jigsaw of deep crevices. At first, the cracks were narrow enough to step over, but soon they widened until they were a foot across and over a yard deep. The camels already had sore feet, and they refused to go on. I was just about to tell Marinetta to retreat when Wad An Nejma lost his footing. He squealed as his flat hooves pawed at the crumbling earth, but in a moment, he was firmly wedged in. I hoped to God that his legs had not been broken. ‘Go back!’ I told Marinetta. Then her camel lost his balance too, and plunged into the cracks.

  ‘God!’ she moaned desperately. ‘We’ll never get them out.’ I had to admit that this looked like the end.

  No amount of pushing, pulling or beating would shift the camels. The brittle ground was as treacherous as a marsh, constantly crumbling and flaking. It was all we could do to maintain our own balance. Slowly, we unloaded, piece by piece. We ferried the heavy baggage back to the roots of some tamarix bushes behind us. It was backbreaking work. The camels wheezed and whimpered and made periodic attempts to haul themselves out, managing only to wedge themselves more tightly in. We strained and strained on the headropes until their clumsy legs sprawled out and they stood trembling on the narrow ledges between the cracks.

  There was still no way forward or back. I took the axe and began to smash my way through the cracked blocks, which shattered like porcelain. It was a slow, draining effort, but steadily, the crests of the cracks got lower and the spaces higher as they filled up with clods of earth. It took an hour to make a very slim path to some firmer’ ground. Then we had to load the camels and lead them out. We stopped to examine the damage. Both camels had badly lacerated feet, and Wad An Nejma’s forefoot was like a balloon. One girba had been punctured and two saddle bags broken.

  The firmer ground gave us only brief respite. There were more of these curious expanses of cracked earth and each time we encountered one, we had to stop and carve out a path with the axe. The work took hours, and all day, we moved in fits and starts. Finally, we came to a kind of island where a palm-frond hut stood on firm ground. There were four Nubians living there, drying fish and cultivating the hard soil. The men had come from Halfa Jadid in the eastern Sudan.

  The ancestors of these men had lived along this reach of the Nile since Pharaonic times. When the High Dam was opened in Aswan, creating Lake Nasser, the rising water had drowned many of the old villages, together with their cultivation and palm groves. Thousands of Nubian families had been forcibly moved to the new town of Haifa
Jadid, named after their old capital, Wadi Haifa. The men said that in recent years, the level of water had fallen again, uncovering some of the original land. These regions of cracked earth were the places that had once been covered by water and were now exposed to the sun. The heat had dried out the wet mud until it had cracked like glass. The firm ground between them was where the spits and bays had been—the places not covered by water. These Nubians were determined to recultivate their ancestral land. I asked them why they preferred the harsher life here to their new homes. ‘So many people!’ one of them said. ‘Here, you can breathe.’

  We drank tea with the men, and later, they pointed out the direction of Semna, where we should be able to rejoin the old stock trail once more. ‘Watch out near the border,’ they told us. ‘There are new Sudanese patrols there now, and they stop everyone going to Egypt.’

  The following day, we marched twelve hours and covered only 5 miles. There was no crossing the immense bays of cracked earth that we came to, and going around them cost us hours. We tried to take shortcuts by climbing over rocky slopes, but the sore-footed animals complained and pulled against the ropes. Soon, my back was aching with the strain of hauling them. We made agonising progress. Once, we came to a chasm between the hills that was choked with tamarix. I actually had to cut a way through it with the machete. A splinter of wood gashed Marinetta’s foot badly, and she sobbed with irritation. Near sunset, we came to the top of a cliff where we could see the ribbon of the Nile and the bend at Semna far beneath us.

  We descended through a watercourse, and at last pushed our way to a narrow shelf by the water’s edge, where we made camp. We were hardly able to move. I felt sick and feverish with strain; my body was racked with spasms of hot and cold. I had a burning sensation in my legs and an ache in the back of my neck. My hands were blistered from the constant pulling of the headrope. Even my appetite had gone. The riverbank was covered in stinging plants and a species of bean that rattled all night. Just after dark, I killed two tarantulas.

  We felt better in the morning as we climbed the steep, sandy skirts of the valley. There was a pass in which we found camel grooves and the lump of a camel skeleton. It was the first skeleton we had found for two days, and it proved that we were back on the stock trail. I did a dance around it. For the rest of the day, we followed carcasses and firestones, and in the evening, we camped near a great wadi. The first thing we saw in the morning was the fresh tracks of camels, together with the distinct imprints of military boots. It could only be a Sudanese border patrol.

  A little farther on, combing the horizon with the binoculars, I spotted a white tent with a camouflaged truck parked outside. The camp was a mile away, but the sun was in front of us now, giving the advantage to the observer. Through the binos, I saw dark figures moving around the tent. ‘Come on,’ I told Marinetta. ‘We don’t want to get stopped now.’ By then, our visas really had expired.

  We marched for fourfeen hours that day. At last, I realised that the distance was telling on me. My body was giving me signals to slow down and rest, signals that I had been ignoring for weeks. I no longer felt tired; I felt physically sick, racked with strange fever and constantly in pain. After sunset, I managed to drag everything from the camels, then I collapsed and crawled into my sleeping bag.

  I felt strangely cold. Fits of shivering convulsed me. My teeth were chattering. I wondered blankly if I had malaria but rejected the idea. Marinetta made a fire and cooked a meal. She brought it to me and helped me to eat. I took a mouthful and was violently sick. I crawled back into my sleeping bag. Marinetta knelt over me, cradling me and looking worried. ‘Come on, Maik,’ she crooned. ‘You’ve got to eat. If you don’t eat, you’ll die. Remember what you

  used to say? When the going gets tough, the tough get going!’

  ‘I’ve let you down,’ I said, eaten up with misery.

  Suddenly, she began to cry. ‘No, you haven’t,’ she sobbed. ‘You’ve never let me down. We’ve lived a lifetime together already. I couldn’t leave you now. Not ever. I love you, Maik.’

  I had come 4,500 miles to hear the woman I loved say that.

  In the morning, we crossed the crust of a mountain and saw Lake Nasser beneath us, dotted with pelicans and herons. Above the inlet, there was a military tent with a radio antenna, half hidden on top of a knoll. As we approached, two dark figures strolled down to meet us, followed by a barking dog. They were Egyptian border police.

  The men were friendly and welcomed us to their tent, where they made us tea and fed us homemade bread. The patrol leader sent a message through to his headquarters at Abu Simbel about our arrival. Marinetta and I relaxed, sitting on a camp bed and waiting for the next radio rendezvous. At noon, the radio stuttered, and the patrol commander listened for a few moments. Then he laid the headphones down and said calmly, ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go back.’

  Go back! I felt my face flushing. Marinetta’s mouth had fallen open in shock. ‘We’ll die if we go back,’ I said. ‘You see what a state the camels are in. They are finished and so are we.’

  ‘It’s orders,’ the soldier said. ‘It’s illegal to cross the border from the Sudan without special permission.’

  ‘We have visas.’

  ‘Yes,’ said he, examining our passports again. ‘But these visas expired six days ago.’

  For almost an hour, we discussed the matter. I was adamant that we should not return to the Sudan. Our Sudanese visas had expired, and even if we survived, we would quickly be arrested by the Sudanese for illegal entry. The soldier, whose name was Hassan, said that he would query his headquarters again during the next radio call. But when the time for the call came, conditions were too bad for contact. ‘Look,’ Hassan said, ‘you may as well stay the night with us, and we’ll establish contact in the morning.’ Then he added, ‘After all, we can’t shoot you, can we?’

  Just before sunset, Marinetta and I walked down to the lake to wash. The water felt ice-cold. We sat in silence for long moments, watching the sun sinking across the lapping water. It was blissfully tranquil.

  ‘Did you mean what you said last night?’ I asked Marinetta. ‘I’ll always mean it,’ she said. ‘Thank you for taking me with you, Maik.’

  I felt a sudden weight of sadness and nostalgia for the beauty we had seen, for the obstacles we had met and crossed, for the characters we had known. There might be good things to look forward to in the civilised world. But nothing would ever inspire either of us as the desert had.

  When we arrived back in the camp, the soldiers fed us on chicken and rice. Afterwards, Hassan said, ‘In the morning, you should load your camels and go to Abu Simbel. Don’t tell anyone there we let you go. Say that you went anyway. If you stay here, they will force us to send you back.’ For a soldier, I thought, Hassan was a very reasonable man.

  It took us twelve hours to reach Abu Simbel the next day, stumping on through endless chasms of rock and sand. We had almost despaired of reaching it when we spotted the white dome of the airport control tower standing out above the undulating rocks. Moments of our marathon journey across an entire continent on camels crowded again into our minds. This was journey’s end, 271 days, nine months, after leaving Chinguetti. We had completed the longest trek ever made by Westerners in the Sahara.

  We stopped outside the town and changed into Western clothes, knowing that it would improve our reception. Then we led our weary camels along the asphalt road to the police station. The young policemen there surrounded us, unloading our camels with great clamour and even taking snapshots. As we sat down with them, some bus loads of tourists passed by. I had a fleeting glimpse of white faces, grey hair, and clean clothes. I realised that we hadn’t seen another Westerner for two months. These were the ordinary people of our world, I thought, only a few days away from their offices and houses. At that moment, they seemed as far away from us as the sky.

  A young officer arrived and smiled at us truculently, commenting again that our visas had expired. He brought along
a more senior officer from the Border Intelligence Section and some other men, who held a kind of court. In the end, the officer said, ‘You’ll have to go back.’

  Then I played my final card. ‘I’m a writer,’ I said, ‘and your country is a very popular one among tourists. If you send us back and anything unpleasant happens to us, it would look very bad for your country.’

  The officers listened politely, then walked away. Later, the Border Intelligence officer called us. ‘You want to get to Aswan, mister? Tomorrow, you will go to Aswan. You will leave the camels here with us. You will be interrogated by the police and by the military intelligence people. If they agree, you will get your entry stamp.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

  We spent the night in the police station among piles of our equipment. The camels chomped on their grain outside, and in the morning, a local herdsman came to take them away. I watched them limping off, feeling somehow guilty that I had forced them to bring us so far.

  We picked up the few things that we could carry and left behind all those that were now useless yet had formed our home for ten months: the cooking pot, the milk bowl, the mugs, the good old girbas, the axe, the machete, and all the other bits and pieces that had seemed so essential in our Adam-and-Eve world.

  A policeman was waiting to take us to the bus. It was a tourist-company bus, crammed with French visitors. They looked well fed and sleepy, like contented pets. The air was full of their sickly perfume and the scent of suntan oil. How ironical, I thought, that we should end such a journey in a busload of tourists. I had spent years searching for the old ways and the hidden places, but in the end, no one and nothing escaped change. The bus slid across the desert on a smooth asphalt piste. The tourists turned drowsily to take in the view of the glittering, insubstantial, amber plain, the closing, rocky jaws of the hills. We turned too, for our last glimpse of the Sahara. For each of us on the bus, the

  desert had its own special meaning. For me, it was a void to which we ourselves had given life, an arena in which we had played out an incredible life-and-death game. Now, it reverted to what it had always been: an illusion.