A Desert Dies

by Michael Asher

  We hauled the camels forwards, but as we reached the hayil, they began to flounder, jerking back on the ropes. Jibrin’s camel was a few feet in front of me, and I saw its legs trembling as it hesitated. It let out a wail of displeasure. ‘Come on, you son of the forbidden!’ Jibrin yelled. I gave the animal a sharp whack across the rear quarters, which sent it lurching forwards. Its legs sank deeper into the sand, and before I could do anything it stumbled and toppled over on to its side. There was a slight crack, and I thought, ‘God! The jerrycan!’ I kicked the camel frantically and as it dragged its body up I saw a runnel of precious water darkening the sand.

  The vessel was still intact, but its screw top had flown off and about a quarter of the liquid had splashed out. It was tragic to see it dripping away down the side of the can. Jibrin cursed and couched the camel in the deep sand. He took the screw top and examined the neck of the jerrycan. It was made of cheap commercial plastic and had previously been used for peanut oil. When we tried the cap, we saw it was loose. Jibrin cut a piece of sacking from one of the saddle pads and screwed the cap over it. ‘It will drip,’ he said. ‘But it is the best we can do now.’

  The sun was already high as we dragged the camels up the slope. We panted, catching our breath in the heat. After a few minutes, we reached the crest of the dune, and I saw an ocean of sand stretching out west as far as the skyline. The surface glistened with a soft glow of quartz pink. We manhandled the animals down the other side and crossed a flat of firm ground littered with nuggets of basalt and quartz.

  All day, we fought a desperate battle with the awful physics of the blown sand, striding on until the going became agonising and our throats too dry for anything except growling at the camels. As we climbed the crest of each dune, it seemed that there was always another one waiting mercilessly beyond it. My arms ached from grasping the headrope and my calves from the constant struggle with the loose sand. Finally, as the sun began to sink and its heat to die, the dunes became gentler, until they were no more than ripples in the sand a foot high. We couched our camels and threw ourselves between them, our bodies craving rest and water. Jibrin drew a little water from one of the skins and we drank a mugful each. Then we made a sobering discovery. Searching the bag that had held our firewood, we found that there was none left. ‘We cannot eat!’ Jibrin said. I was too tired to do anything but grimace. I doubted if I should have been able to stomach kisri now anyway.

  In the morning, we descended into a horseshoe-shaped amphitheatre of rock, perhaps five miles wide. Its floor was covered in cream-coloured sand, and its walls were a melted crust of blue rock with terraces of scattered boulders along its sides. Across the sand were strange groups of oval stones and other boulders perched on slender platforms like exotic sculpture. To the north, Jibrin pointed out a flash of green and insisted on investigating it. As we came near, we saw that it was an arak tree, a tall, stout specimen in imperial green with a perfectly rounded canopy of leaves. Its presence was like an illusion in this desolation of rock and sand.

  We brought the camels up and let them browse. At the base of the tree were the spiral tracks of many snakes that probably lived among its roots. The sand was scarred by the stitchlike patterns of lizards, and several darkling beetles scuttered away at our approach. A single black and white bird flitted off in alarm and perched on a rock nearby. I picked up one of the beetles and examined it. Its legs kicked the air violently as I turned it over. Of all desert creatures, these were the hardiest. Their thick cuticle prevented water loss and their modified wing covers, no longer adapted for flying, trapped a layer of air that insulated them from the heat. They could survive almost anywhere, and unlike most desert fauna, emerged during the day as well as at night.

  We were content to let our camels feed, though we were still plagued by thirst. ‘I say we could find water here if we dug a hole,’ I said to Jibrin.

  The Arab laughed condescendingly. ‘I hope you are prepared to dig for a week. The roots of trees like this go on for ever. You will die of exhaustion before you even get near it!’

  For the rest of the day, we moved through a maze of rock that closed in on us from all sides. Enormous ridges towered above us, their surface weathered into all manner of surreal shapes: pillars, balls, ovals, and wedges. There were scars of granite that had been cracked by the fluctuations of heat and cold, shattering into a billion glittering fragments of geological refuse. In the crevices were the grey bones of sallam and siyaal, but they bore no leaves and were useless even for firewood.

  At noon, we stopped as usual and lay down in the shade of our tiny shelter. The camels rested their heavy skulls on the sand in exhaustion, their eyes blinking in the heat. The sun streamed down from an unblemished sky, and the heat seemed to rise from the ground in a visible cloud of vapour. For a moment, I dozed and dreamt of an Arctic river flowing with ice-cold melt water. I opened my eyes and felt the thirst gouging my stomach like nausea. I would have given much for a mug of water from the Nile. I knew that I could not drink until evening, and I was worried about our navigation. The rocky terrain had now taken us way off course, and neither Jibrin nor I knew where we were. At Abu Tabara, there was only one well and probably no more than two or three tents. If we missed it, we should have to make for Rahib or Umm Grayn. Both were four or five days’ journey from Abu Tabara and we should have to cover the distance with thirsty, exhausted camels without any drinking water for ourselves. I asked Jibrin how long he thought we could last without water in this heat. ‘I once went three days without drinking,’ he told me. ‘It was in the jizzu. Some raiders took three of our camels, and I rode off so quickly that I had no time to take any water. Once I was after them, I did not want to leave the trail. But they outrode me. I was just about to give up when I came to an ’Atawiyya camp. They gave me milk and water. But it was a bitter time, by God! There is nothing so bad as thirst.’

  ‘Could we make it to Umm Grayn if we miss Abu Tabara?’

  ‘The question is the camels. As long as the spirit is in your body and you can hang on to your camel, then it is possible. Many an Arab has been saved by his camel. But if your camel goes down, you are finished. Ours are thirsty already.’

  ‘Is Abu Tabara easy to see from a distance?’

  ‘No, by God! It is the most difficult of places. It is hidden in a belly of great stones, which goes on for a long distance. There are no palm trees, and nothing can be seen from a long way off.’

  ‘God willing, we well find some people there.’

  ‘Amen!’

  I had another look at the map. It told me almost nothing, and I cursed Captains Coningham and Whittingham and wondered where the hell they had learned to survey. Jibrin noticed my expression and commented, ‘Those maps are rubbish! How could those Ingleez know the desert, when they came here only once?’

  ‘You are right, brother,’ I agreed.

  In the late afternoon, we broke out through the wall of rock and came upon a vast plain if ice-cream pink, broken by seams of black stone. Below us was a wadi with a few dry sarh trees. We halted the camels and cut off some of their lower branches with an axe. I knew this was desecration, and that such practices as these had helped to destroy the desert. But it was one thing to pronounce on the evils of deforestation, when one was sitting at home with a full stomach, and quite another here in this dangerous void, when one was fighting for survival and possibly losing.

  The land rose slightly to the horizon, where I could see a pyramid-shaped hill and a ridge with a flat top. Time passed and the camels paced on. There was silence between us. There was nothing but the slap of the camels’ feet and the washing ebb-tide of the wind, like the sea on the shore. There was no life in this land but us. There was no sign of any creature: no foxes, no hares, not even a jerboa. As night came and the embers of the sun flared across the ridge, Venus appeared. It was a pulsing beacon of hypnotic light. Suddenly, as if some hypnotist had snapped his fingers, I had a strange out-of-body experience. It was as if I were looking down o
n myself and my companion from somewhere up near Venus. For a moment, I watched two full-grown men riding two grotesque animals across a wasteland, for no good reason. I found myself saying, from way up there, ‘They do it. And it even seems important!’

  That evening, we camped on a rock shelf beyond the ridge. We cooked porridge, but our mouths were too dry to enjoy it. As the next day dawned, I saw to the north a long wall of black rock. It looked no more than ten kilometres away, and had two rock chimneys rising above it. I guessed that it was the southern edge of the legendary Jabal Abyad, ‘The White Mountain’, where Kababish herds had grazed in past times. There was a high peak marked on the map as Burj al Hatab, but this was nowhere to be seen. The country to the west was hammada, with patches of sand rising to naked peaks of basalt here and there. The day was another hot one, without the solace of a cloud to veil the full power of the sun. We had been riding for six days, most of them under summer conditions, and the camels were tired and thirsty. Working in these temperatures, they needed to drink every three or four days, and the grain we fed them increased their thirst. As the day grew hotter, I felt my spirits sink. The lining of my stomach felt tight with a sick, acid sensation. I could think of nothing but water. The thirst was an acute pain, like a nagging toothache that all my powers of concentration could not dismiss. We rode through a region where the rocks were weathered into the shapes of nightmare creatures and strange deformed reptiles. It was a dead, dry, moonscape world, where men did not belong. By the middle of the moming, on that sixth day, I was almost dropping from my camel with thirst, my body bent and hunched up over the saddle horns. I guessed Jibrin felt the same, for he had assumed the same hunched position. I knew now that the ability to resist thirst was psychological, not physiological. Experiments had proved that an acclimatised European has exactly the same water requirements in the desert as a nomad. One had to have the will to endure it.

  Jibrin exclaimed, ‘By God, it is hot!’

  ‘Let’s drink,’ I said. We couched our camels and drew a single mug of water, half each. At once, I felt the moisture seeping into my blood and reactivating my cells and muscles, uncloying and lubricating the tight walls of my stomach that had seized up and fused together.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Jibrin said, and on we went, crossing the huge, boulder-strewn plain, two tiny black specks in its midst.

  Once, we came across the tracks of two men and eight camels. Jibrin grew excited. ‘These are the tracks of my relations!’ he said. We followed them a short way, but they veered drunkenly from side to side in great sweeps and soon petered out amongst the rocks. Still, it was cheering to know that we were on the right trajectory, and our spirits rose a little. But by the time the darkness came, our optimism had faded.

  The night closed in around us. We ate porridge, chewing it mechanically and retching from its dryness. We drank a little water afterwards, but not enough to quench our thirst. I looked at our remaining supply. Both waterskins were empty and there remained about a gallon in the jerrycan. I could hardly believe that we had used so much. That gallon would last us for the next morning; it might last us all day if we did not eat. That meant that it was essential to find Abu Tabara sometime during the next day. We had no leeway. The chances would be firmly against us, even if the weather changed.

  In all my travels in the desert by camel, I had never been in a position as serious as this. I had been thirsty before; I had gone for days without drinking, but then the temperature had been relatively low and our navigation assured. I thought longingly of the bulging skins I had seen in Ed Debba. Why had I not persuaded someone to sell me one? I remembered bathing in the shallow inlets on the waterfront at Debba, and thought of the water pots the river people left outside their houses. I could think of nothing else. I said to Jibrin, ‘If we do not find Abu Tabara tomorrow, we are in big trouble!’

  ‘We shall all die when it is time for us to die,’ the Arab said. ‘God is generous.’

  I rolled over on to my stomach and switched on my torch. The way ahead looked grim, and I felt angry with myself. My navigation had failed. My map had failed. Even Jibrin’s knowledge had failed. How on earth could we find Abu Tabara? Now all we could do was to resign ourselves to what came, or fight back. Jibrin, true to his culture, had chosen resignation. I, true to mine, wrote in my journal: ‘As long as there is the will in me, I shall struggle to survive.’

  Later, we curled up in our blankets. After about half an hour, I was still awake when I heard the distant growl of a motor vehicle. The sound swelled and died, then swelled again. It sounded like a truck that had got bogged down in the sand. I jumped up and woke Jibrin. He sat up reluctantly. The sound came again, unmistakably. ‘Don’t you hear it?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he replied dully. The sound suddenly ceased, and the desert was quiet again. ‘There is nothing,’ my companion said. ‘You imagined it. It is strange what thirst will do. Go back to sleep. You will need your sleep if we are to find Abu Tabara tomorrow.’ I lay down, straining my ears. There was no sound but the humming breath of the camels. Perhaps I had imagined it after all. I reasoned that Jibrin’s senses must be more acute than mine. I did not know that he had suffered mumps as a boy, and was deaf in one ear.

  Our departure next morning was grim and silent. We moved off, walking as usual through the mystical landscape of moulded rock and drifting sand. My eyes had become accustomed to the washed-out, pastel hues of the desert scenery, so when my gaze swept over the landscape ahead, I picked out a brilliant yellow and silver shape amongst the rocks. I was drawn to it like a magnet. A few paces further on, I realised that it was certainly something man-made. Then Jibrin said, ‘It is a truck, by Almighty God! There are two of them!’

  As we approached, we saw that there were two silver-grey Fiats parked amongst the boulders. They were loaded with sacks and carried yellow covers. There were six men with the vehicles, who gathered together to stare at us when we approached. We left our camels hobbled at some distance and went to greet them.

  The two drivers were fat townsmen with black faces and fuzzy hair. Their faces dropped in amazement when they realised I was a European. I greeted them formally in the manner of the nomads and ignored their expressions. This was enough to prevent too many tedious questions. They were friendly and called for tea. They told us that they had come from El ’Atrun and were taking rock salt for sale in Dongola. They had not been to Abu Tabara, but they thought it was ahead.

  ‘What grazing have you seen on the way?’ Jibrin asked. I was dying to ask for water and could hardly stand the tension, but I thought it better to let my companion talk.

  ‘Well, there was some grass and trees about half an hour from here,’ said one of the drivers.

  ‘What kind of trees?’ Jibrin asked.

  ‘Thorny ones,’ answered the other.

  I saw Jibrin smile almost pityingly. We drank the tea that the lorry boys brought us and squatted down in the hearth with them. Jibrin behaved formally and with great dignity. He sipped his tea as if it were his fifth cup. I took my cue from him, even though I was desperate. I realised that it would be a disgrace to display thirst before these townsmen. After we had drunk, Jibrin casually mentioned that we needed some water. The driver told one of the boys to half-fill one of our skins. The squelching vessel was laid in front of us. I tried to avoid looking at it. Instead, I thanked the men and told them our names.

  ‘Why don’t you travel by lorry? It’s much easier!’ said one of the drivers.

  ‘You can’t learn anything in a lorry,’ I told him. ‘If you are in a lorry, you are not in the desert.’ He looked at me in bewilderment, but Jibrin’s eyes glowed in understanding.

  The men climbed aboard the great machines and started the engines. The desert was filled with the sound of their buzzing, and with fumes of oil. The drivers waved and wished us good luck, and we thanked them again. We grabbed the headropes of our camels to prevent them bolting as the vehicles lumbered off, billowing smoke, slowly gathering speed
until they disappeared into the landscape.

  Then Jibrin poured out a mugful of water and held it out to me. I was too thirsty to worry about protocol. I drank it down greedily in steady gulps. It tasted like cream. When it was finished, I exclaimed, ‘Praise be to God!’ and meant it. Then Jibrin drank. As we reloaded the camels, he muttered, ‘Those people don’t even know they are travelling. There are some trees here, some grass there, “thorny ones” indeed! They know nothing of the desert!’

  ‘You cannot know the desert if you travel by motor vehicle,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. There is nothing better than a camel in the desert. The lorry is fast, but you cannot enjoy it.’ I had always hated motor vehicles, yet I knew that this time, they had saved my life.

  We walked for almost four hours over the carcass of the desert. Soon, the rocks gave way to a basin of brown dust with a great edifice of jagged black rock on the horizon. We mounted up as the time passed, not daring to halt, for the half-skin of water would soon be used up and we could waste no time. In the middle of the plain was a withered tundub, and at its base lay the tangled skeleton of a camel, the dry hide twisted around the bones. There were a few leaves on the tree and we let our camels browse. Jibrin joked, ‘Was this camel a male or a female? It doesn’t matter much now does it! Was it brown or red? Who cares anyway!’

  We pressed on, but now the camels were faltering. This one will be dead soon if we do not find water!’ Jibrin declared. At midday, we crossed a dune and saw from the top a depression filled with massive slabs of rock, black and silver, weathered and carved into weird figures and half-buried by furrows of sand. The sun was so hot, it took our breath away. As we descended the dune slope, Jibrin said, ‘It must be here.’

  I knew he was right. This was the lowest land as far as I could see, and the watercourse must be in a depression. Then we saw a trail of droppings scattered in the sand. They looked very old. We moved on, weaving in and out of the boulders. There were no other signs of humans or herds, and I was beginning to wonder if this was really the place when Jibrin cried, ‘See the last of the tents! This is it!’ Looking down, I saw many pieces of torn shuggas, half covered in sand, with broken pots, useless leather buckets, split saddlebags. ‘This is Abu Tabara,’ Jibrin said, smiling. We climbed a hump of sand, and he showed me the single well, covered in flat stones. ‘They have all gone,’ he said. They must have left only days ago.’ It was disappointing to find the place uninhabited, but the survival instinct was stronger: I was overjoyed to find water.