by Karl Ziegler
1
Do not fall asleep when flying above the Sahara, lest some… thing beyond comprehension tether itself to your nightmares, rumble its way out of the sands, and rip you from the sky.
Such flights across a small tract of the desert (the six-hundred-kilometre flight from Dakhla in Egypt to the capital of Cairo) were somewhat routine for me, my employer supplying an old Cessna 172 light aircraft to accommodate them. If you’re not an aircraft enthusiast, I can tell you that this one has two wings, four seats, and if you have a vague image in your head of what a generic small plane looks like then it’s probably a Cessna. As for any further curiosities concerning my occupation, my past, or even my name, they bare no relevance to what follows so I shall not indulge them.
Rather unusually of me I fell asleep immediately after take-off only to be yanked out of a strangely vivid dream to what I thought was sure to be my imminent death. I had barely opened my eyes to see sand where sky should be before metal crunched around me, a piece of it finding the side of my head and knocking me into dreamless black.
Heat stabbed me awake sometime later, but unlike the kind that typically smothers you in this part of the world, this was specifically close and painfully intense.
Fire!
Completely awake now I squirmed in panic to escape. A dreadful experience; my right arm had broken in the crash and night had fallen during my time unconscious, covering the world outside with a thick ebony blanket and filling the cockpit with an ominous orange glow. The door on my right had come off and the fire grew on my left, now spreading across the clothes of the pilot less than a meter away.
Remorse distracted me briefly as I looked at the poor fellow, caught like a bug in a crushed can. The jovial old gentleman whose name I never did quite catch (no matter how many times he told it to me) sat unnervingly still, his dead eyes almost locking with mine as they stared through me into nothing.
Tentacles of flame whipped at me, and I quickly returned to my desperate escape, finally wrenching myself out of the seat and onto the still warm sand. Staggering away from the wreck, awkwardly holding my injured arm while trying to wipe the blood off my face, I could hardly believe I had survived. Flames now engulphed the completely crumpled nose section and I realised that if I were to retrieve anything from the baggage hold, I would have to claim it now before the flames did.
Naturally, the baggage hold was on the opposite side of the plane to me, so I hobbled with bare feet skidding and squeaking towards the tail. I cursed my casual preference for slip on sandals, as they must have come off in the crash. Thankfully, hardy boots were in my backpack, as was my trusty old drink bottle, fresh clothes, and my phone. Reception here was unlikely but I’d certainly rather have it than not. As I hopped around the tail of the plane, I was surprised how intact it was; hardly damaged at all really, unlike the nose and the now visible pilot's side. The wing had buckled, and the door had crushed inwards through the pilot.
Flames were quite close to the baggage compartment, the door bent and slightly open already so I tried to ignore the searing heat as much as I could and knelt to reach inside. Fortune favoured me; attached to the inside of the door was a small red box with a white cross on it. Hot to the touch (as was the whole compartment) but otherwise undamaged, I quickly lifted it off its sliding rack and tossed it a safe distance away.
A good start, but the real prize was my backpack. An oversized white bedsheet that must have belonged to the pilot had unravelled to cover everything else. With building frustration I teared and yanked at it as flames grew closer, finally managing to pull it free and cast it behind me. The heat was almost unbearable now as I grabbed a strap of my bag and pulled. And pulled. And pulled again, much harder this time. Fire beside me now, I flailed desperately for my pack to come loose but the heat quickly defeated me, so I relinquished my prize and scurried shamefully away. Dread lurched within and my frustration found audible escape as the hungry flames found my backpack and devoured it.
South...
The thought came unbidden, a subtle desire. I shook it off, far too distracted by the fire consuming the plane to focus on anything else. I picked up the white sheet and hurried away from the inferno, nervously expecting it to explode at any moment, but it never did. Soon the fire began to wane, so I went and collected the first aid box. In my hurry to remove it from the door I had not noticed how light it was and as I picked it up I could immediately tell that it was empty. Opening it to confirm my disappointment, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry, so I settled with another dejected yell and hurled the useless box back into the wreckage to burn with the rest of the plane.
Why, I thought, why have a first aid box if you're not going to fill the fucking thing!
I tried calming myself with some deep breaths. It was easy to blame the pilot for not being properly equipped when in truth I likely had him to thank for surviving the crash at all. The damage to the pilot's side compared to mine suggested he had either willingly or unwillingly caused the plane to crash more on his side, and I owed him the benefit of the doubt to assume it was the former.
With a beaten sigh I sat down, tearing away a quarter of the sheet to wrap my arm in a makeshift sling, and tearing off a bit more to wrap the cut on my head. Nothing else remained to do now but watch plane burn. Eventually the fire faded completely, and the coming dawn began to paint the sky grey.
For several hours I had been weighing up my options: to stay or to leave.
South...
Southwest or East were my only choices if I decided to leave. North would be an ironic march to my death parallel to Africa's greatest life-giving river, and west was four thousand kilometres to the Atlantic, thankfully with a road first but that was likely two or three hundred kilometres away. Somewhere to the southwest lay the Dakhla Oasis from where I had taken off, or at least the roads connecting them, and to the east lay the Nile, even more unmissable and heavily populated.
The only question determining which way to go was how far had I come? I chastised myself for falling asleep almost as soon as the plane's wheels had left the ground. If I had not flown far and Dakhla was no more than a few dozen kilometres away but I decided to try my luck east to reach the Nile then I was doomed; the river would be almost three hundred kilometres away, the nearest road half that. However, if I had slept for some time the Nile could be a mere thirty or so kilometres away, to try and go back the way I came would be certain death.
I sighed. All my options seemed like certain death. I didn't feel like I had slept for very long, but I didn't feel like I had slept for an hour or more either. Through the night I saw no light from any horizon, meaning that I was probably over a hundred kilometres away from the nearest living person. A journey beyond my limits even under the best of circumstances, but injured and barefoot in the summer Sahara? Impossible.
Seeking what little shade the dunes provided as the sun rose, I laid down, covered myself as best I could with the sheet, and decided to wait for rescue. People must know the plane had crashed. They must have a good idea as to where, and the rope of black smoke twisting into the sky above was about as good a signal as I could hope for.
I briefly wondered if I should give the poor pilot a burial, but of course I was in no condition to physically do so, and no condition mentally to deal with how he must look and feel after a night roasting in a burning plane, so I quickly put the thought out of my head.
After sitting idle for hours under the heavy foot of oppressive heat, I somehow managed to fall asleep.
2
Blessed, beloved, water… I stood before a pool walled by marble blocks, at the bottom of which was a magnificent turquoise mosaic. The exact nature of the patterns eluded me but the sight of them gave me great
peace and I knew its pure waters would quench and revitalize me. The pool was very high up, perhaps on a cloud, with the Sahara sprawling below me.
Kneeling to reach into the delightfully cold water I suddenly realised I was unable to cup any of it. I could not drink, no matter what shape my hands made. In a panic I plunged my head under the water, and while I felt the soothing splash against my skin, it would not enter my mouth. In silent frustration I flailed around in the pool, unable to drink a single drop.
A voice called from within the pool, its exact words I could not hear, but it held a promise. A promise that can only be fulfilled if I find it... somewhere to the south.
Late in the afternoon I awoke, sand in my wretchedly dry mouth and my left leg burnt to bright red below my shorts. It must have escaped the shelter of the thin sheet throughout the height of the day, when shallow dunes offered no shade. Escaping the wreck had awarded me a dozen or so little cuts and scrapes, and during my sleep the sea of sand had found its way into every one of them. My broken arm throbbed with every movement, but I tried to ignore my painful discomfort and look around.
No rescue had come it seemed, and in a moment of horror I considered that perhaps a rescue had come but having found no survivors (since I was slightly away from a wreckage and sleeping under a sheet), they decided to leave. I calmed my fear with the rationale that no footprints disturbed the sand by the crash besides my own only for that fear to return as I realised smoke no longer rose from the wreck, and without it the odds of someone finding me had significantly dropped.
South...
Perhaps the prospect of leaving was not as bad as I first thought. Preposterous as it sounds, part of me could not help but believe that a beautiful turquoise pool of life-saving water really did lay within reach to the south. My arm itched and throbbed, my head ached, and my throat begged desperately for anything even vaguely wet.
Waiting for rescue had seemed so logical before, but now it seemed like madness for in truth if the absence of my arrival at Cairo had indeed gone unnoticed then who knows when rescue might come. I also had not considered that before its descent into oblivion the plane may have drifted wildly off course, I had no idea why we even crashed in the first place. Its discovery could take days or even weeks, and if winds shifted and sand buried the plane, it might never be found.
The sun was slowly drifting towards the horizon in the west, so I put it on my right to face south. With my thinking impaired by pain, dehydration, and no small amount of paranoia, I would wait for a rescue no longer and instead wandered off into the desert to find the pool of water from my dreams.
3
It might seem pointless to carry on about such a thing considering my location and predicament, but by God, the heat! It was unbearable! Every step on sun-scorched sand was like sinking my foot into an open fire. I often slipped and fell on the unsteady sand, my useless arm reacting to each trip with a sharp jolt of pain.
Torn shorts and a half-shredded shirt offered little protection, so I tried keeping the sheet between myself and the sun; a tiresome fight against a relentless solar barrage as the sun still managed to find enough holes in my defence to leave sunburnt blotches all over my skin. The very air itself was so thick with heat it was like standing in front of a furnace and trying to breathe hot wool.
Only one distraction from the hellfire existed and that was my other torment: maddening thirst. A crunchy tongue scratched compulsively around my mouth for even the barest hint of moisture and my sand hole of a throat screamed incessantly for relief. An unshakable headache had taken hold, each step angering it.
When the urge came, I tried in desperation to drink my urine, but I was ill-prepared and with only a single hand and no container I lost most of it to unsharing sand. The few drops I did manage brought no relief, and a record-breaking string of curses left my mouth as I remembered throwing away the empty metal first aid box. Various plans by which to do better next time came to mind, but the need has not come again since, and I feared that I had already passed the point where it ever would again.
South…
I pushed on.
Two horrible hours passed, and the sun finally took leave of torturing me to give way to night. The air cooled quickly and as I collapsed in exhaustion it immediately dawned on me how stupid I was for trying to travel by day. I figured I had barely walked three kilometres and the two hours it had taken to do so had marched me near to death; to try it again tomorrow would be suicide. I should keep walking through the night and avoid the day however I could.
With the sun having just set on my right I sat my head back against a dune facing south. I knew little of astronomy and practically nothing about how to navigate by star signs, so I tried organising the shape of the stars above in my head to later avoid walking in circles.
Speaking of the stars: with no clouds, moon, or lights from men, they were on full display, a show that was nothing short of staggering. Despite my suffering, as I lay there bewildered by the sheer enormity of the universe above, I decided that in this moment, with this view, were I to finally perish here upon this dune then it would not be so bad.
Fatigue pulled my eyes shut, and I took comfort in the peace of not caring if they should ever open again.
4
Climbing, climbing, climbing... my dreams took me climbing up an endless staircase of stony cubes. Water awaited me at the top, I knew it. Sweet, pure water, all I had to do to claim it was climb, so climb I did. Water began to trickle down the cubes, evaporating before it could reach me, but I was getting closer! I kept climbing, the water now just out of reach. So close! Too close to stop climbing now! Just... a... little... bit... further...
I woke with my good arm reaching for the next ledge in my dream before coming to my senses and dropping it in disappointment. The closeness of the water sat with me and in muddled thoughts I decided I would have certainly reached the water and been saved had I not woken up. Angrily I closed my eyes and tried to will myself back to sleep.
South...
With sudden clarity I jumped to my feet. No water existed in my sleep, but it did to the south! I looked up to see the stars had not moved much, so my sleep had been short. Good. I would need to make use of every minute I had. Surprisingly revitalized by my nap and unburdened by burning sand and air, I set off at a steady pace, careful to not exhaust myself again.
One commonly held belief is that deserts will drop to freezing at night, and while that may be the case in winter, during the summer the air and sand remained warm, at its coolest point it seemed around a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius.
A further stroke of relief came when I climbed to the top of another miserable dune and saw that beyond it lay a great expanse of flat sand. Perhaps despair should have been my reaction as a rising gibbous moon revealed a horizon without features, but the thought of not having to heave myself up the side of another sand dune any time soon was as close to joy as my situation would allow.
At the bottom of that final dune I sat to rest, sharp pangs of hunger now slowing me. The thirst was an inescapable nightmare, but the hunger I knew would soon subside, and a rest before taking my fastest pace yet would be a necessity.
The moon dimmed the starlight spectacle somewhat, but it was still breathtaking. Stars, planets, and galaxies beyond count made me feel quite small, a tiny speck lost in a patch of bleached yellow on a little blue planet hurtling through the abyss of nothing. Earth seemed as tiny and as meaningless as each grain of sand beneath me. And what things dwelt in the black between silver, as inconceivable to me as I must be to a microbe that calls a grain of sand home? What would such an unfathomable being say to a microbe like me, should they deign me worthy of being spoken to at all?
South...
Ah, but my suffering mind had begun conjuring strange, terrible thoughts so I returned my focus to the trial at hand and stood up. I resisted the urge to sleep again despite fatigue clawing at my eyes and making my limbs feel long and slow. Time was too precious,
and if I was to be tormented by dreams of unreachable water then I would save them for the day.
Off I set again, making better time across the flat expanse than I expected. I stopped looking at the stars for guidance, they (well, specifically the darkness between the stars) had begun to fill me a strange dread, so I kept my eyes down and focused on each step. I knew exactly which way to go, like I was being led, or perhaps more accurately pulled...
...south...
...towards my destination, my prize… fresh, pure, water. Wherever my summons came from, I did not believe I would make it there tonight, and I was far from confident that I would survive the next day. Nevertheless, I carried on. The vague urge to head south that compelled me in the first place was now so strong as to be almost an audible voice, a whisper between steps in the sand. Even thinking the word...
...south...
...now made me unsure if it was a thought of my own or an imposter, a doppelganger of my own inner monologue. I tried to ignore such thoughts or dismiss them as madness from fatigue and thirst, and so I spent many hours caught in a ridiculous mental loop of thinking about anything to not think about thinking about that which I must not think about.
My unhinged thought train and my relentless march carried me through the night, so it was with a blink of surprise that I realised the rising sun was attacking me once more. A kilometre or so ahead rose more large sand dunes (the sight of which brought forth a humourless laugh), and beyond them was… perhaps a mountain? God, a mountainous dune? My vision was unreliable, and I was just… so... tired...
Shrugging off the sudden urge to drop right there I steeled myself to at least make it to the base of the dunes before the sun could unleash its full power upon me. The heat rose steadily and was beyond uncomfortable by the time I reached the dune’s base and collapsed into a ball, wrapping the sheet around me and passing out immediately.
5
Calm... floating... serenity... I was floating on my back in an endless body of water, blissfully enjoying the calm of the moment. My ears below the surface of tiny waves that gently lapped my face cut out the harsh noises of the world, and I kept my eyes closed to savour the sheer tranquillity of the moment. All that existed was me, alone, in the water.
