the shuffle as the hind legs were folded in, and the rocking as they tossed from side to side thrusting outward with their knees to bury them in the cooler subsoil below the burning flints …
At night, hobbled upon the ground close together, they were a wonderful sight, great beached ships of the desert irregularly illuminated by the jumping flames of our fire, sniffing the air and searching the ground about them for tufts of grass or other delicacies. Sleeping looked a less romantic affair. The camel would begin in the light doze position, which consisted of craning out his neck to its full extent and lowering it until only the underside of the jaw was resting on the ground. The rest of the neck slanted stiffly aloft. With the whole weight of the beast’s great neck resting on the chin, it looked comically uncomfortable. Later, the eyes would close and the neck progressively relax until all of it was resting on the ground, at which point the camel had an air of gentle helplessness. However well secured at night, if they had a mind to move they did, and mornings would often find them thirty or forty yards away. Sometimes they went farther.
Rejoining us after settling the camels, Abd al Wahab would dip his huge hands near the fire to burn off the cold that set in briskly after sunset. He would cast an expert eye on its structure and, without a word, rearrange any branches we might have added in his absence.
‘What are we having for dinner?’ he would ask either Ned or me, as though addressing his wife.
‘Tuna fish pasta,’ was invariably the reply.
Rightly, he did not appear to rate our culinary skills highly. A packet soup – perhaps chicken and cumin or, more exotically, Stilton, cauliflower and potato – would be followed by endless variations of this meal. One night, in a crude attempt to vary our diet, I threw together a stew of lentils, potatoes, tomato puree, garlic, onions and tuna. It was revolting. Ned obviously felt the same but, ever polite, murmured something about it being ‘interesting’. Abd al Wahab dutifully pushed a spoon around his bowl for a few minutes and then retired to bed earlier than usual. I looked for it the next morning, thinking it might do for a quick lunch on the move. Abd al Wahab had emptied it into the sands.
The country continued remorselessly flat, stony and grey. The horizons were unchanging. The sense of limitless space, of being a tiny, insignificant party moving through a timeless continuum, was affecting. We felt a great freedom, contemplating the surrounding wilderness that was purged of modern life, slipping into a more natural state of eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, waking with dawn, and forming a strengthening bond with the five camels without whom we could not get across this bland, burning expanse.
But it was difficult to concentrate on the landscape for long. More often than not it was too monotonous: there were too few features of interest to break the flint-strewn emptiness. Dwelling on it for too long made you realize how slowly the caravan was travelling and what a vast distance still lay ahead. Sometimes we talked to while away the time, bringing the camels alongside each other as we smoked cigarettes, sometimes we drifted several hundred yards apart and lost ourselves in our own thoughts.
The country was so flat and lifeless that the slightest shape in the distance aroused great excitement. ‘What’s that black thing over there?’ one of us would shout. Twenty minutes later we would be inspecting a discarded oil barrel or wandering through debris from an old army camp – junked machines, water tanks, rusting equipment. We kicked through piles of flints despondently and asked ourselves how long this sort of country would last.
On the seventh day, it changed gloriously. In a fulgor of sunshine we arrived at the top of a steep, boulder-strewn pass that looked out over an immeasurable plain flanked on the south by the outer shores of the Awbari Sand Sea and on the north by an unbroken ridge of ruddy sandstone, cropped off to a level height. We split the camels into smaller groups and picked our way down, obsessed with sand and impatient to put the boredom of flint behind us. The camels did not share our enthusiasm. After a week on the flat, the gradient was an affront. They descended in lurching jolts with heavily planted steps and terror in their eyes. Only Gobber was unruffled. As ever, thick creamy cords of saliva poured from his mouth: walking within thirty feet of him in a rasping wind was a hazardous affair. Sometimes, when I was lost in a deep daytime reverie, Gobber’s billowing streams of spit, spangling attractively in the sunlight, splashed across my face and I came to with a start.
We skidded the final yards on to the plain. Our first sight of sand dunes was unforgettable. They started several miles away across the flats, piled high, row after row of them massed together like troops ready for battle, an unconquerable army whose rearguard reached deep into the horizon. The first few rows were clearly delineated and the smooth curves of their outlines were distinct, now stretching towards the sky, now plunging sharply into deep troughs, blown into elegant shapes by the invisible wind. As you looked farther into the distance, their contours started to fade under the blaze of sun, merging into each other until all that remained was a mass of eye-dazzling sand bearing only the faintest trace of shape or slope.
On the plain it felt as though we were entering a no-man’s land between two ancient foes of sand and rock. To the south, among the first soothing waves of the incandescent sand sea, hulks of dark rock stood like advance scouts behind enemy lines, a rallying point for the next attack. It was a hopeless conflict that neither side would ever win.
We passed a couple of acacia trees – the first we had come across – and Abd al Wahab said this was Nahiyah, an area in which we would reach another well that evening. In late afternoon we sighted a broad band of green that marked the watering point. There seemed to be signs of life among the blur of scrub, but from this distance it was impossible to say what they were. Gradually, as we approached, they became clearer, until we could make out three tiny silhouettes, immobile on a shoulder of elevated ground above the plain. They faced us directly across the plain and there seemed to be an open challenge in their manner. Was this a Touareg reception committee? A fearless party of desert raiders? Or were they hostile tribesmen guarding their well against the hated infidel?
With each step we took towards them, the figures grew larger. One was a tall, lithe figure, an elegant man wearing a jalabiya. Around his head, the ruffled outline of the tagilmus was clearly visible. There was, even from this distance, a marked nobility and self-assurance about him. The figure next to him could hardly have been more different. His profile was enormous. Part Sumo wrestler, part urban Arab, he wore a dark anorak over a voluminous jalabiya, making the latter look like a clownish flowing skirt. This comic trio was completed by a much smaller figure, dwarfed by his two companions, in army jacket, purple trousers, and shades worn over a khaki attempt at a shish that looked like a bandanna gone wrong. He seemed full of nervous energy. While his companions stood stock still, he was bustling about, growing more animated as we drew nearer. When we were yards away, this mad figure hurried forward at us. It was Mohammed Ali. He had said he might drive out to see us in a week.
‘Ohhhhhh,’ (this in a tone of prodigious satisfaction), ‘Mr Jesten and Mr Nid, really I am happy to see you!’ he shouted into the bloody sunset. ‘God bless you. How are you? Fine? As soon as you left Ghadames I was worrying about you and wondering if you were OK. I thought maybe you died from no water or something. Now I see you, I am in good condition. How are you? Fine?’
It was like meeting up with a long-lost friend. He was a bouncy ball of enthusiasm, rebounding between patches of scrub, amassing a towering pile of firewood, and repeating at intervals his delight at seeing us (‘I am too happy now, believe me!’). Ibrahim, a man whose figure suggested a heavy and lifelong involvement with food, smiled and suggested a dinner of tuna fish pasta. The most unobtrusive newcomer was Ali, Abd al Wahab’s elder brother.
Mohammed Ali, our air traffic control expert, produced a roaring beacon of a fire that could have been seen for miles around. While Ibrahim attended to the cooking, Abd al Wahab and Ali set about dividing a fifty-kilogram sack of sha’eer (barley) among the camels. The scattered pasturage we had come
