Back of Beyond (18 page)
In the intense heat of the Sahara the indigo dyes of their robes would gradually seep into their skin turning it a distinct shade of blue. Not surprisingly they became known as the “Blue People” and their mysterious lifeways, their freedom to roam at will, and their ferocity when threatened gave the name a romantic ring, intriguing to Western travelers. (Blue bodies are now a rarity. Modern dying methods have virtually eliminated the transference of color even in temperatures as high as 130 degrees.)
The Tuareg detest cities, even relatively small ones such as Goulimine and Tan-Tan, which are the endpoints of their Saharan camel caravans. They come to trade, to buy supplies and then leave as quickly as possible to return to their ancient tracks across the Sahara, their only home. But again, modern ways have brought change to their apparently ageless traditions. Roads, trucks, and planes have made Saharan trade a brisker business, and the slow caravans are becoming an anomaly. Their demise has been quickened by constant border bickerings among Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania, which make desert travel hazardous.
M’stafa and I drive miles from Goulimine on rough sand tracks to find the Tuareg traders. We eventually locate their camp by a lovely oasis set against a line of low hills. At first their reception is muted, if not hostile. No mint tea is offered (a bad sign) and Ali, the small, wiry leader of the group, reeled off a string of reasons why this foreigner (bristling with cameras and possessing a very limited Arabic vocabulary) is crazy even to consider a trans-Saharan journey. He begins by emphasizing the terrible heat, the discomfort and lack of privacy, the backside-blistering bounce of camel riding for eight hours at a stretch. Then he emphasizes the length of the journey, maybe up to a month across twelve hundred miles of the wildest country imaginable (M’stafa translates his horrific descriptions with relish), and, pointing straight at my well-fed frame, the atrocious diet of sour camel milk and old goat. Finally, as a grand denouement, he adds the fact that he will not allow any photograpy of the three women who are part of the caravan.
Now I’ve always believed in little miracles—the kind that seem to come when you want something so badly that you don’t (or won’t) see the obstacles. The more I’m told something is impossible, the more I know that little miracles will occur if I keep my mind fixed on the endpoint.
And M’stafa is my miracle worker. In a stroke of genius he bows graciously to Ali, leads me inside one of the dark camel-hair tents, and carefully fits me out in the djellaba, robes, dagger, and headdress of the Blue People. Then he proudly strides with me back to Ali’s perch on a rock in the shade of a palm tree.
There is utter silence. Ali looks me up and down very slowly. Some of the other Tuareg emerge from their tents and stand staring at me. At first I feel rather stupid. Then I realize that the robes are in fact most comfortable; the headdress seems almost like a crown, and the heavy dagger on my right side makes me feel like some kind of warrior (memories of my childhood battles against the infidels in the hayfields behind my house). I seem to be taller and filled with a strange energy.
Next thing I know Ali leaps up and begins hugging me, and laughing and hugging me again. Then everyone is smiling; even the camels begin burping and braying. M’stafa gives me one big wink and that is it—the deal is done. I am part of the caravan; I’ve been accepted in spite of all the objections. The little miracle has happened, and the adventure I’ve waited for most of my life is finally about to begin. I am going to cross the Sahara.
Ali, the leader of our small caravan of twenty camels, a few goats, twelve men, and three women, is the first up. It is still dark. He adds wood to the smoldering fire, and the women begin to heat the cauldron of harira soup, a rich mixture of lentils, chick-peas, and meat, and bake the morning farina bread in the sand under the fire. Everyone except me seems to know exactly what to do. I help lower and pack the men’s heavy camel-hair tent (the women have already folded their own flimsy cotton tent), then I make a final trip to the little oasis pond to fill two remaining goatskins with the cold sweet water.
As I kneel by the spring the first gash of scarlet appears across the flat horizon and the brilliant star dome under which I’ve slept for two nights now begins to fade. I watch the shadowy figures scurry about on the bluff, loading the camels and tightening the ropes. The animals are now fully awake and irascible, bellowing, screaming, and spitting.
Before leaving, we all walk together (chewing on the sweet dried dates we eat with every meal) to a quiet valley below the campsite. Here small piles of desert rocks are marked by vertical slabs of stone. Ali kneels on the hard ground and the others follow. Fatima and her two granddaughters, teachers of the sensual
guedra
dance; Abdulali, the old man of the group, bearded and veteran of seventy years of desert travel; Saiid, the foxy-faced humorist, always making us laugh; Rahman, hardly more than a boy, and his stern-faced father, Ahmed, and seven other men who had joined us the previous day.
They have come to say their farewells to members of their tribe who have been buried in this quiet place for generations. The smallest pile of rocks marks the grave of Ali’s youngest boy who died almost exactly a year ago. He prays quietly as the sun eases over the horizon, spraying the desert with color.
A few minutes later we are off, swaying together across the red plateau, leather saddles creaking, the camels still protesting with wide-open mouths, exposing sets of dangerous-looking yellow incisors. A breeze blows, rattling the desert bushes, all tinged with green following a series of fall rainshowers. During the summer months we would have traveled mainly at night, guided by the constellations, and rested during the heat of the day, but Ali decides to risk day travel during this “cooler” season (a euphemism for temperatures under 100 degrees).
By midmorning it is hot (at least by my standards). The flat landscape dances with color. Far to our left are a string of dunes, their knife-edged summits dark against creamy hollows. I am amazed by the range of hues—always changing as we move slowly across an enormous plain, swimming in light.
Around midday we climb a low ridge, the camels sweating profusely now and their mouths dripping with frothy saliva. Ahead of us, a vast bowl of shimmering dunes stretches away into the haze. There is no sign that anyone has ever been here before us. Ali is trying a new route to reach a string of oases near the Mauritanian border. The whole enormous vista seems like another planet—a lost world where nothing has ever changed.
A sense of timelessness begins to creep in. The camels are linked together by ropes but we are all far apart and conversation is rare. Wrapped in a turban and floating ten feet high in the air, I vanish into the cooler spaces of my mind, lulled by the lolloping animals into exploring netherworlds where thoughts take on the tangibility of form and illusions become realities. There are spectacular mirages where the whole landscape is a lake-studded panorama of blue and gold. But after a while you get used to that—you almost expect it—and your mind becomes totally divorced from your body in the heat-stunned stillness. It focuses on little details and childhood memories for what seems like hours at a time—the brain conjures up brilliant fantasies, all teeming together under the blazing sun.
Whatever you notice, a brittle needle of eroded rock, a sudden shattered scarp, a few bones in the scrub, your mind plays with like a kitten and its ball. And then you begin to fly! I remember so well, skimming high over the dunes in a state of utter weightlessness; all I had to do was tip my arms one way or the other and my body would cut through the air clean as a knife until reaching equilibrium as I turned my shoulders. I was so alive! I felt I could fly forever in this soft silence under the bluest of blue skys, circling the globe effortlessly….
Something grabs my djellaba and I’m aware of Ahmed’s angry face a few inches from mine. He is babbling away, shaking me furiously. I can’t understand a word he is saying. Then Ali comes up on the lead camel and explains in guttural English that I must never allow myself to fall asleep on my high perch as a tumble would quickly end my journey and jeopardize the whole caravan.
Ahmed’s wrath is nothing compared to my own self-anger when I realize how stupid I’ve been. No more floating fantasies I promise myself, and vow to learn the desert ways as quickly as possible.
In the late afternoon we pause for prayers and the preparation of mint tea, one of the most soothing rituals of desert travel. We all sit in a circle in the sand watching the water come to a boil, waiting for just the right amount of frothing in the pan. Then Fatima pours a precisely measured amount onto the mixture of tea and dry mint in the silver pot with the conical lid, an ancient battered utensil treated with great reverence by everyone. We wait again, this time for the slow infusion. Then she adds pieces of sugar broken from a solid block and begins the pouring ritual by picking up the first of the small glasses lined up on a richly decorated silver tray. She lifts the teapot high in the air and, without spilling a drop, pours a stream of green-brown liquid into the glass. We can smell the tea, fresh and spicy, in our dried-up noses, but we don’t drink yet. Instead we watch as Fatima pours it back into the pot and repeats the process with a second glass; like an alchemist, she checks for just the right amount of aeration and bubble count. Four times she repeats the process until finally offering the glasses, one by one, to the salivating circle. And it’s so good, sweet and perfumed, trickling over parched tongues and down our throats, warming as it goes, bringing smiles to dried lips. Conversation begins again and we drink the customary three glasses before eating dates, bread dipped in honey, and scoops of camel milk from a communal bowl. Ah! Life seems so good.
Ali had warned us that on this new route it might be a few days before our first oasis. He had decided to travel into the night as the camels seemed fit and frisky. When we finally reach a resting place in a sheltered hollow on the edge of yet one more gravel plain, the moon is high and we are all too weary to pitch the tents or even eat. We unload the camels, hobble their legs to prevent them from straying too far when grazing (another euphemism for their desperate search for anything worth nibbling in that empty land!). Then after lighting a fire we wrap ourselves up in blankets and vanish into a long deep sleep.
For the next three days there are no more dunes. My assumption that the Sahara consists mainly of a sand sea rolling on forever is badly mistaken. Much of our route lies across interminable gray gravelly plains where my romantic enthusiasm for infinity begins to pall. The animals are becoming weary now, bodies jerking in protest as they tear their padded soles on sharp-edged rocks. It’s a long time since we’ve had fresh water and drinking the sour dregs from the goatskins has become a necessary but unpleasant ritual.
In the early evening, when we halt again for mint tea, I sit with Ali and we watch the camels in their endless search for food. “They are so patient. So strong.” He smiles and tugs at his djellaba. “We learn from them how to be strong ourselves. They teach us again and again.”
Ali doesn’t talk much. In fact the whole group is rather silent, as if everything that needs to be said has been said long ago, and they exist as a single entity, bound together by years of common experiences. Ali’s commands are mere nods and single gestures; everyone has a role and fulfills it without question. I wait to be given mine.
The sudden reality of an oasis is hard to grasp at first. Abruptly you are shunted out of your mental fantasyland into the actuality of other humans, the smell of unfamiliar dishes being cooked, the pleasure of deep palm shade, and the utter delight at the sound of splashing water.
You experience a kind of desert jet lag. It can take hours to recover from the long days of riding. I would talk and not remember what I said. I would look and not remember what I saw. But gradually the peace of the oasis seeps in. I sit with the others in the sand as they meet old friends and listen to tales of desert troubles, the fortunes of other families, the lucrative trading deals they have done in the south.