I begin asking around about the possibility of a trek; I meet a teenage boy who tells me he can help. He brings me to a small carpet depot, ushers me into the back room and tells me to wait. A younger boy makes tea, and then, as night is falling, a dust storm kicks up outside and a portentous breeze blows through the storehouse. Suddenly, as if blown in by the wind, two men in frocks and turbans enter through the back and sit with me.

Slowly, they unwind their turbans and introduce themselves. The one man, with light skin and reddish hair, is named M'ahmid; the other, much darker, with a thick black mustache and a somewhat imposing presence, is Ali. As is the custom in Morocco -- indeed, throughout the Sahara -- we do not talk business right away. Instead we chat pleasantly over the mint tea. When the second glass is poured, we begin to discuss the details of my journey. We speak in French.

"Could you be ready to go tomorrow?" M'ahmid asks.

"Yes," I say.

He informs me there is a small group of French visitors whom Ali is taking into the desert for two days and I can go with them.

But I say no. "I want to go alone. And I want to go longer. Is that possible?"

He and Ali begin to talk among themselves, in Berber. The language, with its glottal clicks and deep, guttural resonances, is so different that I can't even guess, through gesture or intonation, what's being said. Then M'ahmid says: "For how long do you wish do go?"

"Ten days," I say. It sounds like a good number to me.

"That is a long time," he says.

"Well," I say, "I want to feel the desert. I want to go long enough for that."

He looks at me a second without saying anything, as if assessing the fortitude of my will, then speaks again with Ali in Berber.

Finally, M'ahmid says yes: Ali will take me, and he himself will guide the French.

Next page | Into the desert