To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > Travel April 5, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/travel/feature/1999/04/05/sahara Ten days in the Sahara A two-man trek through the desert teaches a traveler about seeing, silence and self. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Derek Peck It is late afternoon and I'm standing at the limits of Zagora, a sandy oasis town at the edge of the Sahara, in Morocco. I am gazing out at the great desert, to the place where the earth and sky join in an infinite expanse. A long, circuitous route has brought me here, driven by a deep desire. I am already in the Sahara, I know, but I am still being drawn there, out there: I want to hurl myself into the desert, to be swallowed entire by its vastness and silence, its peaceful and yet hostile indifference. 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.The next morning I make my way to Amezrou, a typical Berber village of sun-dried mud and rush dwellings, called ksour, that sits on the oasis' opposite hillside, overlooking the verdant palm groves. There I find Ali, who in daylight looks less intimidating than he did in the windstorm twilight of the night before. He is dressed in the same cotton frock and turban and is steadily loading packs of supplies onto two camels. When he sees me approaching, he smiles broadly -- "Salaam wa laykoom," he says -- and waves me over. I am relieved by the reception. I have been experiencing some trepidation; to see Ali, a true man of the desert, not merely at ease, but eager to get out there, relaxes me. I know I'm essentially handing my life over to him. I'm going out into a land that's calling me as if it knows me, and Ali will be my leader. "We are almost ready," he says, with another big smile on his face. "Put down your bag and I will load it." After a quick rundown of our provisions -- everything from meat and vegetables to tea, fresh mint, dates, bread and spices, plus several plastic jugs of water -- he introduces me to the camels. "Here are Mimone and Meskou," he says. They are two cute, elegant and impossibly smelly creatures. "They will work hard for us," he says. Then he tells me to get on. I have never been on a camel before and don't know exactly what to do. Although a camel lowers itself to the ground for you, unlike a horse, it's much wider and I'm almost tempted to get a running start. In the end, I grab hold of the saddle's knob and heave myself, legs spread gymnastically, into place. After I'm settled, with repeated clicks of Ali's tongue, the camel jerks powerfully forward, then back and up to a startling height. The next thing I know we're loping toward the desert. But after my first ecstatic minutes I feel a little embarrassed: While I sit atop Meskou, bouncing rhythmically up and down, Ali walks alone. I understand that this is meant to be part of my "experience"; a nomad in the desert almost never rides. So shortly after we're out of town I ask Ali to stop our mini-caravan and I get down. I want to walk like him. By noon all sight of Zagora, that last outpost of civilization, has disappeared behind a visibly sweltering horizon. We have been under the sun for several hours and its force is truly stunning; I wonder how I can stand one more minute of it, let alone 10 whole days. Ali steers us toward the shade of a thorn tree to make camp while we wait out the high afternoon heat. He throws a Moroccan carpet over the ground, which becomes our home, and sets to building a fire. In these first few hours in the desert I make numerous discoveries. The atmosphere of emptiness, the incredible distances, the general absence of sound are all new to me, and I scribble impressions in my notebook. Meanwhile Ali, a former nomad who has become sedentary only in recent years due to a prolonged drought, serenely works the fire in a world he knows so well. It is easy to see how happy he is here. Although he is quiet, he softly hums a Berber folk song as he prepares the tea and dices vegetables for the tajine, the ubiquitous Moroccan stew that will be our staple for the entire journey. As I watch him I understand that this giant desert, and not Zagora, is his truest home. Moments later he fills our glasses and I drink my first tea in the Sahara. Strangely, it is an almost nostalgic moment, due perhaps to the intensity with which I savor the celebrated experience. As I lounge back across the carpet, the desert seems a remarkable and pleasant place. It is this peacefulness, of course, that I sought by coming here, and throughout our lunch I marvel at the immensity of the space that surrounds us and our comfortable smallness within it. Later that evening, a half-day beyond where we stopped for lunch, the desert astonishes me again when suddenly I become aware of the absolute silence. Earlier I had noticed the impressive lack of sound, but the flies that buzzed around us as we trekked disturbed the quiet. Now they have gone still with the fall of night, but there remains the crackling fire. So I stand up and walk away until it fades and the only sound left is of my footsteps. I stop and quiet them too. Then there is nothing. No sound. So this is the silence I have heard of. The wind gently blows, and I hear it in my ears. Then it ceases, and I don't.The next day we start out early; by mid-morning we've already been on the move for more than three hours. But as I look around me it seems as though we've stood still. Nothing has changed. There’s just a copper-brown plain of small rocks in every direction and an immense red granite massif, or jbel, in the distance that has maybe gotten closer. The day before I had something to gauge our movement by -- the slow disappearance of Zagora -- but today we are surrounded by an expansive landscape that appears to be identical in all directions. Even though the ground keeps passing under my feet and I am ever more aware of the toll of my spent energy, it seems as though we have not moved. It occurs to me that even though the previous day I had made so many discoveries, it is now that I am truly in the desert: I have become beguiled by its deceptions. It is about this time, too, with the sun again violently bearing down on us, that I trot up alongside Mimone. Without slowing our pace, I pull out of my pack a long thin strip of cloth I'd bought at the souk in Marrakesh and wrap it around my head -- the way I've seen Ali do it. I've been avoiding this because it seemed silly for me, a Westerner; but now, with temperatures exceeding 120 degrees, it seems absolutely necessary. Although I imagine my turban is sadly formed, at least the sun is no longer beating on my head. When Ali finally notices me, he laughs. "You make a funny nomad," he says. "Here, I will show you." And he gives me a lesson in turbans. Not long afterward, he gives me a lesson in seeing. As we are walking, he points toward the horizon and asks me what I see. A little confused, I ask him what he means. He waves his arm slowly across the view and says, "Out there, what do you see?" "The desert," I say. "You do not see camels?" "No." He points again and says, "There. You see? Far." I look again but still can't see them. "They are very small," he says, "like the trees; very far, but they are moving." Then, at last, I see them, and Ali is right. They are minute, and like the grayish outlines of trees. There are five of them, inching almost imperceptibly across the plain. "Do you see people?" I look again, this time more focused in the area around the camels, but see nothing. "There," Ali says, pointing to a spot behind the camels -- closer to us. Suddenly I see them. There are two small figures. They are even smaller than the camels, and it seems incredible to me that I can make them out. I ask Ali how far that is, and he asks me what I mean. I say, in distance, how far in distance? He says they are a couple of hours away. "Maybe, if they are not traveling, we will reach them." By midday we are again sheltered by shade, the carpet spread out, the teapot on the coals, and Mimone and Meskou slurping from a nearby water hole. One of the nomads we spotted earlier has seen us and wanders over. Ali invites him for tea, and the man, part dusty, part dignified, slips off his crusted leather sandals and joins us on the carpet. He and Ali begin a long, rhythmic discourse in Berber that seems to mimic the preparation of the tea. The man says he's looking for four camels he left out to graze the night before, which were missing in the morning. Ali explains to me that this nomad and his son have had to travel here from beyond the red jbels in order to find enough scrub brush for the herd to feed on. This is a problem that has caused more and more nomads to move closer to villages and towns like Zagora, or to settle in them, as Ali has. Although nomads hobble their camels by tying their front feet with rope, the camels still sometimes wander off. Earlier this morning I had had to wait for Ali to find Meskou. Although five camels represent a small fortune to a nomad, not to mention a mountain of status, this man is well-composed. His only outward sign of concern is that from time to time he stands up and takes out an ancient pair of field glasses and scans the horizon. Upon seeing nothing, he sits back down and pours another tea. As is often the case in Morocco, tea brings forth more conversation, which in turn elicits an invitation to stay for lunch. Ali cuts a few more carrots and potatoes and adds them to the stew. Throughout the meal I find myself observing this man with a sharp curiosity. He is, after all, my first encounter in the desert, and the first person I've met who is actually living a nomadic life. He is tall and lean, with thick bronze skin that is unbelievably weathered, and he has soft, rich brown eyes that look much gentler than his austere home. As I watch him eat, I find myself considering the enormous chasm that must exist between us, the two worlds, so shockingly different, from which we come. Presently, his son comes and joins us and eats the rest of the tajine from the pot. He is so young and frail-looking, dressed in dirty, ripped Western clothing -- a buttoned shirt and cotton trousers -- that I cannot imagine him searching after camels in this heat. Later Ali tells me the pair had not eaten in two days. "That is the life of the nomad," he says, "always dirty, always hungry, trying to make a life from where there is nothing." A while after lunch our new friend is still among us, and his camels are still lost. I am amazed by the languor with which he visits us. One more tea and a few more friendly words and then he slips his sandals back on and steps back into the desert. I watch him walk away, becoming smaller as he goes, leaving Ali and I, once again, alone. I ask Ali if the man will be able to find his camels. "Inshallah," he says: God willing. We rest a while longer in the shade, then pack again and are off. The desert, which at lunch seemed so small and intimate, is once more spread out before us in all its barren and burning grandeur. A few days later we have crossed through the jbels into a larger basin, and we carry onward into the desert's maw. Throughout the trek we have followed a grueling routine: rising at dawn; walking from sometime before 7 until approximately noon; pausing in some besieged sliver of shade, where we wait out the most brutal hours of the day; then moving again until just before sunset. Other than on the first day, when I was a bit touched by the sun, I've been fine. Suddenly one afternoon I feel sick. At first there's an aching in my joints; a bit later I feel feverish and chilled and queasy. For a while I try to conceal this from Ali, hoping it will just go away, but that effort is lost when I suddenly heave my lunch onto the sand. Fortunately, that sends the queasiness away and I'm able to tramp on until sunset, when we stop. My will is aided by the first sight of the dunes, which appear like a rolling orange sea in the distance. Ali informs me that tonight we will be sleeping in their midst. That first evening I am happier to be there than I am weakened, and I take some time to walk around and snap photos before nightfall. However, I get the sense Ali knows what's in store for me: Once he has the carpet spread out and the blankets off Mimone and Meskou, he's telling me to lie down. "You have been bitten by the sun," he says. "You need to rest." I don't know whether it's the sun or just a strong case of turista that has finally caught me, but soon I can tell Ali is right, and I curl up in the blankets by the fire, feeling strangely vulnerable and lost.That night, as on all the others of this journey, Ali and I don't talk much. He builds the fire, prepares the tajine and later makes tea, and then we sit quietly by the fire under the stars. At times, Ali has questions for me about my life. But the pace with which he asks, and especially the pace with which he moves from one query to another, always leaving a gap for silent contemplation in between, is slow. Slow is the correct word for the way he speaks and listens, but I would rather say that he is gentle. This is soothing, despite my illness; as Ali pours me another mint tea I am lulled into thoughts of nomads spending entire lives traversing this desert. What a humbling place, I think. What a precarious life. I understand now that all who live here have made a deal for a very fragile freedom. It's a deal I'm not sure I want to make, although I know it's too late. I find myself wishing I were home. Praying for sleep. I do drift off, but then wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. It's the kind of sudden awakening that comes from nightmares and high fevers. I see the sky full of stars but don't know where I am. I look around and see Ali sleeping next to me, I see our packs on the ground, see the opaque dunes and watch them stretching into the darkness. Suddenly I remember that I'm in the desert, but this recognition of where I am, usually so comforting, fails to soothe me. I'm both burning up and shivering, aching from head to toe, and feeling like I'm lost in another world. I have to get up from my sleeping spot, urgently, to vomit. I go behind a sand dune with my flashlight. The air is cool now and immediately I'm cold. I feel terrible, lost, alone. Why am I here? What was I thinking? What if I die? I feel so afraid. But afraid of what? There's nothing. I walk back to the carpet. Back to my bed. For what seems like hours, I lie awake in a lonely terror. The night is immense, black and limitless. I thought the desert was large by day, but now it feels much larger -- and yet, at the same time, terrifyingly small. I am surrounded by nothingness -- that great expanse of physical and psychological space in which what we had hoped for is missing and what is there has no meaning. It is not merely the desert that threatens me but a host of worries from home. There are worries of work and accomplishment, of love and friendship and family. But it is strange: The things that worry me also seem meaningless, as if they, and me along with them, are slipping away. In fact, that's why they worry me. What would I do without them? What would I be? As I'm lying there, I desperately want to run back to the world and the life I know. But surrounded by Africa's great Sahara, it feels as though that world, both as a place and in all of its conceptions, no longer exists. And that begs the question: Who are we when the world that formed us is gone? I don't know, and the desert is indifferent. So this is the silence I have heard of. In the morning I sleep late. Ali finally wakes me and says we must get moving across the sand; it is too hot to stay, he says, and we are running low on water. Halfway into the morning, I feel so weak and dizzy I nearly pass out. Ali shifts some of our packs from Mimone to Meskou and then lifts me up onto the camel and covers me with a thin cloth. I ride that way the rest of the day. At times I look up and see nothing but dunes. I still feel lost, beyond any possible return, but I tell myself that Ali knows where he's going, and knows where the water is. The following day, by mid-afternoon, we are ready to leave the dunes and head for an oasis that is visible beyond them. Although it is real, with several beautiful palm trees rising out of the earth, it is exactly as I would imagine a mirage to be. It seems to be a miracle, and the shade the trees cast is so dense, so dark, it can be seen clearly from where we are, several hundred meters away. But will there be water? I ask. "Inshallah," Ali says. Inshallah, Inshallah. This is the land of Inshallah. Everything depends on the will of God. The nomad will not find his camels unless God is willing. We will not find more water unless God is willing. I will not survive my sun poisoning, or my identity crisis, without God willing it. I'm beginning to understand this mentality, which is essentially surrender; I see how in this powerful desert, there is no other way. You are not going to struggle against all odds. You are not going to triumph over nature. There is nothing for you to fashion, nothing to make use of. This place is empty, and everything that comes is a gift. Everything depends upon the grace of God. When we arrive, at sunset, there is just enough light left for Ali to check the water hole. He walks behind some bushes and disappears. I find that I am nervous while waiting. Clearly, I had not considered this possibility before the trip. I had just put my trust in Ali -- and, I admit, in Allah. Finally Ali returns. "There is water," he says. I am relieved. Shukran, I think. Thank you. Ali decides we should not travel for a day. "We will stop for you to rest," he says. And so we spend all of the next day around the oasis. While I am convalescing in the shade, Ali replenishes our water from the well and scales a palm tree to pull down fresh dates. The next morning we pack and are on the move again. Our day of rest under the palm fronds was just what I needed and I'm feeling much better. Besides recovering physically, our pause has given me time to contemplate my place in this world, when what I had considered my place had vanished. I haven't come to any solid conclusions, but slowly my enchantment with the desert has returned to replace my fear of it -- and I think the same could be said about my enchantment with life. For the rest of the trip, I wake each morning with an utter sense of wonder and walk our pathless trail in peace. On the next to last day of our journey, we cross a rocky passage back through the red jbels to regain the Draa Valley, and descend the other side, heading not for Zagora, but toward a small village called Tagounit. As we enter the first small settlement, I feel as though I'm back, like I've returned to a place I know, somewhere certain -- even though I've never visited this place and my actual "home" is still thousands of miles away. Children are outdoors playing and one by one they run towards us, barefoot and dusty, shouting something in Berber. Very quickly there is a whole throng of them on our trail, running behind us and from the sides, all shouting the same rhythmic call. "Hat hat Ayilorhman," they yell. "Hat hat Ayilorhman." As the children chase us and get closer, I see their faces are beaming, overridden with joy. Excited and perplexed, I ask Ali what they're saying. He turns and with a smile on his face, perhaps anticipating my satisfaction, says, "They are saying, 'Welcome, welcome, Camelman.'" It is an unforgettable moment. We went into the desert as ordinary men and now come out of it as heroes. Our last stop is at the house of Ali's friend in Tagounit. Abdel is an older man, maybe 50, and lives in an earthen house with his wife and two children. A couscous is prepared to celebrate the unexpected arrival of friends. We sit and eat by candlelight around a circular table. After dinner, Abdel offers us hashish. Ali does not smoke, but is happy to load the pipe and pass it between us. The rest of the evening is spent languidly talking, sprawled on the cushions on the floor. Ali acts as our interpreter, since Abdel does not speak French, and slowly the story of our journey comes out. Perhaps it is just the high, but as I tell of my adventure it feels as though it happened long ago. I tell the story of our journey, but skip the part about my fear, the part about how I felt lost and worried that I would never return. Still, I know I cannot hide it; Ali knows. Later, when the night is late and silent, Ali and I leave Abdel and go to sleep outdoors, "under the beautiful stars," as Ali says in French. It is my last night. I am both contented and wistful, and also anxious about leaving this place. What irony: I was so afraid in the desert that I would not get back, so afraid I would lose grasp of what I considered to be my self, yet now on the eve of my return I find that I am anxious too. It is not yet clear to me how I shall return, or who I shall be when I do. The next day we walk easily the remaining distance to Zagora, with the desert red and beautiful behind us. We arrive shortly after our stop for lunch. Back at the stable, I am both satisfied and ambivalent about the end. "Maybe we will see each other again," I say. "Inshallah," Ali says. "Yes," I say, shaking his hand. "Inshallah." And we hug and say goodbye. salon.com | April 5, 1999