Soft Desolation

A rolling golden-brown sea of sand all the way to horizon.  The sun, hidden behind a thin cloud cover, is beginning to set.  Outside of a few voices in the distance, behind some dune, total quiet.  

Earlier, down in the camp, Bashir pointed to the west in the direction of three large sandy hills.  “I meet you at the top of the big hill at 6.  I bring drinks.”  

I point to what looks like the tallest of three, a flat ridge on the left.  

“No, no, the one in the center.”

From where I’m standing, the conical hill in the center doesn’t look like the biggest, but it is in the center.  I point at it.  “That one?”

“We meet at six.”

Like the Dades Gorge, there don’t seem to be any paths.  Only this time, we don’t have a guide.  At around six we take off into the dunes heading west.  Smooth undulations of undisturbed sand.  Is this some private party Bashir is holding just for the two of us?  We proceed with sinking footsteps where no footsteps have sunk before.  The hill in the center shaped like the top to a tajine pot shows no signs of activity.  

Ella stops on the crest of a small dune where the climb had us high-stepping as fast as we could so we didn’t get swallowed by the deep softness of the sand.  She calls my attention to a group of people collecting on the ridge to our left.  

“But that’s not the hill in the center,” I object.  Then I hear a snorting sound, like a camel trying to clear its sinuses.  (It’s my dg rising out of the sifting sand like a djinn, “You’ve been in the Sahara now, for what?  Thirty minutes?  And already you’re Lawrence of Arabia leading the charge, ignoring the obvious, as more and more people gather on the hill you haven’t chosen.”)

I urge Ella on to the peak of the unpeopled hill.  While we’re scoping out what appears to be an infinite beach rippling out to the west, we hear the growl of an engine and spot a jeep bounding its way up to the base of the hill on our left.  It stops and a couple of turbaned men in djellabas get out and haul a cooler up to the people waiting at the top.  Ella shoots me the “I told you so” look.

This time the Master of Misdirection (dg’s new title for me) follows Ella in a quick laborious trudge up and down ankle-engulfing dunes to join the other guests already enjoying their glasses of wine.  A cheerful Canadian  couple in their fifties sits on the dune-ridge gazing at a the vanishing light sinking behind a a streak of wispy clouds.  Further along the ridge young American newlyweds celebrate the view with their accompanying photographer.  A French family digs through the cooler searching for soft drinks.   Ella gratefully receives a glass of chilled white wine.  The Master of Misdirection, Ali Baba bin Berzerki Al Buquerque, is absorbed by the dying sun and the endless stretch of desert sublimity.

To get here from Dades Gorge was a seven hour drive.  A good portion of the trip was spent curling through a landscape similar to the Zuni Mountains.  Instead of piñon pine, olive trees; instead of chamisa, nitraria.  In the town of Zaragoza, I bought baggy pasha pants, a djellaba, and a scarf that I could wrap into a turban.  The bin Berzerki transformation was complete.  (“Uh-huh,” dg scoffs, “you look like a dubious superannuated snake charmer.”)

Before we headed into the Sahara, we stopped for lunch in M’hamid. M’hamid’s main street could have been the set for a low-budget Hollywood western.  Today its anachronistic charm was devoted to young later-day hippies trekking to a music festival.  

This is Ali’s home town although he now lives in Marrakech.

Scattering back-packing groupies left and right, Ali roared up Main Street out onto a dirt track.  He gave a dismissive wave.  “Road ends.”  For the next hour we were passengers for an off-the-road Toyota Land Cruiser ad, roller coasting over abrupt humps, slewing through sand drift curves, jolting in choppy vibrations over eroded salt beds.  Studying the red-tinged cloud spread on the horizon, I was thankful that my kidneys still functioned.