Camel Jockeys

Sunday. After dinner last night, around 9:30, the dry heat of the day (nothing extreme in the autumn sun) had cooled so that by the time we went to bed there was a faint chill in the air.  And silence.  And a darkness so deep that even my doppelgänger kept his distance.  In the middle of the night I woke up and thought I was in a sensory deprivation chamber.

This morning we were served coffee as we sat in chairs on the dune behind our tent and watched the sun rise.  My expectation of catching a stunning desert sunrise has been influenced by the lens choices made by David Lean’s cinematographer in “Lawrence of Arabia.”  So I’ve been cinematically brainwashed and shrugged off this morning’s sun activity as under par.

As soon as we finished our coffee, Bashir signaled to us that it was time for our camel ride into the desert.  We were the first group to head out.  As was befitting the eldest member of the camp, I was elected to be seated on the lead camel.  Not the easiest thing to do if you’ve had a hip replacement.  Bashir wanted me to mount from the left; I insisted on mounting from the right.  My camel didn’t like my choice and rose too quickly.  I hung on to the iron T-bar pommel while Bashir helped a young turbaned man bind the camel’s legs so that it kneeled back down with a heavy thud.  So much for a dignified start.  David Lean would have kicked me off the set.  There’s something about a person riding a camel that conveys a stately dignity.  We don’t picture the three kings arriving at the nativity on foot; no, their magisterial approach requires being perched astride a camel.

In contrast, when my camel was allowed to jerk itself upright and we hobbled forward, I looked like a hunched over exile returning from fifty years of banishment so that I could be buried among my people.  The young man in the blue djellaba who had helped Bashir grasped a blue rope tied around the camel’s neck and started leading us into the sands.  Walking beside us, Bashir explained that the noise from a car driving to another camp last night had disturbed the camels.  This was why Bashir and the young man had to soothe my camel’s nerves before we could get going.  

The idea that the epitome of heavy-lidded somnolent repose even had nerves was enough to momentarily shake me, but as we clumped along I became accustomed to the camel’s stiff legged rhythm.  The uneven exposed rock surfaces jostled me in the saddle causing me to squeeze tighter on the iron T-bar, but on the resilient sand the I was no longer fighting the saddle, but at one with the camel and its soft plunging motion, mesmerized by the dune drift whipped by overnight wind into forever graceful variations.

Done with our camel excursion, we headed over to the refreshment tent where I spotted a golf bag with a set of clubs stuck in the sand.  I joked to Ali about getting a round in.  He took an iron out of the bag and found loose golf ball which he dropped on the sand.

“Is okay to hit.”

Ali took a swing and topped the ball which skittered about five feet and died in the sand at the foot of a wall.  Behind me I could hear Bashir laugh as Ali retrieved the ball.  Setting up for another shot, Ali handed me the club.

“You try.”

Before I could think better of it, I adjusted my djellaba and gave it the old college try.

“Pock!”

The ball sailed in a high arc straight out into the desert.  If I never connect that well on a drive again I’ll die a happy man.

Ali then drove Ella and I to a Berber nomad camp which consisted of a hut assembled out of loose stones and a thatched roof, some animal pens for chickens, a small garden, and a well with a solar panel.  

A donkey stood by a tamarind tree, and goats roamed the area nibbling on clumps of grass.  

Bashir arrived with the young American couple from Austin who a couple of days earlier had gotten married in Marrakesh in a ceremony featuring fire dancers, frolicking monkeys, and for all I know, a flying carpet buffet.  The bride had changed into a traditional cut-patterned Berber dress.  Bashir gave her a baby goat to pet.  Cuddling it in her arms, she immediately named it “Lambert” and cooed about how she was going to adopt it.  It was all a bit twee for my taste.  (A derisive snort that I at first thought was coming from the baby goat’s mother.  No such luck.  “Twee?  I say old chap, when did you become a blue-blooded Englishman?  Ahem.  Sir Ali, why don’t you be a good sport and take off your shoes to join the others in the hut?”)

I ducked into the hut and sprawled onto the carpet covering a portion of the dirt floor while an old Berber woman poured out tea for Bashir and his visitors.  Our bride had yet to relinquish the goat, so she was no longer twee but simply annoying.  

The tea was quickly quaffed.  With an all out effort I creakily lurched to my feet to join everyone watching a Berber woman seated by a pit stirring out the dying flames of a fire.  Opening a towel, she took out a flat round of pounded dough and covered it with the hot ash in the pit.  Rebecca, the young photographer our newlyweds hired to record their wedding trip, tapped out shots on her camera.  Not shy about taking selfies with their own equipment (a camera with a lens kit and tripod, a Go-Pro sports cam, and two iPhones),  I thought bringing along a third party to click away a tad excessive.  (“I say, old man, are you taking umbrage over the fact that someone else has a servant and you don’t?”  “It’s a worrisome trend.”  “Brilliant!  Sir Ali is going to buy Instagram and shut it down!”  “Far be it from me to cast doubt for services negotiated online, but who’s to say one can’t acquire a slave? Desperate poverty could easily be taken advantage of.”  “Those are dark thoughts.”  “We live in dark times.”)

The Berber baker pulled the cooked bread from the ashes and wiped it clean with her towel.  Sampling it I thought it as tasty as any bread I’d had so far.

Back at our camp, we had lunch with a family from Boston who had taken a tour in Tanzania and were dressed in their safari outfits.  I didn’t mention that I had almost purchased a pair of elephant slippers.

Later, drinks served on the high sandy ridge turned into a sporting event with the newly wedded groom sand boarding down a steep dune holding a Go-Pro.  I saw tiny tracks left by some critter and the newly wedded bride showed me photo of Rebecca holding a “sand fish” that Bashir had plucked out of the ground.

At dinner Rebecca told everyone how in 2021 she had gotten pregnant, and while she was in labor how the nurses informed her that she had Covid and wouldn’t be allowed to hold her baby after she was born.  (“Sir Ali, do you really think that anecdote was necessary?”  “Dark times, dg, dark times.”)

After dessert the guests gathered round the fire pit.  With members of the camp staff drumming in the background, I stretched out on a chaise and gazed at the heavens scattered with a dots of light not as numerous as advertised.  This summoned a boyhood memory of lying in my sleeping bag on a Los Alamos night staring up at the Milky Way thickening the sky with stars.  The newlywed bride joined the drummers; one of the late arriving Spanish guests stood up and sang.  The camp was becoming tribal.  It was time for me to go to bed.