Around the World in 50 Years (5 page)

The powerful nomad tribes were beginning to break up. Many were abandoning their obsolescent traditions, settling in oases, buying some date palms and cereal seeds, venturing into the formerly shunned occupation of agriculture—rooted peasants rather than proud, free wanderers. They'd been compelled to join the revolution that we saw coming to the Sahara, which was just beginning to be drilled by oil rigs, crossed by improved roads, bisected by pipelines, straddled by air strips, carved by mines, and sucked by gushing water pumps. This would bring drastic, and not always desirable, changes to the Sahara in the decades ahead, and I felt fortunate that I first saw her while she was still awesome and proud and not yet conquered.

After driving four days, we reached easternmost Tébessa Province. We were far enough south of the Aurès Mountains to make a run for Tunisia, hoping we could get through, despite the lack of reliable recent road maps. Those provided by the national tourist ministries were frequently misleading, generally glossy and colorful and filled with the thick reds and blues of well-paved roads more for artistic effect than cartographic accuracy, often indicating superhighways where camel trails could barely be discerned.

It was impossible to learn much about distant road conditions from the locals, few of whom had ever been more than 50 miles from their mud doorsteps. Some were fatalistic and untraveled, and told us that our road ended just beyond their oasis and that we could not move farther without a camel. Others were eager to please and reluctant to give offense, invariably telling us to continue in the direction we were heading, lest it be thought they were calling attention to our error. By far the most common, however, were those who didn't understand a word of what we were asking.

We turned northeast at El Oued, the easternmost of Algeria's large oasis towns, set amid dunes over 400 feet high whose lines differed from every angle but were always graceful. They were as picturesque as the Panavision version, and we found ourselves watching expectantly for a dashing warrior in a turban and flowing white robe to come charging over one of the dunes waving a scimitar, his powerful white Arabian stallion raising a plume of golden sand. But the only warriors who came were voracious flies.

As an homage to the Great Desert, then in its last days of untamed glory, we stopped our vehicles, and Manu and Steve and I raced to the tops of these golden hills, tumbling and sliding down, laughing and playing, making tracks where there were no tracks, thrilled by their vast unsullied magnificence.

But the minute we rested, the flies set upon us, vicious, biting bugs, twice as large as America's largest horsefly. Their presence amid these barren dunes, miles from any visible food or breeding spots, miles from any camels—to them a traveling amusement park and lunch wagon combined—was a puzzle to us, as surprising as the flying crabs. Where did they come from? What did they eat when we weren't around? How did they survive in the middle of nowhere? From the relentlessness of their attacks, we must have been the first food they'd seen in months. Fortunately, they departed when the sun set, but they were back by daybreak, an irritating alarm clock with no snooze button.

Their absence after dusk permits the Sahara traveler to relax and enjoy its sunset, one of nature's most dramatic spectacles. Because clouds rarely form above the desert, and moisture seldom enters its air to diffuse or refract, the sun descends as a blazing, hard-edged, crimson orb. In but a few minutes the dunes lose their dazzling glare and turn to soft colors, their lines muted, ever more graceful, as long shadows of purple, like pools of cool water, replace the bright harshness of day. The night comes quickly, and its stars are startling in their number and stunning in their brilliance. There is no sound for a hundred miles save the murmur of the cooling sands, no human save you, and I found myself wishing that the Sahara, however it may change, would never lose this magic.

The road from El Oued toward Tunisia was neither as bad as we'd feared nor as good as we'd hoped. It was asphalt in sections, but badly potholed, and clogged with camels who refused to get out of our way. It was covered with sand for long stretches, making the going slow, slippery, and confusing. Loose-blown sand is a deadly enemy of the Sahara traveler. Rocks can puncture tires, potholes can crack springs, and mud will mire you down, but nothing is as vicious as the Sahara sand, which at one and the same time blinds your vision, obliterates your route, batters your equipment, and assaults you personally.

The isolated Tunisian border post didn't open until 8:00 a.m., so we explored around it and, to our delight, found a wide pipe gushing pure, cold water into a substantial concrete basin in which the cavalry's camels were cavorting. We realized then that we hadn't had a shower since the casbah in Algiers. The Sahara is so dry, and our sweat evaporated so quickly, that we could get by for several
weeks
without bathing, but there are limits, especially for those accustomed to daily dunks.

With a roar and a rush, the five of us ran toward the pool, yelling loudly. The frightened camels dashed out, all except for an ugly albino veteran I had to slap hard on the rump. For half an hour, Steve and I bathed in the pool and stood under the gushing pipe, letting the water soak into every dehydrated pore of our bodies, while Willy took our photo, the same photo featured in
The New York Times
four months later—surely the first (and perhaps the last?) the
Times
printed of a full-frontal naked man—when we were reported lost in a deadly cholera epidemic in Afghanistan.

The pool was heaven until the camels regrouped and, led by the albino avenger, aggressively returned to reassert their rights. It was our turn to retreat. Besides, the border was about to open, and we were eager to get across.

Once through, we followed the dirt track toward the east and, as the sun came hotter into the sky, we began to feel the effects of dehydration. Our eyes burned and our lips cracked. We found no wells in this part of the desert, not a tree anywhere, not even a boulder to give shade.

Suddenly, as we peaked a slight rise, we saw a glorious sight in the distance: a rare desert lake! We gunned the engines, turned off the track, and raced the vehicles toward the water's edge. We soon left the soft sand of the desert and reached the hard-crusted surface that marked the periphery of the lake. But the water itself, that refreshing, beckoning water, was still distant, still farther than we'd thought. The faster we drove, the faster the water receded toward the horizon … until we gradually came to realize we'd been fooled. It was a mirage, a
fata morgana,
a classic deception of those shimmering sands, but a deception of such magnitude and perfection that we were all stunned.

The ground was packed sand and salt deposits interlaced with a network of the tiniest fissures, clearly a dried lake bed. The map confirmed it: Chott el Djerid, the largest salt pan in the Sahara, half as wide as Tunisia itself, half as long as Lake Erie, 70 feet below sea level, occupying an area as large as Connecticut, absolutely waterless and barren at this time of year. We forgot our thirst just thinking of this marvel, and chuckling over how we, supposedly old desert hands by then, had been so deceived.

We opted to rely on our compass and continue across the roadless lake bed a while, as it was a relief not having to dodge rocks and potholes and soft sand, and a thrill to be driving where, as far as we could tell, no vehicle had ever rolled before, leaving white tracks on the virgin soil. (Twelve years later I saw this odd place again, in a movie theater, but there it was called planet Tatooine, and plodding across its crusty sands were Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, R2-D2, and a holographic Princess Leia.)

After we crossed into Libya, we resumed our run on the old asphalt coastal road to the still-standing ruins of the third-century Roman city of Sabratha, where all was as silent as the desert night, lifeless as the desert day, and sea wind and weather were threatening to reduce to limestone dust what had once been part of the glory of Rome. I walked in wonder through the temples of Liber Pater, Isis, and Serapis, past a Christian basilica dating from the time of Emperor Justinian, and on the mosaic floors of the baths overlooking the sea.

At the start of a sandstorm, Steve scouts for a route across Tunisia's 160-mile long Chott el Djerid, the largest salt pan in the Sahara. It can be crossed by boat in winter, but completely dries up in the summer, when the temperature reaches 120 degrees. Driving is dangerous because the salt crust is not firm.

I couldn't help thinking that this was once a bustling city in a mighty empire, a thriving city in a civilization that ruled most of the then-known world for over 400 years, a civilization that brought engineers and aqueducts and teachers and libraries to the most distant corners of the darkness, an empire relatively more powerful in its time than my own country in its, an empire whose enemies were just heathens on horseback and nomads on camels, yet an empire of which only these ruins remained.

Our host in Libya was Mohammed Soussi, the owner of a fledgling Toyota operation headquartered in Benghazi, and we came to know him well during our week in his company, while his men serviced our vehicles and repaired the camper undercarriage. On our last night, he hosted a farewell dinner for us, and after his other guests had gone, we sat on a terrace overlooking the city and talked. When the conversation turned to religion, he gave me an insight into his, declaiming:

“Islam gives meaning to my whole life. I could not live without it. It tells me everything I need to know and every way how to act. It is the greatest religion, the only true religion. Your religions are a fairy tale with miracles and sons of God and Trinities. With Islam there is only one God and He is all powerful. Mohammed is the one true prophet of God, and His writings are the only way that the divine will can be learned. The Koran is the final revelation. We need look no further and we need accept no other. The Koran tells us all we need to know about how to conduct our lives and how to submit to the will of God.

“I never worry. I never drink alcohol. I do not covet young girls, or boys, and I will make my marriage with the help of my father. I never think of suicide and I never think of taking drugs. I am not, like so many in the West, troubled by doubts and fears and neuroses. I know that Allah watches over everything we do, and that if we do everything as He has caused to be written in the Koran, we shall have our reward. I am serene and at peace with myself and the world. I am delighted with the sunrise, because it is the work of God, and with the sunset, because that is also His doing. And when I say my prayers and praise Him, I am sure that He hears them. Does yours?”

Because of the time spent mending the camper-trailer, we could make only a short stop at Leptis Magna, much as I'd have preferred to stay a week. Far more extensive and glorious than Sabratha, Leptis had been a showplace of the Roman Empire, birthplace of the powerful Emperor Septimius Severus, a handsome city of colonnaded avenues, amphitheaters, meeting halls, fountains, baths, basilicas, forums, libraries, arches, and some 40 major buildings. Unlike Sabratha, which had been built from local limestone, Leptis was fashioned from splendid multicolored marble brought from Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor, and its noble stone still stood gleaming as it had before the birth of Christ.

After leaving Leptis, we saw nothing for miles save the tiniest villages and the dullest desert. The road we followed was
La Strada Imperiale
, built in the 1930s by the Italian fascists. It still bore the scars of WW II, when it had been chewed up by tanks, blasted by dive bombers, blown apart by land mines, and cratered by artillery shells. The holes were strategically spaced and impossible to avoid. Whoever first suggested that “if nothing goes right, go left,” never tried to negotiate this road.

The road's condition gave rise to some local humor:

Q. What do you do when you come to a pothole?

A. Honk, in case somebody is in it.

The roadside was strewn with the carcasses of giant truck tires that had been torn to shreds by the potholes and the desert heat. Many of the demolished tires were three feet in diameter and laced with metal mesh, so dense that two of us couldn't lift one, yet the road had shattered them. The only thing in the road's favor was that it was straight, arrowing across the desert, often running 30 to 40 miles without a turn or bend.

The desert sapped our energy and desiccated our bodies. Then the
ghibli
began, the dread Saharan wind that is the scourge of Libya. We'd been warned about the
ghibli,
but the reality went beyond description and further than imagination. It was a blow of pure heat like the discharge of a blast furnace. Inside the cars, which had no AC, the thermometers zoomed over 120 degrees. Whether we drove fast or slow, there was no getting away from the desert blowtorch. It blistered our eyes, cracked the insides of our noses, and parched our throats. Our temperatures soared, our pulses raced up to 130 beats a minute. Any exertion was exhausting: It was an effort to breathe, a struggle to move, a torment to drive. We were being baked alive, but could not escape the searing wind until it died of its own accord two hours later.