“Welcome, welcome, a thousand times welcome," he had sputtered. "But who are you, and how on earth did you get here?" I'll always remember the farmer's warm greeting as I arrived on his doorstep, a tired and bedraggled 25-year-old total stranger.
Now, almost 20 years later, I'm back in his neighborhood. The Great Pyramid looms again out of the yellow murk as I drive down the Giza road past the border post of what once marked the end of the known world. I'm heading inland to the four oases Herodotus called "the Islands of the Blest ," on the long and sandy route to Luxor. A new road makes it easier than it was for ancient Greeks or '70s vagabonds to make the trip through the heart of the Western Desert. The 800- mile journey is a chance to clear my head of urban debris, get one of earth's best geology lessons along the way and , especially, to see my old friend, the farmer who welcomed me to his oasis.
Back then , even in broken Arabic, it had been easy enough to convince him that, yes, I did have an invitation to be his guest. His son Muhammad , a fellow student I'd met in a Cairo coffeehouse a few weeks earlier, had freely extended an offer to visit. And so I arrived in the remote village of Gharghour, having bounced my way seven hours by train down the Nile Valley to Asyut, then four hours by taxi to the Kharga Oasis, an other five hours west by bus to Dakhla Oasis' main town of Mu t, and a final eternity by donkey cart. All this simply to redeem an invitation to sleep in a stranger's house.
"I am the friend of your son Muhammad," I said. "Then my home is your home," replied my host, waving me into his guest quarters . "Your journey has been long, and you must drink." From a long-necked pitcher he decanted the wo rld's freshest-tasting water- a memory tastier by the minute as I push deeper into the sprawling desert.
There is nothing in front of me now but a bone-dry wilderness of rock and sand . Flaking oysterbanks, marine fossils and chunks of petrified wood are everywhere. So are melon-shaped limestones, mushrooms of chalk and ancient termite nests. And then there's the sand itself, dissolving and regathering in the shifting wind, claiming the horizon with dunes named for their distinctive shapes- crescent, sword and star. It's difficult to believe that almost 100,000 people make this desert their home. They are oasis dwellers of Bedouin stock , whose challenge is to farm this parched country.
I head for the first of the four oases- Bahariya, past pharaonic tombs and a set of mosques a thousand years old. Amid these echoes, I hear the gentler rhythms of today- a creaking ox-powered waterwheel, raucous cries of boys climbing date palms at harvest and the whispered thanks to Allah when breaking farm bread- in Arabic, 'aish shamsi , or "sun life ." The road descends through a patch of thermal springs before reaching the oasis itself. The main garden lies in a depression where artesian water is so abundant that rice is grown. Nearby is the recently excavated temple of Alexander the Great , who returned this way after having consulted an oracle that called him a god.
Another ancient Greek, the geographer Strabo, described the oases as "spots on a leopard ," but they're actually closer to the fruit on a tree . Lying atop a course of aquifers, the oases bring alfalfa , blood oranges and clusters of oversize dates to life in an otherwise arid void.
Outside these green islands , the landscape turns to rock and dust again. A hundred miles outside of Farafra, the westernmost oasis, I pass through the White Desert , where wind-sculptured chunks of rock called "mud lions" raise their craggy heads to greet me. A single palm tree is the lone sign of life . Getting out to examine this hardy specimen, I find tracks of fennec fox and camel converging in its midday shade.
Just beyond Farafra lies the Great Sand Sea, a maze of interlocking barchan dunes covering several thousand square miles. Standing guard on the Libyan border, the summits rise 500 feet above the desert floor. The dunes are constantly shaped and reshaped by the wind, ebbing and flowing like the sea. From a high ridge I watch with swells roll all the way into Libya, just 60 miles west. As I stop and scramble atop th em, their crests and troughs chop like waves in a squall. In all directions the surface is devoid of landmarks - including my feet, sunk beneath the sand.
Rolling deeper south , I finally reach signs of life in the sleepy hamlet of Gharghour. At first glance, the village is much as I recall, quiet and peaceful, still nestled in thick palm groves. But I find the waterwheel upturned, replaced by an electric pump , and many new homes obscure my mental map of the one-lane village it once was. I search the faces for my impromptu host of two decades ago. I would recognize the twinkle in his eye anywhere, but I do have a slight problem: I've forgotten his name! The scouring sands of New York life have wiped it clean from my memory.
So all I can go by is the layout of his guest quarters , where I idled away my days in languid conversation with his son Muhammad and their country cousins. Silently I run down the list of common Muslim names- Muhammad , Ahmad, Hamdy, Hamouda - but none strike my inner ear as being his. The next plan is to ask everyone I meet a ridiculous question- ''Do you know me, and do you know who among you hosted me in his home 20 years ago?" All of them shrug. Clueless but curious, the y trail behind me in an ever-expanding entourage . Then l get a bite.
"l know you," says a man in a dirt-caked robe, or galabiyya. '·You were here once before , were you not? You stayed in the house of Al Hajj Mahmoud." Al Hajj Mahmoud,” I repeat. Yes, I remember that name. My hose was proud of his rare status in Gharghour as a Mecca pildrim, thus the honorific Al Hajj.
I am led to an alfalfa field where an old farmer is methodically cutting a sickle blade across the green shoots . Al Hajj Mahmoud-I would recognize those eyes anywhere. A callused hand squeezes mine, and his face beams. Ahlan wa sahlan ("[My] people and [Your] ease"), he says..
No need for re-introductions. He remembers me as if I had come yesterday, and still saves the letter of thanks I had written him-one of the very few letters of an y sort he has received all his life. We walk back to his house hand in hand. The old majlis, or guest quarters , is as I remember. But the palm in the courtyard is now so burdened with dates that its head bows.
"My family has grown big and prosperous," my host updates me, as we enter a newly built majlis. What must be all of Gharghour's menfolk over the age of 12 follow behind. We launch into an endless round of formulaic salutations- "May God be praised for your safe arrival," "May God keep you," "Peace be upon you." By chance, this is the eve of the Islamic feast Eid Al Fitr, marking the last of the lunar month of Ramadan and the end of daylight fasting. I am treated to his kitchen's full bounty pickled eggplant, dried olives , wet-pressed dates, and the thick-crusted farm bread I remember so well.
After dining, Mahmoud takes me to his farm 's most beautiful acre-the shaded orchard of fig, mango and olive trees watered by a murmuring sluiceway. I note that the adjacent dune, though towering above , has not moved. Like the Dutch boy's finger in the dike, these thin trees are keeping an entire desert at bay.
"Without those tamarisk, " says Al Hajj, "that dune would eat us as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Thanks be to God, the trees remain healthy."
Shared meals, conversations and vis its to the people and places of Gharghour fly like sand in a desert wind. After a day and a half, it is time to take my leave. Al Hajj regales me with another round of stories about the village, the land, his family. Another minute becomes another hour. We promise to correspond so that I will never again forget his name. He also makes me vow that another 20 years will not pass before I return. "If you wait so long again," says Al Hajj , nodding toward the village cemetery, "you will find me lying there, next to Al Hajja," indicating his late wife. I promise once more- there's nothing like an open invitation to an oasis.
The road back to Luxor ushers me into the fourth and final oasis, Kharga where the road curls in endless dead ends of mountainous sand. And then on through the lonely ruins of Dush, Kharga 's southernmost settlement, a place where Roman temples and garisons once housed caravans of gold.
Behind me the desert suddenly seems distant again, though still close at heart. Those numberless hills that fade into one another, they have been my road to an oasis in a very sandy world, leading me into the generous hands of one Al Hajj Mahmoud, a man who never forgets a friend.