Renault: And what in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
1979. Egypt’s Western Desert. Waha Dakhla. The Inner Oasis. According to Herodotus, an Island of the Blest. I had been invited by a student I’d met in a Cairo coffeehouse who was from Dakhla’s ‘Izbet Gharghour, the Hamlet of Gharghour, a tongue-twister of a name for a non-Arabic speaker because it has two of the most difficult to pronounce consonants in the alphabet, the letter ‘ayn, an unvoiced guttural stop, and the ghayn, a voiced velar fricative.
Saying it right was almost as difficult as getting there, by train to Asyut from Cairo, by bus from Asyut to Dakhla’s market town of Mut, via Kharga Oasis, and from Mut to Gharghour by donkey cart.
I arrived at the door of the student’s house. His father welcomed me and showed me in. I met his brothers, male cousins, uncles, and so many others. And so many questions for a guest who had come from so far away.
Several days passed in the majlis, the men’s room, talking, taking tea, eating dates and oranges from the trees out his window. One night we piled into a pick up truck to go into the desert a few miles to Deir al-Hajar, House of Stone, a Roman era temple built in the Egyptian manner, with dedications to Titus, Vespasian, Domitian, and Nero.
Just outside the enclosure wall was a water tank filled from a hot spring. We jumped in, under the stars. It was almost boiling, so it seemed. The air was very cold. We were in the desert. Cold air. Hot water. I was misinformed. Ghalat. Error. Spelled with a ghayn.
Seeking the Waters at Deir al Hajar in Dakhla Oasis,