Triliteral root S-H-r. Verb, 1st Form, SaHara, He made milk. 3rd Form, SaaHara, He showed openly what was on his mind. 4th Form, aSHara, He went forth into the desert. Noun, SaHraa’, A desert, a waste, a tract of land like the bare back of an animal [on which you ride], destitute of herbage, without trees and without hills and without mountains. SuHayraa’, A certain sort of milk. SuHaar, The sweat of horses. SaHeer, The certain uttering of the voice of the ass of the vehement kind, more vehement than the neighing of horses.
-Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon
Funduk SaHaari
-An old hotel in downtown Khartoum
Hs and Ss are Arabic letters in non-emphatic and emphatic doubled pairs, transliterated in English as h and H, s and S. Sahara and all its cognates- the desert, the horse sweat, the certain milk, the donkey bray- are pronounced emphatically, a velarized S and an aspirated H. Lane defined the desert as being as bare as a riding animal’s back. My camel’s back had ticks and sores, tufts of long hair and dried sweat. Unsaddled but not as destitute as the SaHraa’.
I stayed at the SaHaari Hotel several times. The lobby had a few people always waiting around, because of its comfortable chairs I guess, but I never saw other guests upstairs. The elevator had broken and no breakfast was served. I liked it because it was central and less expensive. The third time I tried to stay, I found it closed and moved across the street to the Acropole. I asked the Acropole’s owner what happened to the SaHaari.
It’s been closed for more than ten years, he said. I said, But I stayed there last year. Yes, he said, I heard that some crooks had broken in and rented out the rooms behind the government’s back. Were the sheets dirty? Yes, I remembered, But not with horse sweat or a certain sort of milk. And sometimes at night I had heard the vehement voice of an ass. In the SaHraa’, not the SaHaari.