The road is desert throughout and in the most part covered with a deep sand and waterless…As often as the south wind blows there it overwhelms the whole country with huge quantities of sand so that all the marks of the former paths are covered and a traveller is as much at a loss whither to direct his course amidst these sands as if he were at sea…
-Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, describing his route across the Libyan Desert in the year 332 BCE
We too crossed the Libyan Desert, only toward and not away from the Nile, and we were headed south to north. Alexander crossed the sand sea east to west to the oracle at Siwa in order to learn if he was a god. Cairo’s Imbaba camel market had no oracular pronouncements for us, except maybe to warn that we risked trouble back home if we tarried much longer. But we were all eager to leave Cairo, KhairAllah and Mas’ood and the other drovers for Kordofan, I for the Big Apple.
Cavafy wrote, “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one…” What he didn’t say was that cities are alike in every way, not just in his one way. For something really different, to try to erase your old life, you have to go back to the desert. The drovers knew but I didn’t yet. For that I needed to make another trip with them.