[The desert horizon] triggers a vertigo in me which, like the other kind of vertigo with respect to falling, incites me to run, to roll along the ground as far as the eye can see.
-The Solitary Meditator, Ernst Junger, who joined the French Foreign Legion in 1913, was posted to Algeria and deserted to Morocco after only 1 year
There is nothing as earth shattering as already envisioning, from the place we are about to leave, the place we will be reaching that evening, or the following day, without anything in between.
-Méharées (“Camel Trails”), Theodore Monod (1902-2000), who explored the Sahara for almost 80 years
Whether for 1 year or 80, living in the desert can lead to a derangement syndrome of the five senses. Sand becomes a white noise. Wind is like an erasure, leaving nothing of the color wheel. What you taste is what has blown into your mouth when you speak. Peace be upon you, you say, Salaam aleikum. Silica and calcium is answered. Wa aleikum salaam wa ramlatAllah wa barakaathu. And upon you, peace and God’s sand and his blessings. I found little rahmatAllah, God’s mercy, on the trail.
Several days in a row we rode up a trail exactly as Monod described it. Nothing in between us for the twelve hours the sun shone nor the five more hours we rode in moonlight. Maybe the gravel and sand changed size and color, but not much. Not a tree to cast a midday shade for our rest stop. Not a camel skeleton or a piece of petrified wood. Not a dune, no barchan nor seif, no star nor lunette. Shadows, only our own shadows.
I never experienced vertigo while riding. I never wanted to run or roll forward as far as I could see. Some drovers recited poems, maybe they were pop songs, I do not know if any were in the rajaz meter, said to have originated in the pacing of a sick camel whose back leg trembled when it walked. The rajaz has many variations (“relaxations and illnesses”, they are called), just as a lame camel’s pace varies from step to step. There is nothing in between, only relaxations of our progress. Fast, faster…Slow, slower… Empty, emptier.
