Where we were going, we neither knew nor cared. That it would be a grueling murderous march, we knew and did not care…Anyhow, it seemed the best thing to do, but how I longed for a camel!
-Beau Geste, Percival Christopher Wren
The dramatic story of the French Foreign Legion, where men hid from the law or from a woman- but never from death!
-from the cover of the 35 cent Pocket paperbook edition
I had heard them all. When I told friends I planned to ride a camel from Sudan to Egypt, I heard all the names of those who had already beat me to it, or something like it…Marco Polo…Ibn Battuta…Lawrence of Arabia. And the same lame jokes…Ship of the Desert…Arab Seamen…One hump or two.
I knew nothing of any of that when I was little. But if I had only pulled a book off the downstairs shelf, I might have discovered a cheesy paperback’s 1939 movie-inspired cover art of Gary Cooper as Michael “Beau” Geste in French foreign legion kepi, polished black boots, and blue tunic kissing Susan Hayward (but hadn’t he done this nine years earlier in the film Morocco, kissed Marlene Dietrich, with fade out as she follows him on that “grueling murderous march“ across the sands, barefoot with high heels in hand?), and thus encountered my first Saharan cliche. Lucky that edition was published before the movie’s 1966 remake with Leslie Nielsen and Telly Savalas, on whose Algerian sun-scorched bald-pate Nielsen could have fried an egg.
Too bad none of the movie adaptations were made on site. The original 1929 silent was intended to be shot in Algeria but trouble in the Riff moved production to Burlingame, California. Yuma, Arizona and a sand pit near Dorset, England made do for the following 3 remakes.
David made the only French foreign legion gesture on our trip. He sewed a handkerchief to the back of his baseball cap as a nape veil. I made do by popping my shirt collar. A turban would have worked well too. Or a foulard.
