From Adam Ibrahim, a trail boss we met through Mahdi Abu Jaib, we heard our first story of the Darb. Riding sixty kilometer days, taking only catnaps, eating only burnt millet. Is he trying to scare us, to give up before we even begin? He says he’d arrived from the trail with four men driving eighty camels, they wander off every night and must be found again each dawn, maybe 10 of every 100 will die, you must alternate walking and riding every two hours. He gives a silent prayer, palms turned upward, for our safe delivery.
-Diary, January 15, 1984, on the Cairo-to-Khartoum flight
I didn’t think it odd at all, until much later, when from the ground seeing the condensation trail of a Khartoum-to-Cairo bound jet flying overhead and hearing for what seemed like the hundredth time KhairAllah say, Luwees, You should have taken a Tayyara, Airplane, to have had my first conversation about the rigors of the Darb while seated on another jet on that very same route at 30,000 feet.