There are many demons in that desert. There is no road to be seen in the desert and no track, only sand blown about by the wind. You see mountains of sand in one place, then you see they have moved to another. A Guide there is someone who has frequented it repeatedly and has a keen intelligence. A strange thing I saw is that our guide was blind in one eye and diseased in the other, but he knew the route better than anybody else.
-Travels, In the Sahara, Book IV, Ibn Battuta (1304-1368)
Before setting off on my second trip on the Darb, KhairAllah was nowhere to be found and Hajj Bashir recommended that I travel with either RahmatAllah or Bilal, both experienced Khabirs but both very old. It was my choice which one, neither of whom I’d met previously. The outcome of the film depended on its principle subject being as strongly telegenic as my friend KhairAllah. They both worried me. RahmatAllah had trachoma-diseased eyes, oozing and half-closed, and Bilal was not only very old, but very, very old.
We were seated cross-legged at the wells. I wrote their names on two pieces of paper, crumpled them into equal-size balls, mixed them back and forth in my hand, and was preparing to choose when just at that moment a gust of wind moved one an inch. I said, This man wants to travel. On it was Bilal’s name…and at the very next moment a lorry trailing a plume of dust arrived that carried KhairAllah. Bilal was assigned to a companion herd with KhairAllah in the lead and we set out together, leaving rheumy-eyed RahmatAllah behind.