Baptism of Solitude

It called to me with a silent cry. And I knew I needed to go. Beyond the rusty window bars and the chaotic patchwork of rooftops, it shimmered on the horizon, dreamlike. White gold in the morning light. Undulating, unfurling like billowing silk. It was a physical need, an ache that I could no longer ignore: I needed to go into the desert. The realisation made me tingle with excitement and dread.
   

People go into the desert for many reasons: to test themselves; to find themselves; to lose themselves. To be reborn in what the French call the baptism of solitude. It is said that when a man has been to the desert and been under its spell, no other place is ever quite enough for him. My restless mind flickered with assent to all of it. But this wasn’t a measured decision. It was a magnetic yielding to a primitive urge that tugged at my gut.
   

I made enquiries and by evening everything was settled. The proud father of ten children and owner of fifteen camels, he said he was thirty-eight, but looked much older with his sandblasted skin and wiry frame like a gnarled acacia. His name was Yeder. He told me it meant a free spirit, a soul which refuses to be captured. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad omen. However, following a fierce round of haggling, he was mine for 1000 dirhams. We would leave after two sleeps he said, at sunset, weather permitting and God willing.
   

Throughout the intervening days, I nervously watched the horizon, alternately praying for clear skies and abortive sandstorms. Finally the day blew in with a gentle breeze, the blue dappled with cotton wool clouds. Terrifyingly perfect.
   

The bus heading south was as unpredictable as the weather. Most weeks it went on most days and stopped at most towns. But, at the mercy of dust storms, floods, religious festivals and mechanical failure, its departure was by no means guaranteed. So it was with surprise and relief that I elbowed my way up the rickety steps, crushed between veiled women burdened with bulging bags and howling infants. I asked the driver what time we would arrive. Only God knows, he replied, fingering the prayer beads that hung from the cracked rearview mirror.
   

The bus stuttered and shuddered along rutted roads. Beyond the dirty window the landscape faded like an ageing photograph, the colours merging into a flat palette of ochre and dun. Squat homes were sprinkled along sand-strewn streets, slowly crumbling back into the dusty ground. Occasional figures glided by in jewel blue robes that flowed like water. Then nothing. Just rock and sand and sky stretching to the ends of the earth.
   

Yeder was waiting, crouched beneath a lone acacia tree. He nodded an almost imperceptible greeting through a curl of cigarette smoke. The camels were already saddled and cushed. A thin, ragged boy flitted between them adjusting their harnesses amid a chorus of guttural grumbles. Yeder rose and approached, blue robes fluttering in the breeze. My third son, he said, nodding at the boy. Reza - it means contented and happy. At the sound of his name, the boy looked up, dark eyes shy beneath long lashes.
   

I mounted the camel without grace, emitting exclamations far cruder than the animals’ grunts. Beside me, Reza hopped up silently and shushed his camel to standing in a sinuous union of boy and beast. He glanced at my flushed face, a smile scampering across his lips. Yalla, called the boy’s father: let’s go.
   

I don’t know who described camels as ships of the desert. The ride was more reminiscent of a rollercoaster. Every tiny undulation of the terrain seemed magnified atop the camel. I lurched and bounced and hung on for dear life over invisible peaks and troughs, much to Reza’s amusement. I smiled back at him. Quelle âge as-tu? I asked. Huit, he replied quietly, holding up eight fingers and beaming a gap-toothed smile. The exchange seemed to embolden the boy, who began reciting his entire French repertoire. Je m’appelle Reza, j’ai huit ans, j’ai six frères et trois sœurs, j’habite dans le Sahara, il fait beau aujourd’hui, voulez-vous du thè, monsieur? voici le feu, voici les chameaux…His small, singsong voice soon became part of the hypnotic rhythm of the camels’ stride. Up, down, up, down, voici la tente, up, down.
   

When Reza’s recitation petered out, it left only the buffeting of the wind and the soft clump of camels’ feet on the baked ground. Strange rock formations loomed up, ringed and ridged and alien. We picked our way between skeletons of trees that jutted out of the sand like ancient shipwrecks. This was the graveyard of nature, the earth’s carcass picked bare.
   

I’d lost all sense of time — we seemed to have travelled beyond the jurisdiction of past and future into a realm of infinite present. Minutes, hours hovered like a mirage, as featureless as the barren inclines. The dying sun was the only marker as it melted into the horizon, draining the colour from the landscape. High above furrowed clouds, a half moon watched us, unmoved and unblinking. Yeder led us to a hollow fringed with stunted scrub. At his whispered command, the camels knelt, flinging me forwards into powdery sand. Reza’s little laugh echoed across the empty expanse.
   

As father and son busied themselves hobbling the camels and collecting firewood, I scrambled up a pale dune. Sand swallowed up every footprint, erasing all trace of my efforts, my existence. I sank down onto the cool ridge at the summit and gazed out into the stillness. Endless sand. Endless sky. Endless silence. I shivered. I knew it was not just from the chill of the cooling evening air. The desert stared back at me, seeing into my very soul. One by one my thoughts unravelled. They blew away into the emptiness, leaving my mind as clear as the twilight dome of sky.
   

Far below, the first sparks of the campfire floated up into the blue night. The glow drew me back down into its circle of warmth and protection. Tea was poured into gritty glasses. Blackened bread was broken. Reza added more twigs to the fire, his features dancing in the flickering orange glow. Yeder slipped away. I could just make out his silhouette ascending a ghostly dune. His prayers carried across the desolation; crying out, ragged and raw, to an unseen God.
   

Thick woven blankets were spread out beside the last embers of the fire. My aching limbs collapsed, moulding themselves around the sand’s hollows. And there I lay, motionless, my body as heavy as a corpse, my senses alive with awe. The air was still singed with woodsmoke. Ceaseless winds scattered the sands with a fierce hiss. Somewhere in the greyness beyond the camp, a howl. I pulled the rough blanket closer around me.
   

Above, a universe of stars flared and shimmered; ringing, singing with piercing clarity. Like pin pricks in the firmament, giving glimpses into another world. I traced Orion. The Great Bear. The Plough. The distant blaze of a meteor arced towards earth. I forgot to make a wish.

   

I awoke to the sound of Man communing with God. Yeder’s voice drifted down the dunes. The sun’s first rays streaked the lucid sky like a searchlight. I lay back, speechless, devoid of thought but teeming with sensation. Voici du thé, monsieur, Reza said, handing me a small glass of steaming gold. I struggled to sit up. It was as if I was being speared simultaneously through every muscle. Ça va bien, monsieur? the child enquired. Oui, oui, I croaked. My throat and tongue and nostrils were lined with a fine layer of sand.
   

The heat was already brutal, throbbing from the sweltering sky. Silent flies clouded around me, landing on my lips, my cheeks, my eyelashes. I swatted them away. The tiny exertion sent pain shooting through my bicep and sweat trickling down inside my sleeve. Reza was already kicking sand over the fire’s embers. Yeder was loading up the camels. We must leave soon, he said, before it gets hot.
   

Somehow I heaved myself up onto the snarling camel. I winced with the animal’s every movement. The heat hammered at my skull like a madman. Never before had I felt such shock and terror at the fragility of my body. A pasty, pampered being like me had no place in this cruel land. Yalla, called Yeder, yanking the first camel onwards by the frayed rope snaring its bottom jaw. Behind me, Reza resumed his rhythmic roll call: voici le soleil, up, down, voici le ciel, up, down, voici le sable… The monotony washed over me in waves of nausea. I closed my eyes to block out the sun’s blinding inferno. Against closed lids, flashes of colour burst like fireworks, crescendoing until everything splintered into brilliant white, an explosion of pure radiance, my heart fluttering like the wings of angels all crying out monsieur! monsieur! Ça va bien?!

Days later I slid, disorientated, from between damp, crumpled sheets and finally opened the shutters. The fever had passed. My aches and pains had faded to a vague stiffness. Vous avez beaucoup de chance, monsieur, the doctor had said, a sternness to his voice. Le desert, c’est très dangereux.

The familiar drone of traffic drifted up from the street; car horns, drilling, shouts. The telephone rang again. I ignored it and glanced down at the pile of papers on the desk. Immobilised by a heavy paperweight, the corners flicked restlessly in the sparse gasps of breeze. A fly circled the gloom, searching in vain for freedom. And then I looked up. Out beyond the rusty window bars. Beyond the chaotic patchwork of rooftops. Still it shimmered. Rose gold in the evening light. Glittering like a half-forgotten dream. The ache had shifted from my limbs back into my soul. I called out with a silent cry, to the part of me that lay beyond the horizon; the part of me I had left behind in the wilderness.