“God is merciful,” he said, “but I think Arami has walked to his fate.”
I was afraid he might be right. There was something strange about Arami from the first. I learned that on a trek once from Erdi to Ouenat his water-supply had run out and he had had a “bad thirst,” as the desert people call it. He had reached Ouenat half dead. Such an experience leaves its mark on a man, and it is likely to be long before he is himself again. I had noticed the queer, strained, vague look in his eyes and wondered about it. If he did not come back, the desert, in one of its moods of cruelty, would have claimed its own.
In the desert upon the long, waterless treks, the men, from exhaustion, thirst, fatigue, sleeplessness, often lose their heads, and, as the Bedouins say, “walk to their fate”; which means that unless their comrades are on the lookout and keep them with the caravan they walk away into the desert disregarding even the animal instinct of the camel to keep with the herd. In such a case, if the wanderer suddenly returns to his senses, he has to sit down where he finds himself and not move. It is understood that his comrades when they are aware of his absence will retrace the tracks of the caravan and then his own tracks upon the sand and so rescue him. I met a Bedouin at Kufra who had been lost for eighteen hours, cut off from the caravan. When he was rescued he was unconscious, suffering badly from thirst. “God was merciful,” he told me, “for I was just able to do my prayers and face God before what I thought was my inevitable death. But we live and die only by the decree of God,” he added with a smile.
Wednesday, May 9. Start 4:15 P.M., halt at 10:15 P.M. Make 24 kilometers. Highest temperature 37°. White clouds and very strong warm wind from the northeast, which continues all day and at night develops into a sand-storm. A few drops of rain fall at 7 P.M. The sand-storm lasts from 8 to 10. The ground is ordinary serira, with soft sand in places. There are no landmarks and no dry grass. We sight distant sand-dunes on our right in the early morning.
We marched fourteen and a half hours last night, but we were not very tired. Breakfast and four hours’ sleep found us all refreshed again. Mohammed wanted us to make an early start, as there was a difficult gherd ahead which could not be crossed in the dark. So 4:15 found us under way, with serira under our feet and a cool northeast wind behind us. Shortly after eight I felt the wind in my face. I was startled, for the wind does not usually shift so suddenly. Besides, the quality of the wind had not changed. This wind in our faces should be coming from the south, and yet it is not warm. There is something strange about it. I look above for the stars, but the sky is completely covered with dark clouds. I take out my compass and am startled to find that we were heading full northeast instead of southwest. Then it is clear to me that Mohammed has “lost his head,” as the Bedouins say, and is leading us in the diametrically opposite direction from the right one.
It was a serious moment and one that required tact and careful handling. It is dangerous to undermine a desert guide’s confidence. I got off my camel and, mounting my horse, galloped to where Mohammed is leading the caravan.
I realized as I went that the men of the caravan, most of whom were accustomed to this sort of country and this kind of weather, had also a feeling that we were going wrong. But it is the etiquette of the desert that no one may interfere with the guide in any way. The guide of a caravan is exactly like the captain of a ship. He is absolute master of the caravan so far as direction is concerned, and must also be consulted as to the starting and halting times.
ZAGHAWA CHIEFS COMING OUT TO WELCOME THE PARTY AT UM BURU
I had fortunately asked Mohammed before leaving Ouenat as to the direction we were to take and had set my compass to it. As I approach the guide I find him agitated and lacking his habitual cheerful smile and air of self-reliance. I show him the compass and suggest that we are going in the wrong direction. He says nothing but scans the sky anxiously for his favorite Jadi, but in vain, for Polaris is behind the clouds.