In this part of the desert there was little to discover externally, but a great deal to discover in oneself that could only be brought to light in the silence and calm. It makes all the difference in the world whether one goes through the journey with the intention of getting back as quickly as possible to civilization again, or whether one lives and enjoys every moment of it.
Just as the sun was going down, I saw Zerwali sitting by himself, drawing lines on the sand with a meditative finger. He was doing the yazerga, or the “science of the sands,” with which the Bedouin tells his own fortune. At intervals his eyes lifted from the pattern before him and brooded dreamily on the vivid colors of the sunset. The Bedouin has an appreciation of beauty and a reverence for nature. How could he help it?
Day after day it is exactly the same. The photographs I took in those seven days might be pictures of the same camp from different angles, so persistently the same was the immense desolate expanse of sand unmarked except for a camel’s skeleton or a few pebbles the size of a walnut. There was nothing to distract one’s mind or interrupt one’s contemplation.
What a peculiar charm this desolate desert has! What a cleansing effect on one’s mind and body! How this constant touch with infinity, day by day and night by night, affects the mind and the spirit, and alters one’s conception of life!
How small and petty one’s efforts in the round of ordinary civilization seem! How insignificant one’s efforts in this desert actually are!
Saturday, March 24. We were up at 5:30 A.M. tired, for we went to bed at 2. It was fine and clear all day; a northeast breeze in the morning dropped at midday, leaving it very warm. A strong northeast wind got up again at 10 P.M.
At 9:30 A.M. the country began to change slightly; the sand was softer and the ground a little undulating. At 10 we came across patches of black broken stone, which continued all day. At noon we sighted on our right the first hatab—dried brushwood—of Zieghen Valley. At 1:45 we halted for a hot meal and a rest near the first hatab we reached.
Our fuel-supply was exhausted the previous day, and we had had nothing hot to eat or drink since the morning of the day before. At 5:13 we sighted sand-dunes to the southeast, about 40 kilometers distant. The dunes ran southward in a line toward Zieghen Valley. At 8:30 the hillocks of hatab increased in number and extent.
When we started in the morning we hoped to get to Zieghen that day. Later there was disagreement as to why we had not reached it. Bu Helega remarked that the guide must have gone too far to the west or we should have arrived at the well before this. Zerwali, who had selected Bu Hassan for our guide, came to his defense; it was because we lost time slaughtering the camel and feasting the day before that we did not arrive, he said. Hamad had another explanation. “The camels are not being driven at all,” he said. “One sleeps long and gets up at his leisure, and the camels are still in sight.” (It was the custom of the men to drop out of line for a nap of a half an hour or so, the slow pace of the camels and their track in the sand making it possible for them to catch the caravan easily on wakening.)
When we halted to make a fire and have the first hot meal in thirty hours, I remembered that this was just where we had lost our way on the previous trip to Kufra in 1921. After our meal, Dawood, Zerwali’s uncle, left us with his single camel to go to Taiserbo, which lay a day’s journey west of Zieghen. He proposed to get his wife and daughter and take them to Cyrenaica, where there were better prospects for business. Zerwali had agreed to help him in his affairs in the new region. It must have taken a lot of pluck for the old man to undertake the long journey to the north with the two women and but a single camel. I asked him how he would manage it. He told me that the first day they would all walk. The next day, as the weight of water on the camel grew less, his daughter would ride, and the third day his wife.