We had spent nearly three
months lost in the Sahara. Our initial plan had been to
cross from East to West,
using Sorenʼs house in Tenerife as our launch pad. We
flew from there to
Marrakech. Things started to go wrong almost immediately. We
travelled to Erg Chebbi
on the edge of the Sahara, the gateway to the real desert,
where we were due to meet
up with Rashid, our guide. He never showed up. The
local guides made their
living from helping tourists disembark from their four by
fours and transfer to a
camel train which took them half an hour into the desert,
where groups of
Canadians, Australians and North Americans would sing songs
round an open fire and
eat couscous and satisfy their lust for adventure. None of
these guides were
interested in a group of five crazies who actually planned to
enter their desert. The
expedition was only rescued from disaster when a Berber
who was heading towards
the Algerian border to hook up with his tribe agreed to
let us tag along.
The succession of wrong
turns, near-death experiences and mirages (both
physical and
psychological) that occurred over the course of the following ten
weeks have been detailed
in my travelogue, Lost in a Sea of Sand, which you
may well have read. This
isnʼt the place to repeat any of that. Suffice it to say that
when we finally escaped
from the desert and arrived at Timbuktu, it seemed like
a dream. Each one of us
had forgotten what a world containing buildings looked
like, had forgotten that
a world where man could exercise some kind of
ascendancy over nature
(and sand) existed.
Timbuktu is an ancient
city, with an extensive and highly developed cultural
heritage. None of us had
the slightest interest in this. All we cared about was
having a proper shower,
not having to sleep in a tent, and being able to get out of
the sun. These are the
things that matter after youʼve spent the best part of three
months trying to stay
alive in the Sahara. When Pav came back after going out to
have a look around and
told us sheʼd found a Welshman in the library, no-one
was impressed. It was
only when she added that he was a Welshman with a
generator, a fridge and a
seemingly limitless supply of cold beer, that our
curiosity was
aroused.
His name was Liam and he
told us heʼd lived there for almost ten years. He had
originally come as part
of a project which intended to catalogue the library of
Abdarahman Sidi Idie,
initiated by an organisation heʼd worked for which he
grandly claimed was a
depositary for all the stories in the world. The job had
taken longer than
anticipated. After a couple of years the funds had run out, and
his colleagues had
returned to Europe, but Liam had fallen in love with the city,
its libraries, and their
stories, and had chosen to stay.
I asked where the beers
came from. He told me they were made from barley
stewed in fermented camel
milk. Back home Iʼd have probably spat out the sip Iʼd
just taken, but under the
circumstances even camel-piss fermented beer would
have tasted just fine.
It turned into a crazy
night. The alcohol went to everyoneʼs heads. The energy
weʼd been using just to
survive was no longer needed for that purpose. We
suddenly had a surplus.
It affected us all in different ways. Pav and Soren finally
had sex, after weeks of
pretending they werenʼt really interested. Those seven
days in Timbuktu,
drinking Liamʼs beer, waking up hungover then drinking some
more, was one of the best
weeks of our lives. None of this is in the book,
because itʼs personal,
and even though the publishers begged me to make the
book a bit juicier, I
didnʼt think it was appropriate. Thereʼs a big difference
between your public life
and your private life, and you have to respect that.
It was also under the
influence of Liamʼs beer that I found myself walking into a
mosque for the first time
in my life. Of course, Iʼd visited mosques before, as a
tourist, but this time it
wasnʼt like that. I guess that whilst the others used up all
that surplus energy being
physical, I used that surplus energy and applied it to
the spiritual side of
things. It was the first time I realised what it meant to be in a
holy place. As I sat on
the floor, watching people chat or pray, with no one
seeming to bat an eyelash
at this westerner sharing their sacred space, I
experienced what I can
only call, no matter how corny it sounds, a sense of
transcendental relief.
There and then, God came to find me. I knew straightaway
the part he had played in
our salvation, as well as realising that it would always
be, from now on, so much
better now that I was aware of his presence, by my
side, to guide me through
all the journeys I had yet to make.
Of course, none of this
is in the book either. My publishers like to play me up as
some kind of macho
figurehead, always going on crazy adventures, challenging
the boundaries, as it
says on the back of all my books. I canʼt complain. My
image is my fortune, and
without it, I wouldnʼt be able to do the things I feel I
have to do in this world,
no matter how self-serving and absurd they sometimes
seem. My public doesnʼt
need to know the truth about my relationship with God.
Not yet. One day soon, I
shall tell them. Or God will reveal it. But for now, they
wouldnʼt be ready for it,
and I have to assume that heʼs OK with that, otherwise
heʼd do something about
it.
2010
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