| One Night in the Sahara |
by Amanda Jones
Join us each week in December for original stories from The Kindness of Strangers, a timely collection of inspiring tales exploring the human connections that so often transform the experience of travel and celebrates the gift of kindness around the world.
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I remember one night in particular when a man with whom I could not speak saved me.
I was in the Sahara Desert, traveling with a group of people I
neither knew nor liked especially well. We were en route to a
Tuareg wedding, moving via jeep during the day and sleeping
under the stars at night. It was arduous travel. The daytime heat
was stupefying and the drives were long, with nothing to do but
stare morosely at the passing desert.
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I would wait for the nights with their cooling air, the gloom
relieving the sun, the moon hovering huge and the Milky Way
luminous. And each evening, after my companions ate dinner and
retired to their mattresses, I would leave on a walk.
That night I left camp at about nine, foolishly dressed only in a
thin cotton shirt and light trousers. The sky was inky and the
moon had arced high, casting a meek metallic light on the ground.
But the desert seemed radiant and beckoning, and I was overjoyed
to be alone and moving.
After an hour of euphoric ambling, I finally turned back toward
camp. It was not until that moment that I realized how far I had
come and that I had no idea where I was. I looked for footprints,
but beneath my feet was hard-baked earth - flat and stony. With
horror I realized there were no landmarks and I had left no trail.
Resisting panic, I looked to the sky as I imagined one is supposed
to do in such situations - and found I was, of course, utterly clueless
about celestial navigation. As I stumbled onward I was
reminded of a game I had once played with a Tuareg guide in the
Western Sahara. He had delighted in taking off one of his many
scarves, wrapping it around my eyes, leading me in a straight line,
then telling me to find my way back, blindfolded, to the starting
place. It seemed easy enough, child's play, but I was hopeless, repeatedly
veering off course. The more certain I was of my direction, the
more wrong I was, as if the desert itself was conspiring against me.
My stately, indigo-shrouded guide had laughed at me, then had me
spin him in circles before performing the task himself. On every
occasion he strode back to the starting spot without faltering. When
I asked how he had learned this trick, he replied, "It is no trick. It
is the most important rule of the desert. You must learn to watch,
to be sure and always remember where you have come from."
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