Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
he and Awad began to play a kind of backgammon using nothing but lines in the sand and
camel droppings.
'Are you listening to this, Lev?'
Moez inclined his head towards the camel handlers, but they were speaking in Arabic,
so quickly that I could not perceive a word.
'What is it?'
'They're saying . . .' He smiled nervously. 'They're saying they've never been to this
part of the Bayuda . . .'
I almost choked on my words. 'What? But Bala said . . .'
'Yes, yes, I know - but it seems they always go the same way, along an old caravan
route some way south of here. It's the same way General Gordon took between Metemma
and Korti.'
I moved closer to Moez eager that Will and Ash would not hear. 'But what about the
wells?' I asked, in disbelief. 'We drank more water than we rationed today. It's hotter than
we thought . . .'
'They only know Jakdul,' Moez explained, 'and the wells south of the volcanic plateau.
Up here, well, they can guess, but . . .'
I was about to launch into some tirade when I felt movement on my shoulder; Ash, sens-
ing something was wrong, had joined us.
'Did I hear that right? Awad and Ahmad have never been this way? They don't even
know where the wells are?' Aghast, he turned over his shoulder. 'Are you listening to this,
Will?'
Always one to get stuck into a bit of controversy, Will left his ration pack and strode
over. 'What's going on? Wait, let me guess . . . Lev is lost?'
'Worse!' spat Ash. 'The camel guides haven't a clue where they're going.'
Will's face changed; where once he had been keen to poke fun, now he looked sombre.
'That's . . . not good, Lev,' he said, in earnest. 'Are we being incredibly arrogant here?
Three men who've never crossed deserts before, and two guides who don't know the way
. . .'
It was Will's concern that, finally, made me pause. Will was usually game for any ri-
diculous idea; if he was questioning the sanity of a project, there had to be a good reason.
I stared into the blackness of the desert, where the light of a million stars lit only rolling
dunes and outcrops of thorn. The prospect of not finding a well out here was unthinkable.
The old adage of 'three days without water, three weeks without food' didn't apply in a
land as inhospitable as this. In the heat we had walked through today, we wouldn't last
twelve hours without water; we'd be as dead as the shrivelled donkey carcasses we'd seen
outside Kadabas before the day was through.
