In the Footsteps of Riley, October 2001

What lies below is the barely edited, only slightly expurgated day-by-day journal of my research expedition to the Sahara to retrace the route of the crew of the Connecticut merchant brig Commerce shipwrecked here in 1815 as they worked their way across the desert to freedom. Half of the crew of eleven, plus a working passenger, would not make it. I had only the roughly drawn maps of the sailors who wrote memoirs. And as it would turn out, though I had permission to follow this route from one branch of the Moroccan government, the national police and the Army would prevent me from going inland as long as I was in Western Sahara.

While little came off as I had planned, in the end I had learned a whole lot more than I expected. It didn't help that I had scheduled the whole trip a year in advance of 9-11 for the week following 9-11. The crew's fate was determined partly by chance, partly according to how each man responded to the situation. This had fascinated me for some time, and I was here to learn more to better understand how they saved their lives or how they wilted under the privation, cruelty, alienation, and brutal elements.

The trip was made using Land Rovers and camels. We covered about 100 miles on the camels and the rest in the Land Rovers. The trip was immensely helpful in my writing Skeletons on the Zahara.

A 17th century map of the Sahara tracing Rilley's and Robbin's routes.

Day One: New York City

Day Two: Casablanca to Laayoune

Day Three: Laayoune to Dakhla

Day Four: Dakhla to Boujdour

Day Five: Seguia el Hamra I

Day Six: Seguia el Hamra II

Day Seven: Mohammed's Home

Day Eight: Tarfaya

Day Nine: Life on a Camel

Day Ten: A Day of Wandering

Day Eleven: The Dooda Day

Day Twelve: Life Without Mohammed

Day Thirteen: Getting to Know Ali

Day Fourteen: The Last Camel Ride

Day Fifteen: The Hotel Uneasy

Day Sixteen: Agadir

Day Seventeen: Essaouira to Marrakech

Day Eighteen: The End

Epilogue

Day One

Saturday, October 6, 2001: New York City.

J.P. Kang, my technology guru and friend, and I have a 12-hour layover in New York City before flying to Casablanca, laying over 14 hours, and flying to Laayoune, Western Sahara.  This gives me the chance to visit the New York Historical Society to look at Riley's manuscript.  Raw Riley is better than edited Riley for my purposes and, I think, a more likeable, real sea captain.

Notes from the New York Historical Society:

In a letter addressed “Dear Doctor,” last page diffe dated Sept 1883 same hand, Willima W Riley? writes:  “None of the original crew was ever rescued.  Sidi Hamet lost his life trying to rescue them.”

Signed James [Illegible]

First page starts:  “ . . . the sequel which I have published . . .”

         In Riley manuscript a pasted-in letter from Riley dated 20 February 1817 presenting the manuscript to Hon. Pintard Esquire &lbquo;with a request that it may be deposited with the manuscripts belonging to the New York Historical Society.  A note from Pintard, I can't fully read.  Manuscript in Riley's hand with editing over top. Appears to be source for book.  Light to medium editing in firm, dark pen.  Actually very light editing for word choice and slight wordiness primarily.

No. 17  “I began to encourage and press them” changed by ed. to “I began to exhort and press them.” Thus ed. made melodramatic.  R. less prone to this. Also usually calls the crew:  “the mates and the men,”  not things like  “my companions.”

No. 33 p 2:  Re: Hogan (I think) Riley writes, “I saw the lash enter his flesh to the bones at every stroke.&rbquo;  Ed. watered down to: &lbquo;I saw the blows fall on his emaciated and mangled frame.&rbquo;

No. 123, p 4:  a note about repressing material about the Jews.  Two previous pages (apparently a diatribe on Jewish merchants) are deleted.

Chpt XXVIII:  “Having recovered my strength. . . &rbquo;

        J.P. and I meet Ted and Claudia at Kennedy Airport.  They are veteran Third World travelers, and Ted is going to take digital video of the journey.  Ted was my next-door neighbor growing up.  He and Claudia are recently married.   In good spirits,  we drink a few beers at an airport bar waiting for the flight.

Day Two

Sunday, October 7: Casablanca to Laayoune.

        I prefer a more go-it-on-your-own travel, but this trip comes with handlers.  This has its immediate advantages.  Jouwad,  the outfitters representative, meets us at the gate and introduces us to Fouad,  our driver.  He takes us to our hotel,  where we shower,  and then escorts us around the city in his black Mercedes with a reclining back seat.  We are constantly amazed by the collision courses with cars, buses,  bikes and pedestrians and collisions narrowly avoided.  At a busy intersection, Fouad shines the Mercedes door on the backside of a guy cleaning his car.

        Casablanca is a squalid city with shanties behind mud walls and burning sewage.  But also with King Hassan II mosque,  third biggest in the world after those in Mecca and Medina and with the tallest minaret,  200 meters.  It is built over top of the city's pounding surf and is an eerie combination of high-tech and tradition,  with titanium-brass sliding electric doors,  polished marble,  mosaics,  and carved wooden screens to hide the women behind.  Beneath are Turkish baths and Moroccan baths and ablution rooms with rows of mushroom-like marble fountains for washing.  Walls are made of Venetian stucco:  lime,  egg,  etc.,  which is good at absorbing humidity.  Our guide is a slim,  shifty cynic,  very clever,  a natural hustler if he weren't giving English-language tours of the mosque.

        One gets the feeling that all of this is done for its propaganda value.  Most mosques are closed to “non-believers.”  This one is cavernous and sterile feeling.  All the gadgets and materials seem there to impress.  The guide speaks with unselfconscious haughtiness,  certain at our wonder and astonishment,  certain that this is proof of Islam's superiority.

         On our drive afterwards along the shore we see the king of Saudi Arabia's summer houses,  side by side,  one for his French wife,  one for his Saudi wife.  And King Mohammed II's Casablanca house,  as well as a modern Catholic cathedral made of concrete and colored glass and one of the 33 synagogues here,  both most notable simply for their presence.

5:00 P.M.: We return to our rooms for a nap,  a second shower and the news that the United States has begun bombing Afghanistan.  Tony Blair speaks for the Allies.  In German Type below the screen but not in English,  the ticker news reports that Bin Laden has declared that the war against Jews and Christians has begun.  We are in a country that is 90% Muslim, but not a sign of antipathy.

6:00 P.M.: We gather in the hotel lobby for a pow-wow with Jouwad.  &ldquo:It will take an extra day to get to Dakhla,” he says.  Then,  “The boat will take three days” (we had one day in the itinerary).  “It is 240 miles.”  “No, it is 81 miles,” I say,  quoting the Africa Pilot.  We consult my tourist map and settle on 110 miles.  “But the drive from Laayoune to Dakhla will take only 6 or 7 hours,” he says.  “Then we must drive through the night,”  I say.  This goes on and on.  There is a discussion about the boat being paid for in advance,  which Jouwad claims it has been (…time would prove it hadn't).  He goes sanctimonious about how business is done in Morocco assuring us that it has.  “Why was I repeatedly told that we could do it in a day if it will take three days?”  I ask.

        Sensing the subterfuge, Ted gets confrontational. He is even more of a hothead than I am, which I must be mindful of.

        “I am telling you reality,” is Jouwad's reply.

        On the way to the airport, I tell the others I think it is a bluff.  We could paddle there in three days. There is no place to stop,  even if it would take three days.  Why is he testing us?  He also says we can't go 50 miles in a day on the camels.  I argue this.  Basically all the promises Hamid made on the phone in our negotiations over details have been called into question.  At an impasse with Jouwad,  we reach a truce invoking   the words  “In shallah,”  “God willing.”

8:20 p.m.:  We meet Remi, the photographer, just in from Paris, in the airport.  He seems amusing and easygoing, at least on the surface.   J.P. is a great travel companion,  stoic,  into his electronic gadgets, asleep sitting up right now.

Day Three

Monday, October 8: Laayoune to Dakhla.

4:30 A.M.:  We get up to drive into the desert.  Those of us who came from the States have slept about four hours in the past 36,  but while the others slouch in the back,  I am wired as we enter the desert,  the headlights illuminating the moonscape around us,  which will never seem so mysterious as it does right now.  Achmet,  our driver concentrates on the road as Arabic stringed music blares from the Land Rover stereo to keep him awake.

9:00 A.M.: We arrive in the town of Bojador,  charmless concrete shells of buildings with sewage burning in the gutters,  and drive down to the docks.  This is where I am supposed to sail from and there is no boat bigger than a fishing dinghy.  There are dozens of them, each with five benches,  little wooden dinghies. The boats are moved by mules and carts with car tires.  There is no sailboat of the type I need this side of the Canary Islands.  I have paid Hamid $1,500 to get a boat here.  I am incredulous that after all our planning,  including prepaid cash,  he never arranged to have a boat delivered.  When I ask to go out in a dinghy to survey the coast,  they say the surf is too rough.  They won't go out no matter what I am willing to pay.  I walk on the concrete and stone jetty that creates their harbor.  A soldier stationed at the point holds a gun swaddled in rags and packing tape over his shoulder.  He takes a drag on a butt and the smoke is a relief to smell in the deathly stench of desiccated fish guts.  Okay, so we will drive to Cape Barbas.

10:00 A.M.: Just stopped on spectacular bluffs S of Cape Boujdor.  Drop of at least 100 feet, very steep and rocky at top.  Wind blowing so hard that you can only talk from a foot away.  Sea is green for half a mile out turning dark blue.  Big cloud passes like a Zeppelin over the sea,  casting opaque shadows.  I think of them as schools of ravenous fish moving through the water.  A dark-skinned old man with a punched face,  wearing a colorful robe and shesh posed for Remi like a peacock.

10:20 A.M.: Sand stinging back of legs as we walk down in half mile of hummocky dunes to eastern bluff.  This is just around the bend from the last canyon and closed but to the sea.  The bush catches sand and is buried alive,  sticking up brown and gray and crisp,  buried like bones.  I am looking at two wrecks,  a small tanker in the distance S and mast tops of a fishing schooner in the fore.  The sand blowing across the beach makes it alive shimmering,  ghastly,  reflecting light.  Both are Moroccan, this probably a sardine boat wrecked for probably two decades.  My shoes are filled with sand.  I stand on plankton-covered rocks at low tide looking up at the green to rust to white-pitted metal hull,  watching a gull blown backward land nonchalantly on the stern mast.  It serves as a metaphor for this desert coast,  going backwards but taking it in stride.  At any time you can see four rows of breakers.  We come with plans, programs,  agendas,  and schedules to be met.  I shake Jouwad's hand vigorously thankful that he has brought me to this place and to show him I understand now.

12:40 P.M.:  Still driving S on this endless road.  Just before Dakhla 219 road marker,  we see our first pure dunes in piles that pop off the russet landscape like a Matisse cutout of a Delacroix.  This fades to more dirty tan,  rock-strewn plain on either side with heather-colored scrub brush.  Berber music throbbing and twanging from tape player keeps Achmet awake at the wheel.  We are on one lane of pavement suddenly facing an 18-wheel flatbed.  At the last second,  it pulls one side over on the shoulder and we pull one side on the shoulder and we scoot by each other.  This is repeated again and again.  Dakhla 209, see a “sandnado” racing across to E.

1:20 P.M.:  At Noadihibu 556,  we hang a left onto the desert,  drive half a mile to a line of acacia trees (food for camels) and park for lunch under an tree.  The crew of six puts down mats and rugs and mattresses with a round wooden tabletop in the middle.  We listen on Ted and Claudia's short-wave radio to the news of the bombardment of El Queda targets in Afghanistan and the riots in Pakistan and Gaza.  Iran and Iraq have objected. Turkey supporting. Egypt “concerned” at civilian suffering.

         J.P. has me set up on his camera bag with a Berber pillow to the side and a jacket over the computer and my head to keep light and sand out.  The raw powerful elements here must be felt to be appreciated.  The wind howling near the water is deafening,  as is the surf in some places.  The beaches just S of Cape Bojador could well be the beaches where the Commerce wrecked.  We covered about 180 miles this morning and made three stops.

4:45 P.M.:   Dakhla 109:   We pass a hovel town of cinderblock,  plywood,  canvas on the flat ledge above the sea.  Would expect to see tumbleweed around here but anything that can tumble is either caught and burnt by the nomads,  sandblasted to powder by the northeast wind,  or swept over the edge into the Atlantic,  as if under a giant rug.

Dakhla 105: Sand piles to E,  100 yards from bluff over the sea. A crumbled Stonehenge.  After lunch saw a Great Pyramid.  You can see whatever you want here in its desolate twin.

5:30 P.M.: We stop on the cliffs by a fishing shanty village (D92), similar to the one we passed earlier . I accompany Mohammed as he searches for tea.  We pass a patchwork tent of canvas,  plastic held down by fishing net and rocks.  The floor is dirt.  There are another dozen and a half and a dozen dogs.  The men and a boy greet us,  shaking hands and tapping hearts.  They show us their 16-inch loup de mer,  which they have caught with long poles after descending 200 feet to the caved-in strata boulders below. “You want them for dinner?”  they ask,  displaying the fish in the back of a truck under a piece of canvas,  not an ice cube for 50 miles.  The men and a boy surround me close in.  Mohammed somehow talks us out of the group and back to the Rovers.  I stick close by him.

        There Mohammed grabs hold of a fisherman's rope and lowers himself over the cliff face.  He bounds down a steep face of fallen stone and sand above the breakers,  and I momentarily wonder if he is suicidal.  I wasn't going to over the north-facing ledge until I thought of Riley.  I had to overcome my fear and descend the cliff by the tangled-sea-tackle rope attached in the sand somehow beneath a pile of stone.  I knew only that the fishermen,  and Mohammed,  trusted in this rope.  I could see their footprints below and their trampled fishing perches.  Scaled a twenty-foot vertical with good footholds that can also be hand crushers if you are not careful.  At the bottom of this you can go left or right or straight ahead 150 feet down to spumy boulders.  Where a fallen ledge standing on end creates an open-air cave,  I head left.  Here the desert had generously deposited tons of sand to make the descent to the fishing perches easier.  The NE trade wind,  the homeward wind for American sailors,  has filled the crevasses with sand and powdered the sedimentary strata as well.  I ski downward two-Rockports at a time to the craggy fishing seat,  which is littered with muscle shells and the heads and bones of wasted bait.

6:00 P.M.:  Having been stopped at half a dozen mud-bunker guard stands along the highway to show passports and tell the names of our mothers and fathers,  it is at the final stop just above the Dakhla peninsula where we got the shaft.  It all starts to go bad when the pencil-necked gendarme behind the typewriter asks me the usual questions,  including name of parents,  and I realize he is looking at Ted's passport.  He calls Ted in,  yanks the paper out of the typewriter,  and balls it up.

        We play with the black and white and liver-colored puppies,  identify constellations,  and spot three satellites before Achmet brings us to the local gas station café.

8:10 P.M.:  Two hours later we are still in this miserable spot with a loud TV blaring war news in Arabic.&nbbsp; At least we have hot café au lait.  We watch hazy war images and wait for a “message” concerning us. Achmet is with the gendarmes trying to get approval for us to move into the “very restricted” area south of Dahkla.  I could almost crash where I sit,  eyes are sagging seriously.

        Three hours later instead of going to our tent and dinner we are escorted into Dahkla,  where we are interrogated by the Royal Gendarmes and the Army.

        After our ordeal,  we check into a hotel.  Jouwad with a quivering jaw tells me they have taken his identity card,  and we might have to cancel this part of the trip.  I know he isn't fooling around when he tries to get his cigarette to his mouth and it clatters back and forth on his lip. He needs only kind words. “Look, Jouwad, as long as you are trying hard for me it is not a problem,” I say.

Day Four

Tuesday, October 9: Dakhla to Boujdor.

In the morning,  the news is all bad.  We have been refused permission to go to Cape Barbas and been told that we will not be allowed to go into the interior,  where they say all the paths are landmined.  Furthermore,  the proverbial police escort is following us to the county line.

11:00 A. M.:  Leaving town we are stopped at a checkpoint.  Just before J.P. puts his video camera to the window to film,  the sharp-suited and capped gendarme is arguing with two furious Sub-Saharans.  A whole car caravan waits to head S,  and there is much confusion.  All spit-polished,  controlled wrath,  a peacock with an audience,  the gendarme is in his element.  When he engages in this stare down of the shouting,  gesticulating going-nowhere man,  J.P.   can't resist the urge to shoot.  No sooner than J.P. raises the camera,  a gendarme inside the guard hut, sees him and shouts at us.

        The stiff-necked,  puffed-up gendarme outside now looks through the back window of our Land Rover with opaque eyes.  His bristly Saddam mustache marching on his lip as he shouts at us.  Though frightened,  we sit impassively.  Then he says,  apparently to amuse himself, “Tell me a story.”  After 24 hours of polizei,  gendarme,  militaire and 2ieme Bureau harassment,  J.P.,  an Old Testament scholar can only silently sway his jaw.  Now the gendarme is amused.  “Tell me a funny story,”  he demands even more emphatically,  the difference between the gendarme and the white scorpion,  common on the Sahara,  being that the scorpion doesn't sting you for fun.

         “You are a student? How do you say, a researcher?” the gendarme,  who has read J.P.'s passport,  says.  He agrees.  “You are doing research on Moroccan gendarmes,” the gendarme states,  the twitching in his face indicating the expected payoff.  “Moroccan duanes are not nice,”  he says.  “Moroccan Polizei are not nice.  Moroccan gendarmes are not nice,  especially ones with mustaches in Dakhla!”

         We force laughter.  He suppresses a smug grin. With relief,  we perceive that he has reaped his reward from the encounter.

         Just before Laayoune 400: is one of my favorite sights here,  seen on the way down,  the white sand desert between shallow canyon walls with dark strata at top appears to flow right off the edge of the world,  as if it were trying to fill the sea.  The steel-blue endless sea horizon.

Noon: We stop where the sea has carved a deep ravine into the coast.  On both sides,  the bluffs tower 250 feet above the beach,  but here the sand covered boulders allow one to slip gradually down.  I follow the sole tracks of a man and a goat winding into the vortex until they arrive at a steep rocky fissure.  I go down hand over foot to a ledge.  I peer over …nothing, no footholds,  no ledges …nothing but sand 20 feet below and the continuing footprints of the man and the beast.  I search the sides of this ravine and find heads of petrified coral at least 100 feet above the sea.  In one fold of the ravine wall,  the loud drone of the sea is cut off from the direct route but reflects to my ears from the back wall and then from the front wall making the sound you hear inside a shell.

3:25 P.M. :  Passing the sand dunes we saw yesterday that look like sleeping crescent moons lying on their sides.

        Jouwad, who had gotten permissions for us in the first place at the capital of the S,  Laayoune,  is still visibly angry,  shaken,  sad. “They had six of them all asking me questions at the same time,  like I was from the Polisario.  They are stupid.  They know who we are.  We signed in at every stop.  I was down here a month ago getting permission.  Now they say they don't know who we are.  They know about the story for National Geographic.  They don't care.”  We left Foum-something,  outside of Laayoune,  yesterday after a 4:30 am wakeup.  I went to sleep last night at 1:30 without dinner.  Got up this morning at 7:30 and had two cups of café au lait for breakfast.  Now we eat lamb tagine in a Muslim filled gas station cafe with two TVs showing war scenes and protests while men in the cafe pray in two open-door prayer rooms beside the bathroom with a squat hole and a faucet.  The attendant doles out soap powder for the sink.  Now I need a 10 minute snooze before Boujdor where we will take a fishing boat our to look at the coast.

6:35 P.M.:   The molten-sand sun just set a tad S of W from Boujdor.  We are camping behind the beach on the northern edge of town,  and I am just contemplating where the wreck might have been.  The only place that seems to fit with Riley's picture would seem to be the beaches S of here.  There are no bluffs here by the town.  Today had its frustrations …we were again denied the boat,  the seas were too rough …but I am at peace with myself,  whatever happens here.  I am sitting on a rock with a pile of conk shells,  snail shells and sturdy russet-and-white clamshells to take home to my girls.

        Earlier, in the town of Boujdor I was harassed for the first time by a large ash-colored teenager and his friend. “Are you French?  English?”  they ask me as I look at a week-old Figaro.

        “American,”  I say,  without qualms,  though I sense a hustle.

        “What do you think of this guy?”  the big one asks,  pointing to a photograph of Osama bin Laden in an Arabic magazine.

        “He's not a friend of mine,”  I reply,  still not getting it.

        “I like him very much,”  the youth declares.

        I walk away.  The collective unease begins to tell on us.  When I return to the Land Rover,  we argue about the boy's true intent.  The others try to downplay his Osama Bin Laden comment to me and this makes me mad.  We are coming apart at the seams.

Day Five

Wednesday, October 10, 2001: Boujdor to Seguia el Hamra.

9:10 A.M.: We cannot so much as ride in a fishing boat down here.  The colonel of the post, who speaks English and attended college near Reno visited us last night and said we could go out in the boat today,  but this morning he says we also need approval of the Caid,  who cannot see us until later.  The police car is still here.  The men slept overnight in the car.

11:40 A.M.: We take the Land Rover across the riddled desert between the road and sea N of Faux Barbas.  At about .5 miles from an opening between two bluffs,  I get out and jog to an abandoned fishing village of stone and block.  The beach is narrow stone and sand with many small polished stones some of which I gathered for the girls.  I walk on giant smooth white stones like turtles' backs beneath the vertical cliff,  which only a desperate man would attempt to climb without equipment.  This part is only passable when the tide is out.  I have reached an impasse.  I wave and wave to the Land Rover on the bluff to the N,  where I told them I would meet them.  I cannot get there.  Apparently they do not see me.

         Passing back through the village,  I am confronted by a lone man,  who suddenly emerges from one of the buildings.

        “Are there others nearby?“ he asks.

         “Yes,” I lie,  beating a hasty retreat.

        They are still there when I reach the trailing Rover,  which is waiting by the road.  I think and hope it's our Rover.  But it's only frowning Jouwad.  I had headed for it only because the other Rover on the bluff was out of sight and so I thought they might have returned to the road.  My heels and toes are chewed up from running in Rockports with no socks.  But thank God I ran because I was able to follow the Rockport tracks back and I would have otherwise been lost.  They are terrified of landmines even though there are lots of footpaths and tire tracks.  I stayed on these zigzagging back the whole way.

3:00 P.M.:  We eat a late lunch near Laayoune behind a dune.  The gendarmes (blue on blue with red star badges with a crown in the middle) watch from across the road.   “We have a saying,” Jowad says. “When the stomach is happy,  it tells the head to sing.”

        Afterwards we head into Laayoune to meet with head of tourism,  El Khaloufi El Mana,  Delegue du Tourisme,  BP 471 Laayoune.  He is a quiet and intelligent guy,  married to an Ouled Bou Sbaa.  His father was a warlord of sorts whose Reguibat men fought for the French in Vietnam.  He had wives here,  in Mauritania,  and Algeria.  El Khaloufi has siblings all over.  He looks at the Riley picture of the wreck site and says he knows it exactly,  S of Bojador 20 or 30 kilometers.  They have a path down the bluff Riley shows.

        After meeting with El Khaloufi we drive to the souk and buy laelthamine,  long swaths of blue cloth, “ shushes,”  which Mohammed helps us tie around our heads,  Sahara fashion.  I give some curious kids in the souk the colorful pens I have brought.  This makes them beg even harder.  I start to get irritated. Then they ask me “Where from?” “America,”  I say.

        ”Ah, Bush,”they say laughing. “ Bomb. Boom. Boom. Ha, ha!”

        Adult eyes begin to turn our way.  We soon make a hasty exit.

        In the late afternoon, we enter the Seguia el Hamra,  at a remarkable spot by the oasis Lemseid,  like a shallow Grand Canyon.  To the SW the canyon disappears in rippling waves of sand in infinite regression.  It is a sight that lifts our spirits.  There are some people on a blanket drinking tea.  They come from the city to the desert just to have tea.

        “They must have the sand, ”Achmet, our very good driver,  who is going to swap me some music for something,  tells us.  “Some former nomads living in cities fill their terraces with sand so that they can pitch a tent there to have tea.” 

        Around tea before dinner,  Jouwad explains that on the desert if you have a visitor,  you kill your only goat (the least valuable of animals, meaning you have nothing else at all),  to feed them.  Your trust in God so much that you know “in Shallah” he will feed you the next day.

        El Khaloufi comes out to the Seguia and joins us for dinner and brings me the book Estudios Sharaignos by Julio Caro Baroja.  He says he will take me to the beach pictured in Riley's drawing and we will drink camel milk at his cousin's place on the way.  By the end of dinner he seems to be backing off a bit.  (Ted always notices these things.)  He was born on the Sahara. We almost managed to buy wine tonight.  Instead,  Jouwad and Mohammed make tea,  and we sip it staring at the red coals and talking to El Khaloufi.  Mohammed says nomads always drink three cups of tea  (Chinese green).  The first is the strongest,  the second the best,  the third the weakest.  We need all three after the pains of the last couple days.  He pours in a big stream.

         Jouwad talks about the acceptance of Jews,  Muslims,  and Christians in Morocco.  In Marrakech a major mosque is fronted and backed by a synagogue and a church.

11:45 P.M.:   We are bivouacked in the Seguia el Hamra under the Northern Cross and the Southern Cross.  I will not sleep in the rubber-smelling individual tents but on the rug in the open-fronted Berber tent,  where I scribble by the lantern now.  The Seven Sisters,  Taurus and now Orion rise above our bright yellow outhouse.  This is our second night of camping and my second without a shower but the dry air wicks the moisture away.  Even though I ran today I am not sticky anywhere.

        Mohammed is sleeping here too.  He and I talk a good bit using French,  Spanish, and Arabic. “Hogar,”  he says,  tapping my shoulder. “Look.”  He is animated,  wheezy,  funny and friendly.  In the job space of his national ID card,  it reads: “sans.”  He has a wife and a three-year-old daughter and a different name on ID card than he told us.  He says his father told him that whenever he saw a shooting star,  someone had died.  When he saw a bright one,  it was a great man.  Mohammed tells me he has two brothers (out of five) in the Polisario,  one in Cuba learning to fly,  a chilling fact,  and four sisters,  one in Mauritania,  also Polisario.  He also has two brothers in the Moroccan army.

Day Six

Thursday, October 11: Seguia el Hamra.

Seguia el Hamra means “red channel,” supposedly because the walls of the river valley are red,  according to one of my sources.  But they are not red,  at least not that I saw.  Mohammed offers a more plausible reason;  because of the many battles the nomads fought here.  But then I think who the hell would fight over this?  We cross the actual riverbed of the famous Seguia el Hamra in the center of this valley.  It is a groove barely as high or as wide as our Land Rover.  I ask Mohammed if there are any rivers in Western Sahara with water.  He says,  yes,  there is one down near Mauritania.  It is about 45 kilometers long.

Note to self: The Grand Plate is Couscousou River?

         At last this is what I came to see. Ugly desert,  a mind-field of ankle-breaking black stones.  This is what Riley described. Despite my bum ankles  …a legacy of organized and playground basketball… I get out and run on it.  Then I lie down on it with no shirt on to see what it felt like for Riley to sleep on.  It is pain that I have sought long and hard to experience.  The place is so empty and exposed that even the clouds in the distance are a welcome sight,  even though if they don't and won't ever provide any shelter.  Our bag of gorp feels like the riches of the world here.  You cannot imagine more dire nothingness.

At 10:40 A.M.:  At the meeting of Oued Share,  which isn't on the map,  about 60 kilometers inland,  we see a mother and a baby camel.  The baby sleeps in mother's shadow.  Mohammed approaches using signs because camels won't listen to people they don't know.  Camels won't give their milk unless they want to.  Thus, the person who milks the camel is important.  Camels lie down when they want to cut a babe off.  Jackals attack just after the camels go to sleep when the mothers are tired.

        Mohammed is a camel-racing instructor on his third wife.  He likes to holler like a baby camel on steroids and dance.  Or he'll holler, “Whoa, Pater (for J.P., which he cannot say easily),  ca va?”  His father was a mercenary for Franco and then for the French in Algeria.  When I ask,  he tells me that Arabs on the desert drink camel urine for four reasons.  The first three are medicinal  …for gum infections and toothaches;  for stomach ailments; as an antidote to poison  …and they drink only the urine of a female at least three-months pregnant (it takes that long for them to know the female is pregnant;  gestation lasts 12 mos.).  The fourth and only other reason they drink camel urine is because they are really thirsty.  Then any camel urine will do.

        At the opening of the Share …where Riley might have stood and believed the width of the oued to be eight miles,  as he writes in his narrative “…we see a hill with a monument.” I get out and run over the stones in the hard backed earth.  Mohammed tells me, “Walk on stones,”  Mohammed tells me. ”Good for stomach.  Sharp stones very good.”

I climb the hill.  It is the graves of three children,  at least three decades old because they now have to bury their dead in nearest town.  Muslims are buried on sides facing Mecca.  Stones mark foot and head,  in some places a female is marked by a stone on the stomach.  A bowl on one grave is for pouring precious henna on the babe.  Gray,  spiky brush lies nearby a large pile of stones. Wood for burning is precious here,  but no one will take it for fire because it has been used to keep jackals off the graves.  All we see is camels,  one tent of a camel keeper.  We stop at a camel skeleton,  neck arched back at the rise of a hill it could not climb.  It still has its long eyelashes and wrinkled hide that sounds like a fiberglass canoe when you tap it.  Bright white flat ribs.  Mouth agape in a silent scream.

         12:30 P.M.:  Another long, good morning given the circumstances.  We drove 47 kilometers into the Seguia to find a Bou Sbaa home and there I was told the tribal history by a noble of that tribu ,  who happened to have his own slave,  a black teenage boy.  As soon as we brought out our video camera,  they made the boy go in a back room.  At one point, he said,  “Now that I have told you about the Bou Sbaa,  tell me something I don't know about Morocco,  something you have discovered.”

         5:00 P.M.:  Heading back to Boubka,  we haul ass over the hard sand …I check the speedometer,  90 km/hr,  until we reach a spot where it is all hacked up.  A camel bath,  where the camels have layed down in the sand and churned it up.

         Tonight we celebrate Remi's birthday with wine and a cake,  and he seems way pleased.  He tells me his girlfriend thanked me for taking care of him.  The guides dress up a donkey in an outfit for some tomfoolery.

Day Seven

Friday, October 12, 2001: In the Seguia el Hamra.

Idris Asgaugh had 12 sons.  He divided the grand Morocco …the Maghreb …including Algeria,  Tunisia,  Mauritania,  and Libya,  into 12 parts.  They fought.  The oldest,  named Mohammed,  was not content.  He went to Tlimsane in Algeria,  where he joined the tribe Brabcha and became a Mussleman.  He did nothing but study the Koran and studied so hard that he became magic.  The Brabcha came to his house and demanded he serve him a sheep, as is the custom.  He said no.  He didn't want to.  He turned the sheep into lions.  He had seven children.  He came to the Sahara.  He started to fight the Portuguese.  He divided the land for his 17 sons.

         We visit the oasis at Lemseid,  which now part of a rustic outdoor hotel,  and then go into Laayoune.  Then we load into Achmet's Land Rover.  I started talking to him about cures.  He shows me the scars on the meat of his forearms and the top of his head,  also on his ankles where he was burned to cure his stomach problem,  four years,  five months ago.  He was then tapped with a hot stake on his shins and elbows.  This, he promises, saved his life,  and he does this to his children now when they are sick.

         I am amazed because Riley mentioned this form of medical treatment in 1815.  I thought it bizarre even then.  But today it is almost inconceivable.

Noon:  We are in Mohammed's home with his sister,  wife and his sisters' two children.  We drink tea made over a charcoal brassier.  They serve nuts and dates and give us small gifts,  a decorated skin bag and a decorated pencil.  Achmet and I go to return a book to El Khaloufi and sudeenly the Royal Gendarmes pull us over.  They are worried because the others,  whom we had left behind at Mohammed's are not with us.  They are watching us.  Achmet seemed rather charged that Minster of the Interior has put out an a.p.b. that we should be protected and helped wherever we go.  He has a lot of spirit and more than once shakes his head at Jouwad's pusillanimity,  saying,  “You cannot live in fear.”  (He was sent home soon after,  leaving us with an uncommunicative driver.)

         After dropping off the book and bidding adieu to Mohammed's family (I give Mohammed's niece a watch …she beams),  we go to the home of the patriarch of the Bou Sbaa's we met in the Seguia el Hamra for another tea ceremony.  The boys kiss the hands of the old men after shaking hands.  The old men are shown much respect even by our guides.  Claudia is ushered off to be with the women, who shower her with gifts, gowns, bowls, and bracelets.

         I,  as guest of honor,  sit next to the patriarch,  who shows pictures of his sisters and brothers,  who like him were Mujadeen against the Spanish.  They tell me that he is a very honored scholar and will be buried with 50 relatives around him.  But the small 18 th c. English book that an Englishman gave him and that he was going to show me turned out to be …after he carefully unwrapped it from a pouch …the dog-eared business card of journalist,  Michael Griffin.  He tells me that when the Ouled Bou Sbaa came to the desert,  they were the peacemakers.  If there was a dispute,  between two tribes,  they would give sheep,  goats,  camels,  and blankets to the aggrieved to make all all right.  (Contrast this with Ali's story about the Bou Sbaa!)

         When it comes to the Riley story, the Ouled Bou Sbaa grandpere says that he knew a story like the one I was talking about.  He says it was the chief, Sidi Mbara,  who ordered that the Americans be taken to Essaouira.  I absorb the atmosphere while Remi plots something sinister with a young Turk  (not literally)  in the corner.

         They ask us many times to stay for dinner but we refuse.  Leaving,  we are led by a Royal Gendarme GMC with blue lights flashing to a place where we have been told we can not start our camel caravan.

         “You are the only Americans in this province,”  Achmet assures us.

6:30 P.M.:  We are bivouacked on the beach.  I am sitting on the beach N of Tarfaya near the rusted out hull of a fishing trawler.  It is wrecked bow-first like the Commerce and is lying on its port side open to the N wind.  Two blue-robed mujadeen on white camels just rode up.  Their faces are hidden behind black laelthamine.

         Camel for dinner.  Nobody believes me.  It is served with potatoes and carrots.  Remi,  the Frenchman and so our culinary expert,  thinks it is mutton.  We are a little giddy knowing that we have a 6 A.M. wake up call for our first day of camel riding.

9:00 P.M.:  For some reason all the tents are far apart tonight.  J.P. is now sleeping in the communal tent with Mohammed and me.  Ted and Claudia tune in to BBC news,  which I don't particularly want to hear.  Jouwad visits to tell us three good reasons for bigamy.  In Islam,  a man can have four wives.  Here the wife has to go in by herself and request it.  1.)  If wife can't have a child.  2.)  Wife is lonely,  men travel a lot.  3.)  A good woman trying to raise a child needs help and she could use a hand around the house.  Jouwad asks me if we saw the two camels beside the road just before Tah,  which where the old WS border was.  They had been killed by a landmine.  I say to Jouwad,  “It should get better now that we are out of WS and in Morocco.”  He says, “Yes,  well,  Sahara Occidental is part of Morocco but yes.rdquo;

         Mohammed and I talk about many things,  including how to choose a good racing camel.  Here's what Mohammed looks for in a camel:

•  The foot isn't too big and the bone connecting the foot to the ankle is short.

•  Ankle is long.

•    An open chest, elbows wide like a bulldog.

•    Pointed ears that stick out a little bit.

11:00 P.M.:  With Taurus bright in the sky overhead,  we turn in.  I can't help but reflect:  Wow,  two dead camels by the road before Tah,  killed by landmines …one headless, the other gutted.

Day Eight

Saturday, October 13, 2001:  On the way to Tarfaya, we learn to ride camels.

8:10 A.M.:  The camels bark like sea lions as we mount them.   They sit.  We climb on,  in front of the hump.  Rising to their feet,  they stick their tail end up first so that you are looking down at a 45-degree angle,  wondering how long you can hang on before their front end rises.  When that happens,  you are jolted backwards.  I almost flew head over feels off my camel's rump.  The way its legs unfold,  you get the feeling you are on some sort of prehistoric creature or a 1960s alien fighting-machine.  It is like nothing else.

Dean on the coast in the evening.  

         Our planned 7:00-7:30 departure finally pulls out.  We pass two wrecks and tons of debris and garbage swept onto this north-facing coast.  Giant rusted drums,  smashed fishing dinghies,  a whale carcass,  fishing nets,  buoys,  all arranged in lines by the tide.  Crates and cooking oil containers,  the refuse of fishing vessels dumped over the side ends up here where it takes on a new life.  Valuable items have been dragged up above the tide line for future retrieval.  Buoys on poles are staked every so often as if marking some scavenger's territory.  It gives the beach a remote, eerie feeling.  One gets the distinct feeling that the laws out here are those of the Wild West or Lord of the Flies.  Take something if you dare.  It is a scavenger's paradise.  A number of hovels pop up unexpectedly behind dunes.  One,  made of stone to our great surprise,  even has a car out back protected by an automobile slipcover à la middle America,  a reminder that the coastal road is just over the western dunes.

11:30 A.M.:  Bluffs appear,  and shortly after noon,  we seek shelter from the sun and wind in the shade of a boulder part way up the bluff.  The boulder makes about a 20-foot shelf with a clearance of two feet,  just high enough for travelers to seek shelter there from a storm.  Both directions offer a sweeping view of beach and the shallow sea.   This also would have been a prime place to lay in wait of stranded ships.

         Our six fettered camels all hobble over to the same bushy dune to graze.  Ants with aluminum-colored tails for reflecting the sun arrive to recon us for the same.  We made just 15 kilometers before stopping for lunch.  Ironically,  with all the tension and emotion we have faced in dealing with the authority's efforts to derail our expedition,  I almost lost it after we got started this morning,  when we rode through so much garbage on the dunes.  It was a discouraging start.  Nevertheless, now we have something to celebrate …being off the camels …with a tea ceremony.  Tea is the one of the few comforts you have to look forward to in these austere parts,  a comfort Riley did not have.  Tea was not ubiquitous in Morocco and on the Sahara then as it is now.  Today it is crucial to good morale.  Three times we drink,  three different strengths of brew,  always saying  “Besmillah!” whenever we take the cup (“In God's name!”).  Privately,  I raise my glass to Riley.

         We eat salad Niçoise for lunch with fresh sardines,  plus Devil's mess,  which sends two of us directly to the rocks for relief.  The camels chew their foul cud and foam at the mouth.  This is what we came for.  They set down as gently as forklifts with pallets of brick.  Naturally,  the photographer leaves,  just after lunch when we spy a cafe by the highway.  In some ways this is just one big expensive photo shoot.

         After lunch,  we have new energy,  and with a morning of riding under our belt, we notch it up a gear.  Mohammed goads his camel,  and we start to haul ass down the beach.  This is disconcerting:  imagine sitting on a barstool on a horse while looking out the window of speeding car.  Rafts of foam fly back in my face from my camel's huffing mouth as I hang on for dear life.  And then I feel a disturbing sensation.  My saddle is slipping to the side.  I fight off panic and search for a way to gain control of the situation.  But it's useless.  The next thing I know I am heeled over the side of the heedless dashing camel.  Then I am staring at his whipsawing legs.  Sliding, still sliding.  I let go. . . .

         Mohammed rides up to me lying stunned on the beach,  trying to sense slowly if anything is seriously damaged.  If it is,  I don't really want to know.  He shouts,  “You are okay!  Those who fall from camels never get hurt.”  Then,  “Why are you disturbing me?”  Then,  “It was your fault.”   I do not respond other than to shake my head to clear the cobwebs.  This sense that some things are written in stone pervades the culture.  Just as our guides in a brief frank discussion about 9/11,  say,  “Osama couldn't have done that.  He is a Muslim, and a Muslim couldn't have done it.”

         The amazing thing is that when Riley fell from his camel in 1815,  his guide said the same thing to him.  And I paraphrase:  “Riley,  if you had fallen from an ass,  you would be dead.  But since you fell from a camel …camels are sacred …and those who fall from them are never seriously hurt.  You are okay.  Let's go.”

3:45 P.M.:  My ass on fire,  I insist that we stop so that I can get my rug back from Reguibat (a.k.a. Mohammed),  which he had swapped with me after lunch for a thinner one.  I thought nothing of it at the time,  but Mohammed knew what he was doing.  These blankets go over a doughnut of straw that surrounds the camel's hump and provide the only cushion between you and the camel. 

4:15 P.M.: I am riding barefoot.  Pater slumps in his saddle.  With the front end of his ill-fitting round brimmed sun hat cocked up,  he makes a stunning Sancho Panza.  The lone highway that stretches the length of Western Sahara from Morocco to Mauritania squeezes to the coast and we have to cut across it.  After riding on the other side of the road for a while,  with all vehicles honking and waving …Mohammed knows every one and,  it seems, does illicit trading with most …we are beside the sea again but a hundred feet above the water,  the bluff a wall of craggy brown rock.  Behind us is a view of repeating points reminding me of Kauai's Cathedral.  I count 19 jutting bluffs,  black silhouettes,  over boulders and white spume giving to mist.  We are riding towards Cape Juby lighthouse,  then three kilometers beyond to the campsite.  We'll be damn glad to get there.

         After riding 38 kilometers,  we prefer to jog at intervals towards the end.  The middle of my backaches and my tail is skinned up.  We are thankful to see the lighthouse at last,  but it is getting dark and,  though we can see 30 kilometers or so to the mountains,  we cannot find camp.  We have to call and have a Land Rover come get us.  Dismounting,  Mohammed suddenly hits the deck with a massive thigh cramp.  As we wait for the Land Rover,  we all pop Advil to ease our pain.

6:40P.M.:  We eat dinner in our Berber tent,  rugs on poles.  Being inside the tent,  I am reminded of the Arab homes we have entered here.  All,  like our tent,  are virtually empty.  They seem cavernous with just rugs and pillows.  (I recognize the blanket and pillow Mohammed camps with from his living room.)  They have no wastebaskets.  They waste almost nothing.  In the Seguia el Hamra,  when Mohammed threw a plastic water tube out the window,  he could not understand why Claudia was outraged.

         Spaghetti for dinner with fresh fruit soup,  finger bowls of salt and cumin for condiments as usual.  Morale is up even with the pain.  Ted is smiling.  Claudia is talking to me (our camels were roped together most of the day behind Mohammed).  Up tomorrow at 6:15 for 7:30 departure.  Mohammed,  J.P.,  and I are sleeping in this tent,  while the others opt for their own private tents.  All are in the sack by 10 o'clock on this starry night.  Ted even wishes me goodnight.

10:20 P.M. : At the end of the day,  I have some serious questions to ask myself.  But first I have to care for my body.  I had nearly cracked a rib in the fall.  I had stained the back of my pants red with blood from chafing and my muscles and bones were pulverized from the inside of my thighs to the top of my butt.  Could Riley and Co. in the condition they were in possibly have traveled 50 to 100 miles in a day?  Certainly not as we know them on a map.  There are no straight lines in the desert.  Traveling from light to darkness they might have covered such a distance but in a serpentine way.

         Could we continue on,  and at that not near the pace I had expected to make?

         Some of my experiments on this journey are successful and some are not.  Some are in ways that I could not anticipate.  In Laayoune,  I had asked Mohammed to buy me a pipe made of sheep bone and the stuff they smoke to ward off evil eye.  He took a bill from me and returned with shinbone pipe complete with the wool still on it and a leather pouch for holding a substance he calls manaji.  I don't know what it is,  though one guide told me it is nothing more than tobacco from Mauritania.  I have a hard time believing it is the treasured substance for warding off evil eye,  but Mohammed likes to smoke it in the evenings.  It makes him even more loquacious.

         Tonight after the others scatter …primarily because Mohammed shouts when he talks,  and we have to repeat everything we say …in a patois of French, Spanish, English and Arabic …to understand each other.  He and I pour over the maps …Riley's, the Michelin 959 and the ITM 1:900,000 scale.  It all seems to come together,  things that Hamid said,  connections I have made to Riley's map,  which shows the 20 th parallel too far N. As with the height of the bluffs,  Riley exaggerated distance too.  He probably did not go all the way to Mauritania but to the Assouard area.  Mohammed describes to me in his at-once booming and raspy mellow voice,  the features of the area, none of which are on the map.  Noticing a flaw in Riley's map,  “The dunes always NE to SW,”  Mohammed says,  motioning.

         “Three things there are named Assouard,”  he says for the third time,  making scratches on my map,  “A well,  a mountain,  and an oued (wadi).“  He also proudly shows me the exact places where the Reguibat finally wiped out the Bou Sbaa,  in Mauritania.

Day Nine

Sunday, October 14: Second day on camels.

7:50 A.M.: We are finally in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight,  except sand,  rock and thorn bush.  The camels eat the spiky bush even when it's nothing but sun-grayed wood.  Some views vast,  others 20 feet to a hill.  We shun the radio, not wanting the war news to invade our newfound peace.  The three newspapers,  Newsweek and Time that I bought in Laayoune the other day,  thanking my lucky stars at the time,  go unread.  Instead of discussing the sorry state of the world,  I ponder whether or not I want to have the camel feast.  Claudia,  who seemed to fare better than the rest of us on the camels,  explains the importance of rolling the pelvis with the motion of the camel as your ride while keeping your back still straight.  Something else to ponder.

9:15 A.M.: This morning Pater forgets the GPS,  so I run back to camp for it.  The land looks flat but it isn't.  In the brief time that I am gone,  the caravan disappears,  six camels and six riders vanish.  I soon see them as they emerge from a depression in the dunes,  but it hits home how fast you can get lost out here.

         As we skirt the dunes,  I relax,  relieved that the dissension of the past week, with all the uncertainty and constant changes to the itinerary,  seems to have also vanished.  The pall has lifted.  We laugh and joke,  and when we challenge Mohammed to stand on his moving camel,  he pops his feet up onto the saddle,  and then lifts himself,  riding like a surfer,  using his goad for balance,  until he is fully extended and whooping at the top of his lungs,  intoxicated by the view.

         I like Mohammed with his wheezing.  He is a big-hearted chatterbox,  who rides the biggest whitest dromedary with elbows splayed out like Ben Wallace going for a rebound,  hands clutching lead and goad.  The only thing that helps my pulverized tail is mimicking his bellicose posture,  back straight,  elbows extended,  no hand on the sissy bar.  It all is in the mind,  so I try to convince myself.

         We are on Sebjet Renaves,  a plane of rippling black rock and sand topped by pristine dunes some in clusters, with Saarinen type lines.  We are all stiff and sore from yesterday's ride.  As we get into the rhythm of riding for the long haul,  I sing  “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”  for everyone.  This helps ease the pain.  Claudia and J.P. join me for the refrains,  “Glory,  glory,  hallelujah.”  Not to get too heavy,  I follow this up with “Pop Goes the Weasel” (words courtesy of much lullaby time with my little ones).  Afterwards,  whenever my camel racks,  I belt out “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “For All the Saints” …songs memorized long ago at prep school …to drown out the whiner inside me and to coax my body to flow with the jarring.  I think of the irony of the lyrics and am thankful that the guides don't understand English.  To myself I pray the Lord's Prayer and promise to keep doing so today to relate to the devout Sahrawis,  Riley,  and the Creator …and because in the Sahara it does seem that only by the grace of God does anything go your way.

         We pick up two goat skulls with horns,  bleached white by the sun.  Some green cedars told us about this well.

11:25 A.M.:  We reach a 15-foot deep well ( hassi, Arabic, or bir, Berber) full of water …two feet,  anyway,  a veritable ocean out here.  As we approach,  there is a little jostling going on amongst the thirsty camels.  Mohammed climbs down into the narrow well to fetch the bucket.  We pull up water and empty it into a stone trough.  The camels slurp away in big noisy draughts.  Two Izarguien boys come to the well to talk to us.  They are Mbark,  who wears a black shesh , and Mohammed Ami,  who wears an Asics baseball hat,  well faded by the sun.  They have 30 camels,  many young or stunted.  These are not the formidable prehistoric-looking crane-necked beasts we have but scruffy,  mangy looking things.  I have a new-found appreciation for the quality of our mounts.  After 20 minutes the camels are done and we get ready to move on.

         Not all of us want to ride all the time.  It is too painful.  Mohammed points out a straight line to our destination to Claudia and Ted,  who are walking now.  They disappear into the endless folds of the desert while we take a more circuitous camel-friendly route around the dunes.  The sky grows increasingly overcast and eerie as we go.  Looking across their route from atop of my camel,  I see infinite dunes,  and the possibility that they are lost grows heavy on me like the dark clouds.  I began to chastise myself as group leader for violating a cardinal sin on the desert:  allowing part of the group to splinter off carrying no water.  Mohammed becomes alarmed too.  We ride faster to the rendezvous.

         When we reach the road where we are to meet,  there is no sign of Ted and Claudia,  and we begin to worry.  I feel very insufficient as a leader.  We scan the sand hills with binoculars.  No luck.  Eventually,  we ride down the road instead of going back into the dunes to look for them.  Then we see them walking up to a lookout on a hill.  Just as a situation can seem dire one minute,  it can dissipate the next and make you wonder why you ever worried.

         We are now sitting over a canyon of salt flats.  Mohammed starts a fire with brush and charcoal,  which he breaks with a stone.  He has Sultan vert de clime gunpowder tea,  a block of sugar,  which he also hammers with a stone.  The sugar is yellow on the sides and has little hairs stuck to it.  When Mohammed,  always relishing the role of teacher,  serves me tea,  he won't let go if I say “Thank you.”  He makes me say “besmillah” (“in the name of God”),  as is the Arab custom.  “Toujours dit besmillah!”  he crows.

         The salt flat looks like something out of the Klondike with white heaps like snowdrifts on glacial silver-blue water (behind it is sand,  to the side sand).  Up here red and sand-colored highly stratified bluffs.  A salt mine worker in a hooded green jellaba crosses the horizon like the grim reaper and now reclines beside us smoking a cigarette and chatting.  He came,  shook hands,  and hugged Mohammed and Ali, our other guide,  who has brown teeth and speaks no French,  forget English.  [How wrong this would prove to be!]  They are laughing about how Pater rides the camel all tense and holding on tight.  The guest is Abraham.  He lives here on the salt flats, which we are getting ready to cross.

         Sometimes I look across the desert and I can't believe that Riley did what he said he did.  But deep down in my heart,  I know that he did do it …give or take a few dunes.

10:30 p.m.:  This afternoon we rode long and hard.  We're recovering at another good camp in a Berber tent with two rugs for a floor and open to a brilliant starry sky.  Mohammed and I rap again into the night in the tent,  watching the light show in the sky as he smokes the sheep shinbone pipe.  Mohammed tells me that he has two brothers and a sister in the Polisario   (the anti-colonial militant group now opposed to Moroccan rule in Western Sahara),  which gives m