Salon Wanderlust | A desert affair

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

T A B L E_T A L K
They say it's the best way to learn the language ... Weigh in on getting laid while traveling in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Iowa heartland
By Jennifer New
The joys and dilemmas of being a traveler from Iowa
(09/30/98)
An Italian romance: Chapter Two
By Laura Fraser
The first time, he had helped heal her heartbreak. Could their second fling be as good as the first?
(09/29/98)
Running with the Hadza
By Eric Seyfarth
Tanzania's Stone Age tribe represents a living link to our earliest ancestors
(09/27/98)
"Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse"
By Lesley Hazleton
Searching for the site where James Dean died
(09/25/98)
Letter from Pusan: The party's over
By Rolf Potts
The heady rise and fall of expat decadence in South Korea
(09/24/98)

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A DESERT AFFAIR | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The day that ushered in that particularly dark and eerie night had passed like many others. We had swum for hours in the cool waters, hidden from the looming midday sun, gathered branches for the evening fire. The few who had hiked back to the cafe had returned with fresh water and supplies.
We had spoken briefly about the peculiar lift of the wind, about the wear our "house" had suffered, about how our bright cloths had softened, succumbed slowly to the color of sand.
And then the strange arrival of night. It had approached from the peaks of Saudi Arabia, rumbling with the coming wrath of its god. An odd and ominous night in the way that it had crawled towards us -- moved with still purpose towards us, hung there like the pillar of fire that it had once been. Then devoured our arms, our legs, our things; devoured the sand, the waves, the trees.
The friends with whom I was traveling decided suddenly to head back up the coast for the night, in search of food and light, some reminders of "civilization." I offered to stay behind to guard our meager belongings, our little house, our precious tree.
Before they left, they asked me again if I was sure that I didn't want to join them. I was sure. Although it was a little unnerving to see them about to go, I knew that it would be as good as leaving the desert if I went with them, that when we returned it would not be the same.
They gathered themselves up and left. As soon as they had taken a few steps, the night swallowed them, erased them immediately. I could neither hear nor see them. I looked around, but could see nothing. All I could hear was the sound of the sea some distance ahead, its primordial waves rushing and retreating in an invisible line of sound up ahead. I got up and took a few steps. I couldn't see the dunes that I knew were there. I knew their contours only by the way they forced my feet up or down as I crossed their surface. I retraced my steps to our tree and then lay down on the sand, sinking softly and blindly into it. As if to reassure myself of what was still present, I reached for the lines of my body, then ran my hands through the cool night sand and felt a strange exultation as I realized that I was truly alone in the desert -- in this vast invisible night desert and it was a black dance, a cauldron of souls.
I remained there for a long while in the most complete darkness I had ever known, my body sculpted into the sand, a night wind dancing across my face. And I knew then that this was the way I wanted to live -- that I wanted the courage to live like this. That I wanted to explore all the unknown worlds that lay yet buried at my feet, to unearth their wisdom, to devour their wisdom, until it entered my soul, until it was lodged in my armor, jeweled and light.
This is what I remember thinking when suddenly a fire sprang up -- several dunes from where I was lying. A defiant rite, a primordial laugh, it burst suddenly into the impenetrable darkness. What I could see was a cluster of bushes, a house made of wood and brilliantly colored cloths and three men of indeterminate age who had noticed me and were looking in my direction, and who began beckoning me to join them, to come.

It was a strange intimacy that held us for a moment staring at one another across the patch of light that unfurled like a path between us. A strange and unsurpassed intimacy. I took in their long blond hair, their desert robes, their house made of cloth and wood. Then I rose and began walking slowly towards them. The dunes were soft beneath my feet. With every step, I felt the sand recording then erasing my footprints. But as I began to draw closer to them, to approach them where they waited like a crevice, like a footpath, like a wild unknown, when I saw the flames licking at them, illuminating them like ancient shadows, like prophets, like survivors of god, I felt a bit afraid despite myself. They were, I could see now, dark, unfamiliar creatures of the desert to whom language had been lost for years. Who had renounced the world as I had known it but had woken every day for years to the sound of the rushing sea outside the makeshift walls of their house that hung of canvas, that rattled in wood, that held on its skeletal walls a button found, a piece of glass. Language had seeped out of them for years and it had left them muscled, elemental, sparse. Approaching their silent faces that night, I knew that they had lived far too long, seen far too much in this primitive place.
But still I came up to them, to their trailing beards, their sexless skin, their silence and their Bedouin understanding of a world, that once like I, they hadn't known. They were sitting by their fire, cooking tea in a pot black with years of black. Three men with dark skin and distant eyes. German once, Scandinavian perhaps, now citizens of silence, of sand, disciples of a desert god who still visited this land with historic wrath and from whom they hid between great dunes, in makeshift houses, in silent tents.
They received me like the Bedouin would receive a night traveler, with a cushion and a pot of tea rattling on its bed of sticks. They seemed to have no need to find out who I was; it was as a weary traveler that they received me though they'd seen my nearby bed of sand. They patted some bright cushions around me, they threw more sugar into the tea. They brewed it dark, it smelled strangely sweet and unfamiliar, and then there was a rustling just behind me, and turning -- a woman such as I'd never seen -- whose body hung with the remnants of centuries, of Arabian trade routes, of harems, of kings. A woman whose eyes were glowing as if in league with the larger usurpation, she had sucked all the light from the universe, hung it about herself like a jewel, then ignited the fire that had swept the dunes, that had fallen about me like the net of a princess wanting play.
She was standing in the doorway of their house that hung of canvas, that rattled in wood, with her eyes commanding a space and the men gently slid over and created a space for her next to me. I was filled with wonder at this strange and beautiful woman, whose wrists and ankles dangled with tiny hammered bells, who was swooping down like a bird next to me, pouring me some thick sweet tea. I could smell fjords left behind, long winters, cold streets and desert all mixed together. We sat drinking the dark sweet tea from tiny chipped porcelain cups, watching the dancing flames of their fire as it consumed the dry desert brush they were burning, that was crackling and sending sparks over the sand. No one spoke. I remember wondering how long they'd been living like this, who they once had been, what lives they would return to if they ever left this nomadic existence. But pretty soon my head began to grow heavy, to grow sweetly tired and heavy, and I closed my eyes on a world that seemed to have stopped and lay my head on someone's lap, I wasn't sure whose lap. Someone's hands came to stroke me gently, as one would putting a child to sleep. They smelled of Vikings, they sounded like the sea, they had a rhythm that was the rhythm of wind. They spoke of nothing. They wanted nothing. Their rhythm felt like the cyclical dreams of the sea.

When I woke, the night's thick blackness was lifting like a substance, growing like a painting out of the sea. I was lying by the last embers of a fire, a cloth thrown over me, a Bedouin cloth with brilliant flowers and withered seams. In the doorway of that sand-swept house that hung in canvas, that rattled in wood, that looked again like it held no one, knew nothing but the wind shaking it at its foundations, sat a small Bedouin boy with a beautifully carved stick in his hand. He was watching me as if he'd been waiting. He pointed to the weather-beaten shack, now stripped of its bright cloths, its adornments of trinkets and shells.
"Mine," he said as he continued pointing to the house.
I peered at the house. There was no sign of them. I felt a sudden and inexplicable sadness, as if I might have joined them. As if I might have had the courage to renounce the life I was supposed to have and join their wandering from place to place, drape around me the riches and silence of the desert, live for a while in a soft valley of dunes, then move on like the Bedouin.
"They go," he said in his rudimentary English. "Mine," he repeated, pointing again at the house.
"Do you know where they went?" I asked him in English, then in Hebrew.
No, he shook his head.
"Are they coming back? Might they come back?" I asked, realizing the silliness of my question even as it was escaping my lips.
He smiled and raised his gaze to the sky. "Inshallah," If it is God's desire, he said.
I smiled at him and began to head back to where our things were piled, dusty and colorful a few dunes away. When I turned around for one last look, he was standing in the doorway of the house, twirling his beautiful stick like an angel at the mysterious and now empty gate of Eden.
SALON | Oct. 1, 1998
Tehila Lieberman lives in Cambridge, Mass., and is working on a collection of short stories and a novella. She has won the Colorado Review's Stanley Elkin Memorial Prize for fiction. This story is excerpted with permission from "Travelers' Tales Guides: Women in the Wild." © copyright 1998 by Travelers' Tales, Inc.


	T A B L E_T A L K They say it's the best way to learn the language ... Weigh in on getting laid while traveling in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Iowa heartland By Jennifer New The joys and dilemmas of being a traveler from Iowa (09/30/98) An Italian romance: Chapter Two By Laura Fraser The first time, he had helped heal her heartbreak. Could their second fling be as good as the first? (09/29/98) Running with the Hadza By Eric Seyfarth Tanzania's Stone Age tribe represents a living link to our earliest ancestors (09/27/98) "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" By Lesley Hazleton Searching for the site where James Dean died (09/25/98) Letter from Pusan: The party's over By Rolf Potts The heady rise and fall of expat decadence in South Korea (09/24/98) Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		A DESERT AFFAIR \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The day that ushered in that particularly dark and eerie night had passed like many others. We had swum for hours in the cool waters, hidden from the looming midday sun, gathered branches for the evening fire. The few who had hiked back to the cafe had returned with fresh water and supplies. We had spoken briefly about the peculiar lift of the wind, about the wear our "house" had suffered, about how our bright cloths had softened, succumbed slowly to the color of sand. And then the strange arrival of night. It had approached from the peaks of Saudi Arabia, rumbling with the coming wrath of its god. An odd and ominous night in the way that it had crawled towards us -- moved with still purpose towards us, hung there like the pillar of fire that it had once been. Then devoured our arms, our legs, our things; devoured the sand, the waves, the trees. The friends with whom I was traveling decided suddenly to head back up the coast for the night, in search of food and light, some reminders of "civilization." I offered to stay behind to guard our meager belongings, our little house, our precious tree. Before they left, they asked me again if I was sure that I didn't want to join them. I was sure. Although it was a little unnerving to see them about to go, I knew that it would be as good as leaving the desert if I went with them, that when we returned it would not be the same. They gathered themselves up and left. As soon as they had taken a few steps, the night swallowed them, erased them immediately. I could neither hear nor see them. I looked around, but could see nothing. All I could hear was the sound of the sea some distance ahead, its primordial waves rushing and retreating in an invisible line of sound up ahead. I got up and took a few steps. I couldn't see the dunes that I knew were there. I knew their contours only by the way they forced my feet up or down as I crossed their surface. I retraced my steps to our tree and then lay down on the sand, sinking softly and blindly into it. As if to reassure myself of what was still present, I reached for the lines of my body, then ran my hands through the cool night sand and felt a strange exultation as I realized that I was truly alone in the desert -- in this vast invisible night desert and it was a black dance, a cauldron of souls. I remained there for a long while in the most complete darkness I had ever known, my body sculpted into the sand, a night wind dancing across my face. And I knew then that this was the way I wanted to live -- that I wanted the courage to live like this. That I wanted to explore all the unknown worlds that lay yet buried at my feet, to unearth their wisdom, to devour their wisdom, until it entered my soul, until it was lodged in my armor, jeweled and light. This is what I remember thinking when suddenly a fire sprang up -- several dunes from where I was lying. A defiant rite, a primordial laugh, it burst suddenly into the impenetrable darkness. What I could see was a cluster of bushes, a house made of wood and brilliantly colored cloths and three men of indeterminate age who had noticed me and were looking in my direction, and who began beckoning me to join them, to come. It was a strange intimacy that held us for a moment staring at one another across the patch of light that unfurled like a path between us. A strange and unsurpassed intimacy. I took in their long blond hair, their desert robes, their house made of cloth and wood. Then I rose and began walking slowly towards them. The dunes were soft beneath my feet. With every step, I felt the sand recording then erasing my footprints. But as I began to draw closer to them, to approach them where they waited like a crevice, like a footpath, like a wild unknown, when I saw the flames licking at them, illuminating them like ancient shadows, like prophets, like survivors of god, I felt a bit afraid despite myself. They were, I could see now, dark, unfamiliar creatures of the desert to whom language had been lost for years. Who had renounced the world as I had known it but had woken every day for years to the sound of the rushing sea outside the makeshift walls of their house that hung of canvas, that rattled in wood, that held on its skeletal walls a button found, a piece of glass. Language had seeped out of them for years and it had left them muscled, elemental, sparse. Approaching their silent faces that night, I knew that they had lived far too long, seen far too much in this primitive place. But still I came up to them, to their trailing beards, their sexless skin, their silence and their Bedouin understanding of a world, that once like I, they hadn't known. They were sitting by their fire, cooking tea in a pot black with years of black. Three men with dark skin and distant eyes. German once, Scandinavian perhaps, now citizens of silence, of sand, disciples of a desert god who still visited this land with historic wrath and from whom they hid between great dunes, in makeshift houses, in silent tents. They received me like the Bedouin would receive a night traveler, with a cushion and a pot of tea rattling on its bed of sticks. They seemed to have no need to find out who I was; it was as a weary traveler that they received me though they'd seen my nearby bed of sand. They patted some bright cushions around me, they threw more sugar into the tea. They brewed it dark, it smelled strangely sweet and unfamiliar, and then there was a rustling just behind me, and turning -- a woman such as I'd never seen -- whose body hung with the remnants of centuries, of Arabian trade routes, of harems, of kings. A woman whose eyes were glowing as if in league with the larger usurpation, she had sucked all the light from the universe, hung it about herself like a jewel, then ignited the fire that had swept the dunes, that had fallen about me like the net of a princess wanting play. She was standing in the doorway of their house that hung of canvas, that rattled in wood, with her eyes commanding a space and the men gently slid over and created a space for her next to me. I was filled with wonder at this strange and beautiful woman, whose wrists and ankles dangled with tiny hammered bells, who was swooping down like a bird next to me, pouring me some thick sweet tea. I could smell fjords left behind, long winters, cold streets and desert all mixed together. We sat drinking the dark sweet tea from tiny chipped porcelain cups, watching the dancing flames of their fire as it consumed the dry desert brush they were burning, that was crackling and sending sparks over the sand. No one spoke. I remember wondering how long they'd been living like this, who they once had been, what lives they would return to if they ever left this nomadic existence. But pretty soon my head began to grow heavy, to grow sweetly tired and heavy, and I closed my eyes on a world that seemed to have stopped and lay my head on someone's lap, I wasn't sure whose lap. Someone's hands came to stroke me gently, as one would putting a child to sleep. They smelled of Vikings, they sounded like the sea, they had a rhythm that was the rhythm of wind. They spoke of nothing. They wanted nothing. Their rhythm felt like the cyclical dreams of the sea. When I woke, the night's thick blackness was lifting like a substance, growing like a painting out of the sea. I was lying by the last embers of a fire, a cloth thrown over me, a Bedouin cloth with brilliant flowers and withered seams. In the doorway of that sand-swept house that hung in canvas, that rattled in wood, that looked again like it held no one, knew nothing but the wind shaking it at its foundations, sat a small Bedouin boy with a beautifully carved stick in his hand. He was watching me as if he'd been waiting. He pointed to the weather-beaten shack, now stripped of its bright cloths, its adornments of trinkets and shells. "Mine," he said as he continued pointing to the house. I peered at the house. There was no sign of them. I felt a sudden and inexplicable sadness, as if I might have joined them. As if I might have had the courage to renounce the life I was supposed to have and join their wandering from place to place, drape around me the riches and silence of the desert, live for a while in a soft valley of dunes, then move on like the Bedouin. "They go," he said in his rudimentary English. "Mine," he repeated, pointing again at the house. "Do you know where they went?" I asked him in English, then in Hebrew. No, he shook his head. "Are they coming back? Might they come back?" I asked, realizing the silliness of my question even as it was escaping my lips. He smiled and raised his gaze to the sky. "Inshallah," If it is God's desire, he said. I smiled at him and began to head back to where our things were piled, dusty and colorful a few dunes away. When I turned around for one last look, he was standing in the doorway of the house, twirling his beautiful stick like an angel at the mysterious and now empty gate of Eden. SALON \| Oct. 1, 1998 Tehila Lieberman lives in Cambridge, Mass., and is working on a collection of short stories and a novella. She has won the Colorado Review's Stanley Elkin Memorial Prize for fiction. This story is excerpted with permission from "Travelers' Tales Guides: Women in the Wild." © copyright 1998 by Travelers' Tales, Inc.