Around the World in 50 Years (4 page)

Behind the flags and slogans, we detected unrest and discontent. High prices, low wages, half-empty stomachs, and disillusionment were rife. As were guns and barbed wire. Ben Bella's palace was surrounded by concrete tank traps and stout walls manned by half a hundred troops brandishing Russian machine guns.

We searched for the attractive campsites of the tourist brochure, but those sites were also victims of the war for independence that had despoiled the coast around Algiers with barbed wire, minefields, and watchtowers. We were forced to drive 15 miles to find a clear beach, where we set up our camper and rushed for the Mediterranean, eager to wash off the sand and sweat of a week of driving.

Steve plunged in first—and screamed for us to stop. The water was alive with leeches—wriggling, slimy, segmented worms as long as my foot—thousands of hungry black bloodsuckers. We ran out immediately, but Steve was in too far. By the time he made it back to shore there were two hot dog–sized wrigglers clinging to his legs and another, big as a sausage, sucking blood from his back. I pulled them off and cleansed his wounds. We retreated to the camper, utterly dejected.

Later that night, we sat around our dismal campsite getting ready for the next long stretch, to Cairo. Steve was studying maps, I was selecting photos for the sponsors, Woodrow was adding up his expenses, and the nurses were packing their knapsacks. Miles across the bay, the lights of Algiers beamed steady in the clear air, but everywhere else around us was absolute darkness, broken only by the glow of our hissing gas lanterns.

Suddenly Woodrow jumped up, screaming and holding his neck. Something had bitten him hard, and blood was oozing from the wound. But what? What kind of creature could slash a person's neck on a North African beach without being seen?

As I bandaged Woodrow's wound, I heard a faint warning buzz about ten yards away, like a rattlesnake, but lower in pitch. I turned toward the sound and saw a blur of black leap from the beach at my head. It caromed off the gas lantern and vanished. It was terrifying. We'd later be confronted by elephants in heat and tarantulas in our trousers, but we had no idea what demonic creature was attacking us now, and there's nothing more frightening than the unknown.

We waited, tense and sweating: two minutes, five, ten. Then another black buzz jumped at us. It grazed Steve on the chest and he swatted it to the beach and pinned it with his boot. It was one of the most hideous creatures I've ever seen, more a monster than any child of Nature. It was about five inches across, dark chocolate brown, with prominent front pincers and several sets of smaller side legs. It had the general shape of a crab, the hairy appearance of a spider, and some sort of rear wings that enabled it to fly or spring up to five feet high and 20 feet forward. And it died hard: Steve smashed the one at his foot ten times with an entrenching tool before it was finally stilled.

Our flashlights exposed a seething army of these things crawling toward us, but not before one of them sprung at me and nipped my hand. They were attracted to light, so we extinguished our lanterns and sat in the dark until we drowsed into nightmares of minefields and leeches and flying monsters.

The next morning brought no relief, for with it came mobs of unwashed, unruly kids, all curious to see the foreigners who were living on the beach, and all with a touch of larceny in their little hearts. What with two cars and trailers loaded with gear, we were thankful, when we took inventory that evening, that we'd lost only a can opener and a stack of paper plates.

We also lost the nurses that day, though not to looters: They were due back at their hospitals in London. We were sad as we watched their steamer sail for Marseilles. Ours was hardly a trip for the frail, and those Kiwis had borne up splendidly. Where others would have complained about the sun, the sand, the bugs, the food, and the flying crabs, Barbara, Mira, and Liz seldom lost their high spirits or good humor, a credit to their country and their calling.

Sometime during that night, as we slept, our camp had an uninvited visitor who cut the tarp on the small storage trailer and stole a suitcase loaded with winter clothing, mountain-climbing gear, and spare photographic equipment. We reported the theft to the police, who turned it over to the army, which was less interested in catching the thieves than in learning what a bunch of foreigners were doing camped on a beach with ropes and crampons and telephoto lenses. We were released only after hours of interrogation.

Given the aggressive wildlife, the thieving visitors, and the antagonistic political atmosphere, none of us wanted to remain in Algiers, but we had to stay: Cracks in the camper needed welding and the Jeep's generator had burned out and required rewiring. We had difficulty finding someone competent to do this work because almost every skilled auto mechanic and machinist had either fled back to France or been killed during the war, which had claimed 130,000 lives and exiled a million. After hours of searching, we found a welding shop for the camper and a technician who rewired our generator—and warned us that a revolution was imminent.

Though we doubted the thieves would return, we knew it was possible. So as not to be caught unaware, we stuck forked twigs in the sand in a circle around the cars and storage trailer, then ran a piece of string through them to a can half-filled with small stones balanced on a twig in a hole under the camper beside which Steve and I unrolled our sleeping bags. If anybody approached our equipment, they'd trip the string and rattle the can enough to wake us. In theory.

It was black and cramped under the camper, and I was sure the biting monsters would find us, but we managed to fall asleep. Hours later I heard something, but it wasn't the can rattling: It was someone unzipping the windows of the Land Cruiser. Steve was also awake, and handed me our .38 revolver. We slipped out from under the camper and got into position.

Steve flicked on our big flashlight. It caught three mean-looking men, their arms full of our supplies. I shouted at them to drop the stuff.

One of them did, but all three ran into the dark. We gave chase. I warned them to stop or I'd shoot. But they kept running. I fired twice into the air, but they kept going with our gear. I then fired
at
them, trying to hit their legs, though it was difficult to see in the moonless dark. On the third shot, I heard a groan and thought I saw someone fall. We rushed to the spot and found, next to a flying crab, Steve's safari hat, our binoculars, and some of our clothing. Our flashlight showed three sets of tracks moving up the beach, the one in the middle dragging, and here and there a spot of what looked like blood.

Had I killed somebody? Or just wounded him? How badly? Would he be back with a gang to get us? If he died, would his family or friends report us to the police?

We couldn't go to the police ourselves: They were already suspicious and unfriendly and not likely to treat kindly an American who'd shot an Algerian, whatever the provocation. Moreover, we'd averred at the border that we carried no firearms, knowing that if we declared our gun they'd confiscate it. The possession of that undeclared pistol alone could put us in jail, and that was the last place we wanted to be with an impending coup. We decided to clear out then and there.

If the burglar died or reported us, we assumed the police would look for us along the coastal highway east to Tunis, the best and most commonly traveled way out of the country, but one on which we knew Algerian troops had been stationed because of Ben Bella's dispute with neighboring Tunisia. We decided to avoid it by heading south, into the Sahara, where we were reasonably sure nobody would be looking for us. But we were not reasonably sure how to get through it.

When we'd inquired about traveling through the Sahara at gas stations the day before, nobody knew if it was currently negotiable, or what shape the roads were in, or even if there were roads. Our map indicated only thin unpaved tracks, ominous gray veins designated as
“terrible,”
and only one of which led into Tunisia. It was noted as subject to frequent closure by sandstorms, which meant we'd be forced to circle back through 800 miles of desert and mountains to link up with the World War II road through northern Algeria, by which time we'd be out of gas and the uprising we'd been warned about could be underway.

We broke camp and were on the move before dawn. Sunrise found us climbing through the Atlas Mountains, the natural barrier that protects the flourishing Mediterranean strip of North Africa from the encroachment of the great sea of sand, heading south toward the Sahara, into what the Arabs call “the land of a thousand horrors,” the world's hottest and largest sand desert, 9.4 million square miles, larger than the continental U.S., stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic.

Hollywood had taught me to think of the Sahara as an immense waste of worthless, endless sand dunes, unbearably hot by day and freezing cold at night, without rainfall or water, except on a few oases, which I visualized as inviting blue ponds surrounded by beautiful gardens in the midst of an eternal desert whose life was unchanged and unchanging. These misconceptions were dispelled within two days after I met her: The only aspect of my Sahara vision that proved to be valid was “immense.”

The flowing Panavision dunes of the movies comprise only 15 percent of the Sahara, concentrated in two or three areas. Most of the Sahara that we saw was an arid steppe, a low hard-packed plateau of gravel, sand, rocks, and some scrub grass. The rest is remarkably varied: It has massive mountains, high plateaus, volcanic formations, dried river beds, shadowy valleys, depressed salt basins, wind-eroded hills, and sparse plain. And it was far from worthless: Oil, gas, coal, iron, copper, gold, tin, tungsten, and manganese had recently been found there and were being exploited.

We did not find the daytime desert unbearably hot. Though the temperature went over 90 before noon and kept climbing, the heat was by no means intolerable, because the air was so devoid of moisture and in such constant motion that our perspiration evaporated instantly, keeping us cool and dry. We did require salt pills and a constant intake of water, and we had to avoid heavy foods, but as long as we stuck to this regimen, the Sahara was not unpleasant. It did cool quickly once the sun went down. With a cloudless sky overhead, the sand rapidly lost its heat, and there were no large bodies of water near enough to moderate the temperature shift, but it never dropped below 45 degrees.

We also learned that the Sahara had ample water, if you knew where to look, and received rain during winter, with some parts getting four inches—hardly enough to sustain agriculture, but sufficient to enable dormant seeds to germinate, dotting the desert with patches of green and bursts of bloom. The Sahara has no conventional lakes or rivers; They couldn't survive because the hot dry air can evaporate surface water to a depth of 13 feet in a year.

But below the surface there's another world. Fed by millennia of runoff from the Atlas Mountains and underground streams trapped in layers of cretaceous mantle rock, the realm beneath the sand is awash with sufficient water for centuries,
if
not tapped and drawn down profligately. Some aquifers rose to the surface centuries ago, as springs and pools, to create the oases, but most of the waters lay unknown and unused until around 1950, when geologists discovered and tapped them forth. Along our route south, the water table was so close to the surface that we found functioning wells whose water was less than 50 feet down. Though we were never sure of the rules and customs, the wells seemed to be open to any thirsty traveler, with a pulley and a goatskin container or bucket ready and waiting, never any fences or
NO TRESPASSING
signs.

Because we all drank heartily—every other hour draining our personal quart-size thermos bottles and the pair of two-gallon jugs we shared—we found it necessary to stop every 30 miles or so to fill up, yet never lacked for a waiting well. Farther south, in the heart of the desert, the wells were fewer and deeper, but adequate for us. Surveys made a few years earlier had concluded that all the wells, springs, and irrigation ditches in the entire Sahara were consuming its water at one fourth the rate it flowed in. But that balance has been upset in recent years, and lives will be endangered if conservation does not become a priority.

Even more at odds with my idealized view of the Sahara were the oases, which I'd envisioned as photogenic pools surrounded by luxurious gardens. From the distance they seemed to live up to my belief. Through the clear desert air we could see the brilliant green tops of the palm trees. But as we drew closer the vision faded. Little was green at eye level: only brown tree trunks and brownish-red mud and rocks, and ugly houses with barbed wire around struggling gardens.

At the oases, water was highly prized and closely guarded. It ran from heavily fenced-in springs, along dirty canals that bordered the streets, into portions of private land dammed with rocks and rotting boards and protected by rusting wire. The houses were of weathered mud or yellowish clay, a few touched up with whitewash. Everything wore a brown coat of dust or sand from the encroaching desert and the ceaseless wind.

The bleakness was little relieved by the gardens, often a tangle of weeds or rodent-gnawed vegetables, inefficiently small after being passed on for generations, divided among brothers, split and split again, until they were no more than three feet by five, even the largest seldom more than 60 square feet.

Many younger inhabitants refuse to accept this way of life as the will of Allah. In contact with visiting Europeans, hearing about the wonders of modern science and industry, able to catch a truck ride and leave the desert in a few days, hundreds of young men had been heading for the coastal cities to find a better life, leaving the old people behind to tend the dying gardens and crumbling houses.

The other upholders of the old way of life, the nomads, were also undergoing a major transformation and may become people of the past, because the mid-century arrival of the truck diminished the size and importance of their caravan trade, as did the depletion of the desert gold deposits, the mining of cheap salt in Europe, and the decline of the ostrich-feather trade. The French colonizers struck two additional blows when they abolished the lucrative slave trade and the feudal dues paid to the nomads by the oasis dwellers. The nomads then switched to stockbreeding as a source of income, but the decline of the caravans decreased the market for camels, and droughts devastated their sheep herds.