Desert Divers Read Online Free PDF Page A

pointing away from the wind.
    A few miles outside El Aaiun, a gang of Saudi falconers have their caravan camp. They hunt for partridges over great distances with the aid of sophisticated radar equipment, pursuing them in four-wheel-drive vehicles, then, taking the hood off the specially trained falcons, for a few exhilarating moments experience their own power as the falcon cruises above its prey, strikes, kills and brings back the meat.
    ‘The price per kilo will have been considerable,’ say my Saharan hitchhikers dryly.
    They are elegant young men with knife-edge creases in their trousers and smart briefcases. At their destination some milesfurther on, I go with them to two tents by the roadside. The tents smell of milk. Some women live an outfield life there with their goats.
    They splash us with lavender water from a litre bottle and call out to the retired soldier in the tent next to them. My hitchhikers and the old man begin the usual ping-pong game of courtesies and mutual exchanges of information. The smart town lads are transformed into scions of herdsmen, and with surprising expertise they carry out the traditional tea ceremony.
    ‘If you were staying any longer, I would have slit the throat of a goat for you,’ says the old man.
    He is lying on a plaited mat, kneading a large cushion on his stomach. The air is fresh and pleasant under the sky-blue tent, the roof shutting off the sun but giving free rein to the wind. The charcoal glowing in the chafing dish ticks metallically and there is a strong smell of mint and goat’s milk.
    After the obligatory three cups, I drive on towards Smara through vast flat countryside, punctuated by odd tussocks and groups of heroic tamarisks.
    Right out in the dryness, I again meet a large cloud of grasshoppers coming from the south-east, not so much flying as being blown my way by the desert wind, bowling along the ground like a gigantic wavering wheel of insects, some young and pink-winged, but most mature, well-filled, golden-winged creatures which strike the car with a crashing sound and are crushed.
    The Hotel Goldsand, the best in Smara, has been requisitioned by the governor. At the Hotel Erraha across the street, I am given the only room with a window. Two beds, and a hook in the wall. A handbasin outside the privy at the end of the corridor. A pound a night.

28
    I go to bathe after the dusty journey. On my way I see a notice:
Club Saquia el Hamra Musculation
. Bodybuilding in the Sahara! Suddenly I feel my muscles aching with a longing for exertion.
    The premises have just opened for the day and are still empty. I hang my clothes on the wall and start warming up.
    As I lie in the leg-press, an intellectual Moroccan wearing glasses comes and shows me how I can get greater play by pulling out a peg. He is a bookkeeper in the civilian administration and has been here for three years, his family in Casa, as they call Casablanca. Goes home to see them every third month.
    We train together and alternate three times fifteen with light weights. There is – he says, in the winter as well, but most of all in the summer when Smara is turned into a reeking hell – there is a yawning chasm between official rhetoric and the reality of war-weariness and longing for home. The Sahara has been designated ‘their’ country, but it certainly is not their climate or their landscape when they come from northern Morocco …
    After the long gap in my training, it is wonderful to feel my muscles working again, at first reluctantly, then more and more delighted at being needed. The ego-experience climbs down from my head and out into my limbs. Bit by bit my body comes back and becomes my own again.
    After training, we go on to the bath-house. In the innermost of the steaming rooms, we mix hot water from one tap with cold water from another into our black rubber buckets and spend the rest of the afternoon scooping, soaping andscrubbing our newly found bodies while listening to the splash of