Dedicated to: Stephen. (Prompt: the desert).
The ancient jeep cruises through the desert, bouncing over
sand dunes and sending up sand sprays in its wake.
‘Do you like?’ asks the driver, Aksil.
‘Yes! Very much.’
I’m in the front passenger seat, my daughter Alicia is in
the back, looking out of the window. She jumps every time the jeep bounces, but
then catches my eye in the mirror. She’s enjoying it too. In the back with her
is a young Australian couple. There are five jeeps in total, all with one driver
and four passengers from the same tour we’re on. The drivers know the desert
like they’re roads and from time to time start racing each other. This is the
most fun I’ve had in years.
‘Can I drive the jeep?’ I ask the driver in French. He grins
at me.
‘Later, later.’
I’ve wanted to come here my entire life. Earlier, as the
tour bus was driving through the towns, Alicia was reading aloud from her Lonely Planet guide. The earliest people
in the Sahara, 10,000 years ago were the Kiffians, when the area had lakes and
foliage. Next came the Tenerians, then the Nubians, then Egyptians, before
finally the Ancient Greeks in 500BC. My
65 years are a grain of sand, if that, in this landscape’s history. Our tour
guide is a Berber, extremely proud of his ancestry. He took us to a Berber
silver store, where Alicia bought some earrings and chose a necklace for me to buy
for Christina.
The jeep stops abruptly.
‘You want to take pictures?’
Everyone does. People pile out of the cars with cameras,
large and small, most of then digital. One man uses his phone. I walk away from
the group slightly, the digital camera Christina got me around my wrist. If I
took a photo here, you’d never know that there were 20 or so other people
behind me. I’ve dreamt of this place since I was a boy. My parents were another
speck in its history. My father was a desert rat in the Western Desert campaign
of World War II and my mother a journalist. I was conceived here in 1942, born
in London on 23 May 1943, ten days after the troops withdrew.
I cannot imagine this silent, dignified landscape loud and
deadly, with the sounds of tanks and landmines and rifles. This is how it
should be. I wish I could have come here with my parents. Dad died in 1987 and
Mum, she’s forgotten almost everything now. My whole life has been filled with
stories about this desert, from two people who should never really have been
here.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be here either, where I began but don’t
belong; where I tip the locals with one hand and put a protective arm between
them and my adult daughter with the other. And yet, I’m so glad I’m here.
‘Dad’
Alicia comes over.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m very OK darling.’
‘Shall we get a photo together?’
Mike the Australian takes the photo for us and Alicia
scrutinises it on the little screen.
‘It’s a nice one,’ she informs me. When we get back home,
she’ll put it on Facebook. I’ll print it off and take it with me to visit Mum,
to see if it helps her remember.
It’s time to get back into the jeeps. I give a hopeful look
to Aksil. He speaks to one of the other drivers and then smiles and hands me
the keys.
‘Very careful.’
‘I will be very careful, thank you.’
I look around, none of the other tourists are being allowed
to drive. Maybe it’s because I seem old and sensible. Alicia rolls her eyes.
‘Belt up everyone.’
It takes a minute or so to get used to driving across this
sand. There’s a very small sand dune coming up, a similar size to the ones
Aksil was jumping. I glance at him and back at the others.
‘Do it!’ says Mike.
‘Go!’ says Aksil.
This is what I’ve been itching to do all day. I shift gears
and press down on the accelerator. We jump and land with a thud, sending sand
everywhere. Mum and Dad would have loved this.
Words: 700
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