Desert Crossing (Part 1)
Egypt, Christmas 1983
In a quiet bend about 20 km from el Kharga, we left the road and our big lorry started to grind through the sand like a caterpillar truck. The others made considerably faster progress — the jeeps scuttled across the uneven terrain like mice.
We drove eleven kilometres into the desert before it was time to make camp for our first night of the crossing. Soon we were engaged in the usual evening chores: making tea, peeling potatoes, putting up tents. I was chopping peppers in the light of a petroleum lamp when a shout rang out suddenly: “Lights out!”
Within seconds the camp was plunged into darkness, even the hissing stove had been extinguished. Peter, driver of the brown Magirus, thought he had seen something. A few of us climbed up a dune and searched the horizon. To the southwest there was a sprinkling of lights. Through the binoculars I could make out buildings by the roadside. But hidden as we were behind the dunes, we should not be visible. When we returned to camp, the paranoia seemed to have subsided and the evenings activities had resumed — to the extend that only a few scraps of bean stew remained for the scouting group!
Next morning we started on schedule. In the early hours around dawn it was colder than it had been at any time before. I thought the water would freeze on my skin during my morning wash.
The first vehicle to get stuck today was one of the jeeps. Our big lorry roared across the terrain as if driving on asphalt. The ground was firm and criss-crossed with old tyre tracks, eroded by the wind until only pale stripes remained. They could not have been recent. The wind lashing at my tent had kept me awake through much of the night, yet our own tracks were only covered with a fine layer of dust.
We passed the jeep and soon after the white Magirus. Once we had picked up speed we could not stop to help them out for fear of getting stuck as well. It seemed that today we would be the first at camp, reaching speeds of up to 30 km/h.
Occasionally we glanced back, trying to spot the jeep or the Magirus. Through the binoculars I thought that I could see movement, but the lorry rattled so much, I could not get a proper focus and soon the view was obscured by a hill. Eventually, we signalled the others to stop and wait. Once the two vehicles had caught up, we re-distributed a few people and shovels to ensure faster digging and got going again. We had covered 12 km in one and a half hours.
By now the sun was scorching and mirages flittered on the plain ahead, tempting us with illusionary lakes. The desert had gone from freezer to furnace in the space of a few hours.
I was sitting on one of the water barrels which had been moved to the front, sucking on an orange, when it suddely struck me that today was Christmas Eve. To celebrate, at the next rest stop Annette produced a jar of milk-powder and we had coffee with milk. Unfortunately, the coffee was made with water from a small barrel which previously contained washing powder. Every spare container had been filled with water but this did nothing for the taste. Well, you can’t have it all…
After that, our luck left us. We were facing a stretch of sand interspersed with dunes. The brown Magirus promptly got stuck and when we caught up, the two jeep drivers were looking dubiously ahead. When we arrived they informed us they figured we were at a cul-de-sac — the ground looked impassable. There was no trace of any tracks and we had no idea where to head next.
For a while, nothing happened. Reinhold lit a pipe and Siggi and Harald covered their burnt noses with half an orange peel each. We might have been at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.
Eventually, we scattered to find a possible way out, agreed on a direction and set off again. We had made a good choice, the terrain was firmer and soon we picked up speed again. Before long, we had lost the others from sight, but their deepening tracks indicated loose sand once again. Not long after, the lorry started to rattle as the wheels started to dig into the fine white sand. We hobbled along a little further but then the engine spluttered and died. The tank was empty.
We set up camp in the middle of a wide plain dotted with occasional small hills and prepared our Christmas meal in the dark silence: bean stew and cucumber salad.
My mother had given me an envelope with the instructions to open it on Christmas Eve. I had carried it in my money belt and it smelt faintly from being soaked with old sweat. It contained a Christmas card from far away: Münster townhall in the snow with a Christmas tree in front and 100 DM in US dollars, a much welcome reserve of emergency cash.
Once we had settled, Uschi prepared a pudding with a pack of chocolate custard mix she had kept hidden in her rucksack and we found a few nuts among the provisions.
The wind had picked up and a gust ripped my tent out and nearly away. I managed to catch it after a short run through the darkness. There were no rocks to weigh down the canvas so I slept in Uschi’s dome tent.
We caugt up with the others early on Christmas day. They had stopped in the cover of a few hills just five kilometres on. It was quickly decided to have a day of rest and celebrate Christmas in style. After we had cleaned up our things and ourselves and I had patched up my trousers, we made pancakes and as dusk arrived, we shared a few bottles of wine. A pot of potatoes was simmering over the fire. Every now and then a drop fell hissing into the embers. The wind had quietened down and as darkness fell, the sky twinkled with thousands of stars like diamonds sparkling on a black velvet cushion. I lit my pipe and sighed with contentment. Now it was truly Christmas.
We sat around the fire until late into the night singing :”When Moses went to Egypt land…” and similar current hits.
As soon as the first light of dawn appeared on the horizon, Reinhold’swoke us up with one of his primeval screams — and the others who were less than pleased.
I cleaned the dishes by scrubbing them with sand (we would not waste water on trivia such as washing the dishes, which turned out to be our luck). The engine spluttered into life and started to purr like a content kitten. We all got started on schedule. It looked to be a good day.
Or so we thought. Just as we had lost sight of Peter, the professional mechanic driving the brown Magirus, our engine coughed to a halt. Twice Siggi coaxed it back into live, then silence — apart from the wind whistling around the frame of the lorry.
Siggi figured there was a problem with either the filter or the carburettor. Yesterday he had fiddled with the engine but could not pinpoint the exact cause of the problems which had started to creep up. He figured it could also be the copper gaskets. And Peter, the master-mechanic, had driven off across the sandy plain, with all the spare filters and gaskets in his van. Siggi rinsed the filter with clean fuel, replaced it and told us to pray.
The engine roared into life. The filter filled up with a white foam of tiny bubbles, but the motor kept running — for about a hundred metres. Then we got stuck in the sand for good.
It was cold. I never thought the desert could be this cold. The wind penetrated blankets, jackets, shirts and T-shirts and Norbert whinged: “I want to be somewhere warm! Africa or somewhere…”.
However, there were compensations. We did not use much drinking water. We would last a while.
Siggi fiddled with the gasket and managed to fix it with a piece of tape. It would have to do for now.
We managed to struggle across some loose sand and reached firm ground that was covered in ripples like corrugated metal. While our bones and teeth received a good rattling, Siggi’s patch held and we managed to cover almost fifty kilometres without further stoppages.
Confident that we could keep pace, we stopped for a short rest on the stony ground among a few small dunes. Ulrike went for a stroll and called out excitedly:
“Guys! Check out these boulders!”
The ground was covered with lava-like rocks in weird shapes: round like footballs, tear-shaped, even rings. I chipped some of the round stones and found tiny glittering red, yellow or silvery-black crystals inside.
“Wow, these things are like Easter eggs!”
Easter eggs for Christmas! Uschi grabbed a few of the round stones and we played boules until it was time to go. We had stayed twice as long as scheduled for this break.
Nobody believed we would reach the camp by sunset. To confirm this, our companions had noted the time on a patch of sand next to their tracks: nine o’clock! I glanced at my watch. We were four hours behind.
After a while, we again found old tyre marks. We seemed to have hit a track which was good because we were making progress but bad because we could run into traffic. The others must have figured along the same lines and had stopped in the cover of the hills next to the track to discuss our route. We compromised by resolving to stick to the track for 30 km then veer off to the southeast.
Our good progress towards the end of the day stood us in good stead, the overall mood was lighter, the tensions of the past days nearly forgotten. All went to bed early, resolved to be ready by five the next morning.
Happy and content, I slept under the canopy of stars which twinkled infinite and innumerable in the ink-black sky.
Denni