The Desert

The oasis seems a vision, shimmering in the Arabian Desert just off the highway. Rattan, sunsails, fans and palms define Parker’s Cafe, our meeting place. It is lightweight, pretty, very Dubai.  "Live flamingoes in the desert" are mentioned to me, twice, as a test to see if I might be impressed. “Can you believe it, man?” I keep quiet, nod. There are man-made lakes ringed with flowers, light jazz, tent inspired decor.  Inside it is airy and and cool. I’ve seen this before in so many guises, grown up sophistication and a demonstration of control. Money. A cappuccino is extravagantly expensive. 

Finally underway, we leave the asphalt and stop. I wait while the others reduce the tire pressure to 8psi, add tall pole flags, greet members of the convoy. Everyone checks radios, weather and sand conditions which can apparently shift in an instant. An air of expectancy and determination thickens and develops, a murmur of readiness.

They are quiet, solid and gentle people, steely.They don't want to scare me.They stand, arms akimbo, in a quasi military row facing the challenge, readying, testing moisture and wind. They reassure - it's like a day ride, a pleasure boat trip touching the edges of the coast, looking out to sea, just brushing the edge of the deep with a feather.One of them, weathered and solid, explains the levels he thinks in, this will be Level 1 - like a nice ride on city streets, occasionally climbing houses and sliding off them... no skyscrapers, no Burj to surf from today. They laugh, then look at me, eyes creased and measuring. Another is a pilot, long hair to his waist, tangling in the wind. He watches me, level and clear. Will I be a burden, a judgy, shrieking snowflake? I feel myself revealed, facing the desert with them.

They remind me of hard travellers, kindred spirits of the moment. Ghyll runners, checking wetsuits. Weary, wiry hitchhikers who I stared at, wide eyed, in awe, in a raw Amsterdam hostel. Skiers preparing for a black run at the top of Whistler as I stood in an awkward snow plow. They make me feel naive, innocent. They fill me with joy, that they exist, that they choose to feel the adrenaline and push boundaries in a way I never imagined. I do not know the desert, it does not know me. I suspect only a surface calm, with unseen forces unforgiving and brutal, offering an unblinking solution if I dare. The excitement is palpable.

In the distance, a dust cloud, red and dim, promises a rain of sand as it travels.  Dust and sand from across the Empty Quarter appear like clouds swirling high above the surface of the earth, a dry mist caught up in unseen streams and currents in the air.  The ocean of sand is reflected in the ocean of the sky. They exchange atoms, particles, creating infinite sameness just as in the oceans of space between us. It slyly promises softness, like water, not a scouring. Opposites of water and sand, so alike in meaning and matter, pull us to the ocean of the desert.

Dunes rise like waves, shifting and  immense, poised in exquisite ridges.They throw ephemeral plumes into the sky like spices shadowing the air, lifting and swirling together. The sand is cafe au lait, demerara, gold, the colour of an Arab, old bones, shit and grilled chicken, the colours of life.  In the late afternoon, we ride the dunes, revelling in the thrill of the machine, working with wind and gravity like sailors. The monster engines growl and snarl, pitched against the behemoth of sand. It requires courage to dive into the currents running hard and deep, to connect with the earth and feel our insignificance, falling and sliding down a single dune. This is a paradigm shift into the subliminal, surreal, spiritual.  This is not a joyride.

“My heart is Bedo,” I haltingly said in Arabic to two windburned, dry and hardfaced women, many years ago meeting Bedoins and visiting their village in the mountains of Yemen. Bedo: code for so much - honest, raw, unafraid, and resilient in the face of uncertainty and danger.  They smiled.  I  remember this as we stop, silent, watching the desert.  It is lunar and otherworldly, and at the same time elemental and oddly soothing. The sun turns dark; burnt orange, ruby, pomegranate and watermelon pink streak the sky,  and the earth turns to darkness.   A cigarette glow, a puff of smoke, the interruption of a Dubai business call stabs brutally and ineffectually at the silence. 

We feel the chill creep in, a reminder of the eternal, of what waits.  The stars begin to emerge from the darkness in 180 degrees of unbroken indigo, and beyond it, the dark shadow of space. Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Ganymede become visible above us,  alongside tiny cloud galaxies, shooting stars, a descending chill of ages. We breathe, quiet, feeling the calming insignificance of our antlike scrabbling in comparison to the power and dominance of the desert.  An immensity of dust, like pure salt water. Gazelles and oryx and other unknown things, red eyes glinting, begin to scurry - in the silence we are just another set of eyes, another breathing being.  Reduction, simplicity, silence.  There is a sense of danger in the dark, of the desert, of our reliance on technology and each other to survive this which requires  both sensible terror and courage.  I marvel at my companions’ tenacity, their  ability to face this, to choose to face this. It requires  a deep humility to respect the grandeur of the desert which stretches away into the distance, covering countries, making those borders pale into insignificance. Most of the time, we think we know best.

I scoop silicate and bone - products of the crush of ages, the grinding weight of time over hundreds of millennia - into a plastic hummus tub I brought sheepishly for this purpose. Later, we dip our fingers in it and feel the cool,watery sand flowing through our fingers, to remember the eternity of the desert and our transformational encounter with the power of the planet,  as we surface to the ordinary, humdrum minutiae of the city.

February 2025

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