Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD
chapter 8 (1)

The wind whistled inside his head and sand blew against the windows of the Land Rover as if it was being stripped of paint by a sand-blasting machine. It was the first sandstorm Alex had ever been in and it scared him. Visibility was getting so bad he could barely make out the track they'd been following. The Land Rover hit the ridge of the next dune and he felt the strength of its headwind, though it seemed to swirl about him in all directions. A pile of sand was building on the dash and he could taste the dry grit between his teeth. He felt the whole Sahara had risen up and swallowed them under like quicksand.

"I can't make out the tracks," Alex shouted above the wind, much louder than was necessary.

"So I noticed," howled Steve's sarcastic answer. "We'll have to stop and wait till it's over," he said with an air of final acceptance. "That's all we can do."  Steve Morrissey's reputation was built on saying the obvious as if it was some profound revelation. That was a trait of his character -- he never got excited. If he was the captain of the Titanic he would have spoken into the P.A. matter-of-factly, "The ship is sinking," in a melancholy calm tone like a preacher at a funeral.

"Oh my God!" Louise screamed hysterically. "We can't stop here in the middle of nowhere." She was fond of dramatising.

"Silence, you silly wench," Steve added to the scene. "What'll we do, phone a tow truck? We're miles from civilization."

"Civilization!" Louise screamed again, quite upset. "We're half a continent from civilization. I haven't seen civilization in the two years I've been here. We're light years from civilization. Sacre bleu!" Louise knew how to liven up a party and when you're sitting in a sandstorm in the middle of the Sahara desert, you need livening up.

"There she goes with her francais again," Steve answered, true to form. "She thinks she's cultured when she puts on her French accent. Well, it won't do a hell of a lot of good out here, baby." Steve liked to pretend he was macho, especially when sitting in a sandstorm in the middle of the desert.

"Bastard!" Louise screamed at him, though it was meant for anyone in their immediate range. She was unusually high strung.

"That's no way for a mademoiselle to act, now is it? The neighbours might hear and see your make-up running." They were always at each other's throat.

"If you're such a man, then why don't you play the hero and get us out of his mess, or haven't you the balls?" Louise was hysterically angry.

"I've got more balls than you'll ever know," Steve replied, "and I sure as hell wouldn't waste them on you."

"Keep telling yourself and you might believe it," she replied, "they call it illusions of grandeur where I come from."

Steve, usually laid back, thought he should slap her, get her back to reality. Though the film-clip vision entered his mind, he dismissed it. He wasn't really that type of guy.

"Will you two can it?" Alex said finally, getting annoyed with them both. He was trying to get a grip on the situation. "We'll have to make a plan," he said in a heavy tone as if it was the end of a great sermon.

"A plan!" Steve retorted, "What's to plan? I'm sure as hell not going to try and find a gas station, let alone the gas tank."

"We'll have to stay put," Alex said. He felt better, like a leader, not that they had any choice in the matter. Besides, he liked Math, liked to be organized, in control of the situation. He always liked to know where he was going, or not going, as was the case. Now that he knew where they were not going, he felt more at ease. They sat in silence.

"How much water have we got?" Alex asked at last. He got no response. Louise was biting her nails and Steve wasn't paying attention. "I say, how much water have we got, chaps?"

"Jesus, you know damn well we've got one jerry can full," Steve muttered. "Hell, you've got it all written on that stupid list of yours."

Alex hauled out his list and looked at it. True, one jerry can full of water he read, two cans of petrol. He added under it: one nearly hysterical female and one very sarcastic Ontarian, with a bit of self-satisfied humour, as if he were going shopping. He was fond of lists, meticulously obsessed with them. He made lists of everything just in case he'd forget.

"Why don't you get out the map, Mr. Organization?" Steve said sarcastically, not that they were going anywhere.

Alex took him literally and proceeded to unroll his set of Michelin maps. He also liked maps, had maps of everything, just in case he got lost -- meteorological maps -- you name it, if it was available, he had maps of it. We had maps of the Sahara, of Niger, Algeria, North Africa, Africa, The World -- anything he could lay his hands on -- maps of vegetation, population, air routes, shipping routes, time zones, pressure and winds, communications, ocean currents -- not to mention his Atlas and guide books.

"Here we are," he said, studying the map of the Sahara.

"Yeh, about six sand-dunes from a mirage," Steve answered, looking at the spot marked by an X at the end of a dotted line drawn by a felt marker. "So, here we are," he said sighing heavily as if it was the last place in the world he wanted to be. And it was.

Alex had hooked up with them in Kano. He had had a few Star too many at the Central Hotel. They were a couple of misfits. Steve had bought the Land Rover and Louise had been talked into it. She'd had a preliminary test come back positive, cervical cancer or something, but she wanted to escape thinking about it, so was up for any adventure. Lots of people had gone up through Agadez to Morocco. Alex had left on his motorcycle, put it into the back of a cattle truck to take it to the tarred road, planned to sell it in Algiers. It normally took a week to get there, two at the most. It looked easy on the map and they all wanted to get up to the Mediterranean as quickly as possible.

Alex had been lost in Kano, just hanging out. The day school closed, he got on his machine, locked the house and drove down the track along the railway, slept out in Hadeja, ten hours in all, to get to Kano. Jeannie had gone home for the summer, had left a week early to catch her flight. He had been killing time, had not stopped to figure out where he wanted to go, had just headed out, to get somewhere, with no plan, to let the road unfold as it may.

Anyway, he had always wanted to go to Morocco, to ride the Marakesh Express. He wanted to pour thick Arabic coffee from silver vessels and drink it from tiny cups, sit on intricate rugs in a hookah smoke-filled room and watch belly-dancers jangle gold coins from their hips. He had dreamed of a surrealistic vacation among bearded men with hooked noses and long black-haired dark coy beauties, their huge dark eyelashes peering over fluttering sheer veils. Down a maze of winding alleys he would hear the rhythmic metal chimes of music and eat fresh fruit and drink and live cheaply in luxury hotels like a king.