My thoughts crash down upon me in droves. I am in mania, and feel, quite unjustifiably so for now that I have arrived here I can never see leaving this oasis, that I have but limited time to set down my recollections on this page before they slide away into abyss. I am but a simple bedouin, and fit neither in mind nor spirit to consort with the high powers with which I have inextricably found myself in contact. Oh I am a poor messenger to reveal their thoughts to the world, as I now realize it is my purpose to do! How I see now!  All of it! The circling, the thirst, the scabbed feet, the ash tongue, the mind’s anguish, all for this! The spirit I find in this place is too grand to be without worshippers, to bounteous to be without subjects to bless, to worthy to be without a mouth to proclaim its honor! ME! How I came to be chosen I do not know, but chosen I have been! To see sights beyond man’s place in life, to drink in the mysteries of the gods! To be covered in foam from the froth of that Fountain Knowledge that man has searched for through countless generations yet never found! To dive into… but I ramble now, and must press on to record intelligibly those things which cause me to rave.

This dusk I woke to find my eyes and mouth swollen shut. The parched feeling in my throat was like unto flame, and my body felt as though I had been caned for my errors. I lay there, expecting the end to come by and by, praying it should arrive sooner rather than later, for the night was unusually hot and gave me no comfort in my pains. Well, I could hear my friend stirring beside me, engaging in his pre-walk stretching routine and whatnot. He completed his preparations for journeying and then stood still, waiting for me to saddle and ride. I tried my best to crawl to him, not to mount him, of course, for I knew that I had no strength to continue on, but rather to try and push him on. I hoped that at least he could continue the journey we had started together and perhaps reach that oasis that was so nearby, and maybe there remain in luxury for the rest of his days. He was the best of friends, and deserved no less. Well, as I said, I tried to crawl, but found no success and probably only propelled myself 3 feet. I was exhausted, and that little attempt at movement had drained all of me away. I swooned, though I know not how long, for the next thing I felt brought me back into my right mind. It was my friend’s strong neck reaching under my body and lifting me up out of the sand. I tried my best to whisper to him, “go, leave me, you may yet save yourself”, but mere unintelligible groans came instead. It is then that noble beast produced an act of heroism that, in all my extensive travels and all my interactions with the most experienced of camellers, I have never heard matched: Still with that strong neck under me, he tossed me into the air directly onto his back. I landed on him crossways and crumpled like a sack, but the impact, though forceful enough, could not add anymore to my pains. I had only enough strength to grip at his fur with my feeble hands, and then swooned again as I felt his rhythmic plod play out under me.

I woke up at a start. I knew that I had been dropped from my friend’s, nay my savior’s, back, for sand was once again underneath me. I could hear him again, this time engaging in his post-walk shakedown. It was then I heard a noise I never again thought I would hear this side of life and death, he began to drink! He had done it! My friend had carried me as a child, without guidance nor spur, and found his way to that oasis I had seen atop the mountain! This realization, oh it couldn’t be true!, caused me to lift my stone arms to my face and pry my eyes open. They came apart with a tear as if they had been sewn shut, but there it was right in front of me gleaming in the moonlight! A pool of lifesaving water surrounded by lush plants and trees! My friend saw me stir and rushed to assist me. He shoved me, faithful camel, down near the lip of the water, and I stuck my head in. 

The reader may imagine those thoughts I had at this moment, but I will not write of them. What more is there to say than that I had been saved from the grip of hateful death and cast again into the arms of blessed life, through no action of my own, but rather the courage of another, and he not even a man?

I now come to the part in this story that causes, great as those experiences were, what I have just recounted to fall out of my mind as being of no importance whatsoever. There will be some who think that I have gone insane due to my experiences in the desert. I myself have already written that I am in mania, but I know that it is not a mania leading me toward delusion, but rather one leading me away. I must now tell those events which happened to me tonight, and let the reader decide each one what he believes regarding my mental state.

So, I had drunk and drunk from that pool for hours. There was fruit on the trees within handpicking distance, and I had eaten my fill of those as well. My camel and I were in the highest of spirits, and had even broken into song, I singing the melody and drumming the beat on the coconut shells while he crooned the harmony and accentuated the lines with growls, when I saw the light around me glow suddenly brighter. At first I thought nothing of it, thinking that a cloud had passed from the front of the moon. On a chance, I glanced around at the oasis and my eyes fell on the pool in the middle. It had the whole night been reflecting the moonlight, but as I looked its luminescence became more intense. Not only that, though, but the circle shape of the moon began to grow, until, after a few minutes, the light filled the pool from edge to edge. It is then that the indescribable happened, that which has changed me forever. I saw the pool’s water began to move and swirl, and then dark lines begin to form. I crept closer and closer to the edge until I was seated on my heels right upon it, and the dark lines grew more and more distinct. The lines congealed in places and separated in others, eventually forming what I finally understood to be a message sent to me from the Heavenly Realms!  A passion overtook my soul as my face was gripped by an otherworldly force and held in front of the pool, my eyes being drawn deeper and deeper into the water as I was shown things too unspeakable to tell! There was a man to the right, but not a man, a king! He was clothed in dazzling white, and he waved his hands in circles as he cast spells into his magical basin. Then there was a message. I could not read the script for it is not for human eyes to understand the power of its beauty, but the force that held me there instructed me it was a mystery that the sages of a thousand thousand lands could not unravel in a thousand thousand lifetimes! In my spirit I was cowering as I looked upon these things, bethinking that a man could not look upon them and survive, but then came, how could it have been so?, something even more glorious. After the written mystery passed, out from the left came a Great Beast! On his body swirled the hurricane, and in his limbs were tyrannical power. He passed from the left to the right, and then, in defiance and hate, approached the second magical basin, towering over the king in sick rebellion! They stood there, lords of time, and glared, neither giving notice to the other, for to do so would be to give obeisance. As this vision faded from the pool, I was struck with the weight of the battle I had just seen, and humbled to dust that I had witnessed this vision from the Heavens and lived. 

So, I sit here now at this oasis and wait. My mind feels as if it has been opened to Life itself, and mysteries swim in my head. Already I am changed by what I have seen, and the spirit in this place bids me stay and witness further. I am now but a servant of this higher power, but to serve it is now my greatest desire and joy.

August 15, 1531

Sahara Desert, Northern Africa
A lowly bedouin and his friend camel

 

At first the sand beats but softly,
but... ah!, now it blows and tears my face.
I ride upon this camel loftily
marvelled, and grinning at this beast-born pace.
~ Trials of the Sah'arah

All my days I have been an easy mark for unscrupulous traders, being in nature trusting and not given to assume the worst in anyone, but here I set down that I know I have made one good transaction that pays for my scores of bad ones a dozen times over. At dusk’s beginning, I was left with only half a day’s provisions, having wasted (how many times I cursed myself for my stupidity as I rode this night, I cannot count) nearly all of it feasting those two days ago when I thought myself dead. This being so, I was left with no choice; I had to arrive at the oasis within one night’s ride.

And here I enter the story of that one deal which has now paid for all others: I bought my friend camel five years ago for fourteen sticks of butter and a jar of curdled milk from a swarthy drunk of a man who needed goods in order to pay off a gambling debt. Little did I know but, at the time, that scoundrel thought he had gotten the better of me, seeing as my friend camel was, as I learned only after I had paid the butter and milk, then terribly suffering from a bout of lungworms. My friend lay in and out of swoon for a month (how many times I cursed that cheat as I sat nursing my friend each night, I also cannot count), but, in a series of events taking the form of a miracle, eventually recovered.

Having once already seen death and lived, my camel no longer fears it, and as I have already said, my fear passed with the knowledge that I am living on borrowed time already. Atop that mountain, my friend had seen the oasis the same as I had, and could feel the weight, or lack of it, of the provisions upon his back. He knew the distance we must travel and in what time, and so as we set off towards that tiny point on the horizon, he clipped his ears back into place and bolted.

How he flew! The moon was overhead in full giving light to the path ahead, and his sure feet found a path through all the shiftiness of the sands below. It was a sprint for life with specter death chasing after, and no camel could have raced so rapidly as mine, him who knew that the man who had nursed him back to health like a little babe was on his back, and that now was the time to repay the debt!

On and on we went, dust trailing behind for hundreds of yards, that speck on the horizon coming closer and closer each time we peeked at it upon arriving at the top of a dune. The pace was incredible at first, but unsustainable, but still my friend settled into a trot one and a half times his normal. The hours continued to wear on, each with increasing hope as I saw how close we were coming to that oasis, and how it continued to be seen each time we crested a dune, not disappearing into nothingness and showing itself to be the mirage I undoubtedly thought it must be.  Each passing mile my body grew heavier and heavier until I thought that I must fall off out of sheer exhaustion, but my companion’s stone face never wavered.

It is now the nights end and we have traveled 25 miles, and though I myself think it best to press on and brave the horrors of the sunlight, for who knows if we go to sleep whether we shall ever wake again, I can see in my friend’s eyes that we must stop here. I have given him the remaining provisions, taking none for myself, for after that heroic ride he deserves nothing less. There are five miles to travel, no food or water, and little hope of making it to tomorrow’s night. Perhaps it is so that this oasis was but a sham set up to draw me into that stretched death that the desert desired for me, but now I think, being in such brave company as I am, I shall be able to die in peace knowing that we fought so hard for life.

August 14, 1531
Sahara Desert, Northern Africa
A lowly bedouin and his friend camel