South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara. Justin Marozzi

(this in a tone of prodigious satisfaction), ‘Mr Jesten and Mr Nid, really I am happy to see you!’ he shouted into the bloody sunset. ‘God bless you. How are you? Fine? As soon as you left Ghadames I was worrying about you and wondering if you were OK. I thought maybe you died from no water or something. Now I see you, I am in good condition. How are you? Fine?’

      It was like meeting up with a long-lost friend. He was a bouncy ball of enthusiasm, rebounding between patches of scrub, amassing a towering pile of firewood, and repeating at intervals his delight at seeing us (‘I am too happy now, believe me!’). Ibrahim, a man whose figure suggested a heavy and lifelong involvement with food, smiled and suggested a dinner of tuna fish pasta. The most unobtrusive newcomer was Ali, Abd al Wahab’s elder brother.

      Mohammed Ali, our air traffic control expert, produced a roaring beacon of a fire that could have been seen for miles around. While Ibrahim attended to the cooking, Abd al Wahab and Ali set about dividing a fifty-kilogram sack of sha’eer (barley) among the camels. The scattered pasturage we had come across every day had been decent enough feeding for them. This was an added luxury. Eagerly, they hustled forwards on their knees to the troughs made from empty oil barrels sliced in two, and pounced on the grain.

      It had taken the party from Ghadames ten hours to cover what we had travelled in a week. Mohammed Ali was anxious to know how it had been.

      ‘How is the desert? How are the camels? Fine? Are you too tired now? Have you been cold at night? How are your sleeping bags?’

      ‘Everything has been fine, alhamdulillah,’ we replied.

      ‘How are you? Fine? Are the camels thirsty now? How is Abd al Wahab as a guide?’

      ‘Abd al Wahab has been an excellent guide.’

      Ali nodded wisely. ‘Yes, he is a good guide, but he is still learning.’ It would have been unseemly for an elder brother to praise his younger sibling too effusively. This would have upset the pecking order.

      ‘How is your health? Fine?’ added Mohammed.

      As the oldest man among us, Ali was the master of ceremonies that night. Preparing the tea was thus his prerogative. He went through the familiar process but finished with a new flourish, pouring out the tea from such a height that each glass had a layer of froth on the top. We were not sure what the point of all this was (after all these exertions the tea was disappointingly warm), but it looked pretty.

      Abd al Wahab ate heartily for once. I asked Mohammed Ali to find out what our guide thought of our cooking.

      ‘He says everything is all right,’ Mohammed Ali replied quickly.

      ‘No, but ask him what he really thinks of it. Tell him he doesn’t have to be polite,’ I persisted.

      ‘Abd al Wahab says when you are in the desert you must eat whatever you are given,’ came the reply.

      The cold was seizing. Mohammed Ali disappeared on several occasions during dinner, reappearing each time with a new layer of clothing. On retiring for the night he looked like a bizarrely muffled Michelin man wearing three pairs of socks, four pairs of trousers, seven shirts and jumpers. With so many clothes on, he could move about only with difficulty. His walk, shambolic at the best of times, was reduced to a teetering stagger. Every time he stood up he looked as though he would fall over. In hysterics, his Ghadamsi friends teased him mercilessly. He fought back gamely, with a few well-placed remarks about Ibrahim’s obesity. His British Army sleeping bag also attracted several wry comments. But Mohammed Ali had the last laugh. He, at least, was not cold that night.

      In the morning we watered the camels at the well and met a distinguished-looking man called Saleh Omar, a wealthy farmer who had come to inspect his camels, which were being cared for in the desert by two camel boys. On learning that his old friend Ali was with us, he joined him for a lengthy exchange of greetings and several glasses of tea. We remained at the well, and watched as about 150 camels streamed in from behind the dunes. Most were brown dromedaries: a dark shifting mass with a handful of bright specks that were the taller white Meharis. Our own caravan, whose aesthetic qualities we had much admired for the past week, suddenly looked of little consequence.

      ‘Saleh is a very rich man,’ observed Mohammed reverentially. ‘Maybe he has 200 camels.’ Owning a large herd of camels denotes considerable wealth by rural Libyan standards. It was doubly true in the sixteenth century, when the traveller Leo Africanus visited North Africa. ‘The Arabians esteeme [their camels] to be their principall possessions and riches,’ he reported. ‘So that speaking of the wealth of any of their princes or governors, he hath (say they) so many thousand camels, and not so manie thousand ducates.’

      Goodbyes were protracted that morning. This would be the last time we would see Mohammed Ali. ‘Really, I will miss you too much now,’ he thundered in his staccato English. ‘I am too sad because you are leaving. Believe me, you must be careful in the desert, but you will have a very good journey with Abd al Wahab.’ Before he left, he gave Abd al Wahab a pair of fake Adidas trainers. It was a timely present. The thin pair of leather sandals our guide had been wearing offered no support for the ankles and for the past two or three days he had been walking heavily (and uncomplainingly) on a swollen ankle the size of a pear. He exchanged the sandals for the trainers and thanked Mohammed Ali in his customary quiet and understated style.

      Full of tuna and with camels fed and watered, we left the three Ghadamsis packing up their vintage Toyota Landcruiser (regulation royal blue in Libya). Ned and Abd al Wahab stayed on the plain. Childishly keen to climb my first dune, I headed for the nearest one, a giant caramel blancmange, and grunted my way up slowly. On its steeper inclines close to the summit, it was thankless going. For each yard climbed up, half a yard was lost as the sand gave way beneath my feet and I sank in to just below the knee. The twenty-minute ascent (smoker’s lungs screaming all the way) purged me of my romantic ideas about sand seas. Ethereally beautiful things to look at, they are hellish to scale.

      The summit wave commanded a view over many miles. To the south, beyond the patches of scrub where we had camped the night before, were lines of rocky outcrops dribbled over with sand, like cakes sprinkled with sugar. Here and there, silent kingdoms of sand were piled up independently among them, in greater and greater numbers until the rocks were no more and the dunes were one sweeping mass hurrying towards the horizon. To the north were the matchstick figures of Ned and Abd al Wahab leading the camels away from the splash of blue Toyota and beyond them the neat ridge of sandstone, mile after mile of it, like a smudged crayon dashed across the sky.

      We moved on towards Idri, covering 20–25 miles a day. Most of the time we walked. Abd al Wahab, who gave the impression of being completely indefatigable, rarely asked us whether we wanted to ride and we were too proud to suggest it ourselves. It was always a joy, then, to hear him ask ‘Tibbi tirkub?’ (Do you want to ride?). Ned and I would consult each other first, so as not to look overeager – the result of the conference was always a foregone conclusion – and roar ‘Nirkubu!’ (Let’s ride!). The camels would then be halted and made to kneel down.

      To mount from the camel’s left flank, you first grabbed his upper lip, a sensitive part of his anatomy that he was very keen not to have interfered with. Coquettishly, he would duck and swish his head away until, after several attempts, you managed to grab it. Twisting it a little in your hand for maximum control over the animal, you then pulled his head round towards his left side, enabling you to stand with all your weight on your left foot on the camel’s reclined left foreleg. Keeping your outstretched left hand on his lip – if you did not, he might throw you off vengefully for the indignity and discomfort of it all – you then swung your right leg over the pommel of the saddle. As soon as your bottom touched the saddle, he would lurch up violently, first the rear legs, which catapulted you forwards, then his forelegs, which would throw you backwards.