THE FACE OF THE DESERT
Going up the Nile is like running the gauntlet before
Eternity. Till one has seen it, one does not
realise the amazing thinness of that little damp trickle
of life that steals along undefeated through the jaws
of established death. A rifle-shot would cover
the widest limits of cultivation, a bow-shot would
reach the narrower. Once beyond them a man may
carry his next drink with him till he reaches Cape
Blanco on the west (where he may signal for one from
a passing Union Castle boat) or the Karachi Club on
the east. Say four thousand dry miles to the left
hand and three thousand to the right.
The weight of the Desert is on one, every day and
every hour. At morning, when the cavalcade tramps
along in the rear of the tulip-like dragoman, She
says: ’I am here——just
beyond that ridge of pink sand that you are admiring.
Come along, pretty gentleman, and I’ll tell you
your fortune.’ But the dragoman says very
clearly: ’Please, sar, do not separate
yourself at all from the main body,’ which,
the Desert knows well, you had no thought of doing.
At noon, when the stewards rummage out lunch-drinks
from the dewy ice-chest, the Desert whines louder than
the well-wheels on the bank: ’I am here,
only a quarter of a mile away. For mercy’s
sake, pretty gentleman, spare a mouthful of that prickly
whisky-and-soda you are lifting to your lips.
There’s a white man a few hundred miles off,
dying on my lap of thirst—thirst that you
cure with a rag dipped in lukewarm water while you
hold him down with the one hand, and he thinks he
is cursing you aloud, but he isn’t, because his
tongue is outside his mouth and he can’t get
it back. Thank you, my noble captain!’
For naturally one tips half the drink over the rail
with the ancient prayer: ‘May it reach
him who needs it,’ and turns one’s back
on the pulsing ridges and fluid horizons that are beginning
their mid-day mirage-dance.
At evening the Desert obtrudes again—tricked
out as a Nautch girl in veils of purple, saffron,
gold-tinsel, and grass-green. She postures shamelessly
before the delighted tourists with woven skeins of
homeward-flying pelicans, fringes of wild duck, black
spotted on crimson, and cheap jewellery of opal clouds.
‘Notice Me!’ She cries, like any other
worthless woman. ’Admire the play of My
mobile features—the revelations of My multi-coloured
soul! Observe My allurements and potentialities.
Thrill while I stir you!’ So She floats through
all Her changes and retires upstage into the arms of
the dusk. But at midnight She drops all pretence
and bears down in Her natural shape, which depends
upon the conscience of the beholder and his distance
from the next white man.
You will observe in the Benedicite Omnia Opera
that the Desert is the sole thing not enjoined to
’bless the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him
for ever.’ This is because when our illustrious
father, the Lord Adam, and his august consort, the
Lady Eve, were expelled from Eden, Eblis the Accursed,
fearful lest mankind should return ultimately to the
favour of Allah, set himself to burn and lay waste
all the lands east and west of Eden.
