Atar-bound, part two

Back on the gudron, exactly one month after our first visit, we are headed to site for good, for permanent. Cargo includes nine volunteers, a coordinator, a driver and a few dozen empty water bottles. The landscape, parched as we are, rolls out for miles, flat and desolate. I am lucky: although without water, I am centimeters from the air conditioning and a half meter from the bug-pelted windshield. Here, I could see our destination if it weren’t still a distant point somewhere just beyond the horizon obscured by airborne sand.

The driver chews complacently on a stick, or toothbrush depending on whom you ask. He barrels down on a Toyota pickup loaded with twice as many people as it should sensibly carry. Muhammed slams on the brakes and flicks the turn signal just after we veer into oncoming traffic, a camion approximately two hundred yards away and a few stray camels. The lane change seems nonetheless death-defying as the cars we pass try to pass each other. In the middle of nowhere Mauritania, two lanes suddenly seem insufficient. After a chorus of Hassaniye curses from the coordinator and a beep (or several) from the driver, we overtake Toyota and company and hurtle northward.

Not five minutes later, a second convoy interrupts our progress, this time a train not of cars, but of goats. They are brown and black speckled and leisurely crossing the only paved path for miles. Why, given the inexhaustible expanse of the desert, are these hooved beasts irresistibly drawn to a place clearly for cars, clearly not for livestock? It is evident, as they amble across, that they have a death wish which Muhammed is only too happy to fulfill. A reprisal of curses and horn blows inspire the goats to quicken their pace and narrowly escape their mishwi fate (translation: mishwi is Mauritanian-style BBQ).

In the wind, our baggage slaps violently on the car roof. I am sleepy from twelve hours of driving and the prospect of three more. Closing my eyes, I imagine the luggage straps are rain, fat lazy drops that fall in late summer storms. I hear the “rain” and smell the musty air conditioner and feel the trembling engine. I am drowsy and disoriented and suddenly it is a decade ago. I am in a faded red Blazer in an Ohio downpour…

…until my daydream is broken by another unforeseen interruption in travel. This time there is no pickup truck, no goats, just empty inviting freeway and a Peace Corps vehicle that simply gave up in the afternoon heat. We rumble off the asphalt and sputter to a stop. The volunteers nervously murmur behind me: are we lost? Are we out of gas? Good god is the air conditioner broken??... Unfortunately, the passengers up front can provide no answers; we have no idea what happened either.

Muhammed flips off the radio and fusses with a knob I determined to be either the cruise control or the choke. He then pumps the accelerator, mumbles bismillah¹, and turns the key. The engine is stubborn, resolute to avoid over-exertion in the unforgiving desert. Curses follow from the Hassaniye speakers while the volunteers – devoid of suggestions or mechanical knowhow – shift uneasily in their seats. Our driver takes a deep breath, motivated by a vehicle warming by degrees with each passing second; he turns the key a second time. A third. I scan the horizon for a tree to hide beneath, but there is no shade for what seems like kilometers. A fourth prolonged turn. I gasp bismillah and the engine catches and chugs to life.

The sandy expanse eventually surrenders to dark rocky protrusions that emerge abruptly from the dunes. They are alien against the flat, white sand but welcome as the sole topographical feature we’ve seen in hours. At first, I see only two or three crests, but an entire mountain range slowly materializes through the sandy haze. The towering peaks are delicate and timid, veiled by thick, muggy twilight. As we approach, they gradually reveal their crags, unveil shadowed ridges. I am no longer dreaming, neither blissful nor naïve, but am comfortable staring into the endless Sahara, speaking a language I barely understand, whispering prayers to a God I barely know, living a culture that is not yet mine. Whether I would share this moment with someone three thousand miles away is mostly irrelevant. Part of me wants to be here, is happy, is falling in love with Mauritania. Mashallah, since I have exactly two years to go.²

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1: Bismillah is a Hassaniye word as versatile as aloha, meaning both “welcome” and “bless this food” and occasionally “please let this work.”

2: Mashallah, another ubiquitous word in the RIM, translates to “thank God.”