Theme: Fear
We had
two days without water in the hilly, sand-covered August furnace of the Gobi
Desert and I felt the first flutterings of fear. The early days of the sun
rising over the rim of the world dispersed the sharp chill of the desert night.
Fear came with small, fast-beating wings and was suppressed as we sucked
pebbles and fragged our feet on to make maximum distance before the blinding
heat of noon. From time to time one or other of us would climb one of the
endless knolls and look south to see the same deadly landscape stretching to
the horizon.
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The heat
enveloped us, sucking most of the moisture from our bodies, putting ankle-irons
of lethargy about our legs. Each one of us walked with his own thoughts and
none spoke, dully concentrating on placing one foot ahead of the other
interminably. Most often I led the way, and the others bunched together a few
yards behind. I was driving them now, making them get to their feet in the
mornings, forcing them to cut short the noon rest. As we still walked in the
rays of the settling sun the fear hit me again. It was, of course , the fundamental,
most oppressive fear of all – that we should die here in the burning
wilderness.
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It began
to take shape and definition, and hope began
to well up in us. Subsequently, hope became certainty. There were trees
– real, live, growing, healthy trees in a clump, outlined against the sand like
a blob of ink on a fresh-laundered tablecloth.
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The
trees loomed larger and I saw they were palms and in their shade was a sunken
hollow, roughly oval-shaped, and I knew there must be water. A few hundred
yards from the oasis we crossed an east-west caravan track. On the fringe of
the trees we passed an incongruous pile of what looked like rusting biscuit
tins as in some fantastic mid-desert junk yard. In the last twenty yards we
quickened our pace and I think we managed a lope that was very near a run.
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