Into the emptiness - Near Liwa Oasis

[Crowdog]

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081213/TRAVEL/472064235/-1/ART

Into the emptiness
Rosemary Behan

Not here. Not yet. There is still light.” Salem al Mazrouei turns his Nissan Patrol 4x4 into the darkness. He steps on the accelerator and we carve through the dunes, the engine roaring and the headlights casting their beams across the rippling red sand.

We are miles from any road and the faintly flickering lights al Mazrouei is talking about come from Madinat Zayed, miles away in the distance. Here on the edge of the Liwa Oasis, even this vehicle’s powerful headlights cannot penetrate very far. After a short distance they are simply swallowed by the night. It’s disorientating but I’m in safe hands. Al Mazrouei grew up in these dunes and knows his way around better than most. Finally we stop, high up on a bluff. “This is good,” he says. “This is nice.” I disembark with two friends: Lizzie, who is visiting from London, and Adrienne, who works in Abu Dhabi.

As soon as the engine stops, I look up. The sky is so heavily littered with stars I can’t take my eyes off it. Craning my neck, I try to remember when I last saw such a sky. I can’t.

Al Mazrouei quickly makes a fire with wood that he’s brought from his camel stables: out here, there’s little in the way of vegetation and trees are scarce. Tearing myself away from the sky, I help unload the vehicle. Lizzie and I are poorly prepared, with only a pair of sleeping bags; the others have brought duvets and sleeping mats. It’s almost eleven o’clock but al Mazrouei, the operations director of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH), tells me not to worry. “When you sleep for five hours in the desert, it’s like 10 hours at home,” he says. And for him, sleeping in the desert means just that. There’s no tent: it’s just you, a sleeping bag, the sand and the stars. He explains that after a week of working in the capital, being in charge of the Cultural Foundation’s building maintenance, transportation, acquisitions, logistics and IT, managing about 150 people, sleeping in the desert is a kind of therapy that refreshes the mind and invigorates the body.

And what’s more, it’s a very easy thing to do. While endless rules and regulations now govern camping in much of the western world, one of the benefits of living in a Bedouin culture is that making a fire and sleeping virtually anywhere in the desert is seen as a right. “Here in the desert, a fire is safe,” al Mazrouei adds. “It cannot spread to anywhere.”

It also feels It also feels like a glorious It also feels like a glorious act of of self-determination. While I have previously enjoyed camping in some of the world’s most spectacular locations, there is something dispiriting about having to pitch your tent in a designated spot where countless others have camped, and paying for the privilege. Here in the UAE, the sand dunes are like snow, constantly shifting, changing and renewing themselves. A 4x4 takes you off-piste and into virgin territory, where you can pitch your tent anywhere without fear of being ‘moved along’ by the police or other authorities.

There is also something primeval about camping in the wilderness, an experience which has been all but obliterated at many so-called ‘campgrounds’ in the US, in which humble tents are increasingly outmanoeuvred by gargantuan RVs complete with full-sized bathrooms, outdoor canopies, flushing toilets and satellite television.

Now that the stifling summer heat has gone and the weather has cooled down sufficiently, the meditative benefits of camping in the desert are palpable. Here, the night air is perfectly still and fresh: it’s neither warm nor cold, just neutral. The environment feels clean – there’s no rubbish or even rubbish bins – indeed, there’s no real trace of ‘civilisation’. There are no insects and there is no noise apart from the soft crackle of the fire. There are no people, vehicles or animals and once we have all turned off our mobile phones – there is, of course, a signal – no annoying telephone calls or text messages. All there is is silence. Very quickly, the incessant mental chatter of daily life evaporates. I feel my breathing slow, my mind focus and immediately, I feel ready to sleep.

As the others murmur beside the fire, I settle into my sleeping bag. I lie on my back, supported by the firm ridges of the sand. As I stare up at the sky and watch shooting stars, it feels more comfortable than any mattress. Camping in the desert is like hanging off the edge of the earth. The entire sky looks like the inside of a giant tennis ball, the edges of it and the stars are so close I feel as if I can almost touch them.

Unfortunately, I wake in the night, freezing. The sleeping bag I bought in Carrefour has failed to protect me from the chill of the ground. As the others snore beside the dying fire, I survey a moonscape lit by the faint white light of the moon casting eerie shadows over the dunes.

I sleep fitfully until just before dawn, when a deep red strip of light cuts into the blue night along the horizon and brings forth piercing layers of orange and yellow.

Soon the sun is up and the others begin to stir. As I admire the sweeping views to the horizon, I realise that my sleeping bag is soaked with dew. Lizzie, it turns out, wasn’t cold at all. “I slept closer to the fire than you,” she says, helpfully. “I slept closer to the car, so I avoided the cold air blowing over the hill,” admits al Mazrouei. “And I made a hollowed-out bed for myself.” Adrienne is still asleep on her mattress, under two duvets.

Still, everything feels peaceful. Al Mazrouei makes a fire. He was born in Madinat Zayed in 1976, and lived in the desert with his grandparents and uncle in tents near the Habshan oilfield until the age of 11. “My dad went to Abu Dhabi for business but he wanted me to stay here,” he said. “He wanted to keep me in a safe environment. It’s better when you keep the kids away from the city. There’s no playing in the road, no smoking. In a desert you can hang out with camels.”

Al Mazrouei says that growing up in the desert taught him how to be confident, well-behaved and to communicate with people. “My father used to say to me: ‘the desert is your school’. He also said: ‘I don’t want to see you with people younger than you. You are not allowed to go with guys younger than you because you will not benefit’. I had hardly any friends. I used to hang around with my uncle and with camels. It teaches you how to be patient.”

Al Mazrouei is adamant that the Bedouin lifestyle produces calmer, more mature individuals. “If you compare two kids, one who lived in the city and a kid who lives in the desert, the kid who lives in the desert will know how to answer you in perfect words and in the right way. If you speak to the one from the city, they often won’t answer you at all.”

For al Mazrouei, who is busy organising the second Mazayina Dhafra Camel Festival nearby, the desert life is synonymous with the honest life. “We lived and grew up with honest people and there was a contract between families. When you give people your word, you keep it. Reputation is something that you keep for your life. You don’t lie and when you are with older people you don’t say a bad word. Boys are not allowed to go with ladies unless it’s to say hi to their grandmother.”

Not that living in the desert was an altogether sombre existence: al Mazrouei talked incessantly about appreciating the friendships he had and about having fun. “We trained falcons and hunted animals and birds. Once my uncle, my friend and I went playing about 6km from the tent. It was cold and we had no shoes on. It was windy and raining. We ran to the flow line [an oil pipeline which takes oil from a single well to a gathering centre] to get warm. It was very hot and quite dangerous. Then we ran 6km back to the tent because we were getting wet.”