534
PAUL F. HOYE
look as if someone had painstakingly sorted them for size and then carefully leveled them with a rake. Geologists, I believe, call them igneous
rock and say they were flung out of the earth centuries, or maybe even
eons ago, by the belching fury of volcanic action.
As the afternoon wore on the changes became more pronounced. The
smooth black stones gave way to larger jagged fragments heaped up in
huge mounds and looking as if they had been soaked in tar and set out
to dry. For contrast, occasional dunes of soft beach sand sloped off from
lee ridges, improbably golden against the black sheen of the rock. There
were also salt flats, blindingly white, like snow on an Alpine slope, and,
rarely, from patches of alfalfa, flashes of bright green like English grass
in the spring. Finally, impossibly, there was a lake—a big lake, cool and
blue in the shadow of a great brown jabal. I felt an overpowering urge
to stop and swim in the cool waters and looked tentatively at the driver
only to see him dissolve into laughter. My lake was a mirage, nothing but
a mirage. . .
In Camp
MARCH 4
Before we get underway this morning and I get distracted again, I must
jot down a few notes about our head driver Misfir. We didn't realize it
until yesterday, but Misfir is a remarkably able and resourceful individual.
That was when he rescued two drivers, one of whom had been stranded
for four days.
The first rescue took place not far from a town called Khaybar. An
unusually heavy rain had washed out nearly a hundred yards of roadway
and since repairs hadn't yet been made it was necessary to make a wide
swing through the sand to get by. Just before we regained the road, a driver
flagged us down and pointed to a half-ton Dodge truck hub-down in a
wadi. It turned out that the Dodge was not only stuck, but that the motor
wouldn't start. It looked like a lost cause, but Misfir nonchalantly ordered
the driver to jack the truck up until the wheels were free, bent and began
to spin the wheel. It struck me then what he was doing—changing the
position of the fly wheel so the starter could be released. Something clicked
and Misfir climbed in, thumbed the motor to life and began to jockey the
vehicle backward out of the sand with indifferent ease. Twenty minutes
later the driver waved his thanks and was gone.
The second rescue took place on the barren track that wanders off to
the west from the paved road. A truck was parked up ahead surrounded
by half a dozen Bedouins. The driver signaled for help, and told us he
had been stranded there for four days, depending on the Bedouins to sup-
PAUL F. HOYE
look as if someone had painstakingly sorted them for size and then carefully leveled them with a rake. Geologists, I believe, call them igneous
rock and say they were flung out of the earth centuries, or maybe even
eons ago, by the belching fury of volcanic action.
As the afternoon wore on the changes became more pronounced. The
smooth black stones gave way to larger jagged fragments heaped up in
huge mounds and looking as if they had been soaked in tar and set out
to dry. For contrast, occasional dunes of soft beach sand sloped off from
lee ridges, improbably golden against the black sheen of the rock. There
were also salt flats, blindingly white, like snow on an Alpine slope, and,
rarely, from patches of alfalfa, flashes of bright green like English grass
in the spring. Finally, impossibly, there was a lake—a big lake, cool and
blue in the shadow of a great brown jabal. I felt an overpowering urge
to stop and swim in the cool waters and looked tentatively at the driver
only to see him dissolve into laughter. My lake was a mirage, nothing but
a mirage. . .
In Camp
MARCH 4
Before we get underway this morning and I get distracted again, I must
jot down a few notes about our head driver Misfir. We didn't realize it
until yesterday, but Misfir is a remarkably able and resourceful individual.
That was when he rescued two drivers, one of whom had been stranded
for four days.
The first rescue took place not far from a town called Khaybar. An
unusually heavy rain had washed out nearly a hundred yards of roadway
and since repairs hadn't yet been made it was necessary to make a wide
swing through the sand to get by. Just before we regained the road, a driver
flagged us down and pointed to a half-ton Dodge truck hub-down in a
wadi. It turned out that the Dodge was not only stuck, but that the motor
wouldn't start. It looked like a lost cause, but Misfir nonchalantly ordered
the driver to jack the truck up until the wheels were free, bent and began
to spin the wheel. It struck me then what he was doing—changing the
position of the fly wheel so the starter could be released. Something clicked
and Misfir climbed in, thumbed the motor to life and began to jockey the
vehicle backward out of the sand with indifferent ease. Twenty minutes
later the driver waved his thanks and was gone.
The second rescue took place on the barren track that wanders off to
the west from the paved road. A truck was parked up ahead surrounded
by half a dozen Bedouins. The driver signaled for help, and told us he
had been stranded there for four days, depending on the Bedouins to sup-