STORIES

At the end of the afternoon, when the shadows of our camels were ragged streaks on the sand below us, we came across a great cairn near the base of

The sun was drifting down in long veins of fire, edging the clouds with scarlet and gold among the acacia trees. At the well in the Wadi al-Ma, the nomads

It took five sleeps to reach the gelti – the water pool. We left the camels to browze in some thornscrub at the foot of a dune, and climbed up

After we had eaten, Rafig made tea and we sat by the fire, drinking it, basking in moonlight, while the camels chewed and snorted. The moon was full, and staring

We were sitting outside the tent of our host, Hassan, in the Wadi al-Ma, drinking tea, and watching long tongues of flame lick around the three stones of the fireplace.

The Well of the Catfish was a short distance from the camp, and was marked by a round white stone with a hole in the centre, and the skull of

We made camp near the salt-lake and were sitting by the fire, just after sunset, with our camels browzing contentedly in the trees, when a black shape scuttled suddenly across

”When we returned to the camp, the fire was blazing, and Atman called us over to eat polenta and sour camel’s milk. Afterwards, we sat together by the fire and

When I lived in the desert with nomads, we spent almost every evening sitting round the fire telling stories. The nomads had no writing, so they shared knowledge through the

. After sunset, when we had settled the camels, we sat by the fire and drank tea. Brahim added the remaining wood to the fire, building up the flames. I

In the evening we settled the camels, and drew in around the fire huddled in our blankets. It was a cold night and the nomads built up the blaze with

We were not exactly lost, but we needed water and had not found the well that was supposed to lie in this area.  We were six days from the wadi

Brahim was an old man, with eyes polished by the grit laden desert wind. After dark, when the nomads gathered around the fire, he added more wood, and the flames

We set off shortly after first light, with a donkey that Sabba drove in front of her.  Following the wadi bed down into the gorge, through the groves of tarout

Sabba led me out of the gorge and into a narrow canyon like a corridor between sandstone walls. We followed it until we came to a place surrounded by rock

At mid-day we took the ferry across the Nile and found the storyteller’s mud hut in the small village on the other side. Maya, a surprisingly young woman with intense,

We had been heading towards the oasis for eight sleeps when the storm struck. It was if the desert had suddenly woken up, with a roar that came from the

It had been a long, hard, struggle across the sands that day, and often Mafoudh and I had stopped to argue about direction. The camels were hungry and had pulled

All day we had been leading the camels through an area of sand and great boulders that seemed to grow out of the desert like giant mushrooms – a feature

Since I first went to live with nomads, I had been fascinated by the idea of jinns – the evil spirits they said inhabited lonely places, that could get into

According to my diary, we met her in the late morning. ‘… we spied a young woman under an acacia tree surrounded by goats, ‘ I wrote, ‘a slim, demure