November 2005, West Sahara Desert, Morocco

By Jordan Conn

Where the cackling wind swept the sand into a dance with the ominous sky, where the daunting expanse battled the shackles of space, I was alone. Though only half a mile removed from my campsite and a 45-minute Land Rover’s drive from the Moroccan town of Erfoud, the solitude of the Sahara whispered that I was, by anyone’s definition, in the middle of nowhere.

Mountainous red-tinted dunes rose and fell for miles, stretching beyond the limits of vision, carrying both the solace of continuity and the mystery of grandeur. The desert’s silent song welcomed me to take off my shoes and stay for a while, to drink it all in and store it all up, letting every sense capture every sensation to its fullest extent. I had longed for this – to be isolated from all but self and sand, free to stare at nowhere and think of nothing, all while conversing with precisely no one.

Well, no one except Mahmoud.

“Hello, my fren’!” the foreign figure called, barely audibly, from one dune away. I was shocked that another life form had found me – almost certain that the boy had risen from the sand itself – but I politely responded.

“Hello!”

He continued onward, his waifish body hampered by a bulging cloth sack, sand caking his legs with every trudging step. I sat and waited, simultaneously disappointed and delighted that this Saharan stranger had interrupted my solitude. Once he reached the summit of my dune, he launched first into Arabic and then into French. I understood neither.

He said he knew very little English but asked if I spoke Spanish, and although my semester in Seville had taught me less than I would have liked, I knew that in this situation, only one answer would suffice. “Si.”

I knew the fossils were next. They were always next. A handful of children had hounded me the moment I reached Erfoud, relentlessly pitching their freshly polished, prehistoric mantle pieces to a throng of travelers.

The kids, all of whom appeared to be between 4 and 10, lined the edge of the bus stop, each with a tattered sack, eager eyes and grubby hands, anticipating the arrival of their foreign guests. They stared at us: Americans, Germans, Spaniards, Brits. We were objects of opulence in the center of destitution, alien intruders who brought a curiosity for the desert’s desolation and Berber culture. We also brought money. And relatively speaking, we brought lots of it.

So the children waited. Portraits of impoverished innocence, they stood smiling in their faded T-shirts and ripped-up shorts, their bare feet twitching with youthful energy and salesmen’s enthusiasm, each one clearly eager to meet the next group of clients.

And then, they swarmed. They moved in a pack, uniting in their cause but competing for their sales, preying on our sympathy as they’d undoubtedly been taught. They were two-thirds salesmen and one-third beggars, immediate vultures but ultimate victims. They would take any currency and virtually any price, anything to unload their products. Anything to sell. Anything to eat.

This is life for approximately 50,000 Moroccans, who rely on the fossil trade for their well-being. Men dig and polish; children sell. The most common fossils are trilobites, large multi-celled creatures that once populated the seas that covered the Sahara. They are treasures to fossil collectors, and some sell on the Internet for more than 2,000 dollars. In Erfoud, they sold for less than 30. So when my new buddy approached with a smile unfit for a mere passer-by, I beat him to his pitch.

“Fossils?” I asked, reverting to English.

As if on command, the kid dropped to the sand, took off his bag and revealed a dozen fossils. This was purely business.

“I am Mahmoud,” he said with Arabic cadence and a youthful grin, “and these are for you, my fren’.”

His collection included eight individual trilobites of varying sizes, along with two larger rocks in which multiple trilobites were embedded. The prizes of the lot, however, were his two desert roses. These crystallized formations were rosette amalgamations of gypsum and barite. Their “petals” looked like porcelain, fanning out from the axis as pristine appendages. They were chaotically exquisite, with no structural rhythm but a mystifying salmon hue. Immediately, I knew I had to have one.

But if I was going to make this purchase, I wanted fair value. And when you’re isolated in the middle of the Sahara desert, surrounded only by sand and sky, alone with a Berber boy who lives a life you can’t begin to understand, curiosity takes over. Conversation becomes currency.

“Cuantos años tienes?” I asked his age, now comfortable with the fact that we both spoke broken Spanish.

“Quince (15). Y tú?”

“Veinte (20).”

That first question gave birth to many more, and then the real negotiations began. With every new fact Mahmoud divulged about his desert life, he earned himself a larger profit. So we talked. For nearly an hour, we discussed my dorm and his tent, my university and his fossil sales, my Bible and his Koran, my suburb and his Sahara, my football and his fútbol.

He said he was from “beyond the dunes,” pointing east, but the dunes extended farther than I could conceive. Beyond the dunes there are no schools, he said, and he had dug, polished, and sold fossils for his entire life. He spoke Arabic and French fluently, and he had some understanding of Spanish, Italian, English, and Japanese. The desert was his school; tourists were his teachers.

I was enthralled by the mystery of it all, desperate to devour every slice of information he would reveal. I wanted to know Mahmoud. I wanted to understand his desert. I wanted, even if only for a moment, to see into his Arabic existence of discipline and desolation. Did we connect? Could we connect?

I wanted to know what he loved and hated. I wanted to know his dreams. Did he have them? When all you know is poverty, do you long for wealth? When all you know is theocracy, do you long for freedom? I fought the limitations of language and cultural differences, trying to reconcile these questions. But Mahmoud couldn’t respond. He couldn’t understand.

When all you know is contentment, how could you long for more?

Conversation slowed, and he patiently waited to resume negotiations as my senses continued to consume the barren expanse. I was almost ready to talk about my potential purchase, but I realized that one obvious question had been left unanswered.

“Que haces para divertirse?” I asked, wanting to know what he did for fun.

Without a word, he sprang to his feet and galloped toward the top of the hill, scaling the slope with an uncanny stride – a gait that could only be learned through years of running over and around dunes, conforming one’s feet to fluidity of the sand. His steps were short but explosive, simultaneously concentrated and effortless, looking more natural the farther he ran.

When he reached the summit, he took a final step and then soared, somersaulting forward with his mouth wide open and his face lit up. He landed flat on his back, nestled into a self-made crater of sand. He paused, looked back at me, and howled in laughter. Question answered.

By the time he recollected himself and returned to where I was sitting, his focus had shifted. Enough fun, time for business. He’d invested too much time into this interaction to let me go without a sale, and frankly, so had I. He initially asked for 40 euros per fossil, an exorbitant price compared to the other vendors, especially since I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to discern whether or not the fossils were fakes. After we’d spent the whole afternoon playing in the giant sandbox, this little punk was trying to rip me off. Bastard. I was far from skilled in the art of haggling, and I knew he would probably get the best of me when we went our separate ways. Fortunately, I had one crucial factor on my side: I was broke.

“Solamente tengo 10 Euros,” I told him.

“OK. Pues, posiblamente intercambiamos,” he said, suggesting a trade.

He immediately eyed my watch and asked if he could hold it. I relented, and he became transfixed. It was a cheap digital piece I’d gotten from Wal-Mart, and I was more than willing to let it go. Mahmoud, who had already fastened it tightly around his wrist, was not.

I told him I wanted the desert rose and a trilobite, and he could keep the watch. He was willing to give me the rose, but if I wanted the second fossil, I would have to give up something else. He began drawing pictures in the sand to aid in translation, sketching his desires.

First, he asked for my mobile phone, which was still in my tent and inoperable in the desert. He then ran through a list of common American amenities, ranging from baseball caps to Game Boys, stopping just short of a kind request for my soul. When he seemed to run out of ideas, he grunted in exasperation before a hellion’s smile crept across his face.

“Hashish?”

I laughed and shook my head, unable to accommodate the little turban-wearing stoner. I would have given him anything he wanted if I’d had it, but you don’t carry material luxuries on a camping trip in the Sahara. I persisted on getting the trilobite anyway, not because I really wanted it but because I didn’t want the chess match to end. I wanted to beat Mahmoud, or at least play him to a stale mate, reveling in the competition, thrilling from the haggle.

But I eventually relented, realizing that I was doing him no favors by keeping him from other potential customers. I told him I would just keep the rose, and the watch and money were his. He was satisfied.

We thanked each other and turned our separate ways. As I started back toward my camp site, hoping to beat the setting sun, I was stopped by a call from behind.

“Espere!”

He’d told me to wait, so I turned just in time to see a stone sailing in my direction, finally falling at my feet and resting on the sand.

“Un regalo,” Mahmoud said, “porque somos buenos amigos.”

A gift. Because we are good friends.

I reached down to grab the trilobite and thanked him, not for the fossil but for the experience. The gift was a pleasantry, but the banter was a treasure. And that was how we returned: he to his village, me to my suburb; he to his to mosque, me to my church; he to his customers, me to my university. Similar in spirit but divided by culture.

Again, the sand danced with the sky. Again, the expanse challenged the limits of space. Before me, there stood the majestic Sahara. Behind me, there walked a punk kid - not unlike myself – who was hell-bent on competition but longing for camaraderie. I had beaten him – matched his wits, named my price, left with my dignity intact. I had won.

I looked over my shoulder and caught him smiling as he trekked back to his village. It hit me: He’s probably thinking the exact same thing.

Jordan Conn is a student at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. He works as a sportswriter and page designer for the Chattanooga Times Free Press and is originally from Marietta, Georgia.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 | Email This Post

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