My Lovely Desert E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A young female ethnobotanist researching in the Libyan mountains finds herself caught up in events  during the fateful year of 2011, when many forces moved against Colonel Ghaddafi.

Drawn at first by its stark beauty, she discovers that the Libyan desert is a land where elemental forces reign and where rock gives birth to sand; yet even here life and love flourish.

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

My Lovely Desert

This is a work of fiction. Apart from the Colonel, and his son, names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Dedicated to the desert plants and their struggle for survival.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

My Lovely Desert

A land where elemental forces reign and where rock gives birth to sand.

Libya 2011

Shafiq pointed upwards

“See Madam,”

The large shape circled lazily on an updraft. A buzzard or some other bird of prey. Against the sun it was all black, difficult to identify.

Anyway I was an ethnobotanist, plants were my thing not birds. Here on the escarpment I was studying plants that the local tribes people used in their folk medicine and cooking. Shafiq was my helper along with his mother Alya. Shafiq was our sharp eyes and our agile climber.

My name is Bernadine Dacourt, twenty seven, with special permission for this project from Ghaddafi himself.

I was camped with these two members of the the Hathani tribe, pastoralists in these Wadis and rocky hills. Relatively untouched by civilisation they pursued their traditional way of life here on the edge of the Nafusa range.

I was fortunate to have arrived after the first rain for three years. Plants were visible in fissures and cracks.

Here the parallel layers of rock had reacted to the violent daily changes in temperature; strata had fractionated, bent, split, the skin of the rock had hues of rose, pale green, orange and blue. Ancient water erosion had cut deep Wadis or Oueds and on their dry beds lay millions of stones and sand. Gusting winds  over the millennia had lifted the sand and with it sculpted stone outcrops into towers topped with strange cowls of harder rock.

The air had been invigorated after the recent showers; big clumps of artemesia judaica grew on the Wadi slopes, its long stalks of pale yellow flowers breathing an aromatic perfume.

In this austere mineral space the occasional tree or bush grew, protecting itself, like the other plants, against the brutal winds and intense heat with an indescribable force and energy.

“Look,” said Shafiq in a low voice.

A camel caravan from the north was making its way below us. We could make out 30 camels heavily laden, with men on foot but some figures in black riding camels.

“Those are the guards,” said Shafiq authoritively.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“See the sun glinting on the guns.”

I looked again, Sure enough as they moved dull flashes of light flickered.

“They are turning,” said Shafiq excitedly, “coming our way.”

“Why,” said Alya, “ I believe they are heading for the caves in Wadi Qum.They will be hiding something,” said Shafiq.

He explained that the caves were used in troubled times to hide valuables, stock or even people.

I took out my binoculars and focused on the group.

I took a sharp in breath. I recognised the uniformed figures.

“What is it?” said Alya.

“Those are Ghadaffi’s female body guards.”

“Shouldn’t they be guarding his body?” said Alya.

“There have been many caravans like this recently,” said Shafiq. “Heavily laden, heading south into the desert. I heard my father talk of it. All the Sheiks are involved They are disp..disper.”

“Dispersing?”

“Yes that’s it, dispersing something.”

There had been an air of concern in Tripoli when I had obtained my permissions. The colonel was committed to my project he said. The desert was in his heart, and he wanted his people to appreciate its riches, not become addicted to oil, like the Americans.”

He looked out from the tent set up in his palace grounds and used for meetings

“Things are troubled at the moment. My advisers say dark times lie ahead. I fear I may have to put down a revolt.

But in the desert lies our real wealth.

My people have lived sustainably off the desert for thousands of years; it has fed them, given them medicine and experience of the spiritual. The big problem is always water.” But, he confided, he was working on that.

“Under the desert,” he said “there were aquifers as big as seas.”

As I prepared to leave Tripoli I heard rumours in the bazaar. “Ghaddafi was shipping his gold to Sicily; the Mafia was going to look after it for him. Or he was putting it into a specially constructed vault right here under the palace, or he was flying it to Niger in the south.”

Some time later the Wadi group re-appeared, their camels free from burdens. They reassumed the southward route of the main caravan.