Desert Divers (12 page)

At the El Mehri hotel, the starter consists of spaghetti with bread, the main course rice and potatoes. But they play Beethoven’s Fifth during the meal and my table napkin is so heavy and moist that when I put it on my lap I can feel the chill right through my clothes.

This dampness is not because the weather in the Sahara isn’t good for drying – it is the desert’s re-ordering of all values. Damp is the very best. The Sahara has taught me to love the weight and coolness of a really wet table napkin to the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth.

After dinner, I go down to the hotel yard as usual for a last check on the car locks and lights. The car park guard has made a small fire of yellow seed-cases and date palm leaves. We start talking.

He was born a
ghattasin
, as the well-divers are called in Ouargla.

‘They say we are descendants of prisoners who were sentenced to death. The Turks let them choose between being executed immediately or becoming well-divers in the Sahara. When they came here, they were forced down the wells. But their children and grandchildren were the first to become truly skilled, we who were trained from an early age for this difficult work.

‘During the war of liberation, the French tortured their prisoners by holding their heads under water until they almost suffocated. Perhaps you’ve heard about it? Well, that’s also a way of training a child to become a well-diver.

‘Many died, so many that the shortage of well-divers threatened to leave the oases deserted.

‘“Our children aren’t tough enough,” the old men said, those who had survived. “May He-who-makes-all-miracles have mercy on us, otherwise the pitiable performance of our children will bury the entire oasis in sand.”

‘It was the French who saved us from slavery in the wells by their deep drilling. That’s also a side of the French Empire that oughtn’t to be forgotten.

‘The deep bore was first tried in Ghardaia in the late 1890s. They drilled down to 320 metres without finding water.

‘The first kilometre-deep borehole was made in Touggourt in 1927, with no result.

‘Here in Ouargla, they drilled down just as deeply, again in vain.

‘The first successful borehole was made in Zelfana near Ouargla in 1946.

‘Like most
ghattasin
, I was trained as a digger as well as a diver. The most dangerous part of digging was the geyser-like eruptions of water which arose when we broke through the sandstone roof at great depths. Here in Ouargla, the water-bearing stratum is under enormous pressure and many
ghattasin
died in accidents of that kind. But in 1946, they stopped digging wells with those risky old methods.

‘What remained was the task of cleaning the existing wells. We used tallow to plug our ears and nostrils, and descended to great depths. It was dangerous and painful work with low social status, even lower than the status of the Haratin outcasts. Before we had been praised as the heroes of the oases, but in the days of well-borers, we were no longer as important.

‘When the oil began to flow in Hassi Messaoud, many of the
ghattasin
changed identity and became oil workers. It’s a less risky and better-paid profession, with high status.

‘I myself became a truck driver. I learnt French from the French. I drove the Hassi Messaoud to Constantine route. But I’ve also driven to places as far away as Insalah and Tammanrasset, and once went to Zinder. I’ve seen the desert.

‘I’ve had two wives. I have five sons, all employed by the oil company. Now I’m the car park guard here at the hotel. It’s a good job for an old man. I look back on an eventful life (
une vie substantielle
). I am glad I survived the horrors of childhood. I’m glad I didn’t have to torment my children in the same way.’

The Sahara’s water problems appear to have been solved once and for all. Today they bore down to four thousand metres, extracting water which is fifty degrees Celsius. Ouargla is supplied with fifteen thousand litres a minute.

But there is a difference between water and water.

‘The water in the wells we used to dig and clean came from self-renewing sources. The fifteen-thousand-litres-a-minute the oases use today are non-renewable. They say it has come trickling through the base rock of the Atlas mountains, two hundred miles north. It has been on its way for thirty-five thousand years.

‘So every litre used takes thirty-five thousand years to replace with a new litre of water.

‘That worries me. Sometimes I wonder whether the real future profession in the Sahara will be oil-drilling or well-diving.’

That is what he said. Now I know. But what I was looking for – where is that?

I haven’t dared talk about myself. I am still hiding. I am evading death, the door of childhood and dreams is open only a crack. Almost everything remains.

I am small. My hand has five fingers. With them, I hold life in a firm grip.

I grow and my fingers fire shoots. They branch out like cacti. Every branch seems to provide new possibilities. I reach out more, grasp more.

But soon my hand is so full of fingers that they are completely occupied coping with each other. Whatever they are gripping glides away and disappears in the crush.

I realize what is happening and set about thinning out my fingers like carrots in the vegetable garden.

It takes longer than I had calculated. It turns out to be a labour without end.

Then suddenly I am small again. Once more my hand has five fingers.

With them, I take a firm grip on empty air. What I am trying to grasp has come to an end.

Sven Lindqvist
was born in 1932 in Stockholm, where he still lives. Since 1955 he has published more than thirty books of essays, aphorisms, autobiography, documentary prose, travel and literary reportage. He is the author of
Bench Press
, an autobiographical essay on gym culture, ending with the protagonist leaving for the Sahara. His intellectual adventures in the desert are followed up in the books comprising this volume: the highly acclaimed
Desert Divers
and ‘
Exterminate All the Brutes
’, a study of a single sentence in Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
and a journey to the roots of European racism. He is also the author of
A History of Bombing
and
Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land
. www.svenlindqvist.net

Bench Press

A History of Bombing

Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One’s Land