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John Stathatos

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Maps: The Sahara

Two nights with the White Friars at Laghouat:
clean whitewashed cells
and hard beds with mosquito nets.
A quiet day spent pouring over maps
under the fig trees in the garden court,
behind the dusty road. Then off again at dawn,
wandering down to the M'Zab. “Niger 1,200 miles”
pointing due south at Ghardaia crossroads.
The crazy cities rise out of the sand
ring upon ring to the sugar-loaf minaret on top.
In the palm grove, kerosene lamps cast black
and grotesque shadows across the mud walls.
Due south to Niger . . . on the large scale map,
a single thread meanders down through the Hoggar
“eau magnesienne tres peu” along the way.
Each day new symbols take on austere flesh;
with each new mile the tracks become less clear to
                                                                     the eye,
and as sand sings beneath the spinning tyres
the great map of the desert is unrolled
still onwards to the Southern Cross.

 

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