Stars in the desert

It was late in the afternoon, too late, in fact. With the setting sun in my eyes about to disappear over the endless horizon of the Sahara desert, landing an aircraft between the dunes would always be a risky proposition, not for the fainthearted. I had waited almost half the day for supplies to arrive and be loaded on the aircraft, but they hadn’t been very forthcoming. When the small truck eventually arrived, it took another hour for the plane to be loaded. I had no idea what all those mysterious boxes contained and, frankly, couldn’t care less. The only thing of direct concern to me was the distribution and gross weight of all this cargo so I could calculate the “Weight and Balance” for the aircraft; I suppose that made me a pilot and dispatcher simultaneously.

When they were finally done loading, I filed the usual compulsory flight plan, checked the time and figured I could still make it back to base somewhere deep into the desert before dusk would set in… just.

After two and a half hours in the air, scrutinising the empty horizon, I finally detected the lonely transmitter antenna sticking out like a forlorn needle in a haystack and, further away, in the distance, the tower of the Agip oil rig. I began my descent to fifteen hundred feet above ground level and, at last, flew over the concealed and abandoned airstrip to start a classic traffic pattern. This particular airfield is completely hidden from view at low levels, nestled on the only bit of relatively flat real estate available for miles.

From my left window, I glanced down at the wind sock hanging limply in the still evening air, placed next to the fuel tank, the only two objects on the field. The strip was surrounded by giant dunes stretching out as far as the eye can see, and in the desert, one can see over vast distances. I made a sharp left turn, keeping the runway on my left side at all times, and then backtracked on a perfect left downwind course. With the runway now behind me, I went through the usual approach sequence - flaps, gear and power settings and then turned base, followed by a final approach.

There was only one serious problem with this airfield; as soon I was on final, flying only just above ground level, if one can call the rolling sand dunes like the swell on the ocean ground level, I was no longer able to see the runway… at all; it was entirely obscured by a giant dune.

It didn’t help either that the sun was setting over the horizon like a huge orange ball at that precise moment, and that orange ball now sat exactly in my sight. Once I cleared this obstacle, no more than ten feet above the sand, the airstrip suddenly reappeared a hundred feet below, and one had to literally plunge the aircraft down into it. There is no second chance here; if one doesn’t hit the threshold, like on an aircraft carrier, one has to add full power and do it again… I’m not frequently proud, but I dare say I never missed it.

Every time, it was a challenge, and every time, it gave me a feeling of satisfaction to park the aircraft and think, “Well, we did it again.”… we being "me" because I was completely alone out here and seven kilometres from the camp; the terrain in this area did not permit an airstrip to be bulldozed any closer.

I tied the aircraft down, locked up, walked to my parked Jeep, jumped in, turned the ignition key and… nothing. The engine coughed a few times politely, but clearly, it had no intention of responding to my insistent request to get the hell on with it. Eventually, without any doubt, supplemented by some colourful language, I gave up and switched the big military-style radio on with its huge antenna. After yet another futile attempt to raise someone’s attention, it became clear that no one was listening. It is entirely possible that courtesy to the powerful radio I used, my irritated voice may have reached France or, who knows, perhaps even as far as western China courtesy of the radio signals bouncing off the ionosphere but only five miles away, within my own sandy neighbourhood, no one was listening.

By now, the sun was gone completely, and the problem with tropical latitudes is, once the sun sinks below the horizon, it’s like someone just switched the light off… dusk does not linger around for long. The golden rule is “Don’t wander off in the desert at night; they may never find you”, especially if you’re the only pilot in the region.

I now had to make a decision; I either had to resort to sleeping in the aircraft and wait for daylight or… go have a look and see if I could find the trail left behind in the sand by the tyres of my jeep, only that was yesterday and a lot can happen in the desert in twenty-four hours. There was still a tiny bit of light left, but that wouldn’t last long. I walked towards the trail to see if nature had left the landscape exactly the way I had last seen it the previous day or if the wind had been playing games with my, by now, precious, tyre tracks. To my surprise, I could see the trail quite clearly, but that still meant I now had to decide if I would go walkabout into the desert or back off.

Now, some of you may have run up and down the dunes along the beach with your bucket and spade on a sunny afternoon when you were kids, but frankly, that doesn’t even come close to walking seven kilometres on an iffy trail in the sand in the dark. But then I thought, screw it… I can do it; seven K… pfff, it’s only a small matter. And so I began on my journey back to camp, keeping a relatively good pace. The first thing I noticed, not for the first time, was the immense silence, a deep, encompassing silence like most people will never experience in their life, a sort of peaceful tranquillity that, as far as I was concerned, was rather pleasant; to the average disco dancing teenagers however, that would probably classify as their worst nightmare, the more decibels, the better. Also, to my surprise, I could see the trail much clearer than I had expected, even though the light had been switched off once and for all. Much like the snow in the mountains, however, the pale sand was now reflecting a brand new light that had slowly begun creeping into the black night sky, a light that took my breath away, a light that has illuminated the heavens for billions of years and it now steadily worked its way towards its crescendo in the dry winter air. Above me lay a solid carpet of a zillion stars illuminating my path and ushering me on. Sirius, the binary star and Orion, mighty Osiris for the ancient Egyptians, dominated the eastern sky while directly above me, a stunning display of stars shone with such clarity that it gave me the feeling that I could nearly touch them… nearly. I forgot all about the damn jeep that had left me stuck in the desert, and for the time being, I also forgot that, evidently, no one manned the radios or that my flights, by now, should have been declared overdue. For the time being, all I could do was trudge through the sand with my nose in the air, marvelling at the display above. I must have walked along the sandy trail in a near trance for almost two hours; however long my nocturnal walk in the desert may have been, I didn’t notice time go by.

When, at last, the blazing lights of the camp began to appear, a brief feeling of anti-climax crept over me. Soon, I had to say goodbye to the eternal burning lights in the cosmos that had shown me the way back to camp and come back to Earth. It had been a long trek, a trek of pure beauty. But of course, it was almost ten o’clock by now, and I was hungry like hell and in a hurry to reach the mess hall and attack the leftovers.

J.D.