Wendy Darlin's first camel ride... on Chester the Molester.
My camel Chester did a sideways hula,
attempting to throw me. I brought my knees into the saddle with a sharp slam. Chester
felt nothing, whereas I silently howled in pain. I needed a speed course in
camel. He turned his head and smiled at me. But he didn’t spit.
Hut! Hut! What was that? Evidently the
cry to move out, a cry that I sure as hell didn’t make. I held on as the beast
shifted his weight and lumbered forward in a curiously graceful way. Again he
looked at me but didn’t spit. I felt like Lawrencetta of Arabia. Something
whacked into my neck. It was a pith helmet. I wondered who that could be.
I’d never ridden a horse before, and here
I was mounted on a grumpy giant hump. Worst of all he was dressed in clashing
primary colors and four different prints. I was on a tacky camel. I hoped none
of my friends saw me.
Our caravan, such as it was, moved along
with a rocking rhythm. Camels weren’t called the ships of the desert for
nothing. Chester tried to turn back. I leaned over and said “Glue factory,” in
his flea-bitten ear. He must understand horse. He nodded and moved on.
Chester followed the other mounts to a
crest on a point above low-lying dunes. The camels side-stepped their way into
a steep descent. Twice I almost pitched off to the right dragging Fiona with
me. In the distance I could see endless flatlands. Shadows of date palms inked
the ground.
Our trek to the temple was a journey back
in time. Grassy mounds marked the remains of ancient villages. Rolling dunes
sometimes hinted at the tip of a buried temple or sanctuary. Each dune was
touched with a different wind-borne pattern, just enough to be hypnotic. We
skirted mud-brick villages as timeless and weathered as the Great Sphinx of
Giza.
I tried to romanticize our expedition,
but in truth, I was ready to bag it after the first ten minutes. Selling real
estate in a down market wasn’t that bad.
Amazon Kindle: The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age 42 and Three-Quarters
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