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CHAPTER 1
THE HOGGAR MEETINGS
The meetings of the Friends of the Desert organization took place in a newly constructed building, near the border between Austria and the Czech Republic. In honor of a massif of the same name in Algeria, between the villages of Wadi Tanget and the Agargart — a region rich in oases and gardens — the house was called "Hoggar." Rather than discovering the nature of the organization — as was my purpose — the meeting that I took part in only added to my confusion. From the beginning I had the strong feeling that I hadn't unlocked what truly gathered its members there, unitied in their common goal; and, worse still, that to acquire it I would have to overcome all sorts of obstacles.
Otla Plícka received me at the train station with the same yellow tie and with the friendliness of our first encounter, as if no disagreement of any kind had ever come between us. He was eloquent and cordial again, just like his wife, who placed her hand in mine — in the welcome greeting — much longer than can be considered normal.
"You are so nice!" I told her then, holding her gaze.
"You seem very nice to me, too," she answered me.
Perhaps because she was the wife of the organization's current president or because she was very skilled at the role that she held, a few hours were all it took to prove that paná Plicková was very appreciated and popular. She enforced the structure of the day with fidelity and flexibility — virtues seldom found together — and didn't stop smiling at everyone and every moment, perhaps because she knew that that was how her beauty shined most brightly. Having said that, Jan — who was one of the first Friends that I met at that meeting — also smiled a lot; and paná Petruchová, his wife, was the one I became the most intimate with. Both Petruchová and Plicková were very exuberant, flirtatious women; their respective husbands appeared to trust them fully. Paná Petruchová took me by the arm and hardly left me alone over the day and a half that the meeting lasted. I appreciated it, since I don't know what I would have done in the midst of all of those people had I not been in her company. Plus, it pleased me to feel her so warm and revealingly close to me.
Besides some old folks — Professor Pecha among them — the majority of the Friends of the Desert were middle aged, a few years older or younger than me. Among them there were couples and singles, foreigners and compatriots, with greater or lesser educations, and with the most diverse jobs and occupations; they also came from different social backgrounds and religious creeds. Everyone treated me cordially and without affectation. They loved the desert, they confessed it without ostentation or modesty. I heard how they claimed how much they would like to live, or at least spend long periods, in some one of the planet's many deserts; I also heard that, among the countless places on earth, they greatly preferred the desert. Some recounted their experiences and difficulties on the expeditions that, it seemed, they had undertaken to some of the main African deserts. Their love for the desert had endured great difficulties, they said, and they showed each other photographs, laughing and remembering the most memorable episodes and anecdotes. Three of them read some of the letters that they had received from members of other Saharan expeditions and, finally, a group became engrossed in a long discussion about the customs of the Tuareg, the people that I myself had already begun to feel a certain interest in. Of me, fortunately, they asked nothing. They showed me enough deference to allow me to remain on the margins and to do what seemed best to me at any given moment.
"Will you come back?" Paná Plicková wanted to know at the end of that intense weekend.
It was the only direct question, the only indication from which I could derive — on behalf of any of the Friends — any real interest in me.
While she tossed back her long, curly hair in a brusque motion that startled me, I wanted to respond that yes, that of course I would come back; I also wanted to declare that I was a lover of the desert (now that I had the opportunity to demonstrate it — but, was I?); and I would have even guaranteed that my fondness for the subject of these debates was absolutely not ephemeral or fleeting, as Professor Pecha had dared to insinuate. I also wanted to confess in that instant — despite the fact that no one had asked me — that I had three or four images of the desert hanging on the walls of my bedroom; and I wanted to declare — because this would have been a declaration — that all of the organization's women had seemed lovely to me, in particular Plicková, Petruchová, and Benetková, whom I will also say something about in these pages. In the same manner, if I had been allowed, I would have wanted to insist how much I had been impressed by Professor Pecha, a true sage; and surely I would have said another thousand even more flattering things more.
"I don't know, I have to think about it," I said, nonetheless; and it seemed to me, upon saying so, that a shadow fell over paná Petruchová's face.
On the train back to Kromeríz I was meditating on my response, as laconic as it was. Without knowing it, I had given the answer that a true Friend of the Desert must give. Perhaps that's why, at hearing it, Petruchová brusquely tossed back her long and curly hair again.
Naturally, I went to the organization's second meeting. Why will I so insist on how naturally everything developed? Jan, who because of his obesity walked with his legs open wide, had called me several days before to confirm the date and time with me; from his lips, nonetheless, escaped no expression that revealed true interest in my coming. To the contrary, I perceived that he gave me the information in a very vague and general way, as if he preferred that I not attend. It was that generalized disinterest — now I understand it — that redoubled my attraction. The desert continued calling me, of course; but this was now joined by one more incentive: the Friends. Yes, the Friends. In my monotonous life in Kromeríz I missed them, and I went so far as to even travel once to Brno alone in case I ran into one of them by chance. To tell the truth, all of those people managed to attract me to their ranks not just with the natural friendliness that many of them demonstrated; nor with the exquisite politeness and kindness that all of them treated me with, but with a deeper, subtle something that, at that time — because I had barely been initiated — I was still not in a state to recognize.
The caution with which the organization handled the possible joining of new members reached the extreme of not receiving any candidate until their third inquiry. They came formulated in some terms or others — and ignoring the origin and condition of the applicants — the first two inquiries were rejected or ignored by the system. For this reason, most of those interested gave up on first try; their curiosity and affinity for the desert (or so the Friends asserted) were still quite incipient — almost irrelevant — and, therefore, not worthy of being taken into consideration. Some — few — gave up after the second push; their interest was certainly greater, but still insufficient. Only those who persisted in their desire and requested information a third time (and I was among them) were invited to participate in and received at the meetings. If they passed the test, it was suggested to them that they register for the trips or expeditions.
"The test?" I wanted to know.
Yes, all of the candidates for the organization were submitted to a test in one way or another. I myself was examined without realizing it during the meeting I took part in at Hoggar. At first, in my innocence, I came to think that the trip to the Sahara that I was going to commit myself to on my second meeting with the Friends was a project that I has taken on by my own initiative. How naive! It took me a while to understand that the process of initiation to friendship with the desert was much more regulated than what any candidate would have been able to imagine. At that time I couldn't suspect that, beneath the cover of apparent indifference toward me, I was observed with the objective of testing my mettle and verifying my authenticity. Paná Petruchová was the ringleader of this strategy, hidden and effective; but, next to her, Jan, her husband — the one who walked with his legs wide open — and Benetková, who I already mentioned, were those directly responsible for my monitoring.
None of this means that the Friends were a cult (I don't remember God or religion ever being discussed); nor an ideology (there was no indoctrination of any kind); and much less a travel agency, as perhaps someone unsuspecting might have thought. It goes without saying that no one whose interest was merely tourism was admitted. Rather it was an institution in the service of an ideal wide enough so that many of us could find each other and, at the same time, specific enough so that its doors were not open indiscriminately. Soon I would know that no one was allowed in if what they sought with their admission to the Friends was simply to escape or distance themselves from their daily life. That is why I can say that I did not flee Kromeríz — my city — that I didn't go to the desert to distance myself from my world or my loved ones. I went to the desert for the desert itself, that's the truth. That my my loved ones wouldn't be there or that world — what I still called my world then — would remain in my country, was something entirely irrelevant or, in any case, secondary.
"It will be at Hoggar, right?" I asked.
As I have already said, "Hoggar" was how the Friends referred to the house that they met in.
"It's likely," Jan answered me. "We will tell you in due course, when the date approaches."
Why the imprecision? Why not inform me normally? Perhaps because not even I myself really knew what I was searching for?
Now that a certain time has passed since these acts took place but while I am still in the desert, I understand that already then I was chasing that silence — unique and unmistakable — where the essential reverberates.
During the second meeting, paná Petruchová again grabbed my arm with total familiarity. I appreciated then not only her physical beauty, which on this occasion struck me as more radiant and irresistible than the first time, but her ability to retreat at the precise instant when I wanted to be alone and to appear — because she was an authentic apparition! — when I needed her company.
As for me, I didn't take the floor at that meeting either; I constrained myself to listening to what was said about the desert at the lectures and shared invitations, still unaware of how useful all of it would be to me at the right moment. Otla, who for some reason became cold and distant with me again — which I deducted from how he pressed his hands into his armpits — held forth on the conditions of life in the planet's main deserts. He spoke of the countries that the Tropic of Cancer passes through, of the Libyan desert, and of Timbuktu. He carried on tediously about the flora and fauna of these regions, as well as about the exotic customs of some of their inhabitants.
As interesting as his dissertation would be to many, of everything that I heard at those conferences and of all the Friends with whom I entered into relationship, the one who most impressed me was someone who was not present and who everyone simply called Charles. Beyond the biography of this Charles, a type of anchorite adventurer whom many in the organization venerated as one of the most distinguished teachers of the desert, and even beyond his particular charisma — which Professor Pecha seemed every bit an expert on — what most seduced me about Charles de Foucauld (that was his full name) was his face, which was projected onto a large screen during the professor's conference. In that photo, Charles must have been about thirty, thirty-five at the most; the snapshot had been taken just after a foolhardy expedition to Morocco, undertaken after abandoning his licentious military life in the hunter's quarter. He modeled a half smile that didn't show his teeth; eyes deeply sunken, neck thin, and ears pointed. He didn't look sad, but not happy either.
Like the grandfather who tells an old story to his grandchildren, Professor Ladislao Pecha recounted the vicissitudes that that slight man had had to endure in the Algerian desert. While I studied the image of his face, we were informed of how Foucauld — first a geographer and, later, a member of a religious order and colonial interventionist — had participated in military operations in the Oran Campaign, before his conversion, and in commercial operations in Adrar, years later, in an effort to earn the friendship of the natives and win them to his cause. At the end of his days, he had retreated to a small hermitage that had been constructed near a sort of fortress. It was there where he wound up murdered by a Tuareg — the people he had devoted himself to — during a Sennusi revolt. The 6,000-plus letters that are conserved of this example of friendship with the desert, as well as the incommensurable Tamasheq-French dictionary that he prepared with admirable rigor, provided a good example — according to the professor — of how the desert can come to shape a life. Before an engaged auditorium, the professor explained in the same way that Charles de Foucauld was charismatic to his regret, against his will: a sort of founder who never could serve as such. He also said that he was one of those men — always scarce — who follow their own path without worrying about anything else; and he asserted that his most intimate secret was encoded in the many, countless hours that he spent in silence and solitude. He finished by saying that he would have loved to have know him personally, though not as much to speak with him as to gaze at him and enjoy his radiance.
"All of us who in some way feel like failures," he muttered at the end, "find in him a hero, because he took the path opposite to that that everyone else tends to take: the world seeks power and glory," declared Pecha, and he resembled a sort of prophet when he said it; "he, on the other hand, anonymity and obscurity."
That last comment awoke in me the desire to know this character more deeply, had he accomplished the feats attributed to him or not. I don't possess, admittedly, a face like his, so beautiful: a face that is masculine and feminine at the same time and that, once one has beholden it, for some reason can never be forgotten.
"Charles," I said.
I felt the desire to speak with his photographed image.
It took me a long time to read and learn anything more about what type of madman or saint Foucauld was, but the indelible image of his face has accompanied me at some moments that I will by necessity have to refer to in these pages.
I followed the presentation with intense interest, but not just for the brilliance and intensity of that Christian mystic's face, or for his beleaguered life, full of displacement — something that captivated many of those present — but for the way in which the old professor presented it. Beyond the perfect use of the most traditional resources of classic oratory — which Pecha, as an experienced presenter, displayed in his lecture — what really awakened my curiosity were the long silences that broke up the professor's presentation. That's how it went: every four or five sentences, the old presenter observed incredibly prolonged silences. I can state, without any fear of being mistaken, that they were the longest silences that I have ever heard at any conference. He prolonged them so much that, on more than one occasion — and I wasn't the only one — I had the impression that the dissertation had ended and that everyone was waiting for someone to break out in applause. Why those silences? I asked myself. To think about what he would say next (since he spoke without notes)? To give us time to reflect on what we had just heard?
In the brief interval that followed that presentation, when I retired to my assigned room at Hoggar, I had an encounter that left me even more confused than everything before it.
"Pavel ... Pavel!" whispered paná Benetková, motioning to me to approach her in an alcove.
Benetková was a very pale woman with big, exaggerated eyes.
"You won't understand what I am telling you now," she whispered once I was at her side, "but I beg you not to ask me questions and to follow my advice."
She was visibly upset. She blinked excessively and her bottom lip trembled.
"Leave the organization," she continued. "There's still time!"
"But why?" I wanted to know, immediately disobeying one of her instructions. "What could be bad about it?"
But Benetková, who didn't stop blinking, did not want to respond. She said that she wasn't authorized to give me more information and that she risked grave danger if it became known that she had warned me.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Friend of the Desert"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Pablo d'Ors.
Excerpted by permission of Parallax Press.
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