William Langewiesche The World in Its Extreme, theatlantic.com
This is Langewiesche’s first story in the Atlantic. An anecdote: I saw the author at a book store recently, talking about his more recent work. As part of gaining access to the WTC site, Langewiesche wrote a note to Ken Holden, the head of the NYC agency that eventually took charge. Holden called him back right away, knew his work and was effusive about it. This story in particular. Holden had read it to his wife in bed. Oddly enough, I remember doing something similar.
Excerpt 1:
Driving in the Sahara
THE dangers of driving in the Sahara are not limited to foreigners. Anyone can break down. Anyone can get lost. Salah Addoun has at various times said to me:
"When you break down, you have to be calm, because the desert is calm."
"When you get lost, you should sit. Wait. One hour, two hours, a full day. Sit. You will find your orientation."
"Tourists panic and drive aimlessly. They are afraid of the lion before the lion."
"As you believe in life, you must also believe in death."
In a northern oasis I met a retired truck driver, a lively old man named Lag Lag who had nearly perished in the desert in 1957. Lag Lag and an assistant were driving a diesel rig through trackless sand when they lost their way; after several days of wandering they ran out of fuel. They carried water, and so they were in no immediate danger. But the long-term prospects were not good. Walking out was impossible, and it was unlikely that anyone would come their way. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there, watching their water dwindle and waiting for Allah's will. They turned inward to Islam, and talked about death and afterlife. Though they had a small supply of food, they abstained from eating, fearing that it would magnify their thirst. Dehydration, not starvation, is what kills in the desert. And thirst is among the most terrible of all human sufferings.
The physiologists who specialize in thirst seem never to have experienced it. This surprises me. You would think that someone interested in thirst would want to stop drinking for a while. It is easy to arrange, and can be done safely. But the physiologists pursue knowledge, not experience. They use words based in Greek, which soften the subject. For instance, they would describe the Sahara -- the burning sand, the fierce, relentless sky -- as dipsogenic, meaning "thirst-provoking." In discussing Lag Lag's case, they might say he progressed from eudipsia, meaning "ordinary thirst," through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning "temporary intense thirst," to polydipsia, by which they mean "sustained, excessive thirst." We can define it more precisely: since poly means "many," polydipsia means "the kind of thirst that drives you to drink anything. " There are specialized terms for such behavior, including uriposia, "the drinking of urine," and hemoposia, "the drinking of blood." For word enthusiasts, this is heady stuff. Nonetheless, the lexicon has not kept up with technology. Blame the ancients for not driving cars. I have tried, and cannot coin a suitable word for "the drinking of radiator coolant."
This is what Lag Lag and his assistant started drinking. They had been under the truck for several weeks. They wrote good-bye letters to their families and stuck them up in the cab. The assistant cried. Lag Lag was annoyed and said, "When you die, you die." He was a good Muslim. He lay calm.
Finally, the two of them having drunk most of the coolant, Lag Lag had an inspiration. He drained oil from the engine and poured it into the fuel tank. The assistant had given up hope, and wanted no part in the experiment. Lag Lag figured the oil would combine with the dregs of diesel fuel, and the mixture might ignite. He climbed into the cab, cycled the glow plug, and pressed the starter. The engine turned over and rumbled to life. The astonished assistant scrambled aboard. Spewing dense blue smoke, the truck rolled forward. After some miles they came to a track. With no idea where they were, or where the track led, they followed it. Allah was with them. A refrigerated van appeared, with water, meats, and vegetables. It was driven by a friend. They broke the seal on the back, built a fire, drank, and feasted. As the specialists say, they rehydrated.
[ Excerpt 2, it doesn’t always turn out that well ]
My concern was not Ali but the ignorance of our driver. I sat and waited. The desert was calm. I had hours to consider the worst. Somewhere out here, perhaps not far away, the Belgians had been lost.
They were husband, wife, and five-year-old boy, driving a Peugeot sedan for resale in Burkina Faso. At first their trip went fast, from Algiers through the northern oases to points south. Eventually the pavement ended. They were prepared to spend nights in the desert, but the driving was slower than expected. They were encouraged when they made Tamanrasset. After resting there they pushed on, planning on three days to the border.
When they got lost, they still had plenty of gas, and they set out to retrace their route. This was not easy, because the ground was hard-packed and rocky. They grew even more confused. But getting lost was part of the adventure, a special game for carefree Europeans. We know this because the woman later wrote it down. People dying of thirst in the desert often leave a written record. They have time to think. Writing denies the isolation.
The car broke down. They rationed their water and lay in the shade of a tarpaulin. The rationing did not extend their lives. They might as well have drunk their fill, since the human body loses water at a constant rate even when dehydrated. The only way to stretch your life in the desert is to reduce your water needs: stay put, stay shaded, and keep your clothes on.
The Belgians hoped a truck would pass. For a week they waited, scanning the horizon for a dust-tail or the glint of a windshield. The woman wrote more frantically. Their water ran low, then dry. They grew horribly thirsty. After filtering it through a cloth, they drank the radiator coolant.
Water is the largest component of our bodies, but we have little to spare. In the hottest desert we can lose it (mostly by sweating) at the rate of two gallons a day while resting in the shade, or four gallons a day walking. Because sweating keeps us cool, we function well in extreme heat as long as we have plenty of water. We need a lot of water -- say, half again as much as a camel over the course of a year. The rule is to drink until your thirst is gone and then drink a little more. If water is available, you naturally maintain your fluid content within a range of a quarter of a percent. If water is not available, juice, Coke, or beer is just as good. Apparently, radiator coolant also works. But what happens when it all runs out? Inevitably this becomes the question for anyone stranded in the Sahara. I can only list the symptoms.
Thirst is first felt when the body has lost about 0.5 percent of its weight to dehydration. For a 180-pound man that amounts to about a pint. With a two percent loss (say, two quarts) the stomach is no longer big enough to hold as much as the body needs, and people stop drinking before they have replenished their loss, even if they are given ample water. This is called voluntary dehydration, though it is not a conscious choice. Up to a five percent loss (about one gallon) the symptoms include fatigue, loss of appetite, flushed skin, irritability, increased pulse rate, and mild fever. Beyond that lie dizziness, headache, labored breathing, absence of salivation, circulatory problems, blue skin, and slurred speech. At 10 percent a person can no longer walk. The point of no return is around 12 percent (about three gallons), when the tongue swells, the mouth loses all sensation, and swallowing becomes impossible. A person this dehydrated cannot recover without medical assistance. In the Sahara it may take only half a day to get to this stage. Now the skin shrinks against the bones and cracks, the eyes sink, and vision and hearing become dim. Urine is dark and urination is painful. Delirium sets in. In a hot desert climate, as the body dehydrates, a disproportionate amount of water is drawn from the circulating blood. The blood thickens and finally can no longer fulfill its functions, one of which is to transport heat generated within the body to the surface. It is this heat that ultimately kills. The end comes with an explosive rise in body temperature, convulsions, and blissful death.
After the radiator coolant was gone, the Belgians started sipping gasoline. You would too. Call it petroposia: Saharans have recommended it to me as a way of staying off battery acid. The woman wrote that it seemed to help. They drank their urine. She reported that it was difficult at first, but that afterward it wasn't so bad.
The boy was the weakest, and was suffering terribly. In desperation they burned their car, hoping someone would see the smoke. No one did. They killed their son to stop his pain. Later the husband cut himself and the wife drank his blood. At his request she somehow broke his neck with a rock. Alone she no longer wanted to live. Still, the Sahara was fabulous, she wrote, and she was glad to have come. She would do it again. She regretted only one thing -- that she had not seen Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III. Those were her last lines. The family's remains were found later, and returned to Tamanrasset. |
