David was a storyteller—a troubadour who’d snuck into the 20th century from
the Middle Ages. A born entertainer with equal measures of court jester and
Scheherazade, he never had to pay for a beer. He had the voice for it, mellow
and gentle with a hypnotic English accent. He laughed from deep in his belly;
not a loud laugh that interrupted the space, but an emphatic laugh that carried
you along for the ride. He turned every event of his life into an edge of the
seat story; took you on his magic carpet to join him on an adventure of a
lifetime. He made time stand still.
I met him by chance in San Antonio. Travelling from California to New York,
I stopped for a night in this Texan town after visiting The Alamo. Like most
tourists, I ended up strolling along the River Walk. When I noticed a prized
empty seat, I sat down. David told me he spent most of the year driving an
ex-army truck across Africa. His amusing yet enthralling stories of a continent
I knew little about transfixed me. Long after the River Walk bars closed and as
the sun rose on the water, we were still talking. By this time, I knew I’d join
David on his next trip to Africa. On the back of a damp drink coaster, he wrote
the name of a hotel in Algeria where I agreed to meet him in two months’ time.
Nothing about that sounded preposterous until I tried flying into the remote
town of Tamanrasset in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
The check-in clerk at Heathrow studied my
booking. She lowered her head and peered at me over her glasses. ‘Are you sure
you want to go to Algeria?’ she asked. Until then, I thought I had, but her
tone made me wonder. I nodded and feigned a smile. She rolled her eyes.
‘I can’t check you through to Tamanrasset,’ she said. ‘Do that yourself once
you arrive in Algiers’. I walked away from the desk with my boarding pass and
wondered, perhaps a little overdue, if I should have researched my destination
more thoroughly, or even at all.
I had a ten hour wait in Algiers for my connection and other than two
uninterested cleaners and two armed guards, had the eerie terminal to myself.
At two in the morning, the airport came alive with crew and passengers. At
last, I checked in but didn’t receive a boarding card.
‘Libre,’ said the steward in French. Free seating. As passengers arrived,
they crammed up against the bolted double glass doors leading to the tarmac. I
supposed ‘libre’ meant everyone for themselves, so positioned myself near the
doors as well.
When the steward opened the glass doors, everyone ran towards the plane. I
sprinted with the rest, raced up the aeroplane steps, and plonked myself on the
nearest vacant seat, pleased with myself at securing a window seat. It turned
out to be a first-on-first fly basis. If the plane filled and you didn’t have a
seat, you waited until the next plane the next day, but I believe everyone
crowded on. The old, unkempt plane had two seats on either side of the central
aisle. An open metal parcel shelf you’d expect to see on a bus or train ran the
length of the aircraft above our heads. Everyone, other than me, crammed their
bags onto the open railings. I stuffed my bag behind my back. A large lady,
arms full of children and bags, sunk into the seat beside me. She plonked one
of her children onto my lap, and I let out an involuntary laugh, more snort.
She gave me a tea-stained, toothy grin.
She folded up the armrest between us, squeezed another child in the slither
of space and juggled the third child on her own lap. This altered seat plan
didn’t allow us to use the seatbelts. I reasoned if the plane crashed, which I
thought quite likely, a seat belt wouldn’t help anyway. With everyone seated in
whichever way possible, the flight departed. Safety issues aside, to this day,
it’s the most spectacular flight I have ever taken. As the sun rose over the
Sahara Desert below, the view transformed from spectacular sunburnt yellows to
a full spectrum of inferno reds. The sun on the uninterrupted ocean of sand
dunes gave an outstanding performance I will never forget. I felt like an
astronaut and enjoyed the view with the wonder of a child.
I landed in Tamanrasset with no local money and no idea how to get from the
airport to the hotel. The help desks and currency exchange booths I anticipated
didn’t exist. I had asked the lady sitting next to me on the plane if she knew
of my hotel, but she spoke no English or French and I spoke no Arabic. Once we
landed, most passengers disappeared in a blink, so I walked outside to find a
means of transport.
I handed my coaster, with the scribbled name of my hotel, to the driver of
the only car left in the carpark. A few men piled into the long wheel-based
Toyota as the driver turned my coaster around, trying to read it. Not waiting
for an invitation, I clambered into the car with the men. Better than spending
the night at an empty airport again, I reckoned. The driver shrugged when I
told him I had no money and drove us straight to the Hogar Hotel, the only
hotel in town.
I expected David to be waiting for me or, if not, at least a note to tell me
of his whereabouts, but he wasn’t there, nor was any note. He had warned me not
to expect the expected.
‘It’s difficult sticking to a timetable in Africa,’ he said over a rum and
coke, the ring of which still stained the coaster that had bought me thus far.
He had, in theory, picked up a group of passengers who’d flown into Tunisia
from around the world. They had to spend several days in Tunis getting visas
for the different North African countries, then cross into Algeria and drive
south to Tamanrasset and me, waiting. It seemed like such a good idea over a
rum and coke several months ago.
An excerpt from the memoir of Verona McColl. To be continued …..
