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Searching for Zerzura
Postcards from the Western Desert of Egypt
by Dana Smillie
. . . You will find palms and vines and flowing wells. Follow the valley until you meet another valley opening to the west between two hills. In it you will find a road. Follow it. It will lead you to the City of Zerzura. You will find its gate closed. It is a white city, like a dove. By the gate you will find a bird sculptured. Stretch up your hand to its beak and take from it a key. Open the gate with it and enter the city. You will find much wealth and the king and queen in their place sleeping the sleep of enchantment. Do not go near them. Take the treasure and that is all.
– Author unknown, 15th century
The legend enchanted me. Somewhere in this endless sea of sand, the Western Desert, stretching west of the Nile to the far borders of Egypt, might exist the mythical lost oasis of Zerzura – the Shangri-la of the sands. The search for Zerzura has inspired travelers and explorers down through the ages.
“Of course,” my friend Amr told me, “nobody has ever found it.”
Driving all day allows the mind to wander, and our talks meandered like the desert track before us. We discussed many things as we sped across the sand during our short trip to the desert – my first. I had been in Egypt nearly two years, and was just about fed up with life/work/everything. I needed a break.
Amr offered to rescue me from Cairo for a few days. We departed early one morning for a short trip to Baharia Oasis and the White Desert. Inching down the Pyramids Road in bumper to bumper traffic, choking on foul exhaust fumes in a claustrophobic corridor of concrete, it seemed the car would never reach the road to Baharia. I saw the Great Pyramid peeking through the haze as we continued west.
Soon, the road became a single strip of asphalt, the horizon opened before us, and we sped off toward an apparent nothingness.
That afternoon, we ventured off the main road and made camp in a solitary corner of the desert, near a rock formation that looked vaguely like the Sphinx. The sand turned golden in the setting sun. The silence was profound. It was inevitable. I fell in love.
I find myself returning to the desert, escaping west of the Nile, time and again. Any chance that comes my way, I grab. Searching for Zerzura? Not really. Rather, searching for any little bit of paradise that turns up wherever I find myself in that endless desert.
WESTERN DESERT, MAY 1998 Young boys looking at the fortress of Ghueita (Beautiful Garden), an old Roman outpost south of Kharga oasis. Evidence of life, from the beginning of time, can be found throughout the Western Desert.
DAKHLA OASIS, MAY 1998 I traveled to the village of Qalamon with two reporters from American newspapers. We sat in a small house, drinking tea, while the journalists interviewed the patriarch of the family. The family’s children gathered outside the door, curious about the visitors who spoke in a strange language. The journalists wanted to know about the many changes in the oasis. Innocent Heba was too young to understand or care, but her world will be remarkably different from her parents’.
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