Ink Atlas
Cover of The Lost Oases

The Lost Oases

by Ahmed Hassanein · 1925

Memoir · Classics · History

The account of an Egyptian explorer, educated at Oxford, who crossed the Libyan Desert from the Mediterranean coast by way of Siwa and Kufra to the "lost oases" of Arkenu and Ouenat, and on into the Sudan. It also describes the people of the desert and the Senussi brotherhood, with a foreword by Sir Rennell Rodd.

Content note: Written in 1925 under British influence in Egypt, with the language of its time about the peoples and the colonial authorities it describes. It tells of hunger, thirst and danger in the desert.

24 chapters

A look inside

THE DESERT

ON my first trip through the Libyan Desert I took a vow.

We had lost our way, and we had lost all hope. There was no sign of the oasis we sought, no sign of any well near-by. The desert seemed cruel and merciless, and I vowed that if ever we came through alive I would not return again.

Two years later I was back in the same desert, at the same spot where we had lost our way, and landed at the same well that had saved our lives on the previous occasion.

The desert calls, but it is not easy to analyze its attraction and its charm. Perhaps the most wonderful part of desert life is the desert night. You have walked the whole day on blistered feet, because even walking was less painful than riding on a camel; you have kept up with the caravan with eyes half shut; you follow mechanically the rhythm of the camels’ steps. Your throat is parched, and there is no well in sight. The men are no more in the humor to sing. Their faces are drawn with exhaustion, and with eyes bloodshot they keep a vague, hopeless look on the ever faint line between the blue of the sky and the dull yellow of the sand.

If you like this