Fikre and Mulu walk behind us with the other servants. Sometimes, when we are nearing the end of a march, I notice her stagger against the eunuch for support. He puts an arm around her tenderly, holding her upright. At Tococha we stop for water. We fill the gherbes, barrels made of goatskin which are tied to each camel like giant footballs, two to each beast. The water has a rancid, animal taste—hircinos—that worsens dramatically after a day in the sun.At Warumbot, ten miles on, we turn inland. This is the very rim of the desert: the village seems to perch on the edge of the hot sands like a small harbor on the edge of a great sea. In the moonlight—we travel from late afternoon to dawn—it is the color of salt, bright, brilliant and glistening, like a vast plain of quartz. If you lick your lips they are coated with salt dust. Black faces sparkle with crystalline specks. According to Hammond we are now actually lower than the ocean. Sometimes there are steam vents, fumaroles, in the featureless, rocky scrub; sometimes just the endless petrified waves of sand.We see only one living thing all night, a thorn tree that could have been dead for all the leaf it showed.
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