![hand of fate nomads desert hand of fate nomads desert](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YZLhYisq29E/Wp5xyj_71aI/AAAAAAAAHhE/livIOIkOgHsFkJOmX6U_BVv32wnIlYljgCEwYBhgL/s1600/atlantis_5587.jpg)
I was serenely happy, but the same could not be said of the man who held my fate in his hands. I revelled in the desert wind and the spare, virgin landscape, still untouched by modern man because this desert was simply too large and too arid and too frightening. Occasionally I found the odd fossil or flintstone arrow, and I scoured the rock face in search of scratched symbols. It was a fairy-tale setting of blindingly white limestone rocks and sand dunes I loved to roll down. As I chewed on a piece of dry bread, my gaze was drawn to hills that resembled caterpillars and sickle-shaped sand dunes that seemed to embrace the desert. It didn’t bother me when – to put me to the test – my German guide marched for hours without a break. Still half dreaming, I followed the swishing camel tails, trudging across the powdery chalk sand into which I sank up to my ankles. Bringing up the rear of a modest cortege of camels, I stepped out of the small Egyptian oasis known as Ain Tinin and straight through the frame of the painting, feeling very much like Alice in Wonderland. In the autumn of 1988 dream and reality came together. A place I could disappear into for months without anyone noticing. What I was looking for was something larger and emptier, a continent, say, with vistas and horizons, freshly laundered skies, and abraded earth. My brief forays into the Sinai Desert did not count. For many years the desert had been a painting I gazed at with longing.