Middle East Adventure Travel - The Rough Guide to Iraq (Cont.)

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The Rough Guide to Iraq (Cont.)

THE NEXT MORNING, MARCH 25, a strong wind was blowing, but the skies were clear. Soon, however, the wind grew fiercer and picked up the sand. It became a gale that lashed the car; we used the windshield wipers to clear the bone-dry wash of dusty grains.

My Hyundai, rented from Hertz in Kuwait City, had not been made for a military march through the trackless desert. It began making a throbbing noise from the engine, as if it were in pain. The spasms began to come quicker, but there was nothing to be done. We drove on.

Kuni, the photographer for the Boston Herald, took over driving, and I dozed off. I was jolted awake by a crash. Kuni had rear-ended Laurent's Pajero.

"Sorry, I lost attention," Kuni said sheepishly. We jumped out to inspect the damage. Laurent's SUV was fine. Our hood was crumpled and the fender was dented, but the engine continued to run. And the throbbing noise was gone, never to return.

At noon the sky turned hepatitis yellow, as though it were sick. By 2 p.m. it had turned Martian red. The sand seemed alive, trying to get at us. Even inside the SUV, I was still breathing it, feeling it crackle in my teeth.

At noon the sky turned hepatitis yellow, as though it were sick. It seemed that entire deserts of sand were being scooped up and blown around us. By 2 p.m. the sky had turned Martian red. Heavy, isolated raindrops began to fall, followed abruptly by a frenetic downpour. The rain stopped as quickly as it had started. The wind and sand were worse than ever.

At three o'clock the Marine Corps surrendered to reality. The convoy halted. A Marine stumbled over to us with the sort of drunken walk that you see in news footage of people trying to move through hurricane winds. He knocked on the window. I rolled it down.

I hadn't realized how deafening the wind was. "We can't go forward," he shouted. "Do not use sat phones. We can't see our flanks, and the Iraqis can use com signals to pinpoint our position."

The convoy was like a submarine sitting silent at the bottom of the ocean. The sand seemed alive, hitting the car furiously, trying to get at us. Even with the doors and windows shut, the air was filled with the stuff, and though I put a bandanna across my face, I was still breathing it. When I ground my teeth, I felt and heard the crackling of sand. The temperature rose inside the car, and kept rising. Or maybe I had a fever. I asked Kuni how he felt. Feverish, he said.

I drank liters of water and then had to relieve myself—a new problem. I put on my desert goggles and shoved the door open—the wind, pressing against it, fought back hard—and the sandstorm entered the vehicle, like atom-size bees swarming to a hive. The scarf I had wrapped around my face was torn off and blown away. I leaned against the car, held on to the buckled hood with one hand, and took care of business, rocked by the wind. When I got back inside, absolutely every part of me was covered in sand.

After midnight the storm finally blew itself out, and the lightless convoy moved out.

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