atlas

Saturday night; I've gone out. It is after dark, and the tarmac under my feet looks like any other, but you can taste the difference in the breeze. Just as when I pulled off an aeroplane in Aberdeen, back in 1997, to a lungful of the cleanest smelling air I'd breathed in months, the differences here are immediately apparent. Despite the air-fuel, the unmistakeable breath of the ocean hangs about me, and it is warm. From somewhere in the distance, comes the faint scent of woodsmoke, and about me, the groundcrew sputter away in Arabic, the language of my religion, but not a tongue of my own.

When no one is looking, I kiss the ground; I've never been to Africa.

Here, one descends into the immigration hall from an escalator; it has to be tried: you can see the pall of smoke from the top, and at about eight feet from the ground, you descend through it. The atmosphere is so draped with tobacco vapour that its vitality becomes utterly questionable; it is a nightmarish, Paris gay-bar of an immigration hall, for this is where the no smoking signs disappear, and the patient addicts light up.

An airport, like any other, in a city, like any other. We look like locals, so we're likely to be left alone by the scrum of tourist-snatchers that lie in wait; I direct my mother by the shoulders toward the baggage collection belt, we collect our bags, melt into the crowds, and disappear. The motorway into the city is in good condition, but long stretches remain unlit; we fly down the near-empty road at breakneck speed, and I peer into the darkness for my first glimpses of a country I've never befriended before.

Few and far between, handsome men in smart trousers and silk shirts lean against only the blind lamp-posts, a leg hooked up against the railing here, an arm draped languorously there; far from anywhere, in the darkness, on a major road; rent boys can make a living, even in an orthodox Muslim country. Mum considerately suggests that if I'm ever stuck for work, I could come here; I consider the suggestion under a furrowed brow, and agree. Our humours are so alike, hers and mine.

By now it is approaching 2200, and we're tired; tomorrow night, we catch a flight across the Atlas toward the great desert, in search of my sister, leaving a full day beforehand in which to harass the people of the white city. We stop for a drink at the hotel bar, marvel at the exquisitely ornate tea party, and crash.