Glory in a Camel's Eye

A Perilous Trek Through the Greatest African Desert

Jeffrey Tayler

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780618492220
• eBook ISBN:
  9780544277311
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

An "amazing" true account of traveling with Bedouins through a drought-stricken North African landscape ( The Boston Globe).
 
Having journeyed in the past across Siberia and up the Congo, Jeffrey Tayler was well accustomed to adventure and danger. But even this experienced travel writer was unprepared for the physical challenges that awaited him in a Sahara desiccated by eight years of unprecedented drought. In this book, he recounts his travels across a landscape of nightmares—charred earth, blinding sky, choking gales, and what is fittingly called the Valley of the Dead—and manages to describe the trip with "hilarious, horrifying, and wonderfully edifying details" ( The Boston Globe).
 
The last Westerner to attempt this trek left his skeleton in the sand, and even Tayler's camels wilt in the searing wastes. But his remarkable perseverance, as well as his fluency in classical and Moroccan Arabic, helps him find here a bracing purity. The Saharawi Bedouin among whom he journeys are untouched by the modernity or radicalism that festers elsewhere in the Arab world. By revealing their ingenuity, their wit, their unrivaled hospitality, and more, Tayler upends our notions of what is, and what is not, essentially Arab.
 
"Beautifully rendered . . . Tayler's guides provide constant entertainment." — The Seattle Times
 
"Fascinating and informative." — Booklist

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Note on Transliteration
• Prologue
• Other Lived to Lead
• Departure from Tizgui Falls
• Ouriz
• The Casbah of Tamnougalt
• Ait Hamou Said and the Berber Market of Tighoummar
• Marabout and Son
• Moonlight and Fever
• Blood in Zagora
• To the Qsar of Nesrate
• Across Narjam Pass
• Mhamid of the Gazelles
• The Dangers Ahead
• Dry Wells
• Sons of Dogs
• Mghimima
• The Great Sand Wall
• Cut du Drâa
• Ait Oubelli
• To Icht and Foum al-Hisn
• Assa and Houris in the Mists
• Âouïnet-Torkoz
• Crossing the Anti-Atlas
• To the Atlantic
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author