one grain of sand in my eye

Bedouin ways were hard even for those brought up to them, and for strangers terrible: a death in life. When the march or labour ended I had no energy to record sensation, nor while it lasted any leisure to see the spiritual loveliness which sometimes came upon us by the way. In my notes, the cruel rather than the beautiful found place
T E

It didn't take me very long to realise no one was coming this way either. And then it dawned on me ~ today was Friday, the weekly holiday, and I would probably have to wait another day for a vehicle. If I waited through this day and night, and then realised, after an entire next day, that no one was coming even on a weekday, it would be too late. I would be too weak, and my water nearly over. There was only one option ~ spend another day in the shade, hike another night. But it had taken me eight hours to walk 15km, a walk that had left me stumbling stupidly, bent over in pain and croaking for water. How could I ever manage 26km, more than I had ever done in my life at a single stretch, on two litres of water and in a single night? I lay down in the few feet of shade, battling flies and opening The Economist, which promised a tough 2006 in Iraq, the most urbanised demographic statistics the world has ever seen and vague predictions for international economies. It didn't seem particularly well written.

I didn't eat or drink through the day. Eating would only make me need water to wash the food down, and I was beyond trivialities like hunger and sleep anyway. My only thought was of water, enough for 26km. It was so precious I didn't splash it into my eyes when a grain of sand got in minutes later. Instead, I poured it into the little cap of the bottle, administering it overhead like an eye drop. I wasted two caps full till I gave up, and left the sand in.

At four in the afternoon I ate a little, early enough to be digested before my walk and late enough to provide nutrition for the effort. I opened two cans of baked beans, mainly for the tomato sauce, and gulped down my three remaining oranges, licking their juice off my fingers. I was approaching the state where drinking one's urine didn't seem such a bad idea, the main problem being their wasn't enough intake to produce any.

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