l82 DAHLAK 



a Strange down of dry grass which was high in some places, 

 especially beside the beach. Then here and there on the low- 

 lying northern side there were acacias, sandal trees and 

 other plants which I was quite unable to name, since I am 

 only just capable of telling a rose from a sun-flower. In the 

 island's centre, however, which is higher and broken by 

 fissures in the rocks, the trees were thicker and more robust 

 although they were all reduced to just their trunks which 

 appeared to have been desiccated for a thousand years and 

 twisted and blanched by thirst. They were ghost trees. 

 Towards the south, on the highest part of the island, other 

 small ghost trees and skinny acacias rose out of a confusion 

 of thorny bushes. There were agaves everywhere. It was 

 therefore a grey and white sandy-coloured vegetation, 

 thorny and hostile, the branches broken by the wind and as 

 hard and rigid as antlers. 



The only green oasis was just beyond the beach around 

 the pond. The water filtered through from the subsoil, 

 twice a day, at exactly the same time as the high tide (this 

 turned out to be quite useful for our sea operations : we had 

 an infallible natural clock right in front of the tent) . The sea 

 gradually flooded this shallow slimy bowl, thick with small 

 canes of the type we had first met at Sheikh Said; the bowl 

 was surrounded inland by a modest amphitheatre of rocks 

 about six feet high, and on the sea side, by the beach. The 

 rocks could only be reached, even at low tide, by paddling. 

 They were black with humidity, and hewn out with holes 

 swarming with countless insects and other slithering creat- 

 ures. Above, around and inside the bowl the green man- 

 groves grew, thick with leaves and so swollen with water 

 that it dripped from the branches. Two yards from the 

 mangroves the steppe began. The contrast was sudden. 



Small and derelict as it was in the middle of the sea, Dur 



