I walked out into the red desert, into the heart of a Martian winter. Red sand stretched out for miles all around, and dark, jagged rock formations lay scattered, jutting out wildly, like broken mountains probing the sky above the horizon.
All around, a sea of reddened sand, vast, desolate and beautiful, the red wasteland of memory. This was the journey of our lives, a crossing into the blood planet.
“Yalla!” shouted my guide Abdullah, “Let’s go!”, as he kicked his sandal into the sand, impatient that I should stay here too long in wonder, for we had a long journey ahead of us. He bade a laughing goodbye to the camel herders he was joshing with, and we set off.
Across this swathe of landscape in red, we rode in a battered Toyota four-by-four pickup, as it shuddered over the bumpy sea of sand. I sat at the open back of the pickup, leaning back, the wind blowing through my hair, as we drove across the desert horizon. At times I would lean out of the side of the moving pickup and I would reach out my hand into the air, feeling the air flow against my open palm, as we rattled along.
These halcyon days, on the road to nowhere, I felt freedom’s breath against my cheek.
I had been staying with Bedouins here in the Wadi Rum desert, in present day Jordan, dwellers of the desert, who set up camp wherever the desert wind took them, and laughed and danced into the night, among the safety and warmth of music by a campfire, laughter with friends in the dusty desert wind.
We drove to the end of nowhere, to the vast empty landscape on the border with Saudi Arabia, with not a soul around for miles. No-one came here into this vast no-man’s land at the desert’s end, as it ran into the mountains at the border. Here we jumped out of the pickup and started our hike, fighting against the sand storm blowing jagged chunks of sand in our faces; it is simple to turn your head against the raging desert wind, turban or not, and it cannot hurt you.
We now climbed to the top of the mountain of jagged rocks and from here a panorama unfolded, an expanse of vast, empty beauty, a vast line of reddened, pinkish sand sweeping out across the view, among the mountains beyond that jutted up like antennas to the skies.
Among the deserted world, I stood tall and proud on the rocks, lost in a city of the sand that ate the sea.
It was truly like standing on the surface of Mars. An explorer lost in the vastness of space, the beauty of the unknown, of Mars, the red planet. Per Aspera ad Astra - through suffering to the stars. I knew then that I would create art-works here that would be a symbol for travelling through space, using my interest in science and channelling it into an artistic form, and radiating out into new emotional horizons.
Dust in the wind, flowing slowly by, like forgotten memories in the sands of time. Our hearts of the desert, through art, I sought to capture my story in the softness of the light. I photographed my heart out here in the desert. We drove on, as I sought new stories of the beauty of the world.
In this life, I had walked the longest mile, on the road to awe. The blood planet lay before me. I had arrived on Mars, and as I closed my eyes, I drifted out into space through the storm within. I stepped into the wormhole. I emerged into the blue of 13AM, at the gate of Jupiter. It felt incredible to be here and create photography that would reflect my dream. Stark blue and cold, with a white sun, surrounded in mystery, among the vastness of the universe. My artworks were influenced by the film Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky. Here in space, it was colder than life itself.
This is not the place to discuss the mysteries of quantum physics in full. I do so in the last chapter of this book, regarding the science of the world across all of the academic scientific disciplines. Science tells us however, that everything in this universe is made of energy, including our conscious minds. Yet when energy has been attempted to be observed, it cannot be observed directly, rather what can be observed is the probability of a certain form of energy arising, which is the implication of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
At the quantum level, the smallest, most detailed level of physics, energy appears to flit in and out of existence, with energy appearing to take the form of both a wave and a particle, depending on the way it is observed. It is only when that energy forms larger, more stable structures, that anything can be observed within mathematical laws, such as Einstein’s expression of the law of relativity, governing gravity and time and the interaction of large bodies within space. Yet energy is behind all things, and energy that never created a stable form comes in and out of existence in infinite numbers and varieties of ways that cannot be grasped by the human mind - because the human mind is designed only to deal with immediate problems within its environment by the process of evolution.
As explained by Harvard Professor Lawrence Krauss in his brilliant book “A Universe From Nothing”, scientists currently agree that they have dated the beginning of the universe to 13.8 billion years ago, and that the energy in the universe consists of large amounts of “dark energy”, which cannot be observed and is thought by scientists to be driving exponentially the expansion of the universe. And as the universe expands, it will disperse again into nothing. And in the pockets of space time, multiple universes may form again from nothing, in a potential infinity of universes or forms of energy. Any physicist will tell you that, but currently all agree that there is no definitive answer to these big questions, and that quite simply, no one knows.
What does this mean to the artist, or photographer? It means that the imagination is a wonderful thing, and the energy in our conscious minds can take any form, and imagine anything. It means that although it is just physical matter, just energy, just organic structures, that has no meaning or purpose, the concept of reality is a nebulous one, and that we can all create an inner world that expresses beauty and sensation in a way that gives a heightened awareness to our imaginings, which becomes true as an art-work in and of itself, when it is interpreted by the viewer.
As I imagined standing on the surface of Mars, here in the Wadi Rum desert, the deep red sunset was one of my most beautiful memories, for it was truly like night descending on a Martian winter. I was pleased to create a work with this kind of intensity, with its the deep red colour. It was like living out the fantasy of walking on the red surface of Mars, and exploring the vastness of space, and it was enchanting to behold.
Abdullah brought me crashing back down to earth, with his incessant jokes. Out in the desert, one develops a wicked sense of humour, that is passed down through generations of Bedouins. “I’m going now, see you in a couple of weeks maybe” he exclaimed, pretending to start the engine as I was making my way back to the pickup. Of his portrait, he opined: “You are bad photographer. I tell your mother. Take photo again!! So I can post on facebook. The ladies need to see, that Abdullah is dangerous”.
Like a real-world Woody Allen, all I would have to do is simply observe him, and be able to laugh. Life in the desert is really not so serious after all, though quite where he would have gotten internet access to post his selfies was something I did not know. He made me smile a lot, as did two friends I made out on the road, Cyril and Marion, who are pictured in some of my photographs (Les Deux Reveurs - The Two Dreamers).
We made our way back to camp, where we ate boiled chicken in the night air. At night, here in the camp, I looked up at the stars, lustrous, shimmering, their gleaming flicker illuminating the night sky. The flower of my hubris died, lugubriously wilted down, and shed the leaves of memory from my thornless plant. It grew towards the sun. It needed the nourishment of mystery. And it took my breath away.
In the Arabian dawn, I woke up in the camp in the cool desert air. I went for a stroll, and suddenly a scene arose before me, as I came across a group of horses grazing in the sunrise at dawn. I knew there and then that I had to shoot this scene, and I experimented with many ways that the sunlight reflected from the horse’s mane. I was euphoric with the golden light that shone through in the final result and was pleased that these were so well received.
Each of the photographs of horses was named after figures in Greek mythology: Eos, Aethon, Arion and Orion. For example, Eos was the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn. It is also the Greek word for light, because this memory was about the light of the sunrise in the desert. Similarly, with Aethon, these figures were horses in ancient Greek mythology. But also, the ancient Greek word aithôn means "burning", "blazing" or "shining." As a photographer, this signifies my awe at the light, the main component in all my photography. And here in the desert, the light was luminous, shining softly on the vivid awareness of feelings of freedom in an open life.
There was something in the air. An empty beauty among the desert sands, as I set out on the camel across the desert, back on the road to nowhere on camel-back, like Wilfred Thesiger in his book “Arabian Sands”. It was a hard life for the Bedouins, on the dusty road to nowhere. As Thesiger wrote:
“A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live; the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die. In the deserts of southern Arabia there is no rhythm of the seasons, no rise and fall of sap, but empty wastes where only the changing temperature marks the passage of the year. It is a bitter, desiccated land which knows nothing of gentleness or ease. Yet men have lived here since earliest times. Passing generations have left fire-blackened stones at camping sites, a few faint tracks polished on the gravel plains. Elsewhere the winds wipe out their footprints. Men live there because it is the world into which they were born; the life they lead is the life their forefathers led before them; they accept hardships and privations; they know no other way... No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match”.
Certainly it was a hard life, yet there was a captivating beauty here, in the simple life of freedom unencumbered by possessions, for like Thesiger, “here in the desert I had found all that I asked for; I knew I should never find it again".
I knew that to save myself, I would have to look beneath the surface of the world. There is an ancient Persian proverb, which states that:
“The face of the beloved wears neither a veil nor covering.
To glimpse if for yourself, just let the dust of the road settle”.
If one really looked, one could see all the vast beauty of the world in the desert plains, in their raw, naked form, in their very essence.
Yet the dust can never settle for too long, and the desire for adventure is too great, for there is too much beauty in this world to be glimpsed in a lifetime.
While plodding along on our journey, we came across a lone camel in the vastness of the desert - grazing on nothing. Mouth to dust. I thought of the title of Marcel Proust’s novel “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu - In Search of Lost Time”. But like in space with relativity, the only way that time could be formed was through physical structures, mass, the speed of light and energy. Who cared about the correct mathematical formula for depicting the interactions of energy in space? My own time was my own personal value, the winding lanes of the memories of my childhood. And as Anathema sang, “there is no way of knowing, this dream I’m creating”. My photography made up for lost time, by creating new experiences, and creating its own time.
On this mysterious journey through the Blood Planet, I thought of a song by the singer Natacha Atlas that pulled the strings of my heart while calling my name.
“Goulet hayali sharadat hali - wa gounet manali saeed”.
The impatience of my imagination wandered,
And my highest aspiration is to be happy.
Saeed, my name, it means Happy. It became Sead. It is from a time when “the winds of love suddenly began blowing in my head. You emerged from the highest tower, and said a strange word”:
Salva Mea.
To save yourself, you would have to confront yourself, here in this barren wasteland, as you came face to face with your memories, overcame your pain, and started to engage with the reality of the world. It was the experience of survival that forced those who lived in this harsh environment to adapt to the world around them in its rawest form, and be at one with it always.
And they were often truly happy. For no apparent reason, the Somalian camel-herder guiding the way, with nothing but the shirt on his back, would often break into a smile.
It was here in the desert that I created the cover artwork, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, named after the eponymous book by the explorer T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who was based in Wadi Rum as a member of the British Forces of North Africa. His book is an homage to the Arab people of the desert and his love of the area. In this case, the title “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” is a metaphorical one, through which Lawrence sought to find a symbol in his exploration of the Arab world. Likewise my photography is a symbolic representation of this, just like my photography from Cambodia in East Asia, where the titles of each of my photographs reflect the Buddhist cycle and are a symbolic representation of the ideas that the temples and architectural designs there also symbolically depict.
Most of the titles of my photographs are references to literary, cinematic or musical themes, and for one of my personal favourite landscape works, I called it Xibalba, which in ancient Mayan mythology is the underworld. Inspired by the track “Xibalba” by the composer Clint Mansell, from his album The Fountain, the shimmering white sand explored the imagination of being on another planet, and entering a new world.
I set out on a journey through Jordan, in the mountains of poetry. I eventually came to the town of Wadi Musa, nestled high up in the winding mountains. From the top of the mountain, I looked out over the landscape beyond, as the golden, glowing light fell softly on the mountainous horizon in a dreamy haze, and I could see the silhouette of two horses alone, bathed in the vast beauty of the light. I rested here in Wadi Musa, and set off again at dawn.
I was on a journey to the ancient city of Petra, desert kingdom of the Nabateans. Christian Auge in “Petra: The Rose-Red City”, writes of the Nabateans as being caravan traders of the desert, that set up a magnificent kingdom in its very heart, protected by the surrounding canyons and mountains from the harsh desert winds and marauding bands of warrior tribes. It came under the control of the Roman emperor Trajan in the year 106, yet over time the city disappeared to western eyes, buried in the imaginings of the desert sands. It was not so long ago that Petra was discovered, by a Swiss explorer in 1812, who gazed in awe at the ancient city carved of rock among the desert sands. To date little is known about the Nabateans and their ancient kingdom, than the stunning architecture of a vanished world forever left behind.
I entered a deep canyon, the siq, and started to walk, through a chasm in the mountainous rocks looming high up above me, when a trail opened up, the road to Petra, through a long path of dust in the canyon of stone.
As the Egyptian writer-scholar Gamal el-Ghitany wrote, “it seemed to him, looking at the variegated colours of the rock, that rose was dominant. Despite repeated questioning, he could not learn the meaning of the word siq. Ahmed and the others could only say that it meant a fissure (shiqq) between two mountains. That it was the womb of the world, the vast belly of the earth... One can hear there the echo of ancient rituals, the wails of sacrificed victims, the chant that sent people into a trance. One can sense there the memory of the coming of the prophets, and the departure of caravans to distant kingdoms... On the eastern face of certain rocks, the rose colour bears bluish shadows that call to mind the touch of silk”.
I continued on the path through the siq canyon, on the dusty path that led past wild fig trees, casting shadows on the blushing rocks.
Along the journey, I passed the characters that would make their mark on my photography, the lion-hearted boy that was forced to grow up too fast, reining in his horse like a future emperor of Arabia. The boy sitting on a bench in the canyon, gazing dreamily at the viewer, who spoke to me of the detachment and alienation in The Catcher in the Rye.
These children forced to grow up too fast will always be remembered. This was my hope. On this odyssey in the canyon of restless hearts, their stories were written in the stone.
Yet there was a scene that affected me deeply, when I came across a little girl somewhere in the canyon with her father, who was agreeable to the portrait. There is something deeply haunting in her eyes, among the dark, rich tones of her red turban among the canyon’s pale stone rocks. I called this “The Lost Children of Jordan”, whose story I wanted to represent through photography, through the eyes of this little girl. How could one ever know what another person is thinking or feeling? How can you ever look through another person’s eyes? There is a great, cold distance between us.
I walked to the end of the canyon, and here, finally, the view opened up to a magnificent sight: the rose-red city, the giant columns of the Treasury of Petra, its colossal, enormous, columns carved into the stone, glowing rose-red in the desert sun.
The wonders of the world are few, yet this is one that stuns, and among the most exciting of all adventures, the memory remains.
An Iraqi poet of Palestinian origin, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, once wrote of the witnessing of this sight, as it came to life from the ruins of history:
“The rock, the rock! Every marvellous thing is made of rock. With what skill, what patience and love, they have carved these roses of stone!... Look! How marvellous are these abstract shapes that nature has sculpted through the ages! If only we could do the same! To sculpt in the rock that time has worked with its hands, probing to the heart of its mystery and its essence!
Then I imagined a crowd of people filling the wide space between the two mountains, this space that originally had been occupied by the squares and marketplaces of the city. Shaqilat, too, looked at them, with an expression of infinite tenderness, spreading his blessings on them, whatever might be their activities. There were sellers and buyers there, labourers and artisans, priests, thieves, young scoundrels. There were officials and farmers, blacksmiths, soldiers, potters, beggars. There were honest people and liars, the proud and the flatterers, painters, sculptors, poets who addressed compliments to passers-by, in vain. There were children laughing and crying, fathers and mothers bearing baskets of fruit and vegetables uncomplainingly - or, if they complained, they did so while sighing and begging help of the sister of Allat, whose heavenly silhouette rose upon the threshold of her imposing palace of rock”.
I explored the ancient rose-red city of the Nabateans among the rocks in the sand, and set out on foot past the donkey herders on a journey up the steps to the mountain beyond, clip-clopping up to the Monastery of Petra, carved in the stone. Near the top of the final climb, I looked up. At the top of the world, on a mountain incline in Arabia, stood a donkey in an orange robe, framed against the whiteness of the sky.
A lonely passage, it was a journey through a canyon of a forgotten love. It is a reference to the song by Saturnus, which I was listening to a lot at the time. And I thought again of my lost love.
“Your skin like silver in the night. Your face a poem without words”.
I closed my eyes, and drifted away with the music of a sad song, from the depths of memory and the agony of desire:
“The night sky is ever still as
silence descends, the four winds
becoming one, caressing my
naked body, and as you watch
the branches bend,
revealing all of you.
Long lost, but never forgotten.
Will you meet me at the lake
where the water calms my fear?
Will you once more fall in love
and light in me your flame?
Come to me once more,
and I shall know peace and at last be free.
Taking our place among forever,
remembered only by two.
Now closing our eyes to see,
changing our hearts to feel,
sealing our lips to hear.
The call of the raven moon,
laying us to rest.
Your skin like silver
in the night, your face like a poem without words,
Your touch was the sun in my heart,
and my heart was found by you.
And as the world begins to wake,
so falls the last petal,
and at all things end we must go
our separate ways into the night,
always alone because
I couldn't save you.
And for that, I am sorry and always will be.”
Deprived of love my whole life, I was like Manjoun in the Persian tale of Manjoun and his love for Leila. Unrequited in an impossible love, Leila’s father did not allow their marriage. Heartbroken, Manjoun cast himself away and wandered in the desert for years. In the end, frustrated by his broken dreams of love and loneliness, he went insane. To this day, the Arabic word “Manjun” means “crazy person”. And Leila's name meant “bringer of the night”.
“Free is the man who has no desires” said Manjoun.
Yet here, there was no water, only a mirage of love in the dry desert heat, fear in a handful of dust. I knew that after this comes the flood.
Read on for the next chapter via the home page, as we are about to enter our journey together to - MOROCCO......