Desert Storm Operation

During my year teaching English in Israel, I had the opportunity to travel during vacation times. I had made good friends through our volunteer program. Among my friends was Ellen, the stoic and practical one, hard to frazzle and usually someone who made sound decisions, and Lizzy who was my soul sister and had the tendency to worry about others, including herself and just about everything else. That spring, we decided to go to Dahab in Egypt.

All the hip Israelis went there in the spring wearing baggy tie-dyed pants and smoking joints. It was also known for great snorkeling as it is on a little cove on the Red Sea. We had to stop for the night in Sinai and continue our trip the next morning. Our first night we found a tiny bunker-type room that looked like a cement sauna inside with benches and thin mattresses. There was no electricity and it was very hot but we had to keep the door shut as thieves were supposedly rampant. We were tired from all our travels so we went to bed shortly after dinner.

The next morning, we found a taxi fairly easily and started our journey through the desert to Dahab. It felt like hours in that stifling hot car, even with the windows down. When we arrived, we saw beautiful white beaches and clear waters. The beach had little tents everywhere for sleeping and some make-shift restaurants with cushions on the floors and flowing curtains. I hadn’t smoked pot for nearly 4 years, but the whole setting suddenly made me want to get high.

That evening I asked my friends if they wanted to get high. Lizzy said “yes,” and Ellen replied dryly, “Whatever you guys want to do is fine.”

Young boys with dark curly hair would often pass us and say in Hebrew, “grass, grass.”

“Do you think they’re selling pot?” I asked Ellen and Lizzy.

“Why don’t you ask the next one?” said Ellen.

“What happens if we get caught?” I asked.

“Well, you’re the ones who want to get high,” Ellen replied.

“Oh, dear,” Lizzy kept repeating which made me hesitant.

“Do you want to get high?” I asked her.

“Yes, I do but…” she gazed off into a far away land.

“Okay, so, should I ask the next guy who says “grass” to us?”

“Yes. That’s a good idea,” Lizzy said.

“But, what if we get caught? Do you think we’ll get caught?” I asked.

“Will you guys just make a decision?” asked Ellen, the equivalent of a man watching two indecisive women in a clothing store.

A young boy in a taxi slowly drove by and said out his window, “Grass, grass.” I walked up to his car. We spoke in Hebrew. He had pot but we had to get in his taxi to go get it. Of course, this started another dialogue between me and Lizzy with Ellen once again saying, “Will you guys just make a decision.”

The three of us got in the back of his taxi and he sped away, far away from our happy land of tourists and tents on the beach to a place we probably should not have gone. He stopped in the middle of the desert far from the sea. There were some tents and a type of café with men clothed from head to toe in white flowing garments and sitting on pillows in the sand. He led us to the café. We were the only girls there. He had us sit at a table where a teenage boy and an old man were playing backgammon.

“Order a drink while I go inside and get your stuff,” he suggested as he disappeared into the café.

Each of us ordered a Coke and we sat quietly. Lizzy looked paranoid, Ellen looked bored and I sat trying to look like we had come expressly for some cold drinks. The boy and the old man finished their game. Our taxi driver came and sat down with us.

“Do you play?” the teenage boy asked us. He had a gold front tooth and a red and white turban wrapped around his head. The old man smiled and had lots of missing teeth.

Lizzy shook her head shyly.

“I play,” I said.

He set up the board. The boy and the old man probably assumed I had notions of the game. But, I knew backgammon well and had learned it at a very young age. Within the first roll of the die, I was playing better than expected. Five minutes into the game, the boy was smiling nervously, his gold tooth shining and the old man heartily laughing. Our taxi driver sat quietly.

Every time I’d make a move, the boy would shift on his cushion and Lizzy would laugh apprehensively. None of us knew how the boy with the golden tooth would react if he lost. After much concentration from both parties, I won the game. The old man said something in Arabic to the boy, then slapped his thigh and shook with laughter. The boy looked at me with a little resent.

“Okay,” laughed Lizzy trying to break the tension a little.

“Let’s play again,” the boy said hoping to win this time and bring the score to even. He started to set-up the board.

Before I could respond, our taxi driver stood up and said, “Let’s go.” We paid for our Cokes and followed him.

“Let’s smoke a little together,” he said and led us to an empty tent. It was black outside except for the twinkling stars above. The boy left to go find a pipe. I don’t think he was used to smoking pot. He seemed harmless so when he came back, we began to smoke together. The more I smoked, the harder it was for me to understand Hebrew and when I spoke, my ridiculous accent echoed inside my head.

Lizzy and Ellen fell silent. The boy began drumming on his legs and the music vibrated and filled the tent. He was actually a pretty good percussionist (or maybe it was just the pot). We accompanied him with some clapping and swaying, then abruptly he stopped and we all laughed. We lie down staring up into the dark, relaxed. Then, he decided it was time to climb on top of Ellen. She remained calm.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I yelled.

Lizzy quickly left the tent and appeared seconds later holding a huge rock above her head she must have found in the sand. “That’s enough!” she hollered in Hebrew.

The boy got a frightened look on his face.

“Don’t overreact, you guys. I’ll handle this,” Ellen managed to say from her pinned-down position. She talked to him quietly in Hebrew, trying to reason with him. Whatever she said, it worked.

He got off of her and we told him to take us back. At first, we followed him as he wondered aimlessly in the dark desert. He couldn't find his taxi. I began imagining the worst-case scenarios, one being he had planned on someone taking his taxi so we'd be stranded with him and possibly his friends for god-knows-what. But, soon enough, we came upon his taxi. This was a huge relief.

It wasn’t too long into our drive when the boy started his own paranoia attack. “I can’t drive! I can’t drive!” he cried “I’m too stoned. I have to stop. Let’s go to my friends’ house and wait," he said.

Suddenly a vision of going to his friends’ house for a pre-meditated gang rape entered my head. I became fixated on this thought and could barely contain my fear. I had no idea where we were. In fact, no one had any idea where we were. We could be murdered and thrown out into the sand without a trace.

“Take us back now!” I said sternly. “You have to drive. You can do this. Stay calm.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no,” he cried, “I have a headache. I have to stop.”

"This is really bad," moaned Lizzy, "this is really bad."

I stared out the window and deliberated jumping out of the car and rolling as I hit the sand, the car speeding away.

“Keep driving. You’ll be fine,” said Ellen calmly. “Take us back now.”

I promised God I would never smoke pot again if we got back safely. We finally got back. Ellen got out of the car and walked quickly ahead of me and Lizzy. I managed to catch up with her. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

”You guys totally overreacted the entire night. You’re the ones who wanted to do this and then you lost complete control. I’m going to bed,” she barged on ahead.

Our evening ended with the three of us quietly staring in our tent. The next morning none of us said a word about our frightful evening. It wasn’t until years later while Lizzy was visiting me that we told this story to a group of friends and the two of us laughed harder than ever at our dangerous evening.

“I can’t believe we did that,” Lizzy said shaking her head, “I forgot about that night.”

“We are so lucky nothing happened,” I said.

Considering all the things that could have happened that night, we certainly are lucky we weren’t left in the desert without a trace.