I must remember to close my mouth when I smile or else keep eating sand. Considering how much I'm enjoying slaloming across the desert's hills and hollows at a breakneck clip, however, that might pose a problem. I'm inside the roll cage of Mohammed's 660cc two-seater quad bike. The Yamaha Rhino's stereo is blaring an old Emirati tune with a male shouter and a female chorus whose cries follow the song's loping beat. I look over to Mohammed screaming "Yalla! Yalla!" from beneath the white hamdaniyeh tied around his pudgy cheeks, a setting sun glinting off his yellow goggles. I face ahead just as he revs the engine before slamming into a dune and I inhale another grainy mouthful. For an instant when the dust clears I'm looking down from the mound's top before barrelling down it, my stomach catapulted into my throat where lies a pile of grit.
We are motoring along in a pack of more than 12 bikes and Mohammed must keep up with the convoy navigating the uneven terrain at more than 60 kph. In the distance, along the lumpy horizon's ridge, is a separate single-file caravan of white SUVs looking like a giant albino sidewinder and, like us, snaking a path to where daredevils in the UAE come to prove their mettle. When we arrive at the steep rust-red dune rising over 200m above sea level, I see all manner of quad bikes, SUVs and souped-up buggies lining the slope's base, their drivers pondering a charge up its side in the same way lemmings must look as they peer fatalistically at a ledge.
Speaking of furry animals, for some inexplicable reason there is a small monkey on a leash who is gripping the handlebars of his master's quad bike, which is parked next to me. If I were anywhere else this would be the greatest spectacle going. Not here. My eyes are fixed instead on the FJs, Hummers, Jeeps, four-wheeled Banshees and two-wheeled rally raid motorcycles gunning their engines and belching flame from their exhausts as they race up the hill, weaving through the other vehicles sliding down it. It's about as orderly as a battle scene in Braveheart. And just as oddly captivating.
This whole senseless and amazing ordeal began the previous night at a party when a friend, Hussein, asked me if I wanted to tag along with him and a guy he used to work with to the desert. Sure, I said, at about 4am. We woke at 11am and drove from Abu Dhabi towards Dubai and then took Emirates Road to Route E44. We past the meagre settlement of Lahbab and several shops renting all-terrain vehicles near the Dubai-Oman border. We pulled off the motorway onto a rocky track where was parked an SUV hitched to a flatbed. Hussein's friend, Mohammed, was busy rolling his quad bike down the trailer's ramp.
As more and more SUVs and lorries paraded in with trailers bearing quad bikes it became clear that I had misunderstood Hussein. This would not be a four-wheel adventure with a couple of friends: I had been invited to a gathering that included nearly an entire generation of an Emirati clan, a group of al Suwaidis. This is, weather permitting, what they do almost every weekend. During the week they work in their respective jobs in the military, police, Adnoc and elsewhere but, come Friday afternoons, they commune in the desert to race on quad bikes and bond over sumptuous meals, loud music and high-speed high jinks where peril is part of the allure.
And what we were about to do would indeed be dangerous. At one point the quad bike directly in front of the one I was riding in hit a patch of scrub - bike and rider hung in the air for a second during which I thought: well, I guess he's gonna die. The experienced driver, fortunately, had jumped away from the bike upon impact and so when it landed upside down, screwing up the front axle, it didn't also bash in his head. The entire group immediately circled around their comrade, tense for a moment, and then laughing, joking and kicking sand at him while he tried to bend the bike back into shape. As we rode along I had clutched a camera in my hand and snapped photos when I wasn't being jostled to near nausea. Moments after the accident, the ringleader, Moby, who lived in the US for a time, ran up to me and asked in English, "Did you get a picture of it!?" No, I didn't, I said. I was too busy trying to remember how to tie a tourniquet.
But I soon learn that these risks are a part of the equation that equals fun. When the group of about 15 stops to break for cigarettes and Red Bull beneath another huge hill that riders are roaring up, Moby stands leaning back on his bike's rear and talks about the difference between living in the UAE and in my American homeland. "I like America. But everyone is so scared. They don't do this," he says. Night has fallen and Moby's cigarette leaves orange trails as he gesticulates. "In the Emirates we are not afraid of anything. Look at how we have fun. It's dangerous but we don't think about that." After having spent a day buzzing along in the desert with what would have seemed in the US to be disregard for self-preservation, I think back to all the times I have driven on Sheikh Zayed Road in the fast lane, going faster than traffic, only to have someone in an SUV place their front grille inches from my car's back bumper, flash their full beams and then zoom past. Moby agrees there are too many crashes in the UAE. "But it's because we just have no fear," he says.
The muscular man takes a long, last drag and then rallies the group with a fist pump and more yalla-ing. Headlights flick on, engines thunder and we set off in a blazing caravan with Mohammed's stereo cranked again. Our new path requires even bolder manoeuvres but with less visibility and I begin to understand the arithmetic of this entertainment: driving a quad bike is fun; faster is funner; in the dark better yet; everything is enhanced by deafening music; and, if you can, as the driver behind me is relishing at the moment, do all of this while shifting your weight backwards and popping the bike onto its hind wheels in order to experience an absolute thrill.
We reach another towering dune and I hop behind the driver of the most powerful bike in the pack. I lock my fingers around his midsection and he opens the clutch full-throttle. As we climb I feel as if I'm in the cockpit of a fighter jet spiralling into the darkness - another test of navigator's prowess and engine's might where if either fails everything goes awry. But, likewise, success means you're on top of the world.
We toboggan down spewing a wake of sand and join the group as it heads beneath a crescent moon to the far reaches of the desert where I have no idea where I am. The caravan pauses at different clusters of tents and greets the encampments' Emirati owners. At each stop we take off our shoes before an outdoor majlis and are welcomed with offers of tea. It dawns on me that this same ritual would have been performed centuries ago in a similar manner but with camels instead of quad bikes. I realise too the adrenalin rushes on this journey are much like the ones we would have shared back then while galloping across the hostile desert.
Finally we arrive at my companions' own camp. Soon, more than a hundred kebabs roast over a pit dug in the ground. Moby is laying out tabla drums to dry and tighten in the heat. Occasionally he picks one up, tests it with a strike from his thumb and then rubs sand on the skin before laying it by the fire a little longer. We perch by the flames, pull charred meat from skewers with our teeth and sip spiced Arabic coffee from tiny porcelain cups. We wash the grease from our fingers by rubbing them in the sand and sing and beat drums deep into the night. At this point I understand yet another part of the equation - the things we did today add up to more than just fun. They are part of what maintains a clan.
lkummer@thenational.ae
