Martin Buckley: Grains of Sand

By BARBARA HARRIS

Passion is a word that is bandied about glibly these days. Indeed, the advertising fraternity would have us believe that it's needed to even apply for the most menial job.

So when someone comes along who lives up to the word's real meaning you can't help but take notice.

British journalist Martin Buckley has passion in spades for that strange other-worldly place that is the desert.

His paperback is the story of a series of journeys over two years in which he travelled around the world through the deserts by bus, jeep, truck, train and camel.

Buckley started out by "simply liking desert landscapes." Now he admits to "feeling completely at home in them - perhaps more at home than I do anywhere else." His childhood imagination was fired by stories from his uncles, one of whom fought in the North Africa campaign while the other was stationed in the Middle East during the Suez crisis.

Almost half the book is given over to the Sahara where the physical and mental fortitude required to survive is tremendous. He encounters land mines, meets men who would rather lose their life or take a life than lose face, and learns to worship water and sandladders.

Buckley has compassion for desert dwellers although this is severely tested in America when he visits the Indian community of Acoma where photography is forbidden, as is note-taking and talking to the locals.

He is a storyteller who has the ability to carry you with him over the seas, and along the streets, of sand - you can feel the anvil of heat and the cool of the morning.

Some stories, in particular the gazelle chase and the girl who wanted blue eyes, are harrowing but show Buckley's acute sense of people and place.

At dawn in Death Valley he writes of the desert's silence: "The air was dense, still, scented with sage musk released in the night. I became aware of a sound like a sail beating the wind, but more rhythmic, a whooshing of air beaten and resisting, and saw with surprise that it came from the flight of a far distant bird. Its wings made the only noise for miles ... "

Grains of Sand makes for a compelling read.

Vintage UK (Random House) $27.95