Sand Blasting
Fatwas, Fundamentalists and Desert Pirates
A True Story
By Amanda Groom

email: amanda@strandmediaconsultancy.com

Downloadable versions: Press release & Synopsis (Microsoft Word document).

Some experiences are too acutely painful to recollect easily. For almost two decades, this has been one of them. Terrified of being engulfed by my memories I found the process of remembering traumatic and I was able to face only fragments of my past at any one time.

The layers of sand damage that once encrusted the photographs from that time have been carefully removed. If only the psychological damage was as easy to erase. Eventually - physically and psychologically bruised - I left the Sahara. I am still waiting for the memories to leave me.

In writing this tale, I am hoping to reduce the power of the images that still invade my waking mind and plague my sleep.

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If Sand Blasting was fiction you wouldn’t believe it!

In 1989, I found myself trapped inside Algeria, closing borders shutting off my exit. The plan – for my husband Paul and I - was to drive across Africa and build a new life in Zimbabwe; the reality was an emerging civil war in Algeria, Islamic fundamentalist rebels disguising themselves so convincingly we could never be certain who was holding the AK 47’s aimed at our heads.

Algeria is shutting down to the outside world, every day there are more dead bodies. Local women disappear from the scene hidden under their layers of black chador coverings through which they can neither see nor be seen; being a Western woman becomes increasingly provocative, and dangerous. Paul can’t speak French, and so only I can communicate - but the men won’t talk to me. Only trading in dollars will break the impasse, but we have declared our hard currency. Algeria is a closed economy; the penalty for smuggling Western money is death. Unable to buy even basic necessities, our water and food are running out: worse - a fatwa is issued on all foreigners; there is a price on our heads.

Our sole pleasure is the shot of vodka we allow ourselves each night. It had been easy to smuggle vodka, it looks like water. But now even that is running out, and there is no chance here of buying anymore. The punishment for drinking can be the death penalty. As we finish our last dregs of vodka, my husband announces he suspects he is an alcoholic and cannot survive without more drink.

The only way out seems south, across a rarely travelled region of the Sahara, a crossing known locally as the ‘Route of Death’. We’re driving a 20 year old retired German mobile post office; the vehicle in which we invested all that we owned is unlikely to survive the thousands of miles of sinking quicksand and moonscape terrain. But this is no other choice.

Ignoring the skull and cross bone warning signs we take on the least known crossing of the Sahara; the Tanezrouft, a region in which only smugglers and desert pirates thrive. Joining them cost my marriage but saved my life.

About the Author

Amanda Groom

Amanda Groom is an award winning writer and documentary and programme producer. She heads Strand Media Consultancy with clients including Sony Pictures Television International & Granada USA.

Commendations for her writing:

Awards:

Amanda received a commendation as UK Best Creative Non Fiction Writer
from British Arts Council / UEA 2007.
New Writing Partnership Ventures Awards
For Tanezrouft (taken from Sand Blasting)

Judges:

Giles Foden - The Last King of Scotland (1998),
Whitbread First Novel Award & Somerset Maugham Prize.
Mark Cocker - Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold (Cape’ 98)
Vesna Goldsworthy - Chernobyl Strawberries (Atlantic 2005).
Director of Kingston’s Centre for Suburban Studies,
Honorary Senior Research Fellow, UCL.

Publicity and Marketing:

BBC Radio Cornwall. Emma Lloyd Programme 20/8/07 - 20 minutes live on air.
Sand Blasting / The Sahara. And numerous local press articles.

Celebrity contacts for endorsements include Michael Palin, who has agreed to the use of a quote from his book, Sahara.