(Can we date this quote?)Bulletin of the United States National Museum, issues 275-276, page 10:
Fesh-fesh
In some areas of Libya, the surface layer is composed of extremely soft and unstable materials similar in texture to silt [...]
1956, Jean Claude Berrier, Raymont Denizet, High places of Africa, page 47:
I managed to bog up the Savane in the sand fifty yards from the fort in the fesh-fesh worked up by the heavy wheels of the military lorries.
1961, Dorothy Desana, The White Squadron, page 140:
I raced off across the fesh-fesh without looking back until I had gone half a mile.
1974, The Geographical Magazine, volume 47, page 8:
Kind of fesh-fesh on open area.
1981, Buck Sanders, A clear and present danger:
It was at these times he would spin his adventurous tales: the time he nearly drowned in fesh-fesh, the Arabic word, he taught her, for a desert sand so fine that it can suck you up like a swamp; [...]
2008, Helga Besler, The Great Sand Sea in Egypt: formation, dynamics and environmental change, page 131:
The ground consists there in many places of "fesh-fesh". According to the glossary of Saharan terms by Capot-Rey et al. (1963), this is an Arabic word (fechfâch) for a powdery, cohesionless soil rich in gypsum and difficult to traverse.
