I forgot to ask if there were landmines.

I’m walking through the trash, through the desert. Seeing the things that we leave here for the wind to pick apart. For the sun to pick apart, for the wild animals to investigate. For children to play with. Pieces of plastic, glass, ceramic and bone. Pieces of metal and textile among the rock. What rises before me are some low hills. Behind me Choum and the plateau, cast in shadow of sand blowing up. There is not a clear day.

I asked Ali if it is always like this.
He said it is always like this.

I walk, stop to take photos of desert-trash, stop to touch the leaves of a little green plant and linger in amazement: so soft! How can you live here?

I follow wheel-tracks to a nearby hill made of rocks piled up on each other (did you pile yourselves?) and I climb a little way up. I don’t know anything about this landscape; are there scorpions? Are there snakes? The birds of prey in the sky tell me there has to be small critters living around here for them to eat, but to my eye it just looks empty.

I sit my self on a rock overlooking Choum and listen to the wind. I sing. I put my palm against and into a little pool of sand that has gathered in a dent in the rock and find softness again, the softest texture I’ve ever touched. No individual grains; the wind has ripped and grated the sand into fine dust and it shatters, becomes invisible and spreads again in the breeze as I let it fall from my fingers, travels to find new crevices in the world to settle in.

I travel to find new crevices, too, sand; then gather up all my mixed parts and pieces.
Just like you.

It’s quiet, apart from the sound of wind and the objects it plays with. Everything laid out according to its whims; the desert truly, wholly is a landscape that belongs to the element of the wind.

…

(This story told in pictures and video.)