Ola, tudo bem?
Lembras que tu me disseste, um dia, que não tens medo de nada?
E eu disse-te que eu, eu tenho medo de tudo.
Mas agora também sinto que não tenho medo de nada.

…

I feel like I should be able to better connect with the other guests, but I can’t. With one of the guys I bicker about objectivity and cultural biases. Another is upset by my inability to name my origin on the first try. I chat with all the guests that pass before they rush off to their next impressions, pressed on time. It is not them; after my months in conservative countries their calves and bare, pink chests look absurd to me, their comments too direct and inflexible, laden with opinion, hard to relate to.

It is in the eyes of the locals I find calm, despite barely speaking the same language. No fidgeting. They are nice to me. We share every meal and I don’t need to talk or make pleasantries if I don’t want to, I am equally invited with my hand or my spoon into the one shared bowl and I can drift away to wherever I want to the sound of Hassaniya spoken around me, no reprecussions. Or I can ask about the land or their lives and they generously share stories with me. Every day we endure the heat and every night we recline together on a big mat in the yard, the darkness punctuated by small squares of light from screens, the orange glow of an occasional cigarette.

…

I am in the desert. I keep repeating that.
I keep telling people that.
(I keep sneezing.)

As if it is significant. And I guess it is.
I am in the desert now, I have never been before.
And I am not scared of anything.

I do not show a lot of myself, that is true. I am a stranger to my self, covered, un-seen and un-reflected by the people around me; a shadow stuffed into a big hollow body, curving around its inner edges like a cat around house corners, sneaky and fast. They are kind to me even though they don’t know my inner thoughts, and I don’t know theirs as I keep eating with them. It doesn’t bother me; everyone is relaxed.

I am not scared of the scorpions or the snakes. (I might be if I meet one though.)
I am not scared of receiving kindness, and I am not scared to not understand.

I am not scared to stay, and I am not scared to leave. I am not scared to be misunderstood. I guess it makes me sad, and lonely, but I am no longer scared. I no longer try to take as big detours to be understood. I say whatever feels true enough and appropriate, and I let go of the rest.

…

Sidahmed brought me along with his family to eat and play in the dunes one evening. We had been spending some hours translating texts into English to market the auberge, him seemingly insecure and me happy to help in any way. Now his three daughters invited me to jump rope and then we ran in the sand, jumped and they rolled down the hill laughing. We competed for the longest jump. We played hide and seek. I showed them a dance move, a jump and a twist, and they tied their legs together trying, giggling. I stumbled in the jump rope and admitted defeat. The fourth daughter joined in the movement as much as her motorics allowed; I didn’t ask about her illness or issue as she struggled.

Khalil showed up and joined us, he had been taking a walk and I thought it was nice that he came. We ate chicken that Fatima had grilled over the fire. It was delicious. The sun slowly went down over the big landscape and the Adrar plateau was beautifully shifting its shadows as we ate. The prayer call sounded from the town and suddenly they all went to pray. The men synchronized, side by side. The girls a little here and there; the youngest one joined the men, following their movements behind them. The oldest one a bit away on the dune and the middle one on the carpet where I was sitting. “Do you pray?” she’d asked me right before. Even the youngest kid, struggling with her movements, touched the ground with her forehead and I heard for the first time words exit her lips: Allah akhbar. So far I had only heard her grunt and moan. Fatima had been watching the chicken while the others were praying. Now she stood alone, just the shape of the blue-black malefa facing halfway away from me, standing perfectly still and serene, then bowing and getting on her knees and palms.

In the dark we packed up and searched for socks and shoes left in the dunes before we got into the car and drove the short way back.

…

They told me the dunes move.

I see the shapes, the sand being blown, the little waves and patterns on the surface, just like the dunes in miniature; they also move.

They told me that the mines, the landmines in the dunes, move along with the dunes. This truly is a landscape that is alive. It truly is a landscape of the wind. And the desert is growing. I’ve heard that somewhere and I understand it now when I enter, because the wind is so strong. They talk about the mines so matter-of-factly, they are just there, arms, man-made blocks for killing, now swimming in the sands. Part of the landscape. Part of the desert.

But the desert is not a singular. The desert varies. The desert has shades of all colors, there is not a color now that I can think of that I have not seen here. From purple to pink to orange. And green! The green is scarce, but maybe this makes it even brighter, makes it even more special, makes it shine like the palm trees shine clustered in the middle of all sand; the wide flat leaves of the poisonous desert rose; the shy greens of the frail bushes reaching up in lines.

I still don’t understand how these desert plants can live but when I was digging down into the sand the other day, there it was: water. Or rather: moisture.

And I wonder if the water moves together with the dunes.

…

Mahmoud seems to be watering his young date palms all day long. He is Sidahmed’s brother and is working on turning a big lot opposite of the auberge into a garden and campground.
“Here we’ll build the showers,” he shows me, his blue darra’a sweeping the sand behind his excited steps.
“And here they can park the trailers.”
They are evening out the ground, carrying loads of sand from one spot to another, de-placing it with wheelbarrow, shovel and muscle in the heat. He has offered me work in exchange for room and board. I am considering it. I fantasize about trying to plant flax into the sandy ground. There is an airport in Atar with a direct connection to Paris; I could easily make my visa there. Tomorrow I will talk to my parents and see what I feel about the idea after that. I have plans and dates to keep in Senegal, but I could postpone or cancel.

…

I saw the sun rise this morning over the plateau. I crawled out from my tent, coughing too much to sleep, and I took a walk in the dunes, the same dunes where I am now. And I saw the sun rise, it just jumped over the plateau, came up so quickly. And with one hand I mindlessly dug a hole just to watch the sand fall down again into the hole and the beautiful pattern it created.

I feel brought here, I feel brought here as if… I would say “by god”, but everything is by god, everything is by the universal flows, this is no different, but…
the synchronicities feel more tangible somehow.

There is a power in the desert.

Right now it is allowing me to relax. The heat and also this vastness. Energy flows out from me and dissolves towards the horizons in all directions. The crickets singing and the slow dusk that goes on for ages. The night, slowly falling from the east, has already swallowed the plateau.
And the skies…
I don’t know the names of these colors; everything is grey:ish behind the rising sand; the blue, the orange, the light-blue and pink… and the stars are coming out behind it, gradually turning brighter as the sand settles for the night.

I am not afraid here, wandering alone among the moving dunes with their insect tracks, all the trash and stray dogs, stray men and anxious donkeys, poisonous plants and imaginary scorpions, snakes and mines.

It is boring here, but I think that it is good for me. I can write, I have already written and focused a lot despite the coughing and sneezing. I think I will resume to that as I get back to the auberge. Maybe I should do that before it gets too dark. Someone will open the gate for me and invite me to sit, to eat together. Someone will offer me tea. And in the vast space held for me I can choose where I rest my gaze. I can choose to talk, to think, or not.

…

(This story told in pictures part one, two, and video.)