Relax; be polite; you don’t know the outcome.

I did not like that they were men in uniforms, that I was alone and that their ideas about women would, in all probability, vary from mine. I did not like that the French would restrict me, handicap me.

I cursed that I had not walked further, hidden better.

“We have been looking for you,” one of them said once we had finished our salam aleikum:s and how are you:s.
“Oh, really?” Politely unknowing, honestly confused.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just making a fire, looking at the stars. Going to bake some bread,” I said, showed them my little bag of dough.
“In which auberge are you staying?”
“No auberge. I am with my tent.” I was not letting any tension or fear into my voice, smiled calmly. All I wanted was for them to go away. They were calm, too, but authoritative. Around my age or not much older. Our positions of power set us apart, our language, our different worlds; I assumed I might be the first woman they saw camping, maybe ever. Moreover alone and after dark. The fact of me being a white foreigner gave me space to bend what was acceptable, but there were limits.
“No, you cannot do that,” one of them replied.
“Why not?” My voice still calm, curious even, as if I were at the post office, doing anything mundane like that.
“It is not safe.”
“How come it’s not safe?”
There was nobody around. The village, with its thousand-ish inhabitants, calm, over there on the hill.
“It is not safe,” he repeated.
“Is it forbidden?” I asked. I shouldn’t have.
“Yes, it’s forbidden.” I had fed them the reason.
“You will come with us,” the same man continued and I saw my wiggle-room shrink as their minds were made up. I felt fear by the idea of following these two unknown men, my lightness slipping away as a mouse into a crack. By its side was irritation at seeing my freedom, my idea of freedom, being undermined like that.

I knew I was not breaking any laws but I also knew that it didn’t matter; in places like this, the laws were what the men in the uniforms said they were.

“I don’t want to,” I said. They insisted that it was not safe and I said frankly that I was feeling less safe as a lone woman following two men in the middle of the night. I tried to play that card, argue along lines I thought they might understand, but my voice was already shaking and there was no give. They were calm and unyielding, walling me into their world view, oblivious to the threat that they and the idea of following them posed to me in mine.

“You will come with us to the military base,” one of them repeated. He added:
“You can see the stars from there,” and at that they both smirked. Still looking down on me where I sat.

And just like that it was about nothing more to me than men asserting power. Reveling in it. I didn’t need more cues for them to give away what pleasure they felt at that moment. It was enough to tip me from fear into anger.

I swallowed emotion. With iron rein I let my self turn cold, stone; they would see it, but I would not give them more; would not be dramatic; would not claim any rights because I was, first and foremost, a guest and tied to the courtesy of it; imaginary rules, laws.
I was, first and foremost, a body: soft and easily damaged by force and fear. I still didn’t know if they would hurt me.

And this land is not free, after all, I remembered; there is no right to roam and
a woman,
(however much I had come to respect and adore the peaceful and friendly Mauritanian culture,)
is to be confined
in this paradoxical land of vastness and shackles:

her body within the house and within the layers of fabric; her voice within her skull. Her dreams?

This much had been shown to me.

So I shut my mouth and with silent angry hands packed the few things I had had the time to unpack. One of the men stomped out my fire, the fire under which I had not yet had the chance to place the dough I would grow into bread. My movements shook, too; I was afraid and I wanted to let them know that, would not hide it. I wanted them to feel ashamed, to feel regret and doubt over their decision. Punish them. I replied to their polite small talk with nothing more than the minimum amount of words necessary; nothing would make me forgive these men, nothing short of them letting me go.

Flashlights lit out circles in the dark on our way and I struggled, tired, with the weight of my backpack. We ascended by stairs this time, a long staircase all the way up to the base which made me lose my breath and hang way back. They waited for me.

We arrived at the station and the chief of military came to ask me all the proper questions, displaying his all-encompassing authority to me in this tiny desert village; his clean uniform to my dirty jacket and dusty shoes. I repeated, repeated;
I don’t speak so well French,
my purpose of visiting is tourism,
I just wanted to camp in a peaceful place.
Sorry, I don’t understand.

By this time his words were running off me, the language becoming too much for my tired head, my emotional head, despite his French being well articulated.
“You will sleep here at the station,” he told me.
I said, again, that I didn’t want to. Knowing I had no chioce but seeing no reason not to be honest. He offered me a bed and I said I wasn’t comfortable sleeping with men in the same room. True here, and probably a valid reason in his world as well.

He gestured then to the space under the roof just in front of the doors, then he gestured to the small gravel yard in front, a wall running along its edges and a flagpole in the center, overlooking the darkness from which I had been fetched. Without a word I passed him.

Not knowing what to do, I placed my backpack on the ground and sat down on top of it, my back to the station. They let me. The plastic bag with dough was still in my pocket and I let my fingers press their nervous energy into it. Somebody brought out a big mat and rolled it out to my side, a surface for me to sit. I didn’t move. Another somebody brought out a length of bread and a cup to drink, placed it on my side and to his words I gave a fast “thank you, thank you, that is very kind,” but my voice was hard and distant, did not look at him. I was angry, I was exhausted, I was scared. I was hungry, but I was so many other things first. I had not asked to be here, I didn’t want their hospitality. I would leave them uncomfortable, tiptoeing around my ambiguous ungratefulness, discomfort and anger blanketed under all the correct phrases and they would not be able to say that “she was not polite”. “She was crazy”, maybe, but not rude. I would do and say all the right things, but they could not dictate my feelings.

Offended. That was the feeling: I felt offended.

As I was left alone the sense of threat gradually left, though not completely. Breathe. The lights from the station behind me were strong. From the village I heard children playing, screaming, voices which I hadn’t noticed while talking with the chief suddenly resonating, loud and annoying. Upsetting me further. I felt so alone, the wool-clad figure sitting by the wall. I looked up searching for the stars, but was met with the village light resonating back at me, blocking the sky and at the sight of that it came through; I felt my face contort and I cried, slow silent sobs shaking through my chest. It was all unjust. Under, or maybe beside all the anger and the fear, I was sad. I didn’t understand why they had done this to me.

I let it hurt me. Aware that there were so many worse things happening to so many people every day; aware that I was physically OK, still I sat with it and let it hurt me. Didn’t want to be hard and cold. I reached finally for the bread they’d placed beside me and tears welled up again remembering the bread I did not get to make in my fire. Like a baby, I thought at my self, but with no anger or resentment. Amusement even; I held it, marveling, thinking slowly through all the layers in which it hurt.

Chewing my bread through the sobs I saw a movement between my feet. A quick dark oval to my left shoe, then back again to my right. A cockroach? Or did I imagine it? The tears blurred my vision, the ambiguous light didn’t help; yes, I had probably mis-seen. Then it happened again, the back bending in a telltale way of a spine; the movements also too determined for a cockroach. A mouse had come to my feet, searching. Did it even recognize me as a human, a threat, as still as I was sitting? I blinked and it was gone but then it returned, still searching around my shoes, small and quick. I broke off a piece of the bread and flicked it to the ground. The second the pinch of bread landed the mouse darted away again. Fleeing so quickly.
Scared, like me.

But then it returned. After just a few laps he found the bread and disappeared again.

Hungry, too.

I remembered the guardians, the spirits, all the living creatures, the small ones in the cracks. A mouse had come to remind me with his fleeing, darting, quick, escape. Alive to protect what was soft, smooth and warm: the fast-beating, thin-skinned, feeling-filled underbelly. I let my heart expand and pour into this creature, let his focus carry me away in his forage for food.

I am a mouse, too.

Darting, running, picking up crumbs. Protecting what was vital: my innermost, soft-beating ideas of being free, unrestricted. Not hurting anybody; simply looking at stars.

…

The ground too hard for me to pitch my tent, I had known it. The yard too light for me to be comfortable anywhere; I didn’t want to change in the open. But every human has to sleep. I laid out my tent in the corner as a flat tarp, put my bag beside it, between me and the building. After crawling into my sleeping bag I tied the corners of the tent together around me as a second layer, still not trusting that somebody wouldn’t bother me during the night, hoping that the materials would provide enough resistance for me to wake if anyone’s hands were to harass me.

The ground too hard for me to lie comfortably and thinking of the soft sand where I had wanted to sleep brought new waves of crying, interrupting my peace over and over but somehow,
in the end,
shallow spots of sleep
(and mosquitos)
came for me.

…

(This story told in pictures.)