January 1st
Wizard caps pointed dusty ochre brown and tattered in the hot sun, mandarins and sticky dates peeled upon the road, dark red crumbling kasbahs with impenetrable ice cold chambers floors and ceilings winding together in a penumbral maze of light and shadows, tumbled towers blending into the gaping mountains, of the earth and from the earth, humus, humans, building to live and cry and die, this country has me moved beyond belief and I don’t know why. Something inside is awakened, a mirage, an unfurling burning page.
The rest of the world fades away in significance – a dangerous feeling. It is in the bottomless infinity of deserts and high places that all religions are created, something to make sense out of an endless expanse the mind struggles to conceive.
January 3rd
What is to be said of the desert, this camp with its heavy woolen blankets thick underfoot, a dense steadfastness and resolve, its people who have learned to live in silence and with bare necessity, rows upon rows of marching trooping caravans and laden camels with droopy eyes and matted fur colorfully adorned, this silence that is so deafening it makes your ears ring, echoes resonating from valleys leagues away, a hum on the breeze, a song, a murmuring sigh.
One could go mad here, truly mad, hearing these voices like distant memories carried by the wind, with only one’s shadow for company – the soft steady padding of feet on cool sand, rising along sensuous dune crests where shadow selves emerge walking along beside you and then leading the way, growing smaller and taller and taking on a presence which isn’t quite yours anymore, but rather it’s your desert shadow, the silhouette that will survive steadfastly when you are nothing but a bag of bones beaten by the shifting sands.
They say those who go into the desert find God. I have found another God to the one I knew, and I have no sense of what it wants with me.
It’s not just the desert, but also the men who choose to roam in it. A resolute pledge of desolation and silence, striking so close to the Earth’s heartbeat. The ancestral name of the Berbers, imazighen, translates into “free people”. In the lone desert sands, there is no authority. There is no control.
January 5th
The tea ceremony. An elegant object is placed between desert men, delicate and serene, inside which is stirred mint and green tea leaves, obscenely large chunks of sugar like quartz crystals crumbled, and all is left to boil. Over this steaming chalice, transactions are made, friendships are formed, eyes meet, small talk takes on an anticipatory, comforting aspect, because you are waiting for something together, something to be shared, that was brewed while you were both here, unique in time and never repeated quite in the same way again. It is simply, for now, this pot of tea, these shared cups.
And then the crescendo – when the master brewer is ready to pick up the kettle – breaths are held, the tension is high, not a drop is to be spilled for shame – and the light green brew tumbles into the cup, which is them emptied back into the kettle, a critical moment of stirring, and then again, the process repeated, enchanted, conversation stops, all watch the spout with baited breath and smiling eyes knowing this act is irreverent and essential all at the same time. The guest is made to drink, and again, over these satisfied satiated first sips, transactions continue, but matters have been closed. Friendships take on a relaxed air, conversations slow and continue to a newfound patient pace. One imagines the warriors of the desert and the respite and cohesion that may be found in this simple and beautiful ritual, the meeting of fellow tribesmen breaking up the monotony of the desert heat and marching across endless dunes.
January 6th
The Berber youths drummed to moonlight, howling calling a game, clanging the hand drums and beating skin dry, a dance of freedom and surrender to the desert, licking fire lighting up faces in trance, an explosive release if the hot desert days were not to consume them entirely, they needed this song and at that moment I needed it too, they were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I wanted to be a part of it, to be what we all are and have always known – that we all are nomads shaped from the sands.
January 7th
I climb the tallest dune and tug my toes into the shifting sands, sitting alone there above what feels like the entire world. I know I am breaking apart. I don’t know about many things, anymore – it began unfurling I think after the quake, after seeing all could be torn in a split second, then in Devon, in frosty winter nights and long walks which played with time and the hourglass of the cosmos.
It is time, which plays with my heartstrings, and plucks them dry.
I lay bathed in white and moonlight and stared up at the billion eyes. A rock flinging through space. The moon. A meaning we give to nothing at all.
And as the moon rose that morning in the Sahara above the silhouette – it did not matter who he was, I did not need or want to know, it was better that way – as he represented us all, our entire race, solitary and alone on a sand dune in the stars.
I watched that figure and the moon and time broke apart again.
Ever yours,
Alexa
