Tea In The Sahara

Abdul my Berber friend from Casablanca told me before I left: "when you go to the desert, you will forget your name".

My camel is called Tinkerbelle and it doesn:t like to be given instructions. She thinks I,m Japanese also so I'm not gonna bother arguing with her. Despite how fascinating it is to ride on such a majestic animal, I really wish it was over as soon as possible. Its extremely unstable to be on the top of a camel hump and every time she is led up or down a sand dune i am sent wobbling around having to use my overtired bum to balance myself. Thank goodness for the carpet tented camp in a grassy patch of ground we arrived at soon after, with a Bedoiun family and their goats, chickens and cat that keeps out the scorpios. How anything could survive out here amazes me.

At sunset I sit on a 50meter high sand dune sipping tea in the Sahara listeing to Tea In The Sahara by The Police; the joke seems to have just gone a little far. My time in Moroocco seem to be one "priceless" Mastercard ad after another and I have stopped counting. I feel wacked out, amused, overwhelmed by the emptiness and isolation of this place. The sand dunes over shadow you, but once you get to the top of it you look over thousands of other never ending sand dunes and they look like a silky carpet you can swim on. The colours of the setting sun creates a mysterious aura, you hear nothing but the wind, which picks up layers of sand and it feels like the ground you stand on will almost dissappear. I proceed to dance like a child and the camels, now resting in the sand, nods at me as if to tell me to stop.

Perhpaps I am forgetting my name. In the desert you are also nothing, like the desert you are completely blank, like the desert you have infinity. I think about what its like to have your memory erased at age 27 and then finding yourself in the middle of the Sahara. I could start everything over again, and maybe I could be a better person than I am now. Maybe I could decide to be Icelandish cos I'd hate sand. Maybe I could be more likable, smarter, less obnoxious, honest, self disciplined, musical, artistic, committed, attractive... Maybe I could become the zoologist that I should have become, or that lawyer. Maybe I could have gone ahead with that arranged marriage my dad organised after losing a card game in 1984. Maybe I would decide quite independantly that I should never leave the desert and spend the rest of my life gazing across the sand dunes and up at the stars. or I could just go to the nearest town of Ourzazate and still stuck there in a concrete building.

In the evening the sand feels cold to touch. But if you slide your palms further underneath the sand down there is warm. I lie on the carpet with my companions and watch the sky turn dark from the middle to the edges. The stars appeared one by one. First it was Venus (ops correction by the French - ees not a STAAAR, ees a planét ohkay?) then the sauce pan. Its like watching cake rise, slowly at first, then they would all burst out all of a sudden. The stars in the Northern hemisphere feels foreign some times, it was odd not seeing the Southern Cross, and the Orion just tipping over the edge of the milky way instead of being in the middle. Shooting stars and satellites move across my vision, my vision is of the neverending giant abyss engulfing the other giant abyss I am lying on. Like the sky, the desert was here before anything else was and it will still be here when everything else is gone. I see eternity but I will never know it. I don't know how to describe how I feel - its overwhelming but simple at the same time, excited but relaxed, a slow kind of drift that is so comfortable, so easy, so chilled. I can't remember what its like to be in a city, or driving on a road, or typing on a computer. Or the fact that any of the above exists. My head might as well turn into sand it feels this good.

I don't want to fall asleep but I do. At night the desert is cold. Everything sinks in on the sand and it must have been about 3am when I screwed open my drink bottle for a mouth full of water. It tastes like ice and exactly what I need with a throat full of sand. I am natrually a light sleeper and often wake several times a night subconciously. When that happens and the first thing you see is a starry sky it knocks you back into subconsiousness.

5 am and the South Africans bounce up for Sunrise. I wish I didn't have to sleep and lament that the night is over so quickly. Crawling_stumbling_scrambling my way up the highest sand dune was like a fight for life itself, I didn't want to miss the sunrise but honestly i've just woken up and the legs are still sleep. When I finally made it on top it was like finishing an exam. I said something along the lines of "better than an orgasm" so go figure.

Sunrise. Your heart melts with the sun. The last time I saw that big yolk pop out of the pinkness was on The Rainbow Warrior II August 05 over the Tasman Sea. Same ball of burning flame, different horizon. Same woman, different life.