Rabat again. I am on the roof of my host family’s house, looking at the stars. Less than the Sahara; more than New York. I am thinking about the people I know under this sky.
It is not quiet. An outdoor concert makes it over from the river quay. Someone’s loud pop music plays on a nearby speaker. The light from the street comes up orange-yellow on the white washed buildings. The moon is one of many lights, a brighter, less diffuse point than most.
There, the uneven tv antenna. Here, the satellite dish. The open roof, the laundry line. The window boxes across the street. Voices echoing from far away. Is the boombox walking?
Between New York and the Sahara is fitting. It feels like a city, here, it feels like a town, and it feels like the Sahara is only a layer or two away. That older, darker, brighter sky.
***
Going to the Sahara has been one the most incredible experiences on this trip. A train, a car ride along the winding roads of the Moroccan mountains, by cliffs, oasis, ravines... and then camels, just for an hour or two, into the dunes, where we stayed overnight.
The desert is... sublime. Larger than it is possible to comprehend. Sand finer than you can register, dunes rendered so smooth it is like some infinite zoom in an all-immersive video game. A reality so intense that I can only compare it to the virtual.
Some photos:
À la prochaine,
-Luna
Luna Beller-Tadiar
<p>Luna Beller-Tadiar is a rising Sophomore at Yale University with strong interests in critical race, class, gender and sexuality studies, subaltern forms of life, art, and language. She loves all forms of the arts (including the martial ones!), and is constantly sketching in restaurants and dancing along city streets. She believes in understanding everything intersectionally, and is excited for the classes she will be taking on Moroccan history and literature to inform her experience and observations both written and sketched of Rabat!</p>
