Reflections for a Sunday: Desert Dreams

“By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars.” ~ T.E. Lawrence

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This is what a person looks like spending a month in the Sahara Desert without a shower, just a bucket of water to wash yourself.

I never fully got the sand out of my hair, my socks, my underpants—most uncomfortable. I brushed it from my bed at night, spit it out of my mouth. The sand traveled with me when I left. I was told I would still be finding sand years later, in a shoe, or in my suitcase. It was true, I did.

There’s something about the stark beauty of the desert, the clear lines between earth and sky, the limitlessness of it. And then, the danger and the cruelty, the way it doesn’t leave you alone. The desert tests you, it pushes you to your limits and beyond, overcoming you in the end with rapture. It can be the same with the mountains and with the sea. I love them too, but for me, the desert captures my heart above all others.

The Sahara Desert is all of this and more. It is the largest hot desert in the world, spanning over 3.5 million square miles. Climbing Erg Chebbi Sand Dunes, I thought of David Lean’s epic film, Lawrence of Arabia. I was six years old when the film came out. My parents took us to see it at some point before we left on our worldwide travels in 1966. The film made a huge impression on me. Even at that young age, despite how long it was, I remained transfixed and entranced by the story. It’s probably one of the reasons why I love the desert so much.

The scene where Lawrence travels across the desert to reach the Red Sea at Akaba, to prove it can be done, and that view of the water at last, is imbedded in my mind.

And for some reason, when that unidentified person calls out to Lawrence from far away, “Who are you!” the words echoing across the emptiness, and Lawrence just stands, not knowing how to answer. Is he an Englishman or an Arab? Can he ever be either one or fit in anywhere ever again. He is lost between two worlds.

As he says in Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

“I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do.”

Today, I suppose we would call Lawrence a terrorist. With history, looking back, looking forward, and standing in the middle of it, it all looks different depending on who you are. At least when we hear stories, we can lose ourselves in someone else’s world and come to understand it a little bit more.

This short video shows some of the greatest scenes from the movie.

I’ve said before how as a teenager, I yearned to be just like Bruce Lee, only a girl, but wasn’t allowed to train by my parents. I yearned to be a warrior. I would have loved to ride across the desert on a camel, fight the enemy. This desire was always at odds with how I was taught to be a good Christian girl, to submit to the authority of the God-fearing men above me, whether it be my father or my husband. They were wiser than me, a mere girl and then a mere woman, who could so easily be deceived.

On the other hand, although my mom and dad taught me this, my dad always encouraged me to be strong and courageous, and in that he made no distinction between my sister and me and our brothers. Eventually, he came to maybe not accept martial arts but tolerated that I learned it, finally at the age of 30. From then, I didn’t look back. I trained hard, moved on from martial arts to other fighting arts, like boxing and kickboxing. It became a part of my life.

But for many years, there was this conflict between submission as a woman and my true warrior spirit, and I didn’t know how to reconcile these two conflicting sides. This led to allowing myself to be abused by my husband, a Christian, or so he claimed to be, because as a woman, I should obey my husband, pray for him, and be willing to suffer. Eventually, I realized that was all rot, and I freed myself of those restraints becoming the warrior I had always been inside.

From there, it still took a long time before I realized that yes, I could also be a Christian and be a leader as a woman. I had never wanted to be a follower. I had tried, but I couldn’t do it. Eventually, my father came to respect this in me, and we reconciled, during the time when I was being ousted by the board of directors of InsideOUT Writers and he supported me in my decision to stand up to the board. I really have to get around to writing about that.

I had come to all these realizations and then I went to live in a Muslim country. So, my battle continued as a warrior and of course, I had problems as a woman there, I did not fit in, and because I could not stay silent, because I fought back, I faced dangers and had to leave the country.

The reality of life in the Middle East, especially for women, was very different from the romantic stories I read and the movies I saw as a child. The thing is, I still love those stories. Women go overboard and complain about them, but I don’t. I love stories of strong men sweeping women up and carrying them off into the sunset. I love Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries; I especially love The Man in the Brown Suit. The heroine is much like me, she didn’t want to live an ordinary life and got herself in a lot of trouble just like I have, but it was all worth it in the end. One of my favorite adventure movies is Romancing the Stone. I could watch the beginning a hundred times, I probably have. She writes romance stories, lives in a fantasy world, but finds out how strong she is in an adventure and also falls in love with the macho guy who saves her, but then, she saves him, too.

Stories are a part of us, legends of greatness, tales of caution, told and retold down through history. We need to keep those stories alive.

As I descended the Erg Chebbi, I bent down and made my mark in the sand, a little bit of art inspired by the dunes.

I left that temporal art, knowing before long winds would sweep it away. Drawing in the warm sand, I lived and breathed those moments. Looking back up at the setting sun above the dunes, I felt like Lawrence of Arabia, suspended between two worlds of light and dark, sand and sky.

Then, it was back to reality. I took these photos to capture those moments and keep them with me. Now, when I looked at them, I resurrect how I felt as I drew those lines in the sand.

Photo from Cafe Tissardmine website

I lived in a magical artists’ residency, Cafe Tissardmine, built by Karen Hadfield. Karen is quite a woman, unlike anyone else I have ever met. A strong woman who came alone to this tiny village without electricity and built her dream out of nothing. I am sure she would never invite me back there. Just like Covid divided us, the war in Gaza has divided us and without a doubt, we would not agree on what’s happening there.

Karen Hadfield from her website

I was on a fellowship, to do My World Project with the kids in the village school, something I’ve written about elsewhere. Here are some photos I took of Cafe Tissardmine.

My monk-like room.

A big moment was taking the bumpy ride into the town of Rissani, where if I was lucky, I could get enough of a signal to send a file of my latest writing to my publisher. I was working on my YA fantasy series, Night Angels Chronicles.

The photo that I use on Break Free Media is from Rissani:

I love the feel of these Moroccan towns, the colors of the buildings, the light and shade, the heat outside and the cool of the dark cafes.

A cup of tea, the sun so hot, it burns away the cold of night. Renewed and refreshed, the file of my book sent, and then it’s back to the desert.

Life is like the contrast of the desert. The contrast between good and evil, dark and light, old and new. Have you ever been to Death Valley? Go in the spring when the wildflowers bloom. Renewal after the death of winter.

I end with this quote by Lawrence:

“We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”

And this quote to balance out the contrasts and the fight that never seems to end.

“…let us pray with fervour, let us live in holiness, let us preach constantly, and preach with fire, and let us so live, that we may impress our age, and leave our footprints on the sands of time.” ~ Charles Spurgeon

For all our best efforts, the sands claim them. And yet, we keep on. Because, yes, the fight will end one day in victory, but I am sure not in any way that we can foresee. That’s the wonder of it all. The hope of things to come.