11 - Desert microclimates

Summary

It was as if there were no names here, as if there were no words. The desert washed everything away in the wind, obliterated everything. The men had the freedom of the wide open spaces in their eyes; their skin was like metal. The sunlight exploded everywhere. Ochre, yellow, grey and white, the light sand shifted, revealing the wind. It covered every footprint, every bone. It repelled light, drove water, life, far from a centre that nobody could recognize. The men knew that the desert didn't want them; so they walked without stopping, on paths other feet had already trodden, to find something else. As for water, it was in the aiun, eyes the colour of the sky, or in the damp beds of ancient mudstreams. But it was not water for pleasure or for rest. It was just a trace of sweat on the surface of the desert, the parsimonious gift of a dry god, the last spasm of life. Heavy water torn from the sand, dead water of the fissures, alkaline water that caused stomach pains and made people vomit. Keep on going, then, bent a little forward, in the direction the stars had given.

But it was perhaps the last and only free country, the country where men's laws had no importance. A country for the stones and for the wind, but also for scorpions and jerboas, creatures that know how to take refuge when the sun burns down and the night is frosty.

J. M. G. Le Clézio, French writer Désert (1980)