The Desert

By Monique Mugnier

If you can imagine a place where you can see the horizon in all directions, If you can imagine silence in its purest, most untouched - most perfect form . . . this is what I have experienced. The Sahara Desert. I can still smell it, fresh and ancient. I can still feel the continuous breeze that was so gentle, I barely felt it touch my skin. Its warmth, its presence was all very much like God to me.

We arrived in the city of Erfoud, Morocco where white Land Rovers awaited us. The sun had already set and the sky grew darker revealing the stars one-by-one. Myself and six other girls transferred the luggage from the bus to the Land Rover and headed out into the darkness of the Sahara. I sat in the front and rolled down my window and let the air rush in to cool my body. My turban fluttered about my eyes and face and my white linen shirt inflated with the wind. I looked over at my driver, glowing from the light of the speedometer - a dark-skinned, dark-haired Arabian man of medium build sat next to me. His turban was twisted about his head and swept down over his nose and mouth, leaving only his mysterious and exotic eyes looking out into the darkness. His robes moved in waves upon his chest like swells in the ocean. The radio whined Arabian music in the background, and I closed my eyes to take it all in. Already, the desert was changing me.

After about forty minutes, we stopped and got out. Every light was off. I lifted my eyes to the sky and saw stars . . . and magnificence as I have . . . never . . . seen . . . before. The Milky Way, the Big Dipper, and constellations that rested on the horizon stretched for thousands of miles above and around me. Stellar dust was smeared around clusters of stars, which I could never hope to see in any city. I only needed to look for a few minutes before I saw my first shooting star. I was awestruck beyond words and felt in my bones - to the core of my being that I could never fully comprehend the extent of it. I looked down where I heard voices around me. Their black silhouettes shone by the starlight. They laughed and joked around me, as kids often do, and somehow I felt that this experience was something less than spiritual for them. I detached my mind from their noise to where I was alone again in that moment. The darkness intrigued me. I felt it surround me like a blanket; it went completely through me.

We got back in the rovers and drove about forty minutes more to a camp named "Timbuctou." Two huge, tent-like "amaka's" were set up for the group. We unloaded and sat down to dinner. This is when the bongos first began to play. Eight dark-black men dressed in white jalabas (African robes), white turbans and brown sandals pounded on drums and bongos. They shook strange spoon-like instruments and sang in a language I had never heard. We were served cous-cous and camel meat while they played. We finished, then got up to dance with the tribe. We moved outside to where a large fire was lit and danced for hours. It was so much fun! My whole life, practically, I've been trying to learn how to dance like a "cool American," but there, I wanted to do anything BUT that. The fire died down and the throng of bongos gradually reduced: ten . . . five . . .three . . .one . . . One lone beat that rang into the early hours of morning. It echoed off the dunes until sleep overcame me, and I heard nothing.

I woke to voices outside our hut and the light of the new day. I got dressed and stepped outside to see the dunes for the first time in the sunlight. What an amazing sight! The sand where I stood was a grayish-yellow. A bit further out, the color was more orange, and off in the distance where the tallest dunes stood, the color was a deep orange-rose. We had a breakfast of bread with date jam and coffee with sheep milk. We then, mounted our camels and rode for about an hour to a near-by oasis and village called Merzouga. We visited a few shops where rugs, fossils and drums were sold then had lunch with the Berber people. (Most Arabic Muslims in Morocco are known as either Berbers or Bedouins). We traveled back to our camp in the desert and had dinner once again to the beat of the bongos.

After dinner, six girls and myself grabbed a few things from our hut and began walking out into the desert. After about Âľ of a mile, we pitched our blankets on the highest dune we could reach. For the first time in my life, I saw the moon rise. It was half-full and so close to us we could see the craters on its surface. The girls talked about the stars and other things, but all I could do was look up at this silver sky. I looked at the land around me, and as far as I could see in the daylight, I saw just as far by the light of the moon. The dunes rolled up and upon each other casting jet-black shadows on their valleys and spaces between. They glowed soft and smooth like velvet.

Everyone had fallen asleep, but I just couldn't allow myself to miss one minute of that night. I got up and walked back towards the camp to retrieve my journal. I was excited and felt an amazing independence walking alone in the night, deep in the Sahara Desert. However, it was not long before I felt somewhat afraid. I wasn't sure exactly from where the fear had come, or even what it was that frightened me. I thought it might have been that I was afraid of being lost, or of something happening and no one being able to hear me. I realized later what it was.

I drew lines in the sand to help me find my way back and finally saw the roof of our hut. About thirty feet away from it, a circle of Berber men were sitting, muttering and smoking. I saw the dark silhouettes of their turbans and their robes piled around their hunched-over bodies. They were motionless and puzzled. They saw me, but did not speak. They only watched me intently wondering, (I'm sure), why I had come from the desert alone. Their eyes followed me as I began my walk back and I disappeared behind the dunes. I watched for my lines in the sand and kept my eyes on the leaning dune I was headed for. All I could hear were the sounds I made: my feet on the sand, the whisper of the air in my nostrils and the swift beating of my heart. The fear still lingered. To lose myself in the Desert frightened me, yet it was something else that I could not identify. It was something I have never felt, nor ever heard anyone else talk about. It was almost as if I was afraid of the force . . . the energy of the Desert. I tried not to think about it, knowing that fear characteristically thrives upon itself. I kept walking. Finally, I found the girls, still sleeping as quietly as when I had left. I sat down and began to write.

Writing by the light of the moon, I could only see the shadow of my pen-tip on the page. The sound of my feverish scribbles leapt out of the silence like screams. Clouds began to roll in over the stars, carrying a stronger breeze with them now. I felt warm and could barely feel the clothes on my body. My feet were dusty from the sand and the air seemed to enter my lungs without me having to breathe it in. My hair was down and brushed softly across my left cheek, making a rustling noise as the breeze blew through it. This is when I understood it . . .This is when I understood the fear. It was God. He was all around me, manifested in the Desert, living in the dunes, breathing in each grain of sand. The force I felt was God. Sitting there at the top of the dune, the Desert held me and touched me as a mother does to her sleeping child. In every part of my body, throughout my soul, I felt peace like nothing I have ever known. My fear came from being so close to Him. I was not only close to Him, but I was IN Him. . and He was in me.

It was new to me, and I was afraid because I did not know to trust. Feeling the night, seeing the way the moonlight shined on my hands and legs, my fear melted away. It was magical and surreal. I trusted and I was free. I wanted to share it so much, but what could I say? How could I describe it? I did not feel alone because I was there for myself.

I woke the next morning to the movements of the girls next to me. None of us knew what to say. We knew that no amount of words could capture the depth of our emotions and what we learned about ourselves that night. Not even in the words written on this page do justice to my experience. The truth of it remains in me. The sky was lit and we waited for the sun to peek up from behind the dunes. The moon still hung in the sky above my head, growing fainter and smaller until it disappeared altogether. Finally, it happened, sunlight burst forth from behind the furthest dune! We were clapping and cheering with excitement. . . . tears and laughter, it was incredible. Heavenly streams of light encircled the sun as it floated higher and hovered over the Earth.

We packed up and headed back to the camp. We walked in silence, not knowing what to say, yet knowing that we needn't say anything at all. We knew - and that was enough.

The events that transpired after that seem overly insignificant to write in comparison. I imagine that falling in love or giving birth to a child must be somewhat similar, but those are things I have yet to learn. There is no name for what I discovered that night. The profundity of the human soul is always quick to teach that there is so much we can never understand. Just feeling it is enough for me.

It's funny that we feel these things, unable to see their horizons. It's funny that, to us, our thoughts seem to extend so far we think we could never replicate them for another human being, YET . . . we are only people to each other. These deep thoughts are neatly enclosed in a human body and we can never outwardly see what the other feels. That night in the Desert, we knew our thoughts were deeper than we could ever hope to tell, and that is what connected us. My wish for the world at that moment was that everyone, at least one time in his or her life, could experience liberty, as I have known it. I wished that they learn what it is to be silent and that they recognize when it is time to change.

I will forever search for that same glorification of faith. I will forever be thankful for any small bit of enlightenment that happens to strike my heart. My trust, my hope. . . this is God to me.

I could say that the desert has changed me, but I think it is more than that. So many things have led me to this point, that it would be wrong to say it was just this experience. The only thing right to say is that it was time for me to go there , it was time for me to experience that change. . .And I was the lucky one to have realized what it was.

Contact

Golden Thread
https://www.catholic.org NY, US
Monique Mugnier - freelance journalist, 212 715-1682

Email

momug21@yahoo.com

Keywords

Travel, God

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