I’m lying down in a Dalí painting. Inside everyone is asleep, but I’m wide awake, turned into insomnia by the intense star noise that dragged me out to this room, this immense room crowned by stars which is now my own, all mine, so big and all mine... Lying just outside the tent’s door I use my fingertips to touch the sky, timidly lit by a yellowish darksome white light that reflects from the fading moon in the horizon, and that fills with shadows this surreal painting of tones of a greyish dark blue where some random Dalí lost his brush one day. Hovering among the dunes and mountains that compose the horizon, the brush creates before my eyes strange animals with very long legs who, in the absence of elephants, are camels who wobble lazily in front of me, making my still body feel once more the bumpy road that brought me here. On both sides of this painting the brush decorates white tents that snore gently, while in the middle pops a faint red light, recent memory of the blaze around which Tuaregs danced wildly, like me, at the sound of their own rhythmic and joyful beat, consequence of the immense pride they feel in welcoming us their home, this huge sand-made home which is now my own as well. Inside everyone is asleep, but I am here, let alone in this house which is now also mine, just mine, even if only for a moment, even if only in the memory of this painting Dalí lost one day in the desert and which I was lucky enough to find.
Somewhere in the desert - Zagora, Morocco, October 2010
