Finer Sand

Sahara. 2025

I have no excuse, except that my eyes have lost focus on what is beautiful. I’ve been lost in the humanity of the mundane—or the mundaneness of my own humanity. I don’t know which. Pulling weeds from between the pavers. Counting heartbeats. Watching my veins pulse ever so slightly. I’m surprised that Solstice is just a few days away, and then amazed when it arrives again. I turn my hourglass and watch the thick sand slowly trickle from the narrowest part of the glass, counting time so I can turn it upside down and start again. And again.

I’ve had no desire, no heart, no brains to write here—or anywhere that matters. It’s been years.

I’ve built a house. My son is grown. My business is morphing. I feel the sadness and fear that come with change—change without certainty. And yet—thank goodness—I’m still driven by ingenuity and grit. I am already refocusing. Rebuilding elsewhere.

I’ve opened my heart to someone whom I thought would be perennial. I was wrong. It is curious that the paramount feeling when one is open to loving another, besides love itself, is hope. The hope to hold and be held. In some ways, losing hope is worse than losing love.

As 2025 thawed from winter, it came to pass that my beloved Napoleon left me. I knew it was coming, but nothing truly prepares you for the end of an innocent life. I held him as they put him to sleep. I held him while they stopped his little and most faithful heart. I was afraid he would suffer—but he didn’t. He simply slipped into a deep and peaceful sleep. And there he stayed, his face so calm, almost as if dreaming of rolling on the grass, sleeping by the fire and the Christmas tree, eating an extra dinner…

It had been years since I’d seen life exit a body. I braced for the sorrow that permeates the living when witnessing one leaving this world. I felt sorrow—but it was intermingled with gratitude and a strange awareness that death can be peaceful. Blessed are those who merit a peaceful death. My Popo died as he had lived: graciously, quietly, and lovingly.

Thus, I’ve been watching the pieces of my life readjust—settling into new positions or leaving my landscape like bits of music never to be heard again, only remembered.

Wondering what to do next, I followed a childhood dream and I traveled to the Sahara. I landed in Marrakesh and was immediately transported into a world so vastly foreign, I felt small for not understanding it—and large for being able to witness it. North Africa gave me images so rich in color that they are tattooed in my memory: ink and blood mixing, making it real in a way that the American and European worlds failed to do.

Markets full of spice, silk, candles, and livestock. Women floating in veils, only their dark eyes visible to a stranger’s gaze. Children running through long corridors of tents. Architecture so divinely imagined, I wondered if human hands were truly behind it. Cats everywhere—being born, dying, begging, fighting, sitting on brocade cushions in the fanciest of hotels.

While the sun beat down, a constant breeze moved through the valleys of date farms, scattering rose petals across dirt roads, making a mess of my hair. Men greeted each other with two kisses, one on each side of their bearded faces. The food was both rich and simple. The wine was delicious and frowned upon. (I, a Western woman, was frowned upon too, as I raised my glass.) The people were poor, yet seemingly unaware of anything missing. The beds were too firm, but covered in colorful tapestries. The desert was hot and cold —this was a world of incongruities.

I did as I often do when entering a new world: I blended in. I bought garments to match the women who live there, and covered my hair when needed. Leaving my shoes behind, I switched to leather sandals. My feet became like everyone else’s as I walked the ancient stone pavers.

A lawyer, trained in both Sharia and civil law, drove me through the countryside. Sitting in the backseat of a luxury car, I passed villages made mostly of sand and dry straw. I saw families on foot. Stopped to breathe in the perfumed air of the oases. Ate grilled meat at a gas station. Sat beneath a palm tree that housed a hundred songbirds. I marveled at the desert birds and their resilience and desire to sing.

The days on the road were long, but I finally arrived at the edge of the Sahara.

The dunes filled my vision like a mirage. One moment: arid plains. The next: towering waves of sand. Like volcanoes or mountain ranges, they appeared suddenly as if someone had poured millions of truckloads of sand in deliberate patterns.

My driver dropped me and my belongings at a compound of tents nestled at the base of a dune, just a few hours before sunset. This was the place of my childhood’s imagining, of characters who once were part of my dreams: The Little Prince, The Men Who Counted, A Thousand and One Nights.

I was welcomed by the men running the canvas hotel. They told me to grab my scarf and head toward the camels. A young boy, covered in flowing robes with brilliant eyes, gently took my scarf and wrapped it into a turban, only satisfied when my headdress matched his own. He left one trailing piece of cloth to cover my face from the sand and wind. Then, I was pointed to my camel.

I’d never seen one up close. I patted him gently, like the horses I’ve ridden, and climbed onto his saddle. He rose under me as if I weighed nothing at all. I immediately loved this animal. Like horses, they speak through ears and glances, and invite you to relax into their rhythm, to the left-right-left-right of their walk. We climbed the desert, the wind picking up speed as the sun made its way into the horizon.

The ride was short. All too soon, I was at the top of the dunes. I dismounted my new friend and walked toward the highest peak. Others were with me, but their presence faded. It was just me and the wind, whipping sand into my skin, into my eyes, turning the sunset sky a dusty pink.

There, I watched the desert move beneath my feet and disperse into the air. These dunes would not be the same come morning. Here, nothing was permanent. As I stood in that finer sand, I realized I too was being moved—transported. Invited to release what no longer served me. To let it go.

This sand, so much finer than the one in my hourglass, was not meant to measure time; it was timeless. I, the visitor of this wondrous place, was not meant to continue to carry the load I had brought with me; I was meant to return lighter and anew.

Shukran, Sahara.