If I Were to Close My Eyes Now…. [2019]

Saturday morning, August 17, 2019.

We are about sixty kilometres north of Nouakchott, eighteen degrees and thirty six minutes north and sixteen degrees six minutes west. In Mauritania, on the west coast of Africa

The road in the photo connects Tanit and the Nouakchott-Nouadhibou national highway.

Tanit is an uninhabited place all on its own, a newly built port meant for fishing in the traditional manner.

The market, cold storage facility, and seawater desalination plant, are strictly guarded, and empty.

I’m looking through the camera lens in an easterly direction.

On the horizon I can see traces of the desert landscape and regularly spaced high tension lines.

Further on from the horizon, in the desert, are the cities of Chami and Zouérate.

North of the arid Saharan shore.

We might set out on this nameless road to wherever we want.

For a moment I look up to the sky: grey and thick, a mixture of beige and warm blue.

Stretching away in the distance are the poles of the street lighting. What a signpost!?

The fine untouched sand moves just with the strength of the wind, contouring the sparse low vegetation not far from the road.

I get out of the car and take a picture.

I marvel at the road, sandy and then not sandy.

I stand on the route that is and yet does not have to be one.

There is nobody at all, which might make me feel uneasy. But Demba, Georges, Kalidu and the children in front of the supermarket are waiting for us.

Their looks are close to us, don’t easily let go of us.

…and if now, for a moment I were to shut my eyes, I might feel the desert warmth and the fresh sea air from the Atlantic. What a feeling!?