Sounds from the Sahara

Thanks to Leo for inspiring this post

To say that the desert is poetry is to say something obvious.
The Sahara is not just a dazzling world of dunes.
It is also the crunching of sand under footsteps
It is the burning of sand on the feet
The child rolling in the dunes
The blue men of the desert who do not say their feelings.
They write them.
They sing in splendid poems all that the desert gives.

What could be more poignant than these words, like pearls, from this great solitude?
“I cried
I cried
until my heart is drier
That the stones
I threw away my heart
In the stones
of the desert…”

Tuaregs have a language
a culture
a music
an art
political desires
they say them with guns
they say them with words
with music
with their culture that speaks of immensity, of what is more beautiful and strong than man

Then we will have to stop
and listen to them

May all those who are not here forgive us.

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